Agnès van Zanten
Directrice de recherche au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Observatoire Sociologique du Changement, Sciences-Po Paris/ CNRS, France

Critics versus pragmatists?
National traditions and international Anglo-Saxon influences on French research in education and in the social sciences France has a long tradition of theoretical, rather than empirical, research in the social sciences, which has not encouraged taking account of the issues facing practitioners and policy-makers. In spite of the development of empirical research in the last 30 years, the general situation has been until recently one in which researchers had considerable autonomy but little collective influence on practice and decision-making. This configuration is however being altered by new supranational pressures coming both from international agencies such as the OECD that have put forward strong arguments in favour of “evidence-based policy” and from the European Union’s framework research programmes which focus on issues considered relevant for strengthening convergence between European countries. This presentation will analyse how under these pressures a more pragmatic perspective has been developed by some government officials and by some individual researchers and how it relates to the dominant French critical perspective and affects it in several ways. It will also examine how participation in EU projects creates tensions about the definition of what is valuable research knowledge, about the research process and about the communication of results. The conclusion will focus on what the Nordic countries can learn from these descriptions and interpretations.

Gita Steiner Khamsi, Ph.D., Professor of Comparative and International Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York

Knowledge Banks of Transnational Regimes and the Study of Travelling Reforms
The keynote address deals with international “knowledge banks” such as the Education for All Fast Track Initiative (EFA-FTI) of the World Bank or the IEA and OECD-type international student achievement studies (PISA, TIMSS-R, Civic Education, etc.). The argument is made that international comparison—along with international ranking, target setting or benchmarking, and monitoring development against internationally established standards—has situated itself as a central policy tool. The vision of what accounts as good schooling travels around the globe with the active support of transnational regimes (OECD, World Bank, UN organizations, etc.) that advocate, disseminate, and fund their particular “best practices,” thereby contributing to globalization in education.
At the same time, it is important to acknowledge the important role of national actors. In fact, national decision makers selectively resort to “globalization” and international comparative studies whenever they see a need to obtain a quasi-international stamp of approval for either alleviating reform pressure or generating reform pressure in their countries. Against this interpretive framework, the presenter makes the point that globalization is used as an internationally induced external source of authority to either generate or release reform pressure.

Susan Wright, Professor, Department of Educational Anthropology, School of Education, University of Aarhus

What Counts? Who’s Counting? And Why?
‘What you do is what you get’ was an axiom of management when leaders were trying to create an empowered, initiativetaking and self-managing workforce in the 1980s. ‘What you measure is what you get’ could be a catchphrase for governments in the 21st century when they steer universities, along with other public services, by measuring outputs and ranking performance in order to allocate differential funding. But what are governments trying to get? What kinds of universities and what kinds of academic workers are these steering mechanisms trying to create? The presentation draws on a major study of the reform of Danish universities, with contrasting material from the UK.

Hannu Simola, Professor, Department of Education, University of Helsinki

Quality Assurance and Evaluation in Education Research and Teaching in Finnish Universities
Recent changes in education in advanced liberal countries have promoted a shift from rule-governed systems to governance through goals and results, and from state regulation to the creation of education markets. Restructuring may vary but it always seems to contain elements of the ‘New Public Management’ (NPM). Quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) appears to be one of the main technologies of NPM. Metaphors such as the quality revolution, the evaluation industry and the audit explosion are apt descriptions of the role of QAE in education, especially in higher education. On the one hand there are growing concerns that QAE is becoming predominantly a management support system, and an integral part of routinised regimes of organisational guidance and control. On the other hand, it seems to be an vital part in constructing a new European education space or market place. The empirical core of the presentation will consist of early findings of the research project “Power, Supranational Regimes and New University Management in Finland”. This study will trace institutionalised operating logics of power in Finnish universities in the context of a new mode of trans-national governance of education, based on processes of international spectacle and mutual accountability.

Staffan Larsson, Professor, Department of Behavioural Sciences, Linköping University

An emerging economy of citations and publications
The issue of where to publish academic work has become hot. One reason is the rapidly developing technology, which, for instance, has facilitated open access to texts on the Internet. However, a different side of publications is highlighted in this presentation:
the theme is the use of citations and publications calculus as steering tools for allocation of research funds. Academic writers’ “free” choice of publication strategies is, thus, undermined. Such indicators of academic success are more and more used also in Nordic educational research. Possible consequences of this development are explored in the presentation. The use of citation indexes as a source to indicate quality of research is well established in medicine, technology and science. The introduction of these practices in social science and the humanities is controversial, because it is ill suited to current practices in these academic areas. When used for allocating resources to disciplines, universities, research groups, etc., the indicators become very potent devices to shape the future of research. A number of issues arise. I use my own area, adult learning, as an example to discuss the possible consequences of this economy of citations and publications.