The Ideal Learner as Envisioned by Can Do Statements and Grammar Revisions: How Textbook Agency Is Constructed

Abstract

In this chapter, we analyse the features of textbooks that enable and facilitate their role as material agents in the classroom. Rather than analyse the ways textbooks are used in interaction with humans, we analyse the elements in the textbook itself that facilitate intra-action and the ensuing material agency. Based on a discursive analysis of self-assessment in one textbook and discussing that construct against the Finnish national core curriculum and previous research, we present an ‘ideal imaginary’ of classroom activities as construed in the textbook. This helps us understand the textbooks in their pedagogical ergonomics; i.e. as socio-material in the classroom. We conclude by discussing the ideological nature of the textbooks not only as describing, but materially constructing a learner agency that understands learning both as constructivist and behaviourist. This merging of pedagogic ideals promotes a particular kind of disciplined behaviour to the extent that learner behaviour and learning are inseparably intertwined.

Introduction

In this chapter, we analyse the material agency (Canagarajah, 2018) that textbooks may possess as non-human agents in the classroom. Based on a discursive analysis of self-assessment in one textbook, we present an ‘ideal imaginary’ of learner and learning as construed in the textbook and discuss the elements in the textbook that facilitate this ideal. As this chapter focuses on the discursive analysis of textbooks and curricula, we do not analyse classroom dynamics and classroom inter/intra-action. However, we find that our analysis helps us understand the role of textbooks in their “pedagogical ergonomics”, i.e. the socio-material human-object engagements in the classroom, which can include social, material, or cognitive elements (Guerrettaz, 2021, 44–46). In other words, the textbook is not just about the cognitive (what to learn) but also about the social (how, where, and with whom do we do the learning) and the material (doing the learning with what is commonly understood as learning materials such as handouts, books, pens etc. but also with our bodies, chairs, desks, school spaces, etc). Thus, we analyse the textbook not merely from the point of view of their cognitive contents but also from the perspective of the kind of social and material activity they facilitate or restrict.

We chose textbooks and teachers’ guides as our data because of their significant role in language classrooms in the comprehensive school in general (Canale, 2021) and in Finland in particular (Luukka et al., 2008). Assessment, as our analytical focus, presents us with an example of a technology of governance that supports a particular kind of learner agency and consequently a particular image of an ideal learner. In our analysis, textbooks act as a meeting point of curriculum goals and pedagogical practises, and as examples of a hidden curriculum, representing the norms and values of the society, such as for instance gender representations (Lee, 2014), culture (Tajeddin & Teimournezhad, 2015), or political ideologies (Jalalian Daghigh & Abdul Rahim, 2021). Focusing further on self-assessment, we analyse the ways in which material tasks, exercises, activities, and tests proposed in the textbook construe a representation of the expected agency of the learner.

Assessment is among key activities in the curriculum, as well as an integral activity in all education so much so that reference is often made to learning, teaching, and assessing as the three main aspects of language education. The well-documented tension between the purposes of assessment as development and control is present also in textbook assessment, as the summative and formative types alternate in the textbook tasks. High stakes tests such as the Finnish Matriculation examination (see Huhta & Boivin, Chap. 3, this volume) have been analysed and criticised from the perspectives of student aptitude and students’ socioeconomic backgrounds (see Vanttaja, 2002 for an extensive discussion). However, classroom assessments are less commonly understood as possessing a gatekeeper function. Such analyses are important because, in school contexts, assessment results in technologies of governance, or of “governing a school population by convenient means” (Meadmore, 2006, p.9).

We take our data from one English e-textbook and teachers’ guide for basic (comprehensive) education, and the latest Finnish National Core Curriculum (NCC, 2014; FNAE, 2020) for comprehensive school. This results in an intertwined “mutual entailment” (Toohey, 2018, p. 3) of the social and the material in the textbook and teachers’ materials, forming a “mutual constitution of entangled agencies” (Barad, 2007, p. 33). In other words, self-assessment in the textbook and teacher’s guide, and as presented in the National Core Curriculum, provide us with an entry point into analysing and interpreting the ways in which some learner activities are construed as materially, socially, and cognitively valuable.

The Potential Material Agency of / in Textbooks and Curriculum and the Learning Ideals Presented by Assessment

Textbooks are an integral part of school contexts that have implications for pedagogy and curriculum. They embed “cultural and social knowledge, historical perspectives and political ideologies” (Curdt-Christiansen & Weninger, 2015, p. 1), and have for long represented an understanding of what constitutes societally legitimate knowledge in education (Curiel & Durán, 2021). Additionally, they have participated in the extramural commodification of education (Kauppinen et al., 2008). Textbooks are extensively researched compared to other materials or artefacts used in the classroom and for learning (Guerrettaz, 2021). What we intend to do here is a socio-material reading of the social, material, and cognitive elements in the textbook that promote particular kinds of learner activities by providing structure around classroom activities (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013). In this, the books present an imaginary or ideal way of learning, operationalizing answers and behaviour that are presented as desired in the assessment section of the National Core Curriculum (NCC, 2014; FNAE, 2020).

