An Inevitable Progress? Educational restructuring in Finland, Iceland and Sweden at the turn of the millennium

The article discusses how current changes in the system of reasoning about education in Finland, Iceland and Sweden are characterised by culturally woven patterns where marketisation strategies, for instance budget reform, are introduced as technically effective devices both for educating the best and to increase inclusion. This system of reason presupposes that the neo-liberalist restructuring changes are inevitable global phenomena and that they are a progress compared with the old arrangements, but is silent about socio-economic issues and the equity goals of the 1960s-1980s. The article also argues that school-based self-evaluation as a practice and as a language is a normalising technique that ensures that school actors will identify the obstacles encountered in the restructuring transition so that neither state nor other authorities intervene.