| Introduction
Public
schooling in virtually all industrialized countries faces growing pressure
from the corporate sector to adopt occupationally relevant curriculum
(Crouch et al., 1997). As part of the growing international trend toward
developing education and training programs, the British Columbia Ministry
of Education, Skills and Training introduced the Career and Personal
Planning (CAPP) 8 to 12 curriculum in 1995. The ministry's rationale
for developing the program is based on the suggested need for schools
to contribute to the development of "well-rounded, balanced individuals"
(p.1). CAPP courses in grades 11 and 12 are mandatory for graduation
because, the ministry contends, "students [should] understand the relevance
of their studies and acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes that can
help them make appropriate personal decisions and manage their lives
more effectively" (p.1). In spite of the present popularity of employability
skills curricula, however, little formal research has been conducted
to assess the ethical appropriateness, social impact, or conceptual
soundness of transforming Canadian schools in this fashion. This paper
takes a preliminary step to correct this deficit by proposing a method
to investigate the ethical, social, and educational consequences of
curricula implemented for social and vocational purposes.
Curriculum evaluations of vocational education programs typically adopt
a systems management approach that includes four basic stages of development:
1) selecting evaluation targets, that is, determining what is to be
measured and how; 2) planning the evaluation, that is, determining data
collection methods; 3) collecting and analyzing the data; and 4) preparing
the evaluation report (Chandler et al., 1997; Vannatta et al., 1998).
Systems management evaluations assume the effectiveness of a system,
in this case employability skills curricula, can be evaluated on the
basis of how closely the system output matches system objectives (Apple,
1990). Although these evaluations promote the achievement of curriculum
objectives by highlighting a program's instrumental inadequacies, their
functionalist format severely restricts the scope of critical inquiry.
Systems management evaluations may determine whether curriculum objectives
have been realized through the program's recommended methods, but they
do not assess whether those objectives, especially when placed within
the larger social context, can be ethically, conceptually, or educationally
justified.
The inductive research methods employed in systems management evaluations
produce impressive statistical charts and data, but explain little,
if anything, of the social structures from which the data emerge. The
positivist tradition supporting this approach to curriculum evaluation
requires education researchers to adopt methods and terminology developed
by the natural sciences. Within inductive education research, for example,
there is an overriding emphasis on the noble and impressive scientific
research requirements of reliability, validity and generalizability.
Since scientific discourse is generally afforded a higher epistemic
status in education than the discussion of ethical issues, system management
evaluations are exceptionally popular, while foundational questions
associated with curriculum reform, regardless of their tremendous importance,
remain virtually ignored (Apple, 1990). By neglecting the social and
ideological structures that underpin curriculum development and implementation,
then, these evaluations fail to investigate the impact of social engineering
programs, that is, programs designed to improve social efficiency, on
students outside stated learning outcomes.
In this paper, I conceptualize curriculum evaluation in a rather different
fashion from how it is conceived within system management methodology.
I hope to provide educators with a program evaluation approach to enhance
our understanding of how curriculum designed to effect social and occupational
efficiency within market economy cultures fully interacts with students,
schools, and society. This proposed method combines elements of a social
evaluation approach fashioned by Apple and Beyer (1985) with a critical
ethnography model developed by Carspecken (1995), and includes five
levels or basic categories of inquiry: 1) an analysis of the social
and ideological context into which the program is introduced, and how
that context is currently influencing school reform; 2) exposing the
hidden curriculum accompanying the educational change, and reviewing
its potential impact on students and society; 3) a conceptual analysis
of the formal curriculum; 4) an ethnographic collection of data to acquire
knowledge of the dynamic interaction between curricula and classroom
culture; and 5) an analysis of the findings from these four steps through
a critical conceptual framework founded on principles of social justice
and equality. The five phases of analysis are not applied in rigid chronological
fashion, however, but rather in an overlapping, on-going and interconnected
format.
Evaluating the Context of Curriculum Change
The
analysis of context is designed to reveal the ideological connections
between dominant social forces, that is, corporations, and education
policy change, and to identify and critique the various assumptions
underpinning vocational and social preparedness programs. These ideological
assumptions reflect ethical, ontological, and social viewpoints subject
to evaluation through the critical lens provided in phase five. Evaluations
limiting their inquiry to schools and programs, while ignoring social
context, remain relatively unreflective about interests, values, and
ideologies in curriculum:
If our unit of analysis is only the school, the issues surrounding
curriculum evaluation can stand alone and less of a serious challenge
can be made against the process/product path it has taken. If, however,
the school is interpreted as inextricably connected to powerful institutions
and classes outside itself, then our unit of analysis must include these
connections. (Apple and Beyer, 1983, p. 427)
Since schools are not immune to social pressures, disregarding social
context and the connected ideological assumptions precipitating curriculum
reform, suggests that evaluators accept the view that the problems,
values, and objectives of education are those identified by dominant
social interests, or the intellectual and political hegemony (Gramsci,
1971). This problem is consistent with Bourdieu and Passeron's (1994)
observation that the education system is primarily ideological, and
directed at legitimating the established order, reproducing class relations
and ensuring the hereditary transmission of cultural capital. In the
absence of contextual analysis of employability skills curricula, the
hegemonic corporate culture from which these programs emerge, and its
attending values and agenda, is virtually insulated from evaluation.
