De-politicised effects with networked governance? An event ethnography study on education trade fairs

ABSTRACT

This paper explores educational trade fairs as part of the contemporary networked governance of public sector education. The focus is on the forms and functions of network governance in educational trade fairs and how different powers of private and public networking actors and ideas are played out, including the wider implications for education. Based on an event ethnographic case study of a Nordic educational technology fair, the study identifies three significant forms of how network governance powers are constituted: through consensual culture, blurred public-private actor roles, and market individualised addresses. Together this network governance has de-politicising effects that mask power imbalances and evoke democratic challenges for public sector education. The paper discusses how diffused market networking powers shape a national public education sector, and the forms of resistance and responsibilities within such governance. The merits of in-depth process-based event ethnography, which includes social media data, are raised and problematised.

KEYWORDS:

• Education trade fairs
• event ethnography
• network governance
• edtech industry
• post-politics

Introduction

Events such as conferences and fairs directed at the educational sector have a long tradition, widely ranging from world fairs to trade fairs exhibiting educational ideas, demonstrating and selling school and teaching materials and equipment (Lawn 2015). However, in the wake of the past decades’ privatisation and marketisation of public education that follows from the extensive neoliberal reforming of the public sector, trade fairs (often with a focus on educational technology [edtech]) have received new significance for education (Player-Koro, Bergviken Rensfeldt, and Selwyn 2017). Not only do these kinds of fairs function as marketplaces for educational technology, they are also important political spaces for connecting private and public interests and actors who, through such events, expose networking powers and political struggles over education (Ball 2012). This makes edtech fairs both relevant and important sites for the ethnographic study of the contemporary networked governance of schools and public education. In this paper, findings following from a series of ethnographical investigations of the main Nordic ed-tech trade fair, the Scandinavian Educational Technology Transformation (SETT) are presented. One event in particular, the 2018 fair, was selected, which we argue highlights some particularly interesting aspects of the power of network governance and the politics of edtech.

The research builds on policy network research that has shown how private edtech companies have become an integral part of public sector policy formation, and new forms of mutual dependencies established though private–public governance (Ball 2009, 2012; Verger, Steiner-Khamsi, and Lubienski 2017; Ideland, Jobér, and Axelsson 2020). Our previous work have shown the importance of educational trade fairs for global educational policy networks (Player-Koro and Beach 2013), integrating global networks and global education industries (Player-Koro and Beach 2017), and establishing connections and spreading ideas between the private and public sectors, for example, giving the edtech industry direct access to schools, teachers, and other significant educational actors (Player-Koro, Bergviken Rensfeldt, and Selwyn 2017).

Based on these findings, our ambition with this study is to contribute to investigating and understanding the political processes within the policy network envisioned at the edtech fair, with a specific interest in understanding more broadly how neoliberal forms of educational governance through networks operates and affects public education. The central defining characteristic of neoliberal policy is the promotion of markets over state regulation and the collective good, which, in turn, has opened up for market and private sector involvement in public sector education (cf. Ball 2012). The neoliberal reorganisation of the public sector nationally and globally has had many consequences, not least in relation to education (Ball 2009; Verger, Steiner-Khamsi, and Lubienski 2017). Ball (2009) referred to this as an ongoing privatisation of public sector education. The processes at play are, according to Ball, complex, multifaceted, and take place in three inter-related fields: the institutional, the national, and the international level (85). The context for the study presented here is at the national level, using a Swedish edtech fair as a case. Sweden is particularly interesting since the restructuring of the public sector has gone further and faster than in most other countries (Ideland, Jobér, and Axelsson 2020; Karlsson and Erlandson 2020). At the fair in focus for this study, both public and private actors are gathered, national as well as international. Most of the public actors are national, such as principal organisers of education and municipalities, as well as state actors, such as the National Agency for Education. However, the private edtech actors are in many ways international actors, connected through the global education market (cf. Verger, Steiner-Khamsi, and Lubienski 2017). This means that processes at the national level, in many ways, are harmonised on an international level. In that sense, this study exemplifies (2002) (in Ball 2012, 2) a ‘microspace’ of neo-liberalism, an example of how private-public collaboration actually works in mundane practices (in Ball 2012, 2).

