Purpose: Taking läxhjälp/homework support in Sweden as a case, this article aims to further explore shadow education, especially as a pedagogical object from curriculum theory perspective.

Design/Approach/Methods: Approaches including policy analyses, ethnomethodological work based on video- recorded interaction, and narratives have produced empirically grounded knowledge. We use examples from several substudies and analyze the reentry and regulation of supplementary education and how tutors and tutees interact in tutoring settings and negotiate identities in läxhjälp as well as the relation to regular schooling.

Findings: Läxhjälp is conditioned by the logic of equality and changes in the governance of läxhjälp. The proliferation of different kinds of tutoring practices provided by various organizations calls for a broad definition of shadow education. With curriculum as boundary object, equality and academic success are foundational. Different settings and spatiotemporal arrangements affect modes of interaction, distribution of epistemic authority, and negotiations of identities.

Originality/Value: With Sweden as a case, it is possible to explore shadow education in a new context, the Scandinavian welfare state, and its history of comprehensive education. Moreover, ethnomethodological interaction and narrative studies and curriculum perspectives are seldom employed within research on shadow education. A number of critical key boundary objects are identified.

Homework has traditionally been, and still is, a common practice in Swedish and Norwegian schools (Karlsson et al, 2019; Rogde et al, 2019; Westlund, 2004), serving as one of the key links between home and school (Borgonovi & Montt, 2012; Karlsson et al., 2019). Nevertheless, this practice is currently not regulated on a national level and is not even mentioned in curricula in neither Norway nor Sweden. Instead, every school, or even every teacher, has its own policy regarding homework.

Shadow education as a phenomenon has expanded globally during the past decades, attracting interest among educational researchers, policymakers and planners. The concept of "shadow education", made popular by Mark Bray, refers to fee-based education activities which are related to the school curricula but provided by private tutors outside ordinary school hours.

This paper presents preliminary findings of an ongoing research project on shadow education in Russia. Specifically, it seeks to throw into light the emergence of shadow education in Russia. This is done by illuminating policy strategies through which the incipient national education system positioned and legitimized itself in relation to a historically well-established tradition of private tutoring.

The study is theoretically framed by a Foucauldian perspective (historicizing of a present phenomenon, namely shadow education) as well as curriculum theory. By that, the paper elaborates on how private tutoring and public education have changed over time with regard to curriculum, positioning and legitimacy.

The paper has a theoretical contribution in that it seeks to historicize a particular phenomenon as well as how this can be discussed in relation to curriculum theory. While curriculum theory has been predominantly used for studying educational institutions governed by the state, it will in this paper be applied to educational processes taking place outside these institutions normally in focus. This raises questions on new ways of thinking about the curriculum concept and the relationship between policy and practice, as well as the public good and the private good in education.

Private supplementary tutoring, widely known as shadow education, has become a global enterprise, challenging the traditional boundaries of the educational landscape. The concept of shadow education refers to educational activities, which are related to school subjects and are provided by private tutors outside school hours, usually in exchange for a fee (Bray, 1999). The last decades saw the research on shadow education gaining in popularity; however, due to methodological challenges shadow education is still understudied and remains largely undertheorized.

Recently, several studies have theorized the nature and the demands for shadow education by deploying the concepts of curriculum studies (Bray, Kobakhidze, Zhang, & Liu, 2018; Forsberg et al, 2019; Jokić, 2013; Kim, 2016; Kim & Jung, 2019; Sriprakash, Proctor, & Hu, 2016). The present paper joins this line of research. Drawing on findings from previous research and the ongoing PhD project, it provides a conceptual framework for analyzing and understanding the relationship between public education and private tutoring.

From the perspective of curriculum theory, hiring a tutor can be seen as a strategic response  arising from an individual’s experiences or encounters with public education and from a mismatch between one’s own educational needs, aspirations and desires, and the preordained curriculum. The present paper exemplifies how the variety of manifestations and functions of private tutoring can be explained in terms of the (perceived) gaps between planned and enacted curriculum on the one hand, or between enacted and attained curricula on the other. However, since curriculum theory traditionally has been most concerned with public education, the explanatory capacity of the established terms (i.e. planned, enacted and attained curriculum) is limited; in particular, they tend to overlook the capability of the targeted subjects of education to refuse, contest, challenge and go beyond the prescribed set of knowledge. With this in mind, I endeavor to introduce a new concept - a desired curriculum – for exploring the tensions between structure and agency in education in general and for theorizing shadow education in particular. Together, these conceptual and analytical tools seem well suited for exploring how school curriculum is both reproduced and resisted in shadow education.

References

Bray, M. (1999). The Shadow Education System: Private Tutoring and its Implications for Planners. Paris: UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP).

Bray, M., Kobakhidze, M. N., Zhang, W., & Liu, J. (2018). The hidden curriculum in a hidden marketplace: Relationships and values in Cambodia’s shadow education system. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 50(4), 1–21.

Forsberg, E., Mikhaylova, T., Hallsén, S., & Melander Bowden, H. (2019). Supplementary tutoring in Sweden and Russia: A safety net woven with numbers. In C. Elde Mølstad & D. Pettersson (Eds.), New Practices of Comparison, Quantification and Expertise in Education: Conducting Empirically Based Research (pp. 207–229). London & New York: Routledge.

Jokić, B. (Ed.). (2013). Emerging from the shadow: A Comparative Qualitative Exploration of Private Tutoring in Eurasia. Zagreb: Network of Education Policy Centers.

Kim, Y. (2016). Shadow education and the curriculum and culture of schooling in South Korea. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kim, Y. C., & Jung, J.-H. (2019). Conceptualizing shadow curriculum: Definition, features and the changing landscapes of learning cultures. Journal of Curriculum Studies, (Journal Article), 1–21.

Sriprakash, A., Proctor, H., & Hu, B. (2016). Visible pedagogic work: Parenting, private tutoring and educational advantage in Australia. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37(3), 426–441.

Private tutoring is a phenomenon that in various forms had existed long before the inception of the national system of education in Imperial Russia. It was slightly downplayed under the Soviet period when collective values were put to the foreground, only to resurrect with a renewed intensity in the recent decades (Mikhaylova, 2016). However, it was during the nineteenth century that private tutoring most frequently appeared on a formulation arena (cf. Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2000). It was also during this time that education came to function as an important instrument for nation building with a strong emphasis on delivering what could be characterized as a public good.

The paper focuses on this period and examines what aspects of private tutoring were recognized as a problem and what policy tools were employed to resolve it. In answering this question, the paper uses the concepts of ‘public good’ and ‘private good’ (see e.g. Labaree, 1997) for framing the discussion. By that, the overall aim is to develop knowledge on the relationship between public education and private tutoring as constructed in policy documents in nineteenth-century Russia.

Theoretically, the study draws on the Foucauldian “history of the present” approach (Foucault, 1979) in order to uncover the conditions that shaped the hierarchical relations between public education and private tutoring. In doing so, I also use curriculum theory, which offers a broad understanding of curriculum as a historically, politically and culturally produced set of ideas about education (Englund, 2005; Lundgren, 1989). Specifically, the study deals with activities and inscriptions on the formulation arena and investigates the (trans)formation of policy regarding private tutoring. It elaborates on the following question: What ‘problems’ were intended to be solved by a particular form of selecting and organizing curriculum?

Preliminary findings suggest that exacerbation of relations between publicly and privately provided education in the first half of the nineteenth century was triggered by two main factors. Firstly, private tutoring was recognized as a serious obstacle for further expansion of public education. Secondly, of special concern was the fact that the majority of tutors were foreigners who potentially could spread dangerous political ideas. By employing a variety of policy tools, the government gradually aligned the goals and content of private tutoring with those of public education. Hence, private tutoring no longer raised the same amount of concerns and eventually faded from the policydiscourse into the ‘shadows’, but, in fact, it has never disappeared from practice.

This dissertation aims to provide a genealogy of the relations between the public and the private in education. It does so by the exploring how public education and private tutoring form and transform each other and why they are seen as legitimate or problematic in different historical and cultural contexts. Drawing on curriculum theory and Foucault’s genealogical approach to history, the study examines how private tutoring has been problematised in Imperial, Soviet and post-Soviet Russia and discusses how these problematisations reflect and shape the dominant visions of education. 

The results show that norms and values in relation to which private education has been problematised and addressed in Russia have varied in line with nationalist, communist and neoliberal visions of education. Although most questions, such as tutor competence, individual privilege, inequality, ethics, governance, and ideological conformity, have constantly been in the focus of critical reflection, they were ‘answered’ differently in different historical periods. Others, such as spatial inequality and ethical concern for corrupt tutoring practices, are of more recent origin. In contrast to previous research into shadow education, the study argues that the mimicking character of supplementary tutoring is not its natural feature. Rather, in the Russian case, it is the result of constant problematisation and the corresponding regulation of its conformity with what is regarded as ‘sacred’ national values.

