307
TEORIE VĚDY / THEORY OF SCIENCE / XLI / 2019 / 2
////// tematické studie / thematic articles //////////////////////
HOW TO WRITE A PROOF:
PATTERNS OF JUSTIFICATION
IN STRATEGIC DOCUMENTS
FOR EDUCATIONAL REFORM
Abstract: Writing strategic documents is
a major practice of many actors striving
to see their educational ideas realised in
the curriculum. In these documents, arguments
are systematically developed to
create the legitimacy of a new educational
goal and competence to make claims
about it. Through a  qualitative analysis
of the writing strategies used in these
texts, I show how two of the main actors
in the Czech educational discourse have
developed a proof that a new educational
goal is needed. I draw on the connection
of the relational approach in the sociology
of education with Lyotard’s analytical
semantics of instances in the event. The
comparison of the writing strategies in
the two documents reveals differences
in the formation of a particular pattern
of justification. In one case the texts
function as a herald of pure reality, and
in the other case as a messenger of other
witnesses. This reveals different regimens
of proof, although both of them were written
as prescriptive directives – normative
models of the educational world.
Keywords: proof; justification; strategic
document; Lyotard; relational sociology
of education
Jak napsat důkaz: vzorce
ospravedlnění vzdělávacích
reforem ve strategických
dokumentech
Abstrakt: Psaní strategických dokumentů
je zásadní praxí mnoha aktérů
usilujících o to, aby jejich vzdělávací ideje
byly realizovány v  učebních osnovách.
V  těchto dokumentech jsou argumenty
systematicky rozvíjeny tak, aby se vytvořila
jak legitimita nového vzdělávacího
cíle, tak i kompetence těch, kteří tyto cíle
prosazují. Na kvalitativní analýze strategií
psaní použitých v textech tohoto druhu
ukazuji, jak dva hlavní aktéři českého
vzdělávacího diskurzu vytvořili důkaz,
že je zapotřebí nový vzdělávací cíl. Studie
vychází ze spojení relacionistické sociologie
vzdělávání s Lyotardovou analytickou
sémantikou pozic v  určité události.
Porovnání strategií psaní ve dvou dokumentech
odhaluje rozdíly ve  formování
konkrétního vzorce ospravedlnění. V jednom
případě text funguje jako ohlašovatel
čisté reality a v druhém případě jako posel
jiných svědků. Studie odhaluje různé režimy
dokazování v těchto dokumentech,
ačkoli oba byly psány jako preskriptivní
směrnice – normativní modely vzdělávacího
světa.
Klíčová slova: důkaz; ospravedlnění;
strategický dokument; Lyotard;
relacionistická sociologie vzdělávání
JITKA WIRTHOVÁ
Department of Sociology, Institute of Sociological Studies
Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University
U Kříže 8, 158 00 Prague 5-Jinonice
email / jitka.wirthova@fsv.cuni.cz
This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
308
Jitka Wirthová
Introduction
It has often been supposed that the legitimacy of change in an educational
system is developed by unequivocal arguments and proofs posed by transparent
actors and written in law-like documents. But the contemporary
studies of the formation of legitimacy embedded in the sociology of educational
and policy knowledge point to a rather different portrayal of the
landscape of maintaining legitimacy; a significant body of literature, for
example, deals with the coming of new non-transparent actors or networks,1
with the transnationalisation or Europeanisation of policy knowledge that
surpasses local knowledge,2
and with shifts in the space/place of the formation
of legitimacy in education.3
However valuable this attention to these relationships
between actor, knowledge, and space/place may have been, what
has not yet received much scrutiny4
yy is the actual way in which actors develop
and use their knowledge and become competent actors in policymaking
through one of their main practices – the production of a textual document.
Traditionally, the issue of knowledge and symbolic forms is a matter of critical
discourse analysis.5
While many valuable critical studies rest upon the
division of isolated actors on the one hand and isolated discursive strategies
1
Stephen J. Ball, “New Philanthropy, New Networks and New Governance in Education,”
Political Studies 56, no. 4 (2008): 747–65; Sofia Viseu and Luís Miguel Carvalho, “Think Tanks,
Policy Networks and Education Governance: The Emergence of New Intra-National Spaces of
Policy in Portugal,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 26, no. 108 (2018): 1–26.
2
Andreas Nordin and Daniel Sundberg, Transnational Policy Flows in European Education:
The Making and Governing of Knowledge in the Education Policy Field (Oxford: Symposiumd
Books, 2014); Tara Fenwick, Eric Mangez, and Jenny Ozga, Governing Knowledge: Comparison,
Knowledge-Based Technologies and Expertise in the Regulation of Education (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2014).
3
Bob Lingard, “Reforming Education: The Spaces and Places of Education Policy and
Learning,” in Critical Analyses of Educational Reforms in an Era of Transnational Governance,
eds. Elisabeth Hultqvist, Sverker Lindblad, and Thomas S. Popkewitz (Cham: Springer, 2018),
41–60.
