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.     

Changing curriculum policy into practice: the case of physical education in Hong Kong

This article examines the differences between the formally stated aims of education and the implementation of the school curriculum in order to show the divergence between what is initiated and what emerges as school practice. This implementation problem is examined from the policy-makers' and teachers' perspectives, with specific reference to physical education as a school subject in Hong Kong. First, it examines the existence and intention of educational policy towards curriculum as established by policy-makers. Second, the implementation process is evaluated from the teachers' perspective by employing a framework adopted by Cuban (1998) that utilized effectiveness, popularity, fidelity, adaptability and longevity. The data are derived from a case-study of a physical education programme that included document analysis, and interviews with teachers, parents and students. The case-study provided a subjective perspective of teachers and their work, while the framework assisted in demonstrating the absence of cohesion between the various government agencies. The resulting fragmentation of ideas leading to confusion and frustration for teachers also indicates that longevity and adaptability are likely to be the most constructive criteria for the assessment of curriculum change.     

Discursive institutionalism: towards a framework for analysing the relation between policy and curriculum

Discourse approaches in education policy analysis have gained prominence in the last decade. However, though the literature on policy discourses is growing, different conceptions of the ‘discursive’ dimension and its potential for empirical analysis related to the field of curriculum policy have not yet been fully researched. To address this gap in education policy research, this article explores the framework of discursive institutionalism. Using background and foreground ideas and coordinative and communicative discourses on three analytically distinct levels, this article proposes and discusses a framework for empirically analysing, explaining and understanding education reforms on the transnational and local levels. The introduced conceptual framework represents an integration of discursive institutionalism (DI) and curriculum theory (CT) to provide a more multifaceted set of concepts to explore the lending and borrowing of transnational education policies and their application at both national and local levels. These concepts have been applied as analytical tools in a research study on the most recent curriculum reform in Sweden, and they may serve as an example of how different ideas, discourses and levels can be distinguished in research studies to maintain the complexity of education reforms.     

Conceptualizing shadow curriculum: definition,features and the changing landscapes of learning cultures

This article presents a new conceptualization of ‘shadow curriculum’, one component of the worldwide phenomenon of shadow education, i.e. learning outside of school. Traditional conceptions of curriculum are not applicable to shadow education, and so this article begins by exploring how shadow education practices qualify as a new focus of curriculum studies. Based on existing scholarship and our own field experience in South Korea, we propose that shadow curriculum can be defined as supplementary curriculum out of schooling provided by educational business industries that are aimed for individual students’ academic success in formal education. The following discussion explores the characteristics of shadow curriculum and shows that incorporating shadow curriculum as a new area of focus in the field of curriculum studies can broaden existing understandings of student learning and the concept of curriculum. Our hope is that this discussion will open a new intellectual space for analysis of the complex phenomenon of shadow education within the field of curriculum studies.     

Global discourses and national reconstruction: the impact of globalization on curriculum policy

Globalization has been widely discussed and much contested. It has been claimed that the process of globalization has impacted greatly on the capacity of the nation-state to formulate policy (e.g. Reich, 1992). Moreover, globalization has been accompanied by, or at least runs parallel to, a seemingly endless process of change within education. This process has assumed a worldwide character,as policies have migrated around the world; thus there have existed many similarities in terms of, for instance, curriculum provision, or school governance, between New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA. This article examines the nature and extent of education change in general terms, and the concept of globalization, before analysing the links between globalization and the process of change in one area of education, that is, the development of national frameworks for curriculum and assessment within anglophone nations.     

Towards internationalizing the curriculum in a context of globalization: comparing policy processes in two settings

The primary focus of this paper is two case study schools, one in Singapore and one in Australia, which have both been actively pursuing an agenda to build a unique internationally‐oriented curriculum, in a context of globalization, but also within the constraints set by national/State curriculum frameworks, examinations and league tables. Interviews were used to collect data in each school, and then cross‐case analysis was conducted to reveal both similarities and differences in the way the two schools are moving towards internationalizing their curriculum. Emergent meta‐level conceptual themes around policy for ‘internationalization’ of the curriculum are discussed: enablers and constraints; the issue of whether such internationalization fosters a market ideology; changing power relationships; and the relevance of distinctions between internationalization and globalization. The paper concludes by pointing to the contribution of the ‘sociology of knowledge’ and ‘critical policy analysis’ in disrupting the potentially hegemonic economic discourses associated with internationalizing the curriculum.     

