Constructing a European Policy Space in Educational Governance: the role of transnational policy actors

Transcription

1 European Educational Research Journal, Volume 1, Number 2, 2002 Constructing a European Policy Space in Educational Governance: the role of transnational policy actors MARTIN LAWN Worcester, United Kingdom BOB LINGARD University of Queensland, Australia ABSTRACT Educational policy is no longer, if it ever was, the product of the nation state alone. In Europe, significant policy actors in education are working today face to face and virtually in joint governmental projects and networking translating, mediating and constructing educational policies. The existence of this new social sphere of work, in which the construction of Europe is paramount, served by the regular communications and intimate work relations of a new European class of educational system actors, is deserving of further research. They appeared to constitute a form of policy elite in education, which has not surfaced into view in the study of education, either in studies of the national state or of Brussels: in the latter s case, it may be because education does not have the same regulatory or legal framework as key aspects of governance in European law. The power this group wields by acting as shapers of the emerging discourse of educational policy, expressed in reports, key committees, funding streams and programmes has to be examined and recognized within studies of educational policy. The history of European co-operation on educational policy dates back to the early 1960s. Nonetheless, it remains a limited and rather unexplored domain of education policy (see Coulby & Jones, 1995; Novoa, 2000; Lawn, 2001). However, the visibility, pace and scope of this co-operation has moved with increased velocity in recent years. Even as early as the 1970s, Beukel (2001, p. 120) suggests, despite tensions between claims for national sovereignty and claims for European integration, these had no impact on what can be termed the day to day and low key dealing with various aspects of the pre-decisional stages of the educational Europeanisation process. 290

2 CONSTRUCTING A EUROPEAN POLICY SPACE From the early days of discussion about higher education and technical education by ministers and the development of projects for comparison, data collection and harmonisation by officials, through a longer period of concern for European models of culture and education and the European dimension of schooling (mobility, curriculum and exchange) and into the post Maastricht era of markets, quality and trans-national co-operation, there has been a gradually strengthening area of policy creation and management in Europe on education. While the sectors of education most affected by Europeanisation were to do with skills and training, Sprokkereef (1995, p. 341) suggests that in practice it has been very difficult to make clear distinctions among vocational, professional, and university training, continuing education, and primary and secondary education. This is despite the fact that official European discourse emanating from Brussels still avers that education will remain a domain subject to member nation policy direction (Novoa, 2000). Like an emerging behemoth, the European area of education policy has gradually involved more and more system administrators in national agencies, cities and regions (Beukel, 2001, p. 129) and a growing range of actions in schools and higher education (exchanges, networks, teaching resources, etc.) (Beukel, 2001, p. 131). In the last two years at European Council meetings in Lisbon and Stockholm, the target of becoming the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based economy in the world (Beukel, 2001, p. 6; Hingel, 2001) has been adopted. In the context of Europe, this has created an overarching purpose and means of working which is not only about the internal creation of a strengthened area of policy in education, including the new goals of shared benchmarking and indicators, but a new emphasis on managing the education policy area in Europe under globalisation, particularly within emerging world markets in education services and given global labour and economic markets. In itself, the idea of a knowledge economy is not just European, it is a global idea, but it is a policy objective in the EU and can be treated as a major aspect of the new Europeanisation. Although the concept of multi-level governance is the standard way to approach the complexity of European relations, the pressures and opportunities, alliances and communications of policy actions in Europe went beyond the formal exchange of set position:... multilevel governance should mean rather more than the idea that the EU system is composed of distinct policy making levels. Rather it should be used to explore the EU as a highly fluid system of governance, characterised by the complex interpenetration of the national, sub national and supranational; as a multi-perspectival domain of complex overlapping spaces with a multi level institutional architecture and a dispersion of authority. (Rosamond, 2001, p. 160) The idea of the European education space is a reflection of this perspective upon Europeanisation. Although it includes the legislative base flowing from key summits in its history, with their attached programmes and facilitation of exchange, the idea of the space is much more a way to perceive a new area, 291

