Is there a transnational trend of “nudging” away from the arts? How the selection device works in the European–Swedish context

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Arts education
• educational policy
• curriculum theory
• nudging
• secondary education

Introduction

Tendencies toward a decline in arts education have often been reported in this journal (e.g., Aróstegui, 2016; Beveridge, 2009; Chapman, 2004, 2007; Fautley, 2019; Tutt, 2014). These include cuts in instructional time allotted to the arts, the erosion of financial support, and a decrease in student enrollment in arts courses.

Regardless of the forms of the decline, such downturns are generally linked to attitude changes toward the ‘the fine arts’ (i.e., dance, music, theater, and the visual arts, hereafter referred to as the arts). In determining the underlying reasons for such changes, some have suggested personal motivation, that is, whether students will choose to take arts courses if they are offered as electives (curricular options), but not made mandatory. For example, researchers in the field of music education have shown that low enrollment in secondary music courses may be related to a lack of confidence in one’s ability in other subjects (Bamford, 2012; Lamont & Maton, 2008). This may persist although music is often considered less difficult than academic subjects such as one’s native language, mathematics, or science (McPherson & O’Neill, 2010). Another explanation has pointed to the disconnect between public education and students’ daily lives. A policy of standardization may inhibit creative teaching, and as a result formal music education risks becoming moribund and dismissed by students as an irrelevant educational choice (Benedict, 2007; Mullen, 2019; Spruce & Matthews, 2012).

Apart from student attitudes toward fine arts subjects, there has been weakening political interest in arts education. It can be seen in cuts to instructional time and in the withdrawal of the fine arts from the mandatory curriculum (Lilliedahl, 2013; Rabkin & Hedberg, 2011). Some have argued that the diminishing status of arts education may be linked to increased emphasis on “the basics” in standards-based curricula (Chapman, 2007; West, 2012). Such findings refer mainly to reforms of the upper secondary curriculum, where the arts are not as established as at primary and lower secondary levels (Eurydice, 2009; Institute of Education Sciences, 2011). Thus, the changing political views of arts instruction in upper secondary education are considered determinative for the relative status of arts subjects.

The present article correlates motivational and political viewpoints in examining policy movements that have led to the decline of the arts in upper secondary education. Focus is on mechanisms that may explain this outcome on structural levels of policymaking and policy implementation in interrelated contexts. Policy is here understood as more than a legislative bill; it includes actions in areas that range from supranational policymaking to choices regarding educational practice (Schmidt, 2017). Thus, school principals are policy-makers when they design a local curriculum, and teachers contribute to policy in the way they handle accountability. Students also are a part of this as they make their educational choices.

We attempt to show that students’ educational choices are regulated by policy mechanisms of “nudging” embedded in the design of the education system. Moreover, school principals, local school districts, and states are also nudged by various incentives encapsulated in policy initiatives and reforms. In this sense, what will be termed “the selection device” refers to the structurally determined selection of educational content on different policy levels of society. The selection device helps to explain patterns that affect the relative status of arts education. However, what is considered a transnational policy trend may differ in structure and impact between different countries. Thus, studies of policy movements need to take contextual features into consideration.

While the current situation in the US and the UK are rather well-researched, we present the theory of the selection device by drawing on comparable findings from the policy relations of the European–Swedish context. This case study provides insights into the mechanisms connecting several structurally interrelated levels of policy making, including the supra level of international coordination, the macro level of national curriculum making, the meso level of local school administration governance, and the micro level of content selection as made by the students. The examples from the European–Swedish context shows how underlying principles of nudging may be found in the architectural design of an education system, and how reforms may affect the relative status of arts subjects in upper secondary education.

Literature review

Although it is difficult to demonstrate a linear transnational decline in arts education, several studies have found that certain policy initiatives have caused collateral damage to arts education around the world, particularly in the US and the UK.

