To Örebro University

This presentation explores educational assessment practices as techniques for governmentality and as crucial tools for the construction of the knowing subject through contemporary schooling. When the history of assessment has been written, the connection between epistemology and subjectivity has rarely been considered, but, as we will show, the epistemology in curricula contributed to the development of certain specific assessmen tpractices, which fosters particular subjectivities, through relations of power and knowledge.

We analyze the history of examinations in relation to how different assessment practices shape different abilities, such as memory, judgement, imagination, reflexivity etc, and their connection to truths and reasoning. Our discussion expands on the typical understanding of Foucault's concept of examination (1975) and introduces the organization of students as both objects and subjects of knowledge. Thus, examinations can be delineated into two categories of knowledge-producing practices: one administrative practice focused on organizing individuals, and one teaching practice through which knowledge and learning are constructed – also known as summative and formative assessments.

Our presentation builds on a genealogy of assessments in education. A close reading of Swedish curricula from the late 16th century to the early 19th century provides the backdrop for an examination of contemporary notions and practices of assessment in 21st century curricula. With shifting emphasis over time, assessments in education serve a governmental function, validating both the knowledge acquired and its epistemological foundations. This situates the subjects in an epistemological position where they are trained to develop an evaluative judgement, enabling them to distinguish basically between ‘good’ and ‘poor’ work (Boud et al., 2018). However, this subject position - a learner with control over their own learning (Nulty 2010) - becomes normalized through the everyday practice of assessments, which risks obscuring the relations between power, learning and knowledge.

We suggest that these relations are partly framed within the practices of assessment, and that the subject is tied to certain forms of knowledge, through the processes of examination, and additionally that knowledge is validated and vindicated through these practices, governing learner subjects as well as teacher subjects.

Over the past four decades, Sweden's education system has undergone a profound transformation, shifting from a centralised structure to a market-oriented model characterised by independent schools, deregulation, and competition. This paper introduces an innovative methodological approach to studying this transformation by applying computational text analysis with large language models (LLMs) to 45 years of parliamentary debates. By leveraging these methods and extensive parliamentary open data, we identify thematic patterns, ideological shifts, and policy discourses that have shaped the marketisation of Swedish education. Our methodological contribution lies in demonstrating how LLMs can be employed to scale up traditional discourse analysis, bridging the gap between computational methods and qualitative interpretative approaches. We engage critically with the challenges of algorithmic opacity, validation strategies, and interpretative transparency, addressing concerns about bias and the risks of black-boxed analyses. Combining machine-assisted text analysis with traditional qualitative methodologies, we present a scalable yet nuanced framework for studying education policy debates over time.

Over the past four decades, Sweden's education system has undergone a profound transformation, shifting from a centralised structure to a market-oriented model characterised by independent schools, deregulation, and competition. This paper introduces an innovative methodological approach to studying this transformation by applying computational text analysis with large language models (LLMs) to 45 years of parliamentary debates. By leveraging these methods and extensive parliamentary open data, we identify thematic patterns, ideological shifts, and policy discourses that have shaped the marketisation of Swedish education. Our methodological contribution lies in demonstrating how LLMs can be employed to scale up traditional discourse analysis, bridging the gap between computational methods and qualitative interpretative approaches. We engage critically with the challenges of algorithmic opacity, validation strategies, and interpretative transparency, addressing concerns about bias and the risks of black-boxed analyses. Combining machine-assisted text analysis with traditional qualitative methodologies, we present a scalable yet nuanced framework for studying education policy debates over time.

This study addresses the issue of sampling error within research on subsets of parliamentary text corpora. Two samples of parliamentary speeches relating to the marketisation of the Swedish education system, drawn thr ough different sampling techniques, are analysed and compared. The analyses find that diverging sampling methodologies can be complementary as each method adds substantial quantities of unique documents to the dataset. Further, the diverging sampling methodologies employed produce documents with similar semantic content. However, analyses of the distributi on of speeches between party affiliations and speakers indicate va st differences between the two samples. These results indicate that sampling frames can substantially influence the findings of parliamentary text analyses. We conclude that combining different sampling techniques can be a way to reduce the ris k of sampling error, which in turn can have a strong influence on the conclusions drawn from analyses of parliamentary texts. 

The field of educational science displays some specific features that are closely intertwined with temporal and spatial contexts, historical and educational knowledge, the need for reform, and scientific self-reflection. This paper investigates the impact of various contextual factors on the history of educational science in Sweden, covering the period from the 1910s to the 2020s. In the early 20th century, the first education professors primarily came from backgrounds in psychology and philosophy. Their scholarly work focused on exploring the historical evolution of educational thought, delving into influential figures such as Descartes, Rousseau, The Jesuits, and various teaching and learning practices. This early historical discourse played a key role in legitimising education as a structured domain of knowledge with a rich tradition.

Another notable aspect of historiography in education arose concurrently with the comprehensive school reforms of the mid-20th century. The story that enveloped these reforms, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, was closely tied to the idea of ‘social engineering’ in education. This branch of historiography aimed to corroborate the reforms and the ever-growing nexus between educational science and policy. Over the subsequent decades, there was a rising interest in education within the History faculty, with a focus on micro and social aspects. However, there was little attention paid to the role and development of educational science. Currently, there is a new approach to the history of educational science that can be seen, encompassing its knowledge production from both a global, transnational perspective and a social constructivist viewpoint and thus introducing a self-reflection both in educational science and historiography. 