3 Martin Lawn & Bob Lingard only partially visible, which is being shaped by constant interaction between small groups of linked professionals, managers and experts. This space does not have a constitutional position, a legislative legality, a fixed place of work or a regulated civic or business mission (cf Novoa & Lawn, 2002). Yet it is being formed between state and EU offices, between agencies and subcontractors, between academics and policy managers, between experts and officials, and between voluntary and public sector workers. It is a growing culture, which exists in the interstices of formal operations, in the immaterial world. It is shaped by the opportunities and fears of globalisation. A policy space, like the emerging European area for education, needs a discourse and actors. The focus of this article concerns the ways in which policy actors, of different kinds in different locations in Europe, are working between national, and trans-national sites, in this case, within the EU, the European Commission, national policy arms within national states, liaising, networking, sharing, discussing (socially and virtually), as a constant process of translation and mediation of policy discourses. The data of this article is concerned with the national and trans-national relationships of national policy elites in education. As such, the research reported here seeks to complement Shore s (2000) anthropological study of how Europe is being built through the work of EU officials. Shore argues that these professional Europeans, a new class of deterritorialised, trans-national policy actors are central to the project of creating a de facto European state (p. 34). The research reported here is concerned with national policy actors who participate regularly in the emergent European educational policy space. While not located within the European bureaucracy, they may act as deterritorialised, trans-national policy actors, even when they are formally national officials and managers. Their ideas and reasoning, as they translate, mediate and engage with the Europeanisation of educational policy, has significance. Indeed, they have been characterised as a new magistracy of influence in the European educational policy domain: a policy elite that acts across borders, displays a similar habitus, have a feel for the same policy game and are, in a sense, bearers of an emergent European educational policy and policy space. They are involved in what Shore, utilising a common EU idiom, refers to as engrenage, the intermeshing or bureaucratic interpenetration of European and national officials as an element of the creation of Europe, symbolising transnational idealism (pp ). In a broader social sense, this is the habitus of the mobile global elites, of which the educational policy elite form a sub-category, that Bauman (1998) has so constructively written about and for whom space has lost its constraining quality and is easily traversed in both its real and virtual renditions (p. 88). The concept of a new magistrature of influence came from an interview conducted by the Portuguese partners in the research project and was articulated by one of the interview respondents. This magistrature works through a blend of statistical collection regimes (EU and OECD statistical collections have also been synchronised), reports, national 292

4 CONSTRUCTING A EUROPEAN POLICY SPACE reviews, meetings, funding requirements, a cadre of nationally based and European policy producers and so on. This notion of the speeding up of the flows of ideas and peoples is a useful one for considering changes in educational policy production in an era of globalisation (Henry et al, 2001; Lingard, 2000). In policy terms, there has been the emergence of a global educational policy community. In a study of the OECD in the context of globalisation, Henry et al (2001) have shown how the role of the OECD has been reconstituted in the wake of globalisation (and it should be noted the strengthening of political Europe) with it becoming more of a policy actor itself, not just a site of policy talk. The Europeanisation of educational policy is an example of a similar phenomenon at work. The emergent global educational policy community works in ways beyond that captured in the concepts of borrowing, modelling, transfer, diffusion, appropriation, and copying as Halpin (1994, p. 204) has described the cross national mimetic process in educational policy development. What we are witnessing is a move beyond mere policy borrowing, which is not to say that such phenomena do not still occur they clearly do. However, most of the literature on borrowing works with a comparative education model grounded in a non-problematic analysis of the nation state (Taylor et al, 1997, pp ), which fails to acknowledge the effects of globalisation upon its policy salience. Taylor et al (1997, p. 61) have suggested that educational policy analysis in the period of globalisation must consider how: 1. globalisation processes are taken into account in the policy priorities at nationstate level; 2. ideological discourses which frame education policies at the national level might already be globalised; 3. political structures operating beyond nations are framing national policy options; 4. a global policy community may be emerging; and 5. globalisation processes are affecting the cultural field within which education operates. (Taylor et al, 1997, p. 61) This article is concerned with these emergent policy processes as their way out in the new European educational policy space. The creation of Europe has many origins (Axtmann, 1998), but at one level it is both a response to and expression of globalisation and a new policy space within globalisation. Context In a recent research project funded by the European Union s Targeted Socio- Economic Research Programme, Educational Governance and Social Inclusion and Exclusion (EGSIE) (see Lindblad & Popkewitz, 1999, 2000, 2001) on governance and inclusion in the European Union, with a linked 293

