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ABSTRACT
Margaret Archer’s concepts of educational centralization and decentralization, developed in her classical study Social Origins of Educational Systems ([1979] 2013), differ from current conceptions in mainstream research where centralization and decentralization are defined as strategies of governance aiming to redistribute decision-making authority and/or is measured by indicators of ‘school autonomy’. Archer’s definitions of centralized and decentralized systems and the currently dominant conceptions are rooted in divergent ontological assumptions. Current research implicitly assumes a flat ontology, an ontology of practice, while Archers concepts of centralized and decentralized systems are based in an ontology of emergence. Her real definition of an educational system, whether centralized or decentralized, which identifies its emergent structures and mechanisms, is superior to current conceptualizations in the sense of having explanatory power. Analyses of recent educational development in Norway employing current mainstream conceptions and an alternative analysis using Archer’s concepts illustrate the greater explanatory power of the latter.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Tone Skinningsrud, professor of education at UiT the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, has done research in the history of education, comparative education, educational sociology and methods of field work. She has published in journals of educational history comparative education and visual anthropology. Currently, she is co-authoring a comprehensive history of Norwegian education applying Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic approach.
Notes
1. Discussions about essentialism, natural (social) kinds and causality in contemporary philosophical debates, and the standpoint of critical realism in relation to other contemporary philosophies on these issues are presented in Ruth Groff (Citation2013).
2. Bhaskar uses the example of copper, pointing out that the electronic structure of copper can explain its dispositional properties, among which are the tendency to conduct electricity (RTS, 171).
3. This widespread neglect of the educational system as a social structure embodying causal mechanisms has been ignored, even by the prominent educational sociologists Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu (Archer Citation1983), and this neglect prevails in current mainstream educational research.
4. Internal relations are relations of natural necessity, where one element cannot be what it is without its connection to the other elements in the relation.
5. Between 1992 and 1997, 12% of all educational projects funded by the World Bank involved ‘decentralization’. In 2006, more than 40 governments were receiving support from international agencies to decentralize education (Bjork Citation2006, 1).
6. Christopher Bjork (Citation2006) from the UNESCO-UNEVOC International Centre for Education in Bonn presents case studies of educational decentralization from 10 countries in the Asia-Pacific region: China, Macau, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Joseph Zajda (Citation2006) presents case studies from Canada, the UK, Mexico, Columbia, Chile, Thailand, Indonesia, Kerala (India) and regions of Latin America, Europe and Africa.
7. An indicator of decentralization, seen as the amount of decision-making delegated to the school level measuring so-called ‘school autonomy’ has been developed by the OECD. In connection with the international achievement test PISA (Program for International Student Assessment), principals of participating schools are asked to indicate which operations of their schools are decided locally, by them. These include: the hiring and firing of teachers, decisions on teacher salaries and salary increases, formulation of school budgets and budget allocations, practices regarding student discipline, assessment of students, admission, choice of textbooks, course content and the kinds of courses offered. (Haug Citation2009, 112). The EU has also developed indicators for ‘school autonomy’, which are published in European Commission (Citation2014).
8. The data collected in the PISA-survey revealed major differences in the within country/between school variance of school autonomy. The variance between schools were higher in Norway and Canada than in the other countries on a composite variable called Autemploy, which includes the right to hire and fire teachers, establish teachers’ salaries and determine salary increases. Haug finds this difference between schools surprising considering the long history of state involvement in Norwegian education (Haug Citation2009, 84).
9. Susanne Wiborg has, in another article, suggested explanations of why privatization of education was boosted in Sweden in the early 1990s and not in Denmark and Norway (Wiborg Citation2013).
10. During the 1960s and 1970s, in Norwegian public debate, ‘educational centralization’ referred to the closing down of small rural schools, which entailed transferring/transporting pupils to more centrally located schools. This policy was initiated by the Labour government and was justified as an intervention intended to improve the quality of education for pupils in rural areas (Solstad Citation1978). ‘Educational centralization’ in the Norwegian political debate still carries overtones from this period and is associated with the closing down of small rural schools.
11. https://www.udir.no/contentassets/fd2d6bfbf2364e1c98b73e030119bd38/framework_for_basic_skills.pdf
12. These two aspects of teacher autonomy, (a) individual autonomy in choice of pedagogy and (b) collective autonomy in having influence on educational policy formation and the policy process (insertion), are also observed by Helgøy and Homme (Citation2007).
13. Management by objectives (MbO) is sometimes denoted as Management by objectives and results (MbOR), which is more accurate, since the principle entails measurements of obtained results. The notation MbO is used here because it is more commonly used in Norwegian documents.
14. English: On organizing and governing the education sector.
15. English translation: A culture for learning.
16. English translation: Education for welfare.
17. English translation: On the right track.