T HE INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENTS

6.3.1 Institutional framework as analytical tool

The theoretical framework of the thesis sees an educational system as a multi-level institution. Following Scott’s (1995) approach, a national educational system can fairly well be approached as a societal institution grounded on three pillars, respectively the regulatory, the normative and the cultural-cognitive. The institutional perspective, as such, sees education not only through the lenses of structure and regulations, i.e. laws, directives, curricula and governance structure. The perspective rather recognizes that

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dominant professional norms, belief systems and ideologies are powerful constituents of an institution. The perspective takes into account that the behavior of educational actors is not entirely determined by regulations.

Rather, it is assumed that school behavior is also significantly affected by purely social obligations, for example, dominant professional norms⁶⁵. Besides, cultural-cognitive demands, rooted in ideologies and belief systems among strong stakeholders, may also impose considerable environmental pressures and demands on the individual school organization. In other words, the school’s environments are not only a function of regulations and structures, but also of professional norms, belief systems and ideologies anchored in the dominant coalition of the school’s environment. In the Norwegian case, policy research points uniformly to the influential role of the unified school ideology, not only as a belief system, but also as a normative basis for education in practice⁶⁶.

6.3.2 The Norwegian unified school institution

Since the early 20th century, Norwegian educational policy has been strongly influenced by egalitarian values. Equality in education has thus been a governing policy ideal for decades. The equality term denotes an overall goal emphasizing that the provision of the same resources and opportunities should be available to all students, independent of their socio-economic and cultural background. A central aim inherent in the unified school has therefore been to produce equal opportunities for all, irrespective of abilities and conditions⁶⁷. The core of this legacy reflects an ideal that the educational career of the individual would be determined by abilities and interests, and not by social status and place of residence.

In practical terms, politicians have sought to achieve distributional justice through expansive capacity building, in order to make schooling available even in the most remote areas. The historical precedents for this ideal can be traced all the way back to the General Education Act of 1739⁶⁸, which can be seen as the starting point of an evolution towards the contemporary school institution that ensures compulsory education for all children in Norway. In the 18^th century, however, educational attainment was still heavily dependent

65 See Rowan (2002a); Rowan and Miskel (1999)

66 See Lauglo (1998); Tjeldvoll (1998); Welle-Strand and Tjeldvoll,(2002)

67 See Welle-Strand and Tjeldvoll, (2002, p. 674)

68 The Norwegian Act of compulsory schooling of 1739 stated that “equality should be realized whereby all children, irrespective of their parents’ social position and class, should be accorded a certain basic useful and necessary education” (Opheim, 2004, p. 20)

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on social background, as education did not provide the student resources for elevation into another class in society, other than in which the child had its rightful place. The system was to provide the individual with skills appropriate to his social background, and the educational system permeated values of social stability.

From this historical position, the philosophy of educational equality gradually evolved in practice, through the dissolution of the old parallel school system, and towards a nation-wide unified public school, based on comprehensive mass education. The post-war period, characterized by growth in welfare state arrangements, therefore saw major changes in Norwegian education. While presented as an effort to eradicate social differences, a key ambition inherent in the reform waves was also to better utilize the talent reserve available in the population. First of all the educational reforms sought to make educational attainment available for all social groups. Secondly, the educational reforms sought to provide educational opportunities for pupils in rural areas. By 1969, nine year’s compulsory schooling ensured that everyone through the country was entitled to enter lower secondary schooling. The next reform wave then targeted the upper secondary level.

In the early 1970s, however, upper secondary schooling was restricted to a relatively small part of each age cohort. The enrollment capacity of upper secondary schooling was therefore increased during the 1970s and the 1980s, by means of several comprehensive reform projects. Funded by the state and managed by the regional counties, a series of huge construction projects was launched, resulting in many new and timely school buildings throughout the country. A large portion of the new schools found their locus in the rural districts of the country. Moreover, the established parallel system, with strict divisions between the gymnasium school and vocational training institutions, was a bottleneck for building a unified system. The level of vocational qualifications was therefore raised, by means of comprehensive curricula reforms and massive teacher education. As a rule of thumb, teaching in vocational and mercantile lines required lower qualifications than in the gymnasium school, simply because the teachers should serve in programs of one-year duration directed towards working life certification.

