People’s high schools in Scandinavia: a contribution to democracy?

In times of global influence, compulsory education in the Nordic countries has promoted democracy as choice since the 1990s, as enhancing an individual good. Supporting education for democracy is a matter that concerns the world and society on the topic of ‘what shall he do? Shall he act for this or that end?’. This indicates that democratic education is not only a matter of individual good, but a public, regarding who I want to be, how I would like to respond towards both the world and society. As for public good, who I want to be involves having the freedom to act in the world that lies between us. The article explores Nordic tradition of people’s high school, which is known to enhance the enlightenment of the people and to support democracy as a public good. Focus group interviews with folk high school students in Norway were carried out. To theoretically interpret the findings, theories on freedom and action were used. Arendt’s theories contribute to the results by offering ways to theoretically comprehend students’ experiences of being seen and heard during their school years. The study asks to what extent, if any, people’s high schools in Norway contribute to and/or challenge education and democracy in today’s society.     

What do citizens need to know? An analysis of knowledge in citizenship curricula in the UK and Ireland

Contemporary citizenship education tends to focus on the development of skills through real experiences, which has led to a relative neglect or simplification of knowledge and understanding. This article outlines a framework for analysing citizenship curricula drawing on Young’s notion of ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘knowledge of the powerful’ and on Shulman’s account of subject knowledge, which includes substantive concepts and epistemic criteria. These ideas are used to analyse the citizenship curricula in the four nations of the UK and Ireland to assess the extent to which they provide an adequate account of knowledge and understanding of citizenship. The article concludes that it is important to reconsider the relationship between the genuinely educational aspects of citizenship education (where ‘powerful knowledge’ opens up new and diverse understandings) from the normative aims, which are more akin to a form of socialisation (where ‘knowledge of the powerful’ closes down certain possibilities).     

What type of teachers do we intend to train? An analysis of teacher profiles in MERCOSUR curricula

Over the last decades, teachers have often been identified as ‘key’ players for the improvement of education systems. The successive waves of reform taking place in Latin America since the 1990s have aimed at initial and continuous teacher training. The main changes intended to improve the quality and lengthen the duration of initial teacher training; additionally, the variety of teacher training courses was widened and diversified. This work focuses on the teacher training curricula currently in force for the MERCOSUR member states (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay). Special attention will be paid to the definitions of the profile that is intended for future teachers, as it is believed that this dimension makes it possible to reveal the different types of expected performance, which will allow us to move towards the dimension of the educational practices. The results obtained from the comparative analysis indicate that the abilities/competences put forth by the four countries are relevant and complementary with each other. Studies of this kind are a step forward in the definition of common policies for MERCOSUR countries aimed at strengthening and articulating teacher training and, specifically, at recognizing teacher qualifications and favouring mobility among countries.     

The Significance of Physical Education Content: “Sending the Message” in Physical Education Teacher Education

Mind-body dualism has likely influenced how many view human beings and their behavior—mind (i.e., thinking) is elevated over body (i.e., performing)—even in Physical Education Teacher Education. The problem is that such a perspective makes physical education content (i.e., dance, games, play, and sport) subsidiary to more “intellectual” or “academic” content. This article invites Physical Education Teacher Education faculty to consider how to effectively “send the message” to future physical educators that physical education content is valuable and respectable and in many ways epitomizes intelligent human behavior. Specifically, Physical Education Teacher Education faculty are invited to (a) challenge traditional definitions of intelligence and introduce alternative definitions, (b) participate regularly in their own playgrounds, (c) provide a sufficient dose of activity courses in their curricula, (d) teach activity courses, (e) establish a performance-oriented culture, and (f) administer performance and/or game play evaluations.     

Combining Market and Bureaucratic Control in Education: An answer to market and bureaucratic failure?