Textbooks and Their Potential for Enacting Agency

Studies of textbooks tend to conceptualise textbooks as material objects: they are used by students (for instance Kauppinen et al., 2008 on Finnish textbooks; Bikowski & Casal, 2018 on digital textbooks) or studied as cultural artefacts or repositories (see Weninger, 2021 for a review). Rather than being mere objects in this binary relationship, however, textbooks are also a didactic genre that can strongly guide pupils’ engagement (Weninger, 2021). Weninger discusses textbooks as representation vs. textbooks as interaction and goes on to suggest that any critical textbook analysis should take into account the “ideological nature of meaning-making by examining the interplay of multimodal representations, the interactive meaning of textbooks’ multimodal material as well as the pedagogic-didactic frame within which learners encounter them” (p. 133). In other words, the form and content of textbooks cannot be separated from the larger educational and curricular contexts, and neither textbooks nor these contexts are ideologically neutral.

Textbooks have also been studied from the perspective of socialising students into particular ideologies or affecting the ways in which students work. In this sense, they have also been assigned some kind of agency. Canale (2021), summarising main points from a special issue on language textbooks in Language, Culture and Education, states that a “deeper articulation between representation, interaction and learning is needed to further explore the dynamics of structural and situated power and agency in language textbook studies. (p. 204)”.

Bori (2021) and Curdt-Christiansen (2021) approach textbooks as framing and shaping learners’ social identities (see Canale, 2021). Bori (2021), in further discussing textbooks as “self-responsibilization” (p. 12) finds that textbooks play an important role in “modelling the students’ conduct to discipline themselves according to the neoliberal principles of flexibility, competition and self-responsibility”. For Canale, all this means that textbook characters ‘behave’ in a particular way and that the textbook ‘talks’ or addresses readers and learners (Canale, 2021, p. 202); again, indicating agency assigned to the textbooks.

According to Kauppinen et al. (2008), textbooks tend to direct students to work alone (p. 229); they conceptualise language as separate skills to be learned (p. 228–229); and they put the teacher in a challenging position of having to develop their pedagogical practices and draft new material (p. 229). Even with local curricula that have been designed with the intention to bridge the gap between the national frame and existing local practises, their nature and level of detail vary greatly.

There is also an apparent difference between print and digital textbooks when it comes to learner agency. Tossavainen (2019) criticises traditional (print) textbooks for their linearity. While they are undoubtedly designed to be adapted to different needs and uses, in the end they are “designed to adapt to match prevalent teaching methods” and do not challenge teachers or learners to take up new teaching and study cultures (p. 158–159).

In an extensive review on digital textbooks, Bikowski and Casal (2018) found that students may consider digital textbooks challenging for learning, for reasons also discussed by Tossavainen, and may, in fact, prefer print texts. Bikowski and Casal also suggest that students recognize the “human-like roles played by their devices”, which supports Thorne’s (2016) view of the difficulty of conceptualizing artefacts and humans as distinctly independent from one another (p. 131) (see also Jakonen & Jauni, Chap. 2, this volume ; Muhonen & Vaarala, Chap. 4, this volume). However, in Thorne’s review of digital learning environments (2016), few studies found that students saw digital devices as occupying personalised roles in learning environments. This may be due to the devices in most studies being computers rather than mobile devices or applications, which seem to be more likely to be perceived as having distributed agency, i.e. as being both humans and artefacts (see also Jakonen & Jauni, Chap. 2, this volume; Huhta & Boivin, Chap. 3, this volume). It seems that as learning technologies (especially mobile applications) become more interactive and engaging, their users tend to assign personality in addition to agency to their devices (Bikowski & Casal, 2018, p. 131). In our data from a desktop e-book, we focus on the ways in which the learners, teachers, and curriculum contents are being discursively represented as having agency.

New Materialism, Textbooks, and Agency

Instead of analysing textbooks as objects in Finnish teacher-centered “foreign language” classrooms (Salo, 2006; Luukka et al., 2008), we analyse the ways in which agency is materially constructed (Fox & Alldred, 2019). We want to challenge the traditional boundary making between humans and non-humans and analyse textbooks as parts of an assemblage (Fox & Alldred, 2015; Toohey, 2018) of the discursive and the material, the human and the non-human, the animate and the inanimate. The premise of this socio-material approach (Fenwick, 2015) is that there are “no clear, inherent distinctions between social phenomena and materiality” but everyday practises are constituted through “entangled social and material forces that continuously assemble and reassemble” (p. 83). In the “pedagogical ergonomics” (Guerrettaz, 2021) of the classroom, textbooks have agency in socio-materially construing ideal learner and learning both systematically and unpredictably. This agency emerges in the socio-material assemblages in the classroom. Following Miller (2016, p. 205, cited in Toohey, 2018, p. 32), agency is not located in people or other entities, but is “afforded through connections between the assembled beings”, resembling Thorne’s concept of distributed agency where artefacts and humans “create particular morphologies of action” (2016, p. 189).

