Educational Leadership, Improvement and Change

Discourse and Systems in Europe

Lejf Moos,Nikša Alfirevi?,Jurica Pavi?i?,Andrej Koren,Ljiljana Najev ?a?ija

• Editorial: Palgrave Pivot
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783030470203
• Categoría: Education
• Categoría: Education Administration

This book analyses selected critical concepts of policy and practice in educational leadership in five European countries. The editors and contributors cover Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Denmark and Norway, spanning a wide geographical region as well as diverse historical and political contexts. The analyses primarily consider the issues of convergence and divergence in local educational leadership policies and practice that are developing and emerging from traditional structures and discourses under global, trans-national and regional influences. Focusing on both the macro and micro levels, this book examines a range of topics including international benchmarking, inclusive education practices and digital transformation. It will be of interest and value to scholars of educational leadership in Europe, particularly within smaller countries.

"Today's local educational leadership policies and practice are connected with the historical roots of fivesmall European countries. In the analysis, perspectives from within each country and comparisons are used interestingly. Both levels of analysis bring out new understandings of the relationship between policy and practice and how they have been related to leadership in a historical discourse. In my opinion the different country chapters and the comparisons represent important new knowledge and I recommended the book as reading for school leaders and policy makers in the field of educational leadership."

— Professor Olof Johansson, Umeå University, Sweden

"The book fills a gap in the research of cross-national research, comparing school leadership issues in two Balkan countries, Croatia and Slovenia, one Baltic country, Lithuania, and two Scandinavian countries, Norway and Denmark. To my knowledge it is the first time there has been this sort of cross-investigation of commonalities and differences in school leadership conditions between these countries in the age of globalization. I am sure that many scholars and practitioners can benefit from this book and hereby recommend it. "

— Associate Professor Emeritus Klaus Kasper Kofod, Aarhus University, Denmark

© The Author(s) 2020

L. Moos et al. (eds.)Educational Leadership, Improvement and ChangePalgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Educationhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47020-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction to Discourse and Systems of Educational Leadership in Europe

Lejf Moos¹

(1)

Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark

Lejf Moos

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This book analyses critical concepts of policy and practice of educational leadership in five small countries: Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Denmark, and Norway.

Analyses deal with the issues of convergence and divergence in the local educational leadership policies and practices, that is developing and emerging from traditional structures and discourses under the transnational influences.

This volume builds on Palgrave Macmillan volumes (N. Alfirević, J. Burušić, J. Pavičić, and R. Relja [eds] [2016]. School Effectiveness and Educational Management: Towards a South-Eastern Europe Research and Public Policy Agenda. Palgrave Pivot; A.H. Ingþórsson, N. Alfirević, J. Pavičić, J., and D. Vican [eds] [2019]. Educational Leadership in Policy: Challenges and Implementation within Europe, Palgrave Macmillan), studying and comparing the discourses and systems of educational leadership in diverse political settings within Europe.

Keywords

Discourse and systemsGovernanceGlobalizationTransnational agenciesEducational leadership

End Abstract

Discourse and Systems in Europe 1: An Early History

Analyses and discussions of educational leadership need to be aware of the structural, political, and cultural context it is supposed to be part of and to practice and reflect in. Two perspectives have been constructed on developing discourse and systems for educational leadership. One is historical, reaching back to the sixteenth century, and the other is more recent history, from World War II onwards and the developments over the last thirty to fifty years. The histories are for obvious reasons very cursory.

South Eastern and North Western, the Baltic, and the Nordic countries were chosen for the study in this volume because they have somewhat parallel histories: Slovenia and Croatia were parts of the Habsburg Monarchy together with other kingdoms (according to some historians from 1526–1804), and Norway and Denmark were parts of in the Oldenburg Monarchy (1320–1814).

South Eastern Europe

Habsburg Monarchy is the term for the lands and kingdoms of the House of Habsburg. The Habsburg Monarchy was a composite monarchy with no single constitution or shared institutions outside of the Habsburg court; itself united only in the person of the monarch. The Monarchy was dominant on the European continent in its time. This gradually changed in the early nineteenth century. From 1804 to 1867 the Habsburg Monarchy was formally unified as the Austrian Empire, and from 1867 to 1918 as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It dissolved into several new states at the end of World War I.

The Monarchy was rather loosely coupled around the king, while the Empire was politically and culturally tighter, but all through the era from around 1500 up to the end of World War I they constituted communities as foundations for identity building. This happened to different degrees.

But even education was influenced, as Andrej Koren (2002) states: “In the 18th century the role of education was to develop a good citizen rather than a good individual. There were two influences on perceptions about the role of the education system. One perspective may be defined as pietism, where work is understood as a moral obligation. The other perspective is ‘kameralistika’. It focused on the need for state intervention in every area of life and reflects ideas of absolutism. The role of state in education emerged also from the multi-nation-state and the role and intentions of a centralising government; a centralised school system enabled better surveillance and control over the variety of nations.”