The US has concluded that the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2002 enacted by the Bush administration had a negative impact on the position of arts education. The legislation was supposed to narrow the knowledge gap between wealthy and poor students by “high stakes” annual testing and subsequently holding schools accountable for student achievement. Public reporting of school performance was also instituted to strengthen the market force of parents by taking sanctions against schools with poor outcomes (Berliner, 2011). However, because the assessment focused solely on reading and mathematics, schools only boosted their teaching of literacy and numeracy––and, after 2006, science as well––as those skills were the ones tested (Beveridge, 2009; McMurrer, 2008; Pederson, 2007; Schneider, 2005; Spohn, 2008).

The Obama administration’s 2009 Race to the Top (RTTT) legislation continued in this direction (Mullen, 2019), but in addition raised the bar for the STEM subjects, namely science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (Tutt, 2014). “Despite RTTT’s less punitive approach, its central premise remains the same: teacher effectiveness and student performance as measured by high-stakes testing will improve through competition and accountability” (Mullen, 2019, p. 51).

To meet RTTT requirements, schools and teachers concentrated on teaching students to perform well on tests. However, the push to satisfy requirements in the “basics” caused “non-basic” subjects like the fine arts to be marginalized or withdrawn entirely from the curriculum. The testing requirements of the NCLB and RTTT acts have thus incentivized support for language arts, mathematics, and science at the expense of the fine arts (Chapman, 2004, 2007; Shaw, 2018).

In 2015, the NCLB Act was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The academic core subjects were reorganized into the curriculum scope of a “well-rounded education”, which also made a distinction between art and music (Kos, 2018). The effect of this reform is under-researched, but there are indications of a stronger position for the arts since several states (Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Michigan) have revised their accountability systems to include measures regarding student access to art and music instruction (Tuttle, 2020). Such policy changes reflect the transfer of control to the states together with funding support for subjects defined as part of a well-rounded education (Shaw, 2019; Tuttle, 2020).

In the UK, when a conservative coalition came to power in 2010, the new government announced a national curriculum revision “with the aim of reducing prescription and allowing schools to decide how to teach, while refocusing on the core subject knowledge that every child and young person should gain at each stage of their education” (DfE, 2010, p. 10–11). However, since its introduction in 2011, this English baccalaureate certificate (EBacc) has had a negative impact on the provision and uptake of arts education (Bath et al., 2020; Daubney & Mackrill, 2017; Neumann et al., 2016).

Since the EBacc is “made up of the subjects which are considered essential to many degrees and open up lots of doors” (DfE, 2019), it contributes to the discursive distinction between valuable and “less valuable” knowledge. The EBacc encompasses English language and literature, mathematics, the sciences, geography or history, and a second language. Of crucial importance is that “secondary schools are measured on the number of pupils that take GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) in these core subjects. Schools are also measured on how well their pupils do in these subjects” (DfE, 2019).

In addition to the EBacc system, a benchmark called Progress 8 was introduced in 2016 to assess secondary school student achievement. Its scoring is based on six EBacc subjects: mathematics and English (double weighted), three other subjects from the EBacc list, and three open choices. Since fine arts are neither on the EBacc list, nor are advocated by the Progress 8 benchmark, the status of arts education has been undermined and a student’s likelihood of choosing an arts course is minimal (Johnes, 2017).

In a recent study, Neumann et al. found that “creative subjects, in particular performing arts subjects, Design and Technology and vocational subjects” were the ones most likely to have been stricken from the curriculum (2020, p. 707). Moreover, the Cultural Learning Alliance (2018) found that between 2010 and 2018, the number of arts students taking GCSEs decreased by 35%. Similarly, Fautley (2019) has argued that the EBacc has pressured schools to omit the arts in order to maximize EBacc scores. Thus, since its implementation in the UK, EBacc has caused instructional time in disciplines it measures to increase, while time for the fine arts has been reduced (Andrade & Worth, 2017; Daubney & Mackrill, 2017).