In general, private tutoring in Russia has often been treated as a ‘symptom’ of other educational and societal problems, and addressed indirectly, through reforms in public education. Paradoxically, in fighting against undesirable effects of private tutoring, Russian schools had to adopt some of the traits commonly associated with just that industry, namely individualisation, exam drills, and the promotion of private and positional good. Conversely, changes in the structure, content, pedagogy, or assessment procedures in the mainstream system have provoked considerable changes in tutoring practices, which, however, are not limited to imitation and supplementation. The study concludes that this symbiotic relationship cannot be reduced to imitation, reproduction, or supplementation. Rather, it changes like shifting shadows reflecting and ultimately shaping the dominant perceptions of what education is and ought to be.

Private supplementary tutoring (PST) is a phenomenon that in various forms has existed since the establishment of the national education in nineteenth-century Russia (Mikhaylova, 2018). However, it was after the collapse of the Soviet Union when a whole industry of PST has emerged, providing tutoring at all levels of national educational system (Kozar, 2013). Moreover, today the majority of Russians perceive private tutoring as an essential part of education (Forsberg et al, 2019).

This paper explores the role and the legitimacy of PST in relation to public education in contemporary Russia. Drawing on curriculum theory (Forsberg, 2011; Lundgren, 1989) and Foucault’s (1984) concept of problematisation, I discuss the norms, assumptions and beliefs about education that lie behind national policy regarding PST. By examining what aspects of PST have been onto policy agenda, the study illuminates the impacts of particular problematisations on the relations between public education and PST.

References

Foucault, M. (1984). Polemics, politics and problematizations, based on an interview conducted by Paul  Rabinow.  In L. Davis. (Trans.), Essential works of Foucault (Vol. 1), Ethics, New York: New Press. 

Forsberg, E.  (2011). Curriculum theory revisited: curriculum as content, pedagogy and evaluation. Saarbrücken: LAP, Lambert Academic publ.

Forsberg, E., Mikhaylova, T., Hallsén, S., Melander, H.  (2019). Supplementary tutoring in Sweden and Russia: A safety net woven with numbers. Forthcoming.

Kozar, O. (2013). The face of private tutoring in Russia: Evidence from online marketing by private tutors. Research in Comparative and International Education , 8(1), 74–86.

Lundgren, U. P. (1989). Att organisera omvärlden: en introduktion till läroplansteori (2. uppl.). Stockholm: Utbildningsförl. på uppdrag av Gymnasieutredningen.

Mikhaylova, T. (2018). A Numbers Game: Insights from Shadow Education in Russia. Presentedat the ECER, Bolzano

Introduction: The history of private supplementary tutoring (PST), or shadow education, in Russia dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century. The notable expansion of formal education after the liberal reforms of 1860s and increased importance ascribed to educational credentials were accompanied by the growth of tutoring markets. It was around that time that the word repetitor, that is, the modern word for a private tutor, appeared and gradually gained currency in Russian educational discourse. Since then, the practice of PST underwent many changes simultaneously adopting the language and ideology of the ever-evolving education policies. Today, private tutoring – or repetitorstvo – is perceived as an essential part of education by the majority of Russians.

Objectives: The present study seeks to contribute with knowledge on the interrelations between education policies and the practice of PST. More precisely, by focusing on assessment policies developed in Imperial and respectively post-Soviet Russia the study explores how those policies were translated into a specific language of excellence used for promotional purposes on the tutoring market.

Data and methodology: The study consists of content analysis of policy documents and tutoring advertisements from both Imperial and post-Soviet Russia. The historical part concerns the introduction of the number system for measuring students’ achievement and the subsequent assessment policies in the second half of the nineteenth century. A special emphasis is put on the regulations for Maturity Examination issued in 1873. After that, I examine tutoring advertisements published in the daily newspapers Novoe Vremya between 1869 and 1910. The second part deals with the introduction of the Unified State Exam (USE) during the 2000s and proceeds with an analysis of tutors’ profiles collected in 2018 from on one of the largest online PST platforms in Russia.

Findings: The so-called number system (ballovaya sistema) for grading students’ academic achievements came into Russian schools’ daily practice in the mid-nineteenth century. The need for replacing previous practice of verbal evaluations was justified by the assumed capacity of numbers to serve as a unified and objective measurement device that could protect children from personal bias. Regular measuring of individual achievements by means of tests and examinations was intended to provide a ‘fairer’ and more efficient basis for transition between different levels of education system. Eventually, a whole apparatus for centrally administrated nation-wide examinations – Maturity Examination – was developed to serve as a tool for final certification and selection to tertiary education.