Let them eat Shakespeare: prescribed authors and the National Curriculum

In this article, we examine the debate that surrounds prescribed reading lists in the English National Curriculum. In particular, we attempt to locate the role which ideas about heritage and social and moral values have played in constructing this debate. We begin by examining the English National Curriculum's origin in the 1980s as a conservative exercise in stemming cultural crisis, and the discourse about literature's role in the curriculum which this helped construct. We then examine how this discourse has influenced, and continues to influence, the educational policy of prescribing a list of authors and consider the assumptions that are embedded in this policy. Finally, we reflect upon how the material conditions of the classroom provide a site of resistance, or difficulty, for the officially sanctioned discourse concerning literature's role in the curriculum.     

An exploration of primary school teachers' understanding of art and the place of art in the primary school curriculum

Some research within developmental psychology shows a slow period of development in children's expressive drawings during the primary school years. Developmental researchers suggest that ‘educational factors’ could contribute to this dip in development but have not explored these factors. This study explores links between educational policy – in terms of the English National Curriculum – and the development of expression in child art. A Foucauldian style analysis of interviews is presented which investigates how ten primary school teachers working in two Staffordshire schools approach art. A specific concern is to explore how different understandings of art and teaching practices are shaped and managed by the curriculum. This allows links between the demands of the curriculum and the observed dip in expressive drawing development to be investigated.     

Cultural capital,curriculum policy and teaching Latin

Latin is currently being trialled as a subject in 40 state secondary schools in England. This paper focuses on one of the justifications of this trial: that teaching Latin in state secondary schools provides students with cultural capital which in turn counters social injustice. By taking the example of Latin as a starting point, I reach two conclusions about cultural capital. The first is that providing students with cultural capital can be good for some individuals, and so justified on a case-by-case basis depending on context. However, this justification does not hold for curriculum policy making. My second conclusion is that in the long term, pursuing cultural capital as part of curriculum policy exacerbates the social injustices it purports to address. Wherever an activity is introduced for the sake of cultural capital rather than its educational value, educationally valuable activities risk being pushed off the curriculum, potentially degrading the educational value of the curriculum. In the case of teaching Latin, it may provide benefits to particular students, but as part of curriculum policy it risks exacerbating social injustices and undermining the educational value of school curricula. Going beyond the place of Latin on the curriculum, I argue that all appeals to cultural capital provide a poor basis for curriculum policy making.     

Discourse analysis as theory,method, and epistemology in studies of education policy

ABSTRACT

Discourse has featured in studies of educational policy as an analytic and methodological tool, theoretical frame, realm of implication, and even a foundational definition of educational policy itself (e.g.) Despite the centrality of discourse as a frame for exploring educational policy and its implications, the ways that discourse is defined or operationalized in educational policy research are often left implicit which can lead to murky relations to larger onto-epistemological questions of how we construct findings from data as well as the nature of policy. In this interpretive analysis, we synthesize a corpus of 37 peer-reviewed journal articles that bring together educational policy and analyses of discourse from varying theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to better understand the breadth and scope of how discourse is defined and operationalized in studies of educational policy, including in ways that are sometimes incommensurate with authors' stated theoretical and methodological positions. After first laying the theoretical groundwork for analyses of discourse in the field of educational policy, we then illustrate how discourse analysis is used differently, and sometimes inconsistently, within contested paradigmatic landscapes. We conclude with an argument for discussions across theoretical frameworks and methodological paradigms about how the concept of discourse lends itself to different epistemological vantage points on educational policy.     

The new educational policy for the reform of the curriculum and the change of school knowledge in the case of Greek compulsory education

This article looks critically at Greek educational reform to the curriculum of compulsory education—reform that took place so that Greece could put into practice the decisions of the European Union of Lisbon (2000) for the contribution of education to the adaptation of the new data of the ‘knowledge society’. Bernstein's theory about pedagogic discourse is utilized. Also, with the use of qualitative content analysis in specific resources (parliamentary debates, new curriculum and textbooks) we tried to answer the following questions: Which are the dominant social principles that led the Greek state to change the curriculum? Through which process and with the contribution of which factors did the reform of the curriculum come about? And which are the characteristics of the new school knowledge and of the pedagogic practices that are selected for their reproduction at the level of the classroom?     

