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Governing Students’ Access to Knowledge: A Critical Discourse Analysis of General Subjects in the Swedish Upper Secondary School Reforms Between 1990 and 2011
Abstract
In the knowledge society, the populations’ acquisition to education and knowledge has become of crucial importance for democratic and economic development, but also for each and everyone’s life chances. One sign of such societal process is the introduction of certain general subject courses in Swedish upper secondary education (Swedish, Mathematics, English etc.). At the core of this chapter’s descriptions and interpretations are the readings of four Governmental Bills between 1990 and 2011. This chapter’s point of departure is the changing policy rhetoric regarding what kind of general knowledge different categories of upper secondary school students need in order to meet various demands in society. It will be shown how such policy initiatives come to play an active part in the structuring of young people’s acquisition of knowledge. The ways in which the upper secondary education curriculum is organized predefine who will gain admittance to such knowledge and who will not.KeywordsKnowledge societyEducational policyUpper secondary educationNeo-liberalismCritical discourse analysis
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English is a school subject which every Swedish upper secondary student is required to take. The sele ction and dissemination of knowledge among students attending upper secondary programmes carries the intention of social integration as well as specialization. The aim of this dissertation is then to show how perspectives on education in English elicited f rom teachers’ and students’ responses in interviews as well as Swedish education policy (SOU, directives, propositions) contribute to the conditions for the selection of knowledge and teaching, on and between programmes.
Inspired by Basil Bernstein’s theo ries of educational sociology ( 1990 , 2000 ) and Fairclough och Chouliaraki ’ s critical discourse analysis, CDA ( 1999 ) , albeit adjusted to the aim of this study in pedagogics, the focus is on te achers’ and students’ views on teaching and knowledge in English classes on four vocational and academic programmes, establishing varying discourse practices on the different programmes. Moreover, perspectives on upper secondary teaching in Swedish educati on policy texts are analysed following the same methodology.
Results indicate that education policy texts at the time of the interviews strive for adjustment of course content in English teaching to the programme (termed ‘infärgning’ in Swedish). Reflectin g this trend in education policy, teachers and students on programmes speak of aspirations for English teaching as being either adapted for mainly academic purposes, or vocational and everyday – life purposes. On the basis of these aspirations it is argued t hat teachers and students establish either academically oriented discourse or vocational and everyday – life oriented discourse as the dominant pedagogical discourse on the individual programme . Thus, education policy as well as teachers and students reflect each other in striving for knowledge to be adapted for the programme. The two discourses contribute to a movement in favour of differences between programmes, though some of the vocational students complain on not being offered possibilities to analyse an d discuss current problems in society. This is to say they complain that they do not receive an education in line with the academically oriented discourse, which is offered to students on academic programmes. At the same time, vocational students are dissa tisfied in not gaining adequate knowledge in vocational English.
Finally, these perspectives indicate discursive conditions for the selection of knowledge and the organization of teaching in English classes on different programmes. In the last chapter of the dissertation these varying perspectives on programmes concerning the selection of knowledge are analysed but now with a focus on the relationship between programmes. Consequences of the varying dominant pedagogical discourses on the programmes are disc ussed with regard to how they can be understood to mobilize life chances of young people differently, creating conditions for social integration and differentiation. Keywords: Selection of knowledge, upper secondary education, English, education policy, sociology of education, social integration, social differentiation
This article discusses the transforming capitalist welfare state and its education system, and focuses especially on the Nordic model of welfare state and education in Finland. It shows how restructuring processes towards the competition state are proceeding on both policy and institutional levels. Nevertheless, the basic structures of the Nordic model or pattern and especially the principles of public education and the comprehensive and local school are left intact. By applying an institutional approach in the analysis, a new path generation and institutional patterns are emerging, but their legitimization and establishment will take a long time. Changes in policy and organization are much faster to occur than those in sociocultural settings. Such success stories as the Danish labour market reform and the rise of the Finnish knowledge-intensive ICT cluster have paved the way for this transformation. There is still a possibility that a welfare state strategy and a competition state strategy will coexist.
