SummariesHolger Daun, 1997: Restructuration of the Swedish school system: Response to tendencies of globalization or national demands? /Omstrukturering av det svenska skolsystemet: Gensvar på globaliseringstendenser eller nationella krav?/. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, Vol 2, No 3, Pp 161-181. Stockholm. ISSN 1401-6788.
Sweden was still in the 1980s known for its economic growth, its highly developed welfare system, its corporatist politics which tied employers, employees and the state in a pattern of consensus and its comparatively good educational performance. The economic recession in the 1970s and in the beginning of the 1980s did not hit the Swedish economy as rapidly as those of other countries. After approximately 40 years in power (alone or in coalition with other political parties), the Social Democratic party was out of government during the latter half of the 1970s. However, the increase of the public sector continued. A tradition of negotiated and experimented piecemeal changes developed and continued with the Conservative government, i.e. proposals on all major educational changes were elaborated within committees that had members representing all important social interests such as the employers association, the labour union and so on. Compromises were reached. When decisions had been made, a period of experimentation followed before the changes were implemented in full scale.
When the Social Democrats came back in power in the beginning of the 1980s, they started to restructure the state apparatus; decentralization measures were implemented and state owned enterprises were privatized. Steps were taken to decentralize the education system.
However, the decisions on educational restructuring made by the National Parliament in 1991, such as decentralization of many issues down to the school level, choice within the public sector, and reinforced subsidies to private schools were unexpected by researchers, educational administrators and common people, especially because the Social Democrats were in government and relied upon the Left party for forming a majority in the National Parliament. Less than one year later, when a Conservative-Liberal coalition was in government, choice possibilities were made unlimited and the support to private schools was increased. In the policy-making process none of the interest organizations had been involved and educational researchers had not been consulted.
The fact that a series of decisions on privatization and decentralization of the public sector and freedom of choice were rapidly made and that their implementation started immediately seems to indicate (i) that the consensus-building strategy used by the corporatist state at least until mid-80s had been set aside, and (ii) that it had become possible to make decisions that contradict the core values of the labour movement of which the Social Democratic party is one branch.
The argument developed here is that the decisions described should be analysed in relation to the historical development of Swedish society, the globalization processes and the interaction between these two categories of factors. With the accelerating industrialization in Sweden, centralization and urbanization accompanied economic growth and these processes resulted in an increasing distance between the top stratum (the elite), on the one hand, and the common people, on the other hand. The consensus prevailing at the national and elite level concealed the processes that were taking place at the grassroots level. An increasing demand for influence and participation emerged also within the Social Democratic party. Young, active members of the party argued for a decentralized version of socialism, according to which those concerned should have a direct influence in the content of the decisions. Other groups questioned the possibility to influence the existing parties from within and created non-parliament groups and new social and cultural movements, byalag, for instance.
Globalization processes affected Sweden in various ways. Culturally and politically the movements mentioned emerged in practically all capitalist societies during the same period Ð from the late 1960s to the middle of the 1970s. The adherents to these movements are to some extent post-materialist; they reject consumerism and struggle for a healthy environment, equal rights, individual autonomy, and so on. On the other hand, globalization also implies the emergence of consumerism, according to which consumption has a value in itself and sometimes is given a higher priority than political and civil rights.
However, economic restructuring and increasing competition are also important ingredients of the globalization processes. From the neoliberal perspective, it may be argued that Sweden lost position in the global system and on the world market. Just after the Second World War the country had among the highest GNP per capita but in the 1980s it had been bypassed by several other countries within the OECD. The country also lost shares in the world market. At the same time, the public sector grew and the educational costs increased to one of the highest (per pupil) in the world, especially after the implementation of the comprehensive school in the beginning of the 1960s. In short, internal as well as external forces contributed to individualization, competition and increased demand from individuals to take decisions concerning their own everyday life.
This is the background to the decisions on educational restructuring. But has the Swedish educational system really gone through a systemtic shift? Swedish researchers were surprised by the decision in the beginning of the 1990s but they have since then studied some of the processes that gradually took place during the 1970s and 1980s. The article argues (i) that much of the research has focused on the school, classroom and actors and not so much on changes in material and economic organizational structures; (ii) that research has focused on educational discourse and not so much on global changes in material structures; and (iii) that restructuring is a reform that, for its implementation, to a large extent relies upon initiatives and actions from the grassroots level, i.e. common people, parents, teachers and so on.
