School Autonomy Policies and the Changing Governance of Schooling

Abstract

Since the mid-1990, but in particular since the so-called PISA shock, German-speaking countries have seen major changes in the governance of their school systems. The author of this paper aims to explain some conceptual tools for analyzing governance changes and to give examples of research into governance changes using these concepts. He begins by clarifying the special conceptual view on education systems and on educational reforms provided by the governance perspective, then continues by giving an overview of major educational reforms during the last two decades in German-speaking school systems and explains how they are analyzed and interpreted with the help of governance concepts. He concludes by using the Austrian school autonomy policy, which allowed schools to develop specific “curricular profiles,” as an example for discussing governance changes in a multilevel governance system.