5 Martin Lawn & Bob Lingard project taking place in Australia, system actors in eight countries were interviewed about the processes of exclusion/inclusion and its production through ways of governing. A significant element in the interviews, threaded throughout depending on the national context, were references to processes and influences, which were outside the usual explanatory frame of national system actors and policy texts. The significant concerns of these actors were illuminated by reference to the non-national influences that had been, and were continuing to intrude, into the national space of education. The interviews also revealed the actors themselves as bearers of a new policy space in education. Reference to non-national influences in education are not surprising in the contemporary situation and the growth of the OECD and more recently, the World Bank, as references in interviews about educational policy is to be expected. An intriguing aspect of this emergence of an incipient global factor in educational change was its presence as a strong feature in some national responses, depending on the actor level in the system and the country, and its virtual silence in responses from other countries. This article, derived from system actor interviews in eight countries (Germany, Scotland, Iceland, Finland, Greece, Spain, Portugal and England), describes the way in which the new issues of trans-national influence on education, are revealed by system actor interviews and through their reflections upon their situation, and raises questions about the new landscape of education governance. Initially, the responses, collected in the national context, assumed a local response to outsider pressures. As the cases were compared though, patterns of interactions began to emerge, especially between central and peripheral states and then through city-based strategies. EGSIE was concerned with the narratives of transition in national educational systems, and how this transition was viewed, legitimised and contextualised locally. By working with the idea of transitional narratives, EGSIE collected interview and text based data which made reference to the imagined community in the national or local context, stories of progress and dislocation, and problems to be overcome. The role of local and global discourses, and their intersection in these images of community, during periods of transition on educational governance, were crucial to the research. It is from these interviews, from key system actors (national and regional politicians and system administrators, people having responsibility for aspects of the educational system), about this period of national transition, within a global context, that this article is based. Extensive interviews with these actors on the subject on governance and exclusion included references to non national events including international visits, European committees, cross national exchanges and working groups and mobility over time between Brussels and national sites of work. Researchers on the project were asked to review their interview notes (averaging about fifteen respondents each) and draw out references to non-national influences (policy frameworks, funding 294

6 CONSTRUCTING A EUROPEAN POLICY SPACE and actors) and a discourse of globalisation/internationalisation (if it was used in explanation of shifts in the system). Global/Europeanisation Influences The Europeanisation of education occurs as an element of a wider globalisation in education. For example, in the case of Iceland, a country that had special relations with the EU, but was not a member of it, European references went alongside wider comparative references, and especially to the effects of emergent supranational policy bodies (like the OECD). The modernisation of the country, its rapid period of development since the 1950s, from an agricultural to a class society, created a rapid transition in which study visits to other countries and a process of comparison became accepted as a way of improving education. In the imagined community of a modernised Iceland, system actors saw a globally connected culture of teaching, joining teachers within the new performance culture of education: I believe that comparison with the international community and globalisation causes teachers many of whom have acquired knowledge about what is taking place overseas, or have even lived overseas (to be) more ambitious than they were 25 years ago. But the change is not just in the past ten years, it is older. Combined with the switch to information and communications technology, local university/ business co-operation and international exchanges, a principal teacher said: the school is turning global. This is an important element of the thinking about the global shift in education; teachers are seen as independent actors, enabled, through technology and interest, to seek out innovations or comparisons as they are require. Decentralisation of systems has not been treated as significant in the idea of borrowing between states. The other way that globalisation is seen within Iceland is the effect of the movement of peoples into a closed culture: I think that there are people from over forty countries here in the municipality (recently established from four towns and villages and small rural areas). In this sense, globalisation is occurring as a cultural interchange and comparison, specific sites of flux in education, whose effects go wider. The teaching of new languages and a transfer to English (the new international language of business and education) from Danish as the key foreign language is another sign of this cultural-economic stage. There was also a tension between the perceived effects of globalisation and supranational political units and Iceland s own culture and needs. System actors in Iceland used a kind of oppositional global/local reference, which while constructing Iceland as a site of global influences and imagined within a global competitiveness, was to be countered by the specificities of Iceland s culture and language. This had to be retained and its integrity protected. 295

7 Martin Lawn & Bob Lingard Finland, a society at the forefront of new communication technologies and most permeated by them in Europe, linked its changes to its educational system, throughout the 1990s, to changes in the international environment of education. These changes were linked, within this view, to the idea that comprehensive education had lifted the general educational levels for the population and that it was now time to differentiate. Differentiation was seen as the part of the new global discourse. Quite a lot of the system actors who were interviewed, for instance, thought an increasing emphasis upon the education of the gifted was necessary so as to ensure Finland could compete globally. According to system informants, global competition and demands for economic success demanded that education produce better quality learning outcomes through differentiation. One Ministry official noted: Now people look for flexibility and quality and whatever slogans are used here in these new kinds of systems. Because as I see it this certain kind of sectored and hierarchic system won t work in the future. This world is, you see, different, isn t it? And we are in the middle of a harder global competition and it is qualifications that we are competing with. So, maybe there are these emphases at the moment, in a certain way, this ambition for quality and the connection between education and economic growth and development pop up, well, more clearly than ever. Another official commented:... maybe then this globalisation is another matter, so it was noticed that Finland s competitiveness is priority number one and Finland cannot manage well with that kind of a mass (education system) in a world that is becoming more international, but we also have to give opportunities to the most talented to go forwards according to their aptitudes. So, that we also support them. Interviews also suggested that when the comprehensive educational system was being created, Sweden heavily influenced its development in Finland. In contrast, the main influences for recent changes away from the comprehensive approach were seen to come from international sources, for example, the EU and OECD, as well as the Thatcherite market project in England. This kind of global context is different again: the country is seen as being projected into a policy space, which breaks with the past and uses international competition and not national community as its raison d etre. Without differentiation, the whole country will lose. Europeanisation is subsumed within this urgency. European Engagements An important element in the idea of borrowing is the emphasis on the governmental level while at the same time, there is an absence of transparent policy actors. The Europeanisation of municipal policy has encouraged city links to appear. Europe appears to be an arena in which the city can work for their own goals for regeneration and social renewal rather than simply be local 296