It is evident that there has been a shift in educational discourse. However, it might be questioned what changes and how much change needed to take place in material and organizational structures as well as teaching and learning processes, i.e. knowledge processes, before we can state that the nature of the educational system has changed. Decentralization (school-based management and school-based decision-making) is implemented from within the sphere of the state, from its centre towards to grassroots level. The two other types of restructuring, i.e. execution of choice and privatization, depend on Ócivil actorsÓ such as parents and voluntary organizations for their implementation. Until now, the response on both these restructuring measures has been relatively weak. Case studies indicate that less than ten percent of the parents, most of them in urban areas, have chosen another school than that which their children had been assigned to. In the whole country the percentage of pupils in private schools has increased from one percent to approximately two percent.
As long as the response from these categories of people is as weak as it is and as long as classroom processes, i.e. teaching and learning, do not change significantly, it must be questioned whether a systemic shift has taken place. In order to confirm whether a system has changed or not, in its organizational and material structures, we have to use certain indicators.
Theoretically, a system may be said to include certain parameters, i.e. features that characterize the system. When these change, there is a systemic change. The following systemic features or factors may be perceived as parameters: (i) arrangements for decision-making; (ii) resource allocation; (iii) legal framework; (iv) value patterns; (v) philosophy of knowledge, curriculum and content; and (vi) classroom processes and socialization. It can be argued that all of them have changed at the elite level, at least in their discoursive aspects, but that it is questionable whether or not a corresponding change has taken place at the level of implementation (among parents, teachers, and so on.
With a simplified model as a point of departure, some hints are made in relation to educational development in Sweden in the future. According to the model, society consists of three spheres Ð the state sphere, the civil sphere and the sphere of production Ð which have completely different characteristics, driving forces, and so on. Globalization has made the internal elites less dependent on the ties to internal forces and more responsive to global forces such as neoliberal and market ideals. The discourse of competition has attained hegemony. However, according to Gramsci (1971), hegemony tends to create counter-hegemony.
Holger Daun, Institute of International Education, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
pp 233-235
Elisabeth Gerle, 1997: Muslim free-schools in Sweden /Muslimska friskolor i Sverige/. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, Vol 2, No 3, Pp 182-204. Stockholm. ISSN 1401-6788.
Alternatives to the public elemetary schools are fairly new in Sweden. Only a few private schools with alternative pedagogy, with special ethnic, cultural directions or with a special focus on certain interests (e.g. music or sports) have previously existed. Since 1992 independent schools are allowed the same resources from the municipality budgets as other schools if they are considered good enough and attuned to the general guidelines for Swedish schools.
In this article I highlight separate Muslim schools and discuss some questions that have emerged in the public debate around these schools. The main discussion concerns whether separate Muslim schools will facilitate integration between Muslim children and others or if these schools are more likely to prevent such a development and instead increase already existing segregation? Those who argue in favour of separate Muslim schools take as their point of departure a critique of the public schools that are considered to have failed to provide as good education for immigrant children as for others. Against such a background the Muslim schools are described as a way of achieving better equality for Muslim children and, therefore, as a path toward integration. The principal for the oldest Muslim school in Malmš, the Alelown Alislamia School, advocates better education in Swedish as well as in Arabic and teaching in the Koran. Others in favour of Muslim schools are emphasizing questions of identity and argue that this is especially important for the girls. Parents express the desire to ÒprotectÒ their children especially their dauthers by sending them to Muslim schools. Voices against, however, bring forth concerns that special Muslim schools increase ethnic divisions in society and that such schools may be used by ethnic leaders to facilitate their own interests of keeping cultures separate.
The article points out sensitive areas where implicit tensions with the Swedish guidelines for education exist. Such areas include attitudes toward authority and critical thinking, the authority of parents-teachers and a democratic education, the tension between one revealed truth and the right to search for knowledge, including the right to choose religion, and the tension between different understandings of female and male roles in society.
Some of the attitudes mentioned above as well as how the interactions between the individual and the collective are balanced have to do with varying relationships to what often is called Modernization. It is obvious that the guidelines for Swedish schools are underlining the role of the individual and the importance to encourage her/his independent, critical thinking and pursuit of knowledge. Such an approach, of course, is very distant from traditional Muslim ontology and epistemology and an education that implicitly or explicitly builds upon the Koran as the revealed truth to humanity.
The guidelines also explicitly advocates new roles for women and men based on equality. Swedish school are expected to counteract traditional gender roles. Such priorities probably have more to do with a late modern secular society than with religious belonging. It is, therefore, in my view dangerous to think of Islam as a monolithic culture. As immigrants from different Muslim countries and regions show there are immense variations and many interpretations of Islam. Different regional origins among Muslims and how long they have lived in Sweden are also influencing various Muslim understandings of the balance between the group and the individual and how to relate to more traditional life forms. If identity is seen as an important value to support and defend it is necessary to reflect upon whose identity the society is supposed to protect. The groupÕs identity or the identity of various individuals in the ethnic group? Neither identities nor cultures are static.
