Keywords

In recent decades, the role of the state in the governance of education has been changing, as program evaluations, best practices, and large-scale transnational student assessments have visibly shaped policy making in the field. This development has been connected to such conceptual frameworks as governance by numbers, evidence-based policy, externalization of national policy, scientification, and neo-managerialism (Lingard, Martino et al., 2013; Lingard, Sellar et al., 2014; Robertson, 2016; Dovemark et al., 2018; Steiner-Khamsi, 2016). The purpose of this chapter is to explore state policy formation in Iceland by analyzing three recent state documents, specifically examining the following: (a) their antecedents, procedures, and follow-up; (b) their knowledge providers; and (c) the kind of knowledge that is interpreted and recontextualized into Icelandic documents.

Early in this process it became clear that the processes guiding education policy formation in Iceland differ from the Nordic protocol that relies on available green papers (GPs) and white papers (WPs) with reference lists as the main data sources (Steiner-Khamsi et al., 2020). Thus, the first step in the process for this research was to locate documents that would fulfill the criteria of WPs and GPs as understood in the research project (POLNET). We found three documents that could be considered appropriate for the research protocol. In this comparative research project, references are understood as a policy tool to justify or authorize the content of reform (Steiner-Khamsi, Chap. 2 in this volume). Additionally, we obtained deeper phenomenological understanding of the government procedure by analyzing the content of the documents and of qualitative interviews with five officials at the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. Due to the scarcity of GPs to examine for the research, we felt it was important to conduct the interviews to elicit a clearer picture of the knowledge accumulation inside the Ministry.

The main purpose of this chapter is to explore and compare two visionary policy documents and one background paper relevant to the reform of 2013–2017 to determine what counts as evidence at the stage of agenda-setting and policy formulation and identify the main knowledge providers according to reference lists. Governmental legal frameworks originate from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture and gain legal status in the education system through acceptance from parliament. Visionary policy documents, on the other hand, outline what the government hopes to achieve and the knowledge, methods, and principles it will use to achieve them. They state the goals of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture and local municipal governments.

The two visionary policy documents under review in this chapter were both processed by the Minister of the Independence Party, Mr. Illugi Gunnarsson. The earlier of the two (WP2014) was written and classified formally as a WP and is the only document that largely fulfills all criteria for a WP (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2014a). The more recent policy document (WP2017) began as an audit on inclusive education, with background material and guidelines presented by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, but was adopted as a formal policy initiative (European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, 2017). Therefore, we also treat this as a WP. The third document reviewed in this chapter is a background paper prepared under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture for an intended Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) review on resources for the Icelandic schools, which never materialized. Still, the document is often quoted in policy discourse, and we treat it as a GP (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2014b) and it was cited in WP2017.

These texts are important examples of the formal documentation that now governs or at least influences Icelandic compulsory education, along with laws, regulations, and curricula that are considered of primary importance. The document that receives the most attention in our analysis is the WP from 2014, which was written explicitly and exclusively as a policy document. The other two are included to explore whether a very different picture is obtained with respect to the substantive underpinning of evidence, externalization, and governance procedure. Moreover, it was necessary to review these additional texts to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of what can count as evidence and of the formal governing practice for an issued policy document in the field of education in Iceland than could have been gleaned from an analysis of any one single document.

The chapter begins with an introduction to the Icelandic field of education and governance, followed by methodological considerations for this investigation and then a presentation of the results. The empirical portion of the chapter is divided into two sections. The first lays out the numerical pattern of the database. Its subsections go deeper into the texts through a content analysis of the WPs by exploring the actual use of references in the text. The second section deals with the governing practice itself within the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, focusing on the agenda setting, the power relations between the politics (Minister) and the administration (officials), the given time frame, and choices of structure, knowledge providers, and evidence. The qualitative interviews on the governance practice were conducted based on the results from the first empirical section, specifically, the scarcity of written documents to produce a knowledge base for policy making and the numerical pattern in the evidence base.

Iceland: The Research Field

To understand the present, we need to provide insight into the past in terms of educational reforms and governance concerning the themes of the two WPs analyzed—inclusion and literacy.

A Historical Account of Education Reforms in Iceland: Social Justice, Inclusion, and Literacy

The history of public schools in Iceland is relatively short compared to the public school histories of other Nordic countries. The first compulsory school reform in Iceland was led by Guðmundur Finnbogason, who was appointed by the Icelandic government to write a report, a background paper, to prepare for the passage of the country’s first bill on education. He visited progressive schools in Scandinavian countries to gather ideas and, in 1903, published his report as a book, as he felt it was important to inform not only the government of Iceland but the public as well about his ideas (Finnbogason, 1903/1994; Guttormsson, 2008). The first act on public schooling was passed in 1907. However, the legally unified, compulsory, and comprehensive school did not exist in the law until 1946 (Lög um skólakerfi og fræðsluskyldu, 1946). The government viewed the educational system as “fundamental to the newly found independence of the nation from Denmark which required an educated public capable of running and administering a modern state” (Halldórsdóttir, Jónsson, & Magnúsdóttir, 2016, p. 438).

