Conference Agenda

Although the pursuit of equality of opportunity has been high on the agenda in both policy and practice in recent years, inequality in educational opportunities has meanwhile increased even further, arguably especially since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Achieving equality of opportunity turns out to be a particularly complex task. It can be characterized as a ‘wicked’ problem – for a number of reasons.

First of all, wicked problems are socially complex, because a large number of actors is involved, in a dynamic social context. Because various stakeholders (can) play different roles in both the causes and the solutions of the problem of inequality of educational opportunities, it can be seen as a multi-actor problem. Relevant actors in the Dutch educational policy context are parents, teachers, school directors, educational directors or school board members, local policy makers and the municipal educational executive.

Secondly, wicked problems are normatively complex, as solutions often require transcendence of individual interests. All aforementioned stakeholders do not only have an actor-specific views and interests, but also a personal or political ones, which at times might contradict each other.

Thirdly, wicked problems are substantively complex, because the problem cannot be defined unambiguously and has a multitude of – often interrelated – causes. Reducing inequality seems a goal shared by many and, at first glance, the definition of equal opportunities seems unambiguous. Research shows that the shared pursuit of equality of opportunity can be and has been interpreted in a variety of ways.

In this study, inequality of (educational) opportunities is approached as a wicked problem that requires individual and collective commitment from various actors in educational policy and practice, such as local governments, school boards, teachers and parents. To reach collective efficacy, each actor should feel responsible for tackling the problem of inequality of opportunities (ownership) and be willing and able to do so (agency). Feelings of ownership and agency, however, might differ as they are affected by the perspective that actors have on the nature, causes and approaches of the problem of inequality of opportunity. Moreover, in order to be able to show agency, the context must provide sufficient space for actors to actually exert influence on a situation or problem.

This study investigates the perceptions and perspectives of various actors within a local context, regarding the problem of inequality of opportunity in education, their own role in tackling it and possible obstacles they might encounter in developing (collective) agency. The aim is to gain insight in the ways in which local networks handle 'wicked' problems. The central question of this study is: What views, ownership and agency do different actor groups in education have with regard to increasing the equality of opportunities in education?

This quantitative study focuses on various actor groups in their local contexts. In two medium-sized Dutch cities, the entire local school networks, including the municipal educational executive and local policy makers, school boards, headteachers, teachers and parents were asked to fill out an online survey.

Although this study takes place in the Netherlands, the insights will be useable by researchers and policy makers across the national borders as well, as the problem of inequality of opportunity and questions of agency and ownership are universal. During the discussion we can compare the results of our study to the experiences of the audience: do they recognize the way this ‘wicked’ problem is viewed and handled in their own local context? Moreover, possible explanations for (a lack of) perceived ownership and agency by various actors and potential implications for policy can be discussed.

The role of teachers as active curriculum-makers, who make curriculum by considering the contextual conditions and the needs of diverse learners, has particular importance for today's educational environments with a growing number of students from different socio-cultural backgrounds. Subsequently, recent educational reform movements in many places strongly emphasise the role of teachers in enacting curriculum policies, with an increased rhetoric of autonomy and flexibility that is linked to teacher agency (see, for example, Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence and New Zealand Curriculum Framework; Priestley & Biesta, 2013). Offering more flexibility and space for teachers have been addressed along with equity goals (Pantic, 2015; Sinnema & Aitken, 2013). Moreover, the teacher role as the agent of change has been widely discussed in relation to teaching diverse learners by referring to an effective teacher who can initiate and also resist the change to create equitable practices (e.g. Irvine, 1990; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Darling-Hammond, French & Garcia-Lopez 2002; Pantic, 2015).

However, Turkey followed somewhat different trends than international reforms by standardization of educational processes and offering narrow flexibility and autonomy for teachers, while still focusing on reducing the inequalities in the education system through policy papers (e.g. Education vision 2023; MoNE, 2018). Hence, it is crucial to examine teachers’ role in curriculum making for promoting social justice and equity in the context of Turkey.