Assuming agency versus analysing it as emerging in an assemblage of human and non-human means that the ontological and epistemological in our research is interwoven and entangled: We cannot distinguish the (ontological) “what is” from the (epistemological) “how we know it”. Barad (2007, p. 135–136) uses the concept intra-activity to illustrate the coming together (rather than seeing as separate entities) of the “mutual constitution of entangled agencies” (Barad, 2007, p. 33), or more concretely the matters and constructs of, in this case, textbooks, learners, teachers, and assessment as a curricular concept. Instead of looking at the learner and teacher as subjects and the book as an object of study in their interaction, we attempt to see their intra-relationship. By observing textbook agency as emerging in intra-action (Barad, 2007) of textbook, curriculum, teacher, and learner, rather than assuming a human agency over non-human matter, we attempt to make the familiar unfamiliar or to “queer the familiar” (Barad, 2007; Kleinmann, 2012, p. 77) understanding of textbook agency. We thus aim at unpacking the rather arbitrary ways in which the distinction of humans and non-humans is construed in our field in general and in textbook research in particular. In this chapter, we focus on the properties of the textbook that enable participation in these assemblages and facilitate its agency.

Finnish Core Curriculum Reflecting Language and Learning Ideals

Textbooks are expected to follow the National Core Curriculum. This may, however, prove to be challenging. Salo (2006, p. 250), studying Finnish textbooks, criticises them for often leaving the pedagogical or communicative goal unclear, and for including exercises that remain decontextualised or unconnected on the sentence level. Further, Guerrettaz and Johnston (2013) state, citing Tsui (2003), that while more experienced teachers tend to use a variety of different materials, less experienced ones tend to rely more heavily on textbooks “as curricular guide” (p. 780).

The National Core Curriculum (NCC, 2014) for comprehensive education is a core curriculum that sees languages as having an all-encompassing presence. Although multilingualism, including the appreciation of multiple languages and cultures to support all learners’ identities and participation in the society, represents a core value in the curriculum, it has not been pedagogically clarified and explicated in the document (NCC, 2014; Ennser-Kananen et al., 2021). The same applies to assessment, as an operationalisation of curricular learning goals. Decisions about the format and timing of assessments, for example, are left to the teacher (see e.g., Luukka et al., 2008; Tarnanen & Huhta, 2011). Assessment has a specific role in the curriculum, discussed when the different subjects and their content and targets are described. However, the terminology used in the pre-2020 version of the chapter on assessment in the NCC (2014) was somewhat confusing regarding different purposes of assessment, which may have increased teachers’ uncertainty about it. The starting point in the account on assessment in the core curriculum is the national legislation of education. Section 22 of the Basic Education Act states that “[t]he aim of pupil assessment is to guide and encourage learning and to develop the pupil’s capability for self-assessment. The pupil’s learning, work and behaviour shall be variously assessed.” In other words, the learner is presented as developing agency during the learning process, particularly when it comes to self-assessment abilities. This reflects an understanding of the pupil as an active subject rather than a passive object of teaching activities.

The current National Core Curriculum (NCC, 2014) considers the development of learners’ ability to evaluate their learning as one of the key goals of education, also in so-called foreign languages. More specifically, when elaborating the learning targets for English, the NCC places self-assessment ability among Language learning skills (p. 398). Other language learning skills defined in the curriculum include the ability to set targets for one’s own learning and becoming prepared for lifelong learning. Clearly, self-assessment in the NCC (2014) is envisaged to contribute to students’ ability to engage in lifelong learning. In general, lifelong learning is referred to as an important overall goal of education in a number of places in the core curriculum and for several different subjects, linking language education to the larger European language education policy frame (Beacco, 2007).

In its emphasis on lifelong learning, the Finnish National Core Curriculum (2014) echoes wider European and world-wide educational discourses. Internationally, the conceptualisations of lifelong learning appear to have moved from seeing it intertwined with humanistic ideals in the 1960 and 1970s to considering it mostly from (neoliberal) economic perspectives (Olssen, 2006) as a way to address issues like unemployment and slow economic development (Volles, 2016). Ideals of multilingualism, in a similar vein, include values of celebrated individual and societal knowledges, but also commodifiable skills required in the labour market and economy (Beacco, 2007; Pérez-Milans, 2015). As far as the curricula for “foreign” (vieraat kielet, as it is framed in the Curriculum) language education in Finland are concerned, they are clearly rooted in the work of the Council of Europe that has promoted language learning (and self-assessment as one aspect of it; see Oscarson, 2014) as a way to increase dialogue and understanding between European countries. Assessment and testing of students further operationalise these goals into desired activities.

Research Questions and Methodology

We explore the idea of agency discursively and materially enacted (Barad, 2007) in the assemblage, rather than between the book and the person holding it. This, to us, represents something of a hypothesis that taking another viewpoint to textbooks would enable a different understanding of the role that the textbook plays in the in the pedagogical ergonomics of the classroom, i.e. that a new agential cut would emerge (Barad, 2007; see Toohey, 2018 for a discussion). How we make our cuts in our research has a profound effect on how we study them. In the case of our chapter, assuming human (learner or teacher) agency over non-human (curriculum or textbook) would work to reinforce old agential cuts. Instead, we examine a perspective where the agential cut of a textbook could be found “inside” the assemblage (i.e. in the ways in which agency is construed in intra-action of humans and non-humans), rather than “outside” of a book or in the “interface” of book and teacher/student (i.e. book used by someone, in someone’s hands, in a classroom). For us, this is an analytical exercise in that we do not have empirical access to actual classroom data of teacher-learner-curriculum-book assemblage. Rather, we analyse the phenomenon from the perspective of different subject and object positions assigned to the human and non-human participants in this assemblage (see section on methods for a more detailed description below). We understand that our approach also implies assumptions of agency being “located” somewhere; in our case in the intra-action of textbook, curriculum, learner, and teacher. However, we aim to understand more deeply if and how this change of viewpoint may change the way in which we view the socio-material agency of textbooks in the pedagogical ergonomy of classrooms.

Research Questions

Based on previous research by the first author (Saarinen, 2005, 2015), we know that macro level political concepts and goals tend to be discursively operationalised into activities that are presented as doable, but consequently also as valuable and desired. This, however, is ultimately a very linear approach that, while acknowledging the dynamics of policy goals (such as those presented in the National Core Curriculum, 2014) also assumes that (education) policy is a top-down process.

In this chapter, we analyse the features of textbooks that enable and facilitate their role as material agents in the classroom. We are particularly interested in how assessment goals make ideals of learner and learning visible and what the implications of this are for textbook agency. We understand our main question as consisting of the following sub questions:

• What kind of ideal learning and learner behavior do the national core curriculum, textbooks and teacher’s guides promote?

• How is language learning understood as a consequence of the conceptualisations and operationalisations of self-assessment?

• What kind of agency do the curriculum, textbook and teacher’s guide assessment sections facilitate?

Method

In order to be able to conduct the analysis, we employ a discursive agency approach (DAA) of the textbook, i.e. an analysis of the ways in which agency is being sought and legitimised by discursive means (Leipold & Winkel, 2017). We wish to demonstrate how and what kind of agency materialises in this particular case of a new lower secondary English textbook, providing an analytical heuristic to illustrate enactment of agency in our context.

Basing their discussion on Rabinow (1984), Leipold and Winkel (2017) discuss the process of agency enactment from the perspective of subject positions and the role of discourses offering subject positions; meaning that subjects (and their agency) are “effects of discourses” (Leipold & Winkel, 2017, p. 512). We use this approach to understand how textbook discourses offer “subject positions” that are derived from Michel Foucault’s work (Leipold & Winkel, 2017, p. 513, discussing Keller 2012); i.e. how they offer a particular reading of what the desired activity of the learner and teacher is in relation to the curriculum goals. The subject positions may be realised as

• 1. an active subject (observing/ judging position; for instance presenting the teacher as observing or expecting a particular action);

• 2. an observed/passive subject (disciplined/subordinated; for instance learner presented as expected to behave in a particular disciplined way); or

• 3. as agent / performing self (for instance as learner presented as taking active role in own learning).

This framing will guide our critical discourse analysis of the curriculum, the assessment description and the two self-evaluation tasks. Our analysis will focus on the elements in the textbook that facilitate the agency of the book in constructing ideal learners and ideal learning.

Data

Our primary data is (1) the National Core Curriculum (NCC, 2014; FNAE, 2020) and (2) a new textbook series (including teachers’ guides) for English as the first foreign language in lower secondary (grades 7–9) (Banfield et al., 2018).

The national core curriculum (NCC, 2014) was accepted in 2014 and took effect in 2016, and its assessment section was revised in 2020 (FNAE, 2020). The learning and learner behavior goals for assessment in the 2014 comprehensive school core curriculum and specifically the revised chapter on assessment (FNAE, 2020) will be analysed. The textbook and teacher’s guide are available both as a print and digital version. The book series is a new one for grades 7–9, specifically designed based on the new curriculum. Specifically, we chose the teachers’ guide one-page description of assessment; one pupil self-evaluation task (How am I doing) from the textbook for the 7th grade, and one pupil self-evaluation form from the teacher’s guide.

Analysis: Ideal Learner and Ideal Learning as Construed in Curriculum and Textbook

In this section, we present our analysis of the curriculum and textbook tasks, starting with our examination of the National Core Curriculum from the perspective of how ideal learner and learning are presented. From there, we move on to discussing the operationalisation of these goals into textbook assessment practises and their implications to learning.

Learner and Teacher Agency in the National Core Curriculum

According to the National Core Curriculum (NCC, 2014; FNAE, 2020), the main purpose of assessment across disciplines is to promote learning. The core curriculum further states that assessment and feedback based on assessment are the teachers’ pedagogical means to support learners’ development and learning. The main characteristics of the assessment culture that the schools should develop are (p. 46; our translation and emphasis):

• an atmosphere that encourages learners to try their best;

• interactive assessment practices that promote inclusion and discussion;

• practices that help learners to understand their learning process and make progress visible throughout the process;

• fairness and ethicality;

• varied nature of assessment;

• use of assessment information in the planning of teaching and other activities in the school.

