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Equality of Opportunity as Pattern - Education Discourses and Educational Reform in Austria and Germany in the 1960s and 1970s

Main Content

Author(s):

Adrian Schmidtke(presenting / submitting)Julia Seyss-Inquart(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

23 SES 07 B, Equality

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-19

17:15-18:45

Room:

FFL - Aula 15

Chair:

Linda Rönnberg

Contribution

The call for education for all is nothing new and often connected to the notion of fostering equality of opportunity by educational reforms. In this presentation we want to explore in which way equality of opportunity and educational equality is used as pattern in discourses on formal early childhood education against the thematic backdrop of the education reform debates in Austria and Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. On the basis of empirical material we will show why and in what ways the notion of ‘educational equality’ was used during the preschool education reform discourses of the 1960s and 1970s, and which discursive strategies are associated with the use of this term.

The discourses we reviewed differ in several respects. While Julia Seyss-Inquart focusses on a political discourse and uses debates and laws at federal, provincial and municipal level in her review of Austrian education reform, Adrian Schmidtke primarily analyses the educational science discourses that influenced and commented on the 1960s and 1970s reform of preschool education. As a result, our analytic approach to examining the source documents also differ. While Seyss-Inquart analyses the available education policy papers for their educational science content, Schmidtke examines the available educational science papers with a view to their effect on educational policy. We are therefore less interested in enforcing comparability on two very different reform discourses, which appeared in two different institutional places. Instead, our main interest is to use the subject of educational equality to reconstruct the discursive formations, rules and principles that allow for a structurally similar - thematic and strategic – application of a single term in two very different contexts.

Method

Michel Foucault’s 'L'Archéologie du savoir' (1969/1981) and 'L’ordre du discours' (1972/2010), on which both research projects are based, provide a viable methodological framework for this. It allows shifting the focus away from the subject (which is emphasized in most established educational research) towards the discursive practices and structures of discourses on Bildung. In a Foucauldian perspective the idea oft the subject as the starting point of Bildung is replaced by an emphasis on discursive practices as the place of Bildung. These discursive practises are shaped by strategies that open up or close specific topics. Strategies in this theoretical approach do not describe strategic decisions of subjects but logics that form discourses. In our presentation we will show why and in what ways the notion of ‘educational equality’ was used during the preschool education reform discourses of the 1960s and 1970s, and which discursive strategies are associated with the use of this term.

Expected Outcomes

Even though the institutional and administrative framework is different in the two countries the discursive formation and the argumentation pattern of equality of opportunity is strikingly similar: The notion of the ‘producibility’ of talent and educational success characterises both discourses. In their reasoning, early child care institutions play a crucial role in achieving educational success, especially since these institutions can produce equal opportunity before the children enter school. Moreover the argumentation patterns regarding equal opportunity and educational equality seem to consist of strategically used, rhetorical figures designed to legitimise a wide range of reform efforts. Perhaps, as a hypothesis that calls for further review has it, the discourse of equal opportunity served more as a general legitimisation of any kind of reform: the reference sciences served to facilitate a generalised idea of the basic feasibility of talent, intelligence and optimal cognitive promotion, rather than being systematically interpreted and put into action to achieve a fundamental re-structuring of the educational system with a view to reducing inequality of opportunity. This would have required a much more theoretically informed discourse, which would not only have made fundamental changes in the education system possible, but would have virtually demanded them.

References

Hoffmann-Ocon, Andreas / Schmidtke, Adrian (2011): Zwischen Bildungspolitik und Bildungswissenschaft: Legitimationen von Bildungsreformen in bildungshistorischer Perspektive. In: Ludwig, Luise/ Luckas, Helga/ Hamburger, Franz/ Aufenanger, Stefan (Hrsg.): Bildung in der Demokratie II. Tendenzen - Diskurse - Praktiken. Opladen: Budrich, 107-121. Schmidtke, Adrian (2011): Internationale Bezüge im Vorschuldiskurs 1965 - 1976. In: Bilstein, Johannes / Ecarius, Jutta / Keiner, Edwin (Hrsg.): Kulturelle Differenzen und Globalisierung: Herausforderungen für Erziehung und Bildung. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag, 175-195. Schmidtke, Adrian / Seyss-Inquart, Julia (2012): Bildungspolitik und Bildungsreform - Bildungsgerechtigkeit als Thema in österreichischen und deutschen Bildungsreformdiskursen. In: Fegter, Susann / Kessl, Fabian / Langer, Antje / Ott, Marion / Rothe, Daniela / Wrana, Daniel (Hrsg): Erziehungswissenschaftliche Diskursforschung. Empirische Analysen zu Bildungs- und Erziehungsverhältnissen. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag (in preparation). Seyss-Inquart, Julia (2011): „Wenn ich groß bin werde ich Humankapital“ – Anmerkungen über die institutionelle Fremdbetreuung von Kindern. In: Forster, Edgar / Casale, Rita (Hrsg.): Jahrbuch Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung in der Erziehungswissenschaft, 131-142.

Author Information

Adrian Schmidtke (presenting / submitting)

Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen

Paedagogisches Seminar

Goettingen

Julia Seyss-Inquart (presenting)

University of Graz

Education

Graz

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