Session Information
23 SES 03 C, Effects of Reform on Teachers and Schools
Paper Session
Contribution
This chapter focuses on meanings of decentralisation in the context of post-socialist reforms in Romania. The main purpose is to examine the circulation of decentralisation reform in what is generally considered to be a highly centralised country. Contrasting perspectives and hybridised ideas are noticeable in the critical investigation of key policy documents and from teacher perspectives on reform drawn from in-depth interviews and focus groups. Post-socialist decentralisation reforms in Romania should be seen in the larger context of state and education restructuring as a global movement and as part of the trend toward marketisation (McGinn and Welsh, 1999). Romanian political culture, with its discourses on modernisation and a “return to Europe”, has offered a complementary, legitimising base to the decentralising reform of administration and education. In line with the recent history of these reforms, most interview participants view 1998 as the peak of real “institutional autonomy”, followed by a decline or even a slow recentralisation in subsequent years. They also refer to “self-assigned” or “reclaimed” autonomy, which every teacher can adopt “in their own class, once the doors are closed”. Significantly, most agree that the latter type is essentially the same as in the communist period, prior to the 1989 political changes. We will thus investigate the contrasting perspectives expressed by scholars, teachers, policy documents, as well as the hybridised ideas, which result in various visions of reform. The analysis of post-socialist changes, both as real and imagined processes, leads us to conclude that the Romanian education transition should be seen as a complex process which has followed unanticipated trajectories and has led to multiple destinations (Silova, 2009).
We will therefore take a specific look at Romanian decentralisation efforts as being underpinned by a hybridisation of educational philosophies and thus resulting in contrasting policy meanings. The circulation of “decentralisation” concept reveals contrasting meanings also if we look at the internal policy debate (as reflected in key policy documents) and the perspectives of teachers and head teachers on this issue (as analysed through questionnaires and interviews). Our findings reveal that decentralization is primarily conceived as an evolutionary process (following linear trajectories) by ministry experts and in policy documents: both from a technical perspective (from initiation to implementation) and from a cultural point of view (actors “need time” to properly understand it and adopt it). In practice, the picture is far more complicated given that the concept of “decentralization” takes on different meanings for different actors. Moreover, its profile is clearly discernable when confronting it with the three different justification types conceptualised by McGinn and Welsch (1999) – political legitimacy, professional expertise, and market efficiency.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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