A century and a half later, in the early 2000s, a rather similar transition policy was launched; responding to global neoliberal discourse, Russia introduced the USE as a common test for both school leaving and university entrance. By means of unification of assignments and testing procedure, USE was supposed to provide students throughout the country with equal opportunities for pursuing further education.

The analysis reveals some striking similarities between the assessment policies of the Imperial and post-Soviet Russia. However, the language of excellence created through those policies has considerably changed over time. This becomes evident in the practice of PST where references to academic achievements are frequently used to demonstrate the existing expertise of a tutor. In the nineteenth century, tutors put forward their academic awards and degrees, which implied highest scores in all subjects, without explicitly naming their original numerical value. In contrast, today tutors highlight their expert knowledge in one or two subjects by referring to “pure” numbers, which largely correspond to the USE’s 100-point scale. In both cases, the highly specialized - categorical or numerical - language of excellence might be unintelligible for the uninitiated.

Public/private is said to constitute one of the main dichotomies in Western political and philosophical thought. When it comes to education, ‘public’ is often associated with democracy and inclusion, while ‘private’ is seen as threatening the idea of education as a public good. However, taking into consideration that public schools, especially in authoritarian societies, can promote illiberal values, such understandings of the concepts become less obvious. This paper seeks to explore the politics of public-private differentiation in the Russian and Belarusian educational contexts and thereby to trouble the assumptions about this dichotomy reproduced in much academic writing today.

This paper presents a comparison between two national educational contexts – the Soviet Union and Sweden. The countries exhibit similarities on how education was thought in relation to cybernetics (for a description of the early thinking of cybernetics, see Wiener, 1948) and ‘systems thought’ (for a description, see Heyck, 2015) from the early 1960s and onwards. By performing our study, we are able to historicize some of the prerequisites for the contemporary beliefs in education such as accountability, ‘evidence-based education’, and ‘feedback’.

The history of Soviet cybernetics is a history of rebellion and conformity, enchantment and disappointment. This is a story of fascination with a new revolutionary language, which eventually gave way to a frustration when this new language was appropriated by the Soviet nomenclature (Gerovitch, 2002). But, it is also a history of how a new educational language and a new way of reasoning (cf. Hacking, 1990) on education was developed that embraced all educational ‘things’ in terms of organization, structure, system, function, and process (cf. Heyck, 2015). In this way, Soviet cybernetics in education carried a promise and a means of ‘salvation’ for making the educational sciences more ‘objective’ and ‘evidence-based’.

In the Swedish case, we acknowledge cybernetics and ‘systems thought’ as something growing into a specific intellectual tradition, commonly labeled as a ‘systems approach’ (Kaijser & Tiberg, 2000). It has advanced into different fields of science, such as systems analysis, policy analysis and futures studies. The ‘systems approach’, combining cybernetics and ‘systems thought’, also entered the field of education through the language of behaviorism (Bosseldal, 2019) and ‘education technology’.

Our paper is elaborative in its purpose: When dealing with data we firstly present articles important for the phase when cybernetics and ‘systems thought’ were introduced in the educational sciences in the USSR and Sweden (1960s an onwards). In the analysis of these texts we conclude that cybernetics and ‘systems thought’, carried a promise of ‘imagined futures’ (Beckert, 2016) and a tool for resolving some of the perceived educational problems at that time.  Secondly, we analyze (text)books published with a mission of introducing cybernetics and ‘systems thought’ to Soviet and Swedish teachers and students. In performing this task, we are able to demonstrate how cybernetics and ‘systems thought’ changed the organization, practices and roles within education creating a new ‘technology’ of teaching and learning; this is specifically demonstrated in relation to changes in curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation (cf. Bernstein, 1975).

This setup allows us to elaborate on why and how the present reasoning on accountability, feedback, and evidence-based education are made intelligible.

References:

Beckert, J. (2016) Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics. Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press.

Bernstein, B. (1975) Class, Code and Control. Volume 3. Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Bosseldal, I. (2019) Vart tog behaviorismen vägen? Social responsivitet mellan barn och vuxen, hund och människa. Lund: Lunds universitet.

Gerovitch, S. (2002) Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics. Cambridge & London: MIT Press.

