Session Information
23 SES 02 B, Approaching Education Policy (Part 2)
Paper Session
Contribution
The “tools” for development in school are many and various. In descriptions of school improvement and development stories about problems and opportunities are produced.
My purpose in this paper is to analyze school improvement, not as a factual essence, but as a repertoire and a genre of multiple stories or narratives. Narratives are expected to have elements of certain codes or plots, dramatis personae - characters, and rhetoric’s that form structures and figures of thinking (Boje, 2001, Bell, 1991, Czarniawska, 1997).
As a part of a research project (“School development as narrative”), I am examining ideas and concepts for development during 1990-2000, the analyze is also conducted with some historical comparisons.
The overarching question: How is development narrated and constructed in developing programs and ideas directed to schools in Sweden in the period of 1990 – 2009?
1. How are the different programs / concepts structured and plotted?
2. In whose name or from where is the need for development proposed to come?
3. Who and what kind of phenomena are considered as "helpers" respectively "opponents" and what strengths or effects are given them in the different developing stories?
4. What kind of desirable conditions and promises are produced in these narratives?
With these issues, I intend to examine how different development concepts are constructed. I treat them as specific rhetorically built narratives. My interest here concerns both 'plot', plot construction, style and linguistic metaphors, but also in what form and in what kind of context specific stories emerges. My empirical examples consists of developmental models and concepts constructed by educational researchers, official reports from Swedish (national and local) authorities and political committees, and recorded presentations by principals with descriptions of their local work with development. I interpret and categorize the most frequent occurring ideas as a repertoire (Wetherell & Potter 1992, 1987) of specific narratives: In one narrative, the focus is on organization, as the main tool for development, e.g. organizational conditions, decentralization or re-organization of collaboration. While another point out the importance of architecture and shaping the right kind of buildings for education. A third narrative, underlines the importance of cultivate a certain type of rational mentality, approach, attitude or principle – open for developmental action.
When buildings and abstract concepts, play the leading part in the development process, agency steered actions and (individual or collective actors and characters), rooted in individual human intentions, become more or less invisible.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bell, A “News Stories as Narratives” in Jaworski and Coupland Nikolas (ed.) (1999/2002) The Discourse Reader. London / New York: Routledge Boje, D. M. (2001) Narrative Methods for Organizational & Communication Research. London: Sage Publications. Czarniawska, Barbara (1997) Narrating the Organization. Dramas of Institutional Identity. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press Hébert, L (2006), ”The Actantial Model” in Louis Hébert (dir.), Signo [on-line], Rimouski (Quebec), http://www.signosemio.com Propp V. (1968/1975) Morphology of the Folktale. American Folklore Society Bibliographical and Special Series Volume 9. university of Texas Press. Austin and London Wetherell, M, Potter, J (1992) Mapping the Language of Racism. Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploration. New York: Columbia University Press
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