This paper aims to take the point of departure from the above research to further explore processes within a specific policy network, a ‘microspace’ constituted through an educational trade fair. The focus is on the form and function of networked governance and how different powers of networking actors and ideas are played out, thereby contributing to the governing of education. Our goal is in line with what both Olmedo (2017) and Ball (2012) stressed: to study ‘network governance in action’ with the intention of contributing to the development of an understanding of how and what processes enable new forms of collaboration and shared ideas between private and public actors. Such an approach is important in demonstrating how the forces of a diffused, privatised market actually work to shape the national public education sector. The following questions will be addressed: How do network governance operate at events such as edtech trade fairs? And in particular, how are powers of the networking actors and ideas played out or toned down, and with what implications?

The theoretical understanding underpinning the study is, as mentioned already, the policy network approach (cf. Ball 2009, 2012), and we have used a broadly defined policy network concept to try to understand the processes that take form between actors during the event under study, between agents from government organisations, trade union organisations, the global edtech industry and philanthropic organisations, often joined in under the shared messages of improving and imagining better futures for schools and education through digitalisation. However, as the processes at the visited event were complex, multidirectional, and sometimes disguised or neglected, the study also relies on the conceptualisation of post-politics, which contests the liberal political theory of consensus by acknowledging the antagonistic dimensions of political life (Mouffe 2005; Haughton, Allmendinger, and Oosterlynck 2013; Knutsson 2013). This is a perspective that will be further elaborated on in the analytical process.

Educational trade fairs as sites of networked policy governance

Different kinds of meeting opportunities are central to network governing processes due to the multitude of actors working in different sectors (private, public) and at different levels (local, national, governmental, international). Ongoing relationships between actors are at the heart of their very existence, and such exchanges are important nodes in the network and the constituted fields of governance (Corson, Campbell, and MacDonald 2014). The importance of meeting places is also reflected in the increased number of companies that organise events, conferences, and trade fairs (Regan and Khwaja 2019). The industry of educational events is thus an important arena for national as well as the global edtech market (Cook and Ward 2012; McCann and Ward 2012). The Swedish edtech fair SETT, in focus here, is one example of this kind of arrangement, where many commodities, such as devices and applications, are sold and marketed. Even so, the fair is also a melting pot with not only private actors but also a large mix of policy actors and ‘experts’ from diverse societal sectors. They share information and knowledge and have discussions at seminars, hallways, lunch breaks, etc. In Sweden, SETT is the leading edtech event and a sister organisation to the British version, the British Educational Training and Technology (BETT) show. The 2018 Scandinavian SETT event had more than 8000 attendees with spinoffs in other countries or more local fairs in different cities. In 2018, a total of 88 companies and organisations attended the fair; 78 were private companies, whose main purpose was to showcase and market their products, in most cases digital hardware, software, and services but also teaching materials, furniture, etc. Seven exhibitors were different types of non-governmental organisations, such as an animal welfare organisation and a volunteer homework help organisation. There were 11 municipalities (local school authorities) represented, two trade unions, one unemployment fund, and a state actor, the Swedish National Agency of Education (SNAE).

The organiser is a private company that has been active in the educational sector for many years and has gained an influential position in Swedish educational policy processes (Player-Koro and Beach 2017). The edtech fair, SETT, in focus here, is organised in partnership with the Swedish Teachers Union and ‘competence partners’, which in this case refers to some municipalities in the southern Sweden. These partners sponsor the fair financially, thus gaining both influence over the agenda and the opportunity to marketise their schools and municipality during the fair.

Networking is currently a central concept in studies of policy governance and in earlier ethnographic studies on events and fairs. The fairs provide time and place for networking, nodes where, for example, the ‘social’ dimensions of policy-making between actors can take place (cf. Campbell et al. 2014). Both formal (opening ceremonies, keynotes, seminars), and informal settings (by the stands, in hallways, toilets, bars, and cafes) become places where policy stories are shared and reinforced (McCann and Ward 2012). Other policy studies have shown how these events have become complex nodes with different actors, and diverse agendas are held together by policy narratives, usually in the form of strong stories of successful methods and solutions wrapped up as marketable applications and methods (Cook and Ward 2012). In this sense, we argue that edtech trade fairs like the SETT event are best understood as sites of symbolic, performative, and practical policy-making – places where different aspects of educational network governance are staged and practised. However, the complexity of the events and the informal discourses makes the event sites where post-political procedures are played out, where political boundaries and similar antagonistic positions are made invisible or neglected, and ironically, complexity is dismissed (Haughton, Allmendinger, and Oosterlynck 2013).

