Curriculum and assessment for the knowledge society: interrogating experiences in the Republic of Ireland and Queensland,Australia

The ‘knowledge society’ has become a central discourse within educational reform. This article posits that the impact of the knowledge society discourse on curriculum and assessment has led to the emergence of what the authors term a new-form/re-form curriculum, and it asks whether what is transacting in contemporary movements in curriculum is less the reform of curriculum and more the emergence of a new-form/re-form curriculum. What is emerging is well beyond the discussions of outcomes and curriculum alignment that characterised much curriculum reform effort in the late 1990s. In this new-form/re-form curriculum ‘content’ is displaced by ‘skills’ and ‘knowledge acquisition’ by ‘learning’. Curriculum coverage is replaced by learner engagement. In this context, assessment also begins to take on new-form/re-form. Assessment now engages and promotes learning as process rather than as product. Two cases – the Republic of Ireland and Queensland, Australia – are analysed and compared to illustrate this shift in the conceptualisation of curriculum and assessment. Consideration is given to the possibility that this new-form/re-form curriculum represents a settlement in the contestation associated with learning outcomes and their perceived technical rationality and market focus. The paper concludes that the new-form/re-form curriculum is emerging in locations as diverse as Ireland and Queensland.     

Dewey,Derrida, and ‘the Double Bind’

It is taken for granted that the complexity of the information society requires a reorientation of our being in the world. Not surprisingly, the call for lifelong learning and permanent education becomes louder and more intense every day. And while there are various worthwhile initiatives, like alphabetisation courses, the article argues that the discourse of lifelong learning contains at least two difficulties. Firstly, the shift from a knowledge‐based to an information society has revealed a concept of learning with an emphasis on skills related to information retrieval, dissemination and evaluation. Learning now is the constant striving for extra competences, and the efficient management of the acquired ones. Secondly, the discourse of lifelong learning suggests the autonomy of the learner. However, educational practices are organized in a way that ‘choosing to learn (particular things)’ has become the contemporary human condition. With reference to Marshall's notion of ‘busno‐power’, it is argued that—contrary to what one likes to believe—lifelong learning has become a new kind of power mechanism.     

Feedback as a relational concept in the classroom

Abstract

This paper constructs a theoretical argument to frame feedback as a relational concept. It addresses contemporary concern that formative assessment, of which feedback is a part, is under theorised. The arguments presented link to existing theoretical and research evidence. The paper also challenges the dominant policy discourse in high stakes assessment contexts in which feedback is typically seen in technised ways to serve the need to raise measured pupil outcomes. Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development is explored as a relational space in which both teachers and learners understand differences between learning ‘now’ and learning ‘next’. Extending Vygotsky’s perspective, a socio-cultural perspective is offered, by considering the role of ‘others’, ‘language’, ‘activity’ and ‘identity’, as part of the process of sharing and understanding feedback in classrooms. The work of Holland et al. (1998), Bakhtin (1986) are central to the developing argument. The paper reveals feedback as a complex situated process, requiring mediated dynamic interaction, where feedback is appropriated as a cultural artefact by its participants. The implications of such an articulation demands a greater sense of understanding pupils’ roles in feedback and the importance of teachers enabling pupils to see themselves in new ways as future learners.     

‘Conceptual change’ as both revolutionary and evolutionary process

Our argument concerning the debate around the process of ‘conceptual change’ is that it is both an evolutionary learning process and a revolutionary paradigm change. To gain a deeper understanding of the process, the article focuses on the discourse of educational facilitators participating in a community of learners. Applying the methodology of ‘Semiotic Evolution,’ the micro‐process of learning within the group was traced. Analysis of the interaction between individual learning and group learning within the discourse enabled us to postulate a hypothetical three‐stage model of the process. The model indicates that conceptual change is an experiential change rather than a cognitive one, an intentional change of identity, a change of the person's relationship with the world.     

The politics of ‘lifelong learning’ in post‐1997 Hong Kong

This article is concerned with the politics of lifelong learning policy in post‐1997 Hong Kong (HK). The paper is in four parts. Continuing Education, recast as ‘lifelong learning’, is to be the cornerstone of the post‐Handover education reform agenda. The lineaments of a familiar discourse are evident in the Education Commission policy documents. However, to view recent HK education policy just in terms of an apparent convergence with global trends would be to neglect the ways in which the discourse of lifelong learning has been tactically deployed to serve local political agendas. In the second part of this paper, I outline what Scott has called HK’s ‘disarticulated’ political system following its retrocession to China and attempts by an executive‐led administration to demonstrate ‘performance legitimacy’—through major policy reforms—in the absence of (democratic) political legitimacy. Beijing’s designation of HK as a (depoliticized) ‘economic’ city within greater China must also be taken into account. It is against this political background that the strategic deployment of a ‘lifelong learning’ discourse needs to be seen. In the third section of this paper, I examine three recent policy episodes to illustrate how lifelong learning discourse has been adopted and has evolved to meet changing circumstances in HK. Finally, I look at the issue of public consultation. The politics of education policy in HK may be seen to mirror at a micro‐level, the current macro‐level contested interpretations of HK’s future polity.     