The subsequent shift from the macro to the micro level of analysis should
also reveal how local education practice is influenced by global market
forces, and how theory translates into classroom experience in social
engineering programs (Taylor, 1998).
A brief analysis of the present social context and its direct impact
on CAPP, reveals the influence economic forces currently exact on public
education policy by imposing market economy values on schools. The Conference
Board of Canada (CBOC) is the central lobbying force for domestic private
sector business interests in public education policy development. This
organization funds two education councils, the national council and
the corporate council, both entirely dedicated to influencing Canadian
public schooling. The corporate council, comprised of senior executives
from CBOC member companies, includes a disproportionate number of executives
from large technology related corporations (Taylor, 1998). The corporate
council developed the influential Employability Skills Profile
(ESP), a list of generic skills employers supposedly require in students
they hire (CBOC, 1997).
The CBOC's impact on Canadian public education policy has been both
widespread and profound. The board reports, for example, that business-education
partnerships are in "explosion mode" with twenty thousand now in place
across the country (Robertson, 1998). In Alberta, numerous programs
already have been undertaken based on CBOC initiatives (Taylor, 1998).
In British Columbia, the CBOC plays an authoritative role in the career
preparedness component of CAPP, as students are expected to master ESP
skills before graduating from secondary school (CAPP, 1995).The CBOC's
stated interest in education is to engage business and schools "in partnerships
that foster learning excellence to ensure that Canada is successful
and competitive in the global economy" (CBOC, 1997, n.p.).
From its business-driven perspective, the concepts of "success and excellence"
are inextricably connected to attaining the quantifiable rewards consistent
with the consumerism of market economy culture. A CBOC pamphlet, Matching
Education to the Needs of Society (1995), reflects the board's functionalist
education agenda by asking, "Is the present [education] system capable
of preparing students for the challenges of the 21st century and for
a working life that is characterized by high technology and rapid change?"
(n.p.). Kuehn (1997) has challenged the moral, ontological, and educational
assumptions entailed in corporate schooling objectives for viewing students
as human capital, and marginalizing the social, cultural, and ethical
responsibilities of schools. Regardless of whether one agrees with Kuehn's
analysis, highlighting the connections between dominant social interests
and education exposes the assumptions and influences propelling educational
change to critical review.
A common assumption on which employability skills programs are predicated
is their hypothesized ability to improve labour market opportunities
for students (CAPP, 1995; CBOC, 1997). To evaluate the warrant for this
claim requires more than a mere review of student achievement scores
or curriculum delivery protocols. Rather, in the case of CAPP and other
similar programs, the contextual phase includes an analysis of current
labour market conditions to determine whether individual skill deficits
are a major contributing factor to unacceptable unemployment levels.
In fact, a preliminary investigation of labour market circumstances
suggests that skill deficits have little to do with present unemployment
levels, and the rationale for employability skill programs may be deeply
flawed. Livingston (1996) points out that some empirical research suggests
only a Grade 8 education is required to perform the typical factory
or office job in advanced industrial societies. Other studies cited
by Livingston reveal that since the early 1970s at least a third of
the employed North American workforce have work-related skills they
could use in their jobs but are not permitted to use.
Evaluation
of the Hidden Curriculum
Another
phase of this proposed evaluation method identifies the hidden components
of employability skills curriculum to consider their potential impact
on students and society. Pratt (1995) defines the hidden curriculum
as "the conscious or unconscious intentions reflected in the structure
of schools and classrooms and the actions of those who inhabit them"
(p.29). Schools are generally structured to deliver specified pre-packaged
knowledge to students, and thus exercise considerable epistemic authority
over them. Coupled with the epistemic legitimacy afforded to schools
as necessary socializing institutions, education provides the perfect
means to inculcate dominant values and attitudes in future citizens
(Althusser, 1973; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1994). Conveying ideology through
curriculum does not require a large scale conspiracy on behalf of corporate
elites, but only the hidden, largely unspectacular, transmission of
prevailing, often widely accepted, assumptions, beliefs, and values
to students (Portelli,1993). According to Habermas, ideology typically
assumes the form of commonly accepted communication patterns systemically
mitigated by social power relations (Eagleton, 1991). By transmitting
and legitimating dominant attitudes and values to students, then, the
employability skills discourse provides an excellent example of how
schools convey ideology to students.
