STV4447 – Education policies in theory and practice - Policymaking in Norway and around the world

Schedule, syllabus and examination date

Course content

Education policies are very important for modern societies, because institutions such as kindergartens, schools or universities are supposed to educate people to help them become good citizens, prepare them for the labour market, or find answers to societal challenges like climate change. However, education policies show a large variance in many countries and the political dynamics that shape them play out differently depending on national or regional contexts. This opens interesting questions like:

· Why do pupils in Norway go through a unified secondary school system, while in Germany they are separated after the fourth grade based on their grades?

· Why do you have to pay high tuition fees in the U.S., while in Norway universities are mostly tuition-free?

· Why do countries like Norway or Denmark provide extensive student support and others do not?

· What is the impact of these policy differences for educational trajectories or societal inequality in countries around the world?

These are just some of the questions that will be discussed during this course. The lectures and the literature will not only introduce students to the differences between education systems around the world, but also analyze and discuss factors that can explain their variation. This includes aspects such as path-dependence of national education systems, party politics, Europeanization, or reforms that are promoted by international organizations like the World Bank or the OECD.

The course provides theoretical insights from the academic literature on education policies in Norway and around the world with concrete case studies from "real" education policymaking. In cooperation with the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research (Kunnskapsdepartementet), students will be given policy problems which they will have to address by writing a policy brief outlining their solutions to a given problem. The policy briefs are then presented at a meeting at the ministry. This meeting will also be attended by ministerial bureaucrats who will give the students feedback and share insights into their day-to-day work.

Learning outcome

Knowledge

Having completed this course, students:

· Have detailed knowledge of different education systems, relevant actors, and international processes in the policy field as well as the state of the art of research

· Have in-depth knowledge on the most important conceptual approaches used to study education policies, including party politics, neo-institutional approaches, or policy diffusion

· Are familiar with recent international reform processes, such as the Europeanization of higher education or the role of the PISA studies for the policy field; in addition, they are able to assess their consequences for national reforms

· Understand the interaction of education policies among one another and with other policy fields

· Have knowledge