The weakening status of arts courses in secondary education may also be related to the entrance requirements of schools of higher education. In the US, a majority of post-secondary institutions do not require student to complete an arts course for admission (Tutt, 2014). Similar criteria are reported from the Republic of Ireland. A study by McCarthy et al. (2019) found that higher education requirements affect a student’s choice of classes in secondary school. Subjects thought to be valuable for college admission, further study, and professional careers were favored. Thus, the decline in arts education may in part be the result of a lack of demand from institutions of higher learning.

Policy movements in the US and the UK have affected the provision and uptake of arts courses in secondary education. However, an accepted theoretical framework for understanding how the relative status of arts subjects is constituted on different levels of policymaking has been lacking. Comparative studies that examine how such mechanisms may work in different parts of the world are needed. Exploring the theory of the selection device in the following sections may help elucidate those principles. We begin by outlining the concept of the selection device, including its ideological basis and the principle of nudging. Second, we explicate the theory by describing how the selection device operates in the European–Swedish context as an illustration of the transnational politics of arts education. Although rarely mentioned in the literature on arts education policies, similarities in the policy agendas of the US, UK, and Sweden have been noted in other fields of such research (Grek et al., 2009; Lundahl, 2011; Wahlström, 2016).

The selection device

What we define as the selection device aims at exploring the intrinsic logic of educational content selections at different levels of the education system. The notion of a selection device derives from Basil Bernstein’s concept of the “pedagogic device” (1990, 2000), and the “nudge theory” formulated by Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (2003, 2008). Utilizing both, the education system can be understood as a device whose inherent features include incentives that regulate politicians, principals, students, and parents in their choosing behaviors. The architecture of the education system is thus designed to “nudge” people into making rational choices. The selection device helps explain the decline in arts education by showing how certain policy mechanisms have been incorporated into the education system and how they function.

Principles of educational knowledge selection

The political decision of determining a school curriculum includes the fundamental issue of how to apportion the amount of time given to each subject. Thus, a given subject is valued relative to other subjects (Bernstein, 1975; Lilliedahl, 2015). If one subject is to be allotted increased instructional time, there has to be a cut in another. Where a local school principal is responsible for curriculum design, the allocation considerations are generally the same as in government curriculum making. Similarly, when students choose among optional subjects, they must weigh the relative value of the various options offered to them. In this way, the selection of educational content is made at different but interconnected levels of the school enterprise. The choices made are structurally determined by mechanisms that affect the selection or non-selection of the arts at every stage of decision.

The supra level of international cooperation (e.g., the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD]) implies policy borrowing and discursive coordination in the political approach to arts education, including what knowledge is considered most valuable (Ball, 2012; Lawn, 2007; Wahlström, 2016). At the macro level of national policy making, such a pedagogic discourse is formulated in national guidelines and federal laws. The meso level of governance may represent a variety of policy-making agencies such as state governments, school districts, municipal school boards, or local school administrations. The micro level of content selection is typically where students and their parents make their educational choices.

Since there are differences in how education systems in various countries are structured, the selection device is a theoretical framework that needs to be adapted to a specific context, rather than a formulation in which the relationships are fixed.

While the position of the arts is rather strong in primary and lower secondary education, its relative status in upper secondary education is more tenuous and depends on the political landscape. Thus, in assessing the situation of the arts, one has to correlate the structural patterns of the selection device with current policy movements. In the US, the UK, and in Sweden, the New Right has had a great impact on the status of the arts in educational policy.

The new right

Since the beginning of the 1980s, educational policymaking across the globe has been increasingly influenced by neoliberal ideas (Harvey, 2005). This movement has typically been associated with the view that the status of every nation is determined by its competitiveness in a global knowledge economy (Ball, 2012).