In the career preparedness section of CAPP, the hidden curriculum transmits
various norms and values not stated in the formal curriculum document.
By presenting the concept of employability skills to students from a
functionalist perspective, CAPP legitimates the existing economic paradigm
to students. CAPP's functionalist format encourages students to conform
passively with market economy values and practices rather than actively
assessing their general acceptability. Since the primary stated objective
of these programs is to enhance student employment prospects, they also
contain the tacit premise that high levels of joblessness result from
individual deficits rather than from structural inequalities of opportunity,
another indispensable ideological myth in promoting market economy culture.
Once again, responsibility for unemployment and underemployment is deflected
from its systemic origins, and the market economy practices inflicting
widespread job loss are insulated from public criticism.
An analysis of the hidden curriculum related to social engineering curricula
should also explore the particular forms of knowledge the formal curriculum
validates. Apple and Beyer (1983) contend that ". . . prior to measuring
whether or not students are `able' to learn or have learned a particular
set of facts, skills, or dispositions, we should want to know whose
knowledge it is, why it is organized and taught in this particular way,
[and] to this particular group" (p.431). The null curriculum, or what
the formal curriculum does not include, may also reveal content bias.
A review of CAPP, for example, indicates a complete absence of labour
movement history, or indeed any suggested discussion on the role and
purpose of labour unions, while corporate attitudes, values and beliefs
dominate the document. As part of the hidden or null curriculum, then
- in this case what is left out of the formal curriculum - working class
knowledge and experience are excluded and devalued, while hegemonic
corporate knowledge is both conveyed and legitimated to students.
The Conceptual Evaluation of Curriculum
The
third phase in this evaluation approach requires a conceptual analysis
of the employability skills discourse contained in the formal curriculum
of programs such as CAPP. The purpose of this analysis is twofold: First,
many of the so-called skills in the work experience component of CAPP
are not skills at all, but are more appropriately categorized as attitudes,
values, and dispositions. Under ESP's heading of personal management
skills, for example, students are expected to demonstrate "a positive
attitude toward change" (CBOC, 1997, n.p.). Identifying such attitudes
as skills confuses important conceptual distinctions between the two,
and may preempt evaluation of the former's educational and moral appropriateness.
Similar to the underlying assumptions supporting employability skills
programs, the values, attitudes, and dispositions, once properly classified,
are assessed through the critical framework adopted for the evaluation.
Secondly, even if the various assumptions supporting employability skills
education are judged morally acceptable, serious questions remain regarding
the pedagogical efficacy of these programs. A conceptual analysis pointing
out fundamental category mistakes that impede student achievement of
desired cognitive competencies may reveal that employability skills
programs are not only morally suspect, but instrumentally flawed as
well.
Evaluating the Interaction between Curriculum and Classroom Culture
Examining
context, identifying and critiquing messages conveyed to students through
the hidden curriculum, and conceptually analyzing the skills discourse
in the formal curriculum are important steps in the assessment process,
but an examination of the dynamic interplay between the curriculum and
the classroom is also required. These three steps provide insight into
the potential interaction between students, schools, and social structure,
but structural analyses alone cannot reflect the complexity, uncertainty,
and impact of human agency on that interaction. Apple and Beyer (1983)
explain: "No social institution, no set of ideological forms and practices,
is ever totally monolithic. Students will not necessarily accept what
the school teaches and we cannot take for granted that students or teachers
are passive vessels who uncritically accept what curriculum documents
entail" (p. 432).
Ethnographic research conducted by Lave and Wenger (1996), Wertsch (1998),
and Willis (1973) highlights the way in which human agency mediates
between individual cognition, and the cultural, institutional and historical
context of schools. Collectively, these findings seriously challenge
exclusively structural critiques of education, and suggest the need
for some form of ethnographic study to acknowledge the complex interchange
between curriculum, student culture, and individual cognition. From
a reconstructionist perspective, structural critiques that fail to recognize
human agency offer little hope of transforming the repressive and reproductive
schooling practices they identify. Indeed, evaluations ascribing agency
to ideology, corporations and economic systems rather than to teachers
and students, and remaining aloofly detached from classroom settings,
are themselves socially reproductive. No critical curriculum evaluation
is complete, then, without investigating what is taught in the classroom,
and considering student reaction to that instruction.
