Session Information
23 SES 11 A, Perception and Use of Evaluation and Assessment: Classroom Level
Paper Session
Contribution
School curricula in the Western world have several goals to be achieved by students and teachers. Policy documents at national as well as international levels express the vision that the goals are attainable if you only proceed according to plan. The goals in the Swedish school curriculum presuppose detailed planning, by teachers as well as students, for a “successful” result, and different kinds of regulatory documentation have thus become a clear feature within an emerging culture of documentation in educational settings. The two educational key goals equity and individualization are of special importance for the reason that a regulatory culture of documentation is supported by policy documents that comprise the idea that it is possible to improve equity and individualization through education (Gundem & Hopmann 1998, Hopmann 2003). This paper aims to identify and examine contradictions within a regulatory documentation practice designed to promote curricular core values. While freedom of choice requires competencies that enhance individualization according to rational planning designed by the rules on the financial market, equity requires value-laden competencies that go beyond rational planning (Yates & Young 2010). The first question that will guide the argument in this paper is ‘Which policy problems and goals are fore grounded by policy makers?’ and the second is ‘How are teachers and students constructed in the curriculum guidelines?’ The third question that will be examined is ‘What consequences will contradictions between individualization and equity have for governance in educational settings?’
Curricular work has during the last two decades increasingly been linked to the individual teacher’s professional development (Gundem & Hopman 1998). Perceived as a theoretical concept, ‘curriculum’ includes philosophical, cultural and social conditions and can thus be regarded as a foundation of educational science that exceeds disciplinary boundaries. With such a conceptualization of curriculum theory, the epistemological implication for curriculum design will be that education policy is constructed discursively in a social practice, and the ideal images of teachers and students are constructed in the curricula texts (Yates & Young 2010). Using policy texts as data – guidelines for individual development plans issued by the National Agency for Education (Skolverket 2008) – the analysis utilizes discourse analytical methods where policies are perceived as “textual interventions into practice” (Ball 1993: 12, quoted in Saarinen 2008: 720), thus simultaneously “constructing policy and being affected by it” (ibid).
The design of a public text is theoretically based on the idea that texts carry meanings that can be accessible through the analysis of words, phrases and concepts (Searle 1997; Chouliaraki 1998), as well as through analysis of semiotic resources like images, layouts and graphs (Kress & van Leeuwen 2000). A speech act conceived as a written or spoken opinion has a performative function in the meaning that it affects the reader or listener (Searle 1997). The curriculum guidelines published by the National Agency for Education are here perceived as a written opinion with the performative function to frame teachers and students, and construct ideal images of them as agents in the new public market.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
CHOULIARAKI, LILIE (1998) Regulation in ’progressivist’ pedagogic discourse: individualized teacher-pupil talk. Discourse & Society, 9(5), 5-32 GUNDEM, BJØRG BRANDTZÆG. & HOPMANN, STEFAN THOMAS. (eds.) (1998). Didaktik and/or curriculum: an international dialogue. New York: P. Lang, cop. HOPMANN, STEFAN THOMAS. (2003) On evaluation of curriculum reforms. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 35(4), 459-478. KRESS, GÜNTHER & VAN LEUWEN, THEO. (2001) Multimodal discourse. The modes and meniaa of contemporary communication. London: Oxford University Press. NOREN, LARS (2003) Valfrihet till varje pris. Om design av kundvalsmarknader inom skola och omsorg. [Freedom of Choice at any Price. About the Design of Customer Choice Markets in Education and Nursing] Göteborg: Bokförlaget BAS POPKEWITZ, THOMAS S (2009) Curriculum study, curriculum history, and curriculum theory: the reason of reason. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 41(3), 301-319. SAARINEN, TAINA (2008) Position of text and discourse analysis in higher education policy research. Studies in Higher Education, 33(6), 719-728. SEARLE, JOHN R. (1997) Konstruktionen av den sociala verkligheten. [The Construction of Social Reality] Göteborg: Daidalos. SKOLVERKET [SWEDISH NATIONAL AGENCY FOR EDUCATION] (2008) Allmänna råd och kommentarer. Den individuella utvecklingsplanen med skriftliga omdömen. [General Advice and Comments. The Individual Development Plan with Written Remarks] Stockholm: Skolverket/Fritzes YATES, LYN & YOUNG, MICHAEL (2010) Globalisation, Knowledge and the Curriculum. European Journal of Education, 45 (1), 4-10.
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.