Browsing by Author "Wallenius, Tommi J."

In the beginning of the 1990's many education policy reforms took place in Finland. The decentralisation and the deregulation of the former highly centralised comprehensive school policy opened up the way for wider variation and differentiation of the local school policy. The roots of the new policy can be found in the neo-liberal school policy, which has spread globally and quite inevitably. Legitimating national policy on inevitable outer imperatives has been described as characteristic for Finnish policymaking (Kettunen 2008). In my thesis I analysed the views and the argumentation of the Finnish education policymakers on three neo-liberal school policy phenomena: 1) profiled schools, 2) parental school choice and 3) public ranking-lists of the schools. The aim of the study was to analyse how the policymakers relate to these phenomena (positive/negative), how they speak about them (inevitable/possible) and to analyse the structure of their argumentation. The empirical data consisted of 30 interviews collected in previous research projects in 1998 2009. The interviewees were the most central actors in Finnish comprehensive school policy. Methodologically two different analysis models were used simultaneously. The opinions and the speech were analysed in two-dimensional analysis frame (Hay and Rosamond 2002) and the structure of the argumentation by Stephen Toulmin's (1958) model of argumentation. The views on profiled schools and parental choice were positive whereas the public ranking-lists were strongly opposed. Individual needs in education were taken for granted. The profiled schools and individual needs in education were linked to national competitiveness and the there-is-no-alternative -talk was stronger than on parental choice. The public ranking-lists were opposed without alternative mainly because of the fear of media provoking the polarisation of the good and the bad schools . Individual rights and choice are carried out in Finland inside the public school system. The policymakers seem to be well aware of the unequal nature of the neo-liberal school policy. However, promoting of the individual rights seems to be more important and the undesirable side effects are seen controllable.