How does local autonomy meet international and national quality policy rhetoric? A study of local educational actors doing of education

Author(s):

Andreas Bergh(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 07 A, Policy Making and Issues of School Autonomy and Control

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

17:15-18:45

Room:

417.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Donald Gillies

Contribution

This paper takes it point of departure in the international and national policy concept of quality and, with Sweden as a case, reports on the national and local implications of different interpretations. The aim is to investigate whether the tensions identified in the national policy texts also have an impact on the education that takes shape at local level, with a focus on local politicians, civil servants, school leaders and teachers. The specific research question is: How can the local doing of education be understood in relation to international and national quality policy rhetoric, and how does this affect teachers’ autonomy to realise nationally formulated goals?

The study is theoretically inspired by educational research that stresses the need to understand policy as a continuous process of ‘doing’, which includes interactions at and between different levels and actors (Bergh 2010; Biesta & Tedder 2007; Braun, Maguire & Ball 2010; Englund, Forsberg & Sundberg 2012). In order to analyse whether and how the national quality rhetoric affects local actors doing of education, two sets of theoretical concepts are combined. Inspired by Reinhart Koselleck (2002) and conceptual history, the study makes use of horizon of expectation and space of experience and, with inspiration from Alan Cribb and Sharon Gewirtz (2007), autonomy and control.

The international significance is motivated by that the development that is taking place around the quality concept in Swedish education is not limited to a single concept or a specific context. Rather, it reflects a wider social transformation that is occurring in education, in many other sectors in Sweden and in other countries, both in Europe and in other parts of the world (cf. Grek & Lawn 2009). For example, from England Stephen Ball (2003, 216) notes that: ‘One key aspect of the current educational reform movement may be seen as struggles over the control of the field of judgement and its values’. However, besides reports of the many similarities at international and national policy levels it is also pointed out that the formal curricula and their associated pedagogical practices remain largely under-researched as elements in the governing of education (Sivesind, van den Akker and Rosenmund 2012). There is thus a need to acquire more knowledge about how international policy is shaped in relation to national and local educational contexts.

In Sweden, the political rhetoric has changed from the 1990s’ emphasis on decentralisation and local participation in goal setting to an emphasis on quality, equivalence and goal attainment. This is also reflected in the way that national authoritative actors have used the quality concept since its introduction in 1997 (Bergh 2010). Certain understandings, long associated with education, have namely been challenged and partly marginalised by expectations highlighting quality systems, juridical regulations and relating to international policy needs. Despite this changed rhetoric, and the fact that extensive educational reforms have been carried out over the last decade, the government states that the educational assignment is still formulated in the same way as it was in the early 1990s (Bill 2008/09:87). Against this background, a central starting point for the paper is that in the interpretation of the educational assignment tensions could arise between the goals and values formulated in national curricula documents and other aspects of the governing of education, such as the dominating policy rhetoric and structural changes in the educational system as a whole.

The approach taken in this paper has been chosen because it contributes knowledge about whether and how the linguistic force from authoritative actors at national and local levels and the different structures frame and control teachers’ autonomy over the educational practices that prevail in school.

Method

The paper is arranged in a way that reflects the analytical steps of the study. In the first part an earlier study is presented in order to provide a broader contextual understanding of how the use of the quality concept has successively changed in Swedish authoritative educational texts from the 1990s and onwards (Bergh 2010). The methodology used in the earlier study, based on insights gained from conceptual history, is also used in the second step, this time to investigate how local actors use the quality concept. The analytical concepts of horizon of expectation and space of experience (Koselleck 2002) facilitate an analysis of how central concepts, like quality, contain layers of the past and the present, as well as horizons of the future. From this point of departure, history is not only regarded as past time. The third part consists of an analysis of the tensions between the different forms of autonomy and control in relation to the broader context provided by conceptual history. Here, different spaces of experience provide possible empirical references for the analysis of autonomy and control in the local interviews. In this part of the paper the analysis is guided by the three questions formulated by Cribb and Gewirtz (2007): Whose autonomy is in question? Autonomy/control over what? Who are the agents of control and how is their agency exercised? The first part is empirically based on national authoritative texts (written between 1997 to 2008), while the second and third parts make use of interviews with different actors from a municipality chosen for its clearly expressed intention to work with and improve quality in the frames provided by the goal- and result-oriented steering system. Four individual interviews with two politicians (representing the majority and the minority) and two with leading civil servants are reported in the paper, as are two focus group interviews, one with teachers and one with a group of school leaders. The paper ends with a final reflection section. With the approach chosen, the hope is to contribute knowledge that, as Cribb and Gewirtz (2007) point out, avoids ‘the seemingly widespread – and usually unspoken – normative presumption that autonomy is good and control is bad and to open up space for the possibility of richer debates about the value of different forms of and balances between autonomy and control’ (p 203).