Materials and methods

In line with research on partnerships and transactions between different actors through global education policy networks (Ball 2012; Campbell et al. 2014; Corson, Campbell, and MacDonald 2014; Junemann, Ball, and Santori 2017), we suggest that an ethnographic approach best suited our aims. Events such as trade fairs are, in many ways, ideal social settings to study because of their political role, where power mandates and displays of authority are played out by the actors participating in the event (Corson, Campbell, and MacDonald 2014). Capturing these processes is, however, challenging because of their ‘fuzzy’ structure caused by the multitude of actors and the large number of messages to address. The fairs, in Sweden as well as elsewhere are busy places where multiple things happen simultaneously. Nevertheless, applying an ethnographic approach has proven much potential as a method; for example, ‘event ethnography’, ‘multi-sited event ethnography’ (Baird 2017) and ‘collaborative event ethnography’ (Campbell et al. 2014; Corson, Campbell, and MacDonald 2014) have all been used to study political mechanisms and processes enacted at fairs and conferences. The use of traditional ethnographic methods of participate observations make it possible for researchers to immerse themselves in the field, and together with the participants identify dynamic relations of power and authority. A way of meeting the challenges of doing fieldwork on complex ethnographic fields like events is to conduct collaborative fieldwork and by attending multiple events over time to be able to compare data, and tracking knowledge and practices (Baird 2017). With this in mind, the present study is informed by earlier participation or research done visiting SETT, BETT, and similar fairs and is in this way part of a long-term study focus of the involvement of edu-business in Swedish education policy making. The fair has in this research appeared as a good illustration of how policy networks involved in school digitalisation intersect with local school systems and teachers (Player-Koro and Bergviken Rensfeldt 2017). The present study is one in a series of three ethnographic studies that have had different aspects of the meaning of fairs for teachers, schools, and education in focus (e.g. Player-Koro and Bergviken Rensfeldt 2017; Player-Koro, Bergviken Rensfeldt, and Selwyn 2017). During this research one of the researchers has spent around 150 h conducting fieldwork on SETT. We also visited the SETT event more than five times as ordinary participants (BETT and other fairs excluded). The study is therefore not only informed by earlier research but also by participation and experiences from a number of fairs and events. The main part of the data used for this article was, however, collected during an event ethnographic study at the SETT event in Sweden, autumn 2018.

For this study, two researchers spent around 50 h each doing field studies on the event. Multiple data production methods were used, such as participant observation and field interactions with different stakeholders. Five formal interviews were conducted during the event with actors from the public sector and five interviews with private actors, together with informal conversations with participants. Documents, such as advertising in the form of emails, programme sheets and the conference website content where collected, saved, and analysed. Those who were formally and informally interviewed were informed about the overarching aim of the study and that their participation was both confidential and voluntary (Aspers 2011).

Following the event on social media was also part of the data production, and the Twitter profile @SettSyd as well as the hashtag #SETTSyd were scrutinised for this purpose. The profile at that point in time had 791 followers and the hashtag 565 tweets. The ethnographic field of the study was thus both the physical context where the fair actually took place, and the digital space, which constitutes a kind of extended and simultaneous space of the place of the event (Shumar and Madison 2013). While digital aspects of a field sometimes need be treated differently and can be hampered by difficulty of grasping the social and discursive context (Airoldi 2018), the Twitter flow of our case was followed closely relatively the space and place of the actual event. Our selection of tweet data as ethnographic material was also limited to those posted during the actual days of the fair. It should be noted that the Twitter activity during the event was low, and only a few SettSyd hashtag tweets were posted: 63 tweets by approximately 27 different profile accounts. These were posted from individual’s Twitter accounts, mainly belonging to teachers, keynote lecturers and headmasters. There were also tweets from edtech company accounts and different school actors.

Data production were line with Corson, Campbell, and MacDonald (2014) conducted as a collaborative ethnography carried out by two researchers during the two-day event of the fair. The material was then compiled and analysed by all three researchers. The collaborative fieldwork was planned in advance, and could be described as an iterative process where periods of immersions, through participant observations, interviews, and discussions with actors, were mixed with reflected discussion, based on collected documents, tweets and fieldnotes. During this process, our common goal was to understand the political processes between actors at the event, their respective roles, and the ideas expressed, a process that was intertwined with reflections both informed by the theory, and with experiences and results from observations of earlier similar events that we had visited as researchers. All together the phases of observations and reflections could be described as a spiral of data collection (Troman 2006), related to hypothesis building and theory testing, meant to generate further questions and new rounds of fieldwork.

