第十四辑：Journal of Curriculum Studies 45卷1期文章

1. Race to the Top and Leave the Children Behind

Author: Daniel Tanner

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2013, 45(1): 4-15

Abstract:The USA was the first nation to attain universal secondary education through the creation of a unitary school structure capped by the uniquely American institution, the comprehensive or cosmopolitan high school. Other leading democratic nations adopted the comprehensive model, but not until well after mid-twentieth century. The modern movement for charter schools was advocated by President George H.W. Bush in America 2000, issued in 1991, and subsequently expanded in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, signed by President George W. Bush. The charter school movement, coupled with nationalized testing, was to gain great momentum under President Barack Obama in Race to the Top—raising a clear and present danger of splitting up the school system. Once ubiquitous in the elementary school, shop classes have been virtually eliminated while the studio arts—the subjects that children love—have been cut back drastically. Once regarded as professional malpractice, teaching-to-the test is now a "best practice", with deleterious consequences for the school curriculum, and in making decisions on pupil placement, teacher tenure and school evaluation. There is an abiding taboo in the education profession against exposing the invalidity of external, high-stakes, standardized tests in making such decisions.

中文题目：力争上游却把孩子抛在脑后

中文摘要：美国是世界上第一个通过独特的教育机构——综合和国际高中来实现高中教育的普及，这种独特的教育机构创造了独特的学校结构。其他发达的民主国家采纳了综合的模式，但直到二十世纪中期才付诸实施。特许学校的现代运动于1991年发布，2000年由美国总统乔治·布什推行，并于2001年通过布什总统签署“不让任何孩子落后法案”得到进一步推行。在奥巴马总统“力争上游法案”提出建立明晰的并能够解决现实危机的学校系统的背景下，特许学校运动，加上国家范围的测试，已经获得了巨大动力。在小学阶段无处不在的手工艺课已经彻底取消，同时孩子们喜欢的室内艺术课也已经大大削减。曾经被视为专业事故的为了考试而教如今成了“最好的教学”，这种教学方式决定了学生分配、教师任职和学校评价，并危害着学校课程结果。这样的决定所带来的外部的、高风险的、标准化的测试是教育事业的长久的禁忌。

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2. Smacked by the Invisible Hand: the Wrong Debate at the Wrong Time with the Wrong People

Author: Daniel Laitsch

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2013, 45(1): 16-27

Abstract:Over the past three decades, educators have faced an increasing variety of reform proposals that can best be contextualized as efforts to commodify and privatize public education. While supporters of market-based reforms attempt to place these proposals within education theory, they are in reality firmly entrenched in neoliberal economic theory. This paper traces the evolution of neoliberal economic thought from its birth in the 1940s to its rise to prevalence in the 1970s. It looks at the continuing impact of neoliberal theory on public and political thought as well as education reform proposals. If supporters of public education are to respond adequately to these reform proposals, they will need to reframe their approach on economic, rather than educational, grounds.

中文题目：无形手的意味：在错误的时间与错误的人进行错误的争论

中文摘要：在过去的三十年中，在公共教育商业化和私人化的影响下，教育者们面临了越来越多样的改革目标。市场导向改革的支持者们受新自由主义经济学理论先入为主的影响，试图在教育理论中植入这些目标。本文梳理了新自由主义经济学从1940年诞生到1970年广泛传播的发展历程。本文审视了新自由主义经济学对公共和政治体制改革以及教育改革目标的持续影响。如果公共教育的支持者们相对这些改革目标做出全面的回应，他们将需要以经济学视角而非教育视角来重新构建分析框架。

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3. Equity and Difference in Centralized Policy

Author: Elizabeth Macedo

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2013, 45(1): 28-38

Abstract:The paper focuses on the promise of equity that underlies centralized evaluation policies and its relation to difference, or in other words to the singularity of the subject. I defend that without taking the issue of difference into consideration, there is no education, and that the unique subject is what is aspired by education. The analyses rely on recent Brazilian evaluation policy as object. Large-scale testing policies, like much of public policy, are built on the premise that equity is both possible and desirable. First, I try to demonstrate that this is a fallacious promise and then question its desirability. I consider the fact that such a promise even if not delivered does not make it harmless. It creates effects of power while making the idea that "no children [should be] left behind" hegemonic. Naturalizing the existence of a "behind" creates a demarcation line without which it would not be feasible to define this "behind". I argue that the only way to ensure that nobody is excluded is to blur this line, deconstructing the very idea of inclusion, betting on an education committed to the uniqueness of subjects in which the idea of "behind" does not make sense.

