Kati Kasanen

Learning the Class Test.

The class test is one of the important school practices which construct and convey to the pupils the predominant conception of ability and the related psychometric notion of individuality represented by the school. The aim of this study was to examine how the class test is actually ‘taught’ to children — what sorts of elements the teacher uses to construct it, how the children interpret those elements, and how they, act in the test situations — and how the class teacher tries to find a balance in her work between the dilemmas of pupil assessment. The research was focused on the classroom situations of one first-grade class during one autumn term. The ethnographic findings indicated that the frequency of test-like situations was high and that they started as early as the first few days of school. The instructions which regulated the tests were quite similar in all test situations, and their number and preciseness increased in the course of the school term. The dilemmatic nature of the class test surfaced as the teacher used the techniques of ‘silencing’ and ‘counterbalancing’ to avoid presenting the tests explicitly as tests proper. To the children, the test situations manifest themselves as learning situations. They participate actively, and apparently they do not yet see the differential and evaluative import of the situations. Practicing the class test can then be viewed as an important priming event in the formation of pupils’ social representations of academic ability.RésuméL’épreuve en classe est l’une des pratiques scolaires importantes qui forment et transmettent aux élèves la conception prédominante d’abilité et la notion psychomètrique de l’individualité représentée par l’école. L’objectif de cette étude était d’examiner, comment l’épreuve en classe était réellement “enseignée” aux enfants, quels genres d’éléments le professeur utilisait pour la préparer, comment les enfants interprétaient ces éléments, comment ils agissaient en situation d’épreuve et comment l’enseignant de classe cherchait à trouver l’équilibre dans son travail entre les dilemmes d’évaluation des élèves. La recherche fut concentrée sur les situations en classe primaire pendant le trimestre d’automne. Les résultats ethnographiques démontrèrent que la fréquence des situations semblables à celles des épreuves était élevée et que ces situations débutaient dès les premiers jours de l’école. Les instructions qui réglementaient les épreuves, étaient assez similaires dans toutes les situations d’épreuve et leur nombre et leurs précisions augmentaient au cours de l’année scolaire. La nature embarrasssante de l’épreuve de classe surgissait lorsque l’enseignant utilisait la technique de “silence” et de “contrebalance” pour éviter de présenter les épreuves, de manière explicite, comme des épreuves proprement dites. Pour les élèves les situations d’épreuve se présentaient comme des situations pour apprendre. Ils participaient activement, et apparemment, ils ne voyaient pas encore la portée des situations sur le plan de différentiel et d’évaluation. Par conséquent, l’épreuve en classe peut être considérée comme un événement important décisif dans la formation des représentations sociales de l’abilité académique des élèves.

Parents’ Participation in Their Child’s Schooling

The present study set out to survey Finnish parents’ participation in their child’s schooling and related experiences. The subjects were a nationally representative group of academically and vocationally educated fathers and mothers (N = 391) who had a child on the fifth grade. A great majority of the parents reported that they attended the parent evenings and saw them in a positive light. Most parents helped their child in her/his schoolwork, though some of them were doubtful of their own competence for it. The choice of schools, which was considered mainly by urban parents and academically educated parents, seemed to introduce a new private element into parental participation without changing the existing communal forms of participation.

Parents' Perceptions of Their Children's Schools: Findings from a Five-Year Longitudinal Study.

This longitudinal study set out to examine, in the light of the parents’ education and gender and the child’s gender, the changes that occurred in the course of five years in parents’ satisfaction with the functioning of their child’s school. Academically and vocationally educated mothers and fathers (N = 391) were asked to indicate their satisfaction with different aspects of their child’s school at the end of the first, third and fifth school year. It was found that the level of parental satisfaction was fairly high at the start, and despite a decreasing trend, it remained high; parental satisfaction was widely shared, and the number of dissatisfied parents remained small and stable. The academic parents displayed more satisfaction with their child’s school success and the fairness of the treatment than the vocational parents did. The results are discussed in terms of educational policy.

