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Policy Tools and Institutional Change: Comparing education policies in Norway, Sweden and England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 July 2006

INGRID HELGØY
Affiliation:
Stein Pokkan Centre for Social Studies, University of Bergen
ANNE HOMME
Affiliation:
Stein Pokkan Centre for Social Studies, University of Bergen

Abstract

The main question raised in this article is how educational reforms reflect convergence or divergence between the English, the Norwegian and the Swedish educational systems. We claim that the answer depends on how convergence is conceptualised. At the level of decisions on tools, the countries seem more similar than two decades ago. However, to explain policy changes our analytical perspective must be broadened. We demonstrate how values based on different welfare state models, political economies and different types of institutional evolution can explain processes of change in education over the last decades. In paying attention to broader processes of change, a certain degree of variation occurs. The countries seem to develop according to nationally specific trajectories: England has strengthened the liberal and elitist values of education while social democratic values of comprehensiveness and equality have impact on the aims and effects of policy tools in Norway and Sweden.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

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