Assessment at the boundaries: Service learning as case study

This article explores the value systems which inform assessment practices in higher education, specifically how particular forms of knowledge valued in the curriculum shape and constrain assessment practices. The data for this article is drawn from two courses which participated in a service learning research and development project at the University of Cape Town. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein, the article argues that the location of these courses—within the field of higher education and a particular kind of institution, faculty and department—shapes their assessment systems, practices and outcomes in certain ways. What is valued in this field (Bourdieu) is a form of knowledge production which requires students ‘to step out of the particularities’. This form of knowledge operates as a regulative discourse, constituting what counts as legitimate. Using the assessment system as a ‘window’, this article explores how these service learning courses constitute and are constituted by the regulative discourse of the field. While the constraints of the field are powerful, this project offers some hopeful signs of forms of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment that, at the very least, name and challenge these underlying value systems.     

Social Studies Education as a Moral Activity: Teaching towards a just society

Many competing ideas exist around teaching ‘standard’ high school social studies subjects such as history, government, geography, and economics. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of social studies teaching and learning as a moral activity. I first propose that current high school curriculum standards in the United States often fail in focusing on the kinds of sustained discourse and ideas necessary for students to develop an awareness and commitment to justice in a pluralistic society. I then make the argument that understanding social studies as an inherently moral activity creates a space for transformative and meaningful learning to occur. Lastly, I contend that public schools are inextricably linked to understanding and creating elements of a just society and as such, hold equal potential to both support and severely hinder its development.     

From Meritocracy to Aristocracy: Towards a Just Society for the ‘Great Man’

In the practice of education and educational reforms today ‘meritocracy’ is a prevalent mode of thinking and discourse. Behind political and economic debates over the just distribution of education benefits, other kinds of philosophical issues, concerning the question of democracy, await to be addressed. As a means of evoking a language more subtle than what is offered by political and economic solutions, I shall discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson's idea of perfectionism, particularly his ideas of the ‘gleam of light’ and ‘genius’, as an alternative mode of thinking of human power. Through this Emersonian lens, a provocative shift will be made from meritocracy and ‘mediocracy’ to aristocracy. Emersonian aristocracy destabilizes balanced measures and prevailing discourse about fairness and justice, and makes us reconsider how to achieve a just society in democracy. As an educational implication, I shall propose the idea of citizenship without inclusion—a vision of education for a democratic society in which we learn to live as and with the Great Man.     

Community and Learning: contradictions,dilemmas and prospects

In this article I reflect on learning and community and their joint deployment. ‘Community’ evokes images and feelings of security and comfort (‘us’ and ‘ours’), while ‘learning’ evokes a sense of progress and confidence in overcoming obstacles—a lifelong and somewhat breathless journey these days. We learn every day, but what is worthwhile learning? What types of communities are worth learning towards? Such crucial considerations can remain unexamined because these words are so beguiling—every one can agree that learning communities are worthwhile. Together these terms have provided a powerful contemporary discourse for different educational reform agendas. Recent proponents of ‘learning communi ties’ have drawn upon sociocultural theorising of learning initiated by Vygotsky and others in the early 20th century. I suggest that this recent deployment of sociocultural learning theory is opportunistic and reflects an effort to resolve certain endemic pedagogical dilemmas related to how inclusion/exclusion is negotiated, how diversity/uniformity is reconciled, and how membership of a learning community is managed over time. I suggest that our role as learning and/or community theorists is principally to critically reflect on what types of learning and communities are worth striving towards.     

An ‘infusion’ approach to critical thinking: Moore on the critical thinking debate

This paper argues that general skills and the varieties of subject‐specific discourse are both important for teaching, learning and practising critical thinking. The former is important because it outlines the principles of good reasoning simpliciter (what constitutes sound reasoning patterns, invalid inferences, and so on). The latter is important because it outlines how the general principles are used and deployed in the service of ‘academic tribes’. Because critical thinking skills are—in part, at least—general skills, they can be applied to all disciplines and subject‐matter indiscriminately. General skills can help us assess reasoning independently of the vagaries of the linguistic discourse we express arguments in. The paper looks at the debate between the ‘specifists’—those who stress the importance of critical thinking understood as a subject‐specific discourse—and the ‘generalists’—those that stress the importance of critical thinking understood independently of disciplinary context. The paper suggests that the ‘debate’ between the specifists and the generalists amounts to a fallacy of the false alternative, and presents a combinatory‐‘infusion’ approach to critical thinking.     

