Early educational provision – emphasised in education policy reforms in Norway? An analysis of education policy documents

The article analyses how the intentions of early provision in Norwegian schools have been expressed in the education policy reforms in Norway from the 1970s to the present day. The first area deals with the intentions that most explicitly cover early provision; prevention, early detection and intervention. The second area of analysis relates to the early provision intentions with an emphasis on the correlation between individual and environmental factors seen in light of differentiation and disability. The third area examines how significance is attached to pupils’ social background with regard to early provision in learning in schools. Finally, consideration is given to the relationship between early provision intentions and efforts to prevent pupils dropping out of upper secondary education. The analysis also shows that the policy guidelines on early provision for schools and teachers have been weak and unclear. This is due to the fact that the early provision intentions have primarily been expressed in reports to the Storting, and rarely given any kind of focus in national curricula.     

Is ‘gender-sensitive education’ a useful concept for educational policy?

This article responds to Astrid Sinnes and Marianne Løken’s article ‘Gendered education in a gendered world: Looking beyond cosmetic solutions to the gender gap in science’ by exploring the idea of ‘gender-sensitive’ education and its usefulness in educational policy. It draws on theoretical discussions of the concept of gender and of difference to consider ways in which ‘gender-sensitive’ education might serve the task of promoting equality and justice.     

Mixed messages in education policy: Sign of the times?

Abstract

The education policy of Conservative governments in Britain since 1979 is sometimes said to be contradictory. It purports to empower the consumer, but legislation has given the lie to this, vesting ever greater powers in central government, less so in Scotland, the more so in England and Wales. In short, education policy contains mixed messages, or contradictions. But these contradictions to some extent express the tensions which have become apparent in an age of transition: that between the modern and the postmodern, or between Fordist and ‘disorganised’ forms of capitalism. A new mode of regulation is being established within the agencies of the welfare state. It reveals an isomorphic structure ‐ at the level of the pupil, the teacher, the parent and the school ‐ whose purpose is the management of consent, and whose justification appeals to the culture of consumption. The analysis is illustrated mainly with reference to Scotland.     

Beginning teachers’ conceptions of competency: implications to educational policy and teacher education in Malaysia

When any innovations or measurement procedures are introduced into the education system to improve or judge the quality of its teaching force, beginning teachers often have to adapt to these new concepts of what constitute a high quality teaching. This article contends that these new concepts neither necessarily match beginning teachers’ own conceptions about their own competency nor has it given beginning teachers a chance to be heard. This study provides an opportunity for beginning teachers’ ‘voices’ to be heard through phenomenography which is an interpretive research approach to discover what beginning teachers in Malaysia conceive and understand as competence in relation to what they do every day as teachers. The main finding of this study is the key role played by beginning teachers’ conceptions of competency which has provided strong implications for educational policies and teacher education. The findings suggest that teachers need to be represented in any quality improvement measures. Careful attention should also be paid to the school systems and to teacher training programmes to support and encourage teachers in their professional growth as competent teachers.     

Who accesses secondary schooling in Uganda; Was the universal secondary education policy ubiquitously effective?

This paper explores predictors of accessing secondary education for children in Uganda given the universal secondary education policy of 2007. This is done for; rural Uganda, Kampala and other urban areas given increasing urbanization of rural areas that assumes urban homogeneity in heterogeneous situations. We apply the logit model onto Uganda census data to predict access given individual, household and community variables. We discover that only 22% of children aged 13–18 were enrolled at secondary and that demand and supply related predictors are moderated by the socio-economic status of households to influence schooling outcomes all along the education ladder.     

Open educational resources: education for the world?

Education is widely seen as an important means of addressing both national and international problems, such as political or religious extremism, poverty, and hunger. However, if developing countries are to become societies that can compete properly with Western industrialized countries, not only is a fundamental shift in thinking with regard to the value of education and more/better provision of teaching required, but strong support from other countries is needed as well. This article explores questions such as whether Western policymakers can avoid a repetition of some of the failures of the past few decades in terms of providing foreign aid; how educators and providers of educational scenarios and learning contents can foster and manage the creation of a worldwide knowledge society; and in particular, if the provision of open educational resources (OER) can realistically overcome the educational gap and foster educational justice.     

Higher education policy in post-devolution UK: more convergence than divergence?

Many researchers studying the impact of parliamentary devolution conclude that education policies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are diverging. They attribute this to five factors: the redistribution of formal powers associated with devolution; differences in values, ideologies and policy discourses across the four territories; the different composition, interests and policy styles of their policy communities; the different ‘situational logics’ of policy-making and the mutual independence of policy decisions in the different territories. This article reviews trends in higher education (HE) policy across the UK since parliamentary devolution. It focuses on policies for student fees and student support, for widening participation, for supporting research and for the HE contribution to economic development, skills and employability. On balance, it finds as much evidence of policy convergence, or at least of constraints on divergence, as of policy divergence. It argues that each of the five factors claimed to promote divergence can be associated with corresponding pressures for convergence.     

