School Policy Reform in Europe : Exploring Transnational Alignments, National Particularities and Contestations

This book discusses national school policy reforms in a number of key European countries and shows how these are framed in transnational collaborations that meet with national particularities and contestations. It gives an overview of school policy developments that represents the diversity of Europe within a comparative framework.

It takes point of departure in the fact that European countries in their school and education policies have been increasingly aligning with each other, mostly via transnational collaborations, the OECD, EU, and the Bologna Process. Even the IEA has been instrumental to motivate alignments by means of influential surveys, knowledge production and methodological development. This alignment in terms of common standards, social technologies, qualification frameworks and so forth have aimed at facilitating mobility of students, workers, business and so forth as well as fostering a European identity among citizens from Europe’s patchwork of small and medium-size countries, representing a patchwork of different languages, cultures and societal contexts. In national recontextualizations, however, alignments have been continuously contested according to the particularities of what has been possible educationally and politically in the different national contexts. Furthermore, the return of national(isms) as well as the rise of edubusiness and digitalization have been increasingly influential. This book thus concludes that increasing transnational alignments have to be observed with meticulous attention to different national contexts that matter greatly.   

John Benedicto Krejsler is professor at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University. His research on ‘New conditions for (pre-)school and teacher education – in a transnational perspective’ brings together education policy, new conditions for producing ’truths’(evidence) and social technologies. He has published extensively within the field. He was president of the Nordic Educational Research Association (2019-22) and is council member of the European Educational Research Association (2009-2018, and 2022 -). He was visiting professor at Kristianstad University (Sweden) (2009-2010), and visiting scholar at University of California Los Angeles - UCLA (USA) (2015-2016), and University of Strathclyde (Scotland, UK) (2023). He has a background as teacher educator and school teacher.

Lejf Moos is associate professor emeritus in education, leadership and governance. He has authored and edited many articles and books on these subjects. He is thefounder of the Springer book series on Educational Governance Research, of which he is the co-chief editor. Most of his work has been carried out in collaboration with Nordic and international colleagues. He has been the president of NERA (Nordic Educational Research Association), ICSEI (The International Conference on School Effectiveness and Improvement) and EERA (The European Educational Research Association).