Neoliberal politics comprise a series of market principles, including libertarian freedom of choice, government deregulation, and the privatization of welfare systems. Such principles have been decontextualized from the field of economics and recontextualized into the field of educational policy (Bernstein, 2000). This transfer has led to “quasi-markets” in the education system, where the actions of providers and consumers are relative to state regulation (Whitty, 1997). Thus, neoliberal education policy is a balance between the ideas of marketized individual freedom and society’s need for governmental control (Apple, 2003).

Like the neoliberals, neoconservatives have taken up the cause of determining what counts as educational knowledge, and their resulting positioning has contributed to the narrative of a crisis, and to calls for a restoration of an earlier curriculum via the slogan “Back to Basics” (from A Nation At Risk 1983 onward). Although the fine arts continue to be described as important, their relative status has been weakened vis-a-vis what are considered the basics: language arts, mathematics, science, and (to some degree) social studies.

Neoliberal and neoconservative principles have been interconnected in the pedagogic discourse of what Apple (2004, 2006) and Beck (2006) define as the New Right in educational policy. Neoliberals “are deeply committed to markets and to freedom as ‘individual choice’”, while the neoconservative view “wants a return to discipline and traditional knowledge” (Apple, 2006, p. 9). Despite their contradictory views on the notion of governmental control, they both advocate a policy that agrees on what constitutes educational knowledge.

Nudging

For the educational system to function as expected, consumers have to act in accordance with market mechanisms. Based on information about what the outcome of their choices will be, students and their parents are expected to make educational decisions that are rational. However, these choices are not always predictable. In trying to account for this, neoliberals have incorporated a principle from the field of behavioral economics that the 2017 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics, Richard Thaler, and his coauthor, Cass R. Sunstein, have called “the theory of nudging”. Thaler and Sunstein (2003, 2008) describe nudging as interventions based on “libertarian paternalism”, a situation in which markets enable freedom of choice at the same time socio-economic systems subtly regulate individuals’ choosing behaviors in order to nudge them toward “better off”––in this case educational––choices. Thus, liberal paternalism requires a notion of what the desirable outcome is, a knowledge of the incentives that are likely to cause individuals to make choices leading to the desired outcomes, and a way of creating a system that enables such conditioned responses to occur.

In the UK, a nudge approach to education policy was put forward by the conservative-liberal coalition government in 2010. As Bradbury et al. (2013) report, a behavioral insight team was assigned to develop “intelligent ways to encourage, support and enable people to make better choices for themselves” (Cabinet Office, 2011, p. 3). The current situation in England, where researchers have found that arts instruction in secondary education has been deemphasized by the EBacc and Progress 8 benchmarks (Bath et al., 2020; Fautley, 2019), may be understood as a result of such nudge policies.

Pioneered by the “nudge unit” in the UK, the transnational influence of nudging interventions in education policy has grown stronger in recent years in the US and Sweden as well (Sunstein et al., 2018). “In many countries there is an interest in leveraging behavioural economics and especially cost-effective nudges to gently push children, adolescents, parents and teachers towards better education decisions and greater educational attainment” (Damgaard & Nielsen, 2018, p. 47).

The relative status of arts education is determined by official pedagogic discourse (e.g., the New Right policy agenda). The multilayered education policy system may, in turn, be understood as a selection device that regulates student choice or rejection of the arts in upper secondary education. Principles of nudging incorporated in education systems affect parents’ and children’s active decision making by introducing controlling factors to the context of deciding (Bradbury et al., 2013). Similar mechanisms may impact other levels of policymaking and policy implementation, such as a state’s accountability system decisions made by local school board, although in each case, such structural relationships must be contextually analyzed.

The European—Swedish context

A case study of the Swedish upper secondary school system demonstrates how nudging works on four levels of the selection device cited earlier: the supra level (international coordination), the macro level (national guidelines), the meso level (the local school administration), and the micro level (course choices of individual students).