“You be Sure Now to be Honest in Your Assessment”: Teaching and Learning Self-Assessment

When taking part in the everyday practices of the school, the pupil ‘metalearns’ implicit institutional knowledge about educability and its proper criteria. The aim of this study was to examine one important school practice, self-assessment: How is self-assessment ‘taught’ to children, what is assessed through the self-assessment method, how is self-assessment introduced to children, and how do they perceive those situations? The ethnographic research focused on the classroom situations of one class of first-graders during one autumn term. The data were collected by means of regular observation, video recordings, short interviews, documents, and informal conversations with the teachers, pupils and parents. The findings indicated that the frequency of self-assessment episodes was particularly high in the domains of writing, mathematics, and social skills and behaviour; self-assessment situations were a ‘natural’ part of everyday teaching practices. According to our observations, the result of the self-assessment was considerably explicit. The teacher made sure that the pupils assessed their performance in the way she wanted. The teaching of self-assessment also teaches the child what assessment criteria the school regards as important and how well the child fulfils these criteria. According to our analysis, these important assessment criteria are objectiveness (compliance to standard), honesty, and individuality (a product that ‘looks like’ its author). The children practised self-assessment actively and were apparently capable of assessing their own performance. Our results suggest that ‘the self’ in self-assessment is paradoxical: you can assess yourself as long as you assess the right things in the right way.

Seating order as a symbolic arrangement

The study set out to explore the bases on which the school assesses pupils’ educability and which show up as pupil categorizations manifested in seating order. The research was carried out with ethnographic methods and focused on the classroom situations of one first-grade class during one autumn term. The points of interest were those changes and episodes in which the seating order organized the action. Four stages was the spontaneous order created by the pupils themselves on their first day of school; the seating order of the other three stages was set up by the teacher on the basis of mixing boys and girls, of reading skills, of settledness, of capability for pair-work, and of “interpersonal chemistry”. It was found that the teacher made an active use of seating order as a pedagogical instrument. The pupils seemed to adopt the classification criteria and used them in their talk, but the application of these criteria, especially gender and interpersonal relations, was a constant source of dispute between the pupils and the teacher. It was concluded that seating order manifests, implements, and conveys to the pupils important symbolic elements of the representation of educability endorsed by the school.RésuméL’étude propose d’explorer les bases selon lesquelles l’école évalue l’éducabilité des élèves; elle met en exergue comment les diverses catégorisations d’élèves se manifestent dans cet ordre de disposition. La recherche à été menée avec des méthodes ethnographiques et s’est focalisée sur les situations de la classe dans une classe du premier degré durant le semestre d’automne. Les faits marquants ont été les divers changements et épisodes dans lesquels la disposition a organisé l’action. Quatre méthodes ont été utilisées dans la désignation de l’ordre des places. La première a été celle adoptée spontanément par les élèves eux-mêmes des le premier jour de classe. La mise en place des trois autres a été organisée par l’instituteur, selon les critères suivants: mixer les garçons et les filles, capacités de lecture, d’attention, capacité de travailler en duo, et sympathie mutuelle. On a trouve que l’instituteur a utilisé activement la disposition des élèves en classe comme instrument pédagogique. Les élèves ont paru adopter les critères de classification et les ont utilisés dans leur conversation. Cependant l’application de ces critères, spécialement la mixité et les relations personnelles étaient une source constante de dispute entre l’instituteur et les élèves. On en a conclu que l’ordre de disposition des élèves en classe manifeste, produit et apporte aux élèves des éléments symboliques importants de la représentation de l’éducabilité supportée par l’école.

Childrens' notions of the malleability of their academic ability in the mother tongue and mathematics

The ways boys and girls (N = 119) at different grade levels rated and explained their potential for improvement in mathematics and the mother tongue were compared in order to examine their subject‐specific notions of the malleability of their academic ability. The findings indicate that children perceive their potential to improve their performance to be higher in mathematics than in the mother tongue. In the mother tongue the childrens ratings of their potential for improvement became more pessimistic with advancement in the childs grade level. In mathematics the boys rated their potential for improvement higher than the girls did and trusted exertion as a means of improving their performance more than did the girls. Those children who gave optimistic ratings of their potential backed up their view by referring to the possibilities of practising and to the positive academic recognition they had received, and the role of these explanations grew stronger with advancement in the childs grade level. In contrast, those children who gave pessimistic ratings of their potential backed them up by referring to their poor performance and deficient ability. It was concluded that the optimistic pupils seem to place themselves in the ‘promotional sphere’ of the institution of school, whereas the pessimistic pupils seem to place themselves in the ‘restrictive sphere’ of education.

Children's Representations of Ability and their Changes During the First School Year

Abstract The present study was designed to develop a method and related coding systems for examining changes in childrens representations of ability during the first school year. Children (n = 19) of ages six and seven were interviewed three times during a school year. The interview included two tasks: first, the children were asked to group their classmates on the basis of similarity and to justify their groupings; second, they were requested to name those classmates whom they would like to have on their team for different academic contests and as playmates and, again, to give reasons for their choices. The findings suggest that the impact of school and its differential concept of ability show up in the appraisal of theoretical subjects, reading and mathematics, where the use of social reasons almost disappeared, making way for an increased use of performance‐based qualitative criteria.