Retelling herstory: to be a female Bedouin teacher differently

The aim of this article is to contribute to the discussion on education in Palestinian/Bedouin society in the Negev in Israel and it proposes the narrative of female trainee teachers as the basis of an analysis of the changing status of Bedouin women and their community. The academic discourse on teaching in Bedouin society ignores the potential existence of an alternative discussion outside the dichotomous area of ‘traditional and modern’ and/or ‘Jewish and Bedouin’. Bedouin society in the Negev constitutes a particularly interesting case for a meaningful study of the perception of teaching, chiefly because education has already become a significant practice in the life of a community that seeks integration into Israeli society. The teaching profession gives Bedouin women from the Negev a relatively new opportunity to integrate into education and employment and by so doing they reconstruct a new educational discourse.

Il’il: When we were little, we used to laugh about me—hmm—a teacher. Me with pupils, and I’d teach them, like the teacher who used to teach us, with a little board, and I write for them and they are my pupils, as it were, and I give them tests and all sorts. And I love the profession very, very much because I love the pupils…

Nura: I loved learning but this isn’t the profession that I want to study—to be a teacher … You can help someone in this profession. I see myself going in that direction … First of all, you have to give, to impart something to the children in front of you, who have come to learn. You have to give to these children, to be conscientious. You don’t just come. You haven’t chosen the profession because you wanted to, but you have to cope with it.     

Do ‘global citizens’ need the parochial cultural other? Discourse of immersion in study abroad and learning-by-doing

The discourse of immersion is prevalent but little analysed in the field of study abroad. Linked generally to learning-by-doing, this discourse has significance for ‘intercultural education’. Based on text analyses of three guidebooks on study abroad, this article suggests four effects of the discourse of immersion: It justifies study abroad as different from, if not better than, classroom learning and tourism. It emphasises the difference between students’ home and host cultures and constructs each society as internally homogeneous. It constructs study-abroad students’ home societies as globalised and their host societies as immobile and parochial, creating a hierarchy when globalisation is valorized. Finally, it exoticises the learning-by-doing ‘teachers’ – the host people – by portraying them as parochial ‘cultural others’. This article suggests an uneven process where the call for production of ‘global citizens’ through study abroad constructs host societies as parochial and risks reproducing a colonialist hierarchy of exoticism through intercultural learning-by-doing.     

The Learning Society,the Unfinished Cosmopolitan,and Governing Education,Public Health and Crime Prevention at the Beginning of the Twenty‐First Century

The ‘learning society’ expresses principles of a universal humanity and a promise of progress that seem to transcend the nation. The paper indicates how this society is governed in the name of a cosmopolitan ideal that despite its universal pretensions embodies particular inclusions and exclusions. These occur through inscribing distinctions and differentiations between the characteristics of those who embody a cosmopolitan reason that brings social progress and personal fulfilment and those who do not embody the cosmopolitan principles of civility and normalcy. Mapping the circulation of the notion of the ‘learning society’ in arenas of Swedish health and criminal justice, and Swedish and US school reforms is to examine the mode of life of the citizen of this society, the learner, as an ‘unfinished cosmopolitanism’ and also directs attention to its ‘other(s)’—those that are outside.     

Assessment discourse and constructions of social reality in infant classrooms

The 1968 structural reform of the education system in Israel was part both of a global process of democratization of education launched after the Second World War and of a larger modernization project in which the social sciences played a crucial role. This dynamic was an expression of a conjunction of interests, in which political forces used research on educational matters in order to advance their socio‐political agendas, while researchers used the state's interest in their work and in the ‘social problems’ they elaborated in order to receive public funding and to obtain state recognition of their scientific contribution. This article traces the reformist discourse structuration—the process of institutionalization of the different social science discourses in state institutions, such as universities and national institutes—in order to disclose the social sciences/politics linkage in Israel. It also puts forward the argument that in order to understand discourse structuration at a national level, it is essential to consider an additional factor: global education networks. Global networks adopted a discourse inspired by the American school model that tended to be adopted by scholars in different countries. The article focuses on the processes in Israel whereby knowledge producers elaborated the ‘inequality of opportunity’ and ‘ethnic gap’ social problems, and proffered the 1968 structural reform as the solution.     

The Discourse of the Learning Society and the Loss of Childhood

I argue that Hannah Arendt's analysis of the development of modern society illuminates one aspect of prevailing educational discourse. We can understand the ‘learning society’ as both an effect and an instrument of the logic of ‘bare biological life’ or zoé that Arendt claims is the ultimate point of reference for modern society. In such a society we seem to live permanently under the threat of social exclusion, being permanently put in the position of learners or problem‐solvers, without the right of appeal. To imagine the possibility of such an appeal requires us to recover our sense of the experience of childhood.     