8 CONSTRUCTING A EUROPEAN POLICY SPACE agents for national government policy. This was seen clearly in the English case study where a group of system actors, all city managers, made clear and unequivocal reference to trans-national influence on education policy. For example, in one large Midlands city, there was a strong concern with maximising European Union revenue and as well as trying to influence EU policy agendas. Their policy aim was to use the EU to aid the economic regeneration, social renewal and education vision of the city; to do this, the city managers felt that the urban agenda of the city had to be placed forcefully into EU policy thinking. To achieve this, the city has officers who deal mainly with the EU agenda and with local councillors, liase with their counterparts across Europe and with EU managers in Brussels. To maximise city EU income by first, making sure that they bid successfully from the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund: these funds bring substantial amounts of public money in to the city and are extremely important to its economic and social regeneration. This funding has helped the city position itself strategically in relation to new industries and sources of income (such as tourism and conferences). Illustrating the kind of application, which is made to the EU, an officer, described how a city policy objective was matched to a EU Structural Funding Programme and then the city internally organised its officers to produce a bid. For example, its need to upgrade the skills and pool of child minders, created an application to a programme dealing with childcare support in the EU. A local priority was matched to a EU call for applications and the city officers organised themselves to make an application. It allowed additional (non UK governmental) funds to be raised and had the advantage of providing a local flexibility and control over them. To try and make sure that it achieved this funding, the city had to try to ensure successful bidding for grant monies, particularly from the structural funds, the European Regional Development Fund and European Social Fund. More and more, they had to involve themselves in EU wide politicking to influence policy: we are also, in shaping the (EU) programmes, say what those funds should be used for and there we are quite anxious to ensure that there is a broad approach adopted to economic and social regeneration. (A broad approach means here the core involvement of education and learning). For a city to try and shape EU wide policy, it needed allies, and it found these not at a national but at an EU regional level, making a strategic decision that: the regional agenda will affect the European work more because of the work through Europe is done at a regional level rather than the national government or individual local governments. The EU style of government means more democratic channels of influence to policy design. 297

9 Martin Lawn & Bob Lingard Strategically, EuroCities, a network founded by a few European cities (including this Midlands city), to create allies for the improvement of this regional policy agenda, has now achieved a membership of at least 90 major European cities: And that s about trying to reflect in European institutions the needs of the cities. It s about opening up the debate on urban policy. But that is giving (the city ) an access to big cities across Europe. For example, it now provides me with openings in the sense that I am quite at home phoning up the mayor or Rotterdam, more so than phoning up the leaders of local authorities here in the UK. I know a lot of major city leaders across the European Union. A consequence of this approach, with the city needing to influence EU regional agendas, and the development of cross-european city alliances with the larger European cities, was the fact that reciprocal exchanges between city managers was now common, including those within education, and had lead to increased knowledge about the internal politics and policies of cities at some distance from each other. A city official noted that a EU audit of 58 European cities was currently being conducted and described how the requirement to collect comparative data pushed the city in the direction of similar data collection approaches. The city saw an opportunity to influence ideas in Europe and not just income. The city politicians view themselves as progressive, and see the city as a positive model for a new kind of European city, with a diverse population: (The city) has an ethnic minority population, currently about 25% non-european white, but that figure is going to grow if you take the school population. And so the issue of cultural diversity, the issue of inclusivity, and the whole discrimination agenda is an open agenda within (the city)... I think in many respects we could be seen as an authority that has addressed some of these issues and others might wish to learn from us. So, (the city) could play a role in disseminating best practice whatever that might be... I do feel that the policy debate is just as important, and the fact that (the city) because of its multi-ethnic population is in a position to actually influence that policy debate as much as, probably better than, most other big cities in Europe. The city managers had proposed a joint Eurocity conference: which is looking at cultural and national identities in the context of an enlarged EU. So, the social agenda of the EU, with its concerns for social inclusion and community, has been nearer the city s own vision for a modern, European multiracial city. Europeanisation represented a positive agenda for the city and an arena for action and it was used to promote the city and to strengthen its own identity as a site of successful social practice. 298

