Purpose
In the discourse of the ‘knowledge society’, education is perceived as a core technology for seeking to improve a wide range of national issues, public services, and sectors within a new global, economically, cultural, and competitive climate. COMPETE is a cross-disciplinary research group with substantive interest in analysing stakeholder interests, epistemologies, normativity’s, and problem - constructions driving education policy, reform, and governance within key policy areas such as sustainability, citizenship, social justice, national identity, entrepreneurship, and competition.
COMPETE combine analysis of policy, reform, and political instruments with an interest in how they interact with professional identities, didactical texts, contexts, and practices at different institutional levels such as teacher education, schools, and kindergartens.
Background and key narratives
COMPETE is a fusion of two research groups; COMPARE (Comparative Perspectives in Education in Southern - Africa and Northern Europe, and PETER (Political Economy in Teacher Education Research)Https://app.cristin.no/projects/show.jsf?id=535219Https://app.cristin.no/projects/show.jsf?id=502480
COMPARE has substantive interests in analysing urgent, concrete policies and policy instruments in education with empirical or critical theoretical resources derived from the study of political economy and ecology, critical didactics and pedagogy, philosophy, and policy studies.
Because teachers at present are recognized as the most important factors in improving the quality of education, reforming teachers and teacher education is at the core of policymaking in most countries around the world. Non-governmental as well as governmental policymakers look at teacher education as the key lever for raising achievement, improving schools, and elevating the standard of education systems.
Thus, reforming how teachers and student teachers in kindergarten and schools are educated, rearranging their work, identities and knowledge constructs, also represents a strategic effort to shape the identity and work of teachers and the teaching profession in general in a further attempt to change schools and kindergartens and what counts as learning and play.
Political constructs of governance, human capital, leadership, profession models, pupil and student models, quality and effectiveness, investment and learning outcomes, competence, utility, and impact, research-driven or practice-driven relationships between higher education, kindergartens, and schools, are examples of strategies and political instruments derived from overarching political narratives. How do they interact, work, relate or effect pedagogical texts and contexts within key areas such as sustainably, citizenship, competition, and multiculturalism, are at the core of the research interest in COMPETE.