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In this article, we explore the processes of transfer and translation ofeducation policy in a study focusing on the relationship betweenthe Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) and Sweden. The purpose of the study is to investigatehow selective borrowing occurs both in terms of references todifferent types of knowledge sources underpinning the argumentsand shared discourse formations. The data were obtained fromtwo policy reports: an OECD review report of the Swedish schoolsystem and a Swedish follow-up report proposing actual schoolreforms. The method was twofold: first, mapping, categorizing,and counting all the textual references in the two documents;second, critically analyzing the discourses emerging in the twopolicy texts. The results show that international references play asignificant role in substantiating arguments for Swedish educationpolicy. Both policy texts share a policy discourse characterized bysuspiciousness toward the professionalism exercised by teachersand local education authorities. Bibliografiskt granskad

Discursively learning outcomes have been embedded within an education-policy context characterised by a shift from teaching to learning. In the dominant education policy discourse, learning outcome ...

The article aims to explore to what extent and in what ways discourseinstitutionalism can contribute to the understanding and analysis ofcurriculum change in a globalized context. By focusing specifically oncurriculum change, this article proposes how discourse institutionalismcan contribute to the so-called ‘crisis of curriculum theory’ by addressing(i) the non-linearity of change, (ii) the process of the translation of ideasand (iii) actor agency. The text is structured in three sections. In the firstsection, we elaborate on the notion of curriculum change as a vitalconcept for the field of curriculum theory in a globalized context, focusingon processes of recontextualization and the translation of curriculumcontent. In the second, we elaborate on discourse institutionalism as acontributing approach to the analysis of such processes of curriculumchange, constructing a conceptual framework. In the third and finalsection, we give some examples of how the conceptual framework canbe used in analysing curriculum change, using the 2011 Swedish curriculumreform (Lgr 11) as an empirical reference, and the result showsthat the conceptual framework offers a wide repertoire of possibleapproaches to analysing curriculum change, both vertically andhorizontally.

Notions about honour and honour codes are culturally institutionalised and sacralised as well as important quasi-moral human concerns that relate to reputation monitoring. This article addresses honour concepts from the standpoint of the cognition of reputation management and indirect reciprocity. In view of the massive bulk of research on the evolution of moral dispositions for cooperation, it hypothesised that such proclivities for social life underpin and constrain the cultural formation of honour concepts, particularly through the function of reputation. However, there are two prominent theories that address evolved morality, and both consider reputation. Firstly, altruism and group selection theory holds that key moral dispositions are related to punishment and possibly honour, and it proposes that the altruists outcompete non-altruists in a group. By contrast, mutualist theory holds that it is mutually advantageous to cooperate and that an actor's reputation as a reliable exchange partner is at the core of concerns about honour. In this article it is asked whether altruism and mutualism are both of equal explanatory value in explaining honour and reputation. The overarching argument of this article is that mutualist models, prima facie, have explanatory higher ground when a model of the cultural transmission of honour concepts is advanced based on evolved human morality. This objective is highlighted by (a) suggesting a model of how reputation is a conceptual core of honour notions and (b) demonstrating how mutualist rather than altruist approaches offer the most cohesive account of reputation and consequently of honour notions.

In many cultures people value the importance of honour and related rules and behaviours. Honour can be seen as concepts and cultural items represented and processed according to evolved cognitive capacities and emotions supported by local social institutional arrangements. Indeed, this article holds that one reasonable way to analyze honour is to model how cognitive processes and transmission biases work in tandem with institutional support and environmental cues to exert selective pressures on the cultural distribution and formation of honour. The scope of this article is theoretical, aiming to address and explain culturally recurrent aspects of widespread honour concepts. What evolved cognitive systems and selection factors underpin the cultural transmission of honour concepts and institutions? It will be argued that the transmission of honour concepts draws upon cognitive systems referring to male formidability, management of reputation, coalitions, costly signals, shame and stigma, concern for protectiveness and parental investments, essentialist understanding and disgust and on the cognition of institutions.

Dreams are a universal human experience and they form cultural themes in folk traditions and religious rituals, such as pilgrimages and dream incubation. Dreams and dream beliefs are important since they contain representations of interacting supernatural agents that have full access to information of strategic importance to humans. The relevance of dreams often relates to the dreamers' concerns about the future and about health, and in this sense they show similarity with divination and oracles. This article suggests that religious dreaming is underpinned by an evolved system of threat simulation that is activated in dreaming processes; this is associated with a proclivity to evoke agent concepts and to use counterintuitive representations in cultural communication. It is argued that the use of a ‘hypersensitive agency detection device’ draws upon emotionally laden threat simulation in dreaming that makes reference to counterintuitive supernatural agents that are particularly relevant. This suggests that...

This article discusses experiences of hardship during Hindu pilgrimages in the Nepalese and Tibetan Himalayas. Pilgrims have to reach their goal by undertaking a journey. The pilgrimage exposes pilgrims to a variety of experiences. The journey’s religious experiences are of significance for the ritual arrangements of the pilgrimage. Cognitive theories and the selectionist approach of “cultural epidemiology” are adopted to offer explanations for the formation of religious beliefs and values associated with travelling experience, hardship and danger during pilgrimage. Specifically, it is argued that the experience of salient emotional events such as hardship are likely to draw upon evolved social exchange intuitions that impose a selective pressure in the cultural formation and recurrence of beliefs regarding religious merits in pilgrimage. It is further argued that social exchange intuitions are a likely source of beliefs in boons and merits, since pilgrimage is already conceptualised as an interaction with “supernatural agents.” These accounts modify and elaborate former suggestions regarding hardship and sacrificial notions in pilgrimage studies. Thus the presented arguments may be relevant to understanding some of the features of pilgrimage that also seem to recur cross-culturally.