10 Legitimation and Transformation 299 CONSTRUCTING A EUROPEAN POLICY SPACE EU countries on the southern periphery appeared to have a distinctive (though not homogeneous) form of Europeanisation process in education. For example, Greece has been very active in the Educational Committee of the EU and over the last decade has participated substantially in the annual Ministers of Education meetings of the Council of Europe. In 1996 the Greek authorities requested an evaluation of their educational system by the OECD. The report from this evaluation was published simultaneously with current reforms. Supranational bodies have affected both the discourses of educational reform in Greece and specific policy areas. The EU has affected the discourses used in recent reforms. This is so in relation to particular concepts, including globalisation, knowledge society, accountability and democratisation. Both the EU and OECD are being used in Greek educational discourse as legitimating education s core role to future economic prosperity. Indeed, some system actors have also suggested that the EU had an effect on Greek educational policy by speaking explicitly of a hidden policy through funding. Furthermore, globalisation, modernisation, European convergence and increasing ethnic diversity were seen to set the stage for the development of intercultural education policies within Greece. The EU has been influential inside Greece in respect of intercultural education through the European Community Support Framework. For Greece, the EU seemed to augur a new form of supranational governance with very real educational policy effects through its objectives, standards and funding and accountability frameworks. System actors recognised this whereas school actors tended to see the supranational as a positive to the extent that it weakened the power of specific interest groups within Greece itself. There are some similarities with Portugal in this acknowledgement that the use of supranational comparisons was significant and recognised within policy documents and in system actor interviews. Most of these comparisons related to negative comparisons between Portugal and member countries of supranational bodies such as the EU and OECD in respect of its modernisation. Statistical indicators are a very important element here, as is the recognition that globalisation and global labour markets require a paradigm shift in relation to the nature and extent of educational provision. All of this data provides important legitimation for educational policy developments inside Portugal. Other system actors suggested that supranational and international bodies influence national educational policy development through the creation of a common agenda. More specifically in this respect, one system actor spoke of a new kind of magistrature of influence. This magistrature assumes two forms: one consists of participation in the committees, in task force groups and so on of supranational bodies. The other consists of the dissemination of research studies, reports, and statistics. These two elements of the new magistrature of influence work in two ways in Portuguese educational policy.

11 Martin Lawn & Bob Lingard They legitimate options taken and at the same time contribute to policy convergence across nations. Thus one political respondent noted: OECD takes no kind of intervention, contrarily to the European Commission, which influences more at that level. However, OECD s power is at the level of the institutional power, a persuasion power, isn t it? It is some kind of magistrature of influence exerted through its reports, studies and publications, namely its own biannual statistical publications. The statistical production is a high factor of harmonisation. The great foundation for the changes is the Community statistic, the world-wide statistic, and the statistical reference. OECD has in fact made a point at that level in Portugal in the last years. The European Commission and UNESCO have followed... Nowadays all three of them are trying to produce common statistics and common reflection. The reference to the influence of supranational data collection on policy making in education was made by Greece as well. The Greek push for national statistical collection, for example, was influenced by OECD statistical policies and complemented by similar EU policies in relation to Eurostat (the EU Statistical Bureau). In Greece, a special department was created for Eurostat, along with a committee for OECD reports. International benchmarks were used in Greece to support views either for or against contemporary reforms. The Greek position on international measures was utilised to tell stories of progress or denial. Also, statistics were used to frame the desired policy meaning for a new policy initiative. (In Germany and Scotland, few references were made to trans-national influences. In Germany, mention of the TIMMS study or new comparability of assessment data were used briefly to point out possible changes inside the Länder, the regional state authorities. However, this was insubstantial and in a federal system, the horizon of change seems to be at some distance. In Scotland, references were non-existent and the recent preoccupations with constitutional change in the UK focused change references towards the essential character of Scottish society and its traditions rather than perceived new international influence.) Radical Futures In Spain, system actors tended to treat globalisation as a mainly positive and non-threatening concept first as in the English city and Iceland, there is a sense in which there is a clear sense of new international influences and the need to capture and make use of them: I like globalisation and what we need is to elaborate the appropriate answers for the new situation that is arising. Within this tendency, there is a demanding role for the EU, seen as a distinctive project, perhaps a counterweight to Americanization : 300

