Comparing standardised assessment regimes and their effects: England & Germany
Author(s):
Peter Kelly (presenting / submitting) Imke von Bargen (presenting)
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

23 SES 04 B, Evaluation and Policy Enactments

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-23
09:00-10:30
Room:
K4.15
Chair:
Peter Kelly

Contribution

Recent research on education policy has argued the redefinition of what Stephen Ball has called ‘the policy cycle’ (Ball et al., 1992) to include a level of global governance through international comparative standardised assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) surveys and associated expert support such as that provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (Lingard et al. 2013). International systems of assessment and counsel are recontextualised at the mid - often national - level as vernacular versions of testing regimes (Singh et al., 2013). Here the global complements the national as commensurate spaces for measurement, providing for governance by numbers (Ball, 2015; Lingard, 2011; Ozga, 2008).

Picking up the thread from Lingard and his colleagues, our concern is to elaborate particular versions of this extended policy cycle, but our focus is on both the mid-level of national recontextualisation and the micro level of policy enactment in schools and classrooms, something Ball et al. (2012) assert is a difficult but important focus for research. In particular, we are interested in interactions between the three ‘message systems’ identified by Bernstein (1971) which together constitute pedagogic discourse (Bernstein, 1990); specifically the ways vernacular assessment regimes are themselves shaped, and how they shape curriculum and pedagogy (Au, 2008). As these act as reproducers of inequality within the pedagogic device (Bernstein, 1990; 1996), we are also interested in the impact vernacular assessment regimes have on students and student subjectivities, including their contribution towards the shaping of neoliberal subjectivities (Keddie, 2016) or subject positions within neoliberal discourse. By comparing different vernacular regimes, we will examine the degree to which standardised assessment is an example of cross-national policy convergence (Breakspear, 2012). Considering the distributive and evaluative rules surrounding tests, we will discern parallels and variations in how vernacular assessment regimes shape curriculum and pedagogy and their impact on students and student subjectivities. Finally, we will contrast the experiences of each country to ascertain policy lessons.

Method

To compare how standardised tests in each country structure curriculum, pedagogy and students we will focus on the experiences of equivalent students and their class teachers in four state schools in each of England and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.. Our focus will be lower secondary schools. Schools will be chosen to represent a similar geographical, sociocultural and economic diversity for each country. Two lesson observations of mathematics lessons followed by short 30 minute teacher interviews will be conducted in one class of 13 year old children in each school in the six months prior to them being tested in mathematics. Through these we will consider the dominant instructional and regulatory discourses in classroom curriculum and pedagogy (Bernstein, 1990; 1996). Three boy-girl student-pairs in each class, will then be selected; as low, middle and high-attainers by their teachers (where attainment is their anticipated test score level). Teachers and student-pairs will participate in one semi structured interview each following the tests; the teacher interviews lasting about one hour and student-pair interviews about 30 minutes. These final interviews will explore teachers’ and students’ experiences of the regional or national tests and will be analysed using Au’s (2008) theoretical frame to identify and compare the distributive and evaluative rules in each region or country. For the distributive rules we will look at: (a) the knowledge and processes tested in the national tests; (b) how these are processed to make them testable; (c) the ways of teaching privileged by the national tests; and, in consequence (d) the students who are advantaged by the national tests and those who are disadvantaged. For the evaluative rules we consider: (e) how the national tests act as a set of rules for evaluating and regulating classroom practices and teacher and student identities; and (f) how the national tests thereby serve to privilege and marginalise aspects of curriculum and pedagogy. Thus variations across countries will be identified. Finally, to examine the relationship between assessment-induced changes in classroom practices and the reproduction of inequalities in education we will consider differences in the experiences of high and low attaining pupils and the implications of these.

Expected Outcomes

This research will elaborate two particular vernacular versions of standardised assessment, that in England and in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. We have limited ourselves to one relatively diverse region in Germany to align our study with the level at which education is administered in each country. These countries are chosen for their contrasting ideological education policy contexts; England can be considered largely utilitarian liberal, whilst, despite similar incursions in Germany, the influence of humanism remains strong. And whereas standardised assessment is now established for students of all ages in English schools, it is a relatively recent addition in Germany, having been introduced at the regional level of Länder or federal states in 2009. Having already begun to focus on the mid-level recontextualisation of national and regional assessment regimes by exploring interactions between supranational and national/regional policy, we now turn our attention to the micro level recontextualisation of policy enactment in schools and classrooms. In each context we will analyse: (1) the ways standardised assessment shapes curriculum and pedagogy by considering the distributive and evaluative rules underpinning them in pedagogic discourse (Au, 2008)  (2) the impact of standardised assessment on students and student subjectivities, including their contribution towards the shaping of neoliberal subjectivities (Keddie, 2016)  (3) the degree of cross-national policy convergence (Breakspear, 2012) in standardised assessment, including parallels and variations in the experiences of each country to ascertain policy lessons

References

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. (2015) Education, governance and the tyranny of numbers, Journal of Education Policy, 30(3), 299-301. Ball, S. & Bowe, R. (1992) Subject departments and the 'implementation' of National Curriculum policy, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 24 (2), 97-115. Ball, S., Maguire, M. & Braun, A. (2012) How schools do policy: Policy enactment in secondary schools, London, Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1971) On the classification and framing of educational knowledge, in: Michael Young (Ed), Knowledge and Control, London, Collier-MacMillan. 47–69. Bernstein, B. (1990) The structure of pedagogic discourse. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Bernstein, B. (1996) Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. London: Breakspear, S. (2012) The policy impact of PISA: an exploration of the normative effects of international benchmarking in school system performance. OECD Education Working Papers 71. Paris: OECD Publishing. Keddie, A. (2016) Children of the market: performativity, neoliberal responsibilisation and the construction of student identities, Oxford Review of Education, 42(1), 108-122. Kelly, P. (2014) Intercultural comparative research: rethinking insider and outsider perspectives, Oxford Review of Education, 40(2), 1-20. Lingard, B. (2011) Policy as numbers: Ac/counting for educational research, Australian Educational Researcher, 38(4), 355–382. Lingard, B., Martino, W. & Rezai-Rashti, G. (2013) Testing regimes, accountabilities and education policy: commensurate global and national developments, Journal of Education Policy, 28(5), 539-556. Ozga, J. (2008) Governing knowledge: Research steering and research quality, European Educational Research Journal, 7 (3), 261–272. Singh, P., Thomas, S. & Harris, J (2013) Recontextualising policy discourses: a Bernsteinian perspective on policy interpretation, translation, enactment, Journal of Education Policy, 28(4), 465-480.

Author Information

Peter Kelly (presenting / submitting)
Plymouth University, United Kingdom
Imke von Bargen (presenting)
Paderborn University, Germany

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