The history of the student assessment can be traced back centuries. In recent decades, the educational evaluation and student assessment has found its way to the very core of education policy discourse, curricula, and scientific debate across the globe. The trend has also been manifesting as the massive increase of evaluation and assessment reforms enacted and infiltration of evaluation and assessment into each aspect in education and everyday life of it. In the global mainstream policy discourse, or GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) as Pasi Sahlberg (2016) calls it, the evaluation and assessment is reasoned as a policy tool for raising standards and quality of education and learning through inserting a mechanism of accountability. This trend has also been conceptualized as the emergence of global testing culture (Smith 2016) or the rise of test-based accountability (Verger et al 2019).

Elementary to this mainstream policy discourse is that the student assessment is considered to serve as a rather apolitical tool and neutral technique of making judgements about the performance of individual student and student population, and finally about effectiveness and quality of the education system (Pitkänen 2022). Taking the critical policy sociology stance (see e.g. Ball 2013), this article instead, follows the premise according to which assessment in its diversity of techniques, practices and purposes should not be approached as a pure and apolitical measure or technology of learning and quality of education. Rather, it elementary enacts and entails the societal power and governing by disciplining, self-disciplining, normalization and subjectification. Thus, instead of repressing or dominating, the power in question operates indirectly, by shaping and working on aspirations, attitudes, believes and interests of pupils and their subjectivities, and e.g. by inscribing the norm and standard as a frame of reference or comparison. (see also Ball 2003; 2013; Fejes & Dahlstedt 2012; Foucault 1975/1991; Grimaldi 2019;)

These issues of subject and power have been widely examined in the field of education and educational assessment by researchers and studies applying post-structuralist governmentality perspective (see e.g. Ball 2003; Fejes & Dahlstedt 2012; Grimaldi 2019). This study uses this literature, especially the works focusing on subjectifying power — power that makes and shapes subjects — as its theoretical frame. Using this frame, it aims at studying the power and pupil subjectivities shaped and enacted by curricula policy discourse on evaluation and assessment. More specifically, this paper is curious about which kind pupil subjectivities are mobilized by the very specific ‘technique’ of pupil assessment - by the criteria for final assessment in basic education in the case of Finnish curricula policy discourse. Our research question is:

Which are the pupil subjectivities mobilized and ’standardized’ by the Finnish final assessment criteria for comprehensive education as they describe the learning outcomes for grades five (tolerable) and nine (laudable) in grading scale 4 (failed) – 10 (outstanding)?  

The study uses the current Finnish comprehensive education curricula policy discourse concerning the pupil assessment as its case. Unlike many other European education systems, Finland has remained quite resistant to the global discourse and mainstream practices of student assessment. For example, instead of high-stakes testing of whole age cohorts, Finland uses sample based testing in studying the performance of pupil population. At same, the shift towards global trend and more ‘standardized’ student assessment has been taken place through the adoption of standards for grading in final assessment at the end of ninth school year, for a first time in the curriculum 2004. (Kauko et al. 2020; Pitkänen 2022.) Before, the assessment of the pupil was pretty much under the autonomy of the education provider and an individual teacher. In Finnish case, the assessment criteria have been reasoned and justified as a way of homogenizing the grading between schools and geographical locations within the country, and therefore making the grading more equal and just. Even though they also may serve this function of equality and social justice for some part, this study challenges to think about this standardizing practice of student assessment as a practice of societal subjectifying and normalizing power too. As the main data, the study uses the newest Criteria for final assessment in basic education, that is binging national order given by the National Board of Education (NBE 2020a). Additionally, the study uses the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014 (FNBE 2014), and Assessment of Pupils’ learning and skills in basic education. Adjustments to the National Core Curriculum 2014 in 10.2.2020 (FNBE2020b) documents as complementary data. These three documents are curricula documents for basic education in effect. Aligning the post-structuralist frame and the perspective of the governmentality, the data is approached as effect and constitutive of discourse that ‘inscribes rules and standards by which we ‘reason’ about the world and our ‘self’’ (Popkewitz, 1997, p. 132). Instead of representative of the world and reality, it is read as ‘programme of conduct’ (Foucault 2000b), that as part of some ‘game of truth’ (Foucault 1982 is aimed at governing the conduct and subjectivities of those governed (Rose 2009). In Ball’s methodological terms, data studied is analytically approached here as a discourse rather than as a text. Our special methodological focus is on the constitution of subjectivities.

Study shows, that while describing the expected level of learning for grades five and nine and therefore offering a tool for ensuring more equal and just grading at the end of the basic schooling, the criteria mobilize specific and ‘suitable’ subjectivities for students attaining grade five and nine. Pupil receiving grade five is constituted as simplistic, capable of doing only something expected and with the support of some other. In contrast, pupil receiving grade nine is constituted as performative, competitive, autonomous and self-evaluative individual fitting the demands of global economy and idea of continuous self-improvement. This means, the criteria do not only specify specific skills and the level of learning, but constitute categorizations of pupils attaining the school expectations differently. The finding is interesting within the frame of Finnish curricula policy discourse itself as it states that assessment should not be focused on the personality of pupil. Our claim is, while criterion does not directly focus on evaluating the personality of pupil, it more than ever in the history of Finnish curriculum (see Pitkänen 2022), constitutes some traits of personality more preferable by inscribing different subjectivities for pupils receiving different grades.

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