A fragile autonomy in a performativity culture? Exploring positions in the recontextualising field in a Norwegian rural municipality

Abstract

Internationally, the autonomy of schools and teachers is under pressure. In Norway, recent policies emphasise output control through national testing, combined with holding schools and teachers accountable for students’ results. Whereas recent research documents that the autonomy of schools and teachers is weakening in Oslo, there is little research on the rural parts of Norway. Recent political intentions aim to improve the results by establishing a better learning environment and classroom management. These intentions are related to the regulative discourse, ‘the rules of social order’, which is crucial to control as it dominates the instructional discourse. Two different projects were implemented in a rural municipality. Analysing their positions on three levels (author, actor and identity) this study finds considerable autonomy from the state in the pedagogic recontextualising field. However, this autonomy may be fragile as the teachers seem to have surrendered personal values. If teachers are disciplined, then the state may effectively reduce the potential discursive gap by reducing the autonomy of key agents in education. Investigating teachers’ rationalisations is imperative if we are to understand the relations between interests, ideology and class, and thereby the potential for autonomy in the recontextualising field in a performativity culture.

Keywords:

• Recontextualising field
• autonomy
• Bernstein
• rural Norway
• performativity
• regulative discourse

Notes

1. Au (2007, 258) defines tests to be ´high-stakes´ when ´its results are used to make important decisions that affect students, teachers, administrators, communities, schools and districts´. Such decisions can be grade repetition, graduation or salaries. However, he also states that stakes can be regarded high if results are reported to the public, and categorise and rank schools, teachers and children. Although the national website does not provide a ranking of schools, the latter element is still present in all Norwegian municipalities, as media have access to school data and publish ranking of schools at municipal level.

2. NUBU was previously called Atferdssenteret (The Behaviour Centre). The name was changed in March 2017.

3. One difference between the schools is that the PALS school is has years 1 to 10, while the RBCM school has years 8 to 10. However, it is important to state that neither PALS nor RBCM are designed for a specific age-group and are used in both primary and lower-secondary school elsewhere.

4. The parents are especially relevant for the PALS programme as there was a conflict between the school and parents about it. This has been examined in another article (cf. Haugen 2017b). In collecting data from the RBCM project the parents were considered less relevant, as focus was on how the school worked on and experienced the project.

5. The dispute with the group of parents lasted six years, which eventually led the school to opt out of the programme. This conflict has been analysed and discussed in a separate article (see Haugen 2017b).