Search

This study targets hitherto largely understudied empirical processes and activities through which certain ideas and imaginaries are being commercialised and used by corporate actors in the global Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) industry. The aim is to analyse and critically discuss representations of the Scandinavian ECEC regime in the context of ECEC export. This is achieved empirically through a case study of a Swedish education company and its expansion in Germany, as well as by devoting analytical attention to the social, political and fantasmatic logics in the processes that constitute and characterise the "Scandinavian ECEC offer" as it is being exported. The analysis draws on corporate documents, websites and interviews with top-level company representatives. The analysis highlights how the Scandinavian ECEC regime is made up of four interlinked elements; equality, the autonomous child, integration of care and learning and outdoor pedagogy, aligned and sustained by "gripping" and "sticking" forces in fantasmatic logics that hide contingencies. In summary, the powerful imaginary of the Scandinavian ECEC regime, bringing accessibility, social justice, gender equality, nature, democracy, children's rights and autonomy, serves to conceal the political and ideological dimension of the economic logic of capitalism., Published online: 08 Jan 2024.

This special issue focuses on important facets of market-oriented reforms in Nordic Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). It aims to promote discussion on interlinked dimensions of marketisation, privatisation and commercialisation in Nordic ECEC and their manifestations in policy, practice and outcomes. With contributions from authors in five Nordic countries, the articles in the special issue offer accounts of marketisation, including the organisation of ECEC quasi-markets and shifts in the use and function of parental choice. The articles also analyse privatisation by researching the delivery of private services and the nature of the non-state providers within early childhood education markets. Finally, the theme of commercialisation is addressed through research on the commodification of preschool knowledge within Nordic countries but also its export in the global education industry. This special issue highlight how a variety of market-oriented policies, parental choice and private actor involvement are evolving. Taken together, the articles illustrate connections and mutually-reinforcing mechanisms of policy and practice that contribute to the expansion of marketisation, privatisation, and commercialisation in Nordic ECEC. This special issue provides a call to continue exploration of how these processes and actors contribute to the transformation of ECEC in the Nordic countries and elsewhere.

This article focuses on a Swedish school company and its operations in India, examining how setting up and operating schools in another national place forge particular spatial imaginaries. It contributes to literature on the Global Education Industry by focusing on international moves of commercial non-Anglo-Saxon actors. Drawing on interviews and extensive fieldwork in India, we show how the ‘marriage’ between the global (represented by the Swedish company) and local (the ‘Indian’) are manifested in the spatial imaginary of the ‘glocal school’, encompassing hierarchical otherings rooted in discourses of both globalisation and colonialism.

Debates around internationalisation-at-home (IaH) focus on the benefits accrued to students from the integration of internationalisation dimensions in their studies, curricular developments and interactions with international students, but, with scant attention to how these vary in different subject areas. In this article, we focus on the disciplinary experiences and framings of internationalisation from the perspectives of students in two Swedish universities. Drawing on 67 interviews with students sampled across different subject areas, we examine how the disciplinary definitions of study objects and pedagogic approaches filter the students’ experiences and shape their views around IaH, and their ambitions for the future. Our findings suggest first, a discipline-specific set of positionings regarding the nature of subject areas as lenses through which internationalisation is understood. Second, the students hold strong views around the contribution of IaH in strengthening the disciplines themselves. In addition, the student voices paint a dynamic picture of internationalisation positions, not always consistent with disciplinary stereotypes.

National policies aiming at marketisation and privatisation in welfare sectors such as Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) require governance and organisation to be realised. In Sweden, the municipalities are key but largely under-researched organisers for preschool quasi-market infrastructures. This study explores the different ways in which Swedish municipalities act as quasi-market organisers in the preschool setting. Following organisational theory, we analyse their market shaping activities in translating national regulations in efforts to influence, support and control their local preschool quasi-market. Documents, websites, and interviews with public officials from 30 municipalities characterised as having either a large (N = 10), medium (N = 10), or small (N = 10) private ECEC sector are analysed. The analysis highlights large variations on how municipalities act as market makers, which is further discussed in the form of three ideal types: the Frontier, the Keeper, and the Endorser. We conclude that municipalities' varying and hybridised market shaping activities and local characteristics are important to understand the implications that emerge in terms of different rules of the game, stakeholder interdependencies and relationships, composition of market actors etc. Attentiveness to the sub-national/local actors are essential in understanding different welfare quasi-markets within national policy frameworks of marketisation and privatisation., Published online: 18 Jul 2023

Debates around internationalisation-at-home (IaH) focus on the benefits accrued to students from the integration of internationalisation dimensions in their studies, curricular developments and interactions with international students, but, with scant attention to how these vary in different subject areas. In this article, we focus on the disciplinary experiences and framings of internationalisation from the perspectives of students in two Swedish universities. Drawing on 67 interviews with students sampled across different subject areas, we examine how the disciplinary definitions of study objects and pedagogic approaches filter the students’ experiences and shape their views around IaH, and their ambitions for the future. Our findings suggest first, a discipline-specific set of positionings regarding the nature of subject areas as lenses through which internationalisation is understood. Second, the students hold strong views around the contribution of IaH in strengthening the disciplines themselves. In addition, the student voices paint a dynamic picture of internationalisation positions, not always consistent with disciplinary stereotypes.

