Our presentation emanates from the four-year project Following the Money - Finding Professional Learning? (The Invoice Project) funded by the Swedish Research Council (dnr 2019-03828). The overarching aim of the project is to deepen the understanding of teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD), in a decentralized and market-oriented context. The overall project started in a “following the money”-approach (Ball, 2012), where teachers' CPD was studied through data in the form of invoices. Early in the process we noticed a strong focus on children and young people as neurological beings. Further work showed that neuroscience-informed CPD  seemed relatively common in Swedish schools (Levinsson et al., 2022), obviously affecting aspects of teaching and learning in the direction of a certain pedagogic ideal. We discern such patterns of pedagogic ideals as modalities, and in this case, we identified a neuro-educational ideal.

The increased influence of neuroscience in education has attracted attention internationally (see Ansari et al., 2012), as well as in Europe (see Howard-Jones, 2014) and Sweden (Levinsson & Norlund, 2018). But few studies, if any, have examined the nature of the neuro-educational content offered to teachers via CPD, or further explored its distinctive features and implications as a pedagogical ideal. Thus, the aim of our presentation is to introduce, operationalise and exemplify the characteristics of a neuro-educational modality. By ‘operationalising’ we relate to the breaking down of the modality into its sub-components. The pedagogic modality is finally discussed, and critiqued, not least regarding its consequences for teachers and students. This gives us the opportunity to connect to the conference theme regarding the value of diversity in education.

The study is framed by curriculum theory (see Young, 1971, 1998) and sociology of education. We make use of the well-known four-field model over modalities developed by the sociologist of education Basil Bernstein (1990). The model enables analyses and conclusions from a social justice perspective. 

A modality is composed of several different ingredients, which not least are captured by the conceptual pair ofclassification and framing (Bernstein, 1990). The concept of classification stands for the relationship between categories (for example school subjects) or in other words the degree to which these categories are isolated from, or interfere with, each other (Bernstein, 2000, p. 99). Framing represents who, the teacher or the student, is in control over phenomena such as material selection and work pace (cf. Bernstein, 2000, p. 99). We collect another three elements from curriculum theory: i.e. selection (of teaching material or activities), organization (in the classroom) and assessment (of the students’ performance).

In the overall study - the Invoice Project – 674 invoices from 2018 and 2019, were collected from the CPD accounts for elementary and upper secondary school teachers in three Swedish municipalities (municipal invoices are subject to the principal of openness in the Swedish constitution). The selected municipalities were chosen to reflect rural and urban areas with varying socioeconomic characteristics. In total, 236 invoices were identified as representing neuro-educational CPD. But these invoices did not always supply the information needed to address the purpose of and the questions posed in this paper. Through contact information on each invoice, we asked principals, administrators, teachers, or CPD providers for additional information via e-mail or telephone. We also conducted internet searches on the websites of the relevant schools or CPD providers, and in some cases conference programs and lecturers' presentations were available. Through this approach, we were able to identify more interventions with a neuro-educational orientation, which we included in the material. This means that the empirical material that forms the basis for the operationalization of a neuro-educational modality cannot be limited to invoices, even though these constitute the main source. To structure the empirical material and enable further analysis, we initially categorized the CPD efforts based on their main content. In this step, we identified six overarching categories that reflected content such as (i) mental and physical health, (ii) reading, arithmetic and communication difficulties, (iii) neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD:s,) and related diagnoses, (iv) pedagogical and didactical concepts, (v) gifted and talented children and (vi) motivation, grit and mindset. We then analyzed the content of each category based on the concepts and phenomena that we had collected from Bernstein's theory package and from curriculum theory respectively.

During the presentation, outcomes will be presented according to the organizational principle of the five analytical concepts (selection, organization, assessment, classification and framing), which, taken together, represents the operationalization of a neuro-educational modality. To give a few examples, we found desk bikes, a multitude of diagnosing programmes and mobile partition walls (for securing detachment for students) in the selection category. The belief in extensive adaptations and differentiations marks the ideal organization. The ideal way for the teacher to handle assessment is not to talk about grades but instead to focus on changing students’ mindsets via formative strategies. Most examples of framing in the empirical material represent weak framing, where the control over pace, choice etcetera is handed over to the students. Finally, as far as classification is concerned, there are examples of both weak and strong; classification between educational professions seems to be weakened while the classification between students concerning their neurological status tend to be strengthened. The overall conclusion, based on assumptions from the mentioned four-field model, is that a neuro-educational modality brings several potential risks both for students and teachers. Most important, through its emphasis on neurological and intra-individual phenomena it appears to neglect diversity linked to social and/or cultural circumstances as well as to structurally created problems.

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