The statement in the core curriculum that the main purpose of assessment is to promote learning is interesting in at least three respects. First, it implies that assessment can, and should, impact learners and their learning in a positive way. The core curriculum describes some features of assessment that are likely to help assessment achieve this impact by referring to the feedback that teachers give to specific features of assessment (e.g. variation and interaction; see the above points listed), and to certain overall characteristics such as positive atmosphere and fairness, stressing the role of the teacher as an active subject. The core curriculum does not elaborate the impact further, which leaves the practical implementation to the teachers. This is very much in the spirit of formal decentralisation of education policy making and image of teacher autonomy that characterise the Finnish education policy (see Simola et al., 2017 for a critical discussion of the Finnish educational system). The impact of assessment on learning is still a rather poorly understood matter (see e.g. review by Cheng, 2014). What is known about it, however, suggests that it is difficult to predict and likely to depend on many factors such as the purpose and method of assessment, learners’ age, proficiency and beliefs about learning and assessment, and the teacher (e.g. what feedback they give and how).

The second point worth noting in the national core curriculum’s (NCC, 2014) description is that it does not distinguish between different purposes of assessment (see e.g. Nguyen’s, 2021, classification). The explicit purpose of formative assessment is to provide both teachers and learners with information that helps them to teach and learn more and more effectively, and there is evidence that it can increase learning outcomes (Cheng, 2014). In contrast, the other common use of assessment information in the school, the summative purpose, may be less suitable for improving learning. Failure to do well on summative assessments may in fact demotivate and discourage some learners and, thus, have a negative impact on their learning (Cheng, 2014).

This brings us to the third point of interest in the core curriculum description, namely that assessment is assumed to have an impact not only on learning (i.e. increasing learners’ language skills) but also on the learners’ perception of themselves, on their motivation, and on their ability to understand how they learn. These goals of assessment obviously relate to learner agency.

The goals echo well-known views on what makes teaching and feedback effective such as the ones proposed by Hattie and Timperley (2007) who stress the importance of aligning learning goals, assessment, and feedback. Teachers should ensure that learners know the goals and criteria. Self-assessment and learning to do this are considered an important part of learning: self-assessment ability seems to be a goal of learning in itself but it is obviously a way to “help learners to understand their learning process” (see above data example). Peer-assessment and practising giving feedback are also encouraged and regarded as a way for the learners to become aware of and understand their own development and how they can have an impact on their own learning and success at school. Thus, both self-assessment and peer-assessment can be seen as means to increase learner agency, if implemented in ways that actually enable learners to have such agency during the self/peer-assessment tasks and assuming that such exercises increase their agency more generally in their studies and also in their life out of the school.

According to the NCC (2014), assessment covers learning, working practices / working skills (työskentely / työskentelytaidot), and behavior (käyttäytyminen). For the assessment of behavior, the core curriculum states that the student’s personality, temperament, and other personal characteristics are not to be assessed.

The section on assessment in the NCC (2014) divided assessment into final assessment that takes place at the end of grade 9 and assessment that is carried out during the studies prior to the final assessment. The latter was further divided into assessment that happens during the term or year, and assessment at the end of the term or year. These correspond to formative and summative assessment respectively, but were not named as such in the original 2014 curriculum. The recent revision of the section on assessment (FNAE, 2020) clarifies this and refers to formative and summative assessment explicitly as the two complementary purposes of assessment at school (FNAE, 2020, p. 2; our translation):

The purpose of assessment is to

• steer and support studying and develop the pupil’s self-evaluation skills (formative assessment) and

• define to which extent the pupil has achieved the subject-specific goals (summative assessment).

The lack of clarity regarding the assessment purposes in the NCC (2014) may have contributed to confusion among the teachers about what kind of assessment (and consequently learning) the curriculum actually promotes. We lack systematic research on this but it may be that what assessment means for many teachers and students in the lower secondary school (years 7 to 9) relates more closely to summative rather than formative assessment. This interpretation is supported by the findings of the large-scale survey of pedagogical practices in that level of education in the 2000s (Luukka et al., 2008; Tarnanen & Huhta, 2011) which found that language teachers did most of their assessments at the end of courses or terms. Since summative assessment and grade-giving takes place at those points, the most visible types of assessments, at least, are likely to concern summative rather than formative assessment. Since grade-giving is the core element of summative assessment in Finnish school-system, it seems justified to say that teachers in Finland are very concerned about summative assessment, perhaps at the expense of formative assessment (see e.g. Tarnanen & Huhta, 2011).

The question of learner temperament and personality (not to be evaluated) versus learning styles and behavior (to be assessed) seems to be a fine line in the curriculum. In order to link the general curricular goals related to learner and teacher agency, we will next look at assessment in one seventh grade textbook.

Assessment and Self-Assessment in the Scene Textbook and Teacher’s Guide

As seen above, the curriculum presents an ideal of learner and teacher agency, but does not operationalise that agency in any particular way. How does the ideal learner agency emerge in a language textbook? We will first analyse the definitions and characteristics of assessment in the textbook teacher’s guide and then move on to analyse two learner self-assessment tasks in the book.