This article focuses on institutional arrangements in education across Western countries. It essentially deals with the recent trend towards extended school choice presumably aimed at creating a competitive environment for schools and teachers. For many years the functioning of educational systems, in particular the way schools were institutionally co-ordinated, was not perceived as fundamental to economic analysis. But more and more economists now believe that the institutional setting in which schools are embedded-their governance structure-is decisive regarding both efficiency and equity. In this respect, it is worth noting that most Western countries rely essentially on bureaucratic control to co-ordinate their educational sector. Yet some of them, such as Belgium, The Netherlands, England and Wales, New Zealand and Sweden incorporate market-oriented mechanisms at the heart of their institutional arrangements. The main focus of this article is to analyse the origins, as well as the economic relevance, of this-in some cases relatively recent-tendency to mix bureaucratic and market approaches to education.     

Response and responsibility: fabrication of the eco-certified citizen in Swedish curricula 1962–2011

This article addresses the fabrication of the eco-certified citizen, an ideal – rather than real – citizen constructed through requirements of both needed knowledge and a kind of personhood, with specific qualities. The societal demands of knowledge-response to environmental problems are studied, as well as the student’s (future citizen’s) responsibility in relation to these problems, in five subsequent national curricula for the Swedish compulsory school between 1962 and 2011. How does environmental education operate as a hub for constructing desirable citizens? From a theoretical framework of governmentality, the article explores how political rationalities for society and citizenship emerge. Our findings show how recent curricula, by using space and time metaphors, fabricate the eco-certified citizen as an individualistic, globalized person who is able and willing to use scientific knowledge to make decisions and develop opinions about the world. Citizenship has evolved as a competence rather than an ongoing practice, meaning that one has to prove oneself as a legitimate citizen. This emerging, post-political, citizenship differs from citizenship posited in 1960s’ curricula – a combination of traditional family values and democratic involvement in the local society.     

Holocaust Education in Ontario High Schools: An antidote to racism?

The premise underpinning this article is that if the Holocaust is taught well it can help to promote anti-racist goals. The need to realise the Holocaust's anti-racist potential is self-evident, but is arguably greatest where conventional anti-racism (aimed at enhancing the life chances of visible minorities) is under threat. Such a situation currently obtains in Ontario, where the right wing Progressive Conservative party was elected to office in June 1995. The uncertain future of anti-racism in the province provides the background to this article. It examines the teaching of the Holocaust in Ontario high schools and reports the findings of a survey carried out among history staff in May 1998. Various ways are suggested in which the teachers involved (and others elsewhere) might alter their approach to the Holocaust in order to strengthen its contribution to anti-racist education.     

The Politics of Processes and Products in Education: An early childhood metanarrative crisis?

This paper critically engages with the theme of ‘process over product’—a theme that is argued to be increasingly problematised as an influential narrative in the construction and transmission of a philosophy of early education. The importance of producing children of ‘competence’ through appropriate educational processes is associated with assumptions regarding what counts as an appropriate educational journey for children before they reach school age. Drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault, and Jean‐François Lyotard, this paper considers the purpose and tensions of articulating process as more important than product in early childhood. It is argued that the articulation of the child as a particular kind of process‐oriented player leads to an uncritical acceptance of technologies of governing the child. Furthermore, discourse asserting the importance of processes of play reveals a crisis in understanding what it means to be a player, and what the purpose of the process of play might be. Process contributes to a narrow understanding of a performative purpose of play as a processing of information. A role of the educator, this paper argues, is then to critically engage with the transmission of the theme of process.     

Analysing proof-related competences in Estonian,Finnish and Swedish mathematics curricula—towards a framework of developmental proof

Many countries are revising their mathematics curriculum in order to elevate the role of proof and argumentation at all school levels and for all student groups. Yet, we have very little research on how proof-related competences are aimed to be developed in the mathematics curricula of different countries in Grades 1 to 12. This article contributes to filling this gap by analysing and comparing three countries’ curricula from the perspective of developmental proof. For this purpose, we created an analytical frame of proof-related competences that could be connected to the development of students’ understanding and skills concerning argumentation and mathematical proof. The analysis reveals three quite different trajectories with specific characteristics, shortcomings and strengths.     