After the event, the data were analysed further, thematically coded and categorised and guided by the overall aims of the study. The analytical process was informed by the theoretical underpinning from network governance studies (Ball 2012; Olmedo 2017) as well as the concept of post-politics (Mouffe 2005; Haughton, Allmendinger, and Oosterlynck 2013). In the process, the network governance studies functioned as a base for the analytical processes, and the post-political understanding was then used as an analytical tool to identify how this type of event is shaped by the hegemonic and antagonistic powers of networks. This was done by consensually drawing actors and ideas together or apart in different ways, for example, in alliances or by setting up the dichotomy of ‘we’ and ‘them’. The post-event analytic work will be further elaborated on in the Results and Discussion sections below.

Results

The analysis focused on network governance in action during the event. Three distinct forms of network governing were identified. These were: (1) consensual governing through the ‘fika-and-fun-culture’; (2) blurred governing through the formation of partnerships and alliances between public and private actors; and (3) the formation of politics through de-politicised governing. The results are presented in the following subsections.

The simplified ‘Fika’-and-fun-culture – consensual governing

What struck us the most during our fieldwork was the absence of any contradiction or contesting views in the exhibition halls or from the seminar speakers. With the use of a post-political understanding (cf. Mouffe 2005), the social logic at the fair could be understood as an agreement of de-politicising nearly all conflicting ideas or positions between different actors. A chimera of consensus and common direction was established:

It is 9 o’clock; the fair is filled with people … The first message that reaches us is neither linked to digitalisation nor to education. The swing door into the arena was wallpapered with advertising by one of the major edtech companies in Sweden, with the message, “Take a coffee and talk about school development” … There is another operator meeting up in the foyer, namely, the [Swedish] teachers’ trade union, Lärarförbundet. The union representative continued on the same theme and offered us free coffee and a bag with a coffee cup. (Fieldnotes 2018-10-18)

The citation is an illustration of the atmosphere of community, belonging and consensus. The recurrent and widely used message relates to the Swedish custom of having a ‘fika’ (which roughly translates to having a coffee break but is also associated with sharing a small talk on a personal basis), which invites us to have a relaxed and carefree time during this social get-together by chatting and mingling with others. The open and casual invite was taken up by all types of participants at the fair, from the public sector’s trade unions and education agencies to the private sector’s publishing industries as well as edtech companies. Politically, one could expect their purpose in attending the event to be different and in various ways in conflict with each other, but no signs of this were visible.

Often, the depoliticised consensus embedded with the ‘fika’ was paired with the addressing of more or less well-known educational topics, as in the tweet from an edtech company profile inviting attendees to personal discussions on the ‘uniqueness’ of the individual child, which was a feature of their invite and ‘sale pitch’:

Will you be at #SETTSYD, Malmö Fair Thursday or Friday? If you want to have a coffee and talk about unique learning for unique children, both me, Elise and Björn are here. (Tweet #SETTSYD 2018-10-18)

The edtech company, which had advertisements at the entrance swing door, marketed their coffee offers with a core educational issue, ‘school development’, which also appeared in their tweets:

Will we meet at #settsyd? Café Lin has the best coffee at the fair. Drop by and chat about school development with us! #linedu # SETTSYD2018. (Tweet #SETTSYD 2018-10-18)

The establishment of a consensual logic of ‘fika’-and-fun could be seen as a basis for the form and function of how educational issues and/or problems were addressed. The formulation and discussion offered the illusion that it was possible to find solutions to all kinds of educational problems and that these solutions were technical and administrative and detached from conflicts of interest and inequality (Knutsson 2013). The theme of this year’s fair illustrated this kind of process. The theme ‘Multilingualism, digital competence and health in a digital context’ appeared on large banners both at the entrance, in the exhibition hall, and in cafe areas. These themes were handled as given facts by the actors (seldom explained) with practical pedagogical and technical solutions at hand, shortly, and superficially presented in banners, seminar titles, and as different message advertisements in stands. To take multilingualism and health as examples of two complex issues – even if multilingualism is connected to an issue fraught with conflict in today’s political debate and health is in many ways connected to complex questions of inequality and class – these problems were presented in a simplified form with few uncertainties, questions, or objections to the solutions. Some seminar presentations from the programme sheet illustrate this:

Multilingual and happy! … in the lecture … concrete examples are given of how multilingualism can really be an asset in teaching. … The lecture ends with good teaching tips and examples of how further training of teachers can be organised … (from the programme sheet)

How are learning environments designed to promote both health and learning? How can digital learning resources be used to optimise teaching and learning? How can learning for sustainable development … equip children and young people with the skills needed in an ever-changing world? The lecturer presents a democratic way of working with 21st-century skills in focus. (From the programme sheet)

