Abstract
This study emanates from a concern about social injustice. Ibelieve that a number of people in our society, by virtue of their
race, gender or class, are disadvantaged in the distribution of
wealth and privilege. Some people have suggested that schools
contribute to the maintenance and reproduction of this situation
because, in various ways, they replicate inequitable social,
political and economic arrangements. I accept this claim and argue
that any attempt to improve schooling must focus on the social,
economic and political outcomes of education, as well as on
curricular, pedagogical and administrative concerns.
In this study one recent attempt to improve Australian
education, the move to school-level curriculum evaluation, is
examined to ascertain if it represents a challenge to existing
school practices and the beliefs and assumptions which underpin
these. Dominant ideological orientations to improvement are
examined and their key features and assumptions delineated. Because
I believe that these exclude any consideration of the relationship
between school knowledge and the distribution of power and privilege
within society, an attempt is made to reconceptualize school-level
curriculum evaluation in a way that will permit teachers to unpack
what schools do socially, politically and economically. Theories of
cultural and economic reproduction and the work of Freire are drawn
on to help with this task.
Evaluation policy statements and guidelines and examples of
evaluation practice are then analysed in terms of dominant and
reconceptualized notions of evaluation. What emerges is that
although many of these are engulfed by dominant and limiting
ideologies, school-level curriculum may be reconceptualized in a way
that will permit the penetration and contestation of dominant
practices and beliefs and thereby will offer educators a possible
means of addressing problems of social injustice.
| Date of Award | 1983 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |