“To ensure supply and variety”: The dominance of neoliberal discourse in policy documents concerning curriculum materials for compulsory education in Iceland

• Main Author: Magnúsdóttir, Berglind Rós
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Icelandic
• Published: Icelandic Journal of Education 2015
• Subjects: Educational materials; curriculum materials; educational policy; neoliberalism; discourse analysis; democracy; Námsgögn; lög; stefnumótun; menntastefna; nýfrjálshyggja; lýðræði; Iceland
• Online Access: https://ojs.hi.is/index.php/uppmennt/article/view/1972

In recent decades, the neoliberal agenda has become a dominant force in educational policy throughout the Western world. These effects are transnational and the past two decades in particular have seen many sectors in Iceland undergoing reforms in line with the neoliberal imaginary. Neoliberal reforms of legal provisions in education embrace privatization; with its emphasis on consumerism and commodification followed by deregulation, neo-managerialism, instrumental rationalism and dedemocratization. In this article, changes in the educational materials publishing sector in Iceland are explored by analyzing the neoliberal discourse in legal and policy documents from the years 1990–2011. The analysis comprises a) a historical trajectory of neoliberalization in the government regulation of curriculum material by comparing the relevant Act from 1990 and the updated Act from 2007, and b) a discourse analysis of how the role of the National Centre for Educational Materials (NCEM) changed through the course of this neoliberalization, analysing the discourse in NCEM’s official policy documents produced by the board and the managers of NCEM 2007–2011. Prior to the changes in the regulations in 2007, NCEM, which is a state-run and state-funded publishing house, had the role of producing relevant curriculum materials for the compulsory school sector in Iceland. In 2007 the educational publishing sector was marketized and each school now receives state funds to buy educational materials on the open market, but, as before, materials from the NCEM are offered for free. The 2007 Act included privatization in the form of deregulation for private organizations with respect to many aspects of the sector concerning professionalism, democracy and quality evaluation and contracting some services to for-profit and non-profit agencies. NCEM still had such requirements as they were retained in a special regulation solely for them. The deregulation for private organizations included removing: a) the requirement to provide educational ...