23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
Educating the Public on Pedagogic Discourse: Education Authorities’ Media Responses to Critique of Test-Based Accountability
Cecilie Haugen
Norwegian University of Science and Tech, Norway
Presenting Author: Haugen, Cecilie
Internationally, neoliberal school reforms include standardised testing as one tool used to facilitate monitoring in accountability systems and to marketise education. Ball (2013, p. 137) defines performativity as a ´key mechanism of neoliberal governance that uses comparisons and judgements, and self-management, in place of interventions and direction´. In creating a performativity culture, standardised testing is one tool used to facilitate monitoring in accountability systems and to marketise education through New-Public-Management inspired measures (focus on output, incentives linked to results, introduction of quasi-markets and competition) (Clarke and Newman 1997).
In the forming of a pedagogic discourse, ´[t]he distributive rules mark and distribute who may transmit what to whom and under what conditions, and they attempt to set the outer limits of legitimate discourse´ (Bernstein 2000, p. 31). According to Bernstein (2000), the field of production of discourse is increasingly state controlled. Bearing this in mind, arenas outside of state control, such as the media, can be key for actors that aim to challenge, but also to reinforce the dominant discourse (Baroutis 2016).
Some important findings in the international research literature are that media coverage of standardised testing has been increasing (Camphuijsen and Levatino 2022) and that media reportage on it often reinforces rather than challenges the neoliberal discourse and accountability practices (Baroutis 2016; Yemini and Gordon 2017). This is important when it comes to influencing public opinion as it is found that ´one-sided messages emphasising either positive or negative aspects of an issue can change peoples’ preferences´ (Chong and Druckman 2010, p. 1).
Attention in research has often been on the general media coverage and conflicting arguments related to standardised testing and test-based accountability, whereas little attention has been given to how power can play out through the form of the communication and thereby contribute to regulating the public debate. It is important to examine the education authorities’ responses to critique on this issue because ´the response sets the limits for what can be expressed´ (Willig 2016, 29, my translation).
With this as the point of departure, the aim of this paper is to investigate
how education authorities frame the education debate on test-based accountability through their responses to critique in media and thereby educate the public on what they count as legitimate communication
It has been found that non-Anglophone contexts are under-researched, especially when it comes to the issue of how national testing is covered in the media (Camphuijsen and Levatino 2022). To contribute to more research in this area, Norway is the context that will be in focus here.
Since the national tests were introduced in Norway in 2004, the controversies related to their implementation, quality, use and problematic effects have continued (Camphuijsen et al. 2021; Camphuijsen and Levatino 2022; author). What is interesting, however, is that over time, critical perspectives are found to be losing ground in the media coverage (Camphuijsen and Levatino 2022).
When it comes to heated media debates on test-based accountability, two municipalities (Oslo, the capital, and Sandefjord, a small rural municipality with about 45 000 inhabitants) stand out in the national context. For this reason they have been chosen for closer scrutiny below. At the time the debates were raging, both Oslo and Sandefjord had had a conservative municipal government. This fact clearly anchors the political leadership in the neoliberal ideology, which is especially interesting when it comes to investigating how power is exercised when important features of the neoliberal discourse is challenged.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe education debate has two separate but intertwined dimensions when it comes to power relations: First, it represents an important arena for the ideological struggle in the recontextualising field to set the rules for constructing pedagogic texts in the schools (which forms the context of this study). Second, it represents a form of pedagogic communication on its own terms between transmitters (education authorities) and acquirers (the public), which is what the focus of the analysis will be. In other words, the responses to critique constitute one way of educating the public in terms of what counts as legitimate and illegitimate communication and thereby regulating the legitimate discourse.
To analyse how power and control function, the concepts recognition and realisation rules are employed. Recognition and realisation rules are what establish the communicative context (cf. Bernstein 1990, 34-35). Recognition rules refer to power relations, and to how voice is to be reproduced through the limits of the legitimate potential of the communication. This is regulated by the classificatory principle. Classification indicates how one context differs from another and ´provides the key to the distinguishing feature of a context, and so orients the speaker to what is expected, what is legitimate to that´ (Bernstein 2000, 17), and can refer to relations between contexts, agents, discourses or practices. The realisation rules refer to the interactional principle, or the rules for what counts as legitimate communication, and thereby establish what counts as legitimate texts. They regulate the message, or the form of the contextual realisation, and are a function of the framing. When analysing framing, attention in this context is given to three elements: 1) selection, referring to how the content of the critique is given attention/ignored, 2) criteria, referring to how the content of the critique is legitimated or rejected, and 3) the hierarchy between transmitter and acquirer, referring to how the education authorities position themselves and the critics in a social order and address expectations about roles and legitimate behaviour.
Case: Conservative-governed municipalities in Norway
Education authorities from two Norwegian municipalities (Oslo and Sandefjord) are in focus in this study. Under conservative governing these municipalities implemented strong performance management and they received a lot of critique in the media. The data material consists of the education authorities´ responses to the critique (20 responses from Oslo and 20 from Sandefjord).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsWhile neoliberalism often is presented as the ideology of freedom, the question is whether it represents freedom when it comes to responding to critique (Willig 2016). The education authorities’ responses in both municipalities are strongly framed in the selection, criteria and hierachy dimensions, implying strongly framed realisation rules when it comes to what counts as legitimate forms of communication, based on strongly classified recognition rules that in turn are based on the neoliberal discourse. In other words, the education authorities educate the public that there are few, if any, legitimate grounds or forms of critisism of test-based accountability systems, and assume authorititarian roles. As is argued elsewhere, instead of the result-based management stimulating engagement about the quality of schools, it rather serves to de-intellectualise and de-politicise the education field and to shut off discussions about schooling through demonstrating evidence of “efficiency” (e.g. Apple 2006; Ball 2013). The education authorities often use the good results as evidence for rejecting criticism.
To conclude, the education authorities’ responses to critique in Oslo and Sandefjord could play a role in how and why critical framing of test-based accountability is losing ground in the media coverage. The strong classification of what counts as legitimate pedagogic discourse combined with framing demonstrating how the education authorities’ turn a deaf ear to criticism, and how the responses are often directed as individual and personal critique of the critics, could potentially silence critical voices. Whether the response strategies illuminated here are relevant for other media contexts (both nationally and internationally) where the neoliberal discourse is challenged needs further investigation.
ReferencesApple, M. W. (2006). Educating the “Right” Way. Markets, Standards, God and Inequality. New York: Routledge.
Ball, S. J. 2013. Foucault, Power, and Education. New York and London: Routledge.
Baroutis, A. 2016. “Media accounts of school performance: reinforcing dominant practices of accountability”. Journal of Education Policy, 31:5, 567-582, DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2016.1145253
Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Boston: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Bernstein, B. 1990. The structuring of pedagogic discourse. Class, codes and control. Volume IV. Oxon: Routledge.
Camphuijsen, M. K. and A. Levatino. 2022. “Schools in the media: framing national standardized testing in the Norwegian press, 2004-2018”. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 43:4, 601-616, DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2021.1882390
Chong, D. and J. N. Druckman. 2010. “Dynamic public opinion: Communication effects over time”. American Political Science Review, 104(4), 663-680.
Clarke, J. and J. Newman.1997. The Managerial State. Power, Politics and Ideology in the Remaking of Social Welfare. London: Sage Publications.
Willig, R. (2016). Afvæbnet kritik. København: Hans Reitzels Forlag.
Yemini, M. and N. Gordon. 2017. “Media representations of national and international standardized testing in the Israeli education system.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 38:2, 262-276, DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2015.1105786
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Paper
Educational Policy and the Media: A Comparative Analysis of England and Germany
Christian Herzog1, Peter Kelly2
1Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany; 2University of Plymouth, UK
Presenting Author: Herzog, Christian;
Kelly, Peter
This research is concerned with the relationship between educational policy and the media in England and Germany. Whereas schools-related educational policy-making in England is highly centralized in Westminster and regional political layers play a lesser role, German federalism involves the 16 Länder taking charge of school education while the Bund is merely responsibly for funding digital infrastructure (e.g. via the Digitalpakt Schule). Forms of centralist vs federal state organization are also reflected in media system characteristics as well as in domestic journalism cultures (Henkel, Thurman & Deffner 2019). Further, public administration in each country has been subject to different degrees of marketization; extensively in England and less so in the neo-Weberian German state (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011).
Discarding the Foucauldian-inspired perspective according to which state power is diffused into governmentality (Wiklund 2018), in alignment with Bourdieu’s thinking we conceive states as ‘qualitatively significant concentrations of power that merit specific analytical attention’ (Morgan & Orloff 2017 in Swartz 2018: 16). Drawing on mediatization (Hepp 2020; Hesmondhalgh 2006; Ignatow & Robinson 2017) and Bourdieu’s theories of the state (Bourdieu 2014), we investigate how the news media report about school education and policy issues. Empirical studies which analyze news articles with regards to school education and related policy issues are scarce (e.g. Cohen 2010; Baroutsis 2016; Bierbaum 2021; Head & Pryiomka 2020) with press coverage of PISA being one focal point of interest (e.g. Baroutsis & Lingard 2017; Hopfenbeck & Görgen 2017; Hu 2022; Waldow, Takayama & Sung 2014). This research builds up on this body of scholarship while it has a different focus and orientation.