4
Lindsay Prior, “Repositioning Documents in Social Research,” Sociology 42, no. 5 (2008):y
821–36.
5
Sandra Taylor, “Researching Educational Policy and Change in ‘New Times’: Using Critical
Discourse Analysis,” Journal of Education Policy 19, no. 4 (2004): 433–51.y
The research for this article was made possible by the support of the Charles University Grant
Agency, GAUK no. 624218 and by the support of SVV no. 260462. The author would like
to thank participants of Goodall’s Prague seminars on sociological imagination for discussions
of relational ontology, and two anonymous reviewers for inspiring critique and helpful
comments.
309
How to Write a Proof
or the tools used on the other,6
this paper goes beyond this division and
shows how two important Czech policy documents7
do not serve as actors’
straight declarations of their claims, but rather as self-evident prescriptions.
In current developments of the relational approach in the sociology of
education8
it is possible to focus on discourse not only from one perspective
– whether that be of an actor, a particular organisation, or a particular
educational programme – but from the perspectives able to see the problematisations
mentioned above: non-self-evident authorship, standardisation
of knowledge, hybrid spaces of possible action in the very layer of textual
documents. A key to these issues is the concept of situation and event. These
are the situation of various relations (process of ligation) that are constituent
to positions and their occupying.9
Therefore, through the relational approach
to the discourse, we can study the practice of developing proofs, a
competent position for actors, the relevance of problems and claims, and
the reasonability of justification in the mutual relationships of these different
instances.10
Furthermore, we can study an occurrence of reform policy
documents as events presenting these situations.
This paper focuses on three interlinked issues. First, what writing strategies
are used in the textual document in order to make an argument (a
proof) that educational reform is needed and what principles or styles of rea-
soning11
have led them? Second, what concrete arrangements of categories
in texts such as the competence of the actor, the relevance of the problems,
the reasonability of the justification, and the audience formed the particular
6
Gary L. Anderson and Liliana Montoro Donchik, “Privatizing Schooling and Policy Making:
The American Legislative Exchange Council and New Political and Discursive Strategies of
Educational Governance,” Educational Policy 30, no. 2 (2016): 322–64.y
7
Although these are only two documents among other reform educational documents
published so far, and more, presenting different content – these are still decisive for
understanding the writing of the proof in the context of current social changes as will bef
argued in the section Textual Data and the Method Used for the Study.
8
Gert Biesta and Michael Tedder, “How Is Agency Possible? Towards an Ecological
Understanding of Agency-as-Achievement (Working Paper 5),” Learnig Lives Project, RES-
139-25-0111 (Exeter, 2006).
9
Andrew Abbott, “Linked Ecologies,” in Processual Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2016), 40.
10
Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1988).
11
Ian Hacking, “Language, Truth, and Reason,” in Historical Ontology (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2004), 159–77; Michael A. Peters, “Kinds of Thinking, Styles of
Reasoning,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 39, no. 4 (2007): 350–63.y
310
proofs? And third, what differences are there between the two documents
that are researched with regard to the previous questions?
This paper contributes to the discussion of the relationship between ideas
and action in education, inspired by neo-pragmatist philosophy, relational
sociology, and several poststructuralist approaches,12
particularly the study
of the ways in which different ideations, styles of reasoning, and knowledge
regimes in education constrain the possible actions of all the participants
involved.13
To begin with, I will briefly go through the social context of the two
strategic documents that are analysed – several important events which have
created the situation. The theoretical perspective follows: an interconnection
of a sociological view on relations with Lyotard’s analytical semantics, which
enables us to see particular strategies for making up proof in the mutual relations
of the forming of competence, relevance, reasonability, and audience.
The subsequent sections will be devoted to the analysis of actual instances of
the proofmaking in the two documents and to the patterns in which these
documents differ. I will conclude with an interpretive comparison of the
two different patterns of justifications and with the broader related issues
touched on by this study.
The Context of Czech Educational Reform and Its Events
In 2004, based on long-term international and domestic criticism, the Czech
Republic launched an educational reform, first after the political revolution
in 1989. This reform consisted mainly of the introduction of Framework
Educational Programs (FEPs), which were to create a much looser framework
for individual schools to develop their own direction than communist
rigid curricula by defining only basic outputs. The means for fulfilling these
outputs were left up to each individual school. It meant that every school had
12
Jitka Wirthová, “Třetí vlna sociologie vzdělávání: Kritický přístup pro globalizovaný i partikularizovaný
svět,” Sociální studia 16, no. 1 (2019): 165–84.
