Equality and excellence. Hegemonic discourses of economisation within the German education system

Looking to conflicting constitutions of education systems through the terms equality and excellence, this paper examines the discursive formation of two political rationalities in the contemporary German education system. While early childhood and primary education discourses are dominated by a terminology of equality, tertiary education institutions such as universities are described using a terminology of excellence that has become a reference point for political interventions and institutional reform processes. Drawing from hegemony theory, governmentality studies and systems theory, this paper analyses the rules of justification referred to by such hegemonic discourses. It presents a policy discourse analysis of strategic, conceptional and institutional texts produced between 2003 and 2010. Through this analysis, the paper suggests that ‘mobilising’ and ‘optimising’ represent the common principles of equality and excellence as economic rationalities.     

Elite und Exzellenz aus der Perspektive von Jugendlichen und ihren Peers an exklusiven Schulen

Against the backdrop of the recent political discourse on elite and excellence in the German education system, this paper examines how such constructions manifest themselves in programmatic concepts of schools and in the orientations of their pupils and their peers. They are reconstructed on the basis of a qualitative research project on educational careers of young people. This paper focuses on pupils and their peers at an elite school of sports and an international school. Firstly, the state of research on those types of school as well as on educational careers of their pupils will be presented. Secondly, the theoretical reference points and the methodological design of the study will be introduced. At the core of the paper is the analysis of the education related orientations of selected cases of young people and their peers: How do they position themselves towards elite and excellence in their individual and collective orientations and how is this relevant for processes of distinction and coherence building in the groups? In the resuming part of the paper, the results will be summarised and related to the state of research and the scientific discourse on elite and excellence.     

Mechanismen der Elitebildung im deutschen Bildungssystem

The German education system is currently experiencing two contrasting trends: On the one hand, social opening, e.g. through the introduction of a partially-integrated secondary school system, compensatory all-day-schooling. On the other hand, an increasing vertical hierarchy in certain educational phases, e.g. through the explicitly encouraged introduction of private kindergartens and primary schools and the establishment of prime (academic track) Gymnasien and elite universities. In line with these structural changes, next to equality, the principle of excellence is gaining an increasing significance as a justification argument. This contribution will present the situation from an education-policy perspective, discuss theoretical discourses, and the national and international state of research on the topic of elitism and education. It will close with future research challenges.     

Gender equality in German universities: vernacularising the battle for the best brains

We examine how global pressures for competitiveness and gender equality have merged into a discourse of ‘inclusive excellence’ in the twenty-first century and shaped three recent German higher education programmes. After placing these programmes in the larger discourse about gender inequalities, we focus on how they adapt current global concerns about both being ‘the best’ and increasing ‘gender equality’ in locally specific ways, a process called vernacularisation. German equality advocates used ‘meeting international standards’ as leverage, drew on self-governance norms among universities, used formal gender plans as mechanisms to direct change, and set up competition to legitimate intervention. This specific incremental policy path for increasing women's status in German universities also mobilised the national funding agency and local gender equality officers as key actors, and placed particular emphasis on family friendliness as the expression of organisational commitment to gender equality.     

The imagined community of sexually liberal citizens: educational reforms since the 1970s

Recent integration discourses in Europe locate problems of equality, gender, and sexuality among migrant youth. Educating and testing the values of future citizens is supposed to guarantee their conformity with ‘western’ and ‘modern’ values. By analyzing educational reform discourses in multicultural Luxembourg, the paper aims to challenge these contemporary narratives in two ways: (1) In a historical analysis, the paper traces conservative reform resistance in the case of sex education which is often overlooked due to the focus on migrants; (2) In placing sex education’s reform legitimation and resistance within (a) broader educational reform discourses of inequality and citizenship and (b) contemporary narrations of the reforms and their taboos, the paper reconstructs how liberals and conservatives join an alliance over sexuality education of ‘the Other’. The sociological–historical discourse analysis critically questions the ethnicization of sexuality by disclosing its homogenizing use to cover conservative resistance within the citizen’s community.     

The European Union's discourse of ‘equality’ and its education and training policy within the post‐compulsory sector

This paper provides a critical overview of the development of European education and training policy and its relationship to the discourse of ‘equality’. This development reflects significant shifts within the European Union's discourse of economic growth and peaceful unity‐‐that is, the economic and social concerns of the European Commission. Interwoven into both these discourses is the European discourse of ‘equality’.

