Justice and marketization of education in three Nordic countries: can existing large-scale datasets support comparisons?

Abstract

Traditionally emphasizing justice, equality and inclusion, education policies in the Nordiccountries have incorporated neoliberal features during the last three decades, but to varyingextents. These changes have important, multidimensional implications, but the variationshave been addressed in few comparative Nordic studies. Thus, this article explores thepotential to strengthen comparisons of education regimes in the Nordic countries generally,and social justice and marketization aspects more specifically, by using existing datasets anddatabases. It initially elaborates the concepts of justice and marketization of education. UsingIceland, Norway and Sweden as examples, it explores the relevance, accessibility and compar-ability of some of the larger international and national statistical databases, and hence theirpotential to enable such comparisons. These data are complemented with interviews con-ducted with officials at the national agencies of education in the three countries. A mainconclusion is that abundant data are generally available (despite substantial gaps andsilences in the datasets) on various aspects of social justice in education. In contrast, thereis very little data on most aspects of marketization. Comparability is often hindered by factorssuch as differences in definitions, white spots and the organization of education. It isconcluded that there is clearly a need to extend and develop the currently limited Nordiccollaboration in the selection and harmonization of educational statistics.