The policy focus on literacy is in line with a strong emphasis on reading proficiency in Icelandic educational history. The major inspection efforts that were undertaken in the 1740s and later in the 1930s had their primary focus on reading (Guttormsson, 2008). From the beginning of public schooling in Iceland in the early twentieth century, reading scores in terms of speed were used to track and stream in the early grades (Garðarsdóttir, 2001). Indeed achievement in reading has been strongly related to the intersections of social class, residence, and gender in Iceland (Gísladóttir et al., 2019). As such, immigrant and refugee children in Iceland are the “new” disadvantaged group (Garðarsdóttir & Hauksson, 2011; Harðardóttir et al., 2020). Reading proficiency has, for centuries, been the most critical reference point for educational quality, equity, and progress. What is new, however, is that the aim for higher achievement in reading is now put forward in a visionary policy document (Ministry of Education, 2014a).

The 1974 Education Act (63/1974) was progressive in terms of highlighting democracy and inclusion as core purposes, when all children, including those with special needs and disabilities, were required to attend school (Marinósson & Bjarnason, 2014). This act represented a fundamental political change led by a former Minister of Education, Dr. Gylfi Þ Gíslason, a member of the Social-Democratic Party (i. Alþýðuflokkur), and his special advisor, Wolfgang Edelstein (Edelstein, 1988/2013). Jóhannesson (2006, p. 105) described the changes as based on “child-centred, humanistic, and egalitarian views … apparent in cooperative learning methods, integration of subject matter, evaluation as a process rather than a product, and many other ‘progressive’ views in education.” Many of these progressive ideas and views that articulated shared notions of/preferences for certain ideas and values are still discursive themes in the current Act of 2008 (Lög um grunnskóla, 2008), despite its neoliberal orientation (Schriewer, 2003). This reform had a strong mandate and research-oriented focus within the Ministry itself (i. Skólarannsóknardeild) and involved interactive cooperation with teachers to develop new curriculum materials (Edelstein, 1988/2013; Halldórsdóttir et al., 2016).

The last reform prior to the period under review in this paper was the Education Act 1995, followed by a new curriculum in 1999. The emphasis then was on decentralization, neo-managerialism, and individualization in the diagnosis of learning disabilities (Jóhannesson, 2006). The period under review was initiated with a new act on compulsory schools and process for development of a new curriculum, which was led by Ms. Þorgerður K. Gunnarsdóttir, a member of the Independence Party. The only Minister who was not part of the Independence Party during 2008–2017 was Ms. Katrín Jakobsdóttir from the Left-Green Movement. She issued the curriculum for all school levels.

The Education Act from 2008 and the 2011/2013 curriculum guides are still in force, and we note only one substantial addition—the Education Act (2015)—to establish a Directorate of Education.Footnote 1

After the financial collapse in 2008, Iceland’s two political parties on the left formed a coalition and became responsible for dealing with the aftermath. Table 6.1 gives an overview of these political turbulences after the financial collapse in the year 2008 and which political parties and ministers were responsible for laws, regulations, curriculum and other policy papers during the period under review in this chapter. The first part of the fundamental educational reform had already been issued in the 2008 Education Act of All School Levels, and drafts of the new curricula were available on the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture website. The discourse in the legal documents was focused on the competitiveness and quality of the Icelandic education system with in-text citations to the European Commission (European Qualification Framework) and institutions like the OECD (Alþingi [Parliament], 2007). It was shaped with individualistic, market-oriented, managerial, and technological ideas (Dýrfjörð & Magnúsdóttir, 2016; Jónsson, 2018; Sigurðardóttir et al., 2014).

Table 6.1 List of Ministers of Education, their political parties, and the policy documents that formed the fundamental and incremental education reforms
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The bill for the Compulsory School Act emphasized a competence-based curriculum, continuity and flexibility between school levels, quality through formative testing and evaluation asserted by the establishment of the Directorate of Education on market and parental influence, and increased autonomy of schools and municipalities (Parliament, 2007) which was almost exactly the same emphasis found in the Norwegian reform several years prior (Karseth & Sivesind, 2010). The emphasis on gender equity (Guðbjörnsdóttir, 2003), democracy, and social justice that had been a strong part of the Compulsory School Act since 1974 (Halldórsdóttir et al., 2016; Ólafur Páll Jónsson, 2014) was kept and further nuanced. These nuances focused on the emphasis on inclusion (i. skóli án aðgreiningar) as a policy that responded to the Salamanca Statement that Iceland signed in 1994 and had already impacted the whole education system. Iceland only had around 1% of students in special schools or units (Marinósson & Bjarnason, 2014).

