Equity Through Assessment? Teaching in Socioeconomically Different Classrooms During the Swedish Implementation of Grades and National Tests in Year Six

Author(s):

Ola Strandler(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Format:

Paper

Session Information

27 SES 08 A, Assessment Issues in School Subjects

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

09:00-10:30

Room:

B015 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Jens Dolin

Contribution

This paper is framed by the international trend of increasing reliance on assessment policies for national school enhancement. Driven by perceptions of an integrated and economically competitive world, educational strategies often focus on monitoring the achievements of pupils and schools. These perceptions are underpinned by a number of international tests and comparisons. Thus, policies emphasising various forms of assessment have been implemented in many countries, suggesting that educational reforms are often articulated in what can be regarded as an assessment paradigm. The notion of this paradigm entails that measurement and clarification of pupils’ results have become a driving force in policy and thus a central element for teaching.

For most European countries, the recently published PISA survey resulted in extensive media attention, as well as in a plethora of political statements. In Sweden, two aspects of the results attracted most of the attention: the continuing deterioration of results and the seemingly increased educational inequalities between schools, as Sweden used to be one of the highest-ranked countries. Concurrently with these new and highly disturbing results, Sweden undergoes a series of reforms that are meant to address these developments. The most central parts of the new policies focus on educational performances, introducing a new grading scale with different criteria and more levels, starting from lower ages; a more thorough regulation of educational content; national tests in a wider variety of subjects and at lower ages; a strengthened school inspectorate etc. As most Swedish reforms after world war two, the new policies are embedded in a rhetoric of increasing equity, stating that a focus on educational performances will serve as an instrument to identify pupil needs. Hence, the deterioration of both results and equivalence are targets for reform.

Against this background, it is argued in the paper that the continuing reformation of the Swedish educational system (which are perhaps occurring later than in most other countries) is a good example of how the assessment paradigm frame conceptions of what good teaching entails. Not least, this can be seen in increasing elements of performativity, where numeric and statistical measurements and international comparisons become a valid and even dominant expression of quality, and progress, and where visibility becomes the priority, drawing focus towards the measurable, reportable, and evaluable, i.e. how teaching can be represented in terms of performances. The aim of this paper is to use the example of the Swedish reforms to critically discuss the notion of performativity as a driver for increasing educational equity. The paper is built upon six cases where teachers that work with pupils from different socioeconomic backgrounds are followed while implementing the reforms. Interpretation of the collected data is focused on how the new assessment practices are manifested in classroom teaching: What considerations the teachers make and what teaching they consider to be necessary and/or possible under the present circumstances.

In order to enable an interpretation of teaching under increased influence of performativity, a critical hermeneutical approach and the concept of practical reason were used, both inspired by French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. This approach offered a dialectic process of interpretation: on the one hand regarding teaching as an expression of, and as being regulated by, ideological and politicised conceptions (i.e. performativity and equity); and on the other hand, regarding teaching as an expression of teachers’ individual work with pupils in everyday practice. With the concept of practical reason, the teachers’ mediating role in practice between these aspects of teaching could be illuminated.

Method

The critical hermeneutical approach’s aim was to establish an interpretation of data where close understanding (i.e. regarding teaching as an expression of individual work with pupils in everyday practice) was used in conjunction with distanced explanation (i.e. regarding teaching as an expression of, and regulated by, ideological and politicised conceptions). The paper thus begins with an exposition of the assessment reforms, as well as an interpretation of their ideological aims and objectives, built on earlier research. However, the bulk of the empirical data were collected from six teachers during their first year of implementing of the reforms. The teachers taught pupils with different socioeconomic backgrounds: While three of them worked in schools located in areas where a majority of the pupils came from high socioeconomic homes; the other three worked in schools located in areas where a majority of the pupils came from low socioeconomic homes. The data consists of field notes, documented informal interviews/conversations and transcribed interviews with the teachers. The design of the study included an initial interview before the specific reforms were implemented (during spring semester 2012); participatory observations during implementation (between three to five weeks during the school year of 2012/2013); and a retrospective interview after the first year of implementation (during the school year of 2013/2014). The initial interview was unstructured and focused on attitudes toward the reforms and expectations on its influence on teaching, while the retrospective interview was more structured and explored themes that emerged from analysis of the observations and the initial interview. The teachers were selected for the study because of their relatively long experience of teaching, but relatively limited experience of grading and national testing. There are some specific reasons for investigating experienced teachers with little or no experience of these types of assignments. These teachers to some extent represent the current changes in the school system. Grades and national tests are new elements in teaching for many teachers, which is why these are often introduced in established practices, relatively unaffected by similar assessment practices. Consequently, the implementation of the reforms was a unique opportunity to study situations where established practices are subjected to profound policy changes.

