European Educational Research Journal

Volume 12 Number 4 2013

www.wwwords.eu/EERJ
INTRODUCTION

The Governing of Education in Europe:

commercial actors, partnerships and strategies
MAARTEN SIMONS
Laboratory for Education and Society, University of Leuven, Belgium
LISBETH LUNDAHL
Department of Applied Educational Science, Ume University, Sweden
ROBERTO SERPIERI
Department of Social Sciences, Universiy of Naples Federico II, Italy

ABSTRACT Contemporary research on the European policy space in education has paid much
attention to decentralisation, deregulation and new modalities of privatisation and marketisation, but
there is less focus on how these processes and policies are actually played out in education. It is argued
that understanding the role of commercial actors, new local and global markets and publicprivate
partnerships in the governing of education becomes increasingly important. The aim of the article is to
introduce the special issue on commercialisation of the European Educational Research Journal by
discussing some general issues: theoretical and methodological considerations when studying
privatisation and commercialisation in the governing of education, conceptual clarifications, and
finally, possible themes and topics for study, but also for further debate.

Contemporary research on the European policy space in education has been conducted from a
number of different perspectives. One focus is the constitution of a new intergovernmental arena
including new discourses, new forms of deliberation and decision making, shifts from government
to governance, challenges regarding legitimacy and representation, and emerging tensions and
contradictions (Dale & Robertson, 2009). Another perspective is the understanding of Europe as an
assemblage of diverse interactions, discourses, associations, expertise and (hybrid) identities that
constitutes a transnational space of governing education (Lawn & Grek, 2012). Much attention has
been paid to decentralisation, deregulation, and new modalities of privatisation and marketisation
of education, but less focus has been paid on how these processes and policies are actually played
out in education. For instance the role of old and new commercial actors, the new partnerships and
their commercial logic of operation, and how new strategies of governing take shape has been little
dealt with. In other words, the European policy space is rarely approached by explicitly addressing
the creation and functioning of a commercial and a related financial space in education. Moreover,
such direction of analysis implies not only considering the hows, but also exploring the often
missing question of why. This means addressing the nexus between education, the wider financial
dynamics of capital and the neo-liberalising of the State (Ball, 2012, p. 29). The contributions
collected in this special issue of the European Educational Research Journal (EERJ) take up this
challenge. Before introducing the contributions, we discuss some general issues related to
privatisation and commercialisation in the governing of education: theoretical and methodological
considerations, conceptual clarifications, and finally possible themes and topics for study, but also
for further debate.
416

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2013.12.4.416

Downloaded from eer.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 12, 2015