Hacking, I. (1990) The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heyck, H. (2015) Age of System: Understanding the development of modern social science. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Kaijser, A. & Tiberg, J (2000) From Operations Research to Future Studies: The Establishment, Diffusion, and Transformation of the Systems Approach in Sweden. A. C. Hughes & T. P. Hughes (Ed.) Systems, Experts, and Computers: The Systems Approach in Management and Engineering, World War II and After. Cambridge & London: MIT Press.

Wiener, N. (1948) Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Cambridge: MIT Press.

The last decades have been marked by a significant expansion of theoretical and methodological approaches in the studies of the history of curriculum and, more broadly, of education policy (Kalervo et al., 2015; Pinar et al., 2014). However, as a consequence of the pronounced linguistic turn, the field is dominated by an understanding of policy as “discourse, text,and most simply but profoundly, as words and ideas” (Pinar et al., 2014, p. 7). In other words, the emphasis lies on the verbal dimension of policy formation, transformation, enactment, and evaluation, while the visual, nonlinguistic ornondiscursive dimension remains largely unexplored. Although there recently has emerged increased interest in understanding the role of numbers in shaping educational policy (Pettersson, 2020), pictures and images have not received much attention so far. In other words, ‘the pictorial turn’, outlined by Mitchell (1994) in the 1990s in relation to human sciences, has not yet had any significant impact on the study of education policy.

This paper aims to extend existing approaches to the analysis of education policy by highlighting the importance of various forms of visualization in creating and contesting values and norms embedded in policy. More specifically, we examine how pictures used in textbooks for elementary school children reflect and shape what society considers as “sacred values”. To do so, we analyze the pictures from Soviet and Swedish primers published between the early 1960s and the early 1990s. Despite political and ideological differences, both countries saw the development of “one school for all” during these decades. Attention to elementary school textbooks, and primers in particular, stems from the fact that they are intended for children who cannot yet read. With their ability to communicate complex issues in an easy and understandable way, pictures play a more pronounced role than texts in primers. Thus, primers create a kind of “vocabulary of the world”, expressed through pictures. Reflecting pedagogical ideals, these pictures show how school children are expected to think and act, and what society should be produced through education.

By taking a closer analytical look at the pictures that were produced and reproduced in primers in different cultural contexts, we want to demonstrate the complex ways in which images have the power to shape knowledge, visualize educational utopias, and make the values codified in curricula intelligible.

References:

Kalervo, N. G., Matthew, C., & Bendix Petersen, E. (Eds.). (2015). Education policy and contemporary theory: Implications for research. Routledge.   

Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994). Picture theory: Essays on verbal and visual representation. Univ. of Chicago Press.   

Pettersson, D. (2020). A comparativistic narrative of expertise: International large-scale assessments as the encyclopaedia of educational knowledge. In G. Fan & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.), Handbook of education policy studies: School/university, curriculum, and assessment (Vol. 2, pp. 311–329). Springer Singapore.    

Pinar, W., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (Eds.). (2014). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses: Vol. 17. P. Lang.

In 2018, the OECD launched a pilot study titled International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS) which assesses the emergent literacy, numeracy, self-regulation, and social emotional skills of children at age five. These skills are described as fundamental for children’s future achievements in school and later on in adulthood (OECD, 2020). According to the OECD (2015), the IELS will eventually “provide information on the trajectory between early learning outcomes and those at age 15, as measured by PISA” (p. 103). Thus, the basic assumptions underlying the IELS is that intelligence and socioemotional skills can be objectively evaluated and compared, and that they are stable and predictable

Ironically dubbed the ‘Baby PISA’, the IELS has already drawn a great deal of criticism, which tends to be in line with that of PISA (Auld & Morris, 2019; Moss et al., 2016). However, despite obvious connections to other large-scale assessments, the IELS stands out in terms of its methodology which was developed for children who typically cannot yet read and write. The instructions were given by a pre-recorded voice on a tablet and children could indicate their preferred response by touching items or moving them around the screen (OECD, 2020). Thus, at its core the IELS relies on children’s ability to ‘read’ pictures and to match what they hear and see with what they know.

The use of visual imagery as a tool for measuring cognitive and socio-emotional development is by no means new. In fact, many intelligence and personality tests developed as early as the early 1900s (such as Binet-Simon intelligence scale or the Rorschach test) incorporated some form of images. Developed for diagnosing developmental or intellectual deficiencies in young children or to identify personality and mental health disorders, such tests provided a technique to reveal the invisible and to make the perceived differences between humans to become observable, measurable, comparable and, thus, ‘real’. Despite much criticism, tests of this kind are still widely used to differentiate ‘normal’ individuals from those ‘gifted’ or ‘at risk’ and to assign different pedagogical treatments to different groups of students (Paul, 2004).