The supra level of selection

International cooperation often includes policy transfer, whereby national governments engage in policy borrowing under the influence of other nation states and international organizations (Ball, 2012; Exley et al., 2011). Over the last two decades, bodies like the OECD, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), and the European Union (EU) have increased their influence over national curricula. International assessments as a pattern for comparative measurement have been the most prominent form of governance (Grek et al., 2009; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Sellar & Lingard, 2013). To determine how well nation states perform, evaluations of student achievement are held periodically. The most significant of these are the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). These all assess subject-related skills in reading, mathematics, and science. As a result, these so-called core disciplines are given a stronger position in national/state curricula, while other subjects that are not tested may be considered less important.

Swedish education policy follows the “soft governance” of Europeanization, that is, transnational borrowing through European cooperation in policy networks (Lawn, 2007; Wahlström, 2016). European policies, however, are themselves associated with global trends in how knowledge is viewed by international organizations and which student assessment programs they utilize.

In 1997, the OECD introduced the Definition and Selection of Competencies (DeSeCo) with the intention of formulating those “that are important across multiple areas of life and that contribute to an overall successful life and a well-functioning society” (OECD, 2002, p. 10). The OECD viewed the notion of competence as more than knowledge and skills; rather, it was something that “involves the ability to meet complex demands” such as “the ability to communicate effectively” (p. 4). Curricular boundaries were questioned, and a movement toward knowledge integration was proposed. In the OECD’s Skills Strategy, the arts were considered a transversal competence of creativity relevant to a range of disciplines (OECD, 2012).

One may recognize intertextual relationships between the OECD (2005) framework and the EU’s definition of “eight key competencies for lifelong learning”. In recommendation 2006/962/EC of the European Parliament and the Council (European Union, 2006), one of the eight designated factors was stated as “cultural awareness and expression”. As a transversal key competence, the importance of its acquisition has been compared to other overarching competences, such as “digital competence” and “learning to learn”. At the same time, however, the EU’s view of key competencies was narrowly focused on “the basics”.

In 2008, the European Commission (2008; cf. 2012) stated the importance of implementing a range of key competencies, “while retaining a grounding in basic skills” (p. 5).

Literacy and numeracy are essential components of key competences. They are fundamental for further learning, but performance in the EU is deteriorating. The EU benchmark is by 2010 to decrease the proportion of 15-year-olds who are low-achievers in reading literacy to 17%. However, the rate actually increased from 21.3% in 2000 to 24.1% in 2006. Moreover, almost twice as many boys as girls have low reading skills: 17.6% of 15-year-old girls and 30.4 % of 15-year-old boys. The decline in reading literacy must urgently be reversed. This represents one of the key challenges currently facing Europe’s schools. (European Commission, 2008, p. 6)

Based on the finding of deficiencies in young people’s literacy and numeracy skills, the European Commission proposed (p. 7) that member states collaborate by a common focus on

• developing action plans to increase levels of reading literacy and numeracy, including the use of target-setting;

• reinforcing transversal as well as subject-based competences, particularly learning-to-learn; and

• adopting a comprehensive approach to competence development encompassing curricula, learning materials, teacher training, personalized learning, and assessment techniques.

While transversal competences were considered important, the focus of the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (European Council 2009) emphasized the crucial role of subject-related “basic skills”:

Greater attention needs to be paid to raising the level of basic skills such as literacy and numeracy, making mathematics, science and technology more attractive and to strengthening linguistic competences. (European Council 2009, p. 4).

To support greater attention to the basics, the council (p. 9) recommended collaboration on

• Basic skills in reading, mathematics and science: Investigate and disseminate existing good practice and research findings on reading performance among school pupils and draw conclusions on ways of improving literacy levels across the EU. Intensify existing cooperation to improve the take-up of math and science at higher levels of education and training, and to strengthen science teaching. Concrete action is needed to improve the level of basic skills, including those of adults.

• ‘New Skills for New Jobs’: Ensure that the assessment of future skill requirements and the matching of labor market needs are adequately taken on board in education and training planning processes.

