Home > Revue internationale d'éducation Sèvres > n° 46 > Abstracts

School and change : opening up new possibilities
n° 46, December 2007

More democratic societies, reinforced economic development, climbing up the social ladder made easier, reduction of school and social inequalities: Since the seventies, countless are the hopes embodied by the school system that have been thwarted or dashed. The massification of the access to school has not been followed by the expected changes in quality, as multiple international benchmarks and surveys have kept showing. Thus, the structural changes which have hit the work market and the depreciation of diplomas have both contributed to tarnishing the image of schools.

This diagnosis has been the stepping stone of educational policies led on a global scale which have rested on major reforms and on the promotion of innovations. Today, this cycle of voluntarist reforms seems to be coming to an end and the very notions of reform and innovation have undergone a strong erosion.

Yet, changes can be seen at work on different levels, be it local, national or supra-national. Can comparative perspective allow to highlight the evolutions which tend to modify the general landscape skteched by educational systems? That is the basic premise of the present issue of the Revue internationale d’éducation de Sèvres, which collects the contributions of experts from different countries: France, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Spain, Portugal and the United-Kingdom (Scotland).

Several contributors point out the lesser part played by States and the emergence of new managing modes which lead to hybrid and complex adjustments between the various levels of actions and decisions.
Between the increasingly mercantilist approach of education and the rise of local initiatives, several contributions advocate school diversity.

Introduction
School and change: opening up new possibilities
Rui Canário

Between universalism and local development
The emergence of a new school?
Choukri Ben Ayed
In France the restructuring of education from bottom up constitutes a powerful factor for the transformation of the education institution. This has given rise to a set of institutional schemes such as the devolution and decentralisation of decision-making in education, and to territorial education policies, e.g. educational priority areas, local education contracts, etc. Schools are embedded in their local environment in many ways; for instance in how they are situated in a spacialised market of schools and curricula, or through new educational schemes which seize upon the school’s local embeddedness as a resource (open schools, transplanted classes, study of local heritage…). If such changes testify to the weakening of the nation as the key reference, they also bear witness to the gradual emergence of a new school, poised between universalism and local development.

A different school in Spain
The “Atlantida” project
Antonio Bolívar
In the last two decades the Spanish education system has undergone a series of education reforms which closely mirrored changes in government and responded to new social expectations. Confronted to a quick pace of reforms which failed to alter teaching methods, a number of reformist movements has proved that another school can exist. First the article analyses the key dimensions of one community approach to educational reform, an approach related to the “community learning” movement. It proceeds with a case study of the “Atlantida project”, in which the author is involved.

A changing school and the paradoxes of autonomy in Portugal
Fernando Ilídio Ferreira
The changing of school has long been a controversial issue, but the idea that has prevailed in political reflections and decision-making has been that of a “major reform”. This idea is to blame for occulting or discrediting the emerging alternatives to the conventional “school model”. This article confronts various rationalities that are at work in the current process of school change by examining the case of the Escola da Ponte public school. This case study was selected because its pedagogical project breaks free from one of the most deeply-rooted characteristics of the conventional model: classroom organisation. With reference to this example, the author discusses the lessons which can be drawn from a thirty-year experiment, notably on the paradoxes of autonomy.

Schooling in Future(s)
Learning for Life in Scotland
Jenny Ozga
This paper considers the future of schooling as being constructed here and now through the dominant knowledge economy discourse. The discursive effects of the constant invocation of the knowledge economy include the de-centring of educational institutions, the replacement of content with process, and the focus on individualisation of learning that is a task for life. These shifts are achieved through the use of data to monitor individual and system performance, which creates constantly shifting targets, and through the harnessing of the school to a project of ‘projection’ of the future. The paper considers the ways in which this discourse enters and inflects policy for schooling/learning in Scotland.

New governments and new educational projects
Latin-American Schools
Dalida Andrade Oliveira
This article considers the changes occurring in Latin-American schools, especially in Brazil, as a result of ten years of education reforms. The new organisation of schoolwork reflects a pattern of education regulation which endowed schools with more flexibility and autonomy through administrative, financial and pedagogical decentralisation. This process also leads to an increasing demand on teachers and schools in terms of activities and responsibilities. The autonomy of a school entails a greater autonomy for all those involved, especially teachers. This form of regulation leads to a heavier workload for teachers, even in the context of the latest governments, and this weakens the principles of social justice which should guide school.

Middle-class disappointment with school
The case of Canada
Claude Lessard
The article raises the issue of the difficult relationship between the public education system and the middle-classes. In many ways the destinies of the middle-classes and of schools and their agents are historically related in a strong and persistent way. Education as a provider of cultural capital has always captured the interest – in all the meanings of the term – of parents from the various fractions of the middle-classes, and it lies at the heart of their reproduction strategies. In a context where upwards social mobility is either limited or excessive (for some), and where downwards mobility attracts increasing media coverage, the tensions within the middle-classes seem all the starker as fear of social downfall spreads. This concern, which is typical of the middle-classes in the current economic context, is heightened by alarming discourses on public schools. In order to overcome the diagnosed crisis, the author advocates a pragmatic search for a balance which involves encouraging diversity of schools.

Modes of regulation in schools
A European comparison
Christian Maroy
This article presents the main conclusions of a project which aimed at understanding how various modes of regulation combine in six education spaces located in urban contexts – Budapest, Charleroi, Lille, Lisbon, London and greater Paris. The project examined how these six areas evolved due to national education policies but also in relation to social evolutions at the local or wider scale. The manner in which these changes affect how schools are run or their action policies indirectly contributes to restructuring the local processes of production and reproduction of social inequalities at school. The ambition of this study is not so much to make final pronouncements on the objective effects of these new modes of regulation, but rather to provide evidence of their contribution to redefining the way local actors theorize, construct and deal with the issue of inequalities.

Is another school emerging?
Bernard Charlot
Many children, in the world, still have no access to the school or its knowledge. It is necessary to be aware that school is plural: teaching place, “school form”, social institution, place of young people, employer. School started to change in the Sixties, when economical and social dynamics redefined it in the logic of development and insertion. It experienced a new shock as from the Eighties, with Regulator State, Globalization, requirements of quality and performance. The school massification, the transformations of the relation to knowledge and desire made emerge a new pupil. Also appeared new forms of regulation of the school in its relationship with the State and the environment. But the school form and methods of training, i.e. the heart of the school, changed little. Today is outlined a globalized, private, with lucrative goal, competing school. But one can also dream of a school which, from the globalization, would retain human solidarity.

Bibliography
Bernadette Plumelle