13
Thomas S. Popkewitz, Jennifer Diaz, and Christopher Kirchgasler, A Political Sociology of
Educational Knowledge: Studies of Exclusions and Difference (New York: Routledge, 2017);
PetterAasen,Tine Sophie Prøitz, and NinaSandberg, “Knowledge Regimes and Contradictions
in Education Reforms,” Educational Policy 28, no. 5 (2014): 718–38; Christina Mølstad ety
al., “Comparative Educational Knowledge and Knowledge Production: A Technology of
Appearance: Interactional Acts of Education,” in ECER 2018 (EERA, 2018); Peters, “Kinds
of Thinking, Styles of Reasoning.”
Jitka Wirthová
311
to write its own “School Educational Programme” (SEP) on the basis of the
national mandatory FEPs.
Through this reform, the Czech Republic aligned itself with the almost
worldwide trend of deregulation and decentralisation of public policies.14
However, this reform was never fully accepted by teachers, parents, heads of
schools, and the wider public (except some alternatively thinking individual
teachers or schools).15
The SEPs were often written superficially, often by rewriting
old communist curricula, and therefore the criticism from different
and divergent sides increased.16
After some minor changes to the FEP, consisting mainly of adding
some new educational content (new goals: ethics education, multicultural
education, education for national pride, education for financial literacy, etc.),
which were problematic and contradictory in themselves, a significant call
for a fundamental reassessment of the system of education arise and since
2016, a general debate about “the revision of Czech educational curricula”
has been taking place. This debate is by no means closed and preparations
are underway at governmental level for the new Education 2030+ strategy
paper.
The Czech pre-election period in 2017 was a rather unusual period with
regard to debates about education since it was the first time after the general
curricular reform in 2004 that such an extensive public debating about education
had taken place. On the one hand, the main topic of these discussions
respected the trajectory of specific Czech debates about education – the issue
of the urgent need to revise the elementary school curricula – as the 2004
reform was generally deemed to have been unsuccessful. On the other hand,
the newly opened space of legitimisation has attracted new actors and kinds
of knowledge which up to that time had been used occasionally in general
public debates (mainly transnational comparisons).17
Many traditional but
14
Stanislav Štech, “Velká regrese? Proměny vzdělávání mezi hlasy politiků, expertů a rodičů,”
in Vzdělání a dnešek, eds. Martin Strouhal and Stanislav Štech (Praha: Karolinum, 2016),
179–201.
15
Stanislav Štech, “Když je kurikulární reforma evidence-Less,” Pedagogická Orientace 23,
no. 5 (2013): 615–33; Jana Straková, “Postoje Českých učitelů k hlavním prioritám vzdělávací
politiky,” in Učitel v současné škole, eds. Růžena Váňová and Hana Krykorková (Praha:
Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2010), 167–75.
16
From Non-governmental sphere it was mainly the document: SKAV, Zdeněk Slejška, and
Lucie Slejšková, Kdy a jak měnit kurikulum (Praha: SKAV, 2010).VV
17
It must be stressed that in Czech policymaking since 1989 the transnational organisations
and their data have played an important, yet specific, role, but in relation to public debates this
influence was not so visible.
How to Write a Proof
312
also relatively new actors (politicians, inter-ministerial working groups,
industry and employers’ representatives, teachers’ unions, NGOs) tried to
take part in these debates and to promote their own educational claims,
which took the form of very divergent desired curriculum content, such as
inclusive education, lifelong learning, multicultural education, education
for national pride, civil defence education, financial literacy, manual work
and gardening education, and many others.
In 2017 the situation was that many divergent educational claims coexisted
and that many divergent arguments were given to prove them, which
persisted simultaneously. While the call for a unitary “national vision” for
education was significant and was the only point of unity of many divergent
actors, it was never possible for this to happen because of the very confusing
reasoning justifying various notions of what the desired education meant.
Such a situation posed important questions about the conceptual way of understanding
it without taking this non-transparent space/place as mistakes
(of policymakers, of implementation, etc.), but rather took it as a changing
space of justification, posing crucial questions about the ways in which the
legitimisation is achieved within this space.
Text – Education – Categories – and Patterns of Reasoning
The disappointed Pythagorean carries out his ontological and political mourning:
it is necessary to write, to govern through the written, to teach through the
written, to concede to imitation [...], and to grant institutional status to that
addressee unworthy of dialogue who is called the politikos, the reader. As a
counterpoint to oral dialogical phrases, there will need to be written pedagogical
ones.18
This section is devoted to the theoretical exposition of interlinked layers
which creates the subject of this study. Those are the nature of textual documents
in the field of education – the relational anti-foundationalist approach
to categories – and patterns of justification and reasoning.
Education is a cultural process of intentional change in personality and
society; because of the pursuit of the change, the context of educational
semantics is inherently ambivalent in terms of the ends: education for an
18
Lyotard, Differendi , pt. Plato notice: Dialogue. From here on, the references to Lyotard’s
book will be written in the form of numbers of paragraphs (par.), or parts (pt. Plato notice,
pt. Kant notice, for example), since this structure is the same in the French original and in all
translations as well.
