Who influences what? Student influence in a vocational upper secondary class

Author(s):

Carina Hjelmér(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2011

Network:

7. Social Justice and Intercultural Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

07 SES 03 B, Intercultural Education Integrated

Paper Session

Time:

2011-09-13

17:15-18:45

Room:

KL 23/140,G, 23

Chair:

Dana Moree

Contribution

In Sweden the fostering of democratic values has a long history in schools (Öhrn, 2001). Today, when an overwhelming majority of young people continue to post-compulsory studies, the experience of democratic participation among youths is part of education spaces rather than places of work. According to the Swedish national curriculum for upper secondary education, schools should not only teach students about democracy, but also ensure that they ’live democracy’ by having real influence over the educational organisation, methods and contents (the Swedish Ministry of Education and Science, 1994). This paper considers the latter aspect, how democracy is ‘lived’ in daily school life. International-comparative studies show that Sweden and the other Nordic countries have a broader definition of democratic education than many other countries in this respect (Birzéa et al., 2004). Students from Sweden and Nordic countries also express larger confidence in their possibilities to influence by engagement (Torney-Purta & Barber, 2004).

Nevertheless, Swedish studies show that students’ democratic influence is limited (e.g. Dovemark, 2004). Previous research also identifies gender in relation to social background as central for student’s different possibilities to exert influence in school. According to some studies boys seem to have more influence on teaching through their dominance of public speech and space (e.g. Lahelma & Öhrn, 2003), while others identify small groups of girls as a driving force when pursuing democracy issues in school (e.g. Öhrn, 2004). Variations in influence within the same gender groups due to social background have been reported (e.g. Arnot & Reay, 2004). This paper builds on theories and previous research that pays attention to gender and class perspectives as important to understand processes of democracy in school (e.g. Arnot, 2006; Gordon, 2006; Öhrn, 2004).

The paper emanates from the ongoing Swedish research project Active citizenship? On democratic education in the upper secondary school. The project aims at exploring democratic education in upper secondary school in terms of the content and organisation of teaching and learning as well as students' attempts to influence and pursue issues of citizenship and democracy in school. This involves studying rules and regulations employed in schools as institutions as well as the social, material and cultural resources employed by students. This paper aims at discussing situations when students more or less collectively, attempt to exert influence in the classroom. Of special interest are the processes of the students’ attempts to exert influence (who was involved, about what, and what resources were used), the responses of the teachers and head teacher, and the results of the students’ negotiations.

Method

An ethnographic field study was carried out at a major upper secondary school in Sweden during one school year, 2008-09. The study involved two classes, one from the Child and Recreation Programme (vocational, traditional female dominated) and one from the Natural Science Programme (academic, equal sex distribution). However, this paper focuses only the Child and Recreation class. The empirical data in this class consist of field notes from 78 days of participant observations of lessons and breaks, group interviews with the students (17 girls, 4 boys), individual and group interviews with teachers and one individual interview with the head teacher. The interviews were carried out during the spring term 2009. In the analysis has Bernstein’s (2000) theory of pedagogic codes, classification and framing in educational contexts been used, as well as Skeggs´ (1997) research about vocational education in traditionally female dominated courses.

Expected Outcomes

The preliminary results from this ongoing study show that only a few girls were the driving force when negotiating with teachers, while a majority of the students did not undertake actions. The questions the girls raised were, for example, about reduced lesson time, extra breaks and too high pace and difficulty level, and their negotiations were built on feelings rather than on high scholastic ambitions. The teachers and head teacher were almost always very obliging, caring and helpful, which in turn often resulted in reduced demands and lesson times for all students in the class. In this respect the girls´ arguing skills was an important resource for the whole class, and the negotiations seemed to be successful. However, the students´ ‘increased power’ resulted in reduced lesson times and course items, rather than on influence over the way they learned in school. In other words, in practice it led to confirmation of their position as low-achieving students in this upper secondary school.

References

Arnot, M. (2006) Freedom´s children: a gender perspective on the education of the learner-citizen. International Review of Education 52(1), 67-87 Arnot , M. & Reay, D. (2004) The framing of pedagogic encounters: Regulating the social order in classroom learning. In Muller, J., Davies, B. & Morais, A. (eds.) Reading Bernstein, researching Bernstein. London: RoutledgeFalmer Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique, second ed. Lanham Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Birzéa, C., Kerr, D.. Mikkelsen, R., Froumin, I., Losito, B., Pol, M., Sardoc, M. (2004) All-European study on education for democratic citizenship policies. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. Dovemark, M. (2004) Ansvar – flexibilitet – valfrihet: En etnografisk studie om en skola i förändring [Responsibility, flexibility, freedom of choice: An ethnographic study of a school in transition]. Gothenburg University. Gordon, T. (2006) Girls in education: Citizenship, agency and emotions. Gender and Education, 18 (1), 1-15. Lahelma, E. & Öhrn, E. (2003) Strong Nordic women in the making? In Beach, D., Gordon, T. & Lahelma, E. (eds.) Democratic education: Ethnographic challenges. London: Tufnell Press. Skeggs, B. (1997) Formations of class and gender: Becoming respectable. London: Sage. Swedish Ministry of Education and Science (1994) Curriculum for the Non-Compulsory School System Lpf 94. [Läroplaner för de frivilliga skolformerna Lpf 94]. Stockholm: Fritzes. Torney-Purta, J. & Barber, C.H. (2004) Democratic school participation and civic attitudes among European adolescents: Analysis of data from the IEA Civic Education Study. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. http://www.terpconnect.umd.edu/~jtpurta Downloaded 2009-12-29. Öhrn, E. (2001) Marginalization of democratic values: A gendered practice of schooling? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 5(2/3), 319-328. Öhrn, E. (2004) Young people as political actors in school, the ECER conference, 22-25 September, University of Crete.

Author Information

Carina Hjelmér (presenting / submitting)

Umeå University

Dept. of Applied Educational Science

Umeå

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