By measuring the cognitive and emotional intelligence of preschoolers, the IELS marks the culmination of a century in which testing was of paramount importance. In this paper we situate the IELS within a broader history of image-based assessments to discuss how images function as a tool for differentiating students, controlling education, and predicting future risks (cf. Pettersson & Nordin, forthcoming). For that we trace the history of some of the most common intelligence and personality tests and outline the conditions of possibility that enabled image-based tests to appear scientific and to function as a source of evidence.

Data visualization has become an integral part of governing education, greatly expanding its reach and influence in the digital age. From tracking the performance of individual students to monitoring the overall success of educational systems, data visualization serves as a powerful tool for informing policy and decision-making on both global and local levels. By providing an easy-to-understand representation of numerical data, it helps governments to quickly identify patterns and trends over time, make calculations about the future and communicate complex information in ways that are both informative and aesthetically pleasing. While there has recently been an increased interest in understanding the role of numbers in shaping education policy (e.g., Pettersson, 2020), visual representations have so far received little attention. Given the importance attached to data in education governance (Williamson, 2016), this gap is surprising. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to contribute insights on how images, words and numbers work together to produce knowledge that makes educational systems amenable to analysis, comparison, and governance (Decuypere & Landri, 2021; Williamson, 2016). More precisely, we explore how quantitates are transformed into geometric shapes, arrows, bars, and vectors to create persuasive accounts of what ‘works’ and what needs to be fixed. We do so by analyzing abstract non-representational pictures employed by international education agencies (such as OECD and UNESCO) in their reports from the last three decades. Inspired by Science and Technologies Studies (Daston & Galison, 2007; Latour, 2012; Lynch & Woolgar, 1990), we consider data visualization a specific technique of knowledge production that structures our understanding of educational spaces and temporalities (cf. Decuypere & Simons, 2020). Although data visualization is often assigned the role of ‘cognitive aid’, the preliminary results of our study indicate that it is not as transparent and self-evident as it is widely believed. By allowing the viewer to ‘see’ the past and present and to imagine the future, graphs, charts, and diagrams convey the impression as if they were entirely devoid of politics. With this promise of objectivity visual representations turn invisible phenomena into ‘noisy’ but ‘beautiful’ evidence (Halpern, 2015; Lynch, 1991). Nevertheless, data visualization presupposes filtering of what can be seen, in what ways and for what purposes. As such, it operates as a mode of preemptive governance (cf. Massumi, 2007), whereby the visualized pasts and projected (un-)desirable futures are brought into and organize the present.

The concept of differentiation holds immense significance in education, touching upon aspects like access, inclusion, justice, and equality. However, it is also a complex and elusive notion, which acquires different meanings across historical and cultural contexts. This article explores the shifting reasoning about differentiation in the Swedish educational context. Inspired by Foucault’s account of disciplinary power, it conceptualizes differentiation as a technique for marking and addressing gaps between individuals. Drawing on an analysis of governmental and scholarly reports from 1842 to the late 1960s, the article identifies three shifts in the reasoning on differentiation: 1) from differentiation by socioeconomic class as a given factor to the search for scientific rationales for differentiation based on measurement of intellectual ability, 2) from viewing differences in intelligence as biologically conditioned and stable to viewing them as amenable to training and correction through education, and 3) from a focus on inputs to a focus on outputs. Overall, the article argues that even if the term ‘differentiation’ itself has been discursively replaced by others, the ideas underlying it—the search for gaps—continue to shape education in Sweden and beyond.

 What image comes to your mind when you hear ‘Blooms Taxonomy’? Most likely it is a pyramid with several different colored levels of knowledge from ‘remember’ to ‘create’, with implied or explicit arrows pointing upward. In fact, this visualization of taxonomy is one of the most popular. Yet, its origin remains a mystery: it was not part of Bloom’s et al (1956) original framework or the later revision (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). On the one hand, pyramids and triangles are a common way of visualizing theoretical models in the social and educational sciences: think of the didactic triangle, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (1943), or Dale’s cone of experience (1946). However, while these models have largely retained their original pyramidal representations over time, Bloom’s taxonomy has evolved into various visual metaphors such as ladders, trees, circles, and flowers. What ideas about knowledge do these visualizations convey?

