Educational change in Scotland: Policy, context and biography

The poor success rate of policy for curriculum change has been widely noted in the educational change literature. Part of the problem lies in the complexity of schools, as policymakers have proven unable to micromanage the multifarious range of factors that impact upon the implementation of policy. This paper draws upon empirical data from a local authority-led initiative to implement Scotland’s new national curriculum. It offers a set of conceptual tools derived from critical realism (particularly the work of Margaret Archer), which offer significant potential in allowing us to develop greater understanding of the complexities of educational change. Archer’s social theory developed as a means of explaining change and continuity in social settings. As schools and other educational institutions are complex social organisations, critical realism offers us epistemological tools for tracking the ebbs and flows of change cycles over time, presenting the means for mapping the multifarious networks and assemblages that form their basis

Levels and equivalence in credit and qualifications frameworks: Contrasting the prescribed and enacted curriculum in school and college

Drawing on data from an empirical study of three matched subjects in upper secondary school and further education college in Scotland, this article explores some of the factors that result in differences emerging from the translation of the prescribed curriculum into the enacted curriculum. We argue that these differences raise important questions about equivalences which are being promoted through the development of credit and qualifications frameworks. The article suggests that the standardisation associated with the development of a rational credit and qualifications framework and an outcomes-based prescribed curriculum cannot be achieved precisely because of the multiplicity that emerges from the practices of translation