中文题目：集中政策的公平性与差异性

中文摘要：本文主要讨论了集中评价政策对公平的追求以及与差异性的关系，换句话说，就是个体的特殊性。作者认为，不考虑个体差异问题，就不会存在教育，教育鼓励个体的差异性。本分析以巴西评价政策为研究对象。公平是可能的并值得追求的，大规模评价政策与公共政策相似，都是建立上述假设的基础上。首先，作者将论证公平是一个不合理的愿望，并对公平的条件提出质疑。作者承认这个事实，即使没有得到传播，对公平的追求也没有使这项政策变得有害。集中政策使“不让任何一个孩子落后”这个观点广泛传播，并增强了权力的影响力。对“落后”这个词汇的采纳创造了民主的底线，但并没有为“落后”提出可行的界定。作者认为，保证每个人都被包容的唯一途径就是模糊这道底线，结构包容的观点，揭示教育对个体差异的抹杀。在这些观点中，“落后”的概念也没有意义。

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4. Revisiting Curriculum, the Numbers Game and the Inequality Problem

Author: Elizabeth Macedo

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2013, 45(1): 39-51

Abstract:This essay reflects on Daniel Tanner's "Race to the top and leave the children behind" by attention to the way our particular national histories impact on our thinking about what is valuable, the kinds of curriculum pressures and commonsenses that are now at work internationally at government and policy level, the specific forms these are taking in Australia, and the ways they are impacting positively and negatively on concerns about equity and difference. The article argues that neither testing nor lack of testing will solve the issue of schooling and difference and social inequalities. The Program for International Student Assessment agenda has influenced the language and rationale through which differences in schooling outcomes are made visible, and it also contributes to an overarching political and public sense of education as a competitive race, and as an economic vehicle. In Australia, this is underpinning some support for better funding of disadvantaged students, but also building a climate of competitive anxiety that embeds parental concerns about maintaining differential advantage. Beyond the testing arena, the substance of the curriculum is also being reshaped and this essay discusses the ways this too is important in relation to concerns about difference and social equity.

中文题目：重新审视课程、数字游戏和不公平问题

中文摘要：本文对丹尼尔·坦纳（Daniel Tanner）的《力争上游却把孩子抛在脑后》一文提出反思，作者关注了特定国家历史如何影响人们的价值观、课程压力的类型以及在现在的政府和政策层面仍遵循的常识。本文以澳大利亚为例，分析上述方式对公平性与差异性的积极或消极的影响。本文认为，无论是测试还是减少测试，都无法解决学校、差异和社会不公平的问题。国际学生评价项目已经影响到了能够显示出学习结果差异的语言和基本原理，并且有利于揭示作为国际竞争、经济工具的教育的政策和公共意义。在澳大利亚，这个政策为弱势学生提供了一定的资金支持，并且营造了一个竞争氛围来维持差异优势。这门课程的本质超出了测试的范畴被重新开发，本文讨论了既保证差异性同时也实现社会公平的方式。

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5. Mixed Images and Merging Semantics in European Curricula

Author: Kirsten Sivesind

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2013, 45(1): 52-66

Abstract:Due to European agreements and policy expectations, national authorities are revising their formal curricula in line with an evidence-oriented policy. The article explores how new trends in formulating curricula can be regarded as an outcome of experts' semantics and impact on education policy. The article reanalyses documentation from a project, where curricula were compared across countries according to their conceptualizations about schooling and reform. Throughout this project, we observed that curriculum documents merge professional semantics on the purposes, and content of schooling with a language formed by evidence-based policy on outcomes. To understand what the formal curricula express within contemporary policy, a research model is applied, which illustrates how semantics associated with curricula weight theory and evidence differently, all regarded as sources within curriculum making. From this point of view, the recognition or ignorance of schooling is dependent not only on political ideologies, as indicated in Tanners op-ed article, but on how experts provide semantics which might take professional-practical theories of schooling into regard.

中文题目：欧洲课程的复合形象与融合语义

中文摘要：根据欧洲协议和政策预期，国家部门正修订他们的正式课程使之与证据导向的政策相一致。本文探究了正式课程的新趋势如何体现专家的话语和教育政策的影响。本文重新分析了一个项目中的文档，这个项目在国际范围内比较了各国基于各自学校与改革的观念所提出的课程概念。通过该项目，我们发现课程文本融合了关于目标以及由基于证据的政策形成的学校话语背景的语义。为了理解当前政策下正式课程所表达的内容，作者应用了一个研究模型来解释课程权重理论如何组织语义，以及如何在课程实施的不同资源中获取证据。据此观点，对学校教育的重视或忽视不仅取决于坦纳（Tanners）在专栏文章中提到的政策意识，而且取决于专家如何提供能够考虑到学校专业实践理论的话语支持。

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6. OECD, "Key Competencies" and the New Challenges of Educational Inequality

Author: Keita Takayama

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2013, 45(1): 67-80

Abstract:In this paper, I develop a critique of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-based lifelong learning policy discourse with a particular focus on "key competencies" (KCs) and its equity implications for school curricular policies. First, I review the discussion of KCs in the writings by the OECD-affiliated researchers and other OECD documents. In so doing, I identify a marked decoupling of KCs from the initial lifelong learning policy framework. Then, I situate the discussion of KCs within the sociological critique of the new mode of learning deemed essential for a "knowledge society". I identify KCs'  potential to naturalize the (re)production of inequalities through schooling and argue that this can be further compounded by the extraction of KCs from the lifelong learning policy discourse. Finally, I ground these expositions in the specific policy context of Japanese education, highlighting how KCs and its decoupled articulation pose a difficult policy dilemma for Japan's Ministry of Education attempting to address the widening class-based inequalities through schooling. Hence, this study critiques the contemporary school curriculum reform driven by KCs by tracing the flow of this concept from the international policy discourse down to the level of a national policy development. In conclusion, I call for curriculum studies to recognize the increasingly globalized curricular policy context and develop strategies for the new challenges of educational inequalities that confront us today.

