LISTENING TO STUDENTS.
EXPERIENCE AND PERCEPTIONS OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN ANDALUCIA
Nieves Blanco, Encarna Soto, Inma Gómez, Fabiola Revilla and Irene Muñoz.
University of Málaga[1]
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Lisbon, 11-14 September 2002
Abstract
It was barely 10 years ago that compulsory schooling till the age of 16 and comprehensive-style education were implemented in Spain. In the coming academic year, a new reform will be put into effect that will bring about significant changes in the ideological, social, and pedagogic principles regarding the current compulsory secondary school system. These changes will have a profound effect on the future of many students, especially those experiencing academic difficulties.
The data we offer in this paper aims at voicing what students think about the changes introduced 10 years ago, the value they give to schooling and education, the problems they face, and what they ask for. Their voices (not taken into account when designing the reform suggested by the current Government) speak of the high value they give to their education and training, and the lack of significant changes in the curriculum and the methodologies used to deal with students who are increasingly more diverse and have more complex needs. Overall, pupils are demanding a more relevant curriculum and warmer relationships with teachers, based on dialogue.
1. Spanish Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO): a brief history of a anticipated failure (sabotage?).
After the long period of Franco's dictatorship, LOGSE (1990) was the first educational law developed under Spanish democracy. This law involves a complete restructuring of the educational system and, more importantly, it establishes a new set of social and ideological principles. Education is understood as a basic social right whose main function is to educate autonomous and aware citizens capable of understanding the world they are part of, and who have an informed, critical, supportive and respectful attitude toward personal and social diversity.
Possibly, the more emblematic — and problematic — elements of LOGSE were the extension of compulsory schooling to the age of 16 (making secondary school universal for the first time in Spanish history) and its organization along comprehensive lines. Their purpose was to ensure the right to education for everyone based on the criteria of equality and social justice and to raise the educational level of the Spanish population as a whole to encourage a level of personal and collective development that would be in line with the needs of European society in the 21st century. This political and educational philosophy implied deep changes in education regarding the choice and organization of knowledge, and the methodological strategies and evaluation criteria to be used.
Both raising the age of compulsory education and its comprehensive organization had been challenged by a faction of teachers (especially by those coming from the old non-compulsory secondary school system who were incorporated into the new compulsory school system), and by a social sector, mainly belonging to the Spanish conservative party, the Partido Popular, which has been in power since 1996. Although the reasons behind this rejection are complex, a key element in understanding their attitude is to understand that from its origins in the mid-19th century, secondary schools in Spain had an elitist and selective character which did not disappear even in the 1970s when there was a massive, but selective, incorporation of students into secondary schools (Lerena, 1989; Viñao, 1992). From its very beginning, secondary education had been an educational stage aimed at the country's ruling classes and was characterized by being a selective and propaedeutic teaching biased towards academicism. In addition, its bridging position between primary and higher education adds further ambiguity to this educational stage, which was traditionally linked to higher education but has now become an extension of primary education.
By 1995, before Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) had been fully implemented in Spain, teachers were already pointing out that the new system would have a negative impact on education and on themselves as a professional body. Among the "pernicious effects" teachers predicted concerning ESO we can mention the following (Guerrero, 1997, p. 259):
- Automatic promotion — i.e., restricting the possibility of failing a year — would reduce the quality of education.
- Loss of relevance of content in favour of methodology.
- Retraining of secondary school teachers, who would now have to adopt care and custody roles (considered to be primary school teachers' tasks), and would have to move away from what they considered to be their main role: the transmission of academic knowledge.
- Reducing and trivializing content to cover-up school failures.
- Separating secondary school teachers from the Universities, thus destroying their identity.
This diagnosis seems to reveal the influence of the selective tradition we mentioned earlier and it is interesting to note that that difficulties perceived are directly or indirectly linked to the role of teachers as expert transmitters of knowledge. Teachers feel they are faced with a restructuring process, since -- by having to teach all kinds of students and not only those wanting to go to university -- they are being asked to provide a new professional function which does not correspond with the traditional transmission of knowledge. Performing this new role of being the “custodian” of students is perceived as a sort of deprofessionalization, and, on the other hand, it demands skills and knowledge that secondary school teachers lack.
Besides the difficulties expected when introducing significant changes in the educational and social identity of secondary schools, serious mistakes have been made in the process of making these changes known to professionals and to society as a whole. There have also been political mistakes that have reduced the credibility of the proposals as well as a lack of resources that have contributed to creating a climate of disappointment and impotence among those who originally welcomed the changes which, taken together, had contributed to making the prophecy of those reluctant to accept the changes or actually against the reform self-fulfilling.
Although LOGSE did not modify teachers' practices, it modified certain educational conditions, such as the following: compulsory schooling was extended to the age of 16, which increased the level of diversity among students; comprehensive style; a common curriculum; and a tendency to organize teaching by areas of knowledge rather than by subjects. In addition, teaching was planned around a cycle of 2 academic years as the unit, and restrictions were implemented regarding failing years, should the cycle's objectives not be met by students, etc. The appearance of these changes in the actual teaching conditions -- which were not backed-up with new resources or appropiate organizational and pedagogic practices -- has generated friction and conflicts that have encouraged the revival of concern regarding the deterioration of knowledge and the decline of academic standards (Pérez, 2002). However, the data provided by regular evaluations of student performance carried out by the Ministry of Education do not confirm these fears (García Garrido, 2000) and neither do other international evaluations (OECD, 2001). Although academic standards are not good, and there is no reason to feel satisfied with them, there is no evidence to suggest they have dropped (despite the incorporation of a large group of students who had so far been excluded from the system and whose performance is certainly highly unsatisfactory). However, the lack of evidence has never been a strong enough argument to break the myth of lower academic standards in comprehensive education (Fernández Enguita, 1985).
Magnifying these difficulties, and backed up by these myths, the Spanish conservative party --which has always been against the secondary school reform -- has increased its criticisms in the last few months and has drawn up a new law that will in fact eliminate the most significant aspects of ESO (MEC, 2002).
- It establishes different trajectories for different students which, in practical terms, means destroying the comprehensive character of current education. The stated purpose of the new law is to overcome the drawbacks of the comprehensive system and replace it with what they call "opportunity systems"(!), a phrase which can only be considered cynical.
- In practice, this involves the creation of homogeneous groups based on performance and future expectations (i.e., University, Vocational Training or the labour market). It anticipates the possibility of creating special groups for immigrants who may even be located in separate centers away from students of their own age.
- The curriculum will be redefined, making it more discipline-based and will be differentiated according to the different trajectories. This means that in compulsory schools, students will only share part of the curriculum and the remaining part will be differentiated according to future expectations.
- It will be compulsory to stay in the same year if students do not pass three or more subjects.
- Evaluation will be differentiated by subjects, instead of making a global assessment of the student as stated in the previous law (although in practice, this was never truly implemented).
- The inclusion of knowledge-based tests for students (although non-selective) at the end of primary and secondary school.
The contradictory and worrying aspects of these changes derive from the fact that they have been implemented without any kind of diagnosis. No systematic studies have been carried out to enquire into the state of the current educational system, its problems and causes, or how they are perceived by teachers, families, and students, nor has available research been taken into account. An alarmist and catastrophist language, a total lack of data, and use of buzz-words such as "quality" are the pillars of their criticism and the arguments used to justify the change. Finally, their key argument is that LOGSE is to blame for everything that is wrong with education -- an obviously absurd and untrue statement (Escudero, 2002) -- but very effective from a propagandistic point of view.
Although it is becoming the norm to make decisions about the future of millions of students without carrying out a serious and honest analysis of the potentials and drawbacks of the current educational system, it is irresponsible to do so from a political point of view and is unethical. We fear that the potential for personal and social development for a large number of students — those socially "weaker" — is being seriously undermined and that they are being stripped of opportunities and being offered a very bleak future. As Max Van Manen (1988, p.214) points out “any social perspective that refuses to give to any of its citizen the opportunity to fully develop their potential in relation to the rest of society is from a pedagogical point of view corrupt.”
2. Listening to students from Compulsory Secondary Schools.
As mentioned, the Ministry of Education has proposed changes without carrying out an analysis of the situation. However, this does not mean that no research is available. For example, in Andalusia, the local educational authorities requested a study on curriculum development and quality factors in secondary education which has been carried out over two years by part of our research group team (Pérez & Sola, 2002). Using questionnaires, case studies, and debates, we have gathered information from all the agents involved: families, teachers, coordination teams, and students.
In this paper, we analyse and reflect on the perceptions and experience of students (Blanco et al., 2002). Using a questionnaire we have collected the opinions of 1,800 students from Andalusia (53% females and 47% males) with ages between 14 and 16 years, attending 31 different private and state schools located in rural and urban environments; we have also made use of data from some case studies (Blanco, 2002; Soto, 2002).
Who are the students we are going to listen to? They belong to every social strata, although the dominant group is from the middle-class. However, there are important perceptual differences between the coordination teams of the centers -- who consider that a third of the students belong to the working class -- and the students -- of whom only 6% see themselves as belonging to this social group. Most students live in households of 4--5 members: 75% of them have one or two brothers or sisters. There seems to be a relationship between family size and social level, such that having no brothers or sisters or only one is more usual in higher social levels. In most cases, the financial situation of the family is stable: most fathers have a job (94.5%) and 41% of the mothers -- besides working in their home -- have a paid job. The cultural level of the families tends to be low: 60% of fathers and 69% of mothers had only completed primary school or not even this. In any case, the cultural level is higher in private and urban schools.
28% of these students have failed some year, mainly in the 2nd cycle and particularly in the 3rd year of secondary school. More boys than girls fail the year and the rate is double in state schools compared to private ones. Most students consider that their school has a "normal" environment, 15% consider it to be pleasant, while another 15% perceive their school environment as violent or tense. In this latter case, this perception is more common in boys than in girls and it is more extended in urban state schools.