Session Information
23 SES 13 A, School Provision
Paper Session
Contribution
In this presentation, I will shed light on a new policy trend in European education: the foundation of laboratory schools. Standing in the tradition of John Dewey and others, the first laboratory school was founded at the University of Chicago in 1894. It was intended to be an “experimental station for the testing and developing of methods which, when elaborated, may be safely and strongly recommended to other schools“ (Dewey 1896/1972, p. 244).
Since then, lab schools (being the common abbreviation) have become a well-established part of the US-American school and university landscape (cf. Carver et al. 2017). In contrast to this, they have been far less common in Europe in the past – with the notable exception of Laborschule Bielefeld in Germany.
There is already a considerable body of research on what it means to be a lab school. For instance, the International Association of Laboratory Schools (IALS) names five core characteristics: “Research”, “Educational Experimentation”, “Curriculum Development”, “Professional Development” and “Teacher Training” (Dillon / Pinedo-Burns 2017, p. 15). Zenke and Kurz (2021, p. 60 f) describe lab schools with regard to their research activities as aspiring to further the systematic transformation of their national school landscapes by means of transdisciplinary research that is based on the collaboration between researchers and educators and that, at the same time, operates in an experimenting fashion.
What has not been addressed so far is the policy trend lab schools are constituting in European education today. In the last ten years, new lab schools are being founded in several European countries, like for instance, France and the Czech Republic. At the same time, referring to Dewey and his Chicago school, which is “still regarded as one of the most distinguished pioneer schools of the progressive education movement” (Knoll 2014, p. 204), seems to be quite popular among current (university) school founding initiatives. So, it appears that the lab school concept has successfully travelled to Europe.
In this context, four questions arise: What could be the potential reasons for lab schools emerging across Europe around the same time? Why is referring to lab schools and Dewey so popular with school foundation initiatives across Europe at the moment? Can we expect this trend to continue? And finally, what could emerge as unintended consequences of such a growing trend?
To shed light on the lab school trend, I apply a policy transfer lens (cf. Steiner-Khamsi 2004, Phillips & Ochs 2004, Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow 2012). The first step then is to look for possible explanations for this trend. By focusing on aspects of legitimacy (cf. Suchman 1995, Tost 2011, Waldow 2012), I intend to explore why lab schools seem to fit so well into today’s European educational context. The second step includes a reflection on how the lab school trend might develop in the future and what unintended consequences could stem from a growing trend: namely the danger of turning into an “empty vessel” (Steiner-Khamsi 2014, p. 156 f) and/or being primarily used for what Phillips and Ochs (2003, p. 455) call “phoney” borrowing.
Method
In this presentation, I will contextualise and discuss lab schools as a European policy trend that, up until now, has received little attention. This explorative and literature-based case study draws on observations from the field as well as on experiences from the Erasmus+ project “LabschoolsEurope – Participatory Research for Democratic Education” (grant no 2019-1-DE01-KA203-005003). Looking for potential explanations for this European lab school trend, I follow a qualitative research paradigm. By applying a policy transfer lens (cf. Steiner-Khamsi 2004, Phillips & Ochs 2004, Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow 2012) focusing on the reception side and, in this context, especially on aspects of legitimacy (cf. Suchman 1995, Tost 2011, Waldow 2012), several aspects emerge, that could make the lab school concept attractive for borrowing even beyond its core features.
Expected Outcomes
Through exploring lab schools as a new policy trend in European education, this research has arrived at three conclusions. First, there are various factors which make the lab school concept “resonate” (Steiner-Khamsi 2016, p. 381) with Europe’s educational context at the moment. I see at least five pull and push factors which may help to explain why the Lab School trend has been gaining traction throughout Europe until the Covid-19 pandemic put an abrupt stop to it. These factors include: the English term Laboratory School, the University of Chicago’s Laboratory School as a historic and by that plausible scenario, the degree to which the lab school concept matches today’s evidence-based policy context, attracting parents, and avoiding more traditional terms that might have come to carry a negative connotation. Second, this surprisingly seems to indicate that the lab school concept matches today’s educational context in Europe to an even higher degree than it did during Dewey’s time. This would also suggest that lab schools could emerge as an increasingly popular phenonmenon across Europe in the future, at least once the pandemic becomes less unforeseeable and allows for further school founding initiatives. Third, just like any other policy trend, a growing European lab school trend would most certainly come with unintended consequences. These could include using the lab school concept first and foremost as a strategic device. Being borrowed primarily for the purpose of gaining legitimacy – which is a development that may already be starting to appear in Germany – this could potentially increase the risk of what Phillips and Ochs (2003, p. 455) call “phoney” borrowing and even contribute to turning the lab school concept into an empty signifier, a so-called “empty vessel” (Steiner-Khamsi 2014, p. 157).
References
Bruno-Jofre, R., & Schriewer, J. (Eds.). (2011). The Global Reception of John Dewey’s Thought: Multiple Refractions Through Time and Space. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203333624 Carver, S. M., McConnaha, W., Messina, R., Morley, E., & Wand, Y. (2017). Laboratory Schools: Bridging Theory, Research, and Practice to Improve Education. In J. C. Hovarth, J. M. Lodge & J. Hattie (Eds.), From the Laboratoy to the Classroom. Translating Science of Learning for Teachers (pp. 279-296). Routledge. Dewey, J. (1896/1972). A Pedagogical Experiment. In J. Dewey, Early Essays (The Early Works, 1882–1898, 5: 1895–1898) (pp. 244-246). Southern Illinois University Press. Knoll, M. (2014). John Dewey as Administrator: The Inglorious End of the Laboratory School in Chicago. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47(2), 203-252. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2014.936045 Phillips, D., & Ochs, K. (2003). Processes of Policy Borrowing in Education: Some Explanatory and Analytical Devices. Comparative Education, 39(4), 451-461. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305006032000162020 Phillips, D., & Ochs, K. (Eds.). (2004). Educational Policy Borrowing: Historical Perspectives. Symposium Books. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (Ed.). (2004). The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. Teachers College Press. Steiner Khamsi, G. (2012). Understanding Policy Borrowing and Lending: Building Comparative Policy Studies. In G. Steiner-Khamsi, & F. Waldow (Eds.). World Yearbook of Education 2012 (pp. 3-17). Routledge. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2014). Cross-National Policy Borrowing: Understanding Reception and Translation. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 34(2), 153-167. https://doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2013.875649 Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing Legitimacy: Strategic and Institutional Approaches. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 571-610. Tost, L. (2011). An Integrative Model of Legitimacy Judgments. Academy of Management Review, 36(4), 686-710, https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2010.0227 Tröhler, D. (2015). The Medicalization of Current Educational Research and Its Effects on Education Policy and School Reforms. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36(5), 749-764. Waldow, F. (2012). Standardisation and Legitimacy. Two Central Concepts in Research on Educational Borrowing and Lending. In G. Steiner-Khamsi & F. Waldow (Eds.), World Yearbook of Education 2012. Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education (pp. 411-427). Routledge. Waldow, F. (2017): Projecting Images of the ‘Good’ and the ‘Bad School’: Top Scorers in Educational Large-Scale Assessments as Reference Societies. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. 47(5), 647-664, https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2016.1262245 Zenke, C. T., & Kurz, B. (2021): School as an “experimental station”: Über das Prinzip der Laboratory School und seine Verbreitung in Europa. Bildung und Erziehung, 74(1), 51-66. https://doi.org/10.13109/buer.2021.74.1.51
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