Introduction
The Risk of Studying Commercialisation
The point of departure of the collected contributions in this special issue is that private, commercial
actors increasingly enter the European policy space and take up varied forms of roles in governing
activities and processes. Testing producers, data advice companies and education publishers are
examples among many others. At least two developments seem to have opened up the space for,
and hence at least facilitated, commercial involvement. First, policies on decentralisation, new
public management strategies and related reforms of administrative and governmental agencies,
have spread across Europe during the last two decades with different degrees of intensity. In several
European member states, these changes have created opportunities for new private actors to take
up a role both in the organisation and governing of education and an intensification of commercial
activities in and around education has taken place. Additionally, these commercial activities occur
at a transnational scale leading to new configurations of competition and collaboration. Second, the
current financial and economic crisis has deeply affected the funding resources and structures of
education across Europe (Ball et al, 2012). The resulting deficits in national finances has become a
problem for public systems of education and for government budgets generally, and has opened up
for new forms of private finance, new and increased commercial activities, and new partnerships in
the governing of education. Understanding the role of commercial actors, new local and global
markets and publicprivate partnerships in the governing of education within the European policy
space becomes increasingly important.
When addressing these issues, it is important to take some precautions. One of them departs
from Bourdieus discussion of the policy of globalisation: I deliberately say a policy of
globalisation, and do not speak of globalisation as if it were a natural process. In revealing his
specific theoretical commitment he continues: This policy is to a large extent kept secret, as far as
its production and distribution is concerned. And a whole work of research is needed at this point,
to reveal it before it can be put into practice (Bourdieu, 2001/2008, p. 380). In a similar way, it is
important not to assume implicitly or explicitly that what is understood by commercialisation and
privatisation is some kind of natural process. Theoretically, and also methodologically, such a
general naturalist approach includes from the very beginning a blind spot for it does not really
take into account all non-commercial mechanisms and operations that make commercialisation
actually work. Governmental constructions and political choices for instance might play a role in
enabling private involvement and in granting legitimacy to commercial logics. Furthermore, at a
more general level, when commercialisation becomes something that explains everything else it
installs a kind of immunised mindset that is no longer concerned with understanding through
confronting new and possibly challenging practices, mechanisms, ambivalences and tensions. The
ultimate risk is that a notion such as commercialisation becomes part of the list of master signifiers,
such as neo-liberalism, privatisation and marketisation that seem to create their own critical
discourse on policy discourses. For research and scholarly work it is of crucial importance not to be
completely trapped in and hence blinded by its own discourse and conceptual armature. At the
more practical level, the explanatory mode of reasoning in terms of natural processes at once
frames if not determines the space of possible (re)action and critical consideration. A focus on the
policy of commercialisation and hence on processes of construction and intervention allows to
detect or create spaces for reconstruction, for new interventions, or at least room for reconsidering
what is at stake in governing education.
In moving the problematic of commercialisation towards policies of commercialisation, and
related policies of privatisation, there is a risk of treating private, for-profit involvement, and
commercialisation solely or mainly as a deliberate political choice or outcome of a policy, localised
within or initiated by governments. Neo-liberal policies may provide the conditions and contexts in
which private, commercial actors can appear. They are often insufficient, however, to explain their
appearance, and foremost to come to an understanding of the kind of commercial activities, as well
as the new forms of partnership, collaboration and competition that take shape. This is first of all a
precaution against the risk of wishful thinking that all relevant actors, practices and strategies are to
be found in the time and space that is conceptually or theoretically projected. Especially when
dealing with actors and activities (that is, the private sector) that are commonly not associated with
governing, it is important not to limit the focus to political institutions, policy agendas and different
sorts of policy instrumentation. For that reason, we prefer to speak rather broadly about
417

Downloaded from eer.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 12, 2015

Maarten Simons et al
commercialisation in the governing of education, or more specifically, the role and effects of
private, commercial actors, the new partnerships, networks and emerging strategies in the
governing of education.
As indicated earlier, there is little scholarly attention to the appearance and role of
commercial actors and activities in and around education. This is not to say that this topic is not
being addressed. Although not in the middle, it clearly enters the picture in the vast amount of
studies that have been published during the last two decades on: education and neo-liberalism
(Giroux, 2004; Olssen et al, 2004); markets, choice and marketing in education (Kenway et al, 1993;
Gewirtz et al, 1995; Marginson, 1997; Apple, 2006); decentralisation, deregulation and education
policy (Lundahl, 2011); managerialism, new public management and accountability (Ranson, 2003);
and globalisation, corporatising, education service industries and free trade (Saltman, 2000;
Robertson et al, 2002; Toch, 2006; Robertson, 2010). Meanwhile, several studies have put the issue
of commercialisation central stage. One example is the work by Molnar (2006) who discusses, in
the American context, the commercial activities within and towards schools, but also explores how
schooling itself becomes a commercial activity. Hatcher (2000, 2006) addresses the new tendencies
of outsourcing to private companies of the implementation of government education policies and
the increased importance of a business interest in and for education through forms of sponsorship.
The studies by Ball (2008, 2012) and Ball and Youdell (2008) are important in that they shift the
focus from the general interest in the privatisation of education, as part of new public
management and marketisation, to revealing and understanding diverse, concrete forms of the
privatisation in education (ranging from for-profit education to phenomena of cola-isation).
Finally, the work of Burch (2006, 2009) focuses on the hidden market and educational
privatization in the aftermath of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), and more specially the
mechanisms of the education industry that includes activities ranging from test development and
data management to management consulting.
Despite the growing research interest, commercialisation of education is not a major issue
and hence it is worth reflecting about possible reasons for that. First and most evident is perhaps
that it is about rather new phenomena and developments. Although commercial actors, for
instance, with regard to teaching material or school meals, have played a role in education for a
long time, the intensity but also modality have changed. The classic alliance between the national
state and public education is broken down, and new governing assemblages with new alliances,
including private partners and/or competitors, take shape. The actors are not just vendors in the
margins or doing business in specific and defined educational activities. Being involved in activities
of advising, testing, management, reform and development of educational technologies, they
increasingly play a role in or actually make up the educational core-business. Second, as long as the
classic alliances between the national state and public education are the point of departure to
approach and think of the governing of education, private actors, new partnerships and commercial
actions remain invisible or hidden (Ball, 2008), let alone that we come to understand their roles, the
emerging strategies or possible effects and consequences, and the global scale at which they
operate. Third, the study of the role of private actors in the regulation, (reform) management,
ownership and funding of education is often, as Burch (2009, p. 2584) argues, polarized around
broader ideological arguments: advocates of private involvement and market mechanisms in
education in view of efficiency and quality improvement on the one hand, and scholars that focus
on how market related mechanisms and commercial interest dismantle public education with
major impacts on issues related to equal opportunities. There is a risk here that the assumption of a
market-state divide prevents us from being attentive to or focus on actual mechanisms of
commercialisation that cross this divide. Fourth, and related to the previous points, a major
challenge to come to an understanding of the role and impact of private and commercial actors is
to move at the theoretical level beyond forms of methodological nationalism and statism (Dale,
2009). Furthermore, in order to look at governing beyond state, national culture and public and
formal education it is not sufficient to focus on governing networks and modes of governance, but
also to consider from the very beginning both public and private actors and activities in governing
education. One could take a further step to avoid such a form of methodological statism and
nationalism by referring to the greedy capitalism and its accumulation by dispossession (Harvey,
2005, p. 159), and by analysing how it erodes public education resources thanks to the privatisation
and financialisation of such resources (Ball, 2012). The challenge hence becomes to address not
418