Recent work in Critical Discourse Analysis has been focused upon the theoretical and methodological enhancement of the analysis of discourse within transdisciplinary research on social transformations variously referred to as 'globalisation', 'new capitalism', 'knowledge-based economy and learning society', and so forth (see Chouliaraki & Fairclough 1999, Fairclough 2000a, 2000b, 2003, and the 'Language in New Capitalism' website). Discourse (or 'semiosis') is conceived as a moment of the social dialectically interconnected with other moments (Fairclough 2001, Fairclough, Jessop & Sayer 2002). From this perspective, the focus is on how changes in fields such as business or politics relate to these broader dynamics of social transformation and restructuring, and particularly on relationships between discourse and other moments of the social in these changes (Fairclough & Thomas forthcoming). In this paper I shall briefly set out a version of Critical Discourse Analysis which can I believe serve as a resource for framing and researching many of the themes listed by the conference organisers as relevant to the conference. But I shall refer specifically to the preliminary exploration of transdisciplinary dialogue between CDA and 'the new sociology of capitalism' in Chiapello & Fairclough 2002, specifically the analysis of the 'new spirit of capitalism' in Boltanski & Chiapello 1999. The latter was grounded in a contrastive study of the language of management literature of the 1960s and 1990s, and one question addressed by our paper is how a dialogue with CDA might enhance theoretically and methodologically its already existing orientation to discourse. For illustrative purposes I shall refer to one management 'guru' text (Kanter 2001). The paper will address a number of issues including: the dialectics of discourse (Harvey 1996); the nature of 'transdisciplinary' as opposed to other forms of 'interdisciplinary' research; analysis of change in management discourse and ideology; the place of linguistic text analysis in social research.
Discussions of higher education need to be placed within larger processes of socio-economic and cultural restructuring. While higher education does indeed have its own specific histories and its own relatively autonomous dynamics, the entire sphere participates in and is connected in complex ways to social transformations and to struggles over power. The author examines these larger transformations that are changing the very landscape on which higher education - and education in general - sits. He analyzes the formation of a new hegemonic bloc that is pushing education in particular rightward directions. This tense alliance includes various factions - neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, authoritarian populists, and a particular fraction of the upwardly mobile new middle class. The author critically examines the policies that are being proposed and the possibilities of counter-hegemonic action.
The aims of this article are (1) to describe features of Swedish education politics over a 25 year period, with a focus on the 1990s and the first years of the 21st Century, and (2) to discuss how education politics relate to the socio-economic changes which have taken place during the last 10-15 years. Three time periods, based on the prevailing view of education governance and the role of the State, are identified: 1975–1990, 1991–1998 and 1999–2002, respectively. For each period, the context/agenda, processes and outcomes of education policy are discussed. The article is based on statistical data, public reports, policy documents and interviews with central and local actors in the field of education. It is concluded that access to education has increased at all levels during the last 25 years. However, young people's transition to the labour market takes place later, has become more complicated, and in reality requires successful completion of at least upper-secondary education. In the wake of reductions, decentralization and deregulation of education, the differences and divisions between municipalities, schools and different pupils have increased. It is argued that active efforts to counteract such tendencies were weak in the 1990s, and that education politics may instead have reinforced social division and exclusion.
In this article, education policy is analysed from a welfare state perspective. The aim is to analyse the significance attributed to social‐inclusive aspects of education in contemporary education policies of the Nordic countries, and the extent to which education is regarded as an element in welfare policies. Four aspects are addressed: (1) access to education and measures to prevent social exclusion of young people, (2) comprehensiveness of education in terms of public/private, integration/segregation of e.g. minority children and children with special needs, (3) emphasis on democratic values and participation, (4) the importance of community and equality versus a focus on the individual. It is concluded that it is still justified to speak of the five Nordic countries as a rather distinct group. However, social‐inclusive policies have also clearly been reformulated and delimited, related to a strengthening of the economic‐utilitarian functions of education and a weakening of central education governance.
This article analyses and compares the evolving role of general subjects in the curricula of initial upper secondary vocational education and training (VET) in Finland and Sweden during the 1990s and 2010s. The research illustrates how Bernstein's concept of 'pedagogic code' supports comparative studies on principles guiding changes to curricula and how the role of general studies in VET has been redefined. The findings show that while a principle of 'market relevance' has been central to VET over the decades since the 1990s, it has been subject to varying interpretations. The shifts in interpretations have guided the organisation of VET in these two countries in different directions, including the role of general subjects within the curriculum. On a general level, the countries share some key similarities. Both countries emphasised lifelong learning and a broadening of VET in the 1990s, based on a core principle of 'flexibility'. In the 2010s, the earlier promotion of flexibility and universal access to higher education was superseded by a stronger focus on employability and entrepreneurship in addition to students' command of more specific vocational tasks.
This book offers a wide-ranging perspective on how young people and their parents make choices as they travel through a lifetime of education and training. It challenges traditional views of how choices are made of primary school, secondary school, college, university and career, and shows how choices depend upon a range of factors including young people's personal experiences, individual and family histories and their perceptions of education and careers. The book compares choices fopr 5 to 11 year olds and for 16 and 18 year olds, drawing out models of the decision-making process, and at the same time the consequences on schools, colleges and individuals of 'enhanced choice'.
