Conference Agenda

Two international agendas are shaping current scientific discourses around diversity in education. On the one hand, debates and research activities on achievement, competencies, and output orientation have gained importance, strengthened in particular by large-scale assessments (e.g., Pereyra et al., 2011). On the other hand, in particular, concerning international normative frames (United Nations 2015), a stronger focus on inclusion and the reduction of educational inequity has been put into focus (Seitz, Auer & Bellacicco, in press). Linked to both discourses, the role of schools in replicating and reinforcing educational inequities has been the subject of many debates at the international level (Florian et al., 2016).

According to theoretical assumptions on education governance (Wilkins & Olmedo, 2018) it can be assumed that the varying structures of the different educational systems regarding tracking and inclusion are influential for interpretations of these international agendas at different levels. Of particular interest in that context are concepts of achievement and giftedness, as well as achievement differences that can be seen as emerging in assessment-related interactions between students and teachers but are also dependent on specific structural orders (Falkenberg 2020).

Thus, a crucial presumption of the symposium is that achievement and giftedness are central and powerful constructs of schooling related to assessment. Seen as a social practice between teachers and students, assessment links tohabitual assignment problems and hegemonies and the production and negotiation of social differences (Gomolla, 2012). These relations are discussed differently in different countries. With a focus on stratified systems, assessment is partly understood as a regulation of individual educational pathways, recurring to a structural-functionalist perspective, which receives criticism as reinforcing educational inequity by one-sidedly attributing (in specific low or inadequate) achievement to the individual (Pfeffer, 2008; Berkemeyer, 2018).

Based on these considerations, the symposium asks for the varying meanings of achievement and giftedness in assessment-related practices in differently structured educational systems and on different levels of them. In concrete, we bring (1) together the voices of primary school children on assessment in an inclusive educational system (Italy) with (2) a study on views of teenagers (Spain/ Mexico) on assessment and (3) those of parents on achievement and giftedness, located in a highly segregated educational system (Germany). The findings from (4) an international discourse analysis on the scientific discourse around giftedness, achievement, and inclusion may function as a parenthesis between the different studies so that the final discussion will allow us to reflect on possible theory-related conclusions and research-related implications in a broader frame.

Parents find themselves in a position between school and home when it comes to the support for “giftedness” of their children and are thereby confronted with specific roles and school-based expectations of “doing good parent” (cf. Schwermann & Seitz 2023). Amplifying this, the German educational system can be seen as highly structured concerning the segregation of children in secondary schools on account of their developed habitus (cf. Helsper, Kramer & Thiersch 2014). The following study reverses the heavily school-based focus on parenthood in “gifted education” and turns to the perspectives of parents on talent promotion in schools. In accordance with the findings of the study, three different parental types were derived, showing that the central role of parents is to act as advocates for their children´s needs in school-based measures for talent promotion (cf. Schwermann, Rott & Kaiser 2023). The findings of the study have been obtained by a qualitative approach of reconstructive social research (cf. Döring & Bortz 2016), using twenty narrative interviews (cf. Nohl 2017) with parents at primary and secondary schools in Germany in 2021. The interviews took place at schools which participate in the nationwide project "Achievement Makes School" (2018-2023). In the data analysis, one interview of a parent forms a case to be interpreted. The main cases were selected on the basis of maximum and minimum variance until a theoretical saturation was reached. Thereby three different parental types of orientations and practices could be figured out, which shed a light on the role of parents in talent promotion. The data analysis was carried out using the documentary method (cf. Bohnsack 2017) and is completed at this point of the research process. Finally, the study results show that two of three derived parental types adapt to the belief system of “normal” and “special” children, whereby the specialization of “gifted” children becomes a heterotopia, a place outside the supposedly “normality” (cf. Böker 2022). The first type will use the term “giftedness” to gain access to special talent promotion for their child, whereas the second type resists the implied hierarchization by understanding children as different but equal. The third type assumes that their child is not comparable to anyone and does not fit into the constructed grid of “normal” and “special” - which glosses over negative aspects, like masking capital-related inequality. Nevertheless, all types have in common that their practices are seen as beneficial to the child´s well-being.

