The Internationalisation of Federal Educational Policy

Abstract

The question of how agents, configurations of Swiss educational policy and their programmatic adjust to the internationalisation of educational policy is the central idea in this research paper. It is assumed that central as well as differentiated oriented agents in educational policy will participate in international projects. The starting point of the investigation is the development of historical contrasts between vertical, highly standardised and horizontal co-ordinators. Historically speaking the second orientation is clearly dominant in most policy fields, except that of educational policy where in addition to the second it also developed the first. The educational political field was increasingly differentiated during the expansion phase of the educational policy system in the second half of the 20th century. New agents show up and the traditional ones remain with their scientific oriented theories. At the same time both historical orientations exhausted themselves programmatically. The stronger appearance of international agents such as the OECD and the EU, thus the prominence of international forums, constellations and strategies becomes a commonly shared reference for the historically decentralised oriented agents aiming at difference as well as for the historically centralised agents aiming at unification.