redistribution and recognition: working against pedagogies of indifference professor bob lingard the...
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Redistribution and Recognition: working against pedagogies of indifference
Professor Bob Lingard The University of Queensland, Pedagogy that Makes a Difference, Educational Futures Conference, Flinders University, 22 November, 2010.
Bourdieu: pedagogies and student inequalities.
‘In fact to favour the most favoured and disfavour the most disfavoured, all that is necessary and sufficient is for the school to ignore in the content and teaching it transmits, in the methods and techniques of transmission and the criteria of judgement it deploys, the cultural inequalities that divide children from different social classes. In other words, by treating all students, however much they differ, as equal in rights and duties, the educational system actually gives its sanction to the initial inequality in relation to culture’. (Bourdieu, 2008, p.36)
Nancy Fraser (1997): politics of recognition and poiltics of redistribution
Rejects an ‘end of history’ thesis: but suggests in our ‘post-socialist’ condition the grammar of political claim making has changed (USA focus). Here she speaks of politics of ‘recognition’: the rise of identity politics and related decentering of class and the prioritising of a recognition politics around identity and difference.
Related to a decoupling of this cultural politics of recognition from a social politics of redistribution.
Decentring of claims for equality (politics of redistribution) in face of neo-liberal marketisation and sharply rising inequality.
Rose (1999) ‘self-capitalising’ individual. Need for both politics: affirmation to transformation.
Background and purposes
Draws on Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS): mapped, analysed and theorised teacher pedagogies from 1000 classroom observations: concept of ‘productive pedagogies’.
Focus on identity construction, knowledge generation, work together a politics of recognition and redistribution – Nancy Fraser (1997); focus on academic & social outcomes; pedagogies – work with/value difference, strengthen schooling as a good in its own right, strengthen positioning of the most disadvantaged re schooling as a positional good.
Research: found trade-offs between intellectual demand and therapeutic culture of care; pedagogies of indifference.
Need to work against pedagogies of indifference towards pedagogies that make a difference.
Policy and pedagogies
Policy historically had more to say about curriculum and evaluation than about pedagogy: pedagogy implicit in other messages of the message system.
Recently high stakes testing as part of the evaluation message system become major policy steering mechanism with effects on pedagogy; pedagogies of the same.
Pedagogies: link to broader societal cultures and historical changes – Alexander (2000) comparative study of pedagogies across 5 countries.
Bernstein (2004, p.196): ‘Pedagogic practice can be understood as relay, a cultural relay: a uniquely human devoice for both the reproduction and production of culture’.
Pedagogies make the most difference re student learning and in terms of ‘school factors’.
Globalized policy discourse: evaluation as the major policy steering mechanism.
‘A key purpose of assessment, particularly in education, has been to establish and raise standards of learning. This is now a virtually universal belief – it is hard to find a country that is not using the rhetoric of needing assessment to raise standards in response to the challenges of globalisation’. (Stobart, 2008, p.24)
Pedagogies and social inequalities: pedagogies as a social justice issue
Continuing significance of social inequalities in neo-liberal present re social class based inequalities in/through schooling: Wilkinson & Pickett (2009) The Spirit Level Why Equality is Better for Everyone.
Bourdieu: impact of neo-liberal regimes on workers in ‘left hand of the state’: some teachers almost forced to become social workers.
Teachers and schools can make a difference, not all the difference. Bourdieu (1990, p.309): possibility of pedagogies: ‘If all pupils were given
the technology of intellectual enquiry, and if in general they were given rational ways of working (such as the art of choosing between compulsory tasks and spreading them over time), then an important way of reducing inequalities based on cultural inheritance would have been achieved’; culture/ability: ‘social gift treated as a natural one’ (Bourdieu, 1976, p.110).
Bernstein (2004): school success demands two complementary sites of pedagogic acquisition: the school and the home.
Sociological approach to pedagogy: working across two traditions
Two frames: abstract political (critical pedagogies) and empiricist reductive (studies of actual classrooms); Gore (1993): social vision versus explicit instructional focus.
Critical pedagogy tradition: Paulo Freire (1973) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Feminist pedagogies. Giroux, McLaren.
Tradition of classroom pedagogies research: Newmann and Associates (1996): authentic pedagogy research.
Need a more empirically grounded approach to pedagogies, but with political aspirations of critical pedagogy: productive pedagogies, a pedagogical theory of the middle ground; schools can make a difference.
School effectiveness: overstates possibilities of teachers and schooling, neglect contextual factors; reproduction theories, over stress on contexts and limits of possibility for schools and pedagogies.
Background References to Productive Pedagogies Research: US school reform literature
Fred M. Newmann and Associates (1996)
Authentic Achievement: Restructuring Schools
for Intellectual Quality, San Francisco, Jossey-
Bass.
Valerie E. Lee with Julia B. Smith (2001)
Restructuring High Schools for Equity and
Excellence What Works, New York, Teachers
College Press
Four Levels of School Restructuring
(Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study)
ClassroomPractices
School OrganisationalCapacity
External Supports
QSRLS Backward mapping
Student Outcomes
Classroom Practices
Classroom Practices
External Supports
School Organisational Capacity
Main References from QSRLS
Lingard, B., Hayes, D., Mills, M. and Christie, P. (2003) Leading Learning Making Hope Practical in Schools, Maidenhead, Open University Press.
Hayes, D., Mills, M., Christie, P. and Lingard, B. (2006) Teachers & Schooling Making a Difference, Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
Authentic Pedagogy
Newmann’s research identified 4 elements
of what was termed Authentic Pedagogy; Higher order thinking
Depth of knowledge and understanding
Substantive conversation
Connectedness to the world beyond the classroom.
QSRLS Productive Pedagogies represent a
refinement and expansion of these
elements to a 20 item instrument consisting
of 5 point scales, which measure
performance on 4 domains
Conducted by UQ for EQ – 1998 – 2000.
Commissioned to study the impact of school-based management on student outcomes.
Reconceptualised to ‘backward map’ from desired learning outcomes to classroom practices (pedagogies and assessment) (social as well as academic outcomes).
Concern about alignment of the 3 message systems: curriculum, pedagogy, assessment.
Focuses on classrooms 24 schools, purposive sample Teacher questionnaires 975 lessons mapped – Maths, Science, English, Social Studies Across years 6, 8 and 11, plus observed ‘outstanding teachers’ Lessons coded on 20 elements (of Productive Pedagogies) Productive pedagogies derived from ‘authentic pedagogy’ Assessment work collected as well (tasks and student work) Supportive school organisational capacity building: mobilising social capital.
Queensland School Reform Longitudinal
Study (QSRLS)
Intellectual
Quality
Connectedness Supportive
Environment
Working with and valuing differences
Higher order
thinking
Knowledge integration Student direction Cultural knowledges
Deep knowledge Background knowledge Social support Inclusivity
Deep understanding Problem-based curriculum
Academic engagement
Narrative
Substantive
Conversation
Connectedness
beyond classroom
Explicit criteria Group identities
Problematic
knowledge
Student self-regulation
Active citizenship
Metalanguage
Dimensions of Productive Pedagogies
Supportiveness dimension
Engagement: Are students engaged and on-task?
Student self-regulation: Is the direction of student behaviour implicit and self-regulatory or explicit?
Student direction of activities: Do students have any say in the pace, direction or outcomes of the lesson?
Social support: Is the classroom a socially supportive and positive environment?
Explicit criteria: Are the criteria for judging student performances made explicit?
1998
(n=302)
1999
(n=343)
2000
(n=330)
TOTAL
(n=975)
Mean Std
Dev
Mean Std
Dev
Mean Std
Dev
Mean Std
Dev
Intellectual
Quality2.16 .77 2.17 .73 2.47 .91 2.27 .82
Connectedness 1.84 .77 1.97 .79 2.39 .97 2.07 .88
Supportive
Classroom
Environment
2.75 .63 3.05 .67 3.26 .67 3.03 .69
Working with
and Valuing
Difference
1.79 .51 1.89 .50 2.13 .54 1.94 .54
Central findings re pedagogies in approx. 1000 classrooms: ‘pedagogies of indifference’
High levels of supportiveness: high mean and low standard deviation.
Low levels of intellectual demand and connectedness: low mean and high standard deviation.
Absence of working with and valuing difference: low mean and low standard deviation.
Other Findings Differences across curriculum areas. Differences across year levels. Trade-off: care and support/intellectual demand. Counter-intuitive finding more ethnically diverse a school’s
population the less there was of the working with and valuing difference dimension.
Working with and valuing difference: in culture of Indigenous school: appropriate unit of analysis; also in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Teachers practising productive pedagogies: sense of ‘responsibility’ and ‘efficacy’.
Teacher goals significant and perception of nature and location of teachers’ work.
Non-alignment of assessment practices (particularly in primary schools).
School size effects: implications in terms of social capital. Primary and secondary differences: nexus social class/pedagogies
broken in some ‘good’ primary schools. School leadership: learning communities and pedagogical focus. Teacher professional learning communities: significance of ‘we’
and significance to presence of productive pedagogies across schools.
Table 1.12
Correlations between productive classroom practices and student outcomes aggregated to the school level
Academic performance
Social performance
Overall intellectual quality .59 ** .27
Overall connectedness .40 * .53 **
Overall supportive practices .54 ** .37 *
Overall recognition of diff erence
.15 .40 *
* Correlation is significant at the .05 level (2-tailed)
** Correlation is significant at the .01 level (2-tailed)
Explanations of ‘Findings’: account 1
Extent of curriculum coverage; less is more? Curriculum pacing; pedagogies at home complementing
pedagogies at school (Bourdieu and capitals). Class size? Teacher threshold knowledges, particularly primary
maths. Systemic reforms: testing and accountability, social
justice ones?, definition of teacher work (care and support), Bourdieu – ‘left hand’ and ‘right hand’ of the state.
Growing inequalities.
Bourdieu and Understanding the findings: account 2
Lack of intellectual demand: demanding of all students that which they do not give, schools fail to take account of cultural and experiential differences students bring to school.
Lack of connectedness: also advantages those students ‘who know from the outset how to do school’.
Need to redistribute capitals through pedagogies: access to the code.
So little of working with and valuing difference: failure to recognise other capitals: Indigenous school; need to recognise other capitals.
What does the cognate research literature tell us: context and school effects?
Effects of social class or socio-economic background on student performance at school.
Gini Coefficients of Inequality. ‘Economic capital’ and valued ‘cultural capital’ relationships (Bourdieu). School factors: Townsend (2001, p.119): 5-10 % of variance in student
performance to do with school and 35-55 % of variance due to teacher effects.
School factors: teachers’ pedagogies most significant (see Hattie, 2009). Teachers’ pedagogical practices central here: productive pedagogies four
dimensions (intellectual quality, connectedness, supportiveness, working with and valuing differences) and alignment with curriculum goals and assessment practices, very important.
Qualities of pedagogies a social justice issue (redistribution and recognition of multiple capitals), but also need to address issues of poverty.
Concluding comment 1: Capitals and the codes of schooling
‘Intellectual rigour’ and ‘relevance’ as equity strategies. Schools and universities: Brennan and Zipin (2005) two strategies
re disadvantaged students: ‘give them the codes’ vs ‘stuff the codes: give them intelligent relevance’.
Access to the codes: redistribute the required capitals, but also recognise different capitals.
Bernstein (1990) makes a distinction between vertical and horizontal discourses.
Carolyn Williams and Steve Evans (2010) ‘Pedagogies for Social Justice: Did Bernstein get it wrong?’ International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14 (4), pp.417-434.
Concluding comment 2
Productive pedagogies sit across critical pedagogy tradition (social justice focus) and more empiricist, instructional tradition (Newmann and Associates (1996) ‘authentic pedagogy’).
‘Productive pedagogies, politically aware and empirically based – working with both vision and instructional concerns – would appear to offer potential for future pedagogical research from a sociological perspective’.
Raymond Williams: ‘making hope practical rather than despair convincing’.
Impact of current policy context: Australia, national testing. Need to re-imagine social justice imaginary in these neo-liberal
times; recognise that quality of pedagogies is a social justice issue. Martin Luther King: ‘…the arc of the moral universe is long but
bends towards justice’.
Effects of NAPLAN and My school website on pedagogies
Luke (2010, p.180): ‘The key policies of scripted, standardized pedagogy risk offering working-class, cultural and linguistic minority students precisely what Anyon presciently described: an enacted curriculum of basic skills, rule recognition and compliance’.
A. Luke (2010) ‘Documenting reproduction and Inequality: revisiting Jean Anyon’s ‘Social class and School Knowledge’, Curriculum Inquiry, 40 (1), pp. 167-182.
References
Hayes, D., Mills, M., Christie, P. and Lingard, B. (2006) Teachers and Schooling Making a Difference, Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
Lingard, B., Hayes, D., Mills, M. And Christie, P. (2003) Leading Learning, Buckingham, Open University Press.
Lingard, B. (2007) Pedagogies of Indifference, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 11, pp.245-266.
Lingard, B. (2009) ‘Pedagogising Teacher Professional Identities’ in S. Gewirtz, P.Mahony, I.Hextall and A.Cribb (eds) Changing teacher Professionalism, London, Routledge.
Lingard, B. (2010) ‘Policy, borrowing, policy learning: testing times in Australian schooling, Critical Studies in Education, 51 (2), pp.129-147.
Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. (2010) Globalizing Education Policy, London, Routledge. Lingard, B. (forthcoming) ‘Changing Teachers’ Work in Australia’ in J.Sachs and
N.Mockler (eds) Rethinking Educational Practice through Reflexive Research, Dordrecht, Springer.
Lingard, B. (forthcoming) Redistribution and recognition: working against pedagogies of indifference, Education et Societies.
