Marknad och medborgare – elevers valhandlingar i gymnasieutbildningens integrations- och differentieringsprocesser

Market and citizenship

Educational restructuring is an international phenomenon which emphasises a voucher system, upper secondary schools local decision-making and pupils choices in contrast to previous bureaucratic governing. For this reason upper secondary programmes and courses on offer, together with the pupils individual choices, have a direct impact on what could be called the upper-secondary education market. In terms of teaching subject matter, upper secondary education is, at the same time, broadened by means of introducing three-year programmes for all pupils as well as core subjects. The aim of this doctoral thesis is to develop a deeper understanding of how pupils actions of choice create different sorts of integration and differentiation processes within the restructured upper secondary education.

In the light of Jürgen Habermas theory of communicative action combined with Norman Fairclough s critical discourse analysis, pupils actions of choice have been studied within four pedagogical practices: (i) choice of upper secondary school, (ii) choice of upper secondary programme, (iii) pupils initial time at an upper secondary school and how they cope with the specific culture within a programme as well as choice of courses and subjects, and (iv) pupils own stories and points of view on how a core subject, namely Swedish, was taught.

Some of the results demonstrate that pupils actions of choice can be vocation-oriented, career-oriented and consumption-oriented. It is argued that these different types of actions of choice are constituted within a market discourse. The market discourse demands that pupils are able to make suitable choices to achieve an individualistic qualification. From that point of view upper secondary education s integration and differentiation processes aim at developing citizens’ personal opportunities in order for them to benefit to their best ability from what society has to offer. Other results demonstrate that pupils group-oriented, interest-oriented and tradition-oriented actions of choice are built upon another type of discourse, which is about educating pupils towards active citizenship. It has an inter-subjective point of departure. Pupils are driven into the integration and differentiation process where they discuss and take a stand in favour of those educational options, which are conceived as the most relevant in relation to a self-determining ethical-cultural community . The analysis of these two paramount discourses indicates that pupils’ integration and differentiation processes are ambiguous.