Trust and Verify: the Real Keys to School Improvement an International Examination of Trust and Distrust in Education in Seven Countries
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Trust and Verify: The real keys to school improvement An international examination of trust and distrust in education in seven countries Edited by Dean Fink First published in 2016 by the UCL Institute of Education Press, University College London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL ioepress.co.uk © Dean Fink 2016 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBNs 978-1-78277-147-0 (paperback) 978-1-78277-148-7 (PDF) 978-1-78277-149-4 (ePub) 978-1-78277-150-0 (Kindle) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the UCL Institute of Education, University College London. Typeset by Quadrant Infotech (India) Pvt Ltd Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Contents List of tables viii List of figures ix Acknowledgements xi Notes on contributors xii Introduction 1 Dean Fink 1 Trust and mistrust: Competing models of policy and practice 11 Dean Fink 2 Trust and verify 24 Dean Fink 3 Australia: Halfway to anywhere 46 Warren Marks and Norman McCulla 4 Canada: At the tipping point 74 Dean Fink 5 Finland: Trust under pressure 101 Petri Salo and Torbjörn Sandén 6 Lithuania: Faster than history, slower than a lifetime 131 Eglė Pranckūnienė and Jonas Ruškus 7 Sweden: A postmodern cocktail 153 Lars Svedberg 8 The English case: Reform in a hurry 171 Tom Whittingham 9 United States – And the Pendulum Swings 187 Craig Hammonds 10 Themes, dreams and final thoughts 205 Dean Fink and Norman McCulla vii Chapter 6 Lithuania: Faster than history but slower than a lifetime? Eglė Pranckūnienė and Jonas Ruškus Singing Revolution and Social Transformations Lithuania is a country of deep and continuing societal transformations. Situated between Western Europe and Russia, Lithuania, like the other Baltic states (Latvia and Estonia), has experienced significant highs and profound lows in her history both ancient and recent. The glory days of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, were followed by 120 years of Russian Tsarist rule. In 1918, Lithuania gained independence but was then occupied by the Soviets from 1940 to 1990, including a period under the brutal Nazi regime from 1941–4, finally regaining independence in 1990. The country joined the European Union in 2004 and the euro zone in 2015. Each of these dramatic political changes was accompanied by societal collapses, when social structures – value- normative, economic, cultural systems – transformed, taking on an entirely new frame and substance. Lithuania clearly expressed its will to adhere to democratic European values through the ‘Baltic Chain’, an event held on 23 August 1989 whereby approximately two million people joined hands to form a human chain spanning 6,755 km across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The Baltic chain was an instance of an overwhelming civic movement known as the Singing Revolution, which took place in the Baltic states and sought to create new, independent states. ‘The victory of the Singing Revolution of the Baltics was not predetermined by history but by the common understanding of the region’s telos – self-mastery’ (Kavaliauskas, 2014: 21). Despite the energy associated with self-mastery, the transition from a Soviet to a democratic regime has been neither simple nor linear. Lithuanian sociologist Norkus argues that the post-communist epoch in Lithuania finished when Lithuania adopted the Anglo-Saxon neo-liberal mode of exit from communism, and was formally terminated in 2004 when the country joined the EU: ‘Observation of the ongoing reform process in Lithuania during the last decades shows an un ambiguous trend 131 Eglė Pranckūnienė and Jonas Ruškus leading in the direction of the more consequent liberal market economy system’ (Norkus, 2008: 735). We have to conceive neo-liberal reforms in these countries as a part of a global ‘wholesale expansion of a market society’, but also as reflecting an aspiration of these countries to escape the communist past and to embrace the utopian idea of western welfare (Giddens, 1997: 29). Another Lithuanian scholar, Kavaliauskas (2012: 334), contradicts Norkus, stating that ‘the post-communist transition is not linear, because spiral, circular or even regressive transformations are following’. Reflecting on the nation’s multidimensional experiences of rapid change, philosopher Leonidas Donskis states: Lithuania and other Baltic states have become laboratories in which the speed of social change and cultural transformation is measured and tested (…) these societies have developed ‘faster than history’ – faster than history but slower than a lifetime. People often complain that their lives and careers have been ruined by the rapid social transformation. They take it as a tragedy, arguing (not unreasonably) that their lives, energies and careers have been wasted, if not completely spoiled. A human lifetime proves to witness the sweeping change of a society. (Donskis, 2005: 27) To develop ‘faster than history’ means to go through ups and downs, from euphoria to reality shock, from opening new possibilities to living in insecurity and risk. Education reform was one of the driving forces for the quest for independence in Lithuania. The vision of the ‘National school’ was developed in 1988 on the eve of independence. The initial idea of reform was idealistic, based on the vision of an egalitarian and democratic society, on national aspirations and humanistic values. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the formation of educational policies and trends fell under the influence of the Global Education Reform Movement (Sahlberg, 2006), as well as national political and economic shifts and interests. It led to some contradictions between the movement for emancipation from the Soviet system, the effort to restore national values, and the pressure of global organizations like OECD, George Soros’s Open Society foundation, the World Bank, and the European Union (Želvys, 2009: 13–23). These agencies were offering ‘blueprints’ of educational policies and practices, which would purportedly lead (if implemented properly) to increased educational opportunities and improved educational quality 132 Lithuania: Faster than history but slower than a lifetime? through the ‘coercive spread of (neo)liberal education reforms such as standardization of curricula, decentralization and privatization of schools, or the introduction of national educational assessment and international testing’ (Silova, 2013: 55–6). Paraphrasing Norkus (2008: 568) we could say that we in the former Soviet republics were building capitalism not on the ruins of socialism, but from the ruins of socialism and Soviet quasi-globalization; therefore western globalization, standardization, marketization, and internationalization in these post-communist societies formed peculiar and unique patterns. The post-Soviet mentality has and will have an influence on political decisions (sometimes at an unconscious level), so we cannot avoid the post-Soviet heritage in trying to understand current educational processes (Želvys, 2009: 13–23). Summarizing the overview of social transformation in Lithuania, we assume that trust can be considered a transversal variable able to enlighten the essence of educational reform in the context of societal transformations. In this chapter we aim to reveal how agents of educational reforms – teachers and school leaders – are experiencing the phenomena of trust in the context of dramatic societal transformation and when the educational systems have developed from Soviet to neo-liberal approaches in 25 years. Trajectories of educational change since 1990 Western countries tried several educational reform methods following the Second World War. Hargreaves and Shirley have termed these respectively the ‘First Way’ of innovation and inconsistency, the ‘Second Way’ of markets and standardization, and the ‘Third Way’ of performance and partnership (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2009). An overview of these ‘three ways’ of reform in Western countries shows the effects of political ideologies on the development of education. In terms of trust, it is clear that the transfer of neo-liberal values into the education system created an exceptionally distrusting environment. In Western countries, neo-liberal politics replaced either liberal or social-democratic politics, which exhibited much higher levels of trust in professionals and featured less significant and extensive accountability measures. The Lithuanian education community made a rapid leap from a distrusting Soviet environment with extensive control measures to one that was on the opposite end of the spectrum. According to Silova, policy makers in most post-communist Eastern European countries have embraced (neo) liberal education reform ‘packages’ to pursue an allegedly linear transition from communism to democracy (Silova, 2013: 5). 133 Eglė Pranckūnienė and Jonas Ruškus Education reform