Die Rekrutierung in den Lehrberuf: eine international-vergleichende Perspektive

Der Beitrag stellt die Indikatoren vor, welche die Rekrutierung in den Lehrberuf messen. Die Rekrutierung in den Lehrberuf wird für zwei Lehrerbildungssysteme – Singapur und Kirgisien – näher ausgeführt. Das singapurische System ist bekannt für die grosse Selektivität zum Zeitpunkt der Aufnahme in die Lehrerausbildung und für die hohe Übergangsrate in den Lehrberuf. Als Kontrast wird in diesem Beitrag das kirgisische System vorgestellt, das bereits zweimal den untersten Rang in einer PISA-Studie einnehmen musste. Der Lehrermangel in Kirgisien ist so eklatant, dass die Schulen allerlei Notmassnahmen ergreifen, um den Unterricht aufrechterhalten zu können. Diese Überlebensstrategien verdecken das wahre Ausmass des Lehrermangels und zeigen die beschränkte Gültigkeit von Lehrermangelstatistiken. Der Beitrag verweist auf «globale» bildungspolitische Massnahmen zur Aufhebung des Lehrermangels, die von internationalen Organisationen wie der OECD oder der Weltbank weltweit in Umlauf gesetzt werden. Insbesondere die Weltbank hat sich damit profiliert, dass sie einen starken Zusammenhang postuliert zwischen attraktiver Lehrerbesoldung sowie -laufbahnmodellen und einer wirksamen Rekrutierung in den Lehrberuf. Die Autorin postuliert, dass eine international-vergleichende Perspektive nützlich sein könnte für die gegenwärtige bildungspolitische Diskussion zum Thema Lehrermangel in der Schweiz.The study draws on indicators for recruitment into teaching and presents two teacher education systems: Singapore and Kyrgyzstan. The system in Singapore is known for being selective at the moment of admission into teacher education as well as for its high transition rate into the teaching profession at the end of teacher education. The education system of Kyrgyzstan scored in the last two PISA studies at the very bottom of the league table and therefore is in stark contrast to the system of Singapore. Teacher shortage in Kyrgyzstan is rampant and schools have to resort to various emergency measures to ensure that schools remain open. These kind of survival strategies, however, tend to conceal the real extent of teacher shortage and, thus, call into question the validity of official statistics on teacher shortage. This article also addresses the existence of «global» policies for combatting teacher shortage that international organizations such as OECD or the World Bank are disseminating around the globe. The World Bank, in particular, has postulated a close association between attractive teacher salary as well as attractive teacher career ladder and effective recruitment into teaching. The author suggests to adopt an international comparative perspective in the current policy discussion on teacher shortage in Switzerland

The Politics of League Tables

The article focuses on the political usages of OECD- and IEA-type studies on student achievement, and suggests that we examine in more detail how policy makers use results from international comparisons to advance fundamental school reform at national level. The author categorizes three types of policy reactions to league tables: (1) scandalization, (2) glorification, and (3) indifference. Drawing from media reports and policy debates that emerged right after the release of the results from TIMSS, PISA, and the Civic Education Study, the author points at the different policy reactions that these OECD and IEA studies have had in various national contexts. In Japan, for example, the release of TIMSS led to a self-affirmation or glorification of Japanese methods in science and mathematics, whereas the release of PISA in Germany triggered self-criticism or scandalization, and strengthened existing demands for a fundamental reform of the German educational system. Most striking is the political indifference that the release of the IEA Civic Education encountered in Germany. German students held the last rank in the international league table on attitudes towards immigrants (Civic Education Study), whereas they scored below OECD-average in reading literacy (PISA). The author provides a few tentative explanations for the following question: why was there such a political spectacle about the reading literacy scores of German students given that German students did far worse with regard to xenophobia

Global governance of education: The historical and contemporary entanglements of UNESCO, the OECD and the World Bank

The text is a book review of the following book: Global governance of education: The historical and contemporary entanglements of UNESCO, the OECD and the World Bank Maren Elfert and Christian Ydesen, Springer, Cham, 2023, xv + 230 pp. ISBN 978-3-031-40410-8 (hbk), ISBN 978-3-031-40413-9 (pbk), ISBN 978-3-031-40411-5 (eBook

Las políticas de la comparación internacional. Un esbozo histórico de los cambios a lo largo del tiempo