A political shift occurred when Katrin Jakobsdottir assumed the position of Minister of Education, Science and Culture, substantially influenced by an ethics report on the aftermath of the banking crisis (Árnason et al., 2010), emphasizing the strong democratic and critical role of the education system and the leeway for grounding that was needed to rewrite the drafts of the curriculum (Jónsson, 2018). She sought to revitalize core values for the entire educational system as a foundation for a democratic society by emphasizing six fundamental pillars for all school levels: (a) democracy and human rights, (b) literacy, (c) sustainability, (d) equality, (e) health and well-being, and (f) creativity. During an interview in 2018, Jakobsdóttir explained:

When our government came to power in May 2009, the work on the curriculum was in its initial stages and the approach was traditional, i.e., to focus on the subjects taught and list the fields that should be covered on different levels of education. But, from the very beginning, my main question was how do we put into practice the ideas of democracy that are the focus of our legislation? … My vision was that the school had to be a basic democratic institution, that we needed to describe in more detail what this involved. (Jónsson, 2018, p. 62)

The exclusive access of the Independence Party to state governance of education is relevant to this discussion, as had been in control consistently for approximately 20 years until 2009 when Ms. Jakobsdóttir took office after the global economic downturn in the autumn of 2008. The Independence Party then took the helm again from 2013–2017, which is the period of our study. These changes illustrate that the education governance landscape in Iceland during the fundamental and incremental reforms was disrupted by political shifts (Table 6.1) and economic crisis.

Icelandic Governance

The financial meltdown of the Icelandic banks in 2008 created not only an economic crisis but also a democratic crisis that directed attention to the governing body of the nation. The governmental and political foundation of the community was questioned. The parliament organized a special research commission to investigate the failure of the banks. One of the issues uncovered concerned the lack of regulation and government supervision. “The most important lessons to draw from these events are about weak social structures, political culture, and public institutions. It is the common responsibility of the Icelandic nation to work towards strengthening them and constructing a well-functioning democratic society” (Árnason et al., 2010, para. 4).

Governance operations in Iceland have been criticized for lacking professionalism and democratic practices (Árnason & Henrysson, 2018). According to research on government practices in 2010–2011, Iceland deviates from the other Nordic countries in preparing bills for legislative acts. The premises on which policies are based are generally not as systematic in Iceland as in the other Nordic countries, especially Norway, Sweden, and Finland. In Iceland the Minister is given more autonomy to decide on procedures (Kristinsson, 2013). Compared to other countries, the independence of the Icelandic Minister has been enormous and the role of the position loosely defined (Kristinsson, 2009). In 2010 the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture issued a report commissioned by experts/scholars in administration and politics that proposed that the role of ministers be more clearly defined in legal frameworks. In the report, the authors concluded that a minister should “seek professional analysis from the ministerial administration before making decisions” (p. 3). This requirement is now part of the Act on Ministries’ Office (Forsætisráðuneytið, 2010).

The period under review is from 2013–2017 or a few years after the country went through a thorough discussion, reports, and stricter regulations on this process. Since the law (Lög um Stjórnarráð Íslands, 2011) was issued, three white papersFootnote 2 have been published, one of which focused on education and is under review in this chapter. No research has been conducted to examine the governance practice that guided the policy document formulation in the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture; thus, this study is the first to explore that by drawing on empirical data.

Methodology and Research Design

This frame of research is attended to explore the use of evidence in the Icelandic nation’s policy formulation, how the evidence was used in a specific time frame, to what end, and by whom (authors, publishers). References are the primary definition of evidence that are used to “provide legitimacy” for policy development decisions (Steiner-Khamsi, Chap. 2 in this volume).

Methods

The following data from the three documents in focus in this study are explored within this analysis: the publishers/authoring organizations of the documents’ references and citations and their geographical classification (domestic/Icelandic, Nordic/regional, and international); the type of knowledge (e.g., academic, reports, and laws/regulations) used; and the co-citations, which are studied through a bibliographical network analysis. For the selected documents, we look at in-degree centrality, that is, how many times a given reference is cited in these three papers, as a measure of its significance in the policy discourse.

Differently from Finland and Norway, the WP and GP as concepts have not been directly used in Icelandic policy making. For the purpose of this analysis, the WP is understood as an official document that formally suggests how to revise or develop new legislation or direct policy issued for state/municipality policy actors to implement.

A GP in this study constitutes a document that is commissioned for the Ministry to obtain relevant background information to justify amendments within legislation or create new directions in policy making. For this reason, a GP is often used as a resource/reference for development of a WP, including the reference list or formal citations.

In our case, we have examples of many documents that are beyond the scope of this study, as they were commissioned for institutions other than the Ministry, were not used as references, and/or lack a reference list. Therefore, the content analysis is important in determining how the GPs or other background documents are embedded within the texts. For this purpose, we used Atlas.ti word-counting and thematic analysis. Our analysis is designed to answer the research question: What kind of knowledge is used, interpreted, and recontextualized in the documents under examination?

In order to gain some insight into the policy development process within the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, five interviews were conducted with Ministry officials in order to inquire about Nordic and other multinational cooperation and to inquire about the modus operandi that underpins policy formation to clarify some aspects of the construction of the three documents. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and interview subjects were assured of their confidentiality and anonymity. Instead of names, the first five capital letters in the Icelandic alphabet (A, B, D, E, F) are used to represent the interviewees. Jónasson conducted the interviews in December 2019. Interviewees were asked to participate due to their involvement in the policy formation process at various times from 2013–2017.

