How to Become Indispensable
Private Tuition and Policy Processes within Swedish Education System
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25749/sis.18663Keywords:
policy, private tuition, problematisation, WPR analysisAbstract
During the 00s, the hiring of private tutors became a common and profitable practice in Sweden. The aim of this article is to illuminate educational policy space and policy processes through the case of private tuition practice in Sweden. The article offers a critical analysis and illuminates discourses that build up a private tuition network with shared ways of acting and talking, contributing to policy in the making. The data foremost consist of newspaper articles, interviews and websites and were analysed with network ethnography and the What’s the problem represented to be? approach. The analysis shows a network involving human and non-human actors highlighting an education that is in a crisis – a message underpinned with assumptions that suit the network’s needs, thus becoming indispensable for actions. The network occupies space, and through problematisation, determine what is considered to be significant in education and society, in Sweden as well as elsewhere.
Downloads
References
BALL, S. J. (2009). Privatising education, privatising education policy, privatising educational research: network governance and the ‘competition state’. Journal of Educational Policy, 24(1), 83-99.
BALL, S. J. (2016). Following policy: networks, network ethnography and education policy mobilities. Journal of Education Policy, 31(5), 549-566. DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2015.1122232
BALL, S. J., MAGUIRE, M., BRAUN, A., HOSKINS, K., & PERRYMAN, J. (2012). How schools do policy: policy enactments in secondary schools. London [u.a.]: Routledge.
BACCHI, C. (2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education.
BACCHI, C. (2012a). Why Study Problematizations? Making Politics Visible. Open Journal of Political Science, 2(1), 1-8.
BACCHI, C. (2012b). Introducing the ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ approach. In A. BLETSAS & C. BEASLEY (Eds.), Engaging with Carol Bacchi. Strategic Interventions and Exchanges (pp. 21-24). University of Adelaide Press.
BJÖRKMAN, A. (2014, November 21). Skolan är viktig för rut. Dagens Nyheter. Retrieved from: http://www.dn.se
BLETSAS, A., & BEASLEY, C. (2012). Introduction. In A. BLETSAS & C. BEASLEY (Eds.), Engaging with Carol Bacchi. Strategic Interventions and Exchanges (pp. 1-8). University of Adelaide Press.
CALLON, M. (1986). Elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In J. LAW (Ed.), Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? (pp. 196-233). London: Routledge.
CLARKE, M. (2012). The (absent) politics of neo-liberal education policy. Critical Studies in Education, 53(3), 297-310. DOI: 10.1080/17508487.2012.703139
D’ARCY-WARMINGTON, A. (2015). Looking into the Private World of the Private Tuition Industry. In R. J. BLIGNAUT & R. KIZITO (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Southern Hemisphere Conference on the Teaching and Learning of Undergraduate Mathematics and Statistics (pp. 43-57). Retrieved 2017-04-09 from: http://www.deltaconference.org/conferences/2015/images/Proceedings.pdf#page=47
DAHLSTEDT, M., & FEJES, A. (red.) (2018). Skolan, marknaden och framtiden. (Upplaga 1). Lund: Studentlitteratur.
DOVEMARK, M., & ERIXON ARREMAN, I. (2017). The implications of school marketisation for students enrolled on introductory programmes in Swedish upper secondary education. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 12(1), 1-14.
EKSTRÖM, J. (2014, October 23). Familjen. Svenska Dagbladet. Retrieved from: http://www.svd.se
FAIRCLOUGH, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity.
HAGSTRÖM, P. (2015, October 21). Ingen skam vara “dysse i Djursan”. Specialpedagogik. Retrieved from: http://specialpedagogik.se
HURSH, D.W. (2016). The end of public schools: the corporate reform agenda to privatize education. New York: Routledge.
IDELAND, M., JOBÉR, A., & AXELSSO, T. (forthcoming). What is the Solution Represented to be? Exploring Edupreneurs in the Educational Landscape [Manuscript submitted for publication]
IRESON, J., & RUSHFORTH, K. (2011). Private tutoring at transition points in the English education system: its nature, extent and purpose. Research Papers in Education, 26(1), 1-19.