Downloaded from eer.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 12, 2015

Introduction
just public non-profit organisations and considerations, but also the involvement of the private
sector and both the non-profit and for-profit logics. Finally, the matter of commercialisation is
often difficult to research for practical reasons, since information may be protected or otherwise
difficult to access, and also undergoes rapid changes.
It has already been mentioned that the appearance of private and commercial actors in and
around education is not new, neither is the critical and public concern about these issues. Molnar
(2006, p. 622) refers as an example to the appointment of a National Education Association
committee in the 1920s in the United States of America (USA) that studies which commercial
activities and interventions could be in conflict with educational and democratic concerns. There is
a concern to protect schools and children from sorts of commercial interference through school
material, food or advertising that could be harmful or promote certain interests. Although there
are major differences between countries and regions, up till today commercial but also political or
religious activities in and around schools are recognised and usually subject to some kind of
regulation. It is probably not just a matter of scale or intensification. For sure, our society has
increasingly been organised as a society of producers and consumers, and with commercial
activities such as selling and marketing becoming part of many domains of social and private life.
Education has been no island in that regard. Important to mention in this context is the increasing
role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the provision of education and the
new commercialisations that are favoured: from hardware such as white boards and tablets to the
related educational software. But there is more at stake. What is rather new is the organisation of
schooling for profit, the private involvement in the organisation of teacher training, sponsorship or
several forms of outsourcing and contracting out. This indicates that private actors and commercial
activities and relations increasingly become part of education itself. It also indicates that private,
commercial actors become part of the governing of education, and perhaps, to a certain extent, this
is the result of a deliberate policy strategy.
Conceptual Clarifications and Agenda Setting
The collected contributions in this special issue address, in one way or another, the issue of private
and commercial actors in the governing of education. Several related concepts are used however to
address these issues. Without aiming at strict definitions and full transparency, and without doing
justice to the broad field of literature, it could be helpful to focus on some of the often recurring
concepts.
The focus on the commercial activities in education is often part of a broader perspective on
privatisation a process whereby activities and services previously organised by public or
government institutions are transferred to private actors, organisations and agencies. Different
dimensions of privatisation in education can be distinguished: privatisation in terms of
ownership/provision, funding or regulation (see also Dale, 1989). It is argued however not to look
at these processes as merely a zero-sum game of transfer, but in terms of a reconfiguration and new
assemblages of private and public actors (see Burch, 2006), and with taking into account the
revision of the publicprivate divide itself (Marginson, 2007). For evident reasons, these general
tendencies of privatisation are often regarded as a precondition for commercial actors to enter and
activities to emerge in and around education.
Furthermore privatisation is clearly related to the notions of liberalisation, marketisation and
commodification. Liberalisation in education commonly refers to the process of allowing more,
and hence foremost private, providers to play a role in education, and thereby to increase
competition. A typical example is the liberalisation of trade in educational service as part of the
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) that includes four modes of trade: the crossborder supply of services; consumption abroad; the commercial presence of organisations abroad;
and the presence of persons or staff abroad (see for instance, Verger, 2008). The notion of
marketisation is generally used to address the process of organising market forces (for instance,
school choice or competition) in education instead of hierarchical (bureaucratic) modes of
coordination and provision by local or national governments. The related term commodification
refers to the process where education and related activities become treated as a commodity, and
foremost in terms of exchange value instead of a kind of (intrinsic) use value (Naidoo & Jamieson,
419