Employability skills programs provide ample opportunities for both teachers
and students to apply the curriculum in various unexpected ways. Although
critical thinking has been appropriated into the employability skills
discourse (Lankshear, 1997), for example, no procedural parameters are
typically established for its classroom application. Ethnographic research
indicates that even when the supply of learning tools is regulated,
their actual classroom application cannot be completely controlled (Lave
& Wenger, 1996; Werstch, 1998). Ironically, this may suggest that by
adopting critical thinking as an objective, programs such as CAPP also
provide the necessary intellectual tool to challenge their credibility
as teachers and students might employ the concept to challenge the assumptions
supporting employability skills instruction. Regardless, the more salient
point is that ethnographic research may identify and report curriculum
consequences not knowable through structural analysis alone.
The ethnographic phase begins with compiling a primary record, or thick
description, of classroom activities where virtually all speech
acts, body movements, and postures are recorded to represent as fully
and accurately as possible the interaction between the curriculum and
the classroom. The concept of thick description emphasizes the importance
of context in understanding student behaviour by "describing the meaning
or significance of behaviour as it occurs in a cultural network saturated
with meaning" (Eisner, 1977, p. 97). The second step in the ethnographic
phase involves speculating on the meanings of events and actions recorded
during the compiling of the primary record, a process Carspecken (1996)
refers to as "preliminary reconstructive analysis" (p.93). During the
reconstructive phase, because of its interpretive quality, a certain
degree of subjective analysis occurs, but it attempts to identify behaviour
patterns that provide insight into both classroom and student response
to the program. Carspecken also advocates dialogical data generation,
where students and teachers contribute directly to the data collected
through various qualitative research techniques. Their participation
is designed to check possible researcher bias, add to the interpretative
data, and ensure that teachers and students are not objectified by the
ethnographic evaluation process. In an assessment of CAPP, case studies,
interviews, or focus groups could be employed to gauge more fully teacher
and student reaction to the program.
Critical
Evaluation of Curriculum
Social
research suggests that society continues to remain firmly structured
along race, class, and gender lines (Ballantine, 1997), and the actual
chasm between social classes has grown considerably during the last
decade (Robertson, 1998). As a matter of moral coherence, social stratification,
and any schooling practices operating to reproduce it, ought to be considered
ethically inappropriate in a democratic society embracing egalitarian
principles. Indeed, the school is rightly conceived of in our society
as an institution expected to advance the democratic concept of social
justice (Apple, 1990). From a social justice perspective, then, the
ultimate goal in any critical curriculum evaluation is determining the
extent to which the program under review ameliorates or worsens social
stratification and injustice.
In an attempt to address this question, the critical evaluation phase
introduces concepts such as social justice, class structure, and gender
equality to provide a moral conceptual framework to evaluate the data
gathered during the other four stages. Following Apple and Beyer, and
Carspecken, critical analysis contains the fundamental assumption that
the principal role of education research is challenging all forms of
social oppression reproduced through schooling practices. This phase,
then, attempts to intermesh the data collected during the other four
steps with an existing macro critical theory of social explanation to
evaluate the moral appropriateness of programs introduced to improve
social and occupational efficiency. Consistent with critical approaches,
the level of inference in this step of analysis increases dramatically
as the evaluation findings are explained with reference to a social
system theory. As Carspecken suggests, "a critical researcher is able
to suggest reasons for the experience and cultural forms reconstructed
having to do with class, race, gender, and political structures of society"
(p.43). Within a neo-Marxist critical framework, for example, the evaluation
findings could be interpreted on the basis of whether they serve the
needs of the social elite, in this case the corporate hegemony, or actually
improve social and vocational opportunities for disadvantaged students
(Ballantine, 1997).
Summary
In
this paper I have provided an alternative critical evaluation approach
designed to highlight both the individual and social consequences of
education programs introduced to effect social and vocational change.
I have argued that traditional systems management evaluations of such
curricula are woefully inadequate since they ignore the fundamental
ethical, social and ontological assumptions supporting such programs.
In some instances these assumptions may reproduce forms of systemic
injustice that are inconsistent with the general social objectives of
a democratic egalitarian society. In response to this methodological
shortcoming, I have proposed a five phase critical evaluation approach
that examines social context, investigates the impact of the hidden
curriculum, and conceptually analyzes the employability skills discourse
of the formal curriculum. Seeking to avoid an entirely structural critique
of the connections between society, schools and students, the evaluation
method proposes an ethnographic study to reflect the dynamic interaction
between the curriculum and the classroom. Finally, the data collected
during the other four evaluation steps are situated within the context
of a macro critical theory, and evaluated on the basis of ethical consistency
with the fundamental principles of social justice. Classroom teachers
should be provided the opportunity to participate in these evaluations
since they are especially well-situated to grapple with the impact these
programs have on their students. Only by fully understanding the range
of potential influences employability skills education exact, however,
can teachers fully and properly evaluate the pedagogical effectiveness
and ethical appropriateness of programs such as CAPP.
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