These citations illustrate a specific form of how educational issues are brought up, as problems possible to solve, and with simple solutions at hand. Complex questions, in this case health, for example, were detached from questions of social class and attached to a neoliberal global vision of lifelong learning and twenty-first-century skills. The simple solution discourse was also striking when walking through the exhibition hall, decorated with logos, banners, and screens from different edtech companies. Technical solutions for sale (programmes, apps and devices) were downplayed and high-stakes educational issues were placed at the fore but framed as issues with solutions. A banner from a company selling software to monitor student attendance read:

… An important success factor for increasing school attendance is that there are structures for collaboration. By creating conditions for the early detection and measurement of absences, we are involved and collaborate with what we are best at. (From a company banner)

Hence, a simplified solution was painted up: monitoring attendance can help with school success. This could of course be true but not attending school is often more complicated than that. Only on rare occasions are complex issues questioned and problematised. One example is one of the keynote speakers, an invited researcher, who stated that ‘following the money’ was the main function of the fair’s exhibitions, suggesting that the economic interests were highly visible and that there was money to be made from the problem stated. In a Twitter conversation, the researcher received a posted tweet comment, which was more or less the only conflicting ‘debate’ observed or noted, from an event visitor:

Participant: Don’t really understand what you mean by “follow the money”.

Researcher/keynote: I just mean that there is money to be made from this concern. Many people who write things like this have a handy business where they solve the problems they just painted. (Tweet thread #SETTSYD 2018-10-18)

To summarise, as a governing principle, the laidback and friendly atmosphere of the fair functions as a chimera where complex questions can be solved over a coffee break on seemingly neutral ground. Taken together, we argue that the form and function of depoliticisation and the avoidance of conflicts address educational issues as apolitical and solvable, which also present products and services as solutions (Haughton, Allmendinger, and Oosterlynck 2013). These were the characteristic forms of how the fair’s network governance powers were constituted and functioned in a post-political manner. These powers not only keep the network form and function of the fair held together, but they can also mask hegemonic struggles between different actors and ideas. This is illustrated next.

Building partnerships and alliances – blurred governing

Adding to the laidback atmosphere and depoliticisation were the unclear boundaries between different actors. Illustrated below are the mixed-up roles played out at the opening ceremony:

The fair was to be officially opened through a small ceremony in the exhibition hall … . There are teachers, headmasters … and we spot some (real!) students … . Everyone has their tag around their neck, so we can easily see which school and municipality they come from. People from the main organising company was also easy to identify … placed some distance from the stage, dressed in black trousers, t-shirts and jackets with the logotype … The moderator known from Swedish television enters the stage … welcomes four representatives from three different municipalities up onto the stage. … asks them short questions on why they are partnering to and supporting this fair and what they hope to accomplish with the engagement. (Fieldnotes 2018-10-18)

Despite the fact that this was the start of the event where one could expect a distinctness regarding who was welcoming who, etc., it was hard to decipher who was in charge, and who was the main organising actor. Rather than a proper welcoming of the fair participants from the actors in charge, the message was a display of their own municipal school organisation to other municipalities. It remained unclear who stood as the sender of the messages and who was responsible for the agenda of the event. The only shared message at the stage concerned networking and partnership between representatives from different local school municipal authorities: ‘It is a matter of high importance for us to build partnerships with others’. Another representative, from one of the largest municipalities in Sweden, illustrated the weight put on exchange issues within the municipal sector, stating that ‘building partnership is natural for us … including networking with other municipalities’. The banners and programme of the overall event also made it clear that the municipalities were paying to be partners in the organisation of the event. That a private company was the main organiser was, however, more difficult to grasp. Only by studying the details of the SETT website and the programme could this be discovered. The private company also held a low profile during the opening ceremony. We therefore left the opening ceremony with the feeling that what we had seen was orchestrated. This lack of clarity about roles and purposes was apparent to us on several occasions throughout the fair.