JEMINI, M. (2014, August 8). Läxavdraget värt miljoner. Svenska Dagbladet. Retrieved from: http://www.svd.se
JOHANSSON, F., & ÅVALL, R. (2014, June 24). Läxhjälp i offentlig regi riskerar att öka klyftorna. Dagens Nyheter. Retrieved from: http://www.dn.se
JOHANSSON, F., & ÅVALL, R. (2014, June 30). Inte läge att ta bort insatser som höjer elevernas resultat. Dagens Nyheter. Retrieved from: http://www.dn.se
LABAREE, D. (2008). The winning ways of a losing strategy: Educationalizing social problems in the United States. Educational Theory, 58(4), 447-460.
LATOUR, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
LAWN, M. (2014). Outsourcing the governing of education: The contemporary inspection of schooling in England. Sisyphus - Journal of education, 2(1), 88-105.
LINDBLAD, S., PETTERSSON D., & POPKEWITZ, T. (Eds.) (2017). Numbers, Education and the Making of Society: International Assessments and Its Expertise. New York: Routledge.
MISCHO, C., & HAAG, L. (2002). Expansion and effectiveness of private tutoring. European Journal of Psychology of Education, XVII(3), 263-273.
NYMAN, E. (2015, August 21). Läxrut är borta – men lite är fortfarande okej. Svenska Dagbladet. Retrieved from: http://www.svd.se
NYMAN, E. (2016, January 3). Nya läxhjälpstjänster efter slopat läxrut. Svenska Dagbladet. Retrieved from: http://www.svd.se
OMNI, L. (2015, June 15). Läxrut hotar studenters extrajobb. Svenska Dagbladet. Retrieved from: http://www.svd.se
PECK, J., & THEODORE, N. (2010). Mobilizing policy: Models, methods, and mutations. Geoforum, 41(2), 169-174.
PERSSON, I. (2014, November 11). Skattepengar ska inte gå till privat läxhjälp. Aftonbladet. Retrieved from: http://www.aftonbladet.se
PLAYER-KORO, C., JOBÉR, A., & BERGVIKEN RENSFELDT, A. (2019). Policy networks in education – The role of education trade fairs in the governance of education. Paper presented at the Oxford Ethnography and Education Conference, Oxford, Sep 9-11.
POPKEWITZ, T. (2008). Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform. Science, Education and Making Society by Making the Child. New York: Routledge.
REIMERS, E., & MARTINSSON, L. (2014). Klass i marknadsliberala utbildningsdiskurser. Vetenskapsrådets Resultatdialog 2014 (pp. 164-173). Motala: Danagård LiTHO.
REIMERS, E., & MARTINSSON, L. (red.) (2017). Education and political subjectivities in neoliberal times and places: emergences of norms and possibilities. London: Routledge.
SIMONS, M., LUNDAHL, L., & SERPIERI, R. (2013). The governing of education in Europe: commercial actors, partnerships and strategies. European Educational Research Journal, 12(4), 416 -424.
SMYTH, E. (2008). The more, the better? Intensity of involvement in private tuition and examination performance. Educational Research and Evaluation, 14(5), 465-476.
SOU 2016:78. Ordning och reda i välfärden. Retrieved from: http://www.regeringen.se
THE SWEDISH NATIONAL AGENCY OF EDUCATION. (2016). PISA 2015. 15-åringars kunskaper i naturvetenskap, läsförståelse och matematik. Rapport 450. Retrieved 2017-04-06 from: www.skolverket.se
VERGER, A., FONTDEVILA, C., & ZANCAJO, A. (2016). The privatization of education: a political economy of global education reform. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
WILLIAMSON, B. (2017). Decoding ClassDojo: psycho-policy, social-emotional learning and persuasive educational technologies. Learning, Media and Technology, 42(4), 440-453. DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2017.1278020
WILLIAMSON, B., BERGVIKEN RENSFELDT, A., PLAYER-KORO, C., & SELWYN, N. (2019). Education recoded: policy mobilities in the international ‘learning to code’ agenda. Journal of Education Policy, 34(5), 705-725. DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2018.1476735
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) belongs to Sisyphus - Journal of Education. However, we encourage issued articles to be published elsewhere, provided that Sisyphus authorization is asked for and that authors integrate our original source citation and a link to our website.
Author Self-Archiving Policy
Author(s) are permitted to self-archive the final published version in institutional or thematic repositories, and in their personal or institutional websites.
DORA Signer
The Instituto de Educação da Universidade de Lisboa, Sisyphus' Publisher, is a San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment signer.