Downloaded from eer.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 12, 2015

Maarten Simons et al
2005). More specifically, it refers to how knowledge, as well as the educational process, becomes
something that is produced, that can be sold, and hence something that can be consumed (cf.
Lyotard, 1984). This opens up the space for specific modes of production and marketing where
services are customised by taking into account the needs or feedback of individual customers, and
what is called customarisation (see also discussion related to personalised learning; Hartley, 2007).
In the context of education, the term commercialisation, finally, is often used in a very broad
sense to mean a process where private, for-profit agencies and commercial transactions have an
impact on or become part of the scene of education. Molnar (2006, pp. 621-622) offers a useful
distinction when it comes to the commercialisation of education: selling to schools, selling in
schools or selling of schools, that is, commercial activities with educational actors (e.g. selling
school equipment, information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, food and
drinks, etc.), commercial actors that look at the school as a site for advertisement and contact with
potential buyers, and schools as commodities that can be sold (what Molnar refers to as
privatisation).
General definitions and distinctions such as these are risky when the conceptual work
prevents one to look at how mechanisms, operations and logics are played out in different contexts
and when one jumps to general concluding explanation or critical judgement. They are useful
however to clarify the amount of issues and developments to be taken into account when studying
the role of private, commercial actors in and around education. When explicitly addressing the
changes in governing from the perspective of private actors and commercial logics, the more
integrated focus of Ball (2008, 2012) and Ball and Youdell (2008) on forms of privatisation is
particularly useful as a heurist tool. They distinguish between privatisation in public education
(endogenous privatisation) and privatisation of public education (exogenous privatisation).
Privatisation in public education involve the importing of ideas, techniques and practices
form the private sector in order to make public sector more like business and more business-like.
Types of privatisation under this form often not named as privatisation include the
organisation of quasi-markets, modes of new public management and tendencies towards
performance management and related forms of accountability and performance related pay. Forms
of privatisation of public education involve the opening up of the public education services to
private sector participation on a for-profit basis and using the private sector to design, manage or
deliver aspects of public education (Ball & Youdell, 2008, p. 14). Several types are distinguished and
discussed by Ball and Youdell: public education for private profit, private sector supply of
education (contracting out services, contracting out schools), public private partnerships,
international capital in public education, commercialisation (or cola-isation), and philanthropy,
subsidy, aid (p. 5). These types are considered to be all part of the fast growing, globally operating
edu-business, and in that regard there is also what they call, in line with Mahony et al (2004), a
privatisation of policy. It is not only that privatisation itself is a policy tool in the reorganisation
and management of education, but there is also the privatisation of policy programmes and of
policy itself through advice, consultancy, evaluations and research, and policy formulation and
writing (Ball & Youdell, 2008, p. 14; Ball, 2008, 2012). Private actors and commercial interest start
to play a role in different phases of the policy process itself, and become major players in the
governing of education.
When considering the privatisation and commercialisation in and of education, and the
modes of privatisation and commercialisation in the governing of education, a rather broad field of
possible research opens up. Several focuses, themes and issues become worth examining. One
focus is on partnerships, and more particularly on the ongoing shift of the modes of governing
towards heterarchical settlements (Dean, 1999/2010; Jessop, 2002). This means to pay attention to
the specific forms of interaction, communication, financial transaction and division of labour that
emerge when private and public actors collaborate, and when, for instance, for-profit and not-forprofit interests, and even philanthropic ones, come together. Ball and Junemann have offered an
interesting definition of these arrangements: Heterarchical relationships [that] replace bureaucratic
and administrative structures and relationships with a system of organisation replete with overlap,
multiplicity, mixed ascendancy and divergent-but-coexistent patterns of relation (2012, pp. 137-138,
original emphasis). Thus, from a methodological point of view, studying heterarchies requires
developing new tools for representing and mapping the policyscapes as assemblages in perennial
becoming which cut across the traditional divides, such as publicprivate, educationeconomy,
420

