The core of investigation in this symposium in two sessions is how national school policy reforms in a number of key European countries and regions are framed in transnational collaborations that meet with national particularities and contestations.

The symposium explores school policy developments in a number of different countries and regions to represent the diversity of Europe within a comparative framework applied to all presentations. It takes point of departure in the fact that European countries in their school and education policies have been increasingly aligning with each other, mostly via transnational collaborations, the OECD and EU. Even the IEA has been instrumental to motivate alignments by means of influential surveys, knowledge production and methodological development (Hultqvist, Lindblad, & Popkewitz, 2018; Lawn & Grek, 2012; Meyer & Benavot, 2013).

This alignment in terms of common standards, social technologies, qualification frameworks and so forth have aimed at facilitating mobility of students, workers, business and so forth as well as fostering a European identity among citizens from Europe’s patchwork of small and medium-size countries, representing a patchwork of different languages, cultures and societal contexts (Nóvoa & Lawn, 2002). This symposium explores and maps processes of de-contextualization, when policymakers broker consensus in transnational agencies, up against the ensuing processes of re-contextualization when this de-contextualized consensus has to be re-contextualized in widely differing national contexts; here standards, frameworks and social technologies have to be adapted and digested to forms that make sense in relation to what is politically and educationally possible in each and every of these different contexts

Unsurprisingly, however, these processes of policy transfer, exchange and mutual inspiration are equally rife with national contestation as transnational norms meet with national traditions. The presentations in this symposium thus explore and map the diversity of contestations that transnational policy also produces when it meets particular national contexts, ranging from progressive reform pedagogy and Bildung resistance to positivist and economistic approaches to education over increasing focus upon ‘national values’ to recent outright nationalist resentment to transnational and multilateral encroachment upon national sovereignty (Hörner, Döbert, Reuter, & von Kopp, 2015; Judis, 2016; Krejsler & Moos, 2021).     

Equally problematic – and possibly even more opaque -  is the national uptake of transnational school and educational policy is the ‘intermediary’ of issues like digitalization and commercialization by means of which policy passes as it is transformed into organization and practice (Williamson, 2017).

In our approach we thus see the interplays of transnational and national school policy reforms as the intended and unintended strategies and effects of widely differing contexts for making policy for schools, i.e. reflecting what is politically and educationally possible within the national contexts, framed by its particularities: This includes attention to increased focus upon ‘national values’, immigration, populism, and so forth (Judis, 2016) as well as the framing effects on transnational and national school policies by particular approaches to adopting global challenges like digitalization and increasing commercialization (e.g. big data, algorithmization and platformization) (Appadurai, 2006; Williamson, 2017).

The papers in this symposium draw on critical education policy theory, governance and governmentality theory. Empirically they draw on analyses of transnational and national education policy documents as well as national education debates and existing studies on policy reform.

Appadurai, A. (2006). Fear of Small Numbers: An essay on the geography of anger. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Hultqvist, E., Lindblad, S., & Popkewitz, T. S. (Eds.). (2018). Critical Analyses of Educational Reforms in an Era of Transnational Governance. Chan (CH): Springer. Hörner, W., Döbert, H., Reuter, L., & von Kopp, B. (Eds.). (2015). The Education Systems of Europe (2 ed.). Cham: Springer International Publishing. Judis, J. B. (2016). The Populist Explosion: How the great recession transformed American and European politics. New York: Columbia Global Reports. Krejsler, J. B., & Moos, L. (2021). Danish – and Nordic – school policy: its Anglo-American connections and influences. In J. B. Krejsler & L. Moos (Eds.), What Works in Nordic School Policies?. Cham (CH): Springer. Lawn, M., & Grek, S. (2012). Europeanizing Education: Governing a new policy space. Oxford: Symposium Books. Meyer, H.-D., & Benavot, A. E. (Eds.). (2013). PISA, Power, and Policy: the emergence of global educational governance. Oxford: Symposium Books. Nóvoa, A., & Lawn, M. (2002). Fabricating Europe: The formation of an education space. Dordrecht (NL): Kluwer Academic Publishers. Williamson, B. (2017). Big Data in Education: The digital future of learning, policy and practice. London: SAGE Publications.