Christian Lundahl

Standardisation and 'quick languages' : the shape-shifting of standardised measurement of pupil achievement in Sweden and Germany

The article discusses the entry of standardised measurement into the educational systems of Sweden and Germany and the processes of shape‐shifting associated with this process. In the first part of the article, we investigate how standardised measurement challenged existing ways of conceiving education in Sweden and Germany during the first half of the twentieth century, leading to the introduction of a system of national tests in Sweden, but not in Germany. In the second part of the article, we explore standards‐based reform in Sweden and Germany contemporaneously, including the role played by standardised measurement in this process. We analyse how psychometrics functioned as a ‘quick language’, i.e. a shorthand means of communication in educational matters, and the role it played in processes of shape‐shifting of standardised measurement, i.e. transformations in directions very different from that which early proponents of standardised measurement had envisaged.

Evaluating a large-scale implementation of Assessment for Learning in Sweden

This study reports on a large-scale implementation of Assessment for Learning (AfL) in a Swedish municipality. The implementation was founded on two principles: (1) teaching should be informed by educational research; (2) to be successful teachers’ professional development needs to be based in everyday classroom practice. From these principles, AfL was chosen as a strand of educational research to inform teaching and ‘Teacher Learning Communities’ were chosen as a vehicle for professional development and for implementing AfL practices. Findings indicate that the project has been successful in bringing about a change in how teachers talk about teaching and learning and in changing teachers’ pedagogical practice towards AfL. Findings also suggest that AfL practices are mostly teacher-centred, which means that the teachers still take most of the responsibility for the assessment. This leads to high workload for the teachers and may also hinder students from taking responsibility for their learning.

Creating an Educational Testing Profession in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, 1910-1960

In Sweden, Norway and Denmark national testing communities advocating the introduction and expanded use of standardised educational tests in the national educational systems emerged around World War I. Using international research and cross-border networking activities, these coteries were able to gain power and thus establish and promote a new profession, the educational psychologist, along with instituting practices of alleged scientific tests in the following decades.

New modes of policy legitimation in education : (Mis)using comparative data to effectuate assessment reform

Identifying three modes of policy legitimation in education, illustrated by shifts in Swedish educational assessment and grading policies over the past decades, the paper demonstrates significant trends with regard to national governments’ policymaking and borrowing. We observe a shift away from collaboracy – defined as policy legitimation located in partnerships and networks of stakeholders, researchers and other experts – towards more use of supranational agencies (called agency), such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the European Union and associated networks, as well as the use of individual consultants and private enterprises (called consultancy) to legitimate policy change. Given their political and high-stakes character for stakeholders, assessment and grading policies are suitable areas for investigating strategies and trends for policy legitimation in education. The European Union-affiliated Eurydice network synthesises policy descriptions for the European countries in an online database that is widely used by policymakers. Analysing Eurydice data for assessment and grading policies, the paper discusses functional equivalence of grading policies and validity problems related to the comparison of such policy information. Illuminating the roles of the Swedish Government and a consultant in reviewing and recommending grading policies, the paper discusses new ‘fast policy’ modes of policy legitimation in which comparative data is used to effectuate assessment reform.

The power of teacher-assigned grades in outcome-based education

ABSTRACT In arguing for alternatives to test-based accountability, researchers have suggested that teacher-assigned student grades could be used for high-stakes purposes. In this study, Sweden serves as an example of a school system in which teacher-assigned grades have a major role in performance management and accountability. We study how politicians view and legitimise the strengths of grading in an outcome-based accountability system. Based on two-part analysis, we show how grades, through complex processes of legitimation, have acquired and retained a central position in governing the overall quality of the educational system in Sweden. We argue that in the Swedish system, grades used in an administrative rather than a pedagogical way function as a quick language that effectively reduces the complexity of communication between various actors with regard to what students learn and accomplish in education. As such, grades are legitimate in terms of their communicative rationality. However, their use in communicating student learning has not been sufficient to meet the needs of government. We conclude that in order to turn grading into an instrument that can moderate some of the downsides of testing regimes, a broader view of what constitute outcomes in education needs to follow.

Den populära pedagogiken - om hur ett kunskapsområde formas i det moderna samhället

This article concerns a special kind of educational knowledge which is neither practical nor academic or political — but all at the same time. The particular knowledge that is investigated is a co-produced knowledge about students and their performances in school during the 1940s. This knowledge was produced and spread by new social and discursive fields developed to both reflecting and making possible a new school organisation. It is argued that this knowledge while foremost supporting the Swedish reform towards a comprehensive school system in the 1940s, had loopi ng effects on academic theories and on educational practice.

Utvärderingens dubbla politik

This article discusses the political in evaluation with the concept of “looping effects” as a heuristic tool. National evaluation programs have multiple directions, towards the government and towards the public society. The relation between the government, the evaluation program and the public society creates different kinds of looping effects, some intentional and some unintentional. In this article we choose to focus on the unintentional side effects and argue that they might be possible to avoid, at least to some degree, if national evaluation programs take a greater part in constructing their own autonomy.

The Swedish schoolhouse: a case study in transnational influences in education at the 1870s world fairs

At the world exhibitions of the 1870s Sweden displayed a schoolhouse, with examples of teaching material and student work. How did Sweden ship an entire schoolhouse to these exhibitions? What impact did the schoolhouse have on visitors to the exhibition? The purpose of this article is to shed light on the transnational influences operating between Sweden and other countries at the world fairs of the 1870s, regarding both policy and practice formation. In this paper, we will explore the exhibited school, the Swedish schoolhouse, as a major political and educational intervention in the growing market of educational goods, into the group of advanced industrial nations, and into the space of leading education nations. The schoolhouse was internally focused while at the same time demonstrating advanced education thinking, closely linked to Sweden’s national future as a leading economy. Exhibitions were not just events or spectacles. They had effects.

Karin Boye och hennes seminariekamrater – reproducerade för reproduktion? Examensarbeten som historiskt källmaterial

This article investigates the concept of reproduction in relation to teacher education and teaching practice in the early 1920th. Working with a unique source material consisting of teacher exam essays, and teacher students note books written during classroom auscultation, it will be shown how certain ideals were reproduced, first from the teacher seminar to the teacher students, then over to their students by for example the use of questioning the homework. One teacher student in the investigated classes, the author to be, Karin Boye, illustrates some personal and generic dilemmas in this reproduction process, both in first hand sources and in her later reflections over her year at the teacher seminar.

En läroplansteoretisk och läroplanshistorisk analys av kunskapsbedömning i Sveriges första läroverksstadgar 1561 – 1724.

This article deals with conceptions of what we today call “knowledge assessment” in early Swedish curricula, between 1561 and 1724, concerning the grammar schools for boys. The main findings indicate th at it was possible, due to the way knowledge seems to have been understood in the five analysed pre - modern curricula, to integrate administrative demands for examination and assessment with pedagogical ones. This is when it comes to the reproduction of spe aking skills and the training of the memory. When telling about assessing writing skills and the training of judgment, the curricula uses another language. These skills were to be assessed carefully but were at the same time not part of the examinati on. When assessments on administrative grounds get more fo r - malised in the curricula of 1693 and the ones following, they tend to rely solely on oral examination. At the same time, a bit contradictory, the reproduction of “spoken memory” are starting to fall down from its place as the number one purpose of schooling. When leaving 1724 it is with a curriculum that has started to value other skills than having a good memory but at the same time prescribes a memory assessing examination in the name of adm inistrative m o tives.