The influence of supranational organizations on the development of education systems and education policies can hardly be overstated (Daun, 2011). In fact, while this influence has grown in the last few years, as Román, Hallsén, Nordin & Ringarp (2015) point out, already in the late 1990’s, concerns of how standardisation and guidelines from such organizations had been raised in terms of an emerging “world education culture”. This can be seen, as a result of ideological paradigm shift, introducing neoliberal rationality and economical concepts into a wide array of societal institutions through economical organizations such as the World Bank and IMF and through the influence of the OECD (Jones, 2004). While this form of educational policy borrowing, or at least adaption of similar policies into varying contexts (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004), the “international argument” has gained importance – in particular in countries facing a sort of PISA-crises (Ringarp & Waldow, 2016). This is particularly visible in the Nordic context (e.g. Dovemark et al. 2018) where the “Nordic model” is increasingly seen as having been devalued.

In the Nordic context, recent research projects have illustrated how education policy making in the Nordic countries use different sources of information as evidence (knowledge claims backed up by information) to argue for or against different politics and policies (Karseth, Sivesind & Steiner-Khamsi. 2022; Steiner-Khamsi, Karseth & Baek, 2020).  In some countries, it feeds into an “policy of suspiciousness” (Wahlström & Nordin, 2022) towards national researchers, government authorities and educational practitioners – giving increased weight to international references and more importantly supranational organizations, increasingly viewed as “objective” actors (Sivesind & Karseth, 2019).

This symposium aims to illustrate the effects of the OECD in educational policies in the Nordic context with four examples of analysis of OECD documents and their correspondence as regards national education policy documents from Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland. The first paper is a Norwegian study which illustrates how OECD is issuing values and how data from the Nordic countries serve as policy examples.

The second paper is a Swedish study which illustrates an interdependent and legitimizing relationship between the nation-state and the OECD in legitimizing educational reforms albeit ambivalent and alterign over time, even showing that the OECD was perhaps not a driving factor in introducing NPM in Sweden in the 1990’s. The Icelandic study illustrates a clear referential relationship and dependence on OECD from the Icelandic authorities, with new large scale policy documents gaining high influence despite not being legislative or regulatory and despite limited reference or consideration of currently valid educational legislation or curricula. Lastly, we have a historical comparative study, examining the emergence of the OECD's influence in two Nordic countries, Finland and Norway, concentrating on the discursive preparation work behind the current policy practices and discussing the perennial problem of external policy advice in the field of a territorially organized education system.

This symposium thus illuminates the interplay between national authorities, political processes, and education policies and the OECD. Although the cases are all from the Nordic context, there are clear parallels and lessons to be drawn for European education research, with results of importance for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners alike.

Daun, H. (2011). Globalization, EU-ification, and the New Mode of Educational Governance in Europe, European Education, 43:1, 9-32 Karseth, Berit; Sivesind, Kirsten & Steiner-Khamsi, Gita (Ed.), Evidence and Expertise in Nordic Education Policy. A comparative Network Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan Román, H. Hallsén, S. Nordin, A. & Ringarp, J. (2015). Who governs the Swedish school? Local school policy research from a historical and transnational curriculum theory perspective, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 2015:1. Sivesind, K. & Karseth, B. (2019). An officially endorsed national curriculum: institutional boundaries and ideational concerns. Curriculum Perspectives 39(2), p. 193–197 Steiner-Khamsi, G., Karseth, B. & Baek, C. (2020) From science to politics: commissioned reports and their political translation into White Papers, Journal of Education Policy, 35:1, 119-144 Wahlström, N. & Nordin, A. (2022) Policy of suspiciousness –mobilization of educational reforms in Sweden, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 43:2, 251-265-