Pupils’ Participation in and Response to Sustainable Food Education in Swedish Home and Consumer Studies: A Case-Study

The aim of this study is to explore conditioning factors influencing learning opportunities in food-related education taught from a perspective of sustainable development. Over the course of the eighth-grade school year, data were derived from field studies of two classes taught in Home and Consumer Studies with an exploratory case-study design. Data were analyzed using thematic and ideal-type analysis, resulting in four ideal-type portrayals: the Convinced, the Easygoing, the Unable, and the Skeptical, which characterize how pupils participate in and respond to sustainable food education in different ways. The characteristics of each of the four ideal types imply contextual frames that condition unequal learning opportunities in sustainable food education. By identifying, scrutinizing, and accommodating to existing conflicts and related structures, educational policy makers and practicing teachers can increase opportunities for pupils to develop informed reasoning, regardless of their ideal type characteristics.     

Upgraded curriculum? An analysis of knowledge boundaries in teaching under the Swedish subject-based curriculum*

This article offers a contribution to the current debate about knowledge and the curriculum, especially initiated by social realist writers. The enacted Swedish subject-based curriculum for compulsory schooling is examined and is also used as a significant case with the aim of discussing practical implications of social realist claims regarding knowledge and the curriculum. Video-recorded lessons from grade six in six different Swedish schools, in combination with teacher interviews, are explored within the scope of a curriculum theory framework with the purpose of illuminating dominant patterns of knowledge boundaries and knowledge conceptions. The study shows how the Swedish subject-based curriculum frames teaching in a direction where a disciplinary knowledge conception with fixed knowledge boundaries predominates over other knowledge forms. The subject-based curriculum also appears to produce an ‘overloading’ of content, which implies that pupils’ questions and experiences are avoided and dismissed in the teaching practice.     

Who's in STEM? An Exploration of Race,Ethnicity, and Citizenship Reporting in a Federal Education Dataset

As the United States becomes more racially and ethnically diverse and draws more students from across the globe, more representative data are needed to understand at-risk and underrepresented populations in higher education, particularly in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The authors argue that the current reporting standards for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) result in the misrepresentation of racial and ethnic populations in STEM by forcing non-U.S. students into a “master status” category regardless of their racial or ethnic group membership. This study uses data from IPEDS and the American Community Survey to estimate the possible misrepresentation of reported bachelor degree completions by racial and ethnic group and citizenship status in the biological and biomedical sciences and engineering. We found that nearly all of the racial and ethnic groups in IPEDS may be significantly misreported because of the reporting standards for U.S. citizenship. With these findings, various implications are discussed, including higher education decision-making policies; interpretation of academic and social experiences of diverse peoples (race, ethnicity, and nationality); and creation of effective structures for academic success, particularly for students of color, regardless of citizenship.     

‘Education and the working class’: a conversation with the work of Dennis Marsden and his contribution to the sociology of education

This paper is both a careful analysis of a seminal piece of work in the sociology of education, as well as a passionate plea to revisit with renewed urgency, the way in which education continues to fail unacceptably large numbers of working-class children. Through closely examining the work of Dennis Marsden (with his colleague Brian Jackson) in Education and the working class, the paper argues that this pioneering work done in working-class Huddersfield the 1950s, remains a stoic statement of what is wrong with working-class education, and is as rich in substantive and methodological insights as when it was written in 1962. By taking some biographical slices of key contemporary scholars, in particular Stephen Ball and Diane Reay, who have themselves been prolific scholars in this field, the paper speaks to the central arguments of Marsden’s unique work through their biographies, while establishing the distinctiveness of Marsden’s contribution to understanding social class within the wider field of sociology of education. The paper argues for a reinvigoration of the elusive search for the kind of authentic understandings of working class pioneered by Marsden, as the basis for an equitable and just schooling for working-class children.     