Sexuality education in New Zealand: a policy for social justice?

In 2015, the New Zealand Ministry of Education released a new curriculum policy document for sexuality education in all schools – Sexuality Education: A Guide for Boards of Trustees, Principals and Teachers. This policy is a rare international example of a curriculum document that explicitly values diversity, promotes inclusive school environments, and approaches sexuality education as an area of study (rather than a health promotion intervention). Since its release, the document has, however, gained little attention either of a scholarly nature or in terms of dedicated implementation in schools. One exception is a recent article in this journal by Sarah Garland-Levett, which raises some interesting and important concerns about the possibilities of such policy documents. I follow her lead here and continue the discussion about the place and potential of progressive sexuality education policy, and offer some thoughts about the content and intentions of this text.     

Do educational vouchers reduce inequality and inefficiency in education?

Policy debates around the topic of educational vouchers as an approach to improve the public educational system are still ongoing and a consensus on the potential benefits or drawbacks has not been reached yet. This paper models the distributional processes entailed by two alternative educational voucher systems, universal and target vouchers, by using an agent-based model of a highly heterogeneous school district. Using this approach allows to track which students actually switch schools and thereby evaluate peer effects. At the same it is possible to model an endogenous reaction of public schools in order to assess their reaction to increased competition. The results indicate an ambiguous effect of universal vouchers on low-income students. The introduction has a negative peer effect on students in low-performing schools due to “cream skimming”, i.e. highly motivated students leaving the schools. In contrast, students who switch to better schools observe a positive effect. The negative effects are partly alleviated by low- performing schools improving their educational services as a response to a decline in enrollment. When examining target vouchers which are a function of student ability, the paper shows that they allow the school district to benefit from the increased competition while avoiding the deterioration of the peer group.     

Do educational pathways contribute to equity in tertiary education in Australia?

A key assumption of equity policies in Australia, as in many countries, is that pathways from lower-status, vocationally oriented ‘second’ tiers of tertiary education to ‘first’ tier higher education are able to act as an equity mechanism. This is because students from low socio-economic backgrounds are over-represented in former and underrepresented in the latter. The assumption that pathways support equity is tested in this paper through an analysis of the socio-economic profile and institutional destination of student transfers from vocational education and training to higher education in Australia. It finds that educational pathways deepen participation in education by existing social groups but do not effectively widen participation for groups that do not have equitable access. This is as a consequence of the hierarchical structuring of qualifications within VET as well as in higher education.     

Trans-nationalization of educational policy making: from European innovation projects in adult education to an emerging European space for lifelong learning: what model for the European vocational education and training policy?

This article is drawn from broader qualitative research on innovation in the field of professional adult training within the framework of European pilot projects such as the LEONARDO projects. This research aims at contributing to a general understanding of the phenomenon of innovation, in the context of European calls for projects, as an instrument of the European Vocational Education and Training (VET) Policy, which is supposed to transform the national training systems of EU member states according to the Lisbon Strategy. For this article, the author has chosen to present some of the results of the analysis of the European VET Policy and its transition to a lifelong learning policy. The first part of this article describes the conceptual framework and more especially three of the main concepts examined: public policy, social innovation and European space. The second part distinguishes three periods in the European VET policy’s history, identified through a genealogical examination from its first step within the European Coal and Steel Community to the present lifelong learning policy. The third part highlights the specificity of this supranational public policy model and the links between the European VET policy, the LEONARDO programme and the pilot projects. In conclusion, this article supports the idea of antagonistic logics in the evolution of this policy, on at least three levels: decision-making powers, conception of VET systems and conception of learning.     

ICT-use, educational policy and changes in pedagogical paradigms in compulsory education in Denmark: From a lifelong learning paradigm to a traditional paradigm?

For years, increased use of ICT in education and training has been part of the Danish education policy, and the number of computers in schools and the actual use of ICT have grown. At the same time, school leaders’ and teachers’ pedagogical paradigm in primary and lower secondary schools seems to be changing from a lifelong learning paradigm (focussed on student-centred, active, and autonomous leaning) to a more traditional paradigm (focussed on curriculum-centred teaching and instructions). The aim of this paper is to describe this development in relation to the way ICT is used as well as to changes in educational policy. Beck and Beck-Gerrnsheim (2002) theory about ‘institutionalized individualization’ as characteristic of the reflexive society serves as a theoretical framework for better understanding the observed changes.     