Assessment Description in Scene Textbook

The teacher’s guide of the Scene textbook series contains a two-page description of the assessment instruments included in the series and of how the materials themselves (e.g., activities, exercises) can be used for assessment purposes (see the English translation in Table 9.1). The description is divided into an introductory sentence and three sections.

Table 9.1 Scene 1 Digital material for the teacher on assessment (our translation). The description is based on the National Board of Education language portfolio site and the NCC (2014)

The introduction of the assessment instructions (Table 9.1) states that the assessment materials in Scene cover the language skills in a comprehensive way (our translation) and that they take the need to individualise assessments into account as well as the goals related to communication and knowledge of the target language countries and cultures. In this sense, the book introduction refers to the cognitive aspects of learning particular skills.

The first section, Digital tests and modifiable Word tests, describes how the teacher can compile their digital and printable tests from the tests included in the digital version of the textbook. The digital tests can be created and administered through the online platform provided by the publisher of the textbook, whereas the tests submitted to teacher as Word files can first be compiled in the digital platform and then printed out to be handed to the pupils. The areas covered by the tests are referred to by using the traditional categories of vocabulary, grammar, writing, reading, listening and speaking (speaking test is only available in modifiable test version). The test formats are also listed and include the multiple choice, drag-and-drop, short-answer, and open-ended text production formats. The digital version is explained to be able to score the closed task formats automatically (e.g., multiple choice) and provide the short-answer questions with model answers for the human scorer.

What is striking about these template assessments is that they leave out possibilities for more personal and often quite material aspects of knowledge construction in the pedagogical ergonomics such as classroom interaction (see Jakonen & Jauni, Chap. 2, this volume; Muhonen & Vaarala, Chap. 4, this volume), knowledge construction, interests, or personal repertoires (see Dufva, Chap. 5, this volume). The ideal learner is one who picks the correct answers in a way that is easy to evaluate, which also limits the learner’s degree of agency when it comes to assessment.

Two points are worth noting in the description of the tests in the Scene teacher’s guide. First, the guide is ambiguous as to the purpose for which the tests are intended to be used. Since the scope and length of each test probably varies, it is likely that the tests can be used both formatively and summatively. However, it is more likely that they are used mainly summatively given that test-like assessment approaches are the most common approach when teachers give their final summative grades in language subjects in year nine (Luukka et al., 2008). This implies a summative assessment agency for the textbook.

The second point of note is that the focus in this section is on the teacher; the teacher’s guide does not clarify if the pupils have any role in scoring the tests, particularly the responses to short-answer questions that the system cannot mark automatically. At least for formative uses of these tests, this could be a viable alternative to the teacher-based scoring. In sum, combined with the textbook centered tradition and the role of summative testing in the 9th grade (Luukka et al., 2008), the textbook has a particular kind of agency that seems to promote summative testing, with the teacher rather than the learner having an active role.

The second section on assessment in the teacher’s guide is titled Self-assessment and peer-assessment. It is a very brief section but claims that the Scene series encourages the teacher to use both self- and peer-assessment in their assessments. It further describes that self- and peer-assessment are integrated into many exercises found in the materials to make them easier for the pupils and that the digital materials include a number of forms for these types of assessment.

The third and final part of the guide on assessment is called the Language portfolio and is much more detailed than the other parts covering about half of the space. This is in many ways the most interesting part of these suggestions to teachers on assessment. The text makes explicit reference to the emphasis in the National Curriculum on assessment that supports learning and presents the argument that the language portfolio is a very appropriate approach in this regard (the FNAE’s language portfolio website is also mentioned as a source of this information; https://www.oph.fi/fi/koulutus-ja-tutkinnot/eurooppalainen-kielisalkku). Furthermore, the text stresses how useful the portfolio is for training self-assessment, a key target of language education as we noted above. The portfolio is also said to help in peer-assessment. The description then goes on to offer more detailed information about the types of portfolio and the materials in the Scene series that can be used in the portfolio, including several self and peer-assessment forms. While the language portfolio in itself offers a lot of possibilities for learner agency, its practical application is left open.

Analysis of Two Self-Assessment Tasks in the Scene Materials

In this section, we discuss two self-assessment tasks from the Scene 7th grade textbook. The first one is located in the text section and invites pupils to self-assess their learning in the chapter; the second one stems from the teachers’ guide and provides the pupils with tools for self-assessment. Analysing the learner – teacher – textbook – curriculum assemblage, we examine the ways in which the different material actors (equipment, tasks, pupils, teachers, peers, language, home) come together with curriculum and teacher’s guide assessment goals in this section of the book.

The first self-assessment task is an example from the textbook section on families and relatives. The left side of Fig. 9.1 consists of listening to the designated lesson text (1), drawing a family tree (2), and engaging in a Show and Tell activity (3). The right hand side shows a self-assessment task titled How am I doing? This section includes two statements, where the pupil is instructed to “choose the most appropriate option” from a drop down menu (Valitse sinulle sopivin vaihtoehto) on a four step scale between “I Can do very well” (Osaan erittäin hyvin) to “I still need to practise” (Tarvitsen vielä harjoitusta). The statements are “I can talk in English about my family and other relatives” (Osaan kertoa englanniksi perheestäni ja muista sukulaisistani) and “I can ask my friend how s/he is doing” (Osaan kysellä englanniksi ystäväni vointia).

