Abstract
Many critical research studies have documented the complex ways in which global policies on school curricula are reshaped at national and local levels. This paper focuses on the discourses which regulate the recontextualizations of global policies in local school settings. The paper presents an empirical study on the enactments of language curricula in the Greek school education system. Using Bernstein’s theory of knowledge pedagogization, we analyze data produced by semi-structured interviews and classroom observations in five lower secondary state schools with socially and ethnically diverse student populations, in the inner city of Athens. Our findings show that, while the socially disadvantaged schools are regulated by discourses on inclusion, in the more advantaged schools of the study regulative discourses are related to performance management concerns. The paper points to the potential implications of such discourses, claiming that challenging educational inequalities requires to identify and act upon the discourses regulating teachers’ practices.
Highlights
The critical research literature has documented the diverse ways in which global policies on knowledge and the curriculum are taken up, reshaped at the national level and recontextualized in local school contexts
The paper presents an empirical study on the enactments of language curricula in the Greek school education system
While the socially disadvantaged schools are regulated by discourses on inclusion, in the more advantaged schools of the study regulative discourses are related to performance management concerns
Summary
The critical research literature has documented the diverse ways in which global policies on knowledge and the curriculum are taken up, reshaped at the national level and recontextualized in local school contexts. The uniqueness of the Greek national context, when compared to other European countries, stems, on the one hand, from the distinctive characteristics of its education system, which, despite many supranational pressures and governmental attempts towards restructuring, remains highly centralized in terms of curricula and administrative coordination. It utilizes the conceptual tools offered by Bernstein’s theory, which help to describe the processes of knowledge pedagogization and their social reproduction or change implications Using his distinction between the instructional and the regulative components of pedagogic discourse, the study explores how language curricula are recontextualized in these local contexts, what affects such recontextualizations, how teachers shape their pedagogic practices and what their potential effects are on students’ learning and their social positioning.
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