Selection and Types of Source Documents

The only document that was an obvious choice for the analysis was the first educational document issued with “white paper” in the title (WP2014). The other document discovered as a WP that was part of the follow-up incremental reform is the audit report published in 2017 by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture and the European Agency, originally written as a GP. It gained status as a WP after educational leaders in Iceland signed a declaration of cooperation based on the report (i. Samstarfsyfirlýsing).

In 2013, the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture decided to initiate work to examine how the general policy of school for all worked. The European Agency for Special Education was designated to conduct an external evaluation of the situation concerning inclusive education, the policy on the issue, and its implementation. This task was undertaken in 2016 based on a special agreement among three ministries—the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture; the Ministry of Health; and the Ministry of Social Welfare—along with the Association of Municipalities, the Teachers’ Union, The Union of Upper Secondary Rectors, and the leading parental organization (i. Heimili og skóli). The evaluation was based on input and consultation received domestically through surveys, focus group interviews with stakeholders and experts, and a background paper authorized by Ministry officials that was not published (according to an interviewee). Thus, the document was initially classified as a GP. The report was presented and discussed at a meeting on March 2, 2017. The ministers and the representatives of these organizations that had agreed to this initiative in 2016 signed a declaration in which they agreed to follow through on the actions proposed in the report. The status of the document was then changed from GP to WP, as it was brought into the policy arena by the main stakeholders, stating that “they will cooperate to follow up on the results of the audit report” (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2017).

The only GP that fulfilled all requirements was Document ID 3 (see Table 6.2), which was written according to a structure from OECD, as the document’s aim was to prepare for an OECD review for resource allocation and use in Icelandic schools. The Icelandic government undertook the writing of a background report, intended to provide OECD with basic information, as is customary, which would be used as input for OECD’s evaluation and recommendations. In the current context, it is important to keep in mind that its aim was to assemble information and provide an understanding of the system in preparation for an OECD evaluation. The evaluation never took place, but the report was referred to in several subsequent documents, inter alia the WP2017 analyzed here. The document, which contains an extensive description of the Icelandic system, was prepared by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture for OECD and the EC (European Commission), and the committee that oversaw its writing was represented by important stakeholders.Footnote 3 Even though the focus of the report was on the three school levels, the expert group placed emphasis on the compulsory level. Two local experts assisted in drafting the document. Document ID 4 (see Table 6.2) is understood as a source document. It is missing a reference list, so it is not part of the analysis.

Table 6.2 List of documents for analysis
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Results

The documents analyzed came from fundamentally different directions, even though they were issued within a short time frame under the same Minister, which makes them particularly interesting for our analysis. The interviews are used to clarify the nature of the documents and the differences in the reference profiles obtained.

The Knowledge Base in the Documents

This section presents an overview of the findings from the bibliometric analysis. The analysis is grounded in the location of references, types of documents, the network of references, and the publishers.

A total of 203 references were included in these three documents, and more than half are referenced in the only GP that is mainly based on domestic publishers (Statistics Iceland and the state). Both the WPs contain relatively few references, and their reference lists are mostly based on international publishers in the form of reports, but similar to the GP, they include very few academic resources (Table 6.3).

Table 6.3 Reference distribution in the source documents
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There is little overlap in the resources cited. The network structure (Fig. 6.1) shows how loosely related these documents are in terms of references, especially the two WPs: the only connection between them is that WP2017 refers to WP2014. Moreover, GP2014 is a reference in WP2017 and is mentioned as a work in progress in WP2014 without a formal reference.

Fig. 6.1
A network of interconnected nodes has 3 node clusters. The left, top right, and bottom right clusters are labeled 3, 1, and 2, respectively. 2 connects to 3 via node 1046. 1 connects to 3 via the following nodes. 1034, 1007, 1004, 1006, 1005, 1008, and 1012.

The network structure of the three documents. (Notes: Regional = gray; domestic = white; international = black; node size = in-degree centrality. Source: circle)

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Figure 6.1 shows that nine documents are referenced in more than one of the source documents. Seven are governmental documents, and two of these documents are reports on the PISA results from 2012 (OECD, 2013; Halldórsson et al., 2013). Accordingly, a joint focus in the two WPs concerns the Icelandic legal framework and PISA results from 2012.

Emphasis on Quantitative Evidence from Reports

In WP2014, the authors claim that the use of evidence is at the core of the proposed reform: “Work on the White Paper has been based on international studies of education reform, and attempts have been made to draw lessons from the experience of those nations that perform strongest in international comparisons” (p. 5).

The policy discourse in the WP2014 is based on information about those countries that outperform other nations in the comparisons and the aim is to learn from their reforms. The focus on best international performance indicates that “best practice” guides policy development. Table 6.4 provides an overview of the figures that concern the compulsory education part of the WP2014 indicating sources and actual references used. Three different perspectives are used in exploring large data sets.Footnote 4 One is the international comparison that examines the positioning of Iceland within the large list of participating countries (Table 6.4: Figures 1, 2, and 3). The second perspective is the Nordic comparison (Table 6.4: Figures 8 and 18), and the third comprises the national data (Table 6.4: Figures 5, 7, 9, and 10), where both longitudinal and area-based comparisons are made.