Fig. 9.1

“How am I doing”? Self-evaluation of the textbook chapter on family and relatives

The How am I doing tasks seem to represent a communicative view of language, emphasizing the goals of telling about family and asking about how friends are doing. The choices for replies seem to echo the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference; Council of Europe, 2020) Can do statements both in their formulation (“I can talk about my family…”) and the choices for replies (I can do this well / I still need practise). The self-assessment tasks echo the curriculum goals related to language learning skills, particularly those that concern learning to set goals for one’s language learning and learning to evaluate how one studies language. On the other hand, Can do is also not just about what the learner knows but also a subtext of what they still do not know. It reflects on the curricular concepts of self-assessment of language learning goals and study practices; development of self-assessment skills are part of a formative assessment scheme that is not intended to have an effect on the final grade.

In essence, the test extract presents the pupil as active in reflecting on their learning, and fades out the teacher. The exercise is digital, i.e. it can be done on the computer by clicking on the appropriate choice. The view of language is mainly communicative; the view of learning constructivist, and the teacher is mostly absent from the assemblage of book – pupil – curriculum.

The second self-assessment task (Fig. 9.2) is found at the assessment section of the Scene Teacher’s guide that also includes description of assessment principles in the book (see Table 9.1). It is a simple printable pdf format grid that lists about a dozen activities, divided into two groups, and requests the pupil to evaluate their behavior on a three-point scale where the scale steps are defined by using three kinds of smileys (a glad, neutral and sad one). The two kinds of activities can be characterised as working skills and behavior on the one hand, and as language learning related activities on the other. The first set is somewhat longer with eight statements, such as I do my homework every time, I raise my hand in the lessons, and I listen to my peers. The second set comprises five statements focusing on the homework, i.e. I study the text at home, I study the words given to us as homework, and I study irregular verbs at home.

Fig. 9.2

Self-assessment grid (original on the left, with our translation on the right)

While, grammatically, the activity is presented as pupil-centered (first person singular I do, I have, I participate etc.), the pupil is still described as one who follows orders and is subject to behavior control, presented mainly in / by the book (I have my study equipment with me) or as if the instructions were given by the teacher (I listen to the teacher’s instructions). Rather than an active subject, this presents the learner as an observed or passive agent (see Leipold & Winkel, 2017), whose behavior is controlled, and implicitly disciplined and subordinated.

The need for the student to be disciplined is exemplified by self-assessment tasks that link the test to curricular goals of behavior in a way that emphasises the need to follow rules and control behavior. The message that the textbook sends to pupils in this passage can be summarised as check that you have your equipment, check that you have done your homework, do not speak without permission. Interestingly, the pupil doing self-assessment is presented as needing to listen to the teacher (I listen to the teacher’s instructions) and to fellow pupils (I listen to my partner), but not to actively speak, which is restricted rather than encouraged. I put my hand up in class can refer either to being active in class (preparing to speak), or being obedient (asking for permission before participating). Either way, it is a way of passivising the pupil and regulating behavior physically.

Learning in the self-evaluation grid is represented as behaviourist repetition that takes place in a continuum of doing one’s homework (presumably before class), participating in an orderly manner and speaking with permission (in class), and learning particular kinds of tasks at home (after class).

The view of language is that of language as separate individual categories that are practised apparently separately and drilled before and after class as homework (I revise grammar, I study irregular verbs). The role of teacher is that of a supervisor (I listen to the teacher’s instructions) or controller by implication (I put my hand up in class, implying asking the teacher for permission to speak).

We would like to emphasise here, though, that this is not an analysis of the textbook itself or the tasks in it, but rather what is offered for the teacher as aid in pupils’ self-evaluation. In other words, the analysis of how language is viewed is based on how it appears in self-evaluation. This implies that whatever the pupils are taught to do with the self-evaluation exercises is what they are assumed to be able to evaluate themselves on.

In addition to the verbal options, the self-assessment includes a set of smileys and frownies that depict the scale of the pupil’s self-assessment. While the one on the left is clearly a happy one, and the middle one somewhat neutral, the one on the right appears more ambiguous. It is obviously the “wrong” choice in this structural-behaviorist grid, representing possibly just general dissatisfaction, but possibly also unhappiness or even disgust. In any case, it seems that the curriculum goal of self-assessment becoming more analytical in the upper grades (see above) may result in a dissecting of learning, language and behavior in structural and behavioral goals that are easily identifiable (and possibly also easily internalised) by the student in smiley face self-assessment.