12 CONSTRUCTING A EUROPEAN POLICY SPACE We need to empower global analyses inside European Union establishing initiatives or solutions of global character. After the Amsterdam Treaty, the education politics of the (EU) are focused in intergovernmental co-operation and I believe that the EU could be more innovative. Someone should create a more global identity for Europe. A European authority should put (in) the foundations of that identity, (like) the one the Americans have, (because) we have both the cultural and historical tradition but we haven t that cohesion. The EU has a positive connotation inside this view but it is seen as flawed in its speed and scope, unable to act decisively enough, unable to create and enforce anew vision of shared purpose, which the nation state (Spain) needs. From administration to vision, trans national governance is seen as having advantages and needing to go further. Generally speaking, and from a limited sample, there was an interesting variation in response across Europe on globalisation/europeanisation influences. System actors in these countries imagined themselves to be spatially differentiated and consequently, operating on different communication tracks within the same space, even though they may be working in the same way. There appears to be a continuum along which the responses made within the nations can be placed. For example, Germany system actors had few responses that pointed to a concern for outside influence on education except references to the new global indicators (TIMMS) and the shift to knowledge rather than a social orientation in schools. In other words, globalisation, even Europeanisation was a silence within Germany and system actors were not concerned with the outside. (Perhaps these actors had been preoccupied with the reunification of Germany, that is with internal domestic politics, an explanation which might cover Scotland, a country occupied with devolution.) Greece may be placed at the other end of the continuum as a new legitimacy is given to a government driven modernisation of education, which uses international agencies, including the EU, in regulation, discourse and issue. Although the range of external references in the Greek case is wide, the use of international audit data to frame national policy was common to other cases as well. Again, globalisation, and particularly a Europeanisation process driven by the EU, had high visibility and system actors made constant reference to this modernising discourse. Portugal used comparisons with developed states defensively and as a means to justify new policy measures in education. Spanish system actors, clustered on the continuum nearer to Portugal than Greece, were aware of global market pressures and were concerned that the EU wasn t thinking fast enough about the changed situation and wanted extended analyses and new initiatives. It may be possible to see this continuum as related to a phenomenon where the modernisation process in the developing fringe of 301

13 Martin Lawn & Bob Lingard Europe or other world economies, uses knowledge economy arguments to drive change. System actors appear to push change within their national systems by reference to the external force (OECD, EU). One of the key signs of this modernisation is recognition that differentiation will take place inside the national system. Conclusion: trans-national system actors in education The complex responses and positioning of these system actors, working on problems of harmonisation, competition and exchange in European committees, in task force groups and other supranational bodies, showed them to be simultaneously observers, agents, translators, evaluators and even oppositionalists. They were crucial actors in the construction of this extranational policy sphere. Interviewing them revealed the existence of a gradually emerging and distinctive European policy culture in education, constructed through a wide array of committees, exchanges, commissions, networks and regulations, in which they worked to use, shape and imagine a European education of the future. The urgencies and sensitivities of the system actors is displayed and circulated within new virtual and embodied sites of educational policy (not only national offices) and involve a progressing process negotiation and networking, creating and recreating a new culture of policy making, and progressively reconstructing its identity. They used a global discourse cautiously, to justify a shift in national direction or as a stage upon which to project a current version of the city or state. The general proposition we put forward here is about the emergence of these significant actors in educational policy, acting within and through trans-national governance, their collective identity and the effects they are having on policy formation and development. This process is accelerating as new Treaties and international pressures (trade, regulation and information flow) produce more meetings, with more participants, a wider scope of action and more frequent exchange of people, data and system action. New institutions, behaviours and discourses are producing a complex post-comparative policy warp and weft in education across Europe and a legitimating process for it (meanings, consent and cultural infrastructure and so, distinctiveness). The existence of this new social sphere of work, in which the construction of Europe is paramount, served by the discourses, regular communications and intimate work relations of a new Euro class of educational system actors, is deserving of further research. They appeared to constitute a form of policy elite in education, which has not surfaced into view in the study of education, an area which does not have the same regulatory or legal framework as key industrial or core public service governance in European law or institutionalisation. In certain circumstances, they acted like a new magistracy, channelling funding and discourse through participation in committees and mediating externally produced reports. System actors made direct allusion to specific agencies or international agencies and policies. They were likely to refer to the OECD, for example, to 302