Table 6.4 Overview of figures from WP2014 indicating sources and actual references used
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The policy discourse in the WP2014 is based on a technical report (UNESCO & IIEP, 2012) published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). Overall, instead of referring to a list of GPs, the list of references is based on the following: (a) international think tanks, such as McKinsey; (b) information about the education system based on comparative data collected by European institutions like Eurydice and the European Commission; (c) conceptualization, recommendations, and survey results from intergovernmental organizations like OECD; and (d) policy borrowing from other states/nations like Ontario in Canada.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that 71% of the references in WP2014 are international, and 62% are reports. The reference list contains 36 citations when including in-text citations, of which 12 originated from OECD, which is the most cited publisher. This is not the case for the other two documents, as in the Icelandic database, OECD is the fourth most cited. Further analysis of OECD’s impact can be found in Ydesen et al. (Chap. 11 in this volume).

It is very clear from the format of WP2014 that the underlying comparative evidence is quantitative data presented in the figures presented in the paper, which are described in Table 6.4. There are 12 figures in WP2014 and 11 of them are of international sources mainly from OECD with PISA in the forefront. In 7 figures the focus is on literacy. All of them originate from the PISA database except one that is based on data from Eurydice

With reference to the quantitative evidence, no figures or tables are presented in WP2017 nor in the background report prepared by the Icelandic working group.

The words “teachers,” “students,” “reading,” and “reform” are frequently mentioned in WP2014, while “inclusive,” “stakeholders,” “system,” and “support” are among the most common in WP2017. The approaches used in these two policy endeavors are strikingly different. This is, however, in line with the Icelandic tradition of having a wide scope of possibilities to form a policy document, which is further discussed in the next section.

Emphasis on “Evidence-Based” Practice: Focus on Teachers

The WPs are quite different in terms of aims and openings. In WP2014 the implicit assumption is that international data, like PISA results, address what is most important in education, and by implication, the top priority is to address this issue; in WP2017 it is in the hands of the national Ministry of Education, Science and Culture to define the main problems and themes to focus on to get Icelandic schools to become more inclusive. In WP2014 the paper sets out two measurable aims—the one related to literacy in the compulsory schools is designed to increase minimum reading PISA standards. Three main categories of action are included. One is to allot more time to Icelandic as a subject, another is to develop standards by measuring reading proficiency at various levels as each student progresses toward the end of compulsory school, and the third is to form the work of the teachers in more detail.

An extensive analysis carried out by McKinsey (2007) concluded that the two most important factors influencing the performance of an education system were the education and the work of teachers. The same conclusion has been drawn in recent academic writings (Hargreaves and Fullan, 2012). … Recently, an expert panel on the continuing education and professional development of teachers was set up. The panel’s tasks will be to propose ideas and priorities regarding the training and support that teachers should receive in their work, and develop new teaching methods. The Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture has also started consultations with teacher education institutions on the content of teacher education and increased cooperation in this field. (WP2014, pp. 38–39)

This focus is well known in international research: controlling by numbers through yearly evaluations where teachers are made responsible for achieving better results by adopting the “right” teaching practices (Brian, 2009; Robertson, 2016). On the other hand, WP2017, which also emphasized teaching practices, took a different approach intended more so to empower teachers themselves to professionalize in an inclusive way, as illustrated by the following excerpts:

The need to train teachers on using diverse teaching methods—especially within upper-secondary education—is highlighted. (p. 110)

There must be flexible professional development opportunities for teacher educators to support their attitudes, knowledge, skills and ability to model inclusive teaching practice in their work. (p. 130)

Teams of teachers and support professionals should work together to develop flexible frameworks for curriculum and assessment, together with teaching approaches that engage all learners and support their active engagement and participation in learning. (p. 135)

The discourse in WP2017 is not based on “best practices” of teachers but to enhance practices to be in line with the inclusive ideology.

In WP2014, the negative consequences of the constructivist ideals among Icelandic teachers were one of the assumptions made for the declining reading comprehension. A graph from the Teachers and Learning International Survey (TALIS) survey showed how teachers in Iceland believed more heavily in the constructivist model than in direct transmission, compared to teachers in some other nations (WP2014, p. 40). The claim was also made by referring (only through in-text citation) to one small-scale research study by Savola (2010) comparing Finnish and Icelandic teaching practices in mathematics, emphasizing the good performance of the Finnish school system that relies more on direct transmission. When systematically observing teaching practices in large-scale local research on compulsory schools (Óskarsdóttir, 2014), the results indicate that teachers in Iceland do still heavily rely on direct transmission.