Parents' Perceptions of Their Child's Resilience and Competencies.

This study examined parental views of their child’s educability through the parents’ perceptions of their child’s resilience. The purposes of the study were: (1) to examine psychometric properties of the rating scale created to measure parental views of their child’s educational and psychological resilience, (2) to explore whether the parents’ views of the child’s resilience were related to their notions of the child’s competencies and (3) to examine how parents’ perceptions of their child’s resilience were related to the parent’s social position and the child’s gender. Data were collected by questionnaire from the parents of fifth-grade children (N=391). The parental rating scale consisted of three dimensions of resilience, all with satisfactory reliability. Parents’ views of their child’s resilience were related to their perceptions of child’s abilities and school success, suggesting that the parental rating scale had concurrent validity. The results also indicated that parents’ views of their child’s resilience were related to their gender and education and to the child’s gender. Furthermore, parents’ views of their child’s educational resilience, based on parents’ trust in their child’s internal capacities, were related to the parental definition of their child’s cognitive-verbal competencies, in particular.RésuméCetter étude a examiné la façon dont les parents conçoivent l’éducabilité de leur enfant au travers de leur propre perception de la résilience de l’enfant. Les objectifs de cette étude étaient (1) d’examiner les propriétés psychométriques de l’échelle créée pour mesurer les points de vue parentaux sur la résilience éducative et psychologique de l’enfant, (2) d’explorer si ces points de vue sur la force de résistance de leur enfant étaient liés dans l’esprit des parents aux compétences de celui-ci et (3) de considérer comment les perceptions des parents de la résilience de leur enfant étaient liées à leur propre position sociale et au sexe de l’enfant. Les données ont été récoltées au moyen d’un questionnaire soumis aux parents d’élèves de CM2 (5ème classe, 11–12 ans) (N=391). L’échelle parentale comprenait trois dimensions de résilience, chacune ayant un degré de fiabilité satisfaisant. Le point de vue parental sur la résilience de leur enfant était lié à leur perception des aptitudes et de la réussite scolaire de celui-ci, suggérant ainsi que l’échelle de mesure attribuée aux parents avait une validité concrète. Les résultats ont aussi indiqué que la façon dont les parents perçoivent la résilience de leur enfant est liée à leur position sociale, à leur sexe, ainsi qu’au sexe de l’enfant. En outre, le point de vue parental sur la résilience éducative de leur enfant, fondé sur la confiance de ceux-ci en les capacités innées de l’enfant, était tout particulièrement relié à leur définition des compétences verbo-cognitives de l’enfant.

Salvation or a Broken Promise? Two Adult Graduates' Social Positioning in Education and Working Life.

Finland has been celebrated as a country where everyone has the possibility to educate themselves and to get ahead in life through education. However, social differences of educability continue to persist and social differences of employability are further construed in the neo-liberal market economy. In this article we will examine 2 adult graduates’ educational and working life histories based on an 8-year qualitative follow-up study. Lisa with a working-class background and Henri from a middle-class family have both graduated from general upper-secondary school for adults and also accomplished higher education degrees in adulthood. Lisa and Henris cases show how class and gender, as well as age, intertwine in the construction of educability and employability in different narrative environments. Based on our analysis, academic education may turn out as a broken promise instead of a great salvation with good occupational prospects for individuals like Lisa with a working-class background.

To be or not to be? Pupils' explanations of the malleability of their academic competencies

Purpose: The present study set out to examine the grounds on which pupils explain their possibilities of improving their competencies in mathematics and Finnish. Sample: A total of 103 girls and boys of the third grade (age nine years) and the sixth grade (age 12 years), children of academically and vocationally educated parents, were interviewed. Design and method:  The children were asked to rate their potential for improving their academic competencies on both intrapersonal and normative criteria and to give reasons for their ratings. The reasons given were content-analysed based on the data itself. Results: Effort was the most frequently cited explanation by far, and the ratings on intrapersonal criteria were explained with partly different factors and in more variable ways than those on normative criteria. Conclusions: The findings suggest that reference to effort is an explanation that helps the pupil to deal with the threat of a low academic self-concept determined on normative grounds and thus to retain a quantum of hope in regard to her/his prospects of personal development.