Session Information
23 SES 10 B, Education Policy and Curriculum Formation
Paper Session
Contribution
Diverse studies, including the European Social Survey, repeatedly report a general diminution of public trust in diverse institutions. These findings serve as a starting point in order to reflect whether education is also affected by this 'erosion' of trust. Although the international education report 'Education at a Glance' (OECD 2009) includes indicators inquiring after the personal impacts of education on the disposition of trust, the social impacts of education reports have not been reflected, yet. The paper proposed aims at contributing to exploring and structuring this research gap.
Trust is regarded as functional for the reduction of complexity as well as ignorance (Luhmann 1969, 2000). It is considered a risky 'bet on the future' (Sztompka 1998) because Ego can never know whether Alter is aware about Ego’s expectations and whether Alter will respect these expectations and act accordingly. This explanation of trust refers to interpersonal trust. This kind of trust is differentiated from trust which is labelled system trust, institutional or general trust (Gambetta 1998). The paper proposed is reflecting the measure ‘education monitoring’ in the view of general trust.From this vantage point, the education system is confronted with huge expectations regarding efficiency and efficacy. In the face of this and in order to gain safe and solid knowledge of education and its effects, the education systems are being regularly and systematically monitored. This is not a completely new trend as in the 1990ies the emergence of an audit society (Power 1997) as well as the shift towards a governance by numbers (Porter 1980; Miller 2001) have already been debated and revisited in the context of the turn towards evidence-based education policy (Slavin 2008). Some research has also seized on the reflection of the implications of these trends (Busco/Riccaboni/Scpanes 2006; Miller 1994). In the meantime, publicly distributed information on education not only carries the potential to create a well-informed society. It also leads to a public diminution of trust concerning the efficiency and efficacy of institutions, in general (Schäfer 2010; Misztal 2001).
From a sociological point of view, instruments such as education reports can be regarded as tools that fit for closing the ignorance concerning inputs, processes and outputs. Besides, they can be regarded as measures to regain legitimacy as well as public trust as they systematically institutionalise self-observation (Luhmann 1969; Endreß 2002). This paper discusses whether the institutionalisation of education monitoring systems rather leads to the institutionalisation of distrust than to trust in education. Additionally, it will be discussed, whether the concept ‘trust’, which is basic in education, is subject of a transformation – from interpersonal to general trust and, therein, from rational trust to ethical trust (Hartmann 2004).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Busco, C.; Riccaboni, A.; Scapens, R.W. (2006): Trust for accounting and accounting for trust. In: Management Accounting Research, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 11-41 Endreß, M. (2002): Vertrauen. Bielefeld: transcript. Gambetta, D. (1988): Can we Trust Trust? In: Gambetta, D. (ed.): Trust. Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations, Cambridge. Basil Blackwell, pp. 213-239. Luhmann, N. (1969): Legitimation durch Verfahren, Neuwied. Luhmann, N. (2000, 4.A. [1968]): Vertrauen. Frankfurt. Miller, P. (1994): Accounting as social and institutional practice: an introduction. In: Miller, P.; Hopwood, A.G. (eds.): Accounting as social and institutional practice, Cambridge: University Press, pp. 1-39 Miller, P. (2001): Governing by numbers. In: Social Research, vol. 28, p. 379-390. Misztal, B.A. (2001): Trust and cooperation: the democratic public sphere. In: Journal of Sociology, vol 37, no 4, pp. 371-386. Porter, T.M. (1995): Trust in Numbers. The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life, Princeton. Power, Michael (1997): The Audit Society. Rituals of Verification, Oxford. Schäfer, A. (2010): Die Folgen sozialer Ungleicheit für die Demokratie in Westeuropa. In: Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, H. 4, S. 131–156. Slavin, R. E. (2008): Evidence-Based Reform in Education: what will it take? In: EERJ, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 124-128. Sztompka, P. (1998): Trust, Distrust and Two Paradoxes of Democracy. In: European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 1, pp. 19-32.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.