Session Information
23 SES 05 B, The Knowledge Base of Policy
Paper Session
Contribution
In a society that is characterized of being both more and more knowledge intensive and differentiated in the labor market, education has come to be increasingly important for the capitalist states integrative functions as for the competitiveness in the global economy. Parallel processes can be found in a European context. Different movements have resulted in the creation of different supranational systems with the aims of converging nation’s education policy and compare pupils’ knowledge standards on an international basis (Ringarp & Rothland, 2010). In other words – knowledge has become high politics! This means, just like Apple (2003) emphasizes, that schooling by its very nature is political. Apple also suggests that analyses of the politics of knowledge are crucial if a deeper understanding of the complex connections between education and power is to be examined.
In regard to Swedish pupils´ results in the international knowledge comparisons between countries and an huge youth unemployment, the Swedish school system, and especially the upper secondary school, has had to endure a lot of criticism. These critics resulted in a reformation of the Swedish upper secondary school system. With a general interest in understanding the relationship between the constitution of knowledge in education policy and broader social changes - this paper analyses the political dimension of knowledge in the way it is materialized in this reformation. Two education policy reforms will be compared with an aim to study discursive shifts over time concerning the formation of knowledge in educational policy. In 2009 the Swedish government handed over the proposition “Higher standards and quality in the new secondary school” (2008/09: 199) to the Parliament. Foregoing this proposition was the government committee report “the path to the future – a reformed upper secondary school” (SOU 2008:27), which proposed the most extensive changes in the Swedish upper secondary school since the 1990s. This government committee report, with the subsequent proposition, will in this paper be analyzed in relation to one of the most influential committee reports (School of education, 1992:94) and propositions (1992/93:250) which in the same way can be regarded as the most important policy texts in the reformation of the 1990s upper secondary school. The interest of this study is to examine discursive and social changes by comparing the content in these policy texts with regards to the constitution of knowledge in the way it manifest itself in how policymakers talk about the concept of student, education and society. With a critical approach it is crucial to understand and explain policy processes of education in its historical and sociopolitical context. The educational system is then, in this study, theoretically positioned in terms of its embeddedness in a prescribed dilemma by the welfare states politics to, in a as well legitimately and efficiently ways, reproduce the capitalistic system (Offe, 1984; Jessop 2002). In this processes the educational system seems play an important role.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Apple, Michael (2003). The state and the politics of knowledge. London: Routledge Chouliaraki, Lilie & Fairclough, Norman (1999). Discourse in late modernity – Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University press Fairclough, Norman (1992). Discourse and social change. Oxford: Polity Press. Habermas, Jürgen (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 1: Reasons and the Rationalization of Society: Cambridge : Polity Press Jessop, Bob (2002). The future of the capitalist state. Cambridge: Polity Offe, Claus (1984), Contradictions of the welfare state. London: Hutchinson Ringarp, Johanna & Rothland, Martin (2010). “The effects of the PISA results on Education Debates in Sweden and Germany” European Educational Research Journal. Vol. 9, Nr. 3
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.