Böker, A. (2022): Begabtenförderung als Heterotopie im deutschen Bildungssystem: Zur Integration des Modells der Rechtfertigungsordnung in die Wissenssoziologische Diskursanalyse. In: S. Bosančić & R. Keller (ed.): Diskurse, Dispositive und Subjektivitäten. Anwendungsfelder und Anschlussmöglichkeiten in der wissenssoziologischen Diskursforschung, pp. 15-29. Bohnsack, R. (2017): Praxeologische Wissenssoziologie. Opladen: Leske u. Budrich. Döring, N. & Bortz, J. (2016): Forschungsmethoden und Evaluation in den Sozial- und Humanwissenschaften. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Helsper, W., Kramer, R.-T. & Thiersch, S. (2014) (ed.): Schülerhabitus. Theoretische und empirische Analysen zum bourdieuschen Theorem der kulturellen Passung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Nohl, A.-M. (2017): Interview und Dokumentarische Methode. Anleitungen für die Forschungspraxis. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Schwermann, A., Rott, D. & Kaiser, M. (2023, in press): Für Begabungsförderung bleibt wenig Zeit! Perspektiven von Eltern auf eine potenzialorientierte Schule. In: M. Kaiser, B. Laudenberg & D. Rott (ed.): Begabung. Friedrich Jahresheft 2023. Hannover: Friedrich-Verlag, pp. 72-73. Schwermann, A. & Seitz, S. (2023, in press): Handlungsspielräume und Rollen von Eltern in der Begabungs- und Leistungsförderung. In: M. Hoffmann, T. Hoffmann, L. Pfahl, M. Rasell, H. Richter, R. Seebo, M. Sonntag & J. Wagner (ed.): Tagungsband zur IFO 2022. Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, pp. 303-309

The question of the relationship between learning documentation, the role of assessment, and inclusion-related quality requirements for teaching has hardly been empirically researched so far (Moon et al., 2020; Seitz et al., 2020). Taking this up, we conducted a study on the primary school level in Italy, which is an inclusively structured educational system that comes up without any allocation to different types of school until the end of year 8 and requires descriptive report cards instead of numeral grading until the end of year 5 of primary school since 2020. As existing studies on assessment often include the perspective of teachers but rarely that of children (Imperio & Seitz, in press), the study “Children's Perceptions of Performance in Primary Schools" (CrisP) focuses on those, framing its design on the Childhood Studies paradigm (Melton et al., 2014) and the Student Voice movement (Cook-Sather, 2018). Considering children as expert actors and key informants of their school life, the study reconstructs their perception of achievement and assessment under the structural conditions of diversity and asks for possible interpretive patterns regarding normalcy and processes of doing difference. Framed by classroom observations, we listened to thirty-six third graders’ voices, conducting material-based narrative interviews. Based on an overall analysis of the data referring to the working steps of Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1996) and the reconstruction of dense sequences with the Documentary Method (Bohnsack, Pfaff & Weller, 2010), we developed individual case portraits. Based on a condensed presentation of overarching findings, this presentation focuses on the contrasting voices of two children from two diverse primary schools who discuss, in detail, role expectations and social processes concerning assessment and reporting. More specifically, this presentation inquiries about how differences and diversity are handled.

Bohnsack, R., Pfaff, N., & Weller, W. (Eds.). (2010). Qualitative Analysis and Documentary Method In International Educational Research (1st ed.). Verlag Barbara Budrich. Cook-Sather, A. (2018). Tracing the evolution of student voice in educational research. In Bourke, R. & Loveridge, J. (eds.), Radical collegiality through student voice. Educational experience, policy and practice (pp. 17-38). Singapore: Springer. Imperio, A., & Seitz, S. (in press). Positioning of children in research on assessment practices in primary school. In S. Seitz, P. Auer, & R. Bellacicco (Eds.), Inclusion in an international Perspective – Educational Justice in the Focus. Leverkusen: Barbara Budrich. Melton, G. B., Gross-Manos, D., Ben-Arieh, A., & Yazykova, E. (2014). The nature and scope of child research: learning about children’s lives. In G. B. Melton, A. Ben-Arieh, J. Cashmore, G. S. Goodman & N. K. Worley (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Child Research (pp. 3-28). SAGE Publications Ltd. Strauss, A. L. and Corbin, J. (1996). Grounded Theory: Grundlagen qualitativer Sozialforschung. Weinheim: Psychologie-Verlag-Union

The pursue of inclusiveness is an important common goal at basic educational systems nowadays. Not only learning to learn is a principal competence to develop, but also doing so in acceptance of different points of departure regarding teaching goals, and also in prevision of different learning, abilities, experiences and achievement. This study focuses on exploring a new assessment proposal using written exams with a particular design to foster metacognitive awareness and learners’ engagement, with an explicit consideration for inclusiveness, called Synchronous Self-Assessment (SSA) (Remesal, 2021). This strategy leads students to take two important decisions on their learning assessment: picking assessment activities to respond and deciding on the weighed grading among them. The fact of having to take these decisions directly affect students’ emotions and self-efficacy in the assessment situation, also catering for inclusiveness, since participation is facilitated with the traditional “one-size-fits-all” left aside. This strategy has been successfully implemented for over a decade at Bachelor Degree (Remesal & Estrada, 2022; Estrada, 2021). For the first time, this innovative strategy is implemented at Secondary Education. The participants in this study were 100 7th grade (12-13 years old) high school students from an urban school in the state of Yucatan, Mexico. Students (assigned to experimental or control group) resolved a written exam in the third term of the school year, in their mother tongue subject (Spanish). The research follows a mixed-method design: students were invited to answer a non-linguistic (hence, minimally intrusive) emotions test before and after the exam. Later on, an open-ended questionnaire was also responded and eventually a small selection of students are interviewed individually. In this symposium we present results relating to these students’ emotional reactions to their first experience of synchronous self-assessment. Preliminary results reveal some differences in emotions prior to and after solving the exam. Positive emotions prior to the exam showed a general increase –though not significant. In emotions after the exam, we found a significant increase in the sense of control among the students experiencing SSA for this first time. In the individual interviews, adolescent students manifested altogether a positive reception of this new assessment strategy. Most of them express their appreciation of having the opportunity to take the two decisions offered by SSA (concerning which tasks to solve and how to weigh grades on them). Hence, SSA proves to be useful at compulsory secondary level.

