Session Information
23 SES 10 B, Education Policy and Curriculum Formation
Paper Session
Contribution
Since the beginning of the 1990s, education policies have facilitated the possibilities for local actors to develop upper secondary school profiles regarding organisation, co-operation and content (Lundahl 2002, Arnesen & Lundahl 2006, Antikainen 2010). One of Sweden’s most common school profiles in upper secondary education today is school sport (Lund & Olofsson 2009). Two thirds of the municipalities in Sweden offer school sport as an educational option for their pupils´ (Lund 2010). In an upcoming educational reform the government directs a strong critique towards parts of the school sport system. The Government believes that the majority of local school sport programmes and courses prevent a national equivalence to be maintained, that upper secondary schools uses school sport to attract pupils for economic reasons and that some of the pupils involved in school sport may fail to reach the academic or vocational goals of the regular upper secondary education (Governmental Proposition 2008/2009:199). In addition, the largest Special Sport Federations also direct critique towards locally developed sport schools, suggesting that school sport must meet certain standards with a primarily focus on elite sport performance (Lund 2010).
From a theoretical standpoint the paper suggests that education policy needs legitimacy, which can be related to time and space and the symbolic meaning systems that members of civil society maintain and relate to (Alexander 2006). Alexander (2006) argues that symbolic meaning systems form binary pairs that define the motifs of a certain type of action as fair or unfair. For example, rational – irrational, realistic – distorted, straightforward – calculating, altruistic – greedy etc. Altogether, the relations between the positive and negative sides point out which upper secondary schools and which pupils that have the “right” to arrange and participate in school sport. The underlying symbolic meaning system that is ingrained in the policy actors’ texts and discussions about school sport is therefore also linked to different discourses. Fairclough (1992) discusses this standpoint in relation to critical discourse analysis: ‘In using the term “discourse”, I am proposing to regard language use as a form of social practice, rather than a purely individual activity or a reflex of situational variables’ (Fairclough 1992, p. 63). A given discourse partly constructs the relations between the Swedish Sports Confederation, upper secondary schools, sport clubs and pupils, and partly seeks to uphold legitimacy within the practice in which it takes place. In this way, policy discourses will create different types of scope for action and conditions for participation in sport profiled education of every single pupil and upper secondary school.
The purpose of this article is to visualize how educational policy reforms is linked to specific symbolic meaning systems and new forms of centralized policy steering that defines and organise upper secondary schools and pupils´ as being eligible or ineligible for participation in school sports.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Alexander, J. 2006. The Civil Sphere (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Antikainen, A. 2010. The Capitalist State and Education: The case of Restructuring the Nordic Model, Current Sociology, 54(4), 530-550 Arnesen, A-L. & Lundahl, L. 2006. Still Social and Democratic? Inclusive Education in the Nordic Welfare States, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(3), 285-300 Dir. 2007:8 Kommittédirektiv: en reformerad gymnasieskola [Directive to the committee: a reformed upper secondary school] (Stockholm, Utbildningsdepartementet). Fairclough, N. 1992. Discourse and Social Change (Oxford, Polity Press). Lindensjö, B. & Lundgren, U.P. 2000. Utbildningsreformer och politisk styrning. [Educational reforms nad political steering] (Stockholm, HLS). Lund, S. & Olofsson, E. 2009. Vem är idrottseleven? Idrottsprofilerad gymnasieutbildning och selektion [Who is the school sport pupils´? Sport profiled education and social selection], SVEBIs årsbok 2009, 125-150. Lund, S. 2010. Idrottsutbildning och utbildningsreformer: en kartläggningsstudie av Sveriges gymnasiala idrottsutbildning [School sports and educational reform: a national survey] (Stockholm, Riksidrottsförbundet). Lundahl, L. 2002. Sweden: decentralization, deregulation, quasi-markets – and then what? Journal of Education Policy 17(6): 687-697 Miller, D. 2003. Political Philosophy: a very short introduction. (Oxford, Oxford University press). Prop. 2008/09:199 Högre krav och kvalitet i den nya gymnasieskolan [Higher demands and quality in the new upper secondary school]. Stockholm: Utbildningsdepartementet. SFS 2010:235 Svensk författningssamling: förordning om ändring i gymnasieförordningen 1992:394. [Statue book of Sweden: changes of the regulation of upper secondary school].
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