Testing 11 year olds in reading in England and Denmark: Comparing teachers’ & students’ experiences

Author(s):

Peter Kelly(presenting / submitting)Karen Egedal Anderson Kristine Kousholt Elizabeth McNess Christian Ydesen

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 01 A, Policies of Standardization in Education

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

13:15-14:45

Room:

B331 Sala de Aulas

Chair:

Anne Larson

Contribution

In broad terms the dominant national discourses influencing education can be characterised as moving from humanist and socially-orientated (Hermann, 2007) towards an increased focus on skills acquisition and individualization in recent years, and techno-rationalist, individualist and accountability-focussed in England (Goodson & Lindblad, 2011). Whilst standardized tests have been part of this techno-rationalist national education discourse in England for over twenty years, they are a relatively recent addition in Denmark where they were introduced in 2010 partly in response to PISA concerns.

Whilst much has been written about testing in each country (for example, in England, Adams, 2008; Tomlinson, 2005; in Denmark, Andreasen & Hjörne, 2013; Ekholm et al., 2004), only a small number of studies have compared assessment practices across these countries (for example, McNess et al., 2003) and none have done so since the introduction of the national standardized tests in Denmark in 2010. Reading is tested at age 11 years in both Denmark and England, but the form of these tests differs considerably. This is largely due to the influence of different national cultures and dominant discourses on education. English children sit a common paper and pencil test, whereas Danish children sit individualized, adaptive computer-based tests. In England children sit tests for reading, writing, mathematics and science all in one week in May; in Denmark, different subject areas are tested at different times.

For Au (2008), high-stakes tests operate as a relay in the reproduction of dominant social relations in education. By structuring knowledge, high-stakes tests actively select and regulate student identities, and thus contribute to the selection and regulation of students’ educational success. They structure knowledge by: defining what counts as legitimate school knowledge; exerting considerable control over the form in which teachers present content knowledge in the classroom, mirroring that used in the tests; and leveraging control over teacher pedagogies towards teacher-centred pedagogies in an effort to keep up with the content and knowledge forms required by the tests.

The purposes of the study reported here were threefold: (1) to begin to compare how testing in each country structures knowledge, pedagogy and student identities; (2) to begin to examine the relationship between test-induced changes in classroom practices and the reproduction of inequalities in education; and (3) to look how these processes can be fully explored in a larger study.

Method

We focus here on policy-in-use (Ball and Bowe, 1992), looking specifically at the experiences of six students aged 10-11 and their class teachers in each of three public schools [folkeskoler] in Denmark and three primary schools in England, chosen to represent the geographical, sociocultural and economic diversity of each country. Schools included one rural, one small town and one inner city, and all were of mixed catchment. Students were divided into boy-girl student-pairs, chosen as low, middle and high-attainers by their teachers (where attainment is their anticipated test score level). Teachers and student-pairs participated in one semi structured interview each; the teacher interviews lasted about one hour and student-pair interviews about 30 minutes. Interviews took place in May and June 2013. Interviews explored teachers’ and students’ experiences of the national reading tests and were then analysed using Au’s (2008) theoretical frame based in the work of Bernstein (1990; 1996; 1999a; 1999b; 2004) to identify and compare the distributive and evaluative rules in each country. For the distributive rules we looked at: (a) the knowledge and processes tested in the national reading tests; (b) how these are processed to make them testable; (c) the ways of teaching privileged by the national reading tests; and, in consequence (d) the students who are advantaged by the national reading tests and those who are disadvantaged. For the evaluative rules we considered: (e) how the national reading tests act as a set of rules for evaluating and regulating classroom practices and identities; and (f) how the national reading tests thereby serve to privilege and marginalise aspects of pedagogic discourse. Thus variations across the two countries were identified and implications drawn. Of particular interest were differences in the experiences of high and low attaining pupils.

Expected Outcomes

From our preliminary analyses it appears that even though they are only in their third year, the national standardised tests in Denmark are having an increasing impact on the schools in our study and, in particular, on teaching. Teachers express some concerns about the use of test results for school and teacher accountability, but as yet the tests have not become as significant in the lives of children in Denmark as they have in England. Clearly their adaptive nature has something to do with this, as has the holistic emphasis in education, making it more likely that test results are used for pupil evaluation and development purposes. So far, teachers seem to have resisted an overt emphasis on test preparation and maintained more holistic approaches to teaching, although there is an increasing emphasis on skills. However the established testing regime in England has led the schools we studied to focus their teaching almost entirely on testing, particularly during the final year of primary school. The teaching of test strategies dominates, although these have little to do with improving children’s reading, and a skills-coaching view of teaching pervades. Whilst socio-economically advantaged students do better in the schools we looked at in both countries, it is possible that the style of the English tests and the nature of schools and teachers response exacerbates this more than that in Denmark. This would be an interesting and useful focus for further comparative work.

References

Adams, P. (2008) Considering ‘best practice’: the social construction of teacher activity and pupil learning as performance, Cambridge Journal of Education, 38(3), 375-392. Andreasen, K. & Hjörne, E. (2013) Assessing Children in the Nordic Countries: Framing, Diversity and Matters of lnclusion and Exclusion in a School for All. in U. Blossing, G. Imsen & L. Moos, L. (Eds) The Nordic Education Model: 'A School for All' Encounters Neo-Liberal Policy. Dordrecht: Springer. Au, W. (2008): Devising inequality: a Bernsteinian analysis of high-stakes testing and social reproduction in education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29(6), 639-51. Ball, S. and Bowe, R. (1992) Subject Departments and the 'implementation' of National Curriculum Policy, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 24 (2), 97-115. Bernstein, B. (1990) The structure of pedagogic discourse. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Bernstein, B. (1996) Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. London: Taylor Francis. Bernstein, B. (1999a) Official knowledge and pedagogic identities. in F. Christie (Ed.) Pedagogy and the shaping of consciousness: Linguistic and social processes, 246-61. New York: Cassell. Bernstein, B. & Solomon J. (1999b) ‘Pedagogy, identity, and the construction of a theory of symbolic control’: Basil Bernstein questioned by Joseph Solomon, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 20(2), 265-79. Bernstein, B. (2004) Social class and pedagogic practice, in S.J. Ball (Ed) The RoutledgeFalmer reader in Sociology of Education. London: RoutledgeFalmer: 196-217. Ekholm, M, Mortimore, P, David-Evans, M, Laukkanen, R & Valijarvi, J (2004) OECD-rapport om grundskolen i Danmark 2004 [OECD report on basic schooling in Denmark 2004], Copenhagen. Goodson, I. & Lindblad, S. (Eds.) (2011) Professional knowledge and educational restructuring in Europe, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Hermann, S. (2007) Magt og oplysning. Folkeskolen 1950-2006, [Power and enlightenment. Folk Schools 1950-2006.] Unge Pædagogers: Forlag. McNess, E., Broadfoot, P. & Osborn, M. (2003) Is the Effective Compromising the Affective? British Educational Research Journal, 29(2), 243-257. Singh, P. (2002) Pedagogising Knowledge: Bernstein's theory of the pedagogic device. British Journal of Sociology of Education 23(4): 571-582. Tomlinson, S. (2005) Education in a Post-Welfare Society, Buckingham: OUP.

Author Information

Peter Kelly (presenting / submitting)

Plymouth University

Institute of Education

Plymouth

Karen Egedal Anderson

Aalborg University, Denmark

Kristine Kousholt

Aarhus University, Denmark

Elizabeth McNess

University of Bristol, United Kingdom

Christian Ydesen