In his groundbreaking work[CL1] , The Order of Things, Michel Foucault analyses the evolution of different knowledge systems and scientific discourse throughout various historical periods. The concept of ‘episteme’ is introduced as a means of dissecting the overarching frameworks that governed pre-modern era modes of thinking and understanding. Foucault illuminates how distinct epistemes underpinned specific scientific inquiry forms and the institutionalization of sciences. Moreover, these epistemes organized the means by which the world is perceived and comprehended. This paper explores formal education, specifically how examination practices in the grammar schools re/produces a distinct 'epistemic culture' by using knowledge organization and validation techniques to shape how learners understand the world and themselves as subjects. In these schools, examinations were regulated in the curriculum. The paper departs from a close reading of Swedish curriculums from late 16th century to early 19th century.  One of the prevalent applications of Foucault in education concerns his delineation of examinations as instruments for organizational discipline and control of candidates, effectively making them objects for organizational (and mental) differentiation on the basis of their performances. In this paper, we examine examinations in relation to how oral and written tests shape different abilities, such as memory, judgement and imagination, and their connection to truths and reasoning in various school subjects. Our discussion expands on the typical understanding of Foucault's examination concept and introduces the organization of students as both objects and subjects of knowledge. Thus, examinations can be delineated into two categories of knowledge-producing practices: one administrative practice focused on organizing individuals and teaching practice on organizing knowledge and learning. The examination, as an administrative practice, can be construed as the production of knowledge about an individual's understanding. It served multiple purposes in relation to a more traditional Foucauldian understanding of examinations, such as admitting disciples, employing teachers, transferring disciples between classes, monitoring students, and ultimately dismissing teachers and disciples based on their knowledge adequacy. This function involved assessing either inadequate or full knowledge, contributing to the organization of individuals within the educational system. Simultaneously, the examination played a role in the organization of knowledge. It served as a rehearsal of crucial information, imprinting it in the disciples' minds. Moreover, it identified what was retained in the disciples' minds, transferring this knowledge to the schoolmaster's cognition or notebook. This dual ‘inscription’ effectively divided the educational experience, as disciples acquired Christian experience and memory while, concurrently, the process of acquiring this experience educated a new administrative memory. The examination, functioning as a knowledge assessment practice shaping the minds of the subject, laid the groundwork for an administrative assessment practice organizing them as objects. At the same time we can see how this practice of ‘the will to know what others know’ produced an ‘epistemic change’. Examining early school ordinances reveals an episteme characterized by an attempt to reconcile God, truth, and language. Speech and writing were deemed essential skills, with memory and judgment identified as spiritual qualities to be cultivated. The emphasis on memory aligned with the idealization of a nearly absolute reproduction of the Christian experience in Latin. David Hamilton's assertion in Curriculum History that this ‘absolutism’ tied knowledge to language underscores the necessity of separating language from truth to organize curricula for broader purposes. The onset of a transformative shift in the mid-1700s is discernible though, through two tendencies evident in Swedish school ordinances. Firstly, the transition of memory from oral communication to written text allowed for a clearer historical trajectory and facilitated comparisons over time; i.e. the possibility to assess change. Secondly, perhaps due to its ability to be documented, memory underwent a downgrading. Judgment, defined as the capacity to navigate the present with assistance from the past rather than dwelling in the past with present guidance, assumed a more prominent role; paving the ground for a more critical thinking. This transformation aligns with Reinhart Koselleck's thesis that the notion of the past as a repository of examples for correct living gave way around the mid-1700s to the concept of history as a dynamic process. The transmitted experience diminished in value as an organizing principle of society, replaced by emerging institutions such as economy, ideology, and management with a forward-looking perspective forming their own memory. In this new era, memory's value shifted from a reproduced experience to a produced experience, creating a disconnection between the learning mission of schools and their administrative functions.    [CL1]Gör tydligt från början att det verkar orimligt att examinationen primärt tog form som kontroll, utan här söks en närmare koppling till lärandet

This book covers the construction of international education research community in the 1950s-1990s, and the growth of its ‘disembedded’ laboratory i.e. networks, spaces, materiality, travelling, translations. The book follows a sociology of science theoretical framework in order to examine the research-archive of the Swedish internationally renowned educational scholar Torsten Husén (1916-2009). The archive reveals the shifting and heterogenous transnational networks that contribute to the development of social science research beyond fixed time and space dimensions, and that extends social science beyond individual ideas, researchers, environments, institutions and universities. These are practices that create, mobilise, sustain and challenge relations between actors in innovations, knowledge creation and various social activities. In other words, the archive represents the socio-material manifestation not only of the intellectual trajectory of a key education actor but the growing organisation of a whole scientific field at the time. 

How can we understand the uncertainties in high-stake measures such as PISA in relation to the claims that different authorities make from them? In this paper, we use a rather remarkable case from Sweden involving conflicting interpretations of the PISA 2018 results at a national political level and afight over statistics between two national agencies: National Agency for Education and the National Audit Office. The aim of this paper is to unpack processes of interpretations and claims that are often black-boxed in PISA debates: How can we understand the process that led up to the fight and what followed? Our data consist of media articles, broadcasts from the national television and radio (2018–2021), reports and memos from the two-state authorities involved in this debate, and email conversations between the two. Our results stress the need for further transparency in how PISA data are collected and calculated.