Downloaded from eer.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 12, 2015

Introduction
statemarket, enterprisesprofessions, etc. Another topic is how ideas and procedures of
accountability are reconfigured as part of tendering, contracting and outsourcing, and how the
model of corporatisationcompetitivenesscommercialisation (Robertson, 2010, p. 191) is
supported by national governments in their attempt to face global pressures in (higher) education.
A theme that is worth investigating is the production and distribution of knowledge, and, for
instance, new forms of data circulation and management, markets of education reform and
innovation expertise, specific sites and processes of knowledge construction, commercial flows of
ideas and products, and new figures of educational experts and entrepreneurs. This can be linked
up with a focus on the emergence of new patterns, spaces and strategies in the governing of
education, and taking into account several scales of governing, possible differences between levels
of education and the ultimate effects and consequences. In this context, Lawn (2011, p. 259) states
that a new governing architecture of public and private actors and sites is building European
education through arrays of interlocking standards, and he argues that governing by standardizing
excludes politics and relies on experts while offering workable solutions to governing and being
governed in Europe. This indicates again why it is of utmost importance to take into account
actors, interactions and interests that are often not associated with the field of governing and
policy.
Each of the contributions collected in this special issue takes up this challenge. They thus
subscribe to the idea that a deeper understanding of private actors and commercial interest in their
varied forms in the organisation, funding or governing of the education space across Europe might
help to grasp specific policy patterns and governing strategies as part of the construction of the
education space in Europe and each of the member states. But the contributions have an additional
motivation. The focus is not only on policy and governing, but they share as well a concern for
education (Simons et al, 2009). As part of commercialisation and privatisation, the European
education space is clearly confronted with new forms of authority and power concentration,
specific modes of corporate and financial power, as well as new (hegemonic) discourse, rhetoric or
ideology that actually influence (how to look at) the role and meaning of education. The concern
here is not only with the impact on or consequence for major issues, such as equal opportunities,
the definition of educational quality, teacher professionalism and democratic involvement and
decision-making. Equally important is to understand whether and how these issues are being
redefined or reframed, and hence to actually challenge the often taken for granted position of
critical scholarship that relies on a classic definition of the public good, education and government.
The Contributions
In line with the previous sketches of the field of research, it will come as no surprise that the
collected contributions are diverse. There is not only diversity in contexts, and particularly
countries, that are being studied, but also there is diversity in themes and topics in the broad field
of privatisation and commercialisation both in and of education.
With an explicit focus on the privatisation in education, Emiliano Grimaldi investigates three
processes in the Italian context: the widening of the spaces for private schooling; the ongoing
privatisation of policy; and the dynamics of new and old markets in education processes that were
fuelled by the economic crisis. These processes are contextualised by addressing three specific
trends in governing the European space of education, namely, the concern with austerity, the focus
on standardisation, and the processes of digitalisation. Based on this analysis, the author critically
discusses how markets and edu-businesses play an increasingly important role in current modes of
governing in education.
In her article, Natalie Papanastasiou examines another form of privatisation in education:
commercial sponsor involvement in academies in England. Drawing on empirical findings, she
investigates how commercial actors play a role in academies including their active role in the
reconstruction of publicprivate categories. These findings stress the importance of studying
commercialisation in local contexts, and more particularly the understanding of local assemblages
of policy.
Privatisation and related commercialisation of the governing of education can also take shape
through selling and buying particular ideas, techniques and methods. This is the theme of the
421

Downloaded from eer.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 12, 2015