Developed in the 1950s, Bloom’s Taxonomy was designed to provide a wide range of educational professionals with a simple theoretical model that could be used to address curriculum and evaluation problems (Bloom et al, 1956, p. 1). Essentially a product of behaviorism, Bloom’s taxonomy emphasizes observable students’ behaviors resulting from instructions. Moreover, the very word “taxonomy” represents an attempt to apply models from the natural sciences, particularly biology, to the field of education. In biology, taxonomy refers to the classification of organisms into a hierarchical structure based on shared characteristics. By borrowing this concept from the natural sciences, Bloom’s Taxonomy sought to bring a similar order and ‘scientific’ rigor to educational objectives. A taxonomy, according to Bloom, unlike a simple classification system, must follow structural rules and reflect a “real” order among the phenomena it organizes (Bloom et al, 1956, p. 18). It is a method of ordering phenomena that should reveal their essential properties as well as significant relationships among them (p. 17). Recognizing the difference between classifying phenomena in the natural sciences and more abstract educational phenomena, Bloom noted that educational objectives, when expressed in behavioral terms, could indeed be observed, described, and thus classified.

Bloom’s Taxonomy has not only survived the decline of behaviorism but is still widely used in educational planning and evaluation in different parts of the world, including Europe (Anderson & Sosniak, 1994). Moreover, a new revision, known as Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy, was recently developed by Churches (2008) to account for the skills required in the digital age. Such persistence of the taxonomy can be attributed to several factors. First, its structured approach provides a practical and easy-to-use framework for educators and curriculum designers. Second, its adaptability to different visual metaphors may also contribute to its enduring appeal (see Mitchell, 2005). Third, most research on taxonomy tends to focus on its interpretations, misinterpretations and application in educational practice but ignores its historical origins, theoretical underpinnings, and visualizations.

This study explores the confluence of ideas and practices through which a hierarchy of knowledge is produced and disseminated as scientific facts. Specifically, it examines the assumptions and beliefs about knowledge implicit in the Bloom’s Taxonomy and its different visual representations. In doing so, the study brings together and extends the insights from a growing body of literature on how pictorial and graphic displays of conceptual models, methods or data transform ‘invisible’ phenomena into visible facts (Baigrie, 1996; Coopmans et al, 2014; Jones & Galison, 1998; Latour, 1993, 2017; Lynch, 1981; Pauwels, 2005; Rogers et al, 2021). This means that we regard pictures as an important part of discourses that establish ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault, 2014) and promote certain ways of thinking, knowing, seeing, and acting in the world.

This article explores the complex interplay between the visual, numerical and verbal elements of data visualisation and their role in shaping policy concerns. Focusing on the aesthetic and temporal dimensions of statistical graphics and drawing on the notion of diagram in the Deleuzian sense, the article emphasises the performative nature of data visualisation. More specifically, it explores how data visualisation suggests, rather than reveals, particular visions of educational pasts, presents and futures. Based on an analysis of graphs and charts selected from recent UNESCO and OECD reports, the article discusses the practices of the datafication of time and temporalisation and the beautification of data, which together produce ‘beautiful evidence’. This evidence informs education policies and practices and affects the way education can be seen, known and acted upon.

This chapter examines the historical context and evolution of teaching methods in Swedish teacher education. In doing so, it historicizes the ongoing debates about the quality of teacher education in Sweden and the perceived lack of instruction in teaching methods. Drawing on analysis of guidelines, government reports, recommendations, and curricula spanning from 1842 to the early 21st century, the chapter highlights changes in political reasoning about teaching, learning, and the organization of teacher education. The analysis reveals that teaching has been conceptualized in various ways throughout history. Early approaches viewed teaching as a technique for organizing and monitoring student progress. Later, teaching came to be seen as an art requiring not only good knowledge of the subject matter but also creativity and talent. With the subsequent "scientifi?ation" of teacher training and its gradual incorporation into higher education in the late 1960s, the course on teaching methodology came to be perceived as normative, emphasizing reproducible skills and best practices. As a result, by the end of the 20th century, it was replaced by the course in Didaktik, which, instead of providing teacher students with ready-made methods, focuses on critical evaluation of teaching based on relevant research. This does not mean that the question of teaching methods has disappeared from Swedish teacher education programs. However, in the highly differentiated educational system, it is handled differently by different institutions.