The European Policy Cooperation ET2020 whose continuation was urged among member states, “seeks to advance educational policy reforms at the national level”. The ET2020 has, among other things, worked toward improving results on “those basic skills, as measured by PISA” (European Commission, 2019).

As indicated above, the neoliberal policy agenda of international competitiveness has influenced the selection of educational knowledge. Thus, when key competencies were specified in cooperative programs for development, emphasis was placed on literacy, numeracy, and science as the basics of educational knowledge. The neoconservative view of knowledge has thereby played a crucial role in European policy coordination (Sundberg & Wahlström, 2012). Such an integrated transnational policy discourse has also had a bearing on national policy reforms in Sweden on the macro level of educational knowledge selection (Lilliedahl et al., 2016; Wahlström, 2016).

The macro level of selection

In the Swedish educational reforms of 2011, the concept of key competencies was subordinated to specific school subjects (Nordin & Sundberg, 2016). National implementation followed principles of standards-based curricula, and the knowledge that students must achieve in each subject was stated in terms of criteria (Sundberg & Wahlström, 2012). Revisions were also made to the upper secondary school curriculum to increase training in occupational skills and establish a clearer division between academic and vocational programs (Prop, 2008/09:199). While the foundation subjects module was reduced in vocational training programs, higher education preparatory programs were revised to assign more time to academic disciplines. As a result, the entire upper secondary school curriculum was restructured into national programs composed of the following modules:

• foundation subjects (English, history, mathematics, science, social studies, sports and health, and Swedish);

• core courses of the specific program (academic or vocational);

• a nationally regulated specialization within the program (for example, social science courses would have a specialization in social studies, behavioral studies, or media and communication studies);

• an in-depth specialization based on the school’s or the student’s selection from a list of courses prescribed by the state; and

• an elective of the student’s choice.

In the last two modules above, schools and students would have the opportunity to choose educational content and thus influence the design of the program.

In the process of creating this revised curriculum, fine arts was withdrawn from the module of foundation subjects common to all national programs. The official in charge of the reform had decreed “other subjects deemed to be important as compulsory” (SOU 2008:27, p. 509 [author’s transl.]). At the same time, the new curriculum stated that “students shall always be able to take a minimum of one course in an aesthetics subject as per the student’s individual options” (SFS 2010:2039 [author’s transl.]). This policy design presents problems because students in vocational programs must use their individual options for foundation subjects in order to be eligible for admission to schools of higher education. On the other hand, students in college preparatory programs are nudged to choose courses in mathematics, English, and modern languages because grades in those subjects will enhance their academic records and increase their chances of college admission. Opting out of the fine arts may thus be a wise decision, since those courses carry fewer credits (Lilliedahl & Rapp, 2019).

The meso level of selection

In a recent study of locally-designed curricula, we found that it is rare for schools to offer students fine arts courses within their program specialization. For example, although the national program in social studies makes provision for arts courses, upper secondary schools tend to gear study tracks toward academic subjects. Except in a small number of schools, the fine arts are apparently not considered suitable as part of a program specialization. Such a local policy position is expressed in the pre-enrollment information given to the students and parents. In some cases, schools have prescribed all the courses for specialized programs; in other cases, students are able to choose from a variety of courses. In the latter case, however, nudging takes place in the form of recommendations––sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger––for appropriate course choices. Weaker control typically occurs through the discursive presentation of “examples of elective courses”, among which arts courses are not included. Stronger control is exerted when recommendations are more unequivocally phrased as “suggestions for elective courses”, followed by a list of those subjects the administration wishes to promote (with fine arts omitted from the list). Course suggestions are related to specializations or subject areas associated with special merit points according to government incentives. Thus, “free choice” is preceded by a list of courses––like default options––that students must decline in order to take an arts course.

In addition to choices within the modules of program specialization, students are offered a choice of electives independent of their program of study. While arts course are generally among the electives, analysis of the micro level of selection shows that students are nevertheless nudged to non-selection of the arts.

