Quality = equality? Qualities, differences and social justice

Tema for konferansen: Kvalitet i utdanning
Dato: 14. mai 2019
Sted: Auditorium D10 på Dragvoll campus

Påmelding 

Frist for påmelding: 10. mai 2019

English text with programme further down.

Kvalitet i utdanning er et tema av akademisk og politisk interesse. I debatter og diskusjoner fremmes det et mangfold av standpunkt, ideologer og teoretiske perspektiv.

Med denne konferansen ønsker vi å bidra til en kritisk refleksjon over hva kvalitet i utdanning innebærer. Det vil bli reist spørsmål om hva som vurderes som kvalitet i utdanning innen politikkutforming og i pedagogisk forskning. Hvilke diskurser og forståelser om utdanningskvalitet finnes, og hvilke aktører er på banen? Hvordan påvirker materielle og samfunnsmessige strukturer utdanningskvalitet?

Konferansen vil bringe inn spørsmål om sosial rettferdighet i utdanning i et livslangt perspektiv. Sosial rettferdighet handler om de muligheter vi har, eller ikke har, til å gjøre positive forandringer. Hva skjer i skole og samfunn i dag, og er det mulig å tenke sosial rettferdighet i utdanning i et livslangt perspektiv? Og hva er rettferdig, for hvem og hvorfor? Hvordan omtales og vurderes kvalitet i utdanning opp mot områder som sosial ulikhet, kjønn, funksjonshemming og mangfold? Hvordan kan kvalitetsfokus bidra til et mer rettferdig utdanningssystem og i siste instans et mer rettferdig samfunn?

English presentation:

Diverse understandings, political ideologies and theoretical perspectives, nationally and internationally, saturate the academic as well as public debates regarding Quality in Education. The main topic of this conference is a critical reflection on different understandings of Quality in Education. It will focus on how educational policy and research considers the extent to which educational structures, discourses and practices lead to a more equitable education system and ultimately to a fairer society. How does the educational field consider social inequality, gender, disability and diversity when discussing quality in education? What understandings of quality is discussed, for whom and why?

The conference will focus on social justice in education in a lifelong perspective. Social justice recognizes and acts upon the power that we have, or not have, for making positive change. What are the differentiation mechanisms existing in schools and communities today, and what place does social justice have in education in a lifelong perspective? What is fair, for whom and why?

Programme

Auditorium D10, Dragvoll campus

8.30 Registration & coffee

9.00 Welcome

Head of Department of Education and Lifelong Learning

Hans Petter Ulleberg

09:10 Speed-presentations from the project Quality in Education

09:30 Performance: Nick Llewellyn and Emma Selwyn from Access All Areas, London – A learning disability theatre

10:15–11:00 Keynote Professor Alexander M. Sidorkin (Sasha)
Dean of the College of Education at California State University Sacramento

Baumol vs. Becker: From outcome-based to input-based measures of educational quality

11:00–11:15 Coffee and fruit

11:15–12:00 Parallel sessions:

Session 1: 'The hierarchy of knowledge systems in Norwegian Education: A decolonial perspective'
Presenters: Inger Pedersen, Marit Ursin, Carla Chinga-Ramirez
Chair: Runa Rannov Bostad
Abstract

Session 2: 'Governing strategies and policymaking'
Presenters: Christin Tønseth, Nina Volckmar
Chair: Heidun Oldervik
Abstract

Nina Volckmar presents a historical case-oriented comparative analysis of the promotion of equity through and in education, comparing Australia and Norway. Christin Tønseths investigates policymaking and lifelong learning, primarily in the Norwegian context, and will discuss how different knowledge bases and rhetoric are in use for making and legitimizing policies for lifelong learning and adult learning.         

Session 3: 'The physical design of schools and the quality of learning environments'
Presenters: Ellen Saur, Jenny Bergschöld, Hans Petter Ulleberg
Abstract

12:00–13:00 LUNCH

13:00–13:45 Keynote Dr Richard Niesche
School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Educational leadership for social justice and equity: Challenges and opportunities

13:45–14:30 Poster presentation

14:30–14:50 Performance: Teater nonSTOP

15:00–15:45 Keynote Dr Claudia Matus
Faculty of Education, Pontificial Catholic University of Chile 
Quality and Equity after Privatization, how Just can Education be? Policies and Discourses of Inclusion in Chile

15:45 Finishing and summary
By Hans Petter Ulleberg

Keynotes

Professor Alexander M. Sidorkin (Sasha)

Gary Becker postulates that education is an investment in human capital that produces good returns because more educated workers are more productive. The Human Capital Theory (HKT) produced both an increase in investments in education and the attempts to improve education through measuring its outcomes with standardized testing. A strong correlation between the years in formal schooling and lifetime income demonstrated veracity of HKT. However, Baumol has shown that industries can be divided into progressive and non-progressive. In the latter, labor productivity does not rise, and yet workers’ salaries do increase, because of the competitive pressure from other industries. The reason some industries (theater, social work, education, etc.) are non-progressive is that they depend on input of non-automated and non-scalable labor. Therefore, the attempts to improve productivity in education may be completely misguided. The educational outcomes measurable by standardized tests may have no bearing on productivity. The productivity growth is caused by innovations, not by workers’ education. We must go back to treating education not as investment, but as a kind of consumption. We should measure its quality by inputs, mainly by the quantity of relational labor spent. The relational labor of teachers is the only true scare resource, and therefore its equitable distribution is the one true measure of educational equity.

Dr Richard Niesche

In this presentation, I argue for the importance of leadership for social justice and equity in education. I begin by discussing the need for an explicit recognition and understanding of issues of social justice and equity. While these issues have emerged as significant over recent years, there is still a need to understand how these issues affect the performance and educational outcomes of certain groups of students. In highlighting a number of prescient issues from Australia where equity is a particularly significant issue, I focus on the role of government policy and school-based management, school choice policies, as well as other enduring issues such as Indigenous education as examples of the need for equity. I then discuss how equity and social justice might be theorised and understood through the work of Nancy Fraser its role in the work of educational leaders. I draw on some examples of recent research projects with schools and school leaders engaged in this important equity work to highlight some of the challenges and tensions, as well as opportunities for leading for social justice and equity in schools.

Dr Claudia Matus

The active production of diversity and inclusion discourses in Chile since 2012 represents an effort to undo the effects of privatization practices of schooling driven by the neoliberal agenda. In this presentation I problematize contemporary conceptualizations of diversity and difference, as neutral and apolitical notions, to address issues of racism, sexism, and classism, among others, in schools. I contend that systems of differentiation such as gender, race, and social class, when not addressed and theorized as active concepts/agents, they actively, proliferate exclusionary dynamics (aka, “cultural or social problems”). I will focus my discussion on particular policies implemented recently in Chile, such as the Law for School Inclusion (Mineduc, 2016) which has brought different reactions into view, particularly from parents who have shown concerns for their kids being mixed with “other kids in schools.” This might be understood as to how neoliberal and neoconservative agendas have engrained the idea of high and low-status cultures that now come to be mixed in school contexts.  My theoretical orientations are mostly located in posthumanist and post-representational approaches to rethink not only objects of research and methodological practices but also their relationships thus allowing the production of new problems and the exploration of their potential for change.