Research Topic/Aim
The emphasizing on individualization of the pupil in the learning situation, in national and international curricula, can be regarded as a westernized perspective that might be at the expenses of a more communicative approach on learning (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). The increasing migration rate in the Nordic countries, has led to growing numbers of minority pupils at schools and new needs in the local school context. A study was carried out with a focus on pupils’ informal schoolwork related communication with peers. The purpose with this study was to seek to understand the culture of pupils’ collaborative coping strategies in a goal-and-result oriented educational context, when orienting in a system comprising self-regulated learning, formative assessment, tests and national tests. Self-regulated learning in which the pupils work independently on tasks and plan their work and time, is becoming important in a society where the individuals are to regulate themselves (Carlgren, 2015). Questions to be stressed are:
1. What collaborative coping strategies have pupils developed when dealing with individual written assignments and national tests in a goal and result related school context?
2. How could the pupils’ coping strategies be understood in a performative school context?
The concept of coping strategies draws on Lazarus (1966) and Pollard (1984) where the former emphasizes three processes in dealing with stress, where the first process is perceiving a threat to oneself, the second to mentally preparing a potential response to that threat, and the third one – the coping is the executing process of that response. The latter (Pollard) highlights that the greatest potential threat at school to children’s coping is associated to the teacher’s power such as their role and authority – such as the incessant evaluation of their performances - and that pupils consequently orient their actions towards this.
Theoretical Framework
From a sociocultural perspective, learning is regarded as a fundamental social phenomenon where the individual competence is developed through interaction with others. In these learning processes, the one who masters a proficiency guides and scaffolds the novice (Säljö, 2000/2010). Furthermore, the theory gives an opportunity to understand how schoolwork can both hinder and promote the aimed learning (Carlgren, 2015).
Methodological Design
The ethnographic study was based on a long-term participant observation during 4 months where the researcher interacted with and learned from pupils. The observations covered all school subjects, resulting in a 120 000 wordy document of field notes comprising cultural descriptions. A school was selected where 50 % of the pupils had a minority background (born abroad or with both parents born abroad). There were 25 pupils in the 8th grade class in focus of the study, and the minority pupils’ guardians spoke 13 different languages: Amharic, Arabic, Bosnian, Chinese (Mandarin), Finnish, Kurdish (Sorani), Pashto, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Somali and Turkish. The participant observation was followed by video recordings of lessons in Swedish, Social Studies, English as a foreign language and Mathematics during a couple of weeks. The video recordings focused on the pupils’ informal conversations between peers during lessons, and the data was collected through an explorative staging of camcorders and microphones in the classroom which rendered possible to come close to the pupils’ low-voiced informal communication with peers. Interviews with the same pupils were carried out when the pupils were in 9th grade, resulting in 18 interviews (about 60 minutes each). The study was approved by the Ethical vetting board in Umeå.
Findings/Conclusions
The data showed that the pupils helped their classmates to a great extent. Field notes and video files revealed that the pupils discussed, posed questions, explained to peers, and corrected grammar and spelling, but also wrote parts of peers’ written assignments inside the classroom. However, the interviews revealed that the pupils over the last 4 years had developed a creative collaborative coping strategy in managing the system with individual written assignments. Outside the classroom, during leisure time, pupils copied and rewrote each others’ written individual assignments to a great extent, but also wrote parts or entire written assignments for classmates, to be handed in as individual assignments for grading and forwarded national tests and the teachers’ answer keys to the national tests - resulting in a behaviour as if they “knew-how” to write assignments and perform well on tests. This findings suggests, in line with Säljö (2000/2010), that language mastery and literacy proficiency, as well as the use of digital tools, create and maintain power relations between the peers in a very complex social and intellectual practice. The development of knowledge is intertwined with who is included and who is excluded, which therefore is to be regarded as a democratic issue (Säljö, 2000/2010). The analysis shows that the culture in the class related to the social networks and digital tools, created a gap between the pupils in the class, resulting in several excluding aspects such as: a) language mastery, b) gender, c) tools and socio-economic issues, d) space, e) academic (self)esteem and independence, f) social punishments and denied credit of their work and know-how, but also g) in expressing their own opinions and making themselves heard. This can be related not only to gender equity but also to justice in education. Due to the developed coping strategies, the boys had less access to the high achieving girls’ competence and support than the girls had in a goal and result related school context with a focus on both formative and summative assessments. Moreover, pupils less fluent in the target language (Swedish and English as a foreign language) profited less from the developed collaborative coping strategies between peers than the ones more fluent in the languages both when it came to lesson related written assignments and national testing. The study could be considered as one point of departure for further research on justice and equity for future ethnographic research in education in the Nordic countries.
References:
Carlgren, I. (2015). Kunskapsstrukturer och undervisningspraktiker. Gothenburg: Daidalos.
Säljö, R. (2000/2010). Lärande i praktiken - ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. Stockholm: Norstedts akademiska förlag.
Lazarus, R.S. (1966) Psychological Stress and the Coping Process. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Pollard, A. (1984) Goodies, jokers and gangs. In “Life in School – the sociology of pupil culture”, (Eds Hammersley, M. & Woods, P.) Buckingham: Open University Press.
Rizvi, F. & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing Educational Policy. Abingdon: Routledge.
2020.