Large‐scale interventions in science education: The road to utopia?

This article provides commentary on the five articles in this issue on large‐scale interventions in science education for diverse student groups in varied educational settings. Using these articles as a point of departure, I discuss three challenges to science education research and practice. The first concerns the changed meaning of science education reform over the past two decades. The science education research and development community must be aware of the shifting policy and public awareness context of their work and react accordingly if it wishes for its work to make a difference in the lives of teachers and students. The second addresses the importance of teacher professional development and the role that well‐designed and internally valid research plays in developing knowledge in this area. The third discusses the chaotic and contradictory nature of educational policy in this country and argues that our field needs to align our research work with the ways in which real and impactful decisions are made about education in general and science education in particular. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 49: 420–427, 2012     

Convergence in education policy? A quantitative analysis of policy change and stability in OECD countries

In this article, we quantitatively assess education policy change in OECD countries. While research has frequently underlined the importance of international exchange for national policy development, it is yet unclear whether resulting policies are converging. By distinguishing different kinds of education policy goals, we hypothesise that indicators related to macro-level goals are more likely to converge than those related to implementation. We then analyse the development of several education policies since the 1990s. We find strong convergence of some indicators and among some groups of countries, but no clear pattern emerges. Convergence is only partially influenced by the abstractness of education policy goals, and in particular the Scandinavian countries seem to pursue their own approaches in important education policy options.     

Children’s education in secure custodial settings: Towards a global understanding of effective policy and practice

This unique editorial paper is one of the first that discusses the education of incarcerated young people in an international education journal. We review the eleven papers in the Special Issue on children’s education in secure custodial settings to provide key insights with the aim of moving towards a global understanding of what effective policy and practice may look like. In examining the range of cross-disciplinary papers from a range of different cultural contexts including the UK, Germany, UAE, US, Nigeria and South Africa, we are able to illuminate some of the commonalities in the education of young people who are incarcerated as well as some of the background characteristics – many of which are strikingly similar. We employed the ideas of the bio-socio-ecological systems model to explore the proximal and distal systems that interact to affect the educational experiences of the young people. These included at the microsystemic level the importance of relationships in engaging the young people with education and learning and that, the relationships between the key actors (mesosystem) as well as the importance of effective leadership (exosystem) were critical elements in improving the experience of education in custodial settings. But rather predictably, the structural disadvantages (macrosystem) that young people who come into contact with youth justice face and how these are not appropriately addressed that came into sharp focus, possibly because many countries take a punitive approach to youth offending. We argue that there are things that can be done at each systems level but that in order to make the changes to genuinely improve the lives of these young people, we make a bold call upon the global community (macrosystem), through the UNCRC to challenge themselves for a radical overhaul of youth justice approaches which put the child as child first and offender second in order to meet the commitment in Article 28.     

Formal education and pastoralism in western India: inclusion,or adverse incorporation?

The education exclusion of pastoralists is increasingly recognised as a critical area for attention in progress towards Education For All. This article sets out two interlinked propositions as to what underlies barriers to education inclusion for pastoralists in India: a conflation of ‘education’ with schooling; and ambiguity over whether pastoralism is a relevant contemporary livelihood. Taking an adverse incorporation and social exclusion perspective on marginality, policy narratives of education inclusion are explored using its construct of ‘terms of inclusion’. Empirical evidence showing how pastoralism and formal education intersect demonstrates multi-faceted exclusions which simultaneously drive demand for schooling and impose highly adverse terms of incorporation for pastoralism in the globalising economy. Policy strategies currently undervalue ‘education’ as situated learning with a crucial role in pastoralist livelihood sustainability, recognition of which is essential to considering how such ‘education’ can interface with institutional arrangements and tackling the delegitimisation of pastoralism by hegemonic, place-based schooling.     

Parental entrepreneurship in public education: a social force or a policy problem?

Parental involvement in public education is an expression of joint responsibility between parents and the state in which parents are expected to comply with current educational policy. Moreover, parents are often perceived as reactive, whereas the educational administration is seen as proactive, mainly by reducing barriers and establishing mechanisms for parental involvement. Referring to proactive involvement in which parents practice noncompliance while fighting the system, this study conceptualizes ‘parental entrepreneurship.’ The practical aspects of parental entrepreneurship are analyzed based on three well-known manifestations: homeschooling, the integration of children with special needs, and parental cooperatives within early childhood education and care. Parental entrepreneurship further exemplifies the blurry boundaries between parents and administration as regards children’s education and demonstrates that the entrepreneurial role parents may play in reforming formal public education. Parental entrepreneurship also illuminates the ongoing renegotiation of the foundations of the social contract between parents and the government, primarily in relation to professionalism, legitimacy, and authority.