中文题目：OECD，“关键素养”以及教育不公平的新挑战

中文摘要：本文对基于经合组织（OECD）的终身学习政策所讨论的“关键素养”（KCs）及其对学校公平课程政策的启示提出批判。首先，作者回顾了OECD研究者以及其他OECD文件对KCs的讨论。通过这项工作，作者能够在原始的终身学习的政策框架中对KCs做出界定。然后，作者将以社会批判的视角讨论KCs，在社会批判视角下新的学习模式被视为“知识社会”的关键。作者认为KCs通过学校教育潜在地（再）生产了不平等，并指出从终身学习政策的讨论中抽取的KCs使上述过程更加复杂。最后，本文在日本教育特定的背景中进行阐述，并指出KCs如何使日本教育部解决学校教育不平等的行动陷入复杂的政策困境。因此，本研究通过对KCs概念从国际政策讨论到国家层面政策形成的演变历程的考察，对KCs驱动的当代学校课程改革提出批判。作为结论，作者呼吁课程研究应意识到日益变化的全球课程政策的背景，并为我们当前面临的教育不公平的新挑战提出解决策略。

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7. A Shift away from an Egalitarian System: Where Do the Current Reforms in Japan Lead?

Author: Hirotoshi Yano

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2013, 45(1): 81-88

Abstract:This paper deals with an overall changing trend witnessed in public schooling in Japan, known as educational reforms. Through looking at recent reforms in Japan, with an international trend in view, the author first summarizes educational reforms as waves of liberalization that have changed the post-war fundamental principle of Japanese education. Thus the reforms are characterized as a shift from the egalitarian education system to more meritocratic one, focusing on the changing aspects of egalitarian schooling. Secondly, the author considers some interpretations of the central issue of school choice in educational reforms underway to search for a perspective that can be posited for policy discussions in times of change. Finally, the question whether the recent reforms would cause the end of schooling or not is examined and the current educational reforms could be a blessing to those who have been longing for an appropriate representation of their voice in education in that it is encouraging more participation of parents and local people in the running of local schools. 

中文题目：从一个平等系统的转型：日本当前改革会引向何处？

中文摘要：本文讨论教育改革带来的日本公立学校的总体变化趋势。通过国际趋势的视角对日本近期改革进行审视，作者首先总结了作为转变战后日本教育基本原则的自由主义浪潮的教育改革。从学校教育转变的方方面面来看，此次的教育改革关注了使日本教育从一个平等的系统转变为精英教育。随后，作者对教育改革中学校选择的核心问题做出解释，以找出能够在变革的时期进行政策分析的视角。最后，作者讨论了近期改革能否引起学校教育的终结以及谁会成为当前教育改革的受益者并且能够代表并鼓励更多的家长参与者和当地民众参与到当地学校的运作。

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8. The Politics of Testing in South Africa

Author: Linda Chirsholm and Russell Wildeman

Source: Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2013, 45(1): 89-100

Abstract:This article considers the politics of adoption of a testing regime in South Africa. While the broad features of this regime are similar to those in developed countries, there are features specific to the South African context. These emerge from a combination of external and internal pressures. External pressures derive from international testing results and target-setting regimes of international agencies. Internal pressures arise from the arrival of the "evaluative state" and "quasi-market" in schooling in South Africa, the abandonment of outcomes-based education which created the space for reintroduction of traditional forms of testing, public political pressure as well as teacher, teacher union and education NGO support for testing. To date the result has been the emergence of a hybrid system in which the purposes of standardized tests at primary levels are primarily informative and diagnostic, providing a rationale for teacher development and textual resource interventions. Information is considered as enhancing the public right to know rather than competition between schools. Multiple forms of assessment are retained and have not been displaced by standardized tests. The jury is out on whether the interventions introduced will have the desired results or not.

中文题目：南非的测试政策

中文摘要：本文讨论南非的测试管理政策。虽然在大体特征上该政策与发达国家相似，但在南非背景下仍有特殊性。这些特殊性是内部和外部压力共同作用的结果。外部压力来源于国际机构的国际学业成就测试和目标定位的政策。内部压力来源于南非“评估型政府”和“准市场”的形成，为传统考试提供广阔空间的基于结果的教育的废止，公共政策压力，如支持测试的教师、教师工会和非政府组织。到目前为止，一个混合系统带来的结果正在浮现，初等教育阶段的标准化测试的目的是提供信息和诊断依据，为教师专业发展提供基本依据和文本资源的干预。信息是用来获得更广泛的公共权力而不是与其他学校竞争。许多形式的评估模式仍然存在，并未被标准化测试所取代。陪审团的去留以引入的干预是否获得预计结果为依据。