To Örebro University

This paper explores the declining trend of fine arts education in secondary schools. We examine mechanisms that may explain this phenomenon on structural levels of policymaking and policy implementation in different areas of the education system. What will be defined as the “selection device” refers to the structurally determined selection of educational content at various policy levels of society. We argue that the choices politicians, principals, students, and parents make are regulated by “nudging” as an underlying principle of the selective device. By presenting students with “rational choice” alternatives, they are gently pressuring them away from selecting arts courses. This redirection is discursively conveyed by schools, but systematically governed by national and international guidelines in which the fine arts have a relatively low status. The declining legitimacy of arts subjects in secondary education can thus be seen as an outcome of policies embedded in the education system. By manipulating the features of the selection device, the transnational movement of the New Right exerts control over educational policy.

This article examines a specific localisation issue concerning a municipal comprehensive school in the city of Västerås, Sweden, that was brought about by two state reforms between 1989 and 1992: a) the decentralisation of the education system, and b) the introduction of school vouchers. The municipal school in question closed for the academic year 1991/1992, then re-emerged as an independent school one year later. My case study illustrates how, in historical perspective, financial reforms can affect the provision and funding of local schools in the political landscape of public–private partnerships. Documents from city archives and local newspaper accounts of the extensive debate form the basis of the analysis. A multiple streams framework is used to conceptualise the relationship between problems, policies, and politics. Policy entrepreneurs and time-specific windows of opportunities are identified as crucial to the historical understanding of how the multiple streams were coupled in the local policy landscape for the funding of schools.

As a result of international neoliberal and neoconservative trends, the status of the arts has been devalued in secondary school curricula. This paper examines why the arts are not considered core educational knowledge in pedagogic discourse arising from the New Right policy agenda. In a case study analysis of Swedish educational policy debates, curriculum codes and their underlying principles of recontextualization are weighed as they bear on the arts. Discursive positionings and socio-political networking between political standpoints and stakeholders have been analysed based on official Swedish documents associated with the legislative process of curriculum revision.

Our findings show how justifications of arts education clash with coding orientations arising from a strong classification between what is presumed to be valuable and non-valuable knowledge, which in turn is due to an underlying principle of visibility. While advocates argue that artistic practices promote transversal competences and have intangible benefits, this same argument unwittingly strengthens the non-autonomous status of the arts. The illegitimacy of the arts also stems from the belief that they are only marginally related to visible market values. Taken together, the arts are not considered core knowledge because of their perceived relative unimportance for higher academic learning or vocational competence.

This study examines parental involvement in urban public schools, focusing on how parents in organised school-centred networks support, navigate, and negotiate from their different social positions. The multiple case study of specialised music programmes provides insights into parent strategies and behaviours in intermediate practices between school-based socialisation and extracurricular activities largely run by the parents associations.

The paper draws on data from in-depth focus group interviews with members of parents associations in socially, culturally, and historically different schools. Findings demonstrate that parent approaches to specialised education and their modes of involvement vary according to social class, resources, and school culture. There are class-based differences in parent strategies and the way their collective symbolic capital is used in policy negotiation. However, relationships between a parents association and the school administration are generally regulated by the social and cultural history of a particular school.

Professional teaching requires interdisciplinary competency. In consequence, teacher education programs throughout the world generally compile a comprehensive list of disciplines and knowledge practices required for professional work and teachers’ continuing education. As student teachers need to be offered opportunities to make linkages between collected disciplines, concepts and practices have to be structurally interconnected through a coherent program. Coherence is about connecting what belongs together, that is, establishing systemic relations between the constituent parts of teacher education. In this chapter, we elaborate a conceptual framework outlining how the issue of knowledge integration in teacher education programs may be understood and investigated through the lens of coherence. Our focus is on the conceptual coherence in interdisciplinary teacher education programs, as well as on the structural coherence of organizing disciplinary knowledge in and across subject studies, subject didactic areas, and educational science. The analysis is anchored in recent research studies evaluating Swedish programs for teacher education, where relationships between national guidelines, interpretations made by institutions of higher education, and the perceptions of teacher educators and student teachers have been studied in relation to the issue of coherence.

Föreliggande paper belyser den mening läroplansteori tillskrivits som utbildningsinnehåll i svensk lärarutbildning. Utgångspunkten för studien är examensordningens föreskrift att samtliga lärarutbildningsprogram ska inbegripa läroplansteori som innehåll i den utbildningsvetenskapliga kärnan, samtidigt som de realiserande lärosätena ofrånkomligen behöver tolka innebörden i begreppet läroplansteori och relativt självständigt inplacera innehållet i den lokala lärar-utbildningens utformning. Utifrån syftet att begripa vilken mening läroplansteorin kommit att tillskrivas, utmejslas studiens resultat genom analyser av lokalt formulerade utbildnings- och kursplaner för utbildningens utformning och genomförande. Det analytiska ramverket består av en Bernsteiniansk ansats med särskilt fokus på hur läroplansteorin klassificerats såväl som i förhållande till vad som enligt Legitimation Code Theory definieras som semantiska koder. De senare avser att beteckna innehållets teoretiska förtätning i förhållande till dess kontextuella anknytning. 

Utifrån analyser av policytexter från 20 lärosäten menas att tolkningen av läroplansteorins innebörd varierar över den spännvidd som samtliga lärosäten bidrar till att skapa. Somliga lärosäten har organiserat läroplansteori och didaktik relativt särhållet, medan andra verkar ha orienterat sig kring innehållet utifrån ett slags integrerande kod där läroplansteorins innebörd smälts samman med främst allmän utbildningshistoria, skolans organisation och styrning, didaktikens grund-läggande frågor och läraruppdraget, men i vissa fall vidare än så. Utöver variationen av uppfattningar om läroplansteorins innebörd, varierar även i vilken grad läroplansteorin tillmätts betydelse i lärarutbildningen. Vidare framkommer ur materialet skiftande förhållningssätt beträffande i vilken grad läroplansteori är att betrakta som teori relativt praktisk yrkeskunskap i beaktande av den kommande yrkespraktiken. Därav påkallas en diskussion om läroplansteorins samtida ställning i svensk lärarutbildning, dels ifråga om likvärdighet lärosäten emellan, dels vilken betydelse läroplansteori tillskrivs i förhållande till allmän- såväl som ämnesdidaktiska perspektiv.