Maarten Simons et al
contribution of Eli Ottesen, Birthe Lund, Sarah Grams, Marit Aas and Tine Sophie Pritz. From the
perspective of policy borrowing, they analyse how a Norwegian method for school development
has been imported in Denmark. The study clearly indicates that an understanding of the
commodification of school reform and development, and the existence of a global marketplace for
these commodities, is required to understand the governing of schools in Norway and Denmark
today.
The contribution of Ingela Andreasson and Marianne Dovemark discusses in a similar way
processes of commercialisation by taking a clear look at the effects of commodification. The study
of the digital assessment tools Unikum and InfoMentor used in Swedish schools clarify how these
commercial tools become actually part of the governing of education. They reshape the identities
of both students and teachers, and at that point the authors express their concern with tendencies
that result in the de-professionalisation of teachers.
A similar concern with teachers underlies the contribution of Antonio Olmedo, Patrick
L.J. Bailey with Stephen J. Ball on the Teach for All network that is spreading across Europe and
around the world. Their study of the heterarchical network of public and private agencies around
teacher education shows that commercialisation in education is not only about making money, but
also about making people up as commercial and enterprising subjects. In other words, a focus on
both commercial aspects, as well as on the production of new subjectivities, is needed in order to
understand the governance of teacher education in Europe.
The final contribution takes as a point of departure the processes of liberalisation and
privatisation of education in Belgium (Flemish Community) in order to investigate the case of a
private company that becomes a provider of higher education. Bruno Broucker and Kurt De Wit
argue that although the framework of higher education in Flanders remains rather closed and
relatively unaffected, it does challenge the position of traditional providers of higher education in
terms of becoming sensitive to new needs.
There is one important final comment to be made. This special issue is the result of a special,
open call by the journal. The call attempted to collect relevant contributions on a particular topic,
and by doing that the collection itself hopefully is a contribution to turning the issues of
privatisation and commercialisation into a European issue. Perhaps the making of a special issue
based on an open call is itself a mode of Europeanisation. It could be seen as an attempt to turn
privatisation and commercialisation in the governing of education, not only into a matter of
scholarly concern, but hopefully also into matter of public debate important and urgent because
it is about who is governing education and in whose name and interest education is being
governed. Evidently, it is important to remain aware of topics and themes that are not addressed by
the contributions or only explored in the margins. Although the contributions do represent diverse
contexts and regions across Europe, and each of them includes European references or discussions
about Europeanisation, processes and tendencies of privatisation and commercialisation of
Europe and as part of European governing are only being partially addressed. The focus on
commercialisation as a dimension of Europeanisation, for instance as part of European research
projects, sponsorship and consultancy, deserves more attention.
References
Apple, M. (2006) Educating the Right Way: markets, standards, God, and inequality. 2nd edn. New York:
Routledge.
Ball, S.J. (2008) The Education Debate. Policy and Politics in the Twenty-first Century. London: Policy Press.
Ball, S.J. (2012) Global Education Inc.: new policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary. London: Routledge.
Ball, S.J. & Junemann, C. (2012) Networks, New Governance and Education. Bristol: Policy Press.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781847429803.001.0001
Ball, S.J., Maguire, M. & Goodson, I. (Eds) (2012) Education, Capitalism and the Global Crisis. London:
Routledge.
Ball, S.J. & Youdell, D. (2008) Hidden Privatisation in Education. Brussels: Education International.
Bourdieu, P. (2001/2008) Scholars and the Social Movement, in P. Bourdieu (Ed.) Political Interventions: social
science and political action, pp. 380-383. London: Verso.

422

Downloaded from eer.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 12, 2015

