Professional Knowledge and Educational Restructuring in Europe
Developing a Conceptual Framework for Understanding
We enclose a summary chart of these perceptions. Although we have employed the term dictatorship in the Southern European cases, our national teams have pointed to internal ‘transitions’ within those periods and to growing patterns of ‘modernisation’. Nonetheless the late evolution of welfare states in the South stands in sharp juxtaposition to the post-war social democracies in the North. Sweden and Finland and England see fast expansion after 1945. But England, and Ireland, move rapidly into reform mode through the 1980’s. This neo-liberal style of restructuring then becomes a broad-based movement across all countries but building on sharply different trajectory foundations.
NARRATIVES AND WORK LIFE NARRATIVES
Our major work packages have operated at the level of system narratives (especially WP.1 and WP.2) and work life narratives based on life history interviews and mini-ethnographic observations (especially WP4. and WP.5).
Dennis Beach has helpfully summarised the main aspects of public sector restructuring in the following table:
Table 2. The noted outcomes of public service restructuring in the case studies – published in the Profknow Report
– Decentralisation
– Development of an emphatic discourse of privatisation and marketisation (habituation)
– Company formation
– Conversion of public services to private
– Business takeover of education and care supply and teacher and nursing supply
