Session Information
27 SES 08 C, Teacher's Autonomy and Habits across Curriculum Reforms
Paper Session
Contribution
The middle years of compulsory school in Sweden has recently experienced major changes. Reforms to theassessment system in Swedish schools were implemented in 2012, a reform that required that pupils received grades for the first time at Y6 (age 12-13). Also, national tests were introduced in Biology, Physics and Chemistry. The national tests, marked locally using a marking scheme, are intended to support teachers in the assessment of students’ knowledge and to be supportive of consistent grading between schools. Teachers teaching the Science subjects in Y6 are thus faced with a situation of increased centralized control.
The overarching aim in this study is to investigate whether, and if so in what way, the introduction of an increased centralized control in the form of grades and national testing influences the teachers’ local teaching and assessment practices in Science education.
Many parts of the world have over time had more of standardized testing than Sweden has. For example countries within Great Britain have performed tests at least at three key stages within the educational system from 1991, although this has changed in recent years as a consequence of devolution and debates about the pros and cons of such testing (Collins, Reiss & Stobart, 2010). Sweden has historically used this kind of assessment in a restricted way.
The assumption that standardized tests affect teachers’ instruction and student learning is both confirmed and rejected (Cimbricz 2002, Andersen 2011) in international research. A common reaction to state standards and tests is that the content of teaching is adapted to what is tested (Au 2009). Additionally, Au writes that norms are created from high-stake testing reflecting what teaching that is considered to be “good” or “bad”. Standardized tests thus provide a discursive control that defines the acceptable ways of acting as teachers and also creates norms about what counts as valid content and valid methods in teaching. The theoretical approach in this paper is underpinned by Dewey’s pragmatist notion of habits (Dewey 1922/1983). The concept of habits is used to describe how teachers, with their different background and experiences, work with the enacting of reforms in their everyday teaching practice. The notion of habits focuses on understanding how teachers’ actions can appear to be both immutable and revisable and how the context of reform also can contribute to development. A teacher is acting as an individual in selecting what is central within the practice, but the teacher is also at the same time a part of a community, acting in relation to collective habits within this community. Consequently, individuals develop personal habits of acting/teaching on the basis of being educated in, being in and working in contextual situations created by earlier generations of teachers and disciplinary traditions. Habits are thus acquired, but alterable depending on the circumstances. The concept is used to describe individuals’ predispositions for response to situations and problems that arise within a specific context (Nelsen 2015). In the context of reform, different teachers will have different predispositions to respond and with the notion of habits is a resource to capture the process and the tensions that may emerge.
In this study we ask the question: In what ways are teachers’ teaching and assessment habits challenged by the reforms?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Anderson, K. J. B. (2011). Science Education and Test-Based Accountability: Reviewing Their Relationship and Exploring Implications for Future Policy. Science Education 96:104-129. Au, W (2009). Unequal by design. High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality. New York and London: Routledge. Cimbricz, S. (2002). State-Mandated Testing and Teachers’ Beliefs and Practice. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 10, 2. Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/281 Collins, Sue, Reiss, Michael & Stobart, Gordon (2010). What happens when high-stake testing stops? Teachers’ perceptions of the impact of compulsory national testing in science of 11-year-olds in England and its abolition in Wales. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice. Vol. 17, No. 3, 273-286. Dewey, J. (1922/1983). Human Nature and Conduct. Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), John Dewey: The Middle Works, Volume 14. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Nelsen, P. J. (2015). Intelligent Dispositions: Dewey, Habits and Inquiry in Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 66(1), 86-97.
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