Introduction
Burch, P.E. (2006) The New Educational Privatization: educational contracting and high stakes
accountability, Teachers College Record, 108(12), 2582-2610.
Burch, P. (2009) Hidden Markets: the new education privatization. New York: Routledge.
Dale, R. (1989) The State and Education Policy. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Dale, R. (2009) Contexts, Constraints and Resources in the Development of European Educational Space and
European Education Policy, in R. Dale & S. Robertson (Eds) Globalisation and Europeanisation in
Education. Oxford: Symposium Books.
Dale, R. & Robertson, S. (Eds) (2009) Globalisation and Europeanisation in Education. Oxford: Symposium
Books.
Dean, M. (1999/2010) Governmentality. Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage.
Gewirtz, S., Ball, S. & Bowe, R. (1995) Markets, Choice and Equity in Education. Buckingham: Open University
Press.
Giroux, H.A. (2004) The Terror of Neoliberalism. Boulder, CO: Paradigm
Hartley, D. (2007) Personalisation: the emerging revised code of education?, Oxford Review of Education,
33(5), 629-642. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054980701476311
Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hatcher, R. (2000) Profit and Power: business and Education Action Zones, Education Review, 13(1), 71-77.
Hatcher, R. (2006) Privatization and Sponsorship: the re-agenting of the school system in England, Journal of
Education Policy, 21(5), 599-619. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680930600866199
Jessop, B. (2002) The Future of the Capitalist State. Bristol: Polity Press.
Kenway, J., Bigum, C. & Fitzclarence, L. (1993) Marketing Education in the Post-modern Age, Journal of
Education Policy, 8(2), 105-122. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0268093930080201
Lawn, M. (2011) Standardizing the European Education Policy Space, European Educational Research Journal,
10(2), 259-272.
Lawn, M. & Grek, S. (2012) Europeanizing Education Governing a New Policy Space. Oxford: Symposium.
Lundahl, L. (2011) The Emergence of a Swedish School Market, in R. Hatcher & K. Jones (Eds) No Country for
the Young. London: Tufnell Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2011.10.2.259
Lyotard, J-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge, trans. G. Bennington & B. Massumi.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Mahony, P., Hextall, I. & Menter, I. (2004) The Emotional Impact of Threshold Assessment on Teachers in
England, British Educational Research Journal, 30(3), 443-464.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411920410001689724
Marginson, S. (1997) Markets in Education. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Marginson, S. (2007) The Public/Private Divide in Higher Education: a global revision, Higher Education, 53,
307-333. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10734-005-8230-y
Molnar, A. (2006) The Commercial Transformation of Public Education, Journal of Education Policy, 21(5),
621-640. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680930600866231
Naidoo, R. & Jamieson, I. (2005) Knowledge in the Marketplace: the global commodification of teaching and
learning in higher education, in P. Ninnes & M. Hellstn (Eds) Internationalizing Higher Education,
pp. 37-51. Rotterdam: Springer.
Olssen, M., Codd, J. & ONeil, A. (2004) Education Policy. London: Sage.
Ranson, S. (2003) Public Accountability in the Age of Neo-liberal Governance, Journal of Education Policy,
18(5), 459-480. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0268093032000124848
Robertson, S. (2010) Corporatisation, Competitiveness, Commercialisation: new logics in the globalising of
UK higher education, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(2), 191-203.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767721003776320
Robertson, S., Bonal, X. & Dale, R. (2002) GATS and the Education Services Industry: the politics of scale and
global reterritorialization, Comparative Education Review, 46(4), 472-496.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/343122
Saltman, K.L. (2000) Collateral Damage: corporatizing public schools a threat to democracy. Lanham. MD: Rowan
& Littlefield.
Simons, M., Olssen, M. & Peters, M.A. (Eds) (2009) Re-reading Educational Policies: a handbook studying the
policy agenda of the 21st century. Rotterdam: Sense.

423

Downloaded from eer.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 12, 2015

Maarten Simons et al
Toch, T. (2006) Margins of Error: the education testing industry in the No Child Left Behind era. Washington, DC:
Education Sector.
Verger, A. (2008) Measuring Educational Liberalisation. A global analysis of GATS, Globalisation, Societies and
Education, 6(1), 13-31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767720701855576

MAARTEN SIMONS is professor at the Laboratory for Education and Society of the University of
Leuven, Belgium. His principal interests are in educational policy and theory, new global and
European regimes of governance in education, and the public role of (higher) education and
teachers/academics. Correspondence: maarten.simons@ppw.kuleuven.be
LISBETH LUNDAHL is Professor in Educational Work in the Department of Applied Educational
Science, Ume University, Sweden. Her research concerns education governance, youth policies,
and new patterns of young peoples school-to-work transitions and life-careers. At present she is the
leader of two research projects: Upper Secondary Education as a Market and Troublesome
Transitions: school-to-work transitions of young people at risk.
Correspondence: lisbeth.lundahl@educ.umu.se
ROBERTO SERPIERI is professor of Sociology of Organisation, Department of Social Sciences,
University of Naples Federico II, Italy. His main interests of study and research concern educational
policy and governance with a special focus on educational leadership, discourse analysis and
structuration theory. He is a member of the International Editorial Board of the Italian Journal of
Sociology of Education and of the Journal of Educational Administration and History.
Correspondence: profrobertoserpieri@gmail.com

424

Downloaded from eer.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on July 12, 2015