Research

The research questions with the corresponding objectives

Main Research Question: How can we arrive at a comparative understanding of basic education policy in the Nordic countries while keeping the subject of study mobile and fluid and at the same time allowing comparison with other policy fields?

Main Research Objective: To develop and validate an approach focusing on dynamics in policy-making and governance, family educational strategies and classroom cultures, reconstructed by relations between policy threads, actors and institutions in an empirical comparative study focusing on the Nordic countries

Research Question

Research Goals

Q1: How can we account for the fact that an education policy field is constructed of power relations and is in constant motion?

O1: To develop a relational approach based on dynamics in education politics

Q2: How can we take into consideration the specific importance and roles of the context, structure, institutions and agency?

O2: To develop a post-linear approach based on complexity and contingency in education politics

Q3: How can we take into consideration the specific relations between the global, the regional, the national and the local?

O3: To develop a socio-historical approach based on trans-nationality in education politics

Q4: How are the different cases to be compared in terms of dynamics in education politics?

O4: To develop analytical modelling including both causal-linear and relativistic relations of the research subject