The ambiguity in roles also had the effect that actors were able to use a self-exalted position and give the impression of having a policy mandate and school expertise that was sometimes beyond their capacity. One example becomes obvious when comparing a public and a private actor. The public agency actor SNAE has a position of authority with an explicit responsibility to address what is expected of teachers and school teaching. This was explicit, for example, during seminars that addressed the government’s digitalisation curriculum reform. However sometimes private actors seemed to take on that role. During a seminar organised by the Internet Foundation, a business-driven foundation known for selling Swedish web domain addresses, the speaker spent the seminar time explaining how teachers should approach and teach digitalisation in schools. According to the speaker, the foundation ‘considered it a part of their mission to make Swedish internet users more aware, give them knowledge about internet use in Sweden’. During this seminar, we witnessed how the speaker encouraged teachers to teach ‘digital competence’, while launching their own solutions:

I want to say that learning to code is about children having to understand programming, and not that children should become programmers. Digital competence is more than understanding programming … we also need to look beyond the code to understand how the systems work … and it’s not easy … so we have developed material to help you in teaching … this material covers everything from basic programming to more advanced programming … . (Speaker from the company 2018-10-19)

This quotation is just one of many examples of how a private organisation acts as if it were a governmental organisation and how so-called school experts allow themselves to prescribe content, motives, and material, thereby invalidating a humble conversation with school professionals. This exemplifies not only the messiness of roles and mandates; it also becomes hard to understand who is in charge of both problems and solutions.

Moreover, alliances were formed by actors from the private and public sectors, as illustrated here:

Let us present SNAE and the Code Center in a unique MasterClass! Learn the basics of programming and how you can use it in your teaching. Book your place today! (From the programme sheet)

The Code Center presents itself as a non-profit organisation that aims to spread knowledge about programming on a voluntary basis. However, the main sponsors of the organisation are technology giants such as Microsoft, Spotify, and Ericsson. These kinds of alliances are both an example of the fuzzy geography of policy networks but also work as an example of the local national policy network connected globally through the multinational edtech industry. For the participants on the fair specifically but also in relation to governance over the educational sector, however, these kinds of partnerships contribute to creating uncertainty and unclear boundaries for who has the power to speak about education. We argue that this could also be understood in line with Mouffe’s (2005) conception of the ‘political’, building on the ontological position that inherent in human societies, the nature of the political is always ‘antagonism’ and ‘hegemony’. In line with this, these blurred lines and newly acquired positions could be understood as the establishment of hegemony in the formation of a new form of distributed and chaotic governing between public and private actors (Mouffe 2005).

In this hegemony, edtech companies accentuate themselves and exaggerate their mandate beyond ‘just selling computers’, and become drivers and promotors of change and future imaginaries, allowing them to rise above the everyday realities of schools. As stated in a tweet:

It is time to start dreaming! If you had the chance to start school from the beginning, what would your dream school look like? Me and @AppPedagogen believe in meaningful #digitalisation! What would you like to change or improve? (Tweet #SETTSYD 2018-10-18)

Illustrate here is thus (what has also been seen at other fairs) messages regarding the urgent need to solve digitalisation problems connecting the Swedish discourses to a hegemonic global educational agenda on digitalisation. With Ball’s (1998, p. 124) understanding, this is a form of governance that is replacing ‘the grey, slow bureaucracy and politically correct, committee, corridor grimness of the city hall welfare state’ with ‘the fast, adventurous, carefree, gung-ho, open-plan, computerised, individualism of choice, autonomous ‘enterprises’ and sudden opportunity’.

To sum up, unclear boundaries between different actors, mixed-up roles, and mandates blur the forms and functions of networking. Creation of unexpected alliances between ideas and different sector actors through shared depoliticised visions, practical edtech solutions, or self-appointed expertise help set a new shape of governing of education in Sweden.

Formation of individual boundaries and reallocation of matters – individualised market governing

To complement the results presented hitherto of consensual and blurred governing, we also searched for examples in the interviews of boundaries or competing views between actors and ideas. This followed the understanding represented by, among others, Mouffe (2005), namely, that human societies are fundamentally characterised by power struggles, conflict, and antagonistic relations. Through the interviews with actors in stands in the exhibition hall as representatives of various companies and organisations, we revisited the material thoroughly to see if it was possible to track any conflicting or alternative vision or politics of education articulated. When analysing the interviews, we discovered that there were few in-depth answers expressing such aspects, neither from public nor private actors. However, when asked why their business or organisation had chosen to have a stand at the fair, a clear pattern emerged about how their driving forces and visions were connected to the interests they represented. They promoted their own products, messages, or performances by providing customised solutions and technologies to schools, in line with the market logic of the edtech fair. Based on an interview citation with one of the private actors at the fair, this is illustrated as follows:

When I ask about their main message in relation to the education sector, the vendor responds by describing what you can do in the digital platform that the company sells: you can plan the whole course in advance … put everything up … lectures, information, films … assess students … we also have a unique collaboration with Google and Microsoft, which allows their platform to be linked to the products of these players. (Fieldnotes 2018-10-19, interview with a private edtech company)

