Background: Educational restructuring has been a major issue in education the last decades. Educational systems have been restructured in terms of decentralisation, deregulation, professional accountability, marketization and so forth in order to flatten hierarchies, increase managerial, professional or cliental control and to obtain a more efficient and innovative organisation. The focus of this symposium is restructuring related to education governance; deregulation, marketization, and transitions from steering by rules to steering by goals and results. Educational systems have been restructured in different ways, depending on local contexts as well as the impact of international organisations and communications of educational ideas. We have now possibilities to capture the implications of this, how educational restructuring has materialised in different contexts and with what implications. This means that we have opportunities to discuss the value as well as the validity of educational research in a vital area. The proponents of educational restructuring have been numerous, as have its critics. In some research positions technical issues are the focus, in others political issues, and in still others cultural changes. In sum, educational restructuring is controversial in the field of educational research. This symposium has the ambition to capture controversies around educational restructuring. Controversies in educational research: From a positivistic point of view research controversies can be regarded as a consequence of deficiencies in research. Given good methodologies and well-designed and accurate studies we would presumably agree on what are accurate findings and facts and the controversy would turn into consensus. However, from a reflectionist (we are here referring to the work of e g Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, 1992) or a constructionist point of view such a controversy is something you would expect given the structure of discourses as well as relations between research and its context. In short, controversies can be very useful for reflection and analysis. We are not interested in stating rules for how to communicate in research controversies. Nor are we interested in summarising educational thoughts and research in overarching ways. But we are interested in communication about such controversies from different positions, perspectives and contexts, since this will, we hope, generate more precise distinctions and arguments. Here we are using the work of Ian Hacking who have analysed controversies within diagnoses in psychiatry. Hacking is interested in how different lines of reasoning are constructed and in what ways controversies are outlined. Hacking (1999) presents an analysis of social constructionism, where he argues that to state that a phenomenon is socially constructed when, in the present state of affairs, X is taken for granted or appears to be inevitable, and you in spite of that argue that it is not inevitable, but socially constructed Ð a result of a matrix of institutions, social demands, and so forth. Restructuring of education is a social construction Ð a result of human action operating within certain institutional, social and historical circumstances. However, when listening to leading politicians and administrators and reading policy documents in Europe, there is less argumentation about restructuring as a choice and more about the inevitability of restructuring. These findings indicate that education restructuring is on its way to be an institutionalised or reified idea. Considering this, there is a need to highlight controversies about education restructuring and to capture the institutional matrices that form education restructuring and its implications. Purpose: The purpose of this symposium is to present and discuss thoughts on and consequences and implications of educational restructuring in different contexts. The participants are researchers that have criticised current educational restructuring from different theoretical perspectives and research approaches. They will describe the workings and social and educational implications of educational restructuring in different contexts. As discussant we have a proponent of educational restructuring. By means of discussions we hope to identify the most vital controversies in educational restructuring issues. The organisation of the symposium: The contributions are focussing on different aspects of restructuring and governance. The international cases are selected in order to capture the intersection between social and cultural contexts and educational restructuring. And in the symposium we also present different research approaches and intellectual traditions used to capture implications of restructuring The participants will present their studies of education restructuring, focussing on contexts, aspects and implications and outlining a set of controversies or potential controversies around aspects of restructuring. These arguments will be discussed and analysed in interaction with the audience. References References: Bourdieu, P & Wacquant, L (1992) An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: The university of Chicago press. Hacking, I (1999): The social construction of what? Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press