A review of curriculum in the UK: internationalising in a changing context

The present article focuses on the growing emphasis on international dimensions of the curriculum in the UK. Educators and policymakers increasingly grapple with the thorny issue of how best to prepare future generations for life in a world changing so rapidly that no-one is able to predict precisely what knowledge and skills will be relevant for the adult of tomorrow. Overlapping with debate relating to the national context is that pertaining to the global environment, which manifests itself in current educational discourse relating to a growing number of concepts such as global citizenship education, international education, development education, world studies, and education for international understanding. Beginning with consideration of the curriculum context, this article highlights the growing number of international curriculum programmes being developed and offered worldwide, and in the UK in particular, before considering some of the reasons behind this growth and the implications of increased interest in programmes with an international focus.     

Teacher mediation of curriculum making: the role of reflexivity

This research explores curriculum making by teachers and offers a nuanced way of understanding these practices through the concept of reflexivity. The study draws from a collective case study of teachers in an online focus group, in order to identify and analyse diverse thinking on the curriculum making by teachers from Scotland and Wales. A WordPress® page was set up to generate both synchronous and asynchronous discussions over a period of five weeks to discuss curricular issues. Six teachers from Scotland and three teachers from Wales participated in the discussions. Data collection tools comprised iteratively designed interview questions and an Internal Conversation Indicator (ICONI), for indicating participants’ dominant mode of reflexivity. Data were analysed thematically, drawing from Margaret Archer’s theoretical constructs relating to reflexivity and internal conversation. Data analysis suggests that reflexivity provides a useful lens for understanding teachers’ particular approaches to curriculum making. The research suggests that curriculum making practices can be understood, at least partially, in relation to different modes of reflexivity. Further research is needed to substantiate these arguments and provide a richer picture of curriculum making.     

Using multidimensional methods to understand the development,interpretation and enactment of quality assurance policy within the educational development community

Policy texts are representations of practice that both reflect and shape the world around them. There is, however, little higher education research that critically analyses the impact of higher education policy on educational developers and educational development practice. Extending methods from critical discourse analysis by combining textual analysis of a policy text with in-depth interviews with policy-makers and policy users, this article seeks to better understand the process of production, interpretation and implementation of policy. The article focuses on a leading national UK quality assurance policy in relation to the educational development community in order to uncover how policy is played out in practice. The findings paint a picture of a text that presents a version of higher education that is portrayed linguistically as universally accepted. Yet, the methodological approach enables the uncovering of the complexities of the policy process that go beyond the text’s words by highlighting the debates that shaped its development and the interpretations of its textual form that subsequently shape its enactment. Looking specifically at the constraints of policy boundaries, word choice and calls to educational development action (or inaction), the policy text is analysed in light of educational developers’ contexts and institutional positioning, surfaced through the research process itself. The article concludes by arguing that the combination of data collection and analysis methods used provide greater insights into how policy is played out in practice than the employment of any one of these methods individually could have achieved.     

Internationalising the content of higher education: the need for a curriculum perspective

Internationalisation of higher education is a strategic theme in current research on higher education and policy debate. Both at national and institutional levels, in many countries, internationalisation is stated to be an educational goal. However, the dominant discourse on internationalisation of higher education in research and research-based discussions tends to be framed by political, economic and organisational perspectives, rather than informed by educational considerations. There is also a tendency to place internationalisation in higher education within the conceptual frame of economic globalisation and the increasing trade in educational services worldwide. While such discussions may shed light on various organisational, political or economic issues, this research does not give a pedagogical basis for the internationalisation of higher education in terms of teaching and learning. In particular, questions relating to the internationalisation of content and learning outcomes need to be addressed. A series of studies conducted in Sweden 1999–2007 by the authors indicates that the didactical realisation of internationalisation as an educational goal can be very elusive. In our findings, the concrete content considered by teachers and students to represent internationalisation did not follow any clear pattern or goal. Internationalisation was assumed to be represented by some form of ‘general knowledge’ and general human qualities, without considering cultural differences. Institutionalised curriculum thinking as a basis for developing internationalisation was lacking. Concrete thinking was very much restricted to organisational and administrative aspects, and thoughts concerning content and learning outcomes tended to be expressed in idealised and general terms, rather than developed into clarifying and useful specifications underpinned by curriculum theory. Certain consequences ensuing from this situation are discussed, and a curriculum approach to internationalisation of higher education is suggested.     