Jitka Wirthová
313
individual vs education for the society. In this educational context of the
desired future, many texts stand in the position of a determined guide as to
what to do, not mere descriptions. Through these texts, people are instructed
who they are and what they should do, whether in the case of curricula,
educational programmes, strategic policy documents, legal regulations, and
pedagogic instructions and documentation, educational research included.19
Yet these textual documents are not only intact products, entities apart from
practice – they significantly inscribe their cultural logics (systems of reason)
in the practice of education.20
These documents constrain the possible
courses of action of possible actors; they present and prescribe models of
the world.21
According to Prior,22
a document is an agent which cannot be
treated as a mere neutral source of evidence in research. A textual document
creates its own space of reasoning, and especially in the case of educational
policy documents it creates a specific normative model of the world to be
followed.23
In exploring what the proof can mean in different texts, it is the study
of the space of reasoning in which these proofs are embedded that is of greatg
importance. In one contemporary strand of the sociology of education,
the social constitution of normativity in education is a significant issue.24
Whether it is the elucidation of justificatory sagas,25
knowledge regimes, 26
styles of reasoning,gg 27
or7
systems of reason,28
for all of these accounts, the logics
and the reasonings (and the proofs within them) are social in the sense
that they have both social embeddedness (origin) and consequences. This
19
Thomas S. Popkewitz, “Social Epistemology, the Reason of ‘Reason’ and the Curriculum
Studies,” Education Policy Analysis Archives 22, no. 21–25 (2014): 1–18; Thomas S. Popkewitz,
“The Denial of Change in Educational Change: Systems of Ideas in the Construction of
National Policy and Evaluation,” Educational Researcher 29, no. 1 (2000): 17–29.r
20
Popkewitz, Diaz, and Kirchgasler, Political Sociology.
21
Bradley A. U. Levinson, Margaret Sutton, and Teresa Winstead, “Education Policy as
a Practice of Power: Theoretical Tools, Ethnographic Methods, Democratic Options,”
Educational Policy 23, no. 6 (2009): 767–95.y
22
Prior, “Repositioning Documents in Social Research.”
23
Popkewitz, Diaz, and Kirchgasler, Political Sociology.
24
Wirthová, “Třetí vlna sociologie vzdělávání.”
25
Ingolfur Asgeir Johannesson, Gudrun Geirsdottir, and Gunnar E. Finnbogason, “Modern
Educational Sagas: Legitimation of Ideas and Practices in Icelandic Education,” Scandinavian
Journal of Educational Research 46, no. 3 (2002): 265–82.
26
Aasen, Prøitz, and Sandberg, “Knowledge Regimes.”
27
Peters, “Kinds of Thinking, Styles of Reasoning.”
28
Popkewitz, Diaz, and Kirchgasler, Political Sociology.
How to Write a Proof
314
approach derives from post-analytical philosophy, anti-foundationalism,
and the relational approach to categories and agency.
Against the tendency to think of writing as linear moves on the part
of the evident (apparent) author, which is usual in many critical discourse
analyses that point to a “guilty party,” often with the conclusion of neoliberal
hegemony,29
I have pursued a relational understanding of writing a document
in education that focuses on the question of how legitimacy is achieved
in concrete settings and under particular arrangements of categories.30
This
understanding admits various shapes of justification, various types of proofs,
and various ways to establish them, which creates a very non-transparent
space of divergent educational demands.
To understand the particular, actual, and concrete formation of justification
in particular writing strategies of making up a proof one has to
pay attention to relations which are constitutive for any instances (such as
the competent actor, relevant problem, reasonable justification, and existing
audience).31
Affirming that these instances are not self-evident and are
possible only in particularly arranged categories and situations,32
through
the process of writing, raises an important question: in which way is one to
perceive the writing strategies in terms of text and discourse, and thus in the
connection of sociology and linguistics?
For that reason, I have interlinked the sociological relationalism with
Lyotard’s relational ontology and linguistics of instances of phrase universe.
Although Lyotard is predominantly well known for his Postmodern Condition,
here I follow his ontology of event33
tt from his Le Différend because it is
29
Michael W. Apple, “What Is Present and Absent in Critical Analyses of Neoliberalism in
Education,” Peabody Journal of Education 92, no. 1 (2017): 148–53.
30
Sverre Tveit and Christian Lundahl, “New Modes of Policy Legitimation in Education: (Mis)
Using Comparative Data to Effectuate Assessment Reform,” European Educational Research
Journal 17, no. 5 (2017): 631–55; Lindsay Prior,l Using Documents in Social Research (London:
SAGE, 2003).