Discussion

Bringing together the analyses of the curricular goals, the textbook assessment descriptors and the two examples of textbook tests, we find different and somewhat contradicting understandings of textbook agency and its implications to learner activities emerging in this assemblage. While the book facilitates internalizing a particular kind of appropriate behavior and learning, the curriculum goals appear abstract and somewhat unclear, and the pupil and teacher are being represented as passive. This contradicts the curricular goals of learner subjectivity. While learning is presented in the textbook both as constructive (Can do statements) and structuralist (grammar revisions and other independent drilling), the desired behavior and activity of the pupil is presented as following rules, being disciplined and obedient, and doing independent work on the text and other tasks. Cognitively, the tasks promote constructivist learning, while socially and materially, the textbook facilitates repetitive and passive behavioral tasks.

The view of language in the Teacher’s guide section is that of language consisting of individual categories of “text”, “words”, “grammar”. From the agency viewpoint, the agency of the book-pupil-classroom assemblage results in a passive traditional building blocks view of language as separate skills that are easily testable. Doing all this in the first person singular format emphasises the idealised student as having internalised all this as a voluntary activity. In other words, the pupil’s agency is that of a passive, disciplined subject who is active when following the rules, making the textbook a technology for directing behavior (for a discussion of Foucault’s complex notion of governmentality as techniques directing human behavior, see Hutchinson & O’Malley, 2018). From the point of view of teacher agency, the “easily testable” structure of the tests may imply less work for the teacher in a way that does not assign agency either to teacher or to the pupil.

From our analysis of the curriculum, the teacher’s guide assessment descriptions, and the two self-assessment exercises, two phenomena emerge that cut across the more traditionally observed (see literature review above) pupil – book interface.

First, the book offers and enables an agency of an active learner, in charge of their learning, within a socio-constructivist paradigm of learning and language and in line with the curricular goals and teacher’s guide principles. However, the self-evaluation exercise in the teacher’s guide emphasises agency that emerges around discipline, repetition, and language divided into blocks rehearsed separately, demonstrating a structuralist-behaviorist paradigm of language and learning. The latter fits poorly with the ways in which language and learning are presented in the curriculum, and represents the role of the teacher in vague and abstract terms.

Our analysis reflects the layered nature of language education policy, where different language and learning paradigms materialise simultaneously rather than historically following each other, creating different and potentially conflicting (language and learning) ideological constellations and tensions (Saarinen et al., 2019). From the point of view of learner agency, the intra-action of book, curriculum and human actors creates contradictory and conflicting subject positions particularly for pupils that also have very material implications to the ideal behavior of the pupils.

The conflicting views of language and learning are matched by a conflicting view of subject and object positions, thus creating the dynamic possibility for different kinds of agencies to emerge. The textbook How am I doing task (Fig. 9.1) enacts agency mainly from the curricular goals, explicated particularly in the Language Portfolio section of the teacher guide. The second self-evaluation task, in turn, reflects a different kind of agency where the pupil performs to the teacher a particular kind of passive learner, reflected in the more teacher centered parts of the teacher’s guide assessment section.

From the point of view of an active learner ideal, this is concerning. The lifelong learning ideal is thus condensed either into someone who “can do”; i.e. someone who has internalised and can fulfil the requirements of an active citizen; or into someone who needs to internalise a (learner and language user) position of being observed and controlled, behaving in a subordinated way, and conceptualising language as separate skills to be learned.

We experimented with the idea of new agential cuts (Barad, 2007) by not analysing the book purely discursively, or purely as used in classroom, but by analysing the discursive features of the book that enable a socio-material analysis of the potential agency of the book in construing an ideal learner. This also implied considering the intertwined curricular and learning ideologies. The arbitrariness of the traditional Cartesian (human – non-human) cut and how we analyse “objects” and “subjects” started to materialise in the different and sometimes conflicting dynamics that emerged in our analysis: the textbook agency is not one but many.

The way in which we make these cuts indeed has a profound effect on how we can become aware of them in the first place, and how we consequently study them. While our research setting did not allow for an analysis of what physically takes place in classrooms and homework situations, our analysis showed the potential for learner positionings that go against the curriculum and textbook idealisations of constructivist learning. As the existing cuts and ensuing understandings of agency are deeply entrenched in our research culture, imagining new cuts also required a lot of effort. While it seems that the role of textbook as agent could be studied with other material methods, such as the actual ways in which the pupil – textbook interaction takes place (see for instance chapter by Jakonen & Jauni, Chap. 2, this volume) as well, the concept of new agential cuts was helpful in challenging the human centered epistemologies we are adapted to.

To what extent political arguments and perspectives supporting the importance of self-assessment and its role in lifelong learning have entered the educational discourses, curricula and textbooks for foreign languages would be a topic worth investigating in the future. The ideals of self-assessment as politically commodified and simultaneously empowering Can do statements on one hand, and as constraining behavioral control on the other, certainly meet in textbooks. However, this also implies an entanglement of the students’ bodies and the knowledge that they are expected to embody as a result of learning. This gives us a perspective to understanding the ideological role of textbooks as not only describing, but materially construing a learner agency. Consequently, the textbooks not only facilitate and promote different views of learning (as constructivist and behaviorist), but also a particular kind of disciplined social and material behavior to the extent that learner behavior and learning are inseparably intertwined.