European education policy initiatives and teacher education curriculum reforms in Greece

Abstract

The paper explores the ways in which university-based Teacher Education Departments in Greece have operated to promote changes to their undergraduate curricula. Our research approach views these changes as responses to the policies of the European Union and the Bologna Process for the 'modernisation' of higher education systems across Europe. Data are drawn from qualitative analyses of 18 curricula in two periods of their development, the middle of the 1990s and the late 2000s. The analysis of the study is based on Bernstein's theoretical concepts of classification, framing and meaning orientations, and describes basic types of university curricula regarding content organisation, pedagogical practices of teaching and learning, and knowledge evaluation. The findings reveal that, along with the disciplinary and professional criteria for knowledge recontextualisation, which have traditionally been legitimate in the field of Teacher Education, forms of weakly classified knowledge systematically oriented to problem-solving professional practices and school effectiveness are gradually crystallising and tending to become dominant. We argue that the marked shifts in the pedagogical means of teacher education may run the risk of thinning out teachers' knowledge base and de-professionalising their practices and identities.

The shaping of pre-service teachers’ professional knowledge base through assessments

“…One of the contributions of this study is that the overarching regulative discourse operative in the primary teacher education programmewhat it is guiding future teachers towardsis in line with results of previous studies done on education policy in Sweden (Beach andBagley 2012, 2013;Sjöberg 2011), and in the European perspective as well (Garm and Karlsen 2004;Cochran Smith 2005;Zeichner 2010Zeichner , 2012Wågsås Afdal 2012, 2013, 2016Sarakinioti and Tsatsaroni 2015). This shows the substantial influence global policy discourses have on educational practiceswhat they should look like and how they should be carried outand the way these discourses shape both policy and practice, nationally and internationally.…”

“…Teacher education and the shaping of professional knowledge base and identity Finally, several research projects have shown that both teacher education policy and the content of a teacher education programme affects both the knowledge base and the teacher's professional identity (Beck and Young 2005;Tatto 2006;Sarakinioti and Tsatsaroni 2015). For example, Wågsås Afdal (2012,2013,2016) and Wågsås Afdal and Nerland (2014) show that various traditions affect not only content but also which knowledge base and teacher identity is created through the programme.…”

“…Both the EU and the OECD have been important policymakers driving the discourse by way of international measurements of knowledge and schools' results, such as PISA and TIMMS, but also through explicit and specifically expressed education policies (EC 2005(EC , 2007(EC , 2015EU 2010;OECD 2005OECD , 2014) (Cf. Garm and Karlsen 2004;Robertson 2009;Nordin 2012; Wågsås Afdal and Nerland 2014; Sarakinioti and Tsatsaroni 2015). In recent years, it has also become increasingly common that teachers are evaluated against standards and through certification practices.…”

The Swedish primary teacher education programme: at the crossroads between two education programme traditions

“…This is true not only for Sweden but for the rest of the world (Antikainen, 2010;Briant & Doherty, 2012;Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001;Goodson, 2008;Lauder, Brown, & Halsey, 2009;Lawn & Furlong, 2009;Sarakinioti & Tsatsaroni, 2015) and is in line with the discourse of knowledge-based societies and economies (Apple, 2001;Ball, 2008;Garm & Karlsen, 2004;Young, 2009). The reform of teacher education can also be seen as part of the overarching education reform in Sweden that was made around 2010 and with the political purpose of improving the results in Swedish schools.…”

Transformations in the field of symbolic control and their implications for the Greek educational administration

“…Orientation is defined in terms of ‘introverted’ or ‘extroverted’ meanings, corresponding to introjected or projected types of identity formation. The former promotes inwardness, generating inner commitments related to the perceived intrinsic value of specific knowledge domains, while the latter promotes outwardness reflecting demands and contingencies of external fields of practice (Beck and Young, 2005; Bernstein, 2000; Sarakinioti, 2012; Sarakinioti et al, 2011).…”