This presentation draws on a critical examination of the construction of the Swedish compulsory school’s democratic mission and its consequences for the teacher subject, in educational policy texts (Cooper, 2019). The democratic mission refers to a general understanding of democratic values and methods of teaching that underpin the Swedish schoolsystem described as teaching about and for democracy through democrtic methods and institutions. Research questions include how democratic education is articulated (defined) in educational policy and how the teacher subject is discursively positioned.

Although set in a Swedish context the study offers relevant insight into a shared problem that cuts across national borders and school systems. On a global scale, democracy is being pushed back in various ways ranging from low public interest in democratic participation to a rise in right-wing and nationalistic populism. This relates to Third Way politics and the failure to realize the importance of democratic choice in politics (Mouffe, 2005a, 2005b, 2018). Noticeable from an educational perspective are the consequences of the restructuring of educational politics emanating from Third Way neoliberal economic politics and private sector management models. Although these changes apply to national educational policies they illustrate “the impact and effects of transnational policy actors and institutions on national policy production in education through globalised policy discourses” (Lingard & Rawolle, 2011, p. 491). With new public management the educational sector became decentralised and orientated toward goal-steering, accountability and quality assurance. One underlying assumption is that this also effects how democratic education is formulated and described in educational policy (e.g. Carlgren & Klette, 2008; Sachs, 2001).

This study uses the post structural discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe (Laclau, 1990, 1994; Laclau & Mouffe, 2001; Laclau & Zac, 1994) is used as a theoretical and methodological framework. Discourse theory is constructed around indecidability, contingence and hegemony.

Indecidability indicates that every aspect of the social is a contested field and thus every social order contains its own ‘rules’ of structure and dispersion, i.e discourse. A discourse is a contingent and temporary fixation of meaning, or rather identity. Only when the social is undecided there is room for a hegemonic force to constitute social order in a certain way. Articulatory practices occur when a subject, who is not discursively identified by the discourse, define and decide on a specific social order, as in for example political manifestos och policy documents. In turn, antagonism or conflict occurs when hegemonic articulations prevents identity from being realised.

Antagonism and identification reflects back on the understanding of the subject as constitutive lack. This constitutive lack, which also explains human agency, together with a view of the social as primarily political, i.e., contested, are important for understanding Laclau and Mouffe’s theorizing about radical democracy. Radical democracy is not opposed to liberal democracy per se, but should be understood as a proposition to deepen traditional democratic ideals of equality and popular sovereignty and to oppose the deliberative ideal of consensus for mature democracies. Instead of founding the democratic struggle on categories of class och race the basic idea is to articulate democratic demands that could be embraced by various subordinated groups. Thus, the struggle for democracy can take on new forms that allows for plural conceptions of a good life. Scholars that engage with issues of democratic education from a radical democracy perspective state that engaging in helping pupils become subjects (Biesta, 2007, 2011), teaching them how to deal with conflict (Ruitenberg, 2009; Todd & Säfström, 2008) or to articulate democratic demands (Snir, 2017) is better for democracy.

Set against the backdrop of what is commonly referred to as a crisis of democracy and, claims Biesta (2017), the erosion of the democratic dimensions of the teacher profession, the study takes it starting point in changes in educational politics in the last decades and the new national curriculum for the compulsory school in 2011. A selection of national policy texts were chosen for the analysis such as official reports and government bills on the Education Act and the Teacher Education Reform, the Education Act, the National Curriculum and a selection of authoritarian documents from the Swedish National Agency for Education.The criteria for selection were; 1) A time limit ranging from 2008 to 2018, in relation to the new national curriculum of 2011 which also coincided in time with the revised Education Act and the Teacher Education Reform. 2) Educational policy texts on comprehensive school, teachers’ work and education. 3) Policy texts that can be related to different aspects of democracy in education. The analysis is a deconstruction of articulatory logics that construct discursive structures and totalities in relation to the purpose. The first step of the analysis was a careful reading of all the texts in order to get better acquainted with the material and make further selections of relevant parts. After that followed several re-readings to chisel out important empirical concepts and structures while simultaneously constructing and answering empirical questions. Structured totalities are identified with the help of the three analytical concepts myths, nodal points and master signifiers. These are used to construct social order, discourses and subject positions respectively. Articulation is the practice that establishes relations between elements so that their identities are transformed, thus excluding other identities (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001; Torfing, 1999). Concepts that are used to identify how meaning is constructed are element, moment and different signifying concepts such as chains or clusters of equivalence, logics of equivalence and difference and the constitutive outside. Cluster of equivalence is suggested as a complement to chains of equivalence and indicates an accumulation of signs which, through relations between themselves and to nodal points, contribute to the fixation of meaning (Andreasson & Asplund Carlsson, 2009). In order to discuss issues of power and conflict the analytical concepts of hegemony and antagonism are applied (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001).

Important findings show that although democratic education is still partly based on equality, a number of articulations imply that a management perspective has gained influence in the understanding of democracy in education. Firstly, education is standards-based with underlying assumptions of quality, accountability and individualized teaching. Secondly, the texts analysed emphasize documentation in every aspect of a teacher’s work from planning to teaching and finally evaluating pupils’ achievements as well as their own performance. Thirdly, through the logic of measurement, all aspects of knowledge including the democratic, are constructed as separate quantities that can be adequately measured provided the right tools and methods are applied. In sum, this implies an administrative image of democratic education. The task of assessing and grading pupils’ knowledge emphasizes scientific and professional qualities. A scientific approach relies on the use of concepts such as reliability and validity, which lend an air of science as a neutral activity. The relation between science and professionalism contributes to the notion of efficiency and to technocracy as grounds for decision-making and management. Scrutinizing issues of equivalence in relation to standards-based education highlights the individualization of teaching and the demand to meet the needs of every pupil. The aim is to assure that pupils at least reach the lowest standards, which is then used as an indication of quality. Other aspects of individualistic approaches can be found in the pupil’s right to participation and in the task of counteracting abusive behaviour. In relation to abuse and offenses, the individual subject decides what is abusive or offensive and actions are directed towards individual pupils. Together, these results imply a situation where democracy is used as a means towards an end, the formation of a specific democratic citizen. In other words, democracy becomes part of a management perspective.

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