This paper focuses on thechanging role of policy documents in education, so-called “strategic papers” or “conception documents”, generally normative documents, entangled in modern promises of expertise, evidence, planning, public decision making, and reform. The current pandemic distancing have created situations that significantly transform the public and private sphere (Matthewman and Huppatz 2020) – so do with the publicness of normative documentation in education. However, it is not a one-sided transformation; in this paper, I will demonstrate how new normative documentation’s role and materiality transforms the publicness and privateness in education governance itself. Acknowledging the pandemic challenge to the state educational planning across Europe, I offer in this actualised paper a comparison of the role of normative documents in the Czech pre-pandemic situation and during it within the context of Europeanized educational policy knowledge (Lindblad, Pettersson, and Popkewitz 2018).

I pay attention simultaneously to how normative documents relate to reality and how they are related to reality by agents in educational policymaking. Demonstrating these issues by comparing the Czech cases of educational reform (2019) and pandemic situation (2020), this paper sheds light on ambiguous transgression and, simultaneously, preservation of the modern Grand Project. To capture this double relation, this paper draws on the relational approach in philosophy and sociology, which study the relations as constitutive of reality, the world, and actuality and which emphasise on the one hand the aspect of time in stabilising what is and, on the other, the relational nature of what is (Abbott 2016; Benjamin 2015; Decuypere and Simons 2016; Dépelteau 2018).

In the last year’s proposal, I wished to illustrate the shift in the role of normative document form planning action to legitimating position, through the last research I want to accompany it with a shift of materiality in the normative documentation. Previously, especially NGO actors needed to demonstrate the reality via their normative documents (based mainly on comparative transnational data) in order to force the government actors’ reaction, which would consequently affirm their position in a discussion. Therefore, they have transgressed the simple modernisation project (demonstrating reality for planning) in their documents in order to stabilise their position (be legitimate part in policy decision). But with the beginning of the pandemic, the NGO sphere in demand for quickness and physical distance has emphasised more on online debates rather than publishing normative documents – i.e. the public debates without publicly chosen panellists, social media commentaries, and statuses. These practices transgress our traditional view on what the public sphere is. Although it seems to be more public (online technological optimism), by evading the formal public structures (the state) and the private based technological materiality, the publicness of the public is a question.

Moreover, NGOs, even more, direct their communication on policymakers from state structures. Stronger alignment with governmental actors was already problematised (Holmwood and Balon 2018), and I described the rise of a new legitimation infrastructure in the Czech education and its danger to the democratic character of deliberating public issues (dissertation). In the current situation, due to a change of legitimation means, the public character of educational governance is, even more, a question. However, it does not suggest the end of document, it suggests the shift of materiality of its role in contemporary societies – which was to legitimate actors, problems, and solution. This role is still actual, and we need to be prepared by our conceptual tools to see, what materiality it takes on and with what consequences. Therefore the 2020 proposal’s aim to point to “ambiguous transgression and, simultaneously, preservation of the modern Grand Project” is still relevant in 2021.

I will demonstrate the changing role and materiality of normative documents in three cases: the first two (from 2020 proposal) are already finished documents analysis (Wirthová 2020) and semi-structured interviews. These I will accompany by researching a career of an NGO document “Audit”, which has related differently to public and private actors during (pre)pandemic situations. First, I draw on my qualitative research on normative documents, which justified a particular way of reforming education. These were documents of authorised (ministerial, governmental organisations), non-authorised (NGOs), and transnational actors (OSV, OECD) (Wirthová 2019, 2020). Methodologically, I focused on knowledge regimes and systems of reasoning in contemporary policy documents in education (Aasen, Prøitz, and Sandberg 2014; Tveit and Lundahl 2018). Studying the relation to the world manifested within the documents, the investigations lead to an important question about the nature and role of a normative document in contemporary education and question how the actors’ way of legitimising its position, problems and solution (relation to reality) relate to relationships between authorised and non-authorised actors? This latter question proved to be even more important in the current pandemic situation in education. Second, 16 semi-structured interviews with authorised and non-authorised actors focused on the actors’ relation to knowledge, to “proper policy knowledge”, why they write strategic and planning documents, and what these documents are expected to do. In the third analysis, I focus on the career of the document “Audit”, published annually by a non-government organisation, aimed to inform the public about strength and weaknesses of Czech education and present it to variable audiences. Audit, starting with websites for the general public, and “paper” documents, proceeding through hypertext, and the Czech Senate presentation, lastly, was (Audit 2020) presented as an online Facebook event broadcasted form empty Czech Senate (February 2021). These Audits as normative events have related differently to reality and public or private actors through the (pre)pandemic time. Following the distinction between document as topic and resource (Prior 2008), I gain an understanding for the role and materiality of normative documents through a focusing on the relation between the content perspective, the study of knowledge regimes (Aasen et al. 2014), and the topic perspective, the study of how documents are used as a resource by human actors for purposeful ends (Prior 2008). I used a relational analysis based on post-foundational and relational ontology (Knutsson and Lindberg 2017; Macgilchrist 2016).

The findings indicate several shifts in the role of normative documentation in education governance. First is the shift from policy document describing the aims of education and plan of actions to a demonstration of the author’s position and legitimation of this position in educational decision making. This process led to the differentiation of actors as heralds of reality (NGOs) and messengers of reality (governmental actors) (Wirthová 2019), and it is connected mainly with the increasing non-transparency of actorship in current Europeanised educational policies (Wirthová 2021). Second is the shift from bordered textual artefacts published materially or digitally to hypertexts and social media multilinked “statuses” while preserving the roles mentioned above – demonstrating reality by data and self-demonstrating. Although several of these aspects were present in pre-pandemic times (hypertexts of “Audit”), the current situation has intensified them. The problem taken here is mainly the unpublic nature of the technological carrier of this normative documentation. The third is the shift from state-published artefacts representing both the leading public runner of education (the state) and (at least ideally) the public social contract to representing a social contract of those who have access to the production of such documentation. The access here is gained mainly by privately chosen online panellists, guest discussants, influencers, and opinion bloggers. To conclude, there is not only a difference among the documents’ relation to reality but also a difference among what such reality is. It means that the mode of the relation is constitutive of a mode of reality. Normative documentation (of variously authorised actors) become the models of the educational world which should be followed (Freeman & Maybin 2011; Levinson, Sutton, & Winstead 2009); therefore it is vital to pay attention to what contemporary normative policy documents in education mean, and what they do and do not do.

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