This presentation draws on a forthcoming publication with the same (tentative) title (Steiner-Khamsi, Jóhannesdóttir, Magnúsdóttir, forthcoming). Our study draws on the existing Icelandic scholarship complementing a retrospective analysis of the reform as well as a retroactive interpretation of it. There are three conceptual and methodological features of this study that deserve special mention here: First, we conceive of the NPM reform, also known as the school-autonomy-with-accountability reform as a complex reform with its own (i) theory of change, (ii) a mix of school-autonomy-with-accountability (SAWA) policies, and own (iii) policy instrument to achieve and sustain change. Unbundling the reform package and dissecting its elements affords us to examine why some of the NPM policies resonated at the time with practitioners and policy makers, and others did not. We also show how the selectively borrowed NPM policies were subsequently translated and recontextualized in ways that would address the challenges of upper secondary schools. Second, the study introduces a novel method of inquiry for understanding the fundamental reform in upper secondary schools retroactively: We held several Meaning Making Meetings (MMM) with politicians, policy makers, education experts and policy advisors in Iceland in which we presented our preliminary findings in order to solicit feedback and validation on factual information. Finally, we collectively look back at these MMM to assess which of the NPM/SAWA policies endured, which ones were suspended, and which ones were modified over time, and how and why. In other words, we apply the temporal dimension of policies to examine the lifespan of a policy, that is, we determine when a policy was conceived, when it died, and—not unimportantly—what life it had in between.

Steiner-Khamsi, G., Jóhannesdóttir, K., and Magnúsdóttir, B. R. (forthcoming). The school-autonomy-with-accountability reform in Iceland: Looking back and making sense.