Reading is said to have a unique place in human civilization, transcending times and cultures. It is considered crucial for school performance and the development of democratic citizens (Skolverket, 2022). However, according to the Programme for International Reading Literacy Study (Skolverket, 2023) reading habits in Sweden are declining. Overall, the act of reading is perceived to be at risk – a concern that has been eloquently articulated within and beyond the Nordic context. Declining reading habits are seen as a major challenge in contemporary societies, with potential negative effects on children’s cognitive, emotional, and personal development as well as on the formation of a well-rounded, critically thinking, and informed citizens.   In examining how reading is produced as a societal, scientific and political concern (cf. Latour, 2004a), we have elsewhere introduced the concept of the ‘reading industrial complex’ (Sundström Sjödin, et al., in press). This concept posits reading as a multifaceted matter involving a wide range of actors, each holding their own view of what reading is, what it entails, and why we should care about it. The present study focuses more narrowly on the role of science in shaping perceptions of reading as a valued activity, influencing policies, and informing pedagogical practices.

Theoretically, the study is inspired by Latour’s concepts of matters of facts and matters of concern (Latour, 2004a, 2004b, 2014) to explore how scientific knowledge about reading is constructed and transformed into established ‘facts’ or ‘concerns’. This involves uncovering the desires and aspirations behind research initiatives and examining the ‘laboratory life’ (Latour et al., 2013) of reading science.  To achieve this aim, we trace the shifting epistemologies of reading research as reflected in the Journal of Literacy Research from 1969 to 2022. For that, we selected over 200 articles which we coded in accordance with our analytical interest and the purpose of the study. Of particular interest was to explore how the value of reading is constructed within selected articles.   Preliminary findings indicate significant shifts in reading research over time. These include expanded conceptions of what counts as reading and literacy, increased interest in contexts and the use of qualitative research methods. Nevertheless, reading continues to be treated as essentially one thing, albeit complex and multifaceted, that can be observed, measured, and assessed, often at the level of the individual. In Latourian terms, then, we can say that while reading is widely recognized as a political and societal concern, it still tends to be approached as a matter of fact.      

This study is part of a larger project called The Fiction of Numbers, in which we locate and explore the intersections between the spheres of science, public discourse, policymaking and educational practices. We specifically examine how reading becomes a specific node, or discourse, where the changing ideas on societal, sociotechnical and educational imaginaries (cf Jasanoff, 2015; Rahm, 2019; Sundström Sjödin, 2017; 2019) and solutions take place. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS), we are primarily concerned with how knowledge and facts are produced and naturalized; that is, how a phenomenon is produced as a matter of course and thus becomes difficult to question, and the ways in which values and politics of knowledge become invisible in this process (Dussauge et al. 2015; Latour, 1987, 1993).

In this sub-study, we “trace” – in Latour’s (2007) sense of the word – specific ‘numbers’ related to reading that are regularly referred to in media as well as in educational and political settings in contemporary Sweden. The numbers are used in reading promoting arguments: it is claimed that seventeen-year-olds who read a lot have a vocabulary of 50,000 words, while their low-reading peers have only 15,000 words in their vocabulary. It is also argued that 50,000 words is what is needed to be able to read and understand a typical newspaper text.

These kinds of numerical claims circulate in the public discourse and are often unchallenged and presented as matters of facts. Uncontested, the numbers are left to do their work – efficient in establishing truths, suggesting impartiality and transparency, ‘strengthened by the historical relationship between numbers and rationality, objectivity and control’ (de Wilde & Franssen, 2016, p. 505; see Hacking, 1990; Porter, 1995). They stabilize beliefs about reading into hard facts. By that, they also naturalize reading as something inherently good and useful, and therefore difficult to question (Sundström Sjödin, 2019). Moreover, although the construction of the problem implies the construction of the recipient, i.e. the so-called troublesome subject, in this case it remains unclear for whom exactly the lack of reading is a problem (Marres, 2005).

In this study, we trace the specific numbers we encountered in various sites of what we call “the reading industrial complex” (Sundström Sjödin et al, in press). We trace the origins of these numbers, how they have been produced, and with what tools. In doing so, we aim to develop knowledge on how reading is constructed as a public problem and a societal desire and what role numbers play in this construction. This aim is specified in the following three research questions: I) Which actors are involved in the dissemination of particular numbers related to reading, and who are the (implied) addressees of these numbers? II) What societal and educational imaginaries and desires are embedded in these numbers? III) What are the “origins” of the numbers? How and for what purposes were they produced? Theoretically and methodologically, the study draws on concepts and sensibilities of STS to explore the processes of knowledge production and dissemination, developed in the section below.