Estrada, F.G. (2021). Revisión y modificación de concepciones del profesorado sobre la evaluación a través de la autoevaluación sincrónica. Paper presented at Xv Congresso Internazionale sull’educazione e l’innovazione. Firenze, Dec.13th-15th. Remesal, A. (2021). Synchronous Self-Assessment: Assessment from the other Side of the Mirror. In: Z. Yan & L.Yang (Eds) Assessment as learning: Maximising opportunities for student learning and achievement. Routledge. Remesal, A.; Estrada, F.G. (2022). Boosting students’ engagement through synchronous self-assessment: a first in-depth look. Paper presented at SIG1+4 EARLI. Cádiz June 27th-30th,-2022. Remesal, A.; Estrada, F.G.; Corrial, C.L. (2022). Exams for the purpose of meaningful learning: new chances with synchronous self-assessment. In J.L.Gómez-Ramos & I.Mª Gómez-Barreto (Eds.) Design and Measurement Strategies for Meaningful Learning. IGI-Global, chapter 10, 192-211.

With regard to the making and processing of school achievement, giftedness and inclusion, on the international level there is broad consensus that successful education systems are characterized by above-average achievement and below-average educational inequalities (OECD, 2015). Taking this up, we ask in our study achievement, inclusion, and giftedness are discussed in relation to one another in the international scientific discourse. There are some studies on the connection between giftedness and achievement and, in the broadest sense, inclusion on the level of students, teaching and the institutional or structural level (e.g. Böker & Horvarth, 2018; Kiso & Lagies, 2019; Seitz et al., 2016; Wienand, 2022). However, the level of discourse has been omitted so far (Seitz & Kaiser, i.p.; Seitz et al, 2021). The aim of the discourse analysis is therefore to shed light on the rules according to which giftedness, achievement, and inclusion are dealt with in the international scientific discourse. To analyse the narrative structures concerning the relation between the concepts of giftedness, achievement, and inclusion and their structural conditions, the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD; Keller, 2013) was used. The data corpus was compiled by database search via ERIC (N= 97), while according to theoretical sampling along minimum and maximum variance 23 texts were included in the analyses. As a result, an overarching narrative formation on giftedness, achievement, and inclusion within the scientific discourse can be outlined. This narrative formation arises from five steps that structure the discourse: In a first step, the concepts of giftedness and achievement are related to inclusion. In a second step, this relationship is problematised with reference to educational policy agendas and a polarisation of the group of students described as high-achievers and those described as low-achievers is constructed. In a third step, group-specific interventions are presented for the groups of “gifted” students constructed in this way. Finally, these are explained by means of the underlying dispositif of achievement. Where relations to educational equity are put into focus, this is done with diverging understandings and conceptualisations of equity (Seitz et al., 2021). In our presentation, we will use two contrasting examples of the analysis to show how differences are produced and hierarchized by the construction of at-risk groups in the discourse of giftedness and achievement.

Böker, A. & Horvarth, K. (Eds.) (2018). Begabung und Gesellschaft. Sozialwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf Begabung und Begabtenförderung. Springer VS. Kaiser, M. & Seitz, S. (2023): Giftedness and Achievement within Discourses. In: S. Seitz, P. Auer & R. Bellacicco (Eds). International Perspectives on Inclusive Education – In the Light of Educational Justice. (pp. 67-88) Budrich (in press). Keller, R. (2013): Doing Discourse Research: An Introduction for Social Scientists. SAGE Kiso, C. & Lagies, C. (Eds.) (2019). Begabungsgerechtigkeit. Perspektiven auf stärkenorientierte Schulgestaltung in Zeiten von Inklusion. Springer VS. Seitz, S., Pfahl, L., Lassek, M., Rastede, M., & Steinhaus, F. (2016). Hochbegabung inklusive: Inklusion als Impuls für Begabungsförderung an Schulen. Beltz. Seitz, S.; Kaiser, M. Auer, P. & Bellacicco, R. (2021): Achievement, Giftedness and Inclusion: Analyses and Perspectives Regarding Inequality. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference of the Journal Scuola Democratica “Reinventing Education”, (VOL. 2), 805-816. Wienand, C. Y. (2022). Die Herstellung einer Begabungskultur in der Kindheit. Springer VS.