Abstract
The Norwegian Minister of Education is changing how mathematics in early childhood education should be viewed as part of a shifting of its main function from providing children with opportunities to develop holistically to, instead, preparing them for school. Using Edelman’s notion of the political spectacle, the discursive means used in press releases to frame a key policy initiative as a rational and responsible answer to a problem in education are explored. The promotion of the problem and the construction of the solution will have significant impact on how early childhood education and care is undertaken in Norway.
Résumé
Le Ministre de l’Éducation norvégien est. en train de changer la façon dont il faudrait concevoir la fonction principale des mathématiques dans l’éducation des jeunes enfants, soit passer d’une méthode qui consiste à fournir aux enfants des occasions de développement holistique, à une méthode qui les « prépare » à leur entrée à l’école. Par le biais de la notion de spectacle politique d’Edelman, nous analysons comment la méthode discursive est. utilisée dans les communiqués de presse pour présenter une initiative politique clé comme réponse rationnelle et responsable à un problème d’éducation. La promotion du problème et la construction de la solution auront un impact significatif sur l’éducation et les soins donnés aux jeunes enfants en Norvège.
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Notes
In Norwegian, realfag is a collective term for mathematics and science. It literally means real subjects or reality subjects, i.e. subjects addressing material reality as distinguished from subjects dealing with humanities such as literature, language and history. I will be using this and other Norwegian terms when the connotation does not come across well in standard translation into English.
The organisation and naming of institutions for early childhood education and care vary significantly across countries. The word barnehage (barnehager in plural) is the Norwegian term for institutions providing early childhood education and care for 1–5-year-old children. Barnehage literally means children’s garden. It is commonly translated to the German kindergarten (although not capitalised as in German), but this term is used for a variety of institutions around the world. Hence, in order to maintain the context of the study and avoid invoking misleading connotations, I have chosen to use the Norwegian term throughout the paper.
Since the government came into power on 16 October 2013 and 1 April 2016, i.e. during 898 days in power, 455 press releases were issued.
www.regjeringen.no. The website also comes in an English version Government.no; however, this only covers part of the content of the Norwegian version. Hence, the Norwegian site was used for finding the documents. The English version was consulted for translation issues.
The photos used in the press releases will be subject to a different analysis at a later date.
Barnehagen anses således for å være det første og avgjørende leddet i skoleløpet. Det skal være en sømløs, kontinuerlig overgang fra barnehage til skole, slik at barnehagebarna skal være godt forberedt på det de vil møte på skolen. … Det betyr blant annet at arbeidsmåtene som er etablerte i skolen, nå også skal få innvirkning på hva man gjør i barnehagen. … I tråd med dette behandler man i strategimeldingen ikke barnehage og skole separat – de hører til samme pakken og behandles derfor under ett. Man bruker hele tiden «barnehage og skole» som en fellesbetegnelse, og kan helt ubesværet snakke om at de inneholder «elever», og at det gjelder å styrke deres «kompetanse».
In NVivo, you “code” at a “node”, which is a container for references to a theme, issue, topic or opinion.
God kunnskap i realfagene bygges i den enkelte skole og barnehage. Nå ønsker vi å bygge opp realfagskulturen og realfagskompetansen ute i barnehagene og i skolene.
Vi vil derfor styrke heile læringskjeda, frå barnehage og skole til høgare utdanning og forsking, seier kunnskapsminister Torbjørn Røe Isaksen. /…/ Regjeringa bygger kunnskapssamfunnet, og det arbeidet startar allereie i barnehagen.
This pun does not work in Norwegian because the two meanings of chain it plays upon are represented by two unrelated words in Norwegian, kjede (string, series, concatenation) and lenke (enchain, tie, fetter, shackle, manacle).
Den nye PISA-undersøkelsen viser at vi har et realfagsproblem i Norge. Det bekymrer meg sterkt. Resultatene er rett og slett ikke gode nok, sier kunnskapsminister Torbjørn Røe Isaksen. (Kunnskapsdepartementet 2013)
The database Atekst covers the time period since 1945.
Realfagsproblem appears once in 1999 in an opinion piece where it refers to an expected shortage of realfag teachers.
Norske barn har svake ferdigheter innenfor telling og antall (Kunnskapsdepartementet 2014b).
Norske elever presterer under det internasjonale gjennomsnittet i naturfag og matematikk. Vi har også svært få elever som presterer på de høyeste nivåene. Dette er alvorlig når vi vet at matematikk er et av de fagene som har størst betydning for om elevene greier å fullføre videregående skole eller ikke, understreker Røe (Kunnskapsdepartementet 2014c)
37 prosent av. elevene som kom opp i skriftlig eksamen i matematikk på 10. trinn i fjor, fikk karakteren 1 eller 2. Samtidig vet vi at hvilken karakter elevene får i matematikk, er det som har størst betydning for om de greier å fullføre videregående skole eller ikke, sier kunnskapsministeren. (Kunnskapsdepartementet 2015d)
This summary is slightly adapted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes. The full story can—in English translation—be found on http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html
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Lange, T. Unpacking the Emperor’s New Policies: How More Mathematics in Early Childhood Will Save Norway. Can. J. Sci. Math. Techn. Educ. 19, 8–20 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42330-019-00041-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42330-019-00041-1