Habituating Students towards Marginality and a life in the Precariat

Author(s):

Marianne Dovemark(presenting / submitting)Dennis Beach

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

19. Ethnography

Format:

Paper

Session Information

19 SES 05 A, Paper Session

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-03

11:00-12:30

Room:

B105 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Karen Borgnakke

Contribution

The present as well as the previous Swedish Education Acts (1997:107; 2002:120; 2010:800) state that education should be equivalent and designed in accordance with basic democratic values and human rights in terms of citizenship possibilities and democracy. The present paper takes its point of departure in Swedish upper secondary education. It concerns selection and differentiation processes there and at the interface of this school with the comprehensive sector. The data in the paper is generated from a school department called Chisel, an individual alternative within the former Individual Programme (IP) within the previous Swedish Education Act (2002:120). Its main formally expressed goal was to enable students to become eligible for a national programme. IP has now been replaced by five new programmes called introductory programmes which are, like the former IP, supposed to satisfy students’ different educational needs and provides clear educational routes.

As the name indicated the Individual Programme was strongly focused on the individual student. In official policy formulations it was concerned with preparing students for further studies in the upper-secondary school, including also even theoretical studies on academic programmes, as a foundation for higher education and life-long-learning. This was very clear in policy texts such as SOU 1997:107 and SOU 2002:120. However, in practice, in local educational work within schools themselves, official policy was usually re-contextualised according to different parameters. Ethnographic studies (see e g Beach and Dovemark, 2011; Dovemark, 2011) have identified two important dimensions: (i) a deficit view of the pupils attending the programme on the part of teacher teams and local educational leadership and (ii) a concomitant downscaling of the education they were offered to vocational training categories. As described in Beach (1999) they cut across understandings of pupils from all non-academic study programmes and represent a deep democracy problem at the very heart of our ‘one-school-for all’ ideal (Jonsson & Beach, 2013).

Method

The data, upon which this paper focuses, has primarily been produced from transcribed (field) interviews and observations into one particular research project but it links also to other previous investigations. In addition to participant observation and interviewing at the sites we have also read web sites and folders about the IP. All interview- and observation- transcriptions have been read and coded towards what has been recognised as important and interesting. Bernstein’s theoretical contributions to the analysis of educational class relations has guided us in this (Bernstein, 1975, 1999, 2000). This is an interpretative act that involves perception shaped by implicit or explicit theories (Trondman, 2008) or ideas that privilege certain meaning formations, in our case interpretations towards Bernstein’s device (Bernstein, 2000) in terms of a system of rules aimed to explain how symbolic control is materialised and realised in pedagogic practice.

Expected Outcomes

Our data reveal an increasing erosion of trust to the idea and practice of inclusion as a fundamental goal of the education system, and a narrowing of spaces where the older narratives of equality can be asserted. Teachers placed low demands on and had low expectations of the students at the studied programme and they generally quite vigorously advised them away from academically demanding choices toward manual work. Due to the individual schedules and the strong emphasis on freedom of choice students could also get away with following academic studies for just one day a week. The curriculum that was developed to serve the pupils group could be described as formed according to a typically horizontal knowledge discourse (Bernstein 2000). The students were not only denied a vertical organised content (Bernstein, 2000) but also denied analysis of social issues within an academically oriented education. The focus on manual labour at the cost of academically oriented studies actually prevented them to get passing grades to get into a national program (which was the main goal of the programme). The most serious result in our empirical data is the idleness many of the students were put in. They were allowed day after day to neither study nor work in the mechanical workshop or kitchen. We raise the question if there is a risk that these youngsters get used to the idleness and accept an uncertain future without jobs or at the best short-term ones, an insecurity and fragility of their social position which put them into what Standing (2011) express as the new ‘precariat’?

References

Beach, D. (1999) Om demokrati, reproduction och förnyelse i dagens gymnasieskola [Democracy, reproduction and renewal in upper secondary school], Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 4(4), s. 349-365. Beach, D. & Dovemark, M. (2011) Twelve Years of Upper-Secondary Education in Sweden: The Beginnings of a Neo-liberal Policy hegemony. In Educational Review. 63:3, 313-327. Routledge. Beach, D. & Jonsson, A-K. (2013) A Problem of Democracy - Stereotypical notions of intelligence and identity in college preparatory academic programmes in the Swedish upper secondary school. Nordic Studies in Education, ISSN 1891-5914, 04/2013, Volym 33, Nummer 1, pp. 50 - 62 Bernstein, B. (1975) Class, Codes and Control - Towards a Theory of Education Transmissions - Volume 3. London: Open University Press. Bernstein, B. (1999) Vertical and horizontal discourse: an essay. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(2), 157-173. Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic control and Identity: Theory, Research and Critique (revised edition). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Dovemark, M. (2011) Can this be called democracy. In Elisabet Öhrn, Lisbeth Lundahl & Dennis Beach (eds.) Young people’s influence and democratic education. Ethnographic studies in upper secondary schools. Ethnography and Education. Tufnell Press. Milton Keynes. UK. SOU 1997:107. Den nya gymnasieskolan - problem och möjligheter. Slutbetänkande av Kommittén för gymnasieskolans utveckling [The new secondary school - problems and opportunities. Final Report of the Committee for secondary school development]Stockholm: Fritzes SOU 2002:120. Åtta vägar till kunskap - en ny struktur för gymnasieskolan. Slutbetänkande av Gymnasiekommittén 2000 [Eight paths to knowledge - a new structure for Upper Secondary Schools. Final report of the Upper Secondary School Committee 2000].Stockholm: Fritzes. SOU 2008:27. Framtidsvägen - en reformerad gymnasieskola. Betänkande av Gymnasieutredningen [The way forward – a reformed upper seconday education. A Report of the Upper Secondary School Survey]. Stockholm: Fritzes. Standing, Guy (2011) The Precariat – The New Dangerous Class, London: Bloomsbury Academic. Trondman, M. (2008) Bypass surgery: Rerouting theory to ethnographic study. In Geoffrey Walford (ed) How to do Educational Ethnography. Ethnography and Education. London: Tufell Press

Author Information

Marianne Dovemark (presenting / submitting)

Gothenburg university

Department of Education and Special Education

Gothenburg

Dennis Beach

Gothenburg university, Sweden

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