Discursive Manoeuvres: Patterns of 'Adoption' in the Translation of Curriculum Policy into Classrooms

Author(s):

Jenny Reeves(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

03. Curriculum Innovation

Format:

Paper

Session Information

03 SES 02 A, Curriculum Policy and Its Translation into School Practice

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-08

15:15-16:45

Room:

415.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Jan Berkvens

Contribution

In recent years there has been an international policy drive, particularly marked in English speaking countries, to extend practices associated with the discourse of lifelong learning in adult education into the schools’ sector (OECD, 2005; Yates & Young, 2010, Priestley & Biesta, 2013, ). At its heart is a switch to developing children and young people as ‘learners’. ‘Learners’ are able to direct and manage their own learning through acquiring the generic ‘skills and aptitudes’ which will allow them to actively and individually build their knowledge and understanding across the curriculum and throughout their lives. The switch to a constructivist pedagogy, which the title ‘learner’ signals, is contrasted in this discourse with the pedagogy implied by describing children and young people as pupils. Pupils are characterised (caricatured?) as ‘receptive’, passively absorbing the knowledge in subject ‘silos’ transmitted to them by teachers and texts.

This paper forms part of a study that seeks to examine how curriculum policy is implemented through a ‘succession’ of translations from when it is published by government to when and where it is realised (or not) in classroom practice (Reeves 2013, Reeves & Drew 2012). Prior to 2004 the common term for referring to children in Scottish schools was ‘pupil’, a word that was studiously avoided in favour of ‘learner’ in the series of documents published by the Scottish Government to support the introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) from 2004 onwards. This change in nomenclature, signalled an attempt to bring about a substantive alteration in the relations between children and young people, their teachers and the curriculum. The paper explores how a number of teachers and their students made sense of adopting the new curriculum in their classrooms. In so doing it asks:

In what ways did these teachers and students adopt the discourse of the new curriculum?

What were the benefits, conflicts and difficulties that these actors encountered in the course of adoption?

How were these benefits and problems negotiated, accommodated or avoided in practice?

A consistent theme in accounts of educational reform is the difficulty of bringing about alterations in practice at either school or classroom level (Elmore,1996; Spillane, 1999; Fullan 2003). This phenomenon is not confined to education but characteristic of attempts to innovate with regard to work activity in a wide range of fields (Greenwood et al., 2002; Denning & Dunham, 2008; Braun, McGuire & Ball, 2010). Rather than considering these problems as difficulties of implementation it seems more appropriate to look at issues of adoption since this allows for a consideration of what leads a group of practitioners to take up new forms of practice. A survey of recent studies reveals two rather different approaches to adoption. The first (Kostova & Roth 2002, Sturdy, 2004: Roehrig & Kruse,2005; Blin & Munro 2008; Heeks & Stanforth, 2007) reproduces much the same focus on the deficits of the adopters (e.g.misadoption, ceremonial adoption) that often results from adopting an ‘implementation’ perspective whilst the other, looking at adoption in the field of technical innovation, posits an interesting contrast. Here adoption is conceptualised as a cyclical process of feedback and response (Kaptolin & Nardi, 2006; Tanev, 2013) as part of an on-going development of meaning and practice.

Method

The study was based on data derived from eighteen professional enquiries into students’ learning, carried out between May 2010 – June 2011 in eleven secondary and seven primary schools in Scotland. These enquiries, were undertaken by teachers who were on a Master of Education (MEd) programme. Nine enquiries were carried out by individual teachers, the other nine were carried out by two or more teachers working on a joint investigation. The sources of evidence for the study consisted of: interviews with the teachers on the MEd who instigated the enquiries, and, in the case of collaborative projects, a colleague who was a member of the collaborative group and a school manager; the reports written by the teachers on the MEd and the portfolios of evidence submitted with the reports. There were three stages to the analysis. Stage 1: Verbatim quotes were selected from the interviews and the reports relating to four broad topics and were tabulated on this basis for each case. These were: • processes (of enquiry and pedagogy), • professional learning, • curriculum development, and • Things and people ‘imported’ into, or ‘exported’ out of, the enquiry space. The portfolios were read and evidence relevant to illustrating the four themes was identified and cross-referenced in the tabulated text. Stage 2: The tabulated files generated at Stage 1 were examined in order to answer a number of specific questions about how the Curriculum for Excellence was being enacted during the professional enquiries. This analysis collected together evidence about the students’ and the teachers’ classroom experiences. The Stage 1 files were searched for instances of terms associated with the idea of the ‘successful learner’ that had emerged in analysing the policy discourse . Stage 3: All the student data from the portfolios was analysed noting what they had said directly about their experience. This evidence was more variable. Overall there was primary source material in all the portfolios e.g.post-it evaluations written by students, focus group or interview transcripts and/or survey data. Additionally some portfolios had secondary data in the form of observations made by critical friends or extracts from the reporting teachers’ learning journals. In general, older students (those undertaking qualifications) were better represented than younger students.