31
Biesta and Tedder, “How Is Agency Possible?”; Andrew Abbott, Processual Sociology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Mark Priestley and Stavroula Philippou,
“Curriculum Making as Social Practice: Complex Webs of Enactment,” Curriculum Journal
29, no. 2 (2018): 151–58; Luís Miguel Carvalho, “The Fabrications and Travels of a KnowledgePolicy
Instrument,” European Educational Research Journal 11, no. 2 (2012): 172–88; Lyotard,l
Differend.
32
Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, “The Reality of Moral Expectations: A Sociology of
Situated Judgement,” Philosophical Explorations 3, no. 3 (2000): 208–31.
33
Ashley Woodward, “Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998),” The Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, accessed July 6, 2017, https://www.iep.utm.edu/lyotard/; Michael A. Peters,
Jitka Wirthová
315
attentive to the formation of instances from inside the event of utterance.34
Since, in his account, it is impossible to see the proof as an isolated item
that can be torn out of the text (of the space of reasoning) – the question is
how a proof is embedded in the situation (which itself is constituted via the
settlement of instances) – so not only the “referent,” but also other instances,
which give the meaning, the principles to a proof – the possibility of being
formed into a particular shape. This approach sees “proof” as an emergent
phenomenon of the relational condition in the text through which it is enacted.
Therefore, in order to reveal the variety of different ways in which
proof is constructed within normative educational documents, I draw on
Lyotard’s non-essentialist analytical instances: the addressee, the referent,
the sense, and the addressor, which are embodied and constructed in the
texts as the actor’s competence, the relevance and temporality of the claim,
the reasonability of justification and knowledge, and the (dis)qualification of
the audience. A particular way of proving the need for educational reform is
created in the constellation of these instances.
Textual Data and the Method Used for the Study
When trying to understand the proofmaking in the contemporary policy environment
characterised by “hybrid” actors35
or non-transparent networks of
actors,36
it is useful to employ a theoretical division of actors developed in the
anthropology of educational policy and organisation.37
This division makes
it possible to scrutinise a confusing educational “policyscape”38
without any
reduction of the materials on formal policy competences and responsibilities
that are studied. For that reason, there are distinguished authorised actors
(AA), directly delegated to create, assess, correct, or administer curricular
documents (execution), and non-authorised actors (NAA), not directly delegated
but somehow influencing, changing, and assessing curricular documents
(influence). Both of these types of actors create a binding curriculum
“Wittgenstein and Post-Analytic Philosophy of Education: Rorty or Lyotard?,” Educational
Philosophy and Theory 29, no. 2 (1997): 1–32.y
34
Lyotard, Differend.
35
Prior, “Repositioning Documents in Social Research.”
36
Ball, “New Philanthropy.”
37
Levinson, Sutton, and Winstead, “Education Policy as a Practice of Power”; Dorothy
E. Smith, “Texts and the Ontology of Organizations and Institutions,” Studies in Cultures,
Organizations & Societies 7, no. 2 (2001): 159–98.
38
Lingard, “Reforming Education.”
How to Write a Proof
316
with consequences for the actions of all the other actors in the educational
environment, themselves included.
The corpus for this study consists of two main strategic texts, which
were created to provide a “justificatory story” of the need to reform the
education system in the Czech Republic. Both of them were published in the
summer before the parliamentary elections in the autumn in 2017 and the
authors were the two main actors in the Czech educational reform debate.
Although these documents, of course, differ in their purpose and, therefore,
in their language, content, and address - these differences are fundamental
to this study. Their comparability lies in the fact, that they both have the
same purpose in the Lyotardian understanding of the discursive genre,
which in this case is pedagogical, persuasive.39
They present a model of the
world that “should be”; their purpose is to change, transform the context of
what is considered normal and desirable and what is to be done. Although
they are not legal documents, they are normative and link the dimension of
evidence with that of administration.40
The first one to be published was a document produced by an authorised
actor (NÚV – the National Institute for Education), which released a special
issue of its periodic newsletter called Why to Revise Curricular Documents?41
The second was published by a very influential group of various non-authorised
actors (particularly non-government organisation EDUin and an initiative
Education pre-eminently).42
Those two were not strategic documents in a
strict and narrow policy or legal sense.43
Nevertheless, the documents chosen
for the study are, in their aim and scope and design technology, much more
illustrative of different patterns of proving the need for educational change.
Additionally, these documents had a specific position in the “educational
space and place”44
”” of the period because not only were they the main sources
of justification active in the public arena but also, they were framed by their
39
As was indicated by the quotation in the theoretical section
40
Richard Freeman and Jo Maybin, “Documents, Practices and Policy,” Evidence and Policy
7, no. 2 (2011): 155–70.
41
NÚV Národní ústav pro vzdělávání, Zpravodaj Oborové skupiny: Proč revidovat kurikulární
dokumenty? (Praha: NÚV, 2017).?
42
EDUin and Vzdělávání přede-vším, Problémy českého vzdělávání a návrhy jeho řešení
(Praha: EDUin, 2017).