The micro level of selection

In 2016, my colleague, S. Rapp, and I investigated the effects of curriculum reform at the micro level of content selection in Sweden (Lilliedahl & Rapp, 2019). We conducted a comprehensive survey of 1334 schools in order to follow up on each principal’s implementation of the 2011 revised curriculum.

Of the 408 responses received (approximately 31%), 354 school principals answered the question of how many students had chosen an arts course during the school year 2015/16. The results show low interest in studying the fine arts. For example, in 135 schools (38%), fewer than nine students (in some cases none) had taken an arts course. This implies a significant reduction in the uptake of arts courses, as compared to conditions before 2011, when an aesthetics course was mandatory in all upper-secondary school programs. Several principals attributed the decline in arts education to nationally required courses for admission to institutions of higher learning. We concluded that the remarkably low number of students studying fine arts was linked to the architecture of the education system (Lilliedahl & Rapp, 2019). Since 2011 it has seemed imprudent for students in either vocational or college preparatory programs to take fine arts courses as electives since they yielded fewer credits and may delay fulfilling course requirements for college admission.

The impact of the Swedish reforms demonstrates that the selection device gently pressures students to choose core academic disciplines, or, in the case of those on a vocational track, to opt for occupational skills of utility in particular service areas.

Discussion

The selection device theory we have presented provides a systematic approach to analyze the way subjects are effected by policy practices at different strata of society. It can help focus on what counts as educational knowledge, how this issue is regulated by one or more underlying principles, and the ideological basis of such principles.

We have seen how the declining uptake of students in arts subjects on the upper secondary school level may be conditioned by extrinsic incentives to educational choices, rather than an expression of intrinsic student motivation (cf. Bamford, 2012; Lamont & Maton, 2008; McPherson & O’Neill, 2010). Since standardized testing requirements do not apply to the arts, there is a lack of incentives for improving education in these subjects (Beveridge, 2009). Moreover, as Tutt (2014) has shown, because post-secondary institutions do not usually require an arts course for admission, extrinsic motivation is lacking. Finally, as we have tried to show, there are cases where policy incentives work to discourage students from selecting fine arts electives.

The Swedish education system at present is designed in such a way that studying the arts conflicts with completing requirements for further studies. In England, the fine arts are also discouraged by the governance and accountability system at the meso level of selection (Bath et al., 2020; Fautley, 2019; Neumann et al., 2016). Schools may exclude or discourage arts courses because those subjects are not included in the national assessments that are used to evaluate school performance.

The transnational trend is rooted in two ideological approaches to educational policy: neoliberalism and neoconservatism. The neoliberal policy discourse emphasizes a student’s right to choose among educational pathways on the basis of personal interest. Thus, someone who wants to study fine arts is free to do so during their years of secondary school. However, since the value of a particular subject relates to its potential market value, and since markets are based on the principle of supply and demand, different types of educational knowledge and skills have context-dependent values attributed to them (Bernstein, 2000). The fine arts are not considered crucial for achieving occupational competence, nor are they a prerequisite for college entrance, because in both cases they are seen as having weak relevance to market demands.

From a neoconservative point of view, disciplines such as music and the visual arts have long had a place in the history of public education; they are part of society’s cultural heritage. However, unlike “old conservatism”, the neoconservative discourse values the fine arts in economic terms (Bernstein, 2000). They may be ranked among the classics of the curriculum, but they are not seen as “basics” that are likely to strengthen academic achievement or contribute to earning a living. Ever since policy initiatives such as A Nation at Risk (The National Commission of Excellence in Education, 1983), the basics have been associated with literacy, numeracy, science, and to a certain extent social studies. At the same time, notions of fine arts, creative subjects, and aesthetics, although culturally valuable, have not been considered fundamental disciplines. Notably, the arts have been excluded from international assessments or national merit systems. As a result, policy mechanisms have been devised to prevent the “irrational” choice of electing to study the arts during curricular time that could be allocated to subjects considered more important.