As Sweden can be described as a highly industrialized and modern society, attempts to preserve more traditional ways of living are bound to create tensions within Muslim communities in Sweden as well as in relation to other groups and the broader society. It is, therefore, important to analyze what kind of identity Muslim schools want to nurture as there are many Muslim interpretations. This has to do with what kind of society Sweden wants to become. What is desirable? What is possible? What are the values to be supported? Paradoxically enough, there migt be more space for the individual in a society that wishes to protect and nurture a broader community than if the society primarily centers on family and ethnic-religious belonging. Swedish guidelines for education have so far had this ambition to value and support the individual while at the same time nurturing solidarity on a broad base.
A long term solution with separate Muslim schools might, therefore, increase segregation in Swedish society. As a short term solution to a difficult situation in public Swedish schools separate education for Muslim children might be valuable and helpful. To renounce the vision of a public school for all children encompassing different backgrounds, be they cultural, economical, ethnical or religious, would, in my view, be immature. Such a vision is still an important challenge for any society that wants to hold on to a sense of community and therefore needs to counteract segregation of all forms. It should not be impossible to offer a particular education that Muslim and other confessional schools want to emphasize as a complemt to a reformed public Swedish school.
Elisabeth Gerle, Theologicum, Allhelgona kyrkogata 8, S-223 62 Lund, Sweden.
pp 235-237
Jan-Olof Hellsten, 1996: Homework is nothing to talk about: Homework as a phenomenon in present educational literature /Läxor är inget att tala om: Läxan som fenomen i aktuell pedagogisk litteratur/. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige, Vol 2, No 3, Pp 205-220. Stockholm. ISSN 1401-6788.
Homework plays an integral role in the working situations of students in primary and secondary school. It also greatly affects their leisure time. I made a study of literature concerning how the subject of homework was treated in public discourse.Among the material I studied were all the textbooks in pedagogy used in teacher education at Uppsala University, teacher manuals in various subjects and official texts concerning school organisation and education. I also searched for articles and research reports in some databases: ERIC, Current Contents.
My first finding was that homework can be almost anything: sitting at home memorizing facts, producing a text, calculating, reading a favourite book etc. But homework can also be done in school and it can be something that, on some lucky day, students are not given. In spite of the many possible interpretations the word is used by authors as if it had a distinct meaning. Six aspects associated with the concept of homework were found. At first homework was seen as a preparation. By doing homework the student prepares for homework-checks and tests and also gets general job-training, which can be of use later on in life.
Homework is also seen as a way of organising time. Lessons contain special parts dedicated to preparation and control respectively. Even leisure time gets structured by homework, not only for the students but also for their families. A lot of articles recommend that parents use more time in helping their children with their assignments.
Homework is also a tool to control and govern the students, in school by means of tests and examinations but also at home by demanding that a lot of time should be used for homework. Some author saw a moral obligation for teachers to give the students a lot of assignments to keep them away from the damaging effects of TV-watching.
Homework is also associated with parental affection and care. Helping the child with homework is seen as an expression of love and commitment. Identity and status is related to homework. Giving the beginners assignments is a proclamation of their student status. One author also finds that young peopleÕs social identities were Óforged around homework as a contested field of meaning and practiceÓ. Homework gives opportunities for contact and communication between parent and child and between parents and teachers. The only textbook from teacher education that treated homework focused on this aspect.
Among the aspects one does not find is homework Óas a jobÓ. The texts rarely treated homework as a piece of work or discussed it as a part of the burden of work. It seems as if assignments are regarded as something that just pass by, not as work pressure or something that demands effort.
There are three main findings in the study. (i) The first is that homework is rarely mentioned in significant pedagogical texts. To me it is especially remarkable that it is invisible in textbooks used in colleges of education andin a book about the work environment in school, recently published by a student organisation. (ii) The second finding is that when the subject of homework is treated (in a lot of articles and many research reports) it is not problematized or subjected to analysis. There is nearly always praise for the idea of homework but there is no critical view of its content or the procedures involved. (iii) Finally I found that the positive evaluation of homework is not caused by any attainment derived from it. Some authors recommended homework as a tool of education in spite of their own findings that it does not improve learning. There are also researchers who virtually deny their discovery when it argues against the effect of homework. One possible interpretation of my findings is that homework, in public discourse, is perceived as a symbol or a ritual rather than as a means of achieving expressed educational goals.
Jan-Olof Hellsten, Department of Education, Uppsala University, Box 2109, S-750 02 Uppsala, Sweden.
pp 237-238
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