Science curricula design: analysis of authors’ ideological and pedagogical principles

The study analyses the extent to which the sociological message transmitted by the Official Pedagogic Discourse of the curriculum for Portuguese middle schools contains the ideological and pedagogical principles of its authors. The research is epistemologically and sociologically grounded, placing particular emphasis on Bernstein theory of pedagogic discourse. The ideological principles underlie broad educational aims and the pedagogical principles underlie characteristics of the pedagogic practice. Data was obtained through a semi‐structured interview with the authors and documental analysis of their publications. The results suggest that the authors were distinct in the ideological and pedagogical principles they valued and that discontinuities were evident between those principles and the curriculum message. These results are discussed and their consequences in terms of scientific learning are explored.     

Gendered distribution of ‘knowledge required for empowerment’ in Swedish vocational education curricula?

Sweden is internationally commended for a high degree of gender equality, but many divisions in Swedish society, including the labour market, disadvantage women. This paper addresses gendered divisions of preparation for civic participation in the vocational upper secondary national curricula, which may participate in reproduction of the pattern. In a comparative analysis of the curriculum guidelines for different vocational upper secondary programmes, we focus on the inclusion of important knowledge for empowerment and how knowledge is contextualised in terms of valued labour positions. We deploy Bernstein’s concepts of horizontal and vertical discourse and Connell’s concepts of production, consumption and gendered accumulation. A general finding is that vertical discourse is contextualised towards discourses of consumption in girl-dominated programmes and towards discourses of production in boy-dominated programmes. Boy-dominated programmes include more knowledge that can be clearly classified in recognised disciplines or fields, whereas girl-dominated programmes include courses of undefined knowledge, such as creativity and entrepreneurship. We conclude that the vocational curricula reinforce rather than challenge existing gender structures in the labour market and wider society. In a historical perspective, it can be concluded that Swedish vocational education policy has a continuum of ‘gender-blindness', and thus confirming with wider norms.     

Markets,equity and democracy — structural adjustment and the tensions of educational change in South Africa

In 1994 South Africa embarked on a process of major reform of an education system that had existed to support and maintain apartheid. Two of the key principles behind these reforms were greater equity and democracy. However, although not formally having a structural adjustment policy, since 1994 the South African government has had close ties with the World Bank and has increasingly adopted the type of free market macro-economic policies that it favours. This article examines tensions in South African educational policy caused by existing policies favouring state initiated redistribution of resources and power on the one hand and the wider context of a mounting emphasis on limiting public expenditure and increasing private provision on the other. It concludes by asking whether South African education would benefit by borrowing from the World Bank to invest in human resources and argues that the potential dangers outweigh the potential benefits.     

An analysis of English teachers’ self-efficacy in relation to SEN and disability and its implications in a changing SEN policy context

Policy and practice in relation to meeting the diverse needs of all children, including those with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities, is in a state of change in the UK. As a result, there is growing interest in and understanding of the need to focus on factors which impact on teachers’ levels of self-efficacy in meeting the needs of learners with SEN, and the implications of this for further development and training. The research reported in this paper gathered data from teachers at a unique time in the transition of policy and practice in England. Through a quantitative analysis of a questionnaire completed by 213 teachers from a variety of teaching settings, data relating to the self-efficacy and confidence levels of teachers immediately prior to the statutory changes in SEN policy has been captured. The findings identify that the Key Stage that the teacher works in is directly related to self-efficacy, that self-efficacy in collaboration is generally lower than self-efficacy in instruction and behaviour management, and that knowledge of laws and policies pertaining to SEN and Disability and experience in teaching children with disabilities had a strong positive relationship on overall self-efficacy. Implications for the ongoing development of practice within the profession, including the development of appropriate initial and continuing professional development models to support teachers throughout their career, and avenues for further research are presented.