43
In the Czech legal context, the document Strategy for the Education Policy of the Czech
Republic until 2020, published by the Ministry of Education in 2014, possesses such a strategic
character.
44
Lingard, “Reforming Education.”
Jitka Wirthová
317
authors (organisations) as the most important texts providing the reasons
for the desired changes in the Czech education system.
NÚV – 2017 – Why to Revise Curricular Documents? –? was issued for
the wider public to explain the reasons for, and progress of, the revision of
reform (after some criticism that this revision was not transparent and was
chaotic, mainly from the side of EDUin). This material was distributed in a
formal way to authorised actors and was presented on the NÚV’s website in
the position of the main document explaining the aims of the reform work
of the Institute in the section “conception of revision of RVP” (until May
201845
). Since it was the only material issued in that period that articulated
publicly the aims of the revision being prepared, it was widely used as the
only source of clear information about the NÚV’s intentions.
EDUin and Education pre-eminently 2017 – Problems of Czech Education
and Suggestions for its Solution – this material was created before the
parliamentary election and distributed online, or personally, to the leaders
of political parties responsible for that part of their election programme
concerning education. The leaders were asked whether they had read this
document or had any acquaintance with the information and data cited in
it. This document is now presented on the website of EDUin as “our strategic
document.”
Both of these texts were relatively short (four pages in the case of AA, and
seven in the case of NAA). Both of them included significant visual design,
pictures, tables, diagrams, and colour, and they were visually structured. Although
their representativeness for a broad comparison is weak, their value
in relation to the argued contribution, which is to understand how different
writings can model the relations between ideas and action, is high.46
45
In May 2018, this text was transferred to the “Related Articles” section, and at its previous
position stood three “Infographics” and other information derived mainly from the ideas of
this special issue. At present (October 2019) it is no longer among the underlying curriculum
revision materials, but among the other National Institute for Education periodic newsletter.
The Infographics were replaced by the “Background Analytical Studies,” “Personnel Preparation
of Materials,” and “Other Background Materials” (http://www.nuv.cz/t/rrvp).
46
Although the representativity of only two documents among many other strategic
educational papers published so far is low for a broad comparative longitudinal study, they
were essential for this particular debate and for the epistemological and ontological approach
selected. Relational approach using detailed micro analysis of lineages that constitutively
connect various elements and instances that create forms of proof and models of educational
worlds is better conducted on limited events and in particular situation. These events were the
two documents and this situation was the pre-election debate in 2017.
How to Write a Proof
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Method: In this study, I analysed these documents through qualitative
interpretive text analysis using the conceptual view presented in the
theoretical section above.47
I traced the constituting and emerging of the
Addressor (destinateur), Sense (sense), Addressee (destinataire), and Referent
(référent) as embedded in the text and their actual content in several
iterative stages. First, I coded the segments with open and structural coding.
This stage of the analysis brought in the categories of competence, relevance,
reasonability, knowledge – its kind and the way it was recorded (a technology
of appearance48
), and audience. In the next stage the actual content of
these categories was compared both inside the documents and across the
documents with regard to “neutralisations.” The synthesis consisted of the
patterning of the actual justificatory stories.49
See the table of the fourth
stage of the interpretation in the Comparison section.
Messengers and Heralds
Considering the conceptual approach described above, a particular form of
proof lies in the category of referent (relevance) while simultaneously entangled
in relation to other instances (categories). A form of proof is developed
in the course of linking the phrases, statements, utterances, and pictures.
The proof is the inherent (explicit or implicit) answer to the question “why?”
while the actual content of proof depends on the (implicit or explicit) answers
to other questions: how, by whom, and for whom?
This paper offers two different patterns of a justificatory story – it
explores what the proof can mean in different texts.50
The study revealed
that the texts function in one case as a messenger, and in the other caserr
as a herald. In the following sections, I will provide basic characteristics
of these different types of “proof-expertise” stemming from the specific
relational compositions of categories (competence, relevance, reasonability,
knowledge – its kind and the way it was recorded in the text (a technology of
appearance), and audience).
47
Prior, Using Documents in Social Research.
48
Mølstad et al., “Comparative Educational Knowledge.”
49
Johnny Saldana, The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (London: SAGE, 2009).
50
It does not consider the proofs true or false, and neither does it search for mistakes in policy
designs.