Private international education is on the rise, but we still have limited knowledge on how different commercial actors operate in this field and how it affects local teachers and their work in the schools abroad. Swedish school companies have been active in exporting schooling in the international arena, including “Swedish” education models. In this article, we examine one company and their operations in India. We explore the interpretations of the company education model by teachers in the Indian schools, and how this affects their professional capacity. Mixed qualitative methods of interviews, on-site school visits and documentary reviews, were used to examine the possibilities for teachers to exercise professional agency within their working environment. Our findings show that teachers operate within a highly structured pedagogical environment characterised by a given curriculum, a centralised learning platform and training programme, and a set of dominant discourses around values and teaching practices. Teachers are expected to embrace a new professional identity in a process of discarding past experiences and adopting the new professional language given by the company's particular education model. In willingly embracing the company discourses and expectations, teachers’ agency tends to be constrained.

We analyse policy rhetoric on education export in Finland and Sweden as a lens to explore the multifaceted Nordic model in education. We also examine how the Nordic dimension in education is represented in Finnish and Swedish education exports. Our findings highlight that, while education export approaches differ considerably betweenthe two countries, both contexts provide opportunities for private edu-business actorsto thrive, thereby sustaining the global education industry (GEI). Education export is rhetorically positioned in relation to both the national and the Nordic contexts in specific ways, with implications for how Nordic education is framed in the globalised economy.

National policies aiming at marketisation and privatisation in welfare sectors such as Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) require governance and organisation to be realised. In Sweden, the municipalities are key but largely under-researched organisers for preschool quasi-market infrastructures. This study explores the different ways in which Swedish municipalities act as quasi-market organisers in the preschool setting. Following organisational theory, we analyse their market shaping activities in translating national regulations in efforts to influence, support and control their local preschool quasi-market. Documents, websites, and interviews with public officials from 30 municipalities characterised as having either a large (N = 10), medium (N = 10), or small (N = 10) private ECEC sector are analysed. The analysis highlights large variations on how municipalities act as market makers, which is further discussed in the form of three ideal types: the Frontier, the Keeper, and the Endorser. We conclude that municipalities’ varying and hybridised market shaping activities and local characteristics are important to understand the implications that emerge in terms of different rules of the game, stakeholder interdependencies and relationships, composition of market actors etc. Attentiveness to the sub-national/local actors are essential in understanding different welfare quasi-markets within national policy frameworks of marketisation and privatisation.

Since international student achievement surveys were introduced in the 1960s, Sweden has participated in a large number of them. These surveys initially revealed unexpectedly low achievement levels in Sweden relative to other participating countries; however, there were some more positive findings and interpretations in the 1970s and 1980s. The results from the 1990s onwards have been more discouraging for Swedish educational policy and practice. In recent years,some improvements have been seen, although there is some controversy surrounding these interpretations. In Sweden ,international achievement surveys play an important role inframing political discussions about educational outcomes, and they are used for education policy monitoring. Nevertheless, it is hard to establish causal links between particular reforms and such uses of international achievement data. Moreover, the Swedish case illustrates how selective national uptake of these international measures is embedded in and contingent on contextual and historical national circumstances and reform trajectories.

This article focuses on a Swedish school company and its operations in India, examining how setting up and operating schools in another national place forge particular spatial imaginaries. It contributes to literature on the Global Education Industry by focusing on international moves of commercial non-Anglo-Saxon actors. Drawing on interviews and extensive fieldwork in India, we show how the ‘marriage’ between the global (represented by the Swedish company) and local (the ‘Indian’) are manifested in the spatial imaginary of the ‘glocal school’, encompassing hierarchical otherings rooted in discourses of both globalisation and colonialism.

