Group 7: Standardizing education?

qualification frameworks, learning outcomes, implementation

Over the last 15 years education systems have been aligned and curricula redesigned around learning outcomes throughout Europe and beyond. The EU and the Bologna Process influence these radical reforms which are accompanied by a transformation of the ways in which education is governed across countries. The new mode of (‘soft’) governance works through monitoring techniques and the production of new powerful education standards such as the Qualification Frameworks.

Already during the 1980s and 1990s, national qualification frameworks were designed in the UK, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. The outcome-based approach to the qualification frameworks developed at this early stage later models the radical change of the curriculum in continental Europe and beyond through the international qualification frameworks for higher education (2005) initiated by the Bologna Process and the European qualification frameworks for Lifelong Learning (2008) developed by the EU.

This comparative group will address possible ways of explaining differences and varieties as integral to the implementation of qualification frameworks. In order to understand how and why reforms and education standards may change during an implementation process the group takes inspiration in the so-called ‘policy borrowing’-approach to comparative studies which lends explanatory power to national and local translations and contexts.

This comparative group will achieve knowledge on how the production of new education standards, such as the qualification frameworks, constitute the modus operandi of the new soft education governance. Furthermore, the group will achieve comparative skills in analyzing the change of higher education curriculum through the implementation of national qualification frameworks. Finally, the group will achieve competences with regard to assessing, critically reflect on and apply comparisons of national qualification frameworks based on the European qualification frameworks.

Comparative research question:

How are national qualification frameworks implemented by governments and how are they put into practice in study programs by universities?

Context of comparison:

1. Comparative studies of governments’ design and implementation of national qualification frameworks.
2. Comparative studies of the implementation of national qualification frameworks in university study programs and curricula/syllabi.

Categories of comparison:

Papers from students may pursue some of the following categories of comparison Papers from students may pursue some of the following categories of comparison:

1. Design and implementation of national qualification frameworks (government level): Compare the national qualification framework in your home country with the European qualification frameworks for higher education and/ or lifelong learning
2. Implementation of national qualification frameworks in university study programs and curricula/syllabi (university level): Choose a study program and compare a ten year old curriculum belonging to this program with the most updated curriculum and examine whether the study program has been resigned around learning outcomes. Choose two different study programs and compare the curriculum belonging to each of these study programs with regard to formulations and use of learning outcomes.

References:

Bohlinger, S. (2012), Qualification frameworks and learning outcomes: challenges for Europe`s lifelong learning area. In: Journal of Education and Work. Vol. 25. No. 3 (pp.279-297); Brøgger, K. (2016). „The Rule of Mimetic Desire in Higher Education: Governing through naming, shaming and faming." British Journal of Sociology of Education 37(1): 72-91; Phillips, D & Schweisfurth, M. (2015). Chapter 3 (‘Policy Transfer’) in Comparative and International Education (2nd edition). Bloomsbury.

Prof. Katja Brøgger, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Katja Brøgger’s research and teaching areas are education policy, governance and administration. She did her PhD studies at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, School of Management, University of Bath, Department of Anthropology, University of California Santa Cruz and Department of International and Transcultural Studies, Teachers College Columbia University, New York. Her PhD is a study on the Bologna Process, in particular how this reform process has changed the architecture of European education by introducing new education standards such as the qualification frameworks.

Prof. Søren Ehlers, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Søren Ehlers earned his Dr. Paed. degree in History of Education (Royal Danish School of Education) His approach to studies of education policy is global. Dr. Ehlers took the lead in 2005 when a consortium of European universities (Institute of Education in London, University of Deusto in Bilbao and Danish University of Education) designed European Masters in Lifelong Learning: Policy and Management. Visiting Professor at University of Georgia, at Peking University and at Delhi University.