ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses scandalisation as the first phase in the establishment of a national school crisis driven by unexpectedly weak performances in international large-scale assessments. It also discusses what is referred to as a second phase, called ‘normalisation’, where the logic and ideational content of the first phase gradually begins to permeate policymaking at all levels, thereby governing the way in which education is understood and acted out. The chapter explains Swedish national reform programmes in order to examine how the Swedish Government communicates with the EU in a context of crisis. Elaborating on the notion of ‘a data-driven school crisis’ shows that the visualisation of numerical data in league tables and ranking lists is not a neutral act. By focusing on the substantive ideas that comprise educational discourses, discursive institutionalism facilitates a multidimensional analysis that acknowledges both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of why policies change in the wake of crisis-oriented policy events.
