In order to make policy planning and global monitoring of national developments “evidence-based” (Karseth et al., 2022), state authorities voluntarily apply international standards for the sake of improving their own practices (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2017). By tracing how regulative, normative and cognitive orientations of reform trajectories evolve, the present study aims at better understanding of how education policy-making unfolds under the influence of major international policy brokers. In particular, we have compared topologies and examined semantical shifts by the creation and recreation of discourses. IN the Norwegian part of the POLNET-study (Policy Knowledge and Lesson Drawing in Nordic School Reform in an Era of International Comparison), we applied computed text-mining procedures to a large corpus of official documents. This corpus consists of 503 full-text white and green papers published or referenced by the Ministry of Education Norway between 1990 and 2020. In our analysis, we mapped bibliometric reference networks, detected word associations that form topologies and clarified discursive shifts by examining time-space relations (Sivesind et al., 2022). The results show that a new topology on constitutional norms, democracy, the freedom of expression, and human dignity appeared in the 2000s. Moreover, compared to the 1990s, semantic shifts in reform policy during the 2000s reflected a more departmentalized discourse on school reform. Political discourses and conceptualizations of reform during the 2000s reflect an increased differentiation that reflects how state authorities regulate their education system by law. At the same time, word associations and associated discourses for different realms of school reform policy and higher education policy, reflect externalization processes and an increased interest toward cognitive-scientific rationalities of international large-scale studies and evaluations with normative undertones. It is somewhat surprising that that there is an increased attention towards national and international regulations and standards simultaneously. Nonetheless, we consider these trajectories as an outcome of the ways national policy makers and international experts receive and translate ideas and standards, and the ways narratives and discourses resonate within particular contexts.

Karseth, B., Sivesind, K., & Steiner-Khamsi, G. (Eds.). (2022). Evidence and Expertise in Nordic Education Policy. A Comparative Network Analysis. Palgrave McMillan. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-91959-7 Pollitt, C., & Bouckaert, G. (2017). Public management reform: A comparative analysis-into the age of austerity. Oxford university press. Sivesind, K., Tiplic, D., & Johnsen, L. (2022). Surveying Policy Discourses across Time and Space: Internationalization of Knowledge Providers and Nordic Narrative. I D. Tröhler, B. Hörmann, S. Tveit & I. Bostad (Red.), The Nordic Education Model in Context: Historical Developments and Current Renegotiations. London: Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003218180-21