Parents' Resistance Toward a Performance Regime in a Local Norwegian School System

• In Event: Enactment of Performance-Based Accountability in Education: Implications for Stakeholders

Abstract

1. Objectives

Recent global trends towards adopting standardized curricula and strengthening test-based accountability systems have received significant critique and opposition. In different parts of the world, social movements led by parents, educators, and professional organizations have emerged that resist increasing standardization and use of (high-stakes) standardized tests, and that push for educational change. This paper examines a Norwegian parental movement called Foreldreopprøret (FO) (in English: the Parental Uprising) to gain a deeper understanding of the movement’s (a) main motivations and discourses; (b) goals, action strategies and alliances; and (c) successes and achievements.

2. Perspectives

The paper draws on social movement theories that emphasize political opportunities, mobilizing structures and framing processes, forms a useful theoretical resource to examine and understand the onset and development of social movements, as well as their potential success (McAdam, 1982, Caren, 2007).

3. Methods and Data Sources

The analysis follows a qualitative case-study design, and relies on in-depth interviews with initiators and members of FO based on a non-probability sample of members affiliated to the movement (n=8), as well as documentary and press analysis and an examination of social media sites. The interview data were thematically coded applying content analysis, which emphasizes identifying and interpreting patterns of meaning within the data. Moreover, the analytical approach is inspired by narrative analysis in order to identify overall motives, intentions and strategies of the movement. Drawing on Bakhtin (1984), we recognize that any individual voice is actually a dialogue between multiple voices. This implies that we consider the story about the emergence of FO and its accomplishments as co-constructed.

Our analysis relies on different data sources. To gain a deeper understanding of FO members’ views and rationales behind establishing the movement, we conducted in-depth interviews with initiators and members of the parents’ movement. As background to the interviews, we traced and examined press articles as well as documents produced by FO which provided us with a more general understanding of the movement, its arguments and action strategies. Finally, considering the significance of social media sites and in particular Facebook in the FO movement, we examined the movement’s Facebook Page.

4. Findings

Our findings highlight that members of FO express fierce criticism towards management by objectives and results, and seek a change of orientation in the local school system in terms of focusing on developing the whole child and not only basic competencies that can be measured by standardized tests. The analysis highlights how the motivations of parents to join FO strongly align to the motivations documented in previous research on members of anti-standardization movements, including wishes for a broader education and concerns about the impact of standardized testing on children’s well-being and self-esteem, as well as on teachers and on teaching practices.

5. Significance

This paper adds to the existing knowledge base on how important stakeholders such as parents express and act on their dissatisfaction studies, not because they simply oppose high-stakes testing, but due to their concerns about broader aspects of education reform and their implications (Pizmony-Levy & Green-Saraisky, 2016).

Authors

• Marjolein Camphuijsen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

• Guri Skedsmo, University of Oslo