Expected Outcomes

The results show that the national policy rhetoric has a strong impact on local practice, but also that certain interpretations are taken further in the local context, such as an emphasis on market forces. Although possible conflicts in the national context are concealed by the use of positive concepts like quality, these conflicts eventually erupt in the local setting, often with far reaching consequences for its different actors and for the education in question. The linguistic force of international and national policy, in combination with structures that have been developed to measure quality, has a strong impact on the way that local politicians and civil servants talk about quality. When the national use of language relates to goal achievement, results, documentation, systematics, clarity, responsibility etcetera, it is difficult for local actors to use a different language. The study has also demonstrated that the qualitative goals and values formulated in the national curriculum are hard to measure, and thus risk being marginalised by those aspects that can more easily be quantitatively controlled, documented and demonstrated. As a consequence, conflicts arise between the different uses of language. This in turn leads to different actions and implications restricting teachers’ autonomy and thus what can be done in educational practice. However, even though we are embedded in practices and constrained by them, it does not mean that another language cannot be used. Here, conceptual history offers important insights and reminds us that political and social concepts do not only indicate or record given facts, but can also become factors in the formation of consciousness and the control of behaviour (Koselleck 2002). There is a need for further study and discuss how different forms of autonomy and control can best be combined in order to meet the intentions formulated in the national curriculum.

References

Ball, SJ (2003): The Teacher’s Soul and the Terrors of Performativity. Journal of Educational Policy 18(2), 215–228. Bergh, A (2010): Vad gör kvalitet med utbildning? Om kvalitetsbegreppets skilda innebörder och dess konsekvenser för utbildning [What does quality do to education? Different meanings of the concept of quality and their consequences for education]. Örebro: Örebro Studies in Education, 29. Bergh, A (submitted): Local quality work in an age of accountability – between autonomy and control. Biesta, G & Tedder, M (2007): Agency and learning in the lifecourse: towards an ecological perspective. Studies in the Education of Adults 39(2), 132-149. Bill 2008/09:87. Tydligare mål och kunskapskrav – nya läroplaner för skolan [Clearer Goals and Knowledge Demands – New Curricula for School]. Braun, A; Maguire, M & Ball, S.J (2010): Policy enactments in the UK secondary school: Ex-amining policy, practice and school positioning. Journal of Educational Policy, 25(4): 547-561. Cribb, A & Gewirtz, S (2007): Unpacking autonomy and control in education: some conceptual and normative groundwork for a comparative analysis. European Educational Research Journal, 6(3): 203-213. Englund, T; Forsberg, E & Sundberg, D (2012): Vad räknas som kunskap? Läroplansteoretiska utsikter och inblickar i lärarutbildningen och skola [What counts as knowledge? Curriculum theoretical outlooks and insights into teacher training and school]. Stockholm: Liber. Frostensson, M (2012): Lärarnas avprofessionalisering och autonomins mångtydighet [The deprofessionlization of the teaching profession and the ambiguity of autonomy]. Nordiske Organisasjonsstudier 14(2), 49-78. Gewirtz, S (2002): The Managerial School: Post-welfarism and Social Justice in Education. London and New York: Routledge. Grek, S & Lawn, M (2009): A Short History of Europeanizing Education. The New Political Work of Calculating the Future. European Education 41(1), 32–54. Koselleck, Reinhart (2002): The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Page, D (2013): The abolition of the general teaching council for England and the future of teacher discipline. Journal of Education Policy 28(2), 231–246. Sivesind, S, van den Akker, J. & Rosenmund, M (2012): The European Curriculum: Restructuring and Renewal. European Educational Research Journal 11(3), 320–327. Solbrekke, T D & Englund, T (2011) Bringing professional responsibility back in. Studies in Higher Education 36(8), 847–861. Wahlström, N (2009): Mellan leverans och utbildning. Om lärande i en mål- och resultatstyrd skola [Between delivery and education. On learning in a goal- and result-oriented school]. Göteborg: Daidalos.

Author Information

Andreas Bergh (presenting / submitting)

Uppsala University, Sweden

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