Expected Outcomes

The study demonstrates some of the manoeuverings undertaken by students and teachers when faced with competing discourses under the pressure to adopt classroom practices which are new to them. Where new practices seemed to have been adopted most easily was where they were seen as relevant to goals that aroused relatively high levels of commitment y on the part of both teachers and students and where the interrelationship between teacher and students already deviated somewhat from a knowledge transmission model. Whilst collaborative working received some of the most positive comments made by teachers and students it was also a deeply contested change in activity. Both students and teachers provided evidence of conflict with an earlier framing of classroom relations (Bernstein 2000). For example, students noted the following incongruities: talking shows you are not working, sharing or using someone else's work/ideas is cheating. Teachers expressed discomfort about: giving up lecturing and risking that the syllabus was not covered, having to tolerate noise and movement in class, and not trying to help students as soon as they ran into difficulties. Getting round problems of identity and role could be achieved by switching the discursive basis on which a practice was legitimated. For example. many of the teachers characterised collaborative work as improving the behavioural engagement of students rather than seeing it as supporting cognitive goals. This move avoided confronting the issue of a substantive change in roles and relations. Examples of collaboration between teachers and students arose in those instances where feedback from students was both invited and used to inform decisions about teaching. However, the elicitation of student feedback was almost exclusively justified on the basis of a research discourse rather than on pedagogic grounds. In both instances these discursive shifts may have negative implications for sustainability.

References

Banner,I. Donnelly,J. & Ryder,J.(2012) Policy Networks and Boundary Objects: Enacting Curriculum Reform in the Absence of Consensus. Curriculum Studies 44(5)577-598. Bernstein,B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research and Critique. Lanham:Rowman & Littlefield Blin,F. & Monro,M.(2008) Why hasn’t technology disrupted academics’ teaching practices? Understanding resistance to change through the lens of activity theory. Computers and Education 50,475-490. Greenwood,R. Hinings,C.R. & Suddaby,R. (2002) Theorizing Change: The Role of Professional Associations in the Transformation of Institutionalised Fields. Academy of Management Journal 45(1) 58-80 Denning,P.J. & Dunham,R.(2006) Innovation as Language Action. Communications of the ACM 49(5) 47-52 Heeks,R. and Stanforth,C.(2007) Understanding e-Government Project Trajectories from an Actor Network Perspective. European Journal of Information Systems 16, 165-177 Kaptelinin,V. & Nardi,B.(2006) Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design. Cambridge Mass: The MIT Press. Kostova,T.& Roth,K.(2002) Adoption of an Organizational Practice by Subsidiaries of Multinational Corporations: Institutional and Relational Effects. Academy of Management 45(1)215-233 Nicolini,D.(2011) Practice as the Site of Knowing: Insights from the Field of Telemedicine. Organisation Science 22(3) pp 602-620 Priestley,M, Biesta,G.(2013) A Curriculum for the Twenty-First Century in M.Priestley, G Biesta (eds), Reinventing the Curriculum: New Trends in Curriculum Policy and Practice London: Bloomsbury pp 229-236 Reeves,J. 2013 The Successful Learner: A Progressive or an Oppressive Concept? In M.Priestley, G Biesta (eds), Reinventing the Curriculum: New Trends in Curriculum Policy and Practice London: Bloomsbury pp 229-236 Reeves,J,(2010) Professional Learning as Relational Practice. Dordrecht: Springer Reeves,J & Drew,V. (2012) Relays and Relations: Tracking a Policy Initiative for Improving Teacher Professionalism. Journal of Education Policy 27 (6) 711-730 Roehrig,G. & Kruse,R. (2005) The Role of Teachers’ Beliefs and Knowledge in the Adoption of a Reform-Based Curriculum. School Science & Mathematics 105(8)412-432. Shreeve A. & Smith,C. (2012) Multi-directional Creative Transfer between Practice-based Arts Education and Work. British Educational Research Journal 38(4):539-556. Smets,M. Morris,T. & Greenwood,R. (2012) From Practice to Field: A Multilevel Model of Practice-Driven Institutional Change. Academy of Management Journal 55(4)877-904 Sturdy, A.(2004) The Adoption of Management Ideas and Practices: Theoretical Perspectives and Possibilities. Management Learning 35:155-179 Tanev, S. (2013) Technology Adoption by Design: Insights for Entrepreneurs. Lecture delivered as part of the TIM Lecture Series on November 7th at Carleton University. Van Leeuwen,T. (2008) Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press Yates,L. & Young,M.(2010) Globilisation, Knowledge and the Curriculum European Journal of Education 45 (1) 4-10

Author Information

Jenny Reeves (presenting / submitting)

University of Stirling

School of Education

Glasgow

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.