To promote WP2014, the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture held a conference on literacy to which all teachers in the country were invited.Footnote 5 The publication of WP2014 and this conference were the first steps in what was called a “National Literacy Concord” (i. Þjóðarsáttmáli um læsi) with its own logo and a song. A few weeks later, a critique on Beginning Literacy (i. Byrjendalæsi)Footnote 6 was issued in the form of a memo from the Directorate of Education.Footnote 7 Beginning Literacy highlights an interactive approach, collaborative work, and the active participation of pupils as well as integrated language (Eggertsdóttir, 2007). The argument was that the schools that had adopted the Beginning Literacy approach were, on average, scoring lower than other schools on standardized tests (the 4th grade test) and that it was not an evidence-based practice. The Minister made a clear statement about this: “From now on, if there is an idea to utilize a particular practice or program it must be based on available evidence that documents its effectiveness” (Skaptadóttir, 2015, p. 10)

There was a harsh debate about this in the media, and the differences in the test scores were contested by scholars; for example, a sociology professor at the University of Akureyri showed how the difference in scores had been exaggerated visually (Þóroddur Bjarnason, 2015). In the same week the founder of Beginning Literacy stated during an interview that it should not be the role of the Minister of Education, Science and Culture to choose the teaching methods used in the classroom (Arnarsson, 2015). Thus, the PISA “shock” was promulgated in the media, and the new institution (“Act of Law on Directorate of Education,” 91/2015) took the first action to deconstruct Beginning Literacy as an accountable reading method in terms of evidence and achievement. The authors of this chapter are not taking a position on this debate. Rather, this discussion is intended to serve as a follow-up on how the main objective in the WP—to increase achievement in reading—was strongly related to a particular best practice used by teachers and how the mediatization of some sort of a PISA shock was an essential factor in promoting it.

Scarcity of Academic References

The data analysis indicated that the use of academic references in policy making is rather low (both in terms of books and academic journals); indeed, few local (Icelandic) or regional (Nordic) academic references were found. In WP2014 two in-text citations were based on a publication in academic journals. These two are Fullan (2013) that is a commentary paper, and the other is a small-scale dissertation study comparing Finnish and Icelandic teaching practices in mathematics (Savola, 2010). An examination of the academic references in the database, published either as books or as articles in academic journals, revealed that none of those references includes the keywords “literacy/reading” or “inclusion,” which are the main educational themes in the two WPs. Instead, the use of reports to define and discuss the main concepts—literacy and inclusion—is dominant in both WPs. For the reading proficiency discussion, PISA is the main source. The use of academic papers was also scarce when arguing for changing direction in teaching practices.

The reason for the limited number of academic references, both from international and national perspectives, was discussed during the interviews. It seems that the research culture in Icelandic academia does not enter into the governmental framework due to the lack of large-scale, quantitative, and comparable research conducted in the academic context of Iceland.

I think we need to use more systematically collected data. … I think if the intention is really to influence policy, the systematic analysis based on large scale data sets is needed, but also from large scale [national] studies. But it requires an effort to do this. For example, the research from Gerður (referring to Óskarsdóttir, 2014) has a lot of information. Still, it is, however, what you can find in it and pull out of it rather than systematically concluded results with statistical data that you can straightforwardly use in public policy making. (Interviewee B, December 2019)

The Ministry official is asking for a different approach that is more convenient for policy makers, that is, research that is more comparable and quantifiable (statistical) and easy-to-use results, reducing what then counts as evidence. The authors of the audit report (WP2017) did not speak or read Icelandic and relied, instead, on international reports and their own data collection and analysis.

It has been suggested that the policy field is gradually gaining more influence on the academic world, controlling what can count as valuable knowledge. In recent years the neoliberal discourse on market solutions, evidence-based research, and performativity have become more influential (Ball & Olmedo, 2012; Dovemark et al., 2018). This orientation has challenged what had been the dominant model. In Iceland, stakeholders have most often been included in policy formation, such as with laws and curriculum, which is the case in two of the three documents under review in this paper: WP2017 and GP2014. Icelandic academia, however, has not been one of the stakeholders to have a right to be heard in the democratic process; instead, research is produced by scholars independent of the field of policy, and therefore, it has been easy to bypass and overlook.

The Icelandic Procedure of Education Policy Formulation: Ministerial Governance

From the spectrum of available documentation, from the content of the documents analyzed, and from the responses of the interviewees, we can conclude that no established procedure exists to direct the construction of educational policy documents. According to Interviewee B, “There is no organization or a planned process that covers all policy making. … There is no systematic analysis in the background.” Interviewee D explained, “To write a green paper with all the documentation and references, we sometimes skip this and enter the proposals for action stage.”

As an example, the European Agency authorized the audit report on inclusive education (WP2017) because a long-standing Ministry official had for years led the work with European Association for International Education (EAIE) for Iceland. The official used their connection to contract with the Agency to prepare the report. The EAIE asked for a background paper, “The Critical Reflection Paper,” which became the third background paper issued by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in relation to policy formation. WP2017 was the fourth and final paper in this process. The lesson learned from the interviews is that each Minister determines how to proceed, often by designating someone who is trusted to chair the work, either inside or outside the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, who, in turn, may have considerable independent views on how to proceed. Indeed, no formal procedures apply. Interviewee A described it this way: “Talking about influence, the minister’s views are much more influential than something that comes from outside.” According to Interviewee E, “Substantial consultation may or may not take place; the evidence is usually collected, but not in a very systematic way, and the work may thoroughly integrate the ministry specialists, or not.”

The policy document formation process has not been institutionalized along certain operational lines, even though considerable expertise is often harnessed into the process. Furthermore, there is neither a tradition to formalize the evidence used (e.g., by systematic referencing) nor consultation obtained.