In the first section of the paper the historic development of the Commission's education and training policy is considered in relation to the discourses of equal opportunities and social exclusion, paying particular attention to the influence of the Action programmes for equal opportunities between women and men. This is followed by a brief section in which the recent interpretation of EC policy by the UK government is examined. In the final section the focus is on the equality discourse itself and the consequences of its application for under‐educated long‐term unemployed people. The paper concludes that although the differences between equal opportunities and social exclusion can appear as radical redefinition, they are nevertheless simply discursive shifts in a fundamentally unchanged equality discourse. Their significance, however, lies in the need for such an apparent shift.     

THE 'SECOND CHANCE' MYTH: EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY IN IRISH ADULT EDUCATION POLICIES

ABSTRACT:  This article explores the 'second chance' myth that surrounds the role of adult education in society. This myth apparently offers all citizens an equal chance to access educational opportunities to improve their life chances. I argue that recent developments in educational policy-making are increasingly shaped by neoliberal discourses that adapt adult education principles, such as lifelong learning and emancipation, for its own economic and political logic. This has important implications for adult education, especially equality of opportunity and social inclusion.     

'The Trouble with Our Schools': A media construction of public discourses on Queensland schools

This paper gives an account of competing public discourses on schooling. In particular, it investigates one newspaper's coverage of the release of an educational report. The paper combines interview data with a critical discourse analysis of newspaper texts to show how media reporting of Queensland schools constructed a preferred discourse on education that represented schools as being in crisis, 'in trouble'. The analysis describes how the paper shaped popular opinion on educational policy through the construction of public discourses of crisis in education. Further, the analysis shows how this discourse positioned particular groups as the authoritative voice on standards in Queensland schools. It shows how, at a time when teacher quality was under question, the media constructed a public discourse that diminished the authority of teachers to speak about education policy, granting that authority to the newspaper's editor, who assumed the people's voice on educational issues. This analysis of the construction of public discourses about education policy gives insights into the media's place in educational policy-making. In so doing, the paper adds to the small body of literature that investigates the relationships between the media and education.     

The conservative response to the 2011 Chilean student movement: neoliberal education and media

This paper focuses on the relationship between the media and educational policies in the context of the ‘neoliberal newspeak’, which has characterized the current circulation of ideas in cultural production. Using framing theory, this article presents a critical discourse analysis on the editorials published about the 2011 student movement by El Mercurio, the most influential newspaper in Chile. El Mercurio is more than a newspaper. It is an institution; an institution that supports conservative ideas. El Mercurio framed the public discussion about educational policies and defended neoliberal education based on three discourses: the neoliberal system is absolute, public education is valued less than private and education is a technical issue, not political. By invoking this rhetoric strategy, these discourses attempted to maintain the neoliberal education system in Chile, which in turn rejected the social struggles of the student movement.     

A critique of the teaching standards in England (1984–2012): discourses of equality and maintaining the status quo

This study presents a critical analysis of the state-prescribed teaching standards from 1984 to 2012 in order to reveal discourses of equality imbued within. Critical discourse analysis and critical race theory are employed to explore and explain how the discourses of equality are shaped by the prevailing political ideology of the state. Up to 2007, the analyses revealed the gradual emergence of two seemingly incompatible discourses: recognition of the difference within notions of appropriacy of curriculum input vs. the assertion of a homogenised knowledge valid for all. It is argued that because this tension remained unexamined in the documents, damaging assumptions of deficit were obscured, thereby effecting a failure to critique the hegenomic norms against which such deficit was assumed, with the ultimate effect of maintaining the status quo of inequitable outcomes. The standards of 2012 also operate to maintain the status quo, but do so far less discretely. Here homogeneity appears overtly approved through an overarching assimilationist agenda. Deficit is now more openly articulated as attached to those who need to assimilate. The paper concludes with ideas for an alternative transformative teacher education.     

ALAIN ET LES INSTITUTEURS (1)

In the past decade, US==A reforms discourses link strategies of professionalizing teaching with pedagogical research practices. This article explores the different reform practices as the effects of power. It focuses on educational policy and research as governing through the reasoning inscribed in the knowledge generated for action and participation. Political rationalities are inscribed in pedagogy as “a culture of redemption. Pedagogy is to save the child for society and to rescue society through the child. The saving of the child embodies norms about social/cultural progress that makes the science/scientist as the prophet.

