Repurposing public education: governmental rationality of education export in Finland through public education problematisations

Abstract

The Finnish government’s education export (FGEE) programme, which was initiated in 2010, seeks to promote and coordinate education as an export product. Until recently, research on the Finnish education export has focused on individual education sectors, with only passing consideration of the governmental rationality of education export. Drawing on Bacchi’s (2009) post-structural policy analysis, I use the FGEE documents as a material starting point, as ‘practical texts’ (Bacchi 2009, 34; Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, 34) to study how education export discourse problematises public education and produces a contextualised governmental rationality. Contributing to the growing body of knowledge on emerging global, national, and local public–private structures, the paper illustrates how minor policy strands such as the FGEE programme can be seen as production sites in which education practices and their governmental rationalities are constructed.