The architecture of the selection device has not only made the fine arts optional; it has squeezed them between the demands of “the most valuable subjects” and the logic of rational choices. In consequence, students have been denied reasonable opportunities to take courses in the fine arts. To a considerable extent, student disregard of such subjects may thus be understood as the result of choice mechanisms created by policy makers to control selection of educational content.

The state has increasingly made itself the arbiter of what counts as valuable knowledge and, as a result, what was once intended as student choice has been turned into not much more than a display for the public (Lilliedahl & Rapp, 2019, p. 52).

The selection device regulates how students act at the lowest level of the policy chain, i.e., the micro level of selection. Conversely, their non-selection of arts courses affects the status of the fine arts themselves since such action can be interpreted as an expression of the low demand for those subjects in secondary education. In this way, students, together with politicians, principals, and teachers, are engaged in the practice of policymaking (Schmidt, 2017). These policy processes take place in different arenas and on different levels of society, but they are based on the common principle that each school subject has a relative status: subjects are not high or low per se, but are rather assigned higher or lower status depending on the differentiating valuation between them (Bernstein, 1975). As a result, the fine arts are relegated to the periphery, where they are considered negligible.

Implications for policy and further research

In a market-adapted education system, it may be believed that students are free to make their educational choices freely. However, as we have seen, such choices are often conditioned by mechanisms that politicians have socially engineered to control the system. The fate of arts education may then reside in the hands of politicians. If, however, society wishes to prevent a continuing decline in student artistic and creative competence, strategies that exclude the fine arts from the curriculum need to be replaced by incentives that promote such subjects. In this regard, lessons learned from the ESSA Act in the US can be instructive. Including the arts in national guidelines and ensuring federal funding for arts education may encourage advocates inside and outside the goverment to prioritize the arts. Tuttle (2020) has found that several states have revised their accountability systems and included measures facilitating student access to arts education. This positive change addresses the plight that advocates of music instruction have experienced (Kos, 2018). However, further studies are needed to sort out the mechanisms proposed and determine whether incentives have the desired effect on arts course enrollment. In this regard, the implementation of national governance at the meso level of policymaking is as important as analyzing national and regional incentives (Shaw, 2018, 2019). Since it is often up to local secondary school administrations to decide whether to support or eliminate the fine arts, and since an individual school is often where discursive legitimacy or dismissal of the fine arts is conveyed, research can clarify how school principals and student counselors act as policymakers in the day-to-day school environment. Do they encourage students to take arts courses when they are offered as electives? do they nudge them away from the arts? do they not intervene at all?

The status of arts education would be boosted if colleges and universities required or recommended an arts course as part of their admission requirements. Such a change would strengthen the value of the arts in relation to other core academic subjects and, at the same time, act as an extrinsic motivation to take an arts course in upper secondary school (McCarthy et al., 2019; Tutt, 2014).

Reversing the declining trend in arts education in countries such as the UK and Sweden is ultimately a political issue. Whether students are able to study the arts in secondary school depends largely on policy mechanisms embedded in the selection device. While changes to the system can only be handed down by policy makers, researchers, advocates, and organizations may also have the power to exert their influence in defense of arts education. Since the nudge theory demonstrates how students can be nudged away from the arts, its principles can also be applied by government to nudge students toward the arts. For example, an arts course could be made the “default option” of the selective device when students on the micro level choose among elective subjects (Thaler & Sunstein, 2003). However, such an incentive would require a common perception among policymakers that arts education is something of value in the secondary school curriculum. It also assumes that policymakers should have the authority to gently nudge students in making a choice of academic subjects. An alternative approach would be to avoid extrinsic motivation and, instead, encourage a non-manipulative freedom of choice based on a student’s intrinsic interests. However, as long as institutionalized education and social engineering remain tightly interconnected, such a notion may be no more than a liberal fantasy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse.

Funding

This work was supported by Helge Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse.