Classroom of the Future - Sense Publishers

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ANDREAS SCHRATZENSTALLER 2. THE CLASSROOM OF THE PAST “Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone” (An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary by John Donne, 1611) INTRODUCTION In the course of the late 20 th century, “a period of significant educational change” (Lawn & Grosvenor, 1999, p. 385), pedagogic practice came under increasing scrutiny – in the sense of “a growing concern from governments and the general public about the adequacy and quality of education and training” (Rychen, 2001, p. 1). Situated at the precarious intersection of conflicting discourses, the classroom became a pedagogic dispositif 1 , predetermining, it appears, more than ever in educational history, the future of the individual (e.g., Reese, 2007; Smit, Driessen, Sleegers, & Teelken, 2008) and consequently of society in general. This social power naturally attracts the attention of numerous social groups, each of which has their own very specific notion of what should be achieved in the classroom. In the domain of education, there may be nothing as ambiguous as today’s classroom with respect to both its role as an important path into the future and an object of disposal. For a project that visualises the classroom of the future, an examination of these external influences proves instructive in identifying the societal processes which shape, form and lay claim to the classroom and in revealing the relevance of these processes for an educational project that addresses the classroom itself rather than the external forces impacting it. There are at least three major forces to be considered: the economy, parents and politics. Yet before focusing on these influences in more detail, let us agree that, of course, one classroom or one school does not resemble another. Exceptions, alternative modes, specific patterns and optional designs are always to be found. It is therefore more to the point to focus on influential paradigmatic structures and changes rather than becoming entangled in the snares of individual differences and controlling for discontinuities which in any case would not refute but only add to the discursive formations outlined in this chapter. So, let us begin. Let us enter the classroom of the present and view it in the light of the educational expertise of economy, parents, and politics. SHAPING THE CONTEMPORARY CLASSROOM: MAJOR INFLUENCES ON SCHOOL EDUCATION Economy, to start with, has been tremendously successful in the past few decades in penetrating other domains. Indeed, it has become common practice to gear domain-specific considerations towards economic concepts. Not surprisingly, K. Mäkitalo-Siegl, J. Zottmann, F. Kaplan and F. Fischer (eds.), Classroom of the Future: Orchestrating Collaborative Spaces, 15–39. © 2010 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
A. SCHRATZENSTALLER education also did not go unheeded in the alleged necessity for stock-taking costbenefit analyses. There is ample evidence to suggest that we are witnessing a widescale “implementation of the economic market mechanism in education” (Smit et al., 2008, p. 73) and that this is a worldwide process. In America, the National Commission on Excellence in Education has explicitly reformed schools with respect to the needs of national economic competitiveness (Hanushek, Jamison, Jamison, & Woessmann, 2008). The same goes for China, where education is expected to “fit in the market economy” (Guorui, 2006, p. 18). Europe, in accordance with its Lisbon Strategy, conceives of knowledge as “a tool of positioning individuals on […] the labour market” (Magalhães & Stoer, 2003, p. 43) and aims to model the learner according to the demands of the knowledge economy (Brine, 2006). Even Finland, since PISA the shining beacon of education in and beyond Europe, is no exception in this respect (Häyrinen-Alestalo & Peltola, 2006), and the same discussion is being led in New Zealand and Australia (Casey, 2006) and, yes indeed, even in the Caribbean (World Bank Publications, 2007). What does this mean for education and the classroom when they are at the receiving end of economic tuning? To begin with, economic demands on education are asserted on a rather dubious basis. In America, arguably one of the countries most open-minded for economic considerations, there is growing scepticism due to the fact that even strong advocates of the economic turn within education have not been able to produce empirical evidence for the alleged educational benefits of this development, although they continue to exert pressure upon educational institutions (Hanushek et al., 2008). In addition, the economic reign over education also carries content-related problems. Controversial at best is the main demand to foster key competencies (Kember & Leung, 2005), which are regarded to be highly important for productivity and competitiveness (Salganik & Stephens, 2003). Not only is the term utterly vague and not only are there “650 different key competencies […] suggested just in the German literature” (Weinert, 2001, p. 52) - which leaves school with a tremendous amount of work to be done - but a recent study by Hanushek et al. (2008) further suggests that it is cognitive skills rather than key competencies which impact a nation’s economic growth. Altogether, the economy thus interferes rather forcefully and self-confidently, although it becomes obvious upon empiric scrutiny that, with regard to the educational domain, it scarcely has more to offer than vague assumptions and unspecific concepts. Does it take one by surprise that schools experience considerable pressure as they inevitably fall short of what is expected of them as they are unable to deliver that which, economically speaking, the customer him/herself does not know? Parents worldwide are currently gaining increasing influence on schools due to the discussed impact of the economy: “parents empowerment is […] endorsed and encouraged by the market ideology and consumer orientation that penetrate into schools” (Addi-Raccah & Arviv-Elyashiv, 2008, p. 395). Parents’ involvement represents one of the pillars of modern school reform. It is considered to have a substantial effect on - to name but a few educational outcomes - democratic values (Smit et al., 2008) and even academic achievement, however modest the latter effect may be (Nettles, O’Brien Caughy, & O’Campo, 2008). When it comes to 16
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