What aspects should be evaluated when evaluating graduate curriculum: Analysis based on student interview

With the rapid expansion of graduate education in China, graduate curriculum evaluation has aroused great concern from the administrators and researchers. Many colleges and universities have developed their graduate curriculum evaluation system based on educational policy, job analysis or discussions of school administrators. To date, very few systemic studies in this field have been done in China, and little is known about students’ view on the evaluation system. In this study, 30 second-year graduate students from a comprehensive university were selected to participate in a semi-structured interview. It was found that graduate students attached more importance to the following 5 aspects: 1) The curriculum objectives should be employment-oriented and in line with students’ need of future employment and long-term development; 2) The curriculum content should be up to date and its breadth and depth of coverage are appropriate; 3) The instructor's teaching approaches should be flexible and varied, emphasizing student participation and teacher-student interaction; 4) The learning evaluation should be conducted fairly and reasonably in various ways; 5) The curriculum should be able to effectively promote students’ mastery of knowledge and capacities. This study will provide the evidence for rethinking and improving graduate curriculum evaluation system.     

The enactment of literacy curriculum policy by early childhood teachers in two Australian schools

Since the early 2000s, literacy education has become an area of intense focus in Australian education policy, positioned to have a role in Australia's pursuit of enhanced international competitiveness in the “global knowledge economy”. Policy called for improvements in literacy outcomes, monitored by mandated annual assessments, and policy statements recognised the need to establish solid literacy foundations in early childhood to facilitate learning, and desired improvements, in later years. This article is derived from a larger study that investigated the production and enactment of literacy curriculum policy by early childhood teachers in Australian schools. It focuses on the school level within the State of Western Australia, presenting findings derived from thematic and critical discourse analysis of participant interview and documentary data collected in two case‐study schools. Comparative analysis revealed that literacy curriculum policy processes in both case‐study schools were focused on achieving improved test results in mandated testing regimes. This was impacting upon literacy curriculum in the early childhood years of schooling, in Australia deemed to involve children up to 8 years of age, in many, possibly adverse, ways. These findings may offer insights in other contexts about literacy curriculum policy processes that are focused on enhancing competitive positioning.     

The policy discourse of networking and its effect on school autonomy: a Foucauldian interpretation

Policy discourse officially operates to distinctly influence public perception in an irrevocable and normalising manner. In a Maltese educational scenario of gradual decentralisation and increased accountability, I explore the ‘effects’ of both the global and the local policy discourse of networks and networking on the practising leaders, in addition to their reaction to the policy document mandating these multi-site school collaboratives, with a particular interest on their imposed nature and how this reform impinged on individual school autonomy. This research adopts a case study methodology, with data collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews; participant observation; and documentary analysis, interpreted via a Foucauldian theoretical framework through narrative analysis. The findings reveal an inherent tension among autonomy, centralisation, and decentralisation both within the policy discourse and the unfolding network leadership dynamics. This paper has particular philosophical implications for educational policy, practice, and theory in an educational scenario of school policy globalisation.     

Michael Young and the curriculum field in South Africa

The paper addresses the question of what we should make of Michael Young’s recent work with respect to curriculum theory by considering the particular case of South African curriculum reform. The paper thus traces two trajectories: the evolution of Michael Young’s ideas over time and South African curriculum reform in the post-apartheid period. The paper shows how the two trajectories have run in parallel, not least because of Young’s ongoing involvement and interest in South Africa. Three broad periods in Young’s career are identified: the new sociology of education period; a middle period where he engaged in substantial policy work, focusing predominantly on the relation between schooling and the economy; and his social realist phase, where much of his work has focused on an educational notion of specialized knowledge: ‘powerful knowledge’. The possibilities and limitations of this notion as it has been taken up in the research literature, and in relation to the South African case, are explored.     

Changing policy discourses: Constructing literacy inequalities

This paper explores the ways in which policy discourses have constructed rationales for addressing adult literacy over the last 50 years. In particular, we examine how policy positions the literacy learner as citizen within discourses of rights and equity. Taking the case of the UK, we compare two key documents produced at different historical moments. Our discourse analysis reveals a long standing discourse of individual deficit within a functional model of literacy. This is now overlaid by a discourse of social exclusion that views adult learners as entrepreneurial global citizens who must compete within a market economy.