In what sense and to what extent can organised school education be an aims

290 Pages·2013·2.65 MB·English

In what sense and to what extent can
organised school education be an aims-
based enterprise?

Atli Harðarson

Submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements
for the degree of PhD in Education

In what sense and to what extent can
organised school education be an
aims-based enterprise?

Atli Harðarson
June 2013

Supervisors
Dr. Kristján Kristjánsson
Dr. Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson

Ph.D. Committee
Dr. David Carr, University of Birmingham
Dr. Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson, University of Iceland
Dr. Kristján Kristjánsson, University of Iceland

Submitted in partial fulfilment of requirements
for the degree of PhD in Education
180 ECTS
In what sense and to what extent can organised school education
be an aims-based enterprise?

Supervisors
Dr. Kristján Kristjánsson
Dr. Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson

Ph.D. Committee
Dr. David Carr, University of Birmingham
Dr. Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson, University of Iceland
Dr. Kristján Kristjánsson, University of Iceland

University of Iceland: School of Education

Reykjavík 2013
ISBN 978-9935-9025-5-9
© Atli Harðarson
Háskólaprent ehf.
This is why we need diaphaneity. In order to discern knots
along the thread which, stretched through the centuries, helps
us stand upright on this earth. (Elytis, 2004, p. 694)

Contents
Abstract ...... ......................................................................................... ix
Ágrip (Abstract in Icelandic) ............................................................... xi
Acknowledgements .......................................................................... xiii
Publications ....................................................................................... xv
Monograph: In what sense and to what extent can organised
school education be an aims-based enterprise ............. 1
Paper 1: Hvaða áhrif hafði Aðalnámskráin frá 1999 á
bóknámsbrautir framhaldsskóla? .................................... 123
Paper 2: Skilningur framhaldsskólakennara á almennum
námsmarkmiðum ............................................................. 153
Paper 3: Húmanisminn, upplýsingin og íslenska stúdentsprófið ... 181
Paper 4: Why the aims of education cannot be settled ................. 209
Paper 5: Equality and academic subjects. ...................................... 229
Paper 6: Are educational aims principles of design, reform,
justification or rationalisation? ........................................ 251
Index of names ............................................................................... 271

vii

Abstract
The aim of this monograph is to criticise widely held assumptions
about the role of educational aims as organising principles of school
curricula. My research question, posed in Chapter 1, is: In what sense
and to what extent can organised school education be an aims-based
enterprise?
In Chapter 2, I outline a technocratic and rationalistic model of
education as aims-based. This model, often called the objectives
model, has been dominant for more than half a century. In order to
criticise this model, I clarify the concept of aims in Chapter 3, and
make five distinctions between different types of aims. These
distinctions are between:
1. Things, events, or states of affairs that are created or causally
brought about by the means and aims that are constituted by
the means.
2. Aims that are contingently related to the means and aims that
follow logically from the means.
3. Aims that are independent of any specific context and aims
that are dependent on, or only comprehensible within, a
specific context.
4. Objectives that can be reached and ideals that people can
work towards, although the task cannot be completed.
5. Aims as principles of design and aims as principles of reform.
In Chapter 4, I use the first four of these five distinctions to argue
against the objectives model and offer in its place an outlook more in
accord with the tradition of liberal education. The main conclusions of
this chapter are that:
a) The possibilities of organising school practice to reach learner-
centred objectives is limited both by the nature of the subjects
and by the autonomy of the students.
b) The benefits of education cannot all be pre-specified in detail.
ix
In Chapter 5, I use the fifth and last distinction to argue that it is not
realistic to think of general educational aims as principles of design
that can be used to engineer entire school curricula.
My arguments in Chapters 4 and 5 show that education cannot,
without important qualifications, be described as an aims-based
enterprise. They also show that it is unrealistic to think of curriculum
design in terms of top-down engineering where details of
implementation are derived from statements of aims or purposes. In
Chapter 6, I conclude that school education can only be completely
aims-based provided we allow all the sorts of aims listed in Chapter 3
to play a role. Some of these aims can neither be stated precisely, nor
used to determine exactly, what effects a course of education will
have on students.
x