Mid Sweden University

In contemporary ways of thinking about curriculum there is an enhanced focus on individual students’ results and less on students’ collaborative processes for attaining good results. This may appear peculiar, given that is stipulated in the Swedish curriculum that students should be given opportunities to compose texts together with others (Swedish National Agency for Education,2017) and to give and receive feedback (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2018; 2022). Feedback by peers is normally thought in relationship to self-regulated learning; desired by asociety in which willingness for life-long learning is thought as a prerequisite for future successful citizens. However, neither in the curricula (Swedish National Agency for Education 2018; 2022) nor in the national commentary material (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2017) is it regulated in any detail how this peer assistance in learning is to be carried out – which suggests that students and teachers are expected to find their own ways forward. Simultaneously, the importance of computers and digital devices have evolved both inside and outside of the classrooms and have changed the opportunities for learning. This situation creates new dilemmas for teachers on how to e.g., assess individual students’ levels of knowledge. In our study we elaborate on an imagined ordering of knowledge, which we call the ‘the arrow of development’. This ordering indicates that knowledge is intellectually sorted and organized based on a reasoning on different values or an increased complexity, which is said to equal the ‘nature’ of knowledge – from the memorizing of facts to the more complex proficiencies of e.g., understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating, and creating (cf. Bloom et. al., 1956). By an ethnographic research design, comprising observations, audio-visual recordings, and follow-up interviews with students at a Swedish lower secondary school (Years 8 and 9), we investigate the informal social strategies that students enact when doing assignments and how they reflected on it (cf. Rönn, 2022). Goffman’s (1959/1990) dramaturgical metaphor of back region, front region and impression management was used as the theoretical point of departure. The findings showed that some students put efforts and hard work into schoolwork that corresponded with societal desires and ideal learning curves (Rönn & Pettersson, 2022 submitted). Other students aimed at more effortless achievements and relied heavily on peers and digital devices when taking shortcuts to produce formal assignments. These students’ potential learning curves showed a broken arrow of knowledge development, resulting in assessment dilemmas for teachers and possible mismatches in their grading. An educational dilemma appears: Are teachers assessing the curriculum performances of individual students or those achieved by several students in a collaborative learning process?

References:

Bloom. B. S., Engelhart, M. D., Furst, E. J., Hill, W. H., & Krathwohl, D. R. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. Longmans: London.

Goffman, E. (1959/1990). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin.

Rönn, C. (2022). Pupil’s informal social strategies in a Swedish compulsory school – What pupils do and say,out of sight of the teachers, while managing written individual assignments. Educational Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2022.2054955

Rönn, C. & Pettersson, D. (2022, submitted). Swedish Students’ Daily School-Life and Teachers’ AssessmentDilemmas: Peer Strategies for Ameliorating Schoolwork for Assessment.

Swedish National Agency for Education (2017). Kommentarmaterial till kursplanen i svenska 2011 reviderad 2017. [Comment Material to the Course Plan in Swedish 2011: revised 2017] Stockholm.

Skolverket. Swedish National Agency for Education (2011/2018). Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet: reviderad 2018 (Fifth edition, ed.) [Curriculum for the Compulsory School, Preschool Classand School-age Educare].

Skolverket. Swedish National Agency for Education (2022). Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet (Fifth edition, ed.) [Curriculum for the Compulsory School, Preschool Class and School-age Educare]. Skolverket.