Session Information
23 SES 03 B, New Forms of Governing in School Education (Part 3)
Paper Session continued from 23 SES 02 B
Contribution
This paper seeks to demonstrate how education policy discourse in Denmark – understood as a European embedded case - and the US exhibit striking commonalities as well as considerable differences according to vastly different contextual backgrounds.
The paper’s guiding hypothesis proposes that genesis of national policies occurs differently in Denmark as a small country that is highly dependent upon policy advice from the larger critical but highly amorphous mass of transnational policy forums (Bologna Process, OECD, EU) (e.g. Krejsler, Olsson & Petersson, 2014; Waldow, 2009); whereas US education policy is generated as an amorphous albeit more coherent body according to a plethora of forces in 50 different states, think tanks, billionaire philanthropists and other players (e.g. Rhodes, 2012; Reese, 2011; Ravitch 2013). Both ‘bodies’, however, appear to operate according to ‘soft law’ and gradual consensus-building around the imagined needs of how modern nations succeed in ‘an increasingly competitive global race among Knowledge Economies’ (e.g. Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Zeitlin et al., 2005; Henry et al., 2001; Hopmann, 2008; OECD, 1996; Joffe, 2014; Berliner & Briddle, 1996; Pereyra et al, 2011).
Danish education policy discourse is thoroughly impacted by participation in transnational bodies producing a unifying logic and governance technologies (e.g. comparisons, standards, performance indicators, bench-marking) that serve to make national education programs comparable, fueled by mutual peer pressure among competing nations. Consequently, Danish teacher education discourse emerged from a distinctly national vocational seminary tradition into a modernized university college discourse that fits transnational templates of comparability (e.g. Krejsler, Olsson & Petersson, 2014).
US policy discourse is guided by other albeit similar logics. In spite of education being a state responsibility in constitutional terms, a full-fledged federal/national agenda for education has clearly been established. What in the 1980s started out as a concern about falling standards, poor student results and fears of decline in American economic and political power, grew to become a coalition of diverse interest groups to peak with the bi-partisan adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act (e.g. Rhodes, 2012; Ravitch, 2013). The coalition for building standards, high-stakes testing and accountability measures that transcend individual states without explicitly being federal models has created a hitherto unseen unity among 50 states‘ K12 systems. States appear to align, as no state wants to exclude itself by making itself irrelevant to mainstream debate that governs the gradual consensus-building of the remaining states. The Common Core State Standards are clearly defined as an interstate – not a federal - collaboration. Nonetheless, the federal level has been surprisingly successful in utilizing the limited funding it controls to consolidate a national platform for education policy and co-opt CCSS as demonstrated by the Race to the Top initiative.
The US policy processes between compelling and voluntary elements that combine in deepening collaborations resemble similar developments in European education policy (e.g. Rhodes, 2012; Ravitch 2013; Berliner & Nichols, 2008). The European so-called Open Method of Coordination operates by collaboration and dialogue with no decision-making whereby an ever-deepening consensus is gradually achieved. Diversity among 27 different sovereign nations is continually celebrated while simultaneously increasingly compelling unity evolves (e.g. Krejsler, Olsson & Petersson, 2014; Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Zeitlin et al., 2005). Like in the US discourse it is all voluntary, but mutual peer pressure and the fear of excluding oneself from mainstream debate, funding, policy advice and resources ensures adoption of standards, performance indicators and benchmarks that gradually evolve when agents collaborate over time (e.g. Novoa & Lawn, 2002; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Henry et al., 2001; Hopmann, 2008).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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