This article is based on a meta-analysis of previous research on restructuring in relation to education and health professions in Europe and more globally. It highlights common developments and signals the significant and important role of specific cycles of public to private transformation in production relations in these professions over the course of the last century and a successive movement of labour from the domestic sphere of the home to private industry as commoditized labour power, as among the most significant common global features. State involvement has been an important intermediary in these processes, by which relationships that were formerly largely untainted by commerce have become relationships involving the direct buying and selling of labour power. The process of the creation of economically productive labour power also seems to be expanding in scope in the professions, with negative consequences for service workers, low-GDP countries and lower-class fractions of recipient-consumers worldwide.
La situation economique actuelle (competition internationale, declin economique) debouche sur l'accroissement du chomage chez les jeunes. Pour y remedier, la Suede propose de lancer une passerelle entre milieu scolaire et milieu professionnel, par l'introduction d'etudes sur les professions et les carrieres au sein des programmes d'enseignement. L'A. propose d'evaluer les programmes instaures en Suede et suggere une liste de mesures a prendre
Decentralisation policy in Sweden emphasises school capitation allowance, the local upper secondary schools’ decision‐making and pupils’ choices in contrast to previous bureaucratic governing. The aim of this article is to discuss how pupils’ educational choice paths are a part of the different kinds of integration and differentiation processes within upper secondary education. By doing so, the intention is to make a theoretical contribution to the ongoing discussion in this research field. In the light of Habermas’s theory of communicative action combined with Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, educational choice paths have been studied as a process within three educational practices in a local quasi‐market in Sweden: (1) choice of upper secondary school, (2) choice of upper secondary programme, and (3) choice of courses and subjects within a programme. Some of the results demonstrate that pupils’ choice paths can be vocation‐oriented, career‐oriented and consumption‐oriented. It is argued that these different types of choice paths are related to a market discourse. Other results demonstrate that pupils’ group‐oriented, interest‐oriented and tradition‐oriented choice paths are built upon an active citizenship discourse, which is about creating meaning in terms of seeking knowledge and establishing social relations in upper secondary education. The analysis of these two paramount discourses indicates that pupils’ integration and differentiation processes are ambiguous.
This is the first report from the Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion (EGSIE) research project. The project focuses on relations between education governance on one side, and social integration and exclusion on the other. Educational reforms and changes in the governance of education are examined in 10 case studies in Australia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. These case studies are based on analysis of official texts and national statistics in combination with research reviews in each country. Recent changes in ways to govern education are described. Different ways have been found to restructure education in different national cases as well as different routes in dealing with social integration and exclusion. Similarities are noted in discourses on education governance in different contexts. International organizations also play a vital part in education policy discourses in national contexts. This report provides the initial discussion into developing conceptual and methodological strategies for the future project. (Author/RT)
This paper aims to shift the debate on the Learning Society away from the normative focus which has predominated hitherto. Rather than beginning with questions about what a Learning Society ought to constitute, we seek to engage with the patterns of participation in learning through the life‐course and their determinants. Our discussion begins with an examination of the way in which the official discourse of the Learning Society is dominated by human capital theory. The critical evaluation of the latter is thus a serious undertaking. Human capital theory involves an unwarranted abstraction of economic behaviour from social relations more widely; participation in lifetime learning cannot be understood in terms of the narrow calculation of utility maximization. This critique provides the basis for the development of a more satisfactory theoretical account, in which learning behaviour is conceived as the product of individual calculation and active choice, but within parameters set by both access to learning opportunities and collective norms. These parameters, by their very nature, vary systematically over space and time: accordingly, place and history must play a central role in any adequate theorization. We conclude that this kind of theoretical approach has important implications not only for empirical research, but also for strategies aimed at creating a Learning Society.
In this paper I argue that we should not only understand democracy as aproblem for education, but that we should also understand democracy asbeing itself an educational problem. I propose an educational definition ofdemocracy as the situation in which all human beings can be subjects. Next,I discuss Kant’s individual conception of subjectivity, Dewey’s social concep-tion of subjectivity and Arendt’s political conception of subjectivity in orderto explore the political and educational implications of this definition. Iconclude that we should no longer think of subjectivity as an attribute ofindividuals, but rather see it as a dimension of human action, namely actionin the political sphere, the sphere where we are with others. This implies thatthe question for democratic education is not about how to ‘create’ or ‘pro-duce’ democratic citizens, but about how to create opportunities for action,for being a subject, both in schools and other educational institutions, andin society as a whole. The learning involved in democratic education is,similarly, not learning how to become or to be a subject, but learning frombeing and having been a subject.
This chapter deals with a fundamental change in young people's transitions to work. Flexible labor markets have led to a diversification of transition patterns, but policy measures are unresponsive to the needs and aspirations of young people. New risks and challenges emerge that are addressed differently in the different European societies.
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