14 CONSTRUCTING A EUROPEAN POLICY SPACE discuss its mode of persuasion, invitation to audit and the use of statistical indicators. This group of actors is very aware of the rise of statistical indicators, produced by the EU and the OECD among others, and the way that they are used, at different levels of the system, to shape the education system, its goals and its organisation. Along with the new common statistics, there is a powerful discourse, more political than educational, which the system actors are aware is used to construct solutions, produce new conceptual categories or redefine older ones. The Portuguese case, as noted already, spoke of a new magistrature of influence via committee membership etc. and the dissemination of reports and other studies, including statistics. For Portugal, systematic international comparison served a double objective: it conferred visibility on the development distance between Portugal and the central countries and at the same time created the conditions for the new guideline for education to be defended as inevitable because of European integration and development requirements. Access to funding was also crucial. In Spain, system actors felt empowered by EU priorities in some areas of social policy and could argue that Europe was becoming more homogenous due to global processes and that the political union, the EU, should act more cohesively to develop a global identity with education as a key part of the development. The city study in England showed system actors redeveloping the city, creating a new identity, through the active search for EU funding in such a way that their arena for action and influence was both local and central (within Brussels and networks of power focused on Brussels). Indeed, the EU was used as a vehicle to re-imagine the city, to situate the city in a new space, similarly to system actors in Greece. System actors could use the information gained through comparison to act critically within their national situation, pointing out financial differences to make progressive points. So, system actors not only act as conduits for the new participatory values and discourse but they also act reflexively to project national or counterfactual arguments, as they see them. Interestingly, it is possible to see Europeanisation as a source of contra information to globalisation and indeed as having the potential to create a new counter identity against its influence (Spain and England). Visits to other education systems encouraged smaller countries to make judgements about their relative successes; in Iceland and in the Canary islands, it was possible to argue that local education had leading features that others could learn from. In other words, globalisation is a complex phenomenon in education and system actors are themselves differentiated in their response; they may use outside networks and data to justify change locally; they may use new sources of external data to develop critical arguments about the new global; or they may be re-affirmed in the values of the local compared to other places. Europeanisation seems a discourse, which had to bear a powerful set of new myths, projected into a new space of meaning about unity and progress, based upon collectivist notions and social justice. These were to be clarified 303

15 Martin Lawn & Bob Lingard through an oppositional view of Americanization and discourse of modernisation, separate from a wider internationalisation, even though barely discernable as different. If necessary, older languages of culture and tradition could be used to support this project. A preliminary analysis of the discourse suggest that these system actors, significant managers, officials or politicians, were the main carriers of discourses of globalisation, appearing to act as interpreters or translators, excluding or reframing aspects of internationalisation to fit the ( imagined ) situation they felt the site (country or city) was in. The discourse was one of translation, uneven in influence and effect, global in form, and yet ironic (having elements of warning and mimicry). These system actors moved between Brussels and the home state, and between states, interpreting one to the other, and easing the path of change. They acted as translators between sites, turning information into powerful knowledge, re-imagining the project of Europe and re-positioning the national. This powerful role, acting as symbolic analysts, depended for its effect upon the central or peripheral status of their country in Europe; they could have greater or lesser influence and be the bearer of powerful or weak discursive effects, depending on the positioning of the country in relation to the EU project. They circulated an explicit language of comparison and evaluation, new generic skills and learning which, although of wider international usage than specifically European, appeared in particular forms in the Europeanising space. The system actors could not offer an unambiguous vision of a workable future but only the necessity to modernise to cope with the ordinary present. This could have disruptive effects in peripheral countries and yet be normative in others. A European Educational Space? The conceptual idea, emerging within this article, of the European education space, is a recognition that in practice a new era in trans-national governance has opened up opportunities and dangers for critical national system actors, engaging with new actual and virtual sites of policy and governance. A problem with the idea of policy space is that it implies a qualitative difference in nation state governance when, in reality, this difference is viewed as instability, flux and increased risk. These system actors perceived their situation, as significant managers and analysts within their countries, as being within a newly internationalised sphere of work. A significant element bringing organisation and (qualitatively significant) purpose into this situation was the idea of Europeanisation. This idea was constructed in and around the formal sites of negotiation (committees, task groups, projects etc.) and the management of regulation and audit, and at the same time, the organisation and networking to secure advantage or collective purpose. As an idea, it went wider: it included purpose and meaning. Europeanisation was a project in an unstable environment, 304

