Nordic Schools Diverge on Market Forces Despite Shared Values
Norway and Sweden, often viewed as educational twins, are charting different courses on school privatization and teacher autonomy. A new analysis of policy documents reveals how market-driven reforms reshape 'public' education differently in each country—a gap with implications for how governments balance competition, equity, and professional standards.
Originaltitel: (Re)configurations of public education: marketisation, teacher professionalism, and individual rights of students and educators in Norway and Sweden
<p>This article studies the (re)configurations of 'public education' in Norway and Sweden by empirically unpacking connections between marketisation, teacher professionalism and schools' mandate to secure the individual rights of students and teachers. These countries share considerable common cultural and political history; however, they display varying trajectories and configurations in both educational policy and practice. This makes these cases particularly useful for comparing how 'publicness' and 'public education' are (re)configured in the two Nordic welfare states. This comparative exploration is framed by four dimensions of public schooling regarding national policy set-ups expressed through control, access, funding, and teaching. The data includes official policy documents, such as legislation and government reports. We unpack and discuss commonalities and differences by relating them to multiple issues of (re)configured 'publicness' and its implications. Moreover, we argue that the differences in the degrees to which inflows have shaped the Norwegian and Swedish education systems (despite their similarities) offer valuable opportunities for exploring (re)configurations of the notion of publicness.</p>