It is perhaps not surprising that the private sector actors highlighted their own products at a trade fair. However, seen in wider contexts, it is clear that all actors based on our interviews with them, despite sharing a consensual idea of improving, helping, or developing schools, come to the fair with their own driving forces and visions. The private vendors push the messages of ‘Our platform saves time for the teachers … helps them become digitally competent … they need nothing more’, and ‘We take responsibility for the school by helping the teachers … we are on the pitch, provide educational support and help to teachers if the school buys our product’. The quotes exemplify how problems in the education sector are described in terms of individual and personal teacher problems, where a technical administrative solution can be offered to solve the customer problem. Instead of making structural welfare system problems visible, the teacher is positioned as the ‘problem’ that needs help through an individual market solution (Knutsson 2013).

Similar patterns of defining problems and solutions could be seen amongst representatives from the two teachers’ trade unions in Sweden. As observed during the interviews, their main argument for being there was to be able to meet their members. Their role in relation to the school and especially to the teachers was, not unexpectedly, to impel traditional political trade union questions about, for instance, working time, regulations for employment, etc. We asked them about their organisation’s vision for education. We did not get any direct answer to that question; instead, they talked about their role in relation to the school, which was about supporting teachers. As one of the representatives put it:

We know that teachers are stressed … they can’t keep up [with the digitalisation development] … we have to support them … our members … and help them … we are here for them. (Fieldnotes 2018-10-19, interview with a teacher trade union representative)

In this sense, there were quite a few who positioned themselves as helpers to individual teachers facing challenges; however, matters that previously resided within traditional political discussion of teachers’ work conditions have become privatised problems requiring individual solutions and, thereby, the demands of school digitalisation become an individual responsibility of the teachers to deal with.

However, an important essence of Mouffe’s (2005) perspective is that conflicts are inevitable in political life and that communal identities always entail relations of inclusions-exclusions. A somewhat surprising example of this was created by a respondent representing the unemployment fund. When asked why their organisation participated at the fair, the reply was that they mainly wanted to be associated with a specific union organisation and did not pay much attention to the organisation’s relation to the private or public sector:

We want to show that we exist. That we relate to the Teachers’ union. We are competitors to the Teachers’ association. We do not think much about our role in relation to other (private) players. (Fieldnotes 2018-10-19, interview with an unemployment fund representative)

Taken together, the individual and privatised addressing of school problems constitutes a depoliticised policy network space. What could be described as problems related to conflict of interests (in the case of teachers as consequences for teachers caused by, for instance, neoliberal reforming) and inequality (where the connection between how well students succeed in school is deeply embedded in problems in the economic system) is instead addressed as individual problems, which are possible to solve with goods and customised services adapted to the individual need. Even more worrying is how the purpose and content of education are discussed, as the primary focus through these various actors has shifted from a long-term discussion about the content and role of education in society to promoting (and selling) one’s own product or competitive relations. Such powers also keep the network apart and separate, creating new boundaries. As our results show, a line was drawn between some policy actors (namely, the exhibitors we interviewed and observed) and teachers, where teachers were defined as ‘the others’, as those in need of help and support. More rarely within the actual physical event were expressions from the perspective of ‘within schools’, but some exceptions were made on Twitter, some of which we presume were written by teachers.

It is so much wisdom there here. It weighs up the media’s judgment-day prophecies about the school. (Tweet #SETTSYD 2018-10-19)

It is a bit remarkable that our IT supplier, who also delivers to other municipalities, was not even here as visitors to #settsyd to keep an eye on the industry. Especially since we specifically pointed out that this is important when you experience a gap between expectation & delivery. (Tweet #SETTSYD 2018-10-18)

The citations illustrate how, also within a market space of the edtech fair, there is room for counter perspectives, for example, of appraising the wisdom of both public and private actors at the fair, or arguing for the edtech industry’s market responsibility to be visible in such an event. These ‘voices of resistance’ are important for gaining a deeper and wider understanding of how edtech fairs contain contradictions and powerful antagonistic positions. The tweets represent the voices of schools, from the more privileged ones to those who had the opportunity to participate in the fair but also consider themselves spokesmen of its role. Ethnographically, and for being able to explore traces of resistance and critique, this also points to the selection problem of conducting critical studies of network governance powers at events surrounded by excitement and consensus on topics of high economic and societal interest, such as school digitalisation, and by mainly focusing on the exhibiting actors. Perhaps in this regard, the social media platform can offer an additional or alternative ongoing dialogue by offering those who cannot or choose not to be at the event a channel for taking part in the policy network. Notwithstanding, in our study, social media offered a means for studying the form of power resistance dynamics of the event.