16 CONSTRUCTING A EUROPEAN POLICY SPACE which united system actors unable to manage this nationally. For some countries and managers, this had an urgency lacking in others: the activity and noise from one country was matched by relative silence from another. Interviews with these system actors, significant managers, officials or politicians, suggests that they were the main carriers of discourses of globalisation, appearing to act as interpreters or translators, moving between sites, producing a powerful knowledge in which Europe was re-imagined and the national re-located in a new project: meaning thus magnifies the representation of power, positively when a meaning is proposed, and negatively, when it seems to be slipping out of reach. (Laidi, p. 144) The system actors circulated and translated an explicit language of collection, comparison and evaluation, and of new generic skills and learning which, although of wider international usage than specifically European, appeared in particular forms in the Europeanising space. Europeanisation appeared to be the means by which larger visions were projected or demanded and in which a workable future cold be conceived. However, while difference was the new international watchword, Europe offered the chance to produce meaning and not just results, purpose and not just productivity. At the same time, it was used to modernise and even enforce modernisation, a task that the system actors managed, shuttling between sites. Space is reconfigured constantly as the new policy spaces city to city networks, peripheral countries, northern and southern networks, central and border countries and sites work with each other via a spiders web of distributed policy making in multiple centres. System actors, acting as symbolic analysts, try to make sense of the shifting realms in which they are working. Because resources can be captured, at home and in Europe, by increased networking and by a deep and reflective translation, so the space in which this takes place is also reconfigured. They are not just travelling, and not just working in the office, they are in a space between, increasingly reimagining Policy Space, their space of action, its significant elements and personnel, and its purposes. In some parts of Europe, they acted within or close to an observable new magistracy of influence, in some cases working to modernise their governmental policies through close reliance on the EU new centre or the powerful transmission and brokering of international agency data, the new currency of policy. They are taking on the task, for education, of using a Europeanisation process and project, to produce new meanings about trans-national states and globalisation. They are trying to manage the task outlined by Laidi: A Europe of power will never see the light of day if it does not first manage meaning to its inhabitants and the rest of the world. (Laidi, p. 144) System actors becoming a frontier-free, people of the book (Shore, p. 207) aim to create the European education space as a place of meaning. 305

17 Martin Lawn & Bob Lingard Acknowledgement The authors would like to acknowledge the support they received from the following colleagues of the EGSIE Project reviewing their system actor interviews - Miguel Pereyra, Natália Alves, Evie Zambeta, Edwin Keiner, Ingolfur Asgeir Johannesson, Risto Rinne. References Axtmann, R. (1998) Globalisation, Europe and the State: introductory reflections, in R. Axtmann (Ed.) Globalisation and Europe: theoretical and empirical investigations, pp London: Pinter. Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalisation: the human consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beukel, E. (2001) Educational Policy: institutionalization and multi level governance, in S. Andersen & K. Elliassen (Eds) (2nd Edn) Making Policy in Europe, pp London: Sage. Christiansen, T., Jorgensen, K. & Wiener, A. (Eds) (2001) The Social Construction of Europe. London: Sage. Coulby, D. & Jones, C. (1995) Postmodernity and European Education Systems. Stoke-on- Trent: Trentham Books. Halpin, D. (1994) Practice and Prospects in Educational Policy Research, in D. Halpin & B. Troyna (Eds) Researching Educational Policy: ethical and methodological issues, pp London: Falmer Press. Henry, M., Lingard, B., Rizvi, F. & Taylor, S. (2001) The OECD, Globalisation and Education Policy. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Hingel, A. (2001) Education Policies and European Governance EC DG Education and Culture / A1 paper. Laidi, Z. (1998) A World without Meaning the crisis of meaning in international politics. London: Routledge. Lawn, M. (2001) Borderless Education: imagining a european education space in a time of brands and networks, Discourse, 22(2), pp Lindblad, S. & Popkewitz, T. (Eds) (1999) Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion: national cases of educational systems and recent reforms. University of Uppsala Reports on Education 34. Uppsala: Department of Education Press. Lindblad, S. & Popkewitz, T. (Eds) (2000) Public Discourses on education governance and social integration and exclusion: analyses of policy texts in European contexts. University of Uppsala Reports on Education 36. Uppsala: Department of Education Press. Lindblad, S. & Popkewitz, T. (Eds) (2001) Listening to Education Actors on Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion. University of Uppsala Reports on Education 37. Uppsala: Department of Education Press. Lingard, B. (2000) It is and it Isn t: vernacular globalisation, educational policy and restructuring, in N. Burbules & C. Torres (Eds) Globalisation and Educational Policy. New York: Routledge. Novoa, A. (2000) The Restructuring of the European Educational Space: changing relationships among states, citizens and educational communities, in T. Popkewitz (Ed.) Educational Knowledge Changing Relationships Between the State, 306