The emphasis on school reforms is considerable and increasing internationally (Røvik, 2014). In addition, the education systems in Western societies have undergone “major reforms influenced largely by new managerialist ideas” (Gunnulfsen, Jensen & Møller, 2021, p. 13). There has been an increasing influence from international education policy actors, such as OECD, on national educational discourses (Grek, 2009). Furthermore, the use of research-generated knowledge has become important as a justification for policy direction (Wiseman, 2010); including an endorsement of evidence-based practices (Biesta, 2010). The Norwegian policy and educational context, which is the empirical setting for our paper, is interesting in this regard, as Norway was relatively late out with neo-liberal reforms in the public sector (Christensen et al., 2021). It would also seem that the Norwegian context of school governance, inspired by New Public Management logics, differs from the high-stakes accountability regimes of e.g., Anglo-American educational systems, in which low student test scores and poor school results may result in school closure or principals being dismissed (Skedsmo & Møller, 2016). However, standardised testing and increased monitoring and control, have been introduced in the Norwegian education system in the past two decades, because of PISA results falling below expected levels (Camphuijsen et al., 2021). At the same time, a line of Norwegian national reform initiatives, aimed at enhancing school quality and student learning, have been launched. Most notably, in 2006, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research (MER), introduced a new comprehensive competence-oriented curriculum for primary and secondary education called “The Knowledge Promotion Reform”. This curriculum reform introduced the notion of basic skills, defined as reading, writing and numeracy, oral and digital skills. A “Curriculum Renewal” incremental reform is currently being implemented in primary and secondary schools. It includes a new Core Curriculum focusing on values; and new syllabuses centred around core elements of each subject, in addition to cross-curricular topics, and concepts such as deep learning and an emphasis on critical thinking.

In order to realise the reform policy expectations put upon teachers and school leaders, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research has initiated many projects, arrangements and strategies (Gunnulfsen & Jacobsen, 2019). One such strategy, which is also widely distributed internationally, is research-practice partnerships (Coburn et al., 2016). However, it would seem that there has been limited attention towards the underlying intentions, expectations and legimisation of these arrangements, especially in outside of English-speaking countries.

The purpose of our paper is to investigate and discuss how the policy intention of partnerships between schools and higher education institutions is conceptualised and legitimised in Norwegian reform policy documents. We have analysed three government White Papers and three national and comprehensive partnership arrangement strategy documents. Our enquiry focuses on the following three research questions:

1. What intentions about school reform are introduced in central Norwegian policy documents?
2. What expectations towards partnership and school leadership can be identified concerning these policy intentions?
3. How is partnership between schools and higher education institutions legitimised in the policy documents?

Our paper is positioned within the field of policy sociology. We apply an institutional perspective (Lawrence et al. 2011) on policy as text and transmission (Ball et al., 2012) as an analytical framework. In the background of our study lie the influential international discourses on external accountability (Hall et al., 2015), the managerial turn in educational governance (Gunnulfsen, Jensen & Møller, 2021) and evidence-based practices (Biesta, 2010).

We identify and discuss central ideas concerning reform work intentions and partnerships in the selected documents. We also discuss national policy expectations towards intended outcomes, and the policy demands for collaboration between schools and higher education institutions.

Our paper focuses on three recent Norwegian national partnership arrangements initiated after the comprehensive curriculum reform “The Knowledge Promotion Reform” of 2006, and intending to support schools in realising reform intentions. Two of them were time-limited projects, and have been discontinued, whereas the third, and most recently introduced arrangement, currently is in effect from kindergarten throughout secondary education. The arrangements involve partnerships between schools and higher education institutions. However, discontinued arrangements also recommended collaboration between schools and consultants in the private sector. Our empirical data consists of three government White Papers which introduced the partnership arrangements, and three executive national strategy documents, which followed up on the intentions in the White Papers, initiating the arrangements proper. We identify and discuss central ideas concerning reform intentions and partnerships in the selected documents. We also discuss national policy expectations towards intended outcomes, and the policy demands for collaboration between schools and higher education institutions. We apply qualitative content analysis and a discourse analytical approach, and conceptualise our analysis as three “readings” of the six documents. The first reading focused on the textual dimension of the policy documents as communicative events (Fairclough, 1995). Methods include deductive coding, looking for intended outcomes, measures supposed to lead to the intended outcomes and explicit ideas/conceptualisations of reform and partnership intentions. We summarised the documents by way of inductive topical categorisation and performed word counts. The second reading identifies the expectations concerning reform policy and practice in the documents. We interpret the expectations towards partnership and school leadership in light of the central reform policy ideas identified in the first reading. We apply a discourse analytical approach in order to understand how the documents construct realities with language (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002). The second reading focuses on policy documents as a discursive practice including an intertextual dimension. The third reading identifies argumentation connecting the policy ideas and expectations identified in the first and second readings, with the idea of partnerships between schools and higher education institutions. We apply a critical discourse analytical approach and discuss how partnership arrangements are legitimised in the policy documents. We also consider whether the discursive practice reproduces or changes the existing order of discourse, and possible implications for reform work and partnership as social practices.

Our preliminary findings suggest that there has been a shift in the national discourse on partnerships between schools and higher education institutions. This shift can be described along several broad continuums. The first of which is a movement from highly centralised partnership arrangements, to a decentralised model, which is supposed to meet the specific needs of municipalities and schools. This may entail more tailored school-based support based on trust and mutual commitment, but also a stronger client-provider relationship between schools and higher education institutions involved in partnerships. The second represents a change from a high degree of voluntary participation in partnership arrangements from a municipal and school level, to involving all municipalities and as many schools as possible. The final arrangement in our selection has also been extended in order to include kindergartens and also a national mentoring system offered to schools which deliver poor results over time. This may entail a strengthening of the bonds between schools and higher education institutions, potentially bridging gaps between research and practice and increase mutual learning. However, the pressure on schools and higher education institutions to participate in partnership arrangements may also cause difficulties relating to trust, capacity-building and prioritising key areas of each type of institution. We also find that higher education institutions are addressed as gatekeepers and purveyors of scientifically validated practices, thus contributing to the discourse on evidence-based practices. The government calls for more research-based practice in schools, echoing the “what works” agenda, possibly devaluing the importance of experience-based knowledge-generation in the fields of practice. There is also the question of whether partnership arrangements work according to the intentions. There is a continued debate on what is to be accepted as knowledge or scientifically validated practices, and who has the power to set the agenda for future reform initiatives.

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