This article discusses the notions of a good death associated with Hindu pilgrimages in the Nepalese and Tibetan Himalayas. Using theories and concepts from the cognitive anthropology of religion and from the cognitive science of religion—particularly the cultural epidemiological method—my objective is to explain why certain systems of thought and behaviour are favoured over others in cultural transmission. My thesis is that the apprehension of contagion and/or contamination, combined with prevailing cultural representations, exerts selective pressure on the formation of beliefs about good death. Pilgrimage sites are associated with intuitions about contagious and contaminating contact, avert the pollution of death, and provide links to supernatural agents.

Pilgrim journeys are popular religious phenomena that are based on ritual interaction with culturally postulated counterintuitive supernatural agents. This article uses results taken from an anthropological Ph. D. thesis on cognitive aspects of Hindu pilgrimage in Nepal and Tibet. Cognitive theories have been neglected in pilgrimage studies but they offer new perspectives on belief structures and ritual action and call into question some of the current assumptions in this research field. Pilgrim journeys often involve flows of substance of anthropomorphic character. Transferring substance in pilgrimage means leaving material at the pilgrimage site and then receiving other materials to take home. Pilgrim journeys imply ritual interaction, intuitions and ideas regarding the management of sin, impurity and evil. They also imply reception of blessings along with divine agency. This paper investigates how assumptions about agency, psychological essentialism and contagion connected to supernatural agents provides an important selective pressure in formation of beliefs related to pilgrimage. This paper shows that the transfer of substances is an operation on ritual instruments. It creates a supernatural immediacy effect in pilgrims, in the sense suggested by Lawson and McCauley.

Within the European Union the concept of lifelong learning is put forward as one of the main solutions for the member states to cope with globalisation and its effects. Against this background the ...

Ideas and practices about the transfer of substances believed to be charged with positive or negative properties are significant features of pilgrimages. Oftenneglected features of pilgrimages can be addressed by adopting concepts from the Cognitive Science of Religion. Religious pilgrimages are popular phenomena that are based on ritual interaction with culturally-postulated counterintuitive supernatural agents. This article partly refers to and analyses ethnographic data gathered during fieldwork among Hindu pilgrims in Nepal and Tibet. The pilgrims received items to take home from the pilgrimage site but they also left other items there. This constituted a transfer of contagious substances that carried blessings and supernatural agency/power and it enabled the discharging of defilement, sin or evil. The aim of this article is to show how the beliefs about substance transfer are shaped by cultural institutions and by cognitive selection pressures related to psychological essentialism and concepts of agency and contagion relating to counterintuitive agents.

In this article, we present a comparative research project on municipal school policy in Sweden 19502010 which in our view contributes to the research fields of education policy and curriculum theory. Our project which started in 2014 links to a line of international research on education policy concerned with the tensions between decentralisation and globalisation and comparative research investigating transnational transfers of education policy ideas. In this article, we provide some preliminary findings which display municipal school policy dealing with national and transnational school initiatives and affecting local school actions. Most of the findings in this article concern the time period 19501975, during which the present two Swedish school forms, Grundskolan (a 9-year comprehensive school) and Gymnasieskolan (upper secondary school), were introduced and established.We compare local policy, through six interrelated indicators, in two municipalities with different structures and origins. On the basis of our findings, we conclude that municipal school policy research in a comparative and historical perspective is an important field of research as it reveals the complexity of school governance. Historical studies of municipal school policy and practice are crucial for exploring different dimensions of curriculum theory, including the transnational dimension.Keywords: local school policy; local school history; education policy; curriculum theory; globalizationCitation: NordSTEP 2015, 1: 27009 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/nstep.v1.27009

IMAGES OF BILDUNG – AND ITS ABSENCE FROM POLITICAL DISCOURSE ABOUT LIFELONGLEARNING. Studying a sample of what has been written about the conceptsBildung and lifelong learning, we find little connection between the two. Theterm Bildung, mostly used in the hermeneutic tradition, is understood as anindividual’s way of interpreting the world. The skills of interpretation createindividual freedom and a potential to achieve communicative capacity, whichis essential in developing a deliberative democracy. In contrast, with the termlifelong learning, which is mostly found in a political context, the perspectiveof individual freedom in the above-mentioned sense is put to one side infavour of individual adjustment to economic needs. This essay raises ques-tions about the importance of understanding the concept of Bildung in aknowledge-based community.

Around the mid-2000s a crisis discourse emerged in educational policy-making in the EU and in Sweden. Using the EU and Sweden as empirical references, this article explores how this crisis discourse has been and is employed by politicians and NGOs. Discourse Institutionalism is used as an overall theoretical framework focusing on how the crisis discourse is coordinated among powerful policy actors and communicated to the public, while critical discourse analysis is used for the systematic analysis. The crisis discourse implies that action has to be taken immediately and that there is no option other than to act, and the result shows that this normative discourse is becoming an important and powerful instrument in the hands of both national and transnational actors seeking public legitimacy for extensive reforms. Keywords: educational reform, legitimation strategy, risk, crisis, discourse (Published: 7 March 2014) Citation: Education Inquiry (EDUI) 2014, 5 , 24047, http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/edui.v5.24047