Marketing and competition – part of everyday life and pedagogic identities in upper-secondary school?

Author(s):

Inger Erixon ArremanGunnar SchedinLisbeth Lundahl

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 10 E, Markets and Competition

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-30

14:45-16:15

Room:

HG, HS 45

Chair:

Contribution

Economic growth, increased effectiveness and quality have been main arguments for the ex¬tensive introduction of competition and choice in the public sector and education since the late 1980s (Whitty, Power & Halpin 1998; Ball, 2007). Such arguments have also underpin¬ned the fast transformation of Swedish education and education governance in the last decades. Since the early 1990s, reforms of decentralisation and market¬isation of education (Lundahl 2002) have led to an extensive number and variety of pub¬licly funded independent schools, particularly at the upper-secondary level (Swedish Schools Inspectorate, 2009). In 2007 about 15 percent of students attended upper secondary education in independ¬ent schools (Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, 2008; also see Swedish National Agency for Education, 2007). Today the majority of such schools are run by companies, more than eighty percent of which were paying con¬cerns (Swedish Television, 2008). Even if most attention has been paid to the expansion of inde¬pend¬ent schools, marketisation takes place in a num¬ber of other ways as well. Hence, even public schools are competing against each other over students, teachers and reputation, municipalities may invite for tenders in vocational and aestethical subjects, the decisions of which courses and programmes to offer are far more decentralised than before, and so on. Given the history of strong central regulation of education within the Swedish social democratic welfare state (c f Esping Andersen, 1996; Arnesen & Lundahl, 2006), current Swedish education policies, with few hindrances to market forces, are seen as exceptional, even in comparison to the US (Chubb, 2007). Internationally, as well as in Sweden, the concrete expressions and influence of marketisation are however still little researched. Ball (2007) concludes: Most discussion of education markets still remains at the level of ’ab¬strac¬tion’; little is written about the actual buyers and sellers, forms of labour, constraints and regulations in lived, ‘concrete’ markets (Ball, 2007, p 15). The aim of this paper is to investigate and compare the pedagogic identities of students and professional identities of staff (principals, teachers, guidance officers) (Bernstein, 2000) in upper secondary schools exposed to different degrees of competition.

Method

The paper emanates from an ongoing larger research project on marketisation of Swedish upper secondary school, financed by the Swed¬ish Research Council,with an aim to increase our knowledge on the effects of market¬isation in upper-secondary schools which are object to varying degrees of competition, with regard to performance, working environment and well-being of staff and students. Combinations of quantitative and qualitative approaches were used in order to collect data and analyse effects of marketisation of upper-secondary schools.National official statistics, data from a survey in two regions and preliminary interview data from eight upper-secondary schools in two Swedish regions were collected.These schools were selected on basis of the municipalities’ degree of urban¬ity and the market exposure of the school, as measured in previous studies of the project (Lundström, 2009).Questionnaires and interviews were direc¬ted to heads of school administration, principals,counselors and teachers and to students pursuing their second year in the target-schools.

Expected Outcomes

A specific effect of marketisation is that both publicly and privately run schools use a variety of strategies in order to recruit and communicate with prospective students. For example, the home-page of a school is particularly important for advertising the effectiveness and quality of the school, and its pedagogic identity in terms of norms and values (Palme, 2008). In this study we focus on the effects of relations between schools’ discourse and the perceived pedagogic identities of staff and students, their well-being and perceived effectiveness and qualities of the schools.

References

References: Arnesen, Anne-Lise, Lundahl, Lisbeth (2006). Still Social and Democratic? Inclusive Education Policies in the Nordic Welfare States. Scandinavian Journal of Education, Vol. 58, No. 3, pp 285-300. Ball, Stephen J., (2007). Education plc. Understanding private sector participation in public sector education. London: Routledge. Bernstein, Basil (2000). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Chubb, J. E (2007). Kommentar: Att få ut det mesta möjliga av marknaden: Lärdomar från fritt skolval i USA (Comment: To get the most out of the market. Conclusions from free school-choice in the USA). In Anders Lindbom (Ed.), Friskolorna och framtiden – segregation, kostnader och effektivitet. (Independent schools and the future – segregation, costs and efficiency). Stockholm: Institutet för framtidsstudier, 51-57. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta. (1996). After the Golden Age? Welfare State Dilemmas in a Global Economy. In Gøsta Esping-Andersen (eds) Welfare States in Transition. National Adaptations in Global Economies .Pp 1-31. London: SAGE Lundahl, Lisbeth (2002). Sweden: Decentralisation, deregulation, quasi-markets – and then what? Journal of Education Policy, 17 (6), 687-697. Lundström, Ulf (2009). Upper-secondary School as a Market: Perceptions of the market competition. Paper to be presented in NFPF conference, Trondheim, March 2009. Palme, Mikael (2008). Det kulturella kapitalet. Studier av symboliska tillgångar i det svenska utbildningssystemet 1988–2008 (Cultural Capital: Symbolic Assets in the Swedish Education System 1988–2008). Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Uppsala: Studier i utbildnings- och kultursociologi (In Swedish with an English abstract). Swedish Television (2008). Vinst från friskolor hamnar i privata fickor (Profits from independent schools go into private pockets). (http://.svt.se) Publicerad 2007-10-27. Accessed 2008-11-04. Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (2008). Öppna jämförelser 2008. Gymnasieskola. (Open comparisons 2008. Upper-secondary education). Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting www.skl.se Accessed 2009-01-20. Swedish National Agency for Education (2007). Descriptive data on pre- school activities, school-age childcare, schools and adult education in Sweden 2006. Swedish National Agency for Education report no. 283. http://www.skolverket.se/sb/d/356/a/1326. Accessed 2009-01-28. The Swedish National Agency for Education (2005). The Swedish School System. The right to choose one´s school and independent schools. Published 2005-02-21. http://www.skolverket.se/sb/d/374#paragraphAnchor8 Accessed 2009-01-22. Swedish Schools Inspectorate (2009). Fakta om fristående skolor. http://www.skolinspektionen.se/sv/Tillstandsprovning/Fakta-om-fristaende-skolor/ Accessed 2009-01-28. Whitty, Geoff, Power, Sally & Halpin, David (1998). Devolution & Choice in Education. The School, the State and the Market. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Author Information

Inger Erixon Arreman

Umeå University

Department of Child and Youth Education,Special Education and Counselling

Umeå

186

Gunnar Schedin

Umeå University, Sweden

Lisbeth Lundahl

Umeå University

Child and Youth Education, Special Education and Counselling

Umeå

186

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