El auge de los bancos de datos internacionales en la economía digital exige una investigación sobre cómo contextos enormemente diferentes se hacen comparables. El método de formular las mismas preguntas o, según la terminología del siglo XXI, de utilizar el mismo conjunto de indicadores combinados con la información sobre variables del sistema, es clave para entender el despliegue de la comparación. El artículo examina la investigación sobre indicadores durante tres periodos de tiempo centrándose en sus actores influyentes: el Esquisse d’un ouvrage sur l’Éducation Comparée de Jullien de Paris (1817); las “encuestas” de Paul Monroe en Filipinas (1912-1914) y el trabajo de Isaac Kandel en torno a la comparabilidad y la Teoría de la Civilización; la colaboración del Instituto de Estadística de la UNESCO con otras partes interesadas en el desarrollo de indicadores educativos para los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible 2030 (2015-2016). Estos tres periodos reflejan los cambios en el uso de los indicadores educativos: modernización / construcción nacional, colonización / desarrollo y estandarización / globalización. Jullien de Paris propuso preguntas estandarizadas para comparar características claves de los sistemas educativos, dio forma al método comparativo de investigación transnacional y contribuyó a justificar la necesidad de la comparación para extraer lecciones, tomar prestadas políticas o aprender de las “buenas prácticas” y las normas internacionales. Este enfoque mantiene su pertinencia en el contexto actual, marcado por el auge de los regímenes de cuantificación que promueven el uso de evidencia derivada de la investigación para la política y la planificación

Governance by numbers 2.0: policy brokerage as an instrument of global governance in the era of information overload

The article investigates how and when the two first movers in knowledge-based regulation – the OECD and the World Bank – developed policy brokerage as an instrument of global governance in the education sector. We also examine how their target clientele – national governments – responds to this instrument. Given the surplus of research evidence in today’s digital economy, intergovernmental organisations have the challenge of standing out as trusted and credible knowledge brokers in a crowded space. The authors make the case for a comparative research programme – tentatively labeled ‘Governance by Numbers 2.0’ – that is informed by a multidisciplinary (history, political science, interdisciplinary policy studies) interpretive framework and that advances a transnational, relational method of inquiry which draws attention to the global/national nexus

Evidence and Expertise in Nordic Education Policy. A Comparative Network Analysis

The use of expertise and evidence in educational policy and planning of five Nordic European countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The comparative studies draw on social network analysis as well as qualitative comparisons. Table of Contents 1 Introduction: A Comparative Network Analysis of Knowledge Use in Nordic Education Policies Kirsten Sivesind and Berit Karseth 2 What Is in a Reference? Theoretically Understanding the Uses of Evidence in Education Policy Gita Steiner-Khamsi 3 Exploring the Architecture of Policy Knowledge: A Methodological Note Oren Pizmony-Levy and Chanwoong Baek 4 Policy Borrowing and Evidence in Danish Education Policy Preparation: The Case of the Public School Reform of 2013 Trine Juul Reder and Christian Ydesen 5 Evidence and Expert Power in Finnish Education Policy Making: The National Core Curriculum Reform Saija Volmari, Jaakko Kauko, Juho Anturaniemi, and Íris Santos 6 The Irregular Formation of State Policy Documents in the Icelandic Field of Education 2013–2017 Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir and Jón Torfi Jónasson 7 Structuring School Reform Policy with Evidence: The Inter-mediational Role of Knowledge Sources and Arguments Bernadette Hörmann and Kirsten Sivesind 8 The Complexity of Context in Legitimating National School Reforms: The Case of Sweden Andreas Nordin and Ninni Wahlström 9 Evidence-Based Policymaking in Nordic Countries: Different Settings, Different Practices? Chanwoong Baek, Dijana Tiplic, and Íris Santos 10 How Much Is Policy Advice Changed and Lost in Political Translation? Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Chanwoong Baek, Berit Karseth, and Andreas Nordin 11 The OECD and the Field of Knowledge Brokers in Danish, Finnish, and Icelandic Education Policy Christian Ydesen, Jaakko Kauko, and Berglind Rós Magnúsdóttir 12 Regional Policy Spaces, Knowledge Networks, and the “Nordic Other” Saija Volmari, Kirsten Sivesind, and Jón Torfi Jónasson 13 On Evidence, Impact, and Layers in Education Policy Processes Kerstin Martens 14 Evidence-Based Policy Making and Educational Reform in Nordic Europe: Key Contributions of the POLNET Study Antoni Verger 15 Conclusion: Toward a Renewed Understanding of Evidence-Based Policy in Education Berit Karseth and Kirsten Sivesin

Comparing two transfer spaces over time and against a global script: the case of school-autonomy-with-accountability