Sweden has actively pursued internationalisation policies at national level, in parallel to the pursuit of internationalisation strategies of individual universities. Thisarticle focuses on university responses towards internationalisation, and the inter -play between external higher education environments and institutional positioning.We draw on empirical qualitative research in two of Sweden’s largest universities, toexamine institutional responses to internationalisation, expressed through documen-tary material and interviews with 32 senior leaders. Our findings suggest that theglobal research environment acts as a strong discursive driver for internationalisa-tion actions, manifested in the strategic partnerships pursued by the two institutions.An equally powerful driver, is the national higher education sector as a context ofconstant comparisons and competition but also as a source of collaborative learningand exchange. The two universities exhibit strategic autonomy in their reading ofthe internationalisation imperative, and in constructing their actions and responses,although these are significantly framed by size and geography. In the Swedish highereducation landscape, these two dimensions constitute a constraining physical anddiscursive context, underpinning the links between a global, internationalised envi-ronment, and the universities’ self-image and positioning.

Background: Although extubation is a high-risk phase associated with risk of severe complications for patients undergoing general anaesthesia, there is a lack of research about this phenomenon from the perspective of anaesthesiologists’ experiences of the process of extubation in the anaesthesia setting. Aim: To describe Swedish anaesthesiologists’ experiences of the extubation process in the anaesthesia setting. Methods: A qualitative descriptive design study with individual semi-structured interviews was conducted in three hospitals in Sweden with a total of 17 anaesthesiologists. A qualitative manifest content analysis method was used to analyse the data. Results: The anaesthesiologists’ experiences were described in two categories: To assemble sensibilities, where the anaesthesiologists are receptive to inputs, create tailored plans, are guided by emotions and experiences, and sense the atmosphere in the process of extubation; and To stay focused, where they understand the importance of preparation and being prepared, and of being calm and strategic, and of needing to trust the registered nurse anaesthetist in the process of extubation. Conclusions: Decision-making regarding the process of extubation does not rely solely on monitoring signs; rather, the anaesthesiologists described how, by looking beyond the monitors and by being receptive to inputs from the patient and other professionals, their experience and intuition guides them through the process of extubation.

Today, one out of five Swedish children attend a privately operated preschool. Even if there are national policies targeting for instance parental choice and right for private actors to provide pre-primary education, municipalities in Sweden have extensive local autonomy in organizing and governing their ‘local preschool markets’ or, rather, quasi markets. As Brunsson and Jutterström (2018 p. 8) put it; “markets are formed by processes of organization. They are the objects of decisions. There are people and organizations that decide not only on their own actions in markets, but also on the actions of others”. Swedish municipalities are such key organizations that create market infrastructures via market shaping activities (c.f. Flaig et al 2021) including for instance to facilitate, support and police the market actors. The aim of this paper is to explore the different ways in which Swedish municipalities create their local preschool markets to analyse how they act as market organizers in the pre-primary education setting. We do this through analysing documents, websites and interviews with municipal officers from 30 municipalities characterized as having either a large (N=10), medium (N=10) or small (N=10) private pre-primary sector. Theoretically, we turn to literature on organizations, governing and public-private relations. Our preliminary findings show that there are large variations on how municipalities act as local preschool market organizers and the paper elaborates three (ideal typical) modes: Endorsers are municipalities that actively promote, support and sponsor market actors. Frontiers denotes municipal territories that are unattractive or not yet fully explored by private preschool actors. Keepers are municipalities that strive to maintain balance or status quo between public and private providers, using various strategies and tools to this end. In sum, this paper seeks to contribute to the discussion on how public actors work to organize, enable or l

Although there is a growing body of literature addressing different aspects of implementation and translation of market-oriented policies, privatisation and choice reforms in both Nordic and European educational research, such processes in pre-primary education have received limited scholarly attention. Indeed, as in other sectors of education, European pre-primary education systems display great variation with regards to, for instance, the extent to which public and private for-profit and/or not-for-profit actors are responsible for preschool provision. In addition, funding policies and regulation varies extensively as well (c.f. Eurydice 2019; Loyd & Penn 2014; Ruutiainen et al 2020; Trætteberg et al 2021). This paper focuses on the Swedish pre-primary education case and is part of an ongoing research project entitled The Preschool as a market (Carlbaum, 2020). Today, one out of five Swedish children attend a privately operated preschool. Even if there are national policies targeting for instance parental choice and right for private actors to provide pre-primary education, municipalities in Sweden have extensive local autonomy in organising and governing their ‘local preschool markets’ or, rather, quasi markets. By creating a market infrastructure via market shaping activities (c.f. Flaig et al 2021) including for instance to facilitate, support and police the market actors, the 290 municipalities have extensive discretion on how to organise the local market for private preschool provision. Thus, market freedoms do not just appear, they require institutions and rules as well as protection and maintenance from, in this case, local authorities (c.f. Wilkinson, 2013). As Brunsson and Jutterström (2018 p. 8) put it; “markets are formed by processes of organization. They are the objects of decisions. There are people and organizations that decide not only on their own actions in markets, but also on the actions of others”. In the Swedish pre-primary education sect