Jitka Wirthová
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The Justificatory Pattern of Authorised Actors – Gathering Witnesses
Semantic Regime – a Passive Apologetics
What pattern of justificatory story is given by AA? Since they are an authorised
organisation directly delegated to revise curricular documents, it
is not surprising that they refer to government documents and decisions
and derive part of their competence from these sources. Nevertheless, the
degree to which they explicitly cited other human or non-human actors or
“authorities” in the educational environment was considerable. There were
many “subjects” in the text that demanded the educational change: the
society, competitiveness, constant change, and others. All these subjects
required something, and it was the role of AA to answer, to justify what
will be done to rectify Czech education. In this text, the organisation was
not in the role of an active voice of the demands. The regime of its justification
rested in answering questions which were asked by somebody else, not
by it. Additionally, in the case of the reason for writing such a document,
the motive was delimited at the very beginning: the original principles of
curricular reform (what was meant by that was the reform from 2004) had
not been fulfilled – these past events (previous criticism directed toward
the organisation) impelled the organisation to answer. In the document the
organisation itself did not determine the reason for the change; instead, it
developed an apologetic concerning what to do about it now.
On the other hand, turning to many authorities was not the only way
to propose the change. The voice of the document was confined to a kind
of noncommittal designing. “Main features of the design of the conception of“
revisions”51
were proposed, rather than there being a straightforward proposal.
This cautious proposal involving several stages (design-conceptionrevision)
touches the rhetorical figure of mimesis,52
which, in the addressor,
51
NÚV Národní ústav pro vzdělávání, Zpravodaj Oborové skupiny, 2.
52
Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, pt. Plato notice. Here Lyotard is drawing on
the work of Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (Ithaca, NY: Cornelld
University Press, 1980) and Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). But his understanding of mimesis
goes beyond literary theory toward a philosophical elaboration of the differend between twod
parties, in which it is not possible for one of them to be in the position of an addressor. This
issue of category and possible action has been taken up by many contemporary sociologistsy
of education (mainly Popkewitz, Diaz, and Kirchgasler, Political Sociology) and differs
particularly from the narrative analysis inspired by Ricoeur (such as, for example, in Martin
Hájek, Martin Havlík, and Jiří Nekvapil, “Narativní analýza v sociologickém výzkumu:
přístupy a jednotící rámec,” Czech Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (2012): 199–223).
How to Write a Proof
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presupposes: “a dissimulation, an occultation, the apocrypt (it’s not me, it’s
the gods or the heroes who are phrased through my mouth [...].” 53
A proposition
using such a figure does not expect that the audience should take the
floor, that it should debate, or even that it should judge.54
We will see later
how this proposition regime is linked to the form of the competence and
audience of AA in its document and how it differs in the NAA document.
Indeed, such several-stages mimesis (design-conception-revision) avoids
judging about its purposefulness or purposelessness or reasoning about the
correctness or incorrectness of the educational goal. It corresponds with
Popkewitz’s insight of the irony of reform making – these reforms are aboutg
motion and activity, and not change.55
The Technology of Appearance – We Cite Witnesses
As mentioned above, in this text, there were many “authorities” worthy
of being cited in an authorised document. As we will see in the section
about the justificatory pattern of NAA, there is a difference between citing
“authorities” and citing “data which speaks for itself.” The function of “authorities”
(human and non-human), such as, for example, a high-ranking
official from a foreign authorised educational organisation, or an author
of a popular book,56
“a number of developed countries,” or “changes in the
outside world”57
was the testimony; these “authorities” were witnesses to the
need to revise the Czech curricula. After the citation of a high-ranking official
(the head of the curriculum development department of the Finnish
Government Education Committee), which took up one third of the first
page, there followed this sentence: “We are also aware of the need to adapt
the curriculum constantly to the contemporary world, the constant characteristic
of which is change and where learning never ends.”58
This “we are
also” refers to the cumulating of the witnesses, while the justification points
to the past – “we” do something because others also did so. Such a justification
regime is passive.
53
Lyotard, Differend, pt. Plato notice.
54
Ibid.
55
Popkewitz, Diaz, and Kirchgasler, Political Sociology, 4.
56
Robert J. Marzano and Tammy Heflebower, Teaching and Assessing 21st
Century Skills: Thet
Classroom Strategies Series (Bloomington: Marzano Research, 2011).
57
NÚV Národní ústav pro vzdělávání, Zpravodaj Oborové skupiny, 1.
58
Ibid.
Jitka Wirthová
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Relevance – Why? ... for Adaptation
With regard to many authorities demanding something, the relevance – the
answer to “why” – took the form of adaptation. It was the adaptation to past
or present events – not only to non-specified changes in the world but also
because the principles of the original curricular reform were not fulfilled.
The very second sentence in this text reads thus: “Not all intentions have
yet to be ‘tightened’, and not all intentions have been put into practice as
intended.”59
These were the “praxis which required the introduction of
educational outcome standards,”60
the changes in the world, and the fact
that the previous documents were unintelligible which were the reasons why.
These things are not something to debate about; we have to adapt to them.
Furthermore, the very nature of these changes is that we are not able to do
anything about them:
to adapt to it. We have to understand the world so that we can live well in it.