The study compares the selective adoption of the global school-autonomy-with-accountability (SAWA) reform in two cantons of Switzerland (Zurich and St. Gallen) over the period 1995–2015. The authors dissect the SAWA reform into three aspects: its theory of change, its bundle of policies, and its preferred policy instru- ments to achieve and sustain change. Methodologically, the study draws on a database of over 1,200 policy-relevant documents and expert interviews related to the so-called ‘outcomes-oriented school reform’ (German: wirkungsorientierte Schulreform) or SAWA, respectively. In an endeavor to advance research on policy borrow- ing, the authors propose a distinction between six temporal fea- tures of policy transfer: time, timing, tempo, lifespan, age, and sequence. They find that SAWA’s neoliberal theory of change was not adopted. However, select policies and instruments were trans- ferred and translated into the Swiss context. Furthermore, some policies expanded over time (standardized testing), some were dropped after a while (performance pay), some were kept on the books but, with age, hollowed out over time (external evaluation), and some were long-lived and were institutionalized (professional school management). Keywords: comparative policy studies, comparative education, school reform, school autonomy with accountability, temporal dimension, education policy studie

The school-autonomy-with-accountability reform in Iceland: looking back and making sense

The study examines the selective adoption of the school-autonomy-with-accountability (SAWA) reform at upper secondary school level in Iceland. It draws on a review of policy documents (acts, amendments to acts, regulations) and interviews with 17 individuals, including four former ministers of education that served over the period 1995-2017. The authors identify three distinct reform waves: a general public management reform (NPM) implemented across all sectors (1991 – 1995), the school autonomy reform (1995-2009), and the school-autonomy-with-soft-accountability reform (2009-2015). The sequence explains why opening up to the private sector during NPM required all line ministries to come up with clearly defined tasks and expected outcomes and why the third wave was an attempt to (minimally) reregulate the sector. The proliferation of standardized testing, a feature of SAWA in many other countries, did not occur in Iceland. Strikingly, the argument for autonomy was from the onset linked to diversity, that is, enabling upper secondary schools to respond to students’ diverse needs and interests and thereby reduce student drop. The study attempts to demonstrate the importance of the temporal dimension of policy transfer such as, for example, the timing, tempo, sequence and duration of adopted policies

Qualitative Comparative Policy Studies: An Introduction from the Special Section Editors

This inaugural article delineates the vision and scope of the new section “Qualitative Comparative Policy Studies” of the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis. The co-editors present the five key features of the section: the comparative, the transnational, the relational, the global, and the self-reflective. Concretely, they invite contributions on qualitative empirical research that (i) is comparative in its methods and interpretive framework, (ii) draws on the transnational dimension, (iii) considers the relational dimension of network governance, (iv) recognizes an unequal global setting, and (v) is self-reflective and interrogates international comparison as a governance tool. By definition, qualitative comparison is contextual comparison that differentiates between place and space and the temporalities of comparative policy analysis (period, timing, tempo, sequence, lifespan, and age). Keywords: qualitative comparison, case study methodology, spatial comparison, temporal comparison, global governance, transnational networks, policy transfe

Euro-Patriotism: what’s there to gain for minorities?

The essay draws from qualitative case studies conducted during Phase 1 of the IEA Civic Education Study (1994 – 2002), and points at recent curricular reforms in political education (specially in Europe). There are several recent developments in political education reform that are highlighted: the fusion of politics and the economy, the emergence of a «postnational model of membership» in European countries (Soysal), the emphasis on «constitutional patriotism»(Kleger), and the dichotomization between «mild capitalism» (European social market economies) and «wild capitalism» (US free market economy). The author labels these recent developments «Euro-Patriotism» and reflects on how these recent reforms in political education may impact minorities in Europe. (DIPF/orig.)Der Aufsatz bezieht sich auf Länderfallstudien, die im Rahmen der IEA Studie zur politischen Bildung (1994-2002) entwickelt worden sind und fasst die wichtigsten Lehrplanreformen auf dem Gebiet der politischen Bildung zusammen. Unter den europäischen Lehrplanreformen werden die folgenden Entwicklungen besonders hervorgehoben: die Fusion von Politik und Wirtschaft, die Herausbildung eines «postnationalen Modells der Mitgliedschaft» (Soysal) in europäischen Staaten, die Betonung des «Verfassungspatriotismus» (Kleger) sowie eine zunehmende Dichotomisierung zwischen einer «milden Form des Kapitalismus» (europäische Modelle einer sozialen Markwirtschaft) und einer «wilden Form des Kapitalismus» (US Modell der freien Marktwirtschaft). Die Autorin bezeichnet diese neueren Tendenzen im Bereich der politischen Bildung als «Euro-Patriotismus» und stellt ihre Überlegungen zu den möglichen Folgen dieses «Euro-Patriotismus» für Minderheiten in Europa dar. (DIPF/Orig.