What (more) can,and should,assessment do for learning? Observations from ‘successful learning context’ in Singapore

Singapore has earned accolades as one of the leading education systems in the world, based on its record in international assessments, including TIMMS and PISA. This has contributed to the entrenchment of ‘assessment’ becoming an institutional authority of standards, teaching (performativity) and classroom learning. It is against, and amidst such contexts, that this article traces how the notion and discourse of formative assessment and Assessment for Learning (AfL) are widely introduced and used formally across all Singaporean schools, particularly after a recent introduction of new ‘Holistic and Balanced Assessment’ policies. We argue that the very institutional authority of successful high-stake examination results, which served as critical standards of performativity of teaching and learning in the classroom, is being challenged. The changing assessment context of Singaporean schools, therefore serves as an interesting case study site for studying how formative assessment and AfL can be adapted and understood when ‘learning’ is already seen to be successful.     

Dialogic argumentation as a bridge to argumentative thinking and writing / La argumentación dialógica como puente para el pensamiento y la escritura argumentativa

Abstract

Argumentation has been claimed to be ‘the more general human process of which more specific forms of reasoning are a part’. The educational context in which argument is most often practised and assessed is individual expository writing — a skill that teachers routinely report as their most challenging to teach and one in which students typically perform poorly. It becomes increasingly important with advancing grade and by the post-secondary level is crucial to academic success. We describe the dialogic method we have developed to foster young adolescents’ argument skills. Its essence is to engage students in rich and extended dialogues with one another on significant topics. We review evidence that the method, implemented in extended form over two or more years, produces positive outcomes in argumentative discourse, in individual writing and in meta-level understandings of argumentative discourse and evaluations of argument. In this study, we elaborate on these results and on the promise and challenges the method poses.     

The Dakar framework: constructing and deconstructing the global neo‐liberal matrix

The paper’s focus is The Dakar framework for action—education for all: meeting our collective commitments, which presents the UNESCO, G8, World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s blueprint for the ‘development’ of education globally by 2015. Taking a discourse analytic approach, discussion of the Dakar framework make two claims. The first is that the Framework has a Matrix‐like effect in that it potentially closes out other ways of thinking about and practicing education. The second argument is that the apparent contradiction between its deployment of a human rights centered discourse and neo‐liberal discourse that establishes this Matrix‐like effect, must be understood as something more than simply an exercise in lies, deception and rhetoric. Rather, the Matrix‐like effect of the Framework succeeds not because the Framework lies, but because it doubly exploits the very same ambivalence in liberal‐humanism that facilitated the European control of ‘Others’ in an earlier era of globalisation. Gandhi who challenged the Matrix‐like effects of globalising British Empire power in this earlier era of globalisation is referred to in the paper as a real figure of history to exemplify the Neo figure in the discussion of the Matrix as a metaphor for the neo‐liberal EFA policy.     

Large-scale implementation of formative assessment practices in an examination-oriented culture

Singapore’s education system has often been characterised as exam-oriented. This paper describes efforts (‘windmills’) made by the Government to constructively respond to the ‘winds of change’ in the education system. A committee called the Primary Education Review and Implementation (PERI) Committee was appointed to study and recommend the priorities, programmes and resources needed to revise primary education in Singapore. The Committee recommended that a balanced school-based assessment system that provides constructive feedback, enabling more meaningful learning in support of both academic and non-academic aspects of a pupil’s development, be carried out under the label of ‘Holistic Assessment’. This paper is an attempt at surfacing the challenges (‘walls’) in implementing ‘Holistic Assessment’ on a large scale, highlighting in particular, the tensions perceived by stakeholders concerning the interaction between formative assessment and accountability systems. It documents how stakeholders, namely teachers and parents, perceive and typify the concept of ‘Holistic Assessment’. The findings provide insights into the consequent realities of a nationwide shift in assessment purpose and discourse on teachers and parents.     

What academic language and learning advisers bring to the scholarship of teaching and learning: problems and possibilities for dialogue with the disciplines

Higher education policy is seeking, in the interest of ‘quality assurance’, to reward teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Academic language and learning (ALL) advisers, who work closely with students to improve their performance in their courses of study, have much to contribute to SoTL. ALL advisers who adopt an ‘academic literacies’ approach share with lecturers in the disciplines an engagement with issues of ‘‐ography’ (i.e. writing in and for a discourse community)—including the relationships between epistemology, form, and language—yet, misconceptions about ALL advisers’ work can prevent discipline lecturers from consulting them when thinking about questions of teaching and learning in their own field. This paper discusses ALL advisers’ access to insights into students’ experiences of learning and of being taught, with relevance both for particular disciplines and for academic culture across the disciplines; their contributions to SoTL; the difficulties they encounter in trying to communicate across the borders of the disciplines; and ways of improving this situation in the context of the new emphasis on encouraging improvement in the quality of teaching.