Expected Outcomes

In line with the critical hermeneutical strive toward close understanding of teaching, interpretation of data suggested that the teachers implemented the reforms in highly different ways. Despite these differences though, some very clear patterns were illuminated when teaching was related to the increasing emphasis on performativity in the reforms. These patterns in teaching followed the lines of pupils’ socioeconomic backgrounds. In all six cases, teaching was clearly characterized by performativity in that the teachers assessed the quality of their own teaching in relation to the extent in which it could result in auditable and thereby assessable products. However, the teachers with pupils from high socioeconomic homes regarded this as less problematic or difficult, although there were some criticisms toward the effects of performativity on teaching. For the teachers with pupils from low socioeconomic homes, this perceived requirement of producing auditable and assessable results were highly problematic and difficult, and they found themselves compelled to focus on other forms of teaching than what they regarded necessary for their pupils to succeed. Although a study of this character cannot result in any general conclusions on what teaching under increased influence of performativity entails, they do point toward the need for of a more problematized and nuanced attitude toward the notion of performativity as a drive for educational equity. If the results are raised above the individual classrooms and related to structured differences between schools, the cases suggest that there is a high risk of frictions between the ideologically motivated aims of equity and performativity. To sum up, in a time when it becomes increasingly important to produce auditable results, the results suggest that increasing emphasis on performativity can contribute to increased rather than decreased differences between schools, and in how they provide equal life opportunities for pupils from different backgrounds.

References

Ball, S. J. (2003) The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 215-228. Beach, D. and Dovemark, M. (2009) Making ‘right’ choices? An ethnographic account of creativity, performativity and personalised learning policy, concepts and practices. Oxford Review of Education, 35(6), 689-704. Beach, D. and Sernhede, O. (2011) From learning to labour to learning for marginality: school segregation and marginalization in Swedish suburbs. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 32(2), 257-274. Dahlstedt, M. (2009) Parental governmentality: involving ‘immigrant parents’ in Swedish schools. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30(2), 193-205. European Commission. (2011). Progress towards the common European objectives in education and training. Indicators and benchmarks 2010/2011. Government Bill 2009/10:219. Betyg från årskurs 6 i grundskolan [Grades From Year 6 in Compulsary School Education] (Stockholm: Ministry of Education and Research). Lindensjö, B., Lundgren, U. P. and Högskolan för lärarutbildning i Stockholm. (2000) Utbildningsreformer och politisk styrning [Educational reforms and political governance] (Stockholm: HLS förl.). Nusche, D., Halász, G., Looney, J., Santiago, P. and Shewbridge, C. (2011) OECD reviews of evaluation and assessment in education. Available online. Popkewitz, T. S. (2012) Numbers in grids of intelligibility. Making sense of how educational truth is told. In H. Lauder (Ed.), Educating For the Knowledge Economy?: Critical Perspectives (New York, NY: Routledge), 169-191. Ricœur, P. (1981) Hermeneutics and the human sciences : essays on language, action and interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P.). Ricœur, P. (2007) From text to action (New ed.) (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press). Sirin, S. R. (2005) Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Review of Research. Review of Educational Research, 75(3), 417-453. Sundberg, D. and Wahlström, N. (2012) Standards-based curricula in a denationalised conception of education: The case of Sweden. European Educational Research Journal, 11(3), 342. Swedish National Agency for Education. (2012) Likvärdig utbildning i svensk grundskola? En kvantitativ analys av likvärdighet över tid. [Equity in Swedish compulsory school? A quantitative analysis of equity over time.] Available online. Swedish National Agency for Education. (2013) PISA 2012. 15-åringars kunskaper i matematik, läsförståelse och naturvetenskap [PISA 2012. 15 year olds results in mathematics, reading and science reading] (Stockholm: Swedish National Agency for Education). Yang Hansen, K., Rosén, M. and Gustafsson, J. E. (2011) Changes in the Multi‐Level Effects of Socio‐Economic Status on Reading Achievement in Sweden in 1991 and 2001. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 55(2), 197-211.

Author Information

Ola Strandler (presenting / submitting)

University of Gothenburg

Göteborg

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