“There Is Often a Feeling of an Urgent Need for Action”: The Tight Timeframe

As mentioned previously, the concepts of the WP and GP have not directly been in use in Icelandic policy making until very recently, which allows extraordinary leeway for a short-cut and powerful agendas to push forward in a short amount of time. “There is often a feeling of an urgent need for action. For example, if PISA results are bad, there may be little room for delay” (Interviewee D).

Part of the core curriculum for all school levels was published in the beginning of 2013, and the new Minister of Education, Science and Culture, Illugi Gunnarsson, who took the position in the spring of 2013, managed to publish a WP in June 2014. It would have been impossible to issue a WP with the standard protocol in such a short time. Two of the officials in the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture mentioned that the main reason for the focus on PISA in WP2014 was a sort of PISA shock: “The white paper had mainly focused on OECD material. Other data somehow didn’t make it into the paper. I think there was some kind of a PISA shock reaction that pushed this to the fore” (Interviewee D).

This is exactly what has been defined as re-articulation of social justice to test-driven data and numbers (Lingard et al., 2014), where evidence becomes the vehicle for reform and renewal in the education sector. The follow-up of WP2014 was massively resourced financially (compared to other projects) according to a Ministry official, and the Minister of Education, Science and Culture himself visited every compulsory school in the country to introduce it to the school communities. WP2014 was never passed through any kind of regulation in the parliament. The push for writing the first WP at the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in such a short time frame, just a year after the subject-based curriculum was issued, could be understood as creating leeway for the Minister of Education, Science and Culture to bypass the new curriculum, change direction, and make his own agenda without the need for any influence from the parliament or other governance bodies.

The audit report (WP2017) also had a tight time frame. The two background papers were issued in 2015 (Mat á framkvæmd stefnu um skóla án aðgreiningar: Skýrsla starfshóps, 2015; Ólafsdóttir et al., 2015) and the cooperation with the European Agency started formerly in late 2015. The “Critical Reflection Paper” background paper, according to an interviewee, was written before data collection process, which started in spring 2016. An enormous amount of data was collected in four days by the six audit members, as they spent just few days in the country. This included 27 focus groups involving 222 participants, 11 school visits, and 9 individual face-to-face interviews with high-level decision-makers. An online survey was available for six weeks from May–June 2016 (WP2017, pp. 25–27), and the report was launched in Reykjavík on March 2, 2017,Footnote 8 the same day it was updated as a WP.

The Small Nordic State in a Globalized World

After analyzing our interview data, two discursive themes emerged from the reasons given for relying so extensively on external authorities. They concern the scarcity of officials to participate at the policy-making level and to interpret or translate the OECD discourse and data and the importance of externalization to avoid nepotism or as a strategy to change direction from what is suggested nationally.

Icelandic governance suffers from the lack of capacities at the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, including the lack of domestic experts and human capital who can participate at the policy level and then filter the OECD influence and control it in line with the normative way of governance (e.g., through GPs).

It is a major task to be on top of everything within the OECD, and the countries have different capacities available in terms of money and staff. Some, like Finland and Estonia, as examples, have people stationed in Paris who only attend to these tasks. And [some] countries don’t have education attachés who follow what is happening and prepare meetings … it is only a fraction of my job here to go there and attend meetings … but this is supportive of our work, and we do our best. I have just been talking to a Norwegian colleague who deals with OECD, Nordic issues and bilateral issues—but he has a support of twenty staff. Yes, one feels a bit overwhelmed. (Interviewee B)

The small state lacks human capital to cover all international cooperative endeavors and translate transnational effects and policy borrowing into a more local frame of policy discourse. In Finland a large group is designated to do that and is authorized as such (Volmari et al., Chap. 5 in this volume).

“The eye of the guest is keenest” (i. glöggt er gests augað) is a maxim in Iceland that captures the belief that we need to get somebody that is not part of “our group” to explore objectively and tell us the “truth” of what is really happening. The words from the Minister of Education, Science and Culture that are discussed in WP2017 reflect on this belief:

At the audit launch event on November 3, 2015, Mr Illugi Gunnarsson, the Minister for Education, Science and Culture at that time, stated that the main motivation for the Icelandic stakeholders in requesting an audit was to gain an external view of the operation of the Icelandic system for inclusive education. He quoted an Icelandic maxim that says “The eye of the guest is keenest.” (WP2017, p. 12)

This viewpoint is based on the belief that Icelanders, in most cases, have dependent and biased viewpoints. For policy formation on inclusive education, two background papers (Mat á framkvæmd stefnu um skóla án aðgreiningar: Skýrsla starfshóps, 2015; Steingerður Ólafsdóttir et al., 2015) were requested by the Ministry/Katrín Jakobsdóttir.

There was ongoing work on analyzing the stage of inclusive education here in Iceland, which was … not getting us anywhere. Then there popped up a suggestion of requesting help from the European Agency, just to get an external view, get the guest’s eye, and that was the end result. … But a request was sent to them, as their approach is more democratic than the OECD’s and not with a tight structure and standards of indicators and questions as OECD. (Interviewee B)

Sensibly, it was not a matter of whether to ask for external help—the choice was made between two international knowledge providers, OECD and EAIE, and EAIE was recommended to the Minister of Education, Science and Culture due to its democratic and inclusive governance practice (according to one interviewee). One can also interpret this as a way to get a different political frame of reference than the national context could offer at that time. Externalization can also be a way of bypassing some local objectives, people, and beliefs.

