Professional Knowledge And Educational Restructuring In Europe
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Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe
Author: I.F. Goodson
language: en
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Release Date: 2011-07-23
European welfare institutions such as education and health care are restructuring their organisations in terms of decentralisation, deregulation, privatization and so forth. As a consequence professional positions and demands on professional competencies in these institutions are in transition. At the same time European societies are changing in different ways, e.g. in terms of a "knowledge society" as well as in demographic and cultural changes. Professionals such as teachers and nurses are meeting such changes in their work with students and clients.Thus, there is a need to study these transitions and changes. Here we are doing this from a "bottom-up" perspective where we are comparing experiences in different institutional and national contexts. This study combines two kinds of narrative research; a study of the systemic narratives produced by governments who are restructuring educational systems and the life history narratives of those professionals working within those systems and their perspectives on ongoing restructuring.
Educational Reform in Europe
Education is a contested terrain. The symmetry of education reform among the seven countries examined in this volume is remarkable. There is much commonality in the issues they raise, in the competing groups battling over education policy, their policy choices, and the implementation of such policies. Also, all seven countries address the same issues: equity, global competition, the performance of their students. There are at least six important traits characterizing these battles: the context, the combatants, the issues, the process, and the policies. To begin with, history, culture, and governance regime set the context for education policy and reform. Second, there is the process of how these battles are waged--is compromise an outcome or is it a zero sum contest? Third, there appear to be four groups of combatants each with its own ideology representing a particular social class in society and their views about education and its uses: Conservatives, Socialists, Neo-Liberals, and Elites. Education is an important and valued resource that each status group tries to control and shape to its own views. Fourth, there are key issues that drive education reform: how education can best flatten a social system, how education train students for work, and how education socializes students to be functioning citizens. In recent years, fifth issue has emerged: student performance on international standardized tests. Not only is a society’s international reputation based on their students’ performance, but nations see such performance as an indicator of the quality of their educational system and if it is good enough to secure its economic future. Finally, there are the policies themselves--do they reduce or increase inequality, who benefits and how? The chapters in this volume clearly point out that education reform is not a homogeneous process as some scholars have conjectured. Rather, education reform involves heated battles over the control of the educational system because education is seen as a key factor in maintaining a society’s vision and social structure.
European Nurses' Life and Work Under Restructuring
The book examines nurses’ professional work and life in the context of the ongoing institutional restructuring of health care systems in seven European counties, England, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The main idea has been to discuss professional experience and expertise from below, i.e. from the perspective of the nurses and focuses on how they deal with restructuring measures caused by changes in policy and administration. This is not, however, a book about policy implementation and new managerial ideas. Its goal is to examine the complexities and ambiguities in nurses’ work from different theoretical viewpoints. The book also describes both the unique situations and larger societal patterns in which these complexities and ambiguities are embedded. It is intended to contribute to the discussion of and research on nurses as European welfare state professionals.