Schools help pupils to understand the contemporary world better. The learning
process can and should be fun. Of course, it has to react to changes in the
outside world. The school should strengthen the identity of pupils and increase
their ability to learn. The basic value is the uniqueness of each pupil.61
In this quotation of the Finnish official, there were considerations that it is
not in human power to change the changes, that the only reasonable thing
to do is to adapt to them (with the fun). The values proposed as “autonomous
personality,” “responsible citizen,” “lifelong learning individual,” and “creative
innovator”62
are valuable for the degree of adaptation to changes, not for
changing them.
Audience – the Presence of Other Actors
To whom did the AA document speak? Just as there were many who made
demands, so there were also many who could listen to the “designs of
conceptions” of proposals and follow them. The role of the audience of this
document was delimited in the text by stating the “basic functions of curricular
documents” which were “normative,” “diagnostic and evaluative,”
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid., 3.
How to Write a Proof
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and “informative.” The informative function was the space where the audience
was established.
The KD serves not only to inform schools and teachers about the requirements
of the State for the teaching and learning outcomes of pupils, but also to inform
parents, pupils, employers, and other subjects involved.63
Nevertheless, these many audiences did not join in immediately with
their voices for particular activities such as debating, judging, or questioning.
Since one of the functions of a curricular document was articulated
in terms of being properly informed, the audience’s position was not compatible
with the debate about the information provided in these curricular
documents. On the other hand, there was one active audience role that was
specified: the teachers – as soon as they were adequately informed about
the state’s requirements, they could be good evaluators of pupils’ learning
outcomes, and they could adequately verify the learning achieved.
Although many audiences were discerned, the text did not draw hierarchical
lines among them, which is in contrast to the NAA document.
Moreover, a call, at the bottom of page 3:64
“What is your opinion? Send
responses to [...],”65
was oriented toward the general public, which was in that
sense provided with the opportunity to react.
Messengers of Witnesses
Despite the passive usage of knowledge as messages of others’ needs, the
organisation’s position as an authorised actor rests in some formal responsibilities
– still, the organisation must perform some action in educational
63
Ibid., 2.
64
“1) What is your opinion on the intention to refine the expected outputs – or learning
outcomes so that they are usable as evaluation standards?
2) What is your opinion on the meaning and importance of the accompanying methodological
materials that should develop the expected learning outcomes in terms of:
- methodology (examples of pupils’ learning activities)
- ways of verifying results and evaluating pupils
- reference tasks specifying the expected learning outcomes
3) What is your opinion on the possibility of seeking and expressing a binding “core” of
education in general education?
4) What is your view on maintaining a two-step curriculum (FEP – SEP)?
5) What are your suggestions for simplifying administration in creating the SEP?
What is our opinion? Send responses to [...],” Ibid., 3.
65
Ibid.
Jitka Wirthová
323
change. Since it was “others” who were demanding such a change, the
competent position of this organisation, embedded in its text, was that
of a non-responsible evaluator. Indeed, one of the main objectives to berr
achieved through the revision of curricular documents was the “transfer of
responsibility for learning to pupils.”66
Such discourse of pupils’ responsibility
for outcomes is well-known not only in the Czech context but in many
countries; rather, this kind of allocation of responsibility is connected to the
Europeanisation and transnationalisation of educational policies in many
documents and programmes.67
Nevertheless, we can turn our attention to the peculiar links of such
responsibility to a demand for control and monitoring.
The curricular documents can be a significant tool for influencing the quality
of teaching and learning, only on the condition that they formulate the basic
requirements in the form of the expected results of the pupil’s learning [...], the
utilisation of learning outcomes also enables an effective way of verifying them
to be designed.68
While the pupils were responsible for outcomes, defined as clearly expressed
desired results, which, as we have seen above, were demanded by “others”,
the role of the authorised organisation was to evaluate and monitor their
achievement (with the help of teachers). In the document under analysis, the
subject which was able to assure appropriately expressed results was located
in the revised curricular documents. The assurance of adaptation expressed
in these curricular documents was the primary location of the organisation’s
activity.
The Justificatory Pattern of the NAA – Disappearance of Mediators
Semantic Regime – an Active Denunciation
In the case of the NGO’s text, in order to detect the pattern of proof, it is
relevant to start with the knowledge – its kind and the way of its recording.
This NA actor used prevailingly the kind of knowledge which they framed
as “expert” – by which was meant mainly comparative statistical data
(they cited the OECD’s international education indicators, PISA reports,
66
Ibid., 1, 4.
67
Martin Lawn, “Standardizing the European Education Policy Space,” European Educational
Research Journal 10, no. 2 (2011): 259–72.l
68
NÚV Národní ústav pro vzdělávání, Zpravodaj Oborové skupiny, 2.
How to Write a Proof
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semi-academic centres’ comparisons, governmental statistical reports, and
so forth). In their text, this expert knowledge itself denounced the state of
affairs - the NAA was not waiting for other witnesses in order to propose
a change in education, as in the case of AA. The expertise provided by the
NAA text was in the position of a non-mediated proposition. