New Practices, Old Discourses?
Change and Continuity in Humanities and Social Sciences in Latvia during the Democratic Transition
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Mulderrig, Jane (2003) “Consuming Education: A critical discourse analysis of social actors in New Labour’s Education Policy” Journal for Critical Education Studies, Volume 1, Number 1 (March).
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This article critically assesses the social identities, relations and practices of participants in education under New Labour. It combines sociological critique of education policy reform and analysis of the discourse representation of government, teachers, and pupils in two policy texts. Education is theoretically positioned in terms of its relationship with the economy and broader state policy. It is postulated that an instrumental rationality underlies education policy discourse, manifested in the pervasive rhetoric and values of the market in the representation of educational participants and practices. This is theorized as an indicator of a general shift towards the commodification of education and the concomitant consumerisation of social actors. Further, it is argued that discourse plays a significant role in constructing and legitimizing post-welfare learning policy as a key aspect of the ongoing project of globalization.
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Trowler, Paul “Captured by the Discourse: The Socially Constitutive Power of New Higher Education Discourse in the UK” Organisation, Volume 8.
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Trowler addresses the extent to which academic staff are 'captured' by the discourse associated with the 'new higher education' (NHE) in the UK and identifies the factors which condition their ability to displace, negotiate, reconstruct and create alternative discourses. In addressing this task, the paper draws on data from a five-year ethnographic study of an English university, NewU, a single document from NewU published after that study, a comparative study of 'new' academics in England and Canada, and spontaneous textual data produced at a conference on higher education. The paper concludes that the dialogical nature of universities means that the impact of NHE discourse on organizational practices is mitigated as it is read and reacted to in varied ways: that academics are not fundamentally 'captured' by this discursive form.
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Centre for Public Policy PROVIDUS “Education in Latvia’s transition: the challenge of management. Report on education in Latvia 2001/2002”.
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This is a two part study in the form of an executive summary and a collection of articles on the state of Education in Latvia during the 12 years that preceded it. It also marked the first of the annual reports compiled by Providus instead of the Soros Foundation, yet this is not to mean that they are not continuing in the same tradition. What is interesting is that the nature of this report tends to highlight the managerial issues behind the new type of economy that it has become apart of. The summary assesses the changes that took place and makes recommendations for reform. The articles proceed to examine topics such as teachers training, management information and administration as well as the logistics of higher education such as student loans.
In essence, The education system in Latvia had undergone a successful transition from a system suited to a planned economy to a system suited to a market economy and democratic society. But now new challenges have arisen as Latvia finds itself in competition with economies making another transition, where growth is driven not by ‘economic factors’ but by product and service innovation. This transition will require a radically different understanding from educational institutions and a significant shift in the structure of incentives to generate an adequate level of educational innovation and response. The transition to this new stage will depend less on the level of new public investment in education and more on the quality and innovation in the management of current investments and in the generation of non-public sources of investment. The challenge of education is as serious today as it was in 1990, but today it is the managerial traditions that have been established since independence that are in question.
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Kalm, Volli “ Estonia’s way in reforming Higher Education”.
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This article investigates the phases of reform that took place in the educational system of Estonia from the period of 1989 to 2004. It also examines the outcomes of the different phases of reforms and surveys the reasons of failures if progressive changes were not implemented. An overview of the current curriculum and degree system is given and expected future developments are discussed. There is also an extensive literature review that reflects the nature of education policies in the Baltic region and their involvement in the Bologna Process.
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