Excellence of analysis to diversity of advocacy: The multiple roles of the Leverhulme study into the future of higher education

The Leverhulme programme of study into the future of higher education is an impressive analytical effort carried through with expediency and allowing for wide participation. However, the programme is not only an ambitious exercise in policy analysis and unorthodox planning. It also involves processes of bargaining and policy advocacy. But the demands of these different roles have not been openly examined. Thus the programme has unnecessarily rendered itself open to criticism. In particular, many of the recommendations echo a consistent plea for new institutional arrangements for central co-ordination and top-down management and control. These recommendations, however, have received little or no underpinning and are actually at odds with some of the most qualified studies of the Leverhulme programme itself. Furthermore, the programme has tended to neglect two of the most urgent tasks of policy analysis, namely to outline a range of available options - rather than to produce a broad consensus view - and to clearly spell out major value tradeoffs involved - rather than to assure that there are no significant drawbacks attached to the options being advocated.Prepared when the author was a Visiting Scholar of the Comparative Higher Education Research Group, University of California, Los Angeles. The author is indebted to the Director of the Group, Professor Burton Clark, for incisive comments on some of the issues raised by the Leverhulme Programme and to Dr. Gary Rhoades of the same Group for helpful comments on a previous draft of the article.     

When transnational curriculum policy reaches classrooms – teaching as directed exploration

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to explore how education policy that is both enabled and constrained by transnational policy flows and national policy built up by social, cultural and historical traditions are enacted through curriculum at the classroom level. The focus is on how policy rationality embedded in the structure and content of curriculum is transformed into certain rationalities in classroom teaching. By understanding lessons as ‘curriculum events’, the study reveals a dominant classroom discourse of recitation and similar triadic communication patterns, which is in accordance with other classroom studies. However, in the article it is argued that the version of teaching that emerges in this study, interpreted in a broader context of an international standards movement, can be understood in terms of directed exploration based on the teacher’s role as an explorer of what the students know, think and understand in relation to the acquisition of knowledge prescribed in the curriculum’s knowledge requirements. Even though the form of recitation is well known, the reason for choosing this teaching repertoire is somewhat new and can be related to the teacher authoring a basic oral text in accordance with assessment standards.     

Reformation of VET and demands on teachers’ subject knowledge – Swedish vocational teachers’ recurrent participation in a national CPD initiative

This study investigates continuing professional development (CPD) of vocational teachers, with a focus on recurrent participation. Vocational teachers need to be competent as teachers and in relation to their vocational teaching subject. Reformation of Swedish vocational education in order to strengthen the working-life connection imposes demands on teachers to have up-to-date knowledge about the vocations related to their vocational subjects. To support the reform, vocational teachers have been offered to participate in a new national CPD initiative targeting their vocational competence. The study concerns participation in this initiative. Drawing on a socio-cultural perspective, vocational teachers’ CPD implies boundary-crossing between school and working-life. Theory concerning adults’ participation in education is considered relevant to understand conditions for such boundary-crossing, and learning, among vocational teachers. The article specifically investigates patterns in vocational teachers’ recurrent participation, which is expected to clarify the factors influencing further participation in professional development. The strongest predictor of recurrent participation, when adjusting for the influence of other factors, is the type of municipality that the teacher comes from, with low populated municipalities having the lowest likelihood of participation. Furthermore, recurrent participation is more likely by participating teachers from adult education or from privately owned schools, and by male teachers.     

Education and assessment in Sweden

Education and assessment in Swedish schools have been affected by several reforms during the last two decades. The educational system has moved from centralization to decentralization and a goal‐oriented approach has been introduced on all educational levels. This paper provides an historical overview of the Swedish educational system, educational and assessment policies and principles, to explain why and how the reforms have been carried out. This is followed by a discussion on the effects and consequences of recent reforms, based on findings in recent education and assessment research.     

Together I Can! Joint Attention Boosts 3- to 4-Year-Olds’ Performance in a Verbal False-Belief Test

Effects of joint attention were addressed on 3- to 4-year-olds’ performance in a verbal false-Belief Test (FBT), featuring the experimenter as co-watcher rather than narrator. In two experiments, children (N = 183) watched a filmed-FBT jointly with a test leader, disjointed from a test leader, or alone. Children attending jointly with a test leader were more likely to pass the FBT compared with normative data and to spontaneously recall information indicating false-belief understanding, suggesting that joint attention strengthens the plausibility of the FBT and renders plot-critical information more salient. In a third experiment (N = 59), results were replicated using a typical, image-based FBT. Overall findings highlight the profound impact of experimenter as social context in verbal FBTs, and link recall of specific story features to false-belief understanding.