Adopting a comparative case study research design which allows us to ‘contrast specific instances of a given phenomenon as a means of grasping the peculiarities of each case’ (Tilly 1984: 82), we investigate similarities and differences in how the news media at the regional and national levels report about school education and policy in the two countries under study. During the three-month period April to June 2022, which did not coincide with school holidays, we gathered national- as well as regional press coverage from two emblematic regions: South-West England and Schleswig-Holstein. Both regions are suitable for comparison as they feature striking similarities. Both are rural coastal regions, remote from the capital with resemblant number of inhabitants. Taking into account the average household income both regions are poor. They exhibit ‘the worst educational outcomes for disadvantaged young people in the [UK]’ (Sim & Major 2022: 3) and, in the case of Schleswig-Holstein, an exceptionally high proportion of young adults, aged 30–35 years, which lack occupational qualification (Hollstein et al. 2021: 65). This makes them prime cases for investigating issues of educational inequality and the public good.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn England we collected coverage related to school education from four regional newspapers (n = 67) and two national newspapers (The Guardian, Observer; n = 120). In Germany we investigated two regional (n = 176) and two national newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung; n = 40). The total amount of press articles in our data sets adds up to 187 in the UK and 216 in Germany (n = 403).
First, we classified the articles from both data sets according to article types. We distinguish between positioned articles and more objective information-centered articles. The former take a particular stance in an area of contention and debate whereas the latter report factual information in an apparently neutral, objective and balanced manner.
Second, to gain a more thorough understanding of the data, it is useful to disaggregate in which departments the articles under study were published. We distinguish between Regional/Local, Politics, Education/Schools, Feuilleton/Panorama and five other categories.
Third, to compare the occurance of speaking actors between (a) the national and the regional press in each country under study, and, (b) on this basis, to bring to the fore cross-country similarities and differences, we investigated the prevalence of actors in all news articles under study. Following an inductive proceeding, first, we listed all actors who are either cited with direct speech or given voice in that their views and statements are indirectly cited. In the next step, we created categories – in a variety of cases also sub-categories – for the various types of actors.
Fourth, we subjected the articles from our data sets to a thematic analysis using Braun and Clarke’s ‘organic’ approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006; 2013). Having become familiar with the data, open coding was performed in an inductive manner across the entire data set and initial codes were generated. Individual sentences, at time paragraphs, were designated as data items for coding (Braun & Clarke, 2021). In the following steps the codes were reworked and refined, assessed in relation to the whole data set, and sorted into themes and sub-themes by collating all data relevant to each of them. Thematic analysis was conducted from a constructionist perspective, aiming to contextualize the societal discourses and sociocultural conditions that affect the meanings within the examined written accounts (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 85). Furthermore, the analysis was conducted at the semantic level and was informed by the theoretical mediatization perspective.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsWe find that, at the local level, media reports in England focus largely on events and local issues. However, at a national level there is considerable and extended debate about education policy, including position pieces from different actors and editorial commentaries. In terms of who is given voice in regional press coverage actors from politics (government departments, politicians, public administration) and schools (head teachers, teachers) feature most prominently while families are rather neglected. In the national press it is striking that, apart from actors from politics and schools, actors from trade unions, think tanks other interest groups and non-governmental organizations are given ample space to express their views, opinions and concerns (Hilton et al. 2013).
Meanwhile in Germany, the regional press in its coverage of school-related issues, apart from dealing with local issues and events, also raises more general educational concerns while making links to broader (national) policy issues with immediate effects for regional/local layers (e.g. the challenge of schooling pupils from Ukraine). On the regional layer, schools, politics and families are the most prevalent actor groups who are given voice in the data. On the national level, apart from the actor groups politics, schools and families, interest groups, scientists and public intellectuals are present but less prevalent as in England. Nationally, in Germany issues of general educational concerns are covered from multiple perspectives while one-on-one debates play a subordinate role. Arguably, the findings reflect the characteristics of domestic media systems and nature of states, with England a centralizing public interest state and Germany a federal bureaucratic state (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011). They also demonstrate that a wider range of actors are engaged in publicly negotiating education policy and seeking consensus for their positions in the fragmented English market state, whereas this is not obvious in the German neo-Weberian state.
ReferencesBeckers, K. & Van Aelst, P. (2019). Look who’s talking? An analysis of actors in television news (2003–2016). Journalism Studies, 20(6): 872–890.
Bourdieu, P. (2014 [1989–92]). On the state: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1989–1992, ed. by P. Champagne et al., translated by D. Fernbach. London, Polity.
Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2021). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. London. Sage.
Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2): 77–101.
Head, J. & Pryiomka, K. (2020). Accounting for mediatization in the era of individualized consequential accountability. Journal of Education Policy, 35(3): 421–440.
Hepp, A. (2020). Deep mediatization. Abingdon: Routledge.
Morgan, K. J. & Orloff, A. S. (eds) (2017). The many hands of the state: Theorizing political authority and social control. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Nowell, L. S, Norris, J. M., White, D. E. & Moules, N. J. (2017). Thematic analysis: Striving to meet the trustworthiness criteria. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16(1): 1–13.
|
