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2021 - Volume 5 - Number 2

Enactments of Curriculum Policies in Greek Secondary Education: Regulative Discourses and the Reproduction of Social Inequalities

Sofia Koutsiouri  * koutsiourisofia@gmail.com * ORCID: 0000-0002-9098-3324
University of the Peloponnese, Department of Social and Education Policy, GREECE

Ioulia Antoniou  * julie_antoniou@hotmail.com * ORCID: 0000-0002-9976-876X
University of the Peloponnese, Department of Social and Education Policy, GREECE

Anna Tsatsaroni  * tsatsaro@uop.gr * ORCID: 0000-0002-2477-8816
University of the Peloponnese, Department of Social and Education Policy, GREECE

Open Journal for Sociological Studies, 2021, 5(2), 57-70 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojss.0502.02057k
Received: 24 July 2021 ▪ Accepted: 23 September 2021 ▪ Published Online: 11 October 2021

LICENCE: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ARTICLE (Full Text - PDF)

ABSTRACT:
Many critical research studies have documented the complex ways in which global policies on school curricula are reshaped at national and local levels. This paper focuses on the discourses which regulate the recontextualizations of global policies in local school settings. The paper presents an empirical study on the enactments of language curricula in the Greek school education system. Using Bernstein’s theory of knowledge pedagogization, we analyze data produced by semi-structured interviews and classroom observations in five lower secondary state schools with socially and ethnically diverse student populations, in the inner city of Athens. Our findings show that, while the socially disadvantaged schools are regulated by discourses on inclusion, in the more advantaged schools of the study regulative discourses are related to performance management concerns. The paper points to the potential implications of such discourses, claiming that challenging educational inequalities requires to identify and act upon the discourses regulating teachers’ practices.

KEY WORDS: regulative discourse, instructional practices, global curriculum policies, Bernstein, educational inequalities.

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR:
Sofia Koutsiouri, University of the Peloponnese, Department of Social and Education Policy, Damaskinou & Kolokotroni Str. 20100 Corinth, GREECE.  Εmail: koutsiourisofia@gmail.com.

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