Since World War I structures and cultures in the countries have developed differently as shown in the country reports.

North Western Europe

Norway and Denmark also have shared backgrounds in the Nordic history, political institutions, society, and culture.¹ The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are national variations of the same language (Blossing, Imsen, & Moos, 2014). The language community reflects the close political relations between the Nordic peoples. For most of the period c.1320–1520 the kingdoms of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway were united in loosely coupled political unions, like the Kalmar Union 1390–1523; Denmark, Norway, and Sweden joined under a single monarch.

The union was not quite continuous; there were several short interruptions. Legally, the countries remained separate sovereign states, but with their domestic and foreign policies being directed by a common monarch.

Around 1523 Scandinavia was divided into two political blocs: the western Oldenburg monarchy with Denmark and Norway and with Sweden in the east. Norway continued to remain a part of the realm of Denmark–Norway under the Oldenburg dynasty for nearly three centuries, until its dissolution in 1814. Although the internal affairs were left to the Danish and Norwegian governments, there was much cultural influence between the two nations; as an example, many Christian hymns in the Norwegian hymn book were composed by Danish writers.

In spite of the division in nation-states after 1814, the Nordic countries retained their common feature, which was strengthened as a result of Scandinavian movements in the nineteenth century and a strong sense of common historical and cultural heritage; all the Nordic nation-states abolished absolutism and introduced democratic constitutions. Moreover, they could count on a long tradition of rule by law. And finally, social inequality was never as pronounced as on the European continent, even though parts of the Nordic region did follow a more continental pattern with regard to social structures. Strong and self-ruling rural communities characterised the Nordic model, which is very well documented, especially in Sweden and Norway, from the late Middle Ages and onwards. In other words, history has put its mark on the process of political and social modernisation in the Nordic countries from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present.

In the early twenty-first century unifying bonds still exist between the Nordic countries. They are all welfare states, characterised by stable parliamentary democracies, low elements of violence in society, extensive equality between men and women, and an organised labour market. Recent decades of increased immigration have been a major challenge to national identities. As a region in Europe, their unifying characteristics are perhaps most obvious when it comes to such everyday phenomena as the childcare system and the high rate of women in the labour market.

The education politics and regulation in Denmark and Norway have developed quite similarly over the past decades as will be illustrated in the country reports.

Lithuania was not part of the Nordic countries but in parallel to them developed a societal vision of democracy similar to the Nordic.

Discourse and System Post World War II Until 1990

The potential relevance and influence of these distant histories should be balanced with the fact that Croatia and Slovenia were from the end of World War II made parts of the totalitarian Yugoslavian regime, and Lithuania was made of part of the communist Soviet regime. When the Soviet Union broke down around 1989–1990, those countries were liberated and had to begin rebuilding democracies with—for better and for worse—inspiration and influences from transnational agencies like UNESCO, the OECD, and the World Bank—all under the legacy of the former totalitarian regimes.

Discourse and Systems in Europe 2: 1990 Until Today

In order to understand the country accounts, we first give a brief analysis of the context, and the shared governance conditions in contemporary neoliberal globalization (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

Shared governance contexts

The shared global influence on public sectors and education is introduced briefly in this section: the construction of neoliberal marketplaces, named as globalization. Following that, the concepts of transnational agencies as important carriers of policy and governance influences are then introduced. This is the starting point, on which all nations and regions interpret and respond to the overall trends. However, all nations and local institutions have developed their own ideas and practices over years. They are based on mixtures of broader and local cultures, traditions, histories, professional values, and educational theories. Therefore they act differently from the global and transnational influences.

Ideas about globalisation are introduced and following that, thoughts about transnational agencies. To get an overview of the governance trends in Europe, ideas of globalisation are described. There have been interactions and collaboration between countries and continents for hundreds of years, but based on the experiences in World War II country-collaboration was accelerated after that war. The capitalist economy is developing towards a world economy: huge marketplaces with free access and no barriers for members’ transport of goods, services, finances, and citizens. The development was supported heavily by important agencies, first and foremost the World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), as those agencies were constructed on the basis of neoliberal economy thinking and logics. This means that the marketplace is being developed into a global way of thinking: the marketplace logics, talks about producers, commodities, competition, and costumers. This trend has spread to all aspects of society. Signs of this development in education can be seen in policy documents describing education as businesses; education is a commodity, the educational systems are producers, and students are consumers. This has facilitated the idea that the education system must be competitive.

Nation-state status was supplemented by transnational agencies like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Deve...