Conclusion and Discussion

The external steering and input into policy making were substantial in Iceland from 2013–2017. GP2014 was written by Icelandic experts in line with a structure from OECD, and WP2017 was written and published by an external audit (European Agency) but processed by information from and in consultation with Ministry of Education, Science and Culture officials, Icelandic experts, and stakeholders. WP2017 is an example of a document where the externalization is achieved by getting external agencies to bring some possible solutions to the table. English is the original language of two of the three documents explored in this study. WP2014 is exemplary for its dominant use of international reports, especially from OECD, which is the most cited publisher, in defining main concepts, grounding arguments for the weak points in the Icelandic system (teacher practice), and providing solutions.

The use of references varies widely, both in scope and extent, with GP2014 accounting for 70% of the references used in total. In the combined database the primary knowledge providers are Statistics Iceland; Icelandic Ministry of Education, Science and Culture; the Icelandic Parliament; and OECD. According to the bibliographic analysis, academic papers in general, but especially Icelandic papers, are thought to be irrelevant or not providing “accessible” knowledge in the evidence base for the policy. Strong transnational influences can be observed, and in WP2014 an excessive policy borrowing in terms of references and values, especially from PISA, OECD, Canada, and international think tanks, is evident. According to the interviews, the procedure in Icelandic education policy making is loosely structured compared to governmental practices in countries where the procedure is more formalized (Kristinsson, 2013).

The main focus was on the only WP that has been issued as such in Iceland, and analysis of the other two had the aim of providing a wider picture of policy formation. The over-emphasis on international and quantitative evidence in WP2014 was not as prominent in the other two papers. A more ethnographic approach was detected for the knowledge producing in relation to WP2017 with their own school visits and interviews as main sources of data. In GP2014 the main source was Icelandic governmental data. WP2014 is exemplary when it comes to a scarcity of academic references and time frame. WP2017 did have a short time frame but was better articulated in the three background documents that had been written before getting the European Agency to write the paper. On the other hand, PISA-shock was the driving force for WP2014. The urgent need to react immediately to declining results in PISA and media attention can support an argument for ministers for policy changes (Sellar & Lingard, 2013).

Prior research on the logic of practice in Icelandic governance resonates with our results in terms of loosely defined protocols and ministerial governance (Kristinsson, 2009, 2013). This also holds true in the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. Despite the thorough discussion, reports, and stricter regulations on the procedures in the governance after the financial crash in 2008 (Árnason & Henrysson, 2018) reflected in the new law on governance (Icelandic parliament, 2011) the different formulation with the two WPs reveals how loosely defined and ministerial governed this process still is. The short time frame for publishing a WP in 2014, focusing solely on reading performance even though the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture had just recently issued a curriculum (2011/2013) that had not been implemented, is noticeable. On the other hand, this focus on literacy has existed for centuries in Iceland (Guttormsson, 2008).

The scarcity of people working in international relations for the state education government and the distance between the policy and academia in the field of education in Iceland provide more space for the external voice to design national policy. It is tempting to rely heavily on international sources, probably to a greater degree than others, when the state governance lacks the human resources required to tackle all their transnational duties and to translate the transnational effects to an Icelandic context (Ydesen et al., Chap. 11 in this volume). This is also a way to avoid being accused of nepotism in this small country. However, in a ministerial governance ministers can bypass objectives and ideas that already have gained status in the form of regulations and previous and current discourse, for example, in the local academic arena, and use this danger of nepotism to gain leeway from that and find an international knowledge provider abroad that is more in line with their own political agenda.

WP2014, the only document that was authorized and published exclusively by the Ministry, is a clear example of substantial externalization. It reveals the power of OECD and marketization of knowledge through rankings to produce, extract, and choose from the available knowledge to form a policy document. Transnational agencies manage to boil complex issues down to relatively simple numbers, to present sociological issues in terms of quantification. They come across as politically neutral in the service of local policy making. The data is seen as comparable and essentially problem free. So even if the evidence used sometimes only refers to the Nordic countries or even to one country, Iceland in our case, the reference base is still defined by OECD. Numbers and statistics have for a long time been used in educational research and also in policy making to understand the distribution of capital, poverty, educational outcomes, and so on. Numbers have been part of the national state for centuries to gain overview and control. The development in Iceland as it is represented in WP2014 shows the dominance of the international perspective and how governing by numbers is a way to ensure social justice and, thus, depoliticize political decisions. It is a technology of governance that aims at easing out politics and values that are based on other views and concurrently advocate for more efficiency, accountability, and effectiveness. It is an attempt at steering from above, especially aimed at teachers in WP2014, by collecting data that translate life in schools and communities into a series of graphs, grids, league tables, and indices and by introducing examples of best practices. This discourse is based on the view that competitive and test-driven education policy in the core subjects (reading and math) is the route to real social justice (Lingard et al., 2014; Sellar & Lingard, 2013).