Teacher agency has been addressed by referring capacity of the teacher and individual ability to act like a change-maker and critical decision-maker in the literature on educational change (e.g. Fullan, 1993; Zeichner, 2009; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). However, Priestley, Biesta, and Robinson (2013) have challenged this approach with their model for understanding teacher agency from an ecological perspective which is outlined by Emirbayer’s and Mische (1998), that suggests social, cultural, and structural conditions also play an important role in achieving agency for teachers in their work. The model of the ecological approach to teacher agency is a theoretical basis for this study that aims to explore teacher agency in curriculum making in respect of social justice and equity. Thus, this study aims to explore how do teachers' individual and ecological conditions enable and constrain mathematics teachers’ achievement of agency, in respect of curriculum making through social justice and equity in Turkey.

The following questions are addressed in this study:

1. How do mathematics teachers perceive their agency in relation to teaching diverse learners?
2. How do teachers perceive the mathematics curriculum and their role in curriculum making in relation to social justice and equity?
3. What are individual, cultural, social, and structural factors that influence teacher agency in mathematics curriculum making in relation to social justice and equity?

Auditing Gender Equality

This study contributes to critical literature on educational equality policies by examining equality promotion through school level functional equality planning. Equality policies in Nordic countries, such as Finland, have been described pro-active and exemplary, especially because state-feminism has an established status in the national policies (Kreitz-Sandberg and Lahelma, 2021; Lahelma, Öhrn and Weiner 2021). An equality planning obligation was extended to Finnish basic education (grades 1-9, age group 7-15 years) in 2015 in the reform of the Act of Equality (609/1986). The reform was a state-feminist establishment of equality work in elementary schools, that feminist researchers have desired for decades (Kreitz-Sandberg and Lahelma 2021). In this study, I examine critically the steps and missteps that the Finnish gender equality work has taken when the recently implemented equality tool – equality planning – was operationalised in elementary schools and reflects its potential in equality promotion in Finland and elsewhere.

The functional equality planning is targeted to challenge the educational equality policies that have repeatedly failed to problematise gendered binary structures and norms (see Ikävalko and Brunila 2019; Myyry 2022). In general, schools draft their equality promotion policy on the grounds of the gender inequalities, which school community find out by surveys addressed to pupils (FNAE 2015). Previous studies have examined the equality planning in upper secondary education (Ikävalko 2016), working life (Ylöstalo 2012; Ikävalko and Brunila 2011), and a diversity planning in universities (Ahmed 2012). These studies on equality tools have shown that the equality planning can offer a stage for institutional discussions on gender equality, but unfortunately the plan and the planning process are often truncated into technical performances of fulfilling the requirements. Additionally drafting a document requires time and effort from every-day school practices and thus after completing the formal document, there is no time left to critically ponder and raise awareness of inequal structures (Ikävalko & Brunila 2011, 328-329). Thus, despite the step forward in equality promotion, policy researchers have shown that bureaucratic logics of equality techniques depoliticise feminist approaches, because then feminist knowledge becomes mainstreamed and equality work is audited from the viewpoint of efficiency and effectiveness (Prügl 2011; Ikävalko 2016; Ahmed 2012; Ylöstalo 2012). From the critical viewpoint, equality planning represents an auditing culture of education, and then the plan is a document in which schools perform their equality (see Ball 2000).

However, due to the novelty of the gender equality tool in basic education, there is no information yet on how the equality plan succeeds in challenging binary inequalities. In this study, I show how equality planning as an equality tool discursively fix, shrink, stretch, and bend meaning of gender equality and what happens to problematisation of gender binarism in the process of functional equality planning. In particular, I will show that drafting a document does not itself problematise gender binarism, but instead it can be harmful for equality promotion, if the meaning of gender equality is stretched and bended to other premises or fixed to some depoliticised questions (see Lombardo, Meier and Verloo 2009).