European Educational Research Journal
ISSN 1474-9041

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

Kathrin Dedering. Evidence-Based Education Policy: lip service or common practice? Empirical Findings from Germany, pages 484‑496
Elina Lahelma. Dichotomized Metaphors and Young People’s Educational Routes, pages 497‑507
Per Lindqvist, Ulla Karin Nordänger & Joakim Landahl. Insurance and Assurance: teachers’ strategies in the regimes of risk and audit, pages 508‑519
Ninni Wahlström. Understanding the Universal Right to Education as Jurisgenerative Politics and Democratic Iterations, pages 520‑533
Charlotta Edström. Preschool as an Arena of Gender Policies: the examples of Sweden and Scotland, pages 534‑549

EERJ ROUNDTABLE
AT ECER VIENNA 2009
Researcher Mobility and the European Research Area
Peter van der Hijden. European Union Initiatives to Enhance the Attractiveness of the Research Profession in Europe, pages 550‑554 doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.4.550 VIEW FULL TEXT
Jane Kenway & Johannah Fahey. Academic Mobility and Hospitality: the good host and the good guest, pages 555‑559 doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.4.555 VIEW FULL TEXT

Evidence-Based Education Policy: lip service or common practice? Empirical Findings from Germany

KATHRIN DEDERING Fakultat für Erziehungswissenschaft, University of Bielefeld, Germany

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.4.484

Since the late 1990s, it has been the practice in Germany that decisions in educational policy and educational administration should primarily be subject to evidence in terms of reliable empirical data. However, little research has been conducted so far as to the question of how actors in charge receive and process the existing data, and how they use them in decision-making processes. In this article, new empirical findings are presented concerning the way in which the reception and processing of educational scientific evidence is currently carried out. Moreover, differences in the use of data within the last decade are revealed. Relating to an explorative study that consists of 12 qualitative interviews with ministerial personnel in four German school ministries, the findings generally indicate that evidence-based educational policy in Germany is less a matter of paying lip service, but rather increasingly becoming common practice. On the whole, the findings indicate an increasing routine and a more professional treatment of the demands for processing data. All of the school ministries reveal approaches towards systematising the use of data.

Dichotomized Metaphors and Young People’s Educational Routes

ELINA LAHELMA Department of Education, University of Helsinki, Finland

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.4.497

Drawing from an ethnographically grounded longitudinal study on educational transitions, the aim of this article is to analyse young people’s reflections about their educational choices at different ages. Consistencies and breaks in their plans and actual choices are explored and reflected in relation to the economic, social, cultural and emotional resources they possess. In particular, the author explores taken-for-granted dichotomous metaphors that seem to open up certain educational routes and close others, such as ‘the head’ and ‘the hand’ for routes to academic and vocational education. In the first section of the article, the author demonstrates how metaphors appear in ethnographic accounts of lower secondary schools. The author then suggests how they are activated when young people reflect on their post-compulsory choices. Finally, the author presents the educational routes of two young people, drawing from their hopes, dreams and actual choices, as they relate them in interviews when they were 13, 18, 20 and 24 years old.

Insurance and Assurance: teachers’ strategies in the regimes of risk and audit

PER LINDQVIST, ULLA KARIN NORDÄNGER & JOAKIM LANDAHL School of Human Sciences, University of Kalmar, Sweden

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.4.508

This article deals with how the increasing use of notions such as ‘risk awareness’ and ‘blame’ in relation to school affects the daily work of Swedish teachers. With the help of empirical excerpts from documents and focus group interviews, the authors provide examples of how the introduction of the risk society and audit cultures encourages the creation of new strategies for coping. Two of these concern the mediation of ‘safe school’ images and preventions in order to avoid future blame. The authors depict them as strategies of assurance and insurance. The increasing handling of these strategies seems to draw attention away from relations to students and actual time spent on teaching. When considering an action, teachers seem to balance the risk of attracting blame against the didactic potential. Finally, the possibility of practices which reflect more positive risk logic is discussed.

Understanding the Universal Right to Education as Jurisgenerative Politics and Democratic Iterations

NINNI WAHLSTRÖM School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, Sweden

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.4.520

This article examines how the universal human right to education can be understood in terms of what Seyla Benhabib considers ‘democratic iterations’. Further, by referring to the concept of jurisgenerative politics, Benhabib argues that a democratic people reinterpret guiding norms and principles which they find themselves bound to, through iterative acts, so that they are not only the subjects but also the authors of laws. By examining the use of the Article of the universal right to education in the European Convention on Human Rights, not as an Article with an unambiguous meaning, but as an Article which from its very start was the subject of different interpretations and desires, the author argues for an understanding of the process of transforming universal rights into national law and norms as democratic iterations. This way of conceiving democratic iterations is examined empirically, with Sweden as an example, by analyses of three different discursive arenas: a political/legal arena; an arena concerning political contests over independent schools; and a more limited arena for advocating denominational schools. The conclusion is that two different disjunctions – between universal norms and national self-determination and between law as power and law as meaning – are productive interspaces for renegotiating and rearticulating universal law into local/national norms.

Preschool as an Arena of Gender Policies: the examples of Sweden and Scotland

CHARLOTTA EDSTRÖM Department of Child and Youth Education, Special Education and Counselling, Umeå University, Sweden

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.4.534

As many countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have developed more universal provision for early childhood education during the last decades, preschool increasingly has become a central policy arena. Gender politics, especially with an aim to promote female labour market participation, but also policies addressing children and preschool staff, constitute one vital aspect. This article analyses staff responsibilities for promoting gender equality in preschool in Sweden and Scotland. These countries represent different welfare regimes, but also display common features, both influenced by tradition and recent transnational policies and discourses. Based on national policy documents from 1970 to the early 2000s, this study shows that gender equality has continuously been brought up in the Swedish context since the 1970s, but entered the Scottish context at a later stage. Since the late 1990s, such questions have been addressed in both countries. In both cases, teachers are constructed as role models who should promote certain gender values and provide children with opportunities. The Swedish curriculum places more emphasis on similarities between girls and boys, while the Scottish counterpart tends to emphasize difference more, paying attention to boys and the need for male role models. Scottish gender policies are influenced by the travelling discourse of ‘the boys’ underachievement crisis’, whereas Swedish gender policies in preschool demonstrate little of this.

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