The school reforms of the 1970s therefore sought to upgrade all kinds of vocational schooling to the standard of three-year duration, in order to construct a coherent upper secondary sector, and thereby expand the unified school ideology to the middle level of the educational system.

122 6.3.3 A qualitative shift in the 1990s

Whereas policy makers in Norway in the 1950’s and the 1960’s emphasized equality of opportunity through structural reforms and expanded enrollment capacity, changes in the unified school conception were observed from the 1970’s⁶⁹. Politicians, representatives of the teaching profession and educationalists increasingly argued that providing opportunity was not a sufficient condition to fulfill the unified school policy in practice. The policy ideal gradually changed, from equality of opportunity, towards the idea of equality of results. From the latter perspective, providing the same opportunity was not enough, because different people would need different kind of opportunities, and some would need more support than others would to be successful⁷⁰. If children from different backgrounds were to have similar opportunities in life, they would have to be treated differently⁷¹. The underlying line of argument stated that equality of results would necessitate inequality of provisions and distribution of resources. The ideology indicated that the state was not only responsible for providing opportunities for all to participate in education, but also for whether people were actually successful in doing so.

The shift reflects a more general debate of what equality in reality means.

For example, the educational policy literature has distinguished between different facets of the equality concept, encompassing equality of access, equality of survival (the capacity to fulfill the completion cycle), equality of outputs (of schooling) and equality of outcome, i.e. the societal capitalization of the individual’s educational outputs⁷². In this respect, the qualitative shift of the 1990s represents a move towards the emphasis of equality of outputs.

The extended unified school model, rooted in a more comprehensive version of the equality conception, is manifested in three areas of practical reform policies of the 1990s:

Firstly, at the upper secondary level, the inclusive school principle was strengthened through the new intake regime inherent in ‘Reform 1994’. In many respects, the structural side of the reform was a ‘youth reform’, because it removed the barriers the youngest applicants met in the intake system. However, the new intake regime not only granted statutory right for all applicants but a governing norm also emerged, stating that one of the applicant’s top-three priorities should be offered by the schools of their home environments. This regulatory change implied an intended shift in

69 See Slagstad (1998)

70 See Opheim (2004, p. 21)

71 See Støren and Skjersli (1997)

72 See Farrell (1992) for a policy review of educational equality

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student population, because it gave young applicants a premium right at the expense of older candidates⁷³. Moreover, the reform granted access for students with disabilities and special needs. In consequence, most upper secondary schools gradually started to build up their capacity in special education and social services, in order to deal more efficiently with more demanding groups of students.

Secondly, the state-owned special schools were closed during the 1990s, and pupils and students with various types of disorders should attend their local schools, normally in the same class as students without such problems. Both primary and secondary education was affected by this systemic restructure (Midthassel, 2004). Thirdly, the principle of adapted teaching and learning was introduced in ‘Reform 1994’. This means that most aspects of educational provision, such as curriculum, teaching and materials, shall be organized to meet preconditions and needs of the individual student. The students’ legal rights to expect their learning environments to be adapted to their preconditions were further strengthened in the Education Act of 1998.

Review of how adapted teaching and learning is understood among practitioners and researchers shows, however, a relative blurred picture when it comes to conceptual content and meaning⁷⁴.

This image was confirmed and amplified when discussing the issue in interviews with middle managers and school principals during the case study. The examples listed, indicate that the unified school model has not been a consistently understood set of policies. Politicians, stakeholders and professional groups have put different content into the concept at different times. It is fair to interpret the main trends of the 1990 reforms as a shift towards more individually tailored education, paired with a more inclusive intake regime, rooted in the notion that the public school system should take responsibilities for all youngsters. The thesis suggest that these broad ideas shape normative and ideology-driven ‘belts’ in the schools’ environments - resulting in more inclusive demands. Equally important, it is stated that the extended unified school conception forms sets of technical demands imposed on school actors in practice, through the intake regulations. The changes have institutionalized a more complex work context for teachers and school managers, in primary as well as in secondary education, due to a more heterogeneous class population⁷⁵.

73 See Grøgaard (2006)

74 See Bachmann and Haug (2006) for a review of the literature on adapted teaching and learning

75 See Opheim (2004)

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