Discussion

The neoliberal restructuring of the public sector and new forms of networked governance have many implications, not the least in relation to education. Public policymaking that was previously publicly handled and processed has now become enmeshed into hegemonic and de-politicised governing activities that blur the dividing line between private and public affairs. This change reconfigures the political forces that were historically a public matter in Sweden and involved more than just the export of work from the state to the private sector. The Swedish system, with the possibility of profiting on public funds, also means that this involves an economic transaction of tax funds, where private companies are given the opportunity to profit from political reforms, leading to a shift in whose opinions and interests take precedence in the governance of education (Beach 2010; Ball 2012). This study highlights the processes in play when the public and private meet in a specific ‘microspace’, an education trade fair where not only money but also educational issues, decisions, and processes are transacted. It also highlights some of the consequences in relation to how educational issues are taken up and what solutions and consequences are played out or toned down, with implications for political processes and democracy.

In concluding the results and the analysis of this study, the absence of any contradiction or different contesting views in the exhibition halls from the seminar speakers of the seminars struck us. The SETT event was strongly characterised by a consensus-driven culture, and we witnessed how this culture established ‘the roles of the game’ between the participants of the fair. Actors from the business sector, state, local municipalities, and actors representing teacher trade unions as well as teachers and school leaders, who typically have different and also in many ways’ contradictory intentions and ideas for their participation and power relations, acted in consensus in the name of providing the best for teachers, students and education. It all seemed very harmless; however, the consensual approach has some serious implications and consequences that require scrutiny and discussion.

The consensual governing that was used to invite everybody to an informal coffee discussion created an apolitical arena where important differences between participants seemed erased, both in relation to power and influence over educational issues of equal power. We mean that this social logic, viewed within the theoretical frame of network policy as a governing principle, was also visible in blurred governing, as policy actors have unclear or self-exalted positions. Nevertheless, despite the attempt to distance oneself from conflicts, new conflicts and boundaries were created when they competed about airtime and sales regarding their own products, following a neoliberal logic. With the use of the concept of post-politics, we also identified articulations of conflicts of network boundaries (c.f. Mouffe 2005; Knutsson 2013), where teachers constituted the main target within the market space, with limited possibilities to express alternative voices within such space.

The exploration of the educational trade fair works as an example of how policy networks with different forms and functions become new arrangements of governance that imply not only a rearrangement of power structures but also a ‘transformation of the nature and roles of existing policy actors’ (Olmedo 2017, 71). By scrutinising the network-governing role of the Swedish education fair, our study complements the understanding of how privatised market forces actually work in shaping the national public education sector through intricate network forms between private–public sectors and actors. We argue that this comes with a price. Several examples in our study illustrate, for instance, that important and complex educational questions are simplified, downplayed, or not even addressed, while other messages (‘our own products and solutions’) where tuned up. In addition, it hinders the understanding of the actors’ different roles and mandates and, as such, hinders finding answers to questions about who and what should deal with the core issues of society and education. The possible political and democratic implications of these processes, such as the seemingly consensual politics, make visible that not only should consensual issues be explored and made visible from a closer perspective to track internal inconsistencies and similarities, but also power alliances, struggles, and boundaries set up between actors, ideas, and resources are important to take into considerations. Furthermore, we stress that there are post-political processes that take place at these fairs, and that this denial of power inequalities and conflicts hinder understanding of the complexity of educational problems and the social and economic conflicts that shape the problems. Related to the more general post-political trend in Western societies (Mouffe 2005), the dismissal of complexity paired with an economic focus involving utility maximisation risks creating a never-ending wheel of commodification in the public sector. According to Haughton, Allmendinger, and Oosterlynck (2013, 232), this risk creates a narrowing of intellectual horizons and the ‘loss of a wider sense of purpose’ and, as such, is also an issue that needs to be further scrutinised.

Is it fair to hold trade fairs and private and public sector actors accountable for the depoliticised character that edtech and school issues at trade fairs seem to have taken today? Our answer is that these forms of governance arrangements are both an effect of a transforming political situation, with examples of distributed governance where powers are more dynamic and perhaps more difficult to identify and track – from an ethnographical point-of-view as well. However, policy actors have an open opportunity to act within the network, and thus, have the possibility to raise questions on the taken-for-granted nature of edtech and edtech solutions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partly funded by the Swedish Research Council [grant number 2017-01657].