The first section examines turn of the 20th century USA practices to professionalize the teacher and redefine pedagogy. Pedagogy embodies a concept of progress that revisions the child from a religious entity beholden to God to one that embodies certain collective social norms related to political rationalities. The child is to be a self‐motivated participant in a liberal democracy. The teacher is also revisioned as a redemptive agent but now in the worldly name of progress and a populism. Professional knowledge is interpellated in service of a liberal democratic ideal.

The second section focuses on the revisioning of the redemptive culture in contemporary USA educational science and reform discourses. Examining two seemingly different ideological discursive practices ‐‐ a state‐sponsored discourse of “systemic school reform” and a “post‐modern” critical pedagogy ‐‐ the author argues that similar redemptive images of progress, expert‐knowledge and populism are utilized. The redemptive discourses focus on the teacher fand child) who participates, collaborates, and constructs (makes) knowledge within a “community” rather than as a participant in social, collective norms. As with the redemption at the turn of the century, contemporary educational sciences inscribe principles of order that relate to changes in the governing systems for constructing individuality, but these systems are different from those produced at the end of the century.     

Phelps‐Stokes in Congo: Transferring Educational Policy Discourse to Govern Metropole and Colony

This article combines a historical with a social/political anthropological framework to examine the role played by the transfer of educational discourse between the United States‐based Phelps‐Stokes Fund and the Belgian Ministry of Colonies in the formulation of the colonial education policy of “adapted education” in the 1920s. The author argues that the transfer of racialized discourses of education and educational language was instrumental in the political governance of both metropole and colony as well as in improving the image of Belgian colonialism in the international political arena. In particular, the author emphasizes the political clout of the Catholic Party and the role played by two problems that ascended to the center stage of Belgian national politics after World War I (i.e. the cost of rebuilding the country and the so‐called “Flemish problem”) to show how colonial educational policy, and national and international politics are interconnected.     

The cultural politics of national testing and test result release policy in South Korea: a critical discourse analysis

This paper examines the ideological construction of educational discourses embedded within the South Korean print media. Significantly, these discourses have recently promoted the resurrection of a sweeping national testing and test results release policy. Through careful examination of the “test plus release” policy, the authors show how the government has achieved hegemonic power by shaping public opinion through the national testing contexts. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of educational policy texts from the government and top 10 print media sources, this paper analyses how discourses on “accountability”, “the right to know” and “the fairness of the tests” have been produced, reproduced and recontextualized to favour particular perspectives. The authors also examine how government and influential print media discourses interact with political and cultural factors such as “acclaiming the evaluative state”, “education fever” and “meritocratic beliefs” to achieve public consent for the new “test plus release” policy.     

Discourses of education and constitutions of class: public discourses on education in Swedish PBS television

Drawing on post-structural perspectives and analysis of television programs on education, the article investigates the public educational discourse in Sweden. It shows how a dominant neoliberal educational discourse is articulated together with a discourse of equal education, where the two discourses influence and subvert each other so that neither becomes totally hegemonic. Taking as its point of departure the neoliberal emphasis on the individual, especially as it relates to school choice and to the significance of class for educational success, the analysis focuses on the constitution of classed positions. The study reveals constitutions of class in which race, place, gender, economy and agency are intertwined, such that the schools and the students are attributed both different statuses and different subject positions in terms of future economic trajectories. The conclusions drawn are that, in the public conversation about the organization and goal of compulsory education, it is important to be aware of the discursive and political contexts in which the discussions take place. It is also important to realize that class matters in the educational assemblage in the form of economic subjectivities constituted in a web of intersecting notions about differing preconditions and outcomes of education.     

The regulation of teaching as symbolic politics: rituals of order,blame and redemption

This article explores the school inspection as a political ritual for the management of tensions between competition and equality inherent in neo-liberal educational regulatory regimes. At the centre of the article is a case study of how teachers in an allegedly failing working-class English primary school coped with issues of social class, educational success-and-failure and an Office of Standards in Education (OFSTED) inspection and related accountability measures. National educational policy – relative performance data and inspection – generated a crisis within the school, and intervened in teacher discourse about the role of social class in pupil attainment. Whereas previous scholarship on OFSTED and inspections has emphasised their harmful effects on teachers and teaching practice, the current article broadens the focus from regulatory to political issues, from specific schools to the stability of the educational order more generally. Based on this case study, situated within a broader analysis of shifting discourses about social class and education in English educational policy, I argue that (1) the current regulatory regime makes ‘failure’ inevitable, thereby posing a symbolic problem for policy-makers and politicians; (2) by identifying failure and allocating blame, the inspection ritual fulfils an important symbolic function; which (3) serves to buttress the legitimacy of the neo-liberal educational order.     

均质与分化:德国高校分类发展的战略选择

德国高校体系以平等均质为特色,各类型学校崇尚平等,特色各异。近年来,德国政府为提高高校竞争力,对促进学校差异化发展做出政策调整。“卓越计划”在平等传统上,促进高校功能分化:卓越研究型大学和均质大学并存,自治大学与应用科学大学均衡。从历史维度梳理德国高校分类发展进程发现,横向分类中均衡与均质并存,纵向分层中分化与卓越并举。正视不利于德国高校系统可持续发展的因素,对中国“双一流”建设具有启示意义。     

Contesting education policy in the public sphere: media debates over policies for the Queensland school curriculum

This paper investigates the work of media discourses on education policy in public debates over the Queensland school curriculum. It draws on theories of discourse, theories that have recently influenced the field of policy sociology, to outline a conceptualization of policy and media texts as discourses in the public sphere. In so doing, it notes the significant contribution such public discourses on education make to the policy process. The paper employs critical discourse analysis to investigate the discursive constructions of curriculum during one particular policy initiative. The analysis focuses on newspaper debates over the inclusion of a subject called Health and Physical Education (HPE) in the Queensland secondary school curriculum. The paper shows how educational policy issues were discursively constituted and contested through the construction of public discourses on education policy. In particular, it demonstrates how such public discourses worked to construct authoritative voices on educational policy. The paper concludes with a call to teachers and policymakers to seek opportunities to construct an authoritative public voice on issues of education policy.     

Teacher education reform: Issues of equity and accountability

Recent policy changes in teacher education have had a significant impact on equality of educational opportunity for the teaching profession. Improving standards of excellence in the school system while at the same time insuring equality of opportunity has become a major concern. The policy maker interested in promoting equality of opportunity will have to balance the need for teacher quality with the notion of equity. This paper examines some of the policy changes in teacher education and focuses on how they impact the recruitment and retention of minority students.     

Successful girls? Complicating post‐feminist,neoliberal discourses of educational achievement and gender equality

This paper examines how an ongoing educational panic over failing boys has contributed to a new celebratory discourse about successful girls. Rather than conceive of this shift as an anti‐feminist feminist backlash, the paper examines how the successful girl discourse is postfeminist, and how liberal feminist theory has contributed to narrowly conceived, divisive educational debates and policies where boys' disadvantage/success are pitted against girls' disadvantage/success. The paper illustrates that gender‐only and gender binary conceptions of educational achievement are easily recuperated into individualizing neo‐liberal discourses of educational equality, and consistently conceal how issues of achievement in school are related to issues of class, race, ethnicity, religion, citizenship and location. Some recent media examples that illustrate the intensification of the successful girl discourse are examined. It is argued that the gender and achievement debate fuels a seductive postfeminist discourse of girl power, possibility and choice with massive reach, where girls' educational performance is used as evidence that individual success is attainable and educational policies are working in contexts of globalization, marketization and economic insecurity. The new contradictory work of ‘doing’ successful femininity, which requires balancing traditional feminine and masculine qualities, is also considered.     

Education in the Sudan: the privileging of an Islamic discourse

This article examines the educational discourse in the part of the Sudan administered by the Government of the Sudan. It first analyses the value system upon which the Sudanese education is based by focusing on the nature of Islamism. Such a discussion is necessary because the dominant discourse is a discourse where power and Islamic theocracy legitimise each other and spill over into the educational discourse. Given the ethnic and religious complexity in the Sudan the imposition of a fundamentalist Islamic discourse is fiercely contested. The second part of the article, therefore, discusses the educational discourse of the government and relates it to the oppositional discourses in the country. It pays particular attention to the homogenising efforts of the dominant discourse to eradicate difference as a constituting factor in the Sudanese education system. The attempts to recognise difference have not led to a fundamental negotiation of the consequences of Islamism in the official school system.