EduLog

Educational change is usually thought to be creating stress and fatigue given that there are many reforms at one time or are frequent in occurrence. However it is not only the quantity and/or frequency of the reforms that matter but also how wide/broad the reform is and its pace. It is important to analyse the scope and pace of the reform in order for it to be implemented well. The scope of any reform can be examined by analyzing the existing practices and adapting to the changing demands of the reform. For example in one school a national curriculum reform is in its implementation stages for the last 4-5 years. By analyzing how this school managed the enactment of the reform, it is evident that the school did not give up its existing practices, programs and structure. This school adopted to the change by putting it into their existing structure. This means that this school is positively biased towards their old system and are being able to pick and choose from the new refo...

Since my work is on educational change and reform and its manifests itself at the local level, I come across two kinds of arguments: one that the local context is more important for change to take place; and the other that the global trends should be followed to keep up with the world. In this writing I argue that global trend and local/contextual practices are in dialectic relation with each other: nothing more important than the other. Any new reform and especially a national reform is criticized at the local level being globally influenced and not catering for local needs. However the reality is that in this century of rapid change, globalization has not only influenced nations or states but also reached to individual lives effecting daily activities. This means that globalization is inevitable phenomena and must be embraced, however with proper scrutiny and better analysis. Globalization has negative as well as positive impacts. Negative impacts of international frictions that ma...

A field is a social space with a relatively autonomy and its own unique characteristics including the actors in the field, their position and disposition and the field specific logic and capital involved. Policy enactment at school level is a field with its own agents involved in the process of receiving, interpreting, articulating, translating, enacting and responding to a policy reform. With this in mind, policy enactment is considered a socially constituted process with its complex practices, unique tensions and conflicts, contestations and struggle, power relations, negotiations and position taking. According to Hardy (2015) ‘the field of policy enactment’ is “a social space characterized by conflicting pressure, demands, relations and dispositions amongst those affected about how best to respond to the policy push for curriculum reform” (p.78).  The field of policy enactment has its own distinct actors functioning according to the logic of the field. The policy ena...

Bourdieu’s idea that schools are reproducing inequalities is not appealing at first, especially for people like me from a working class background and who have progressed through to the middle class in a specific context and community. From my personal experience and from people that I know who have accomplished in life just because of their education, Bourdieu’s idea is pessimistic and one wants to just give up on it. However a little more in-depth study, conceptual understanding and a know-how of other concepts in Bourdieu’s theory gives the wider picture which also includes transformation and change in life through opportunities. One thing that caught my attention and is more convincing to me is the historical condition of that time in France when Bourdieu developed his framework. Below I will explain that condition and how Bourdieu’s idea was received by people from different walks of life. Bourdieu brought to light the idea of schools reproducing inequalities at a time in Fra...

Historically researchers argued on two different views of generating knowledge. Some researchers, especially in the natural science believe that knowledge is objectively produced: that is ‘knowledge without a knowing subject'. This kind of knowledge is gained by analysing the structure, the objective conditions and the objective relationship. These researchers contended that it is through controlled experiments that one can reach the truth. For a long time, such kind of objective knowledge was on the landscape of the social sciences and especially education as well. The researcher in the social science discipline attempted to objectively define theories which could be applied in a broader context or generalized in different contexts and settings. However this proved to be a deficit thinking, because such kind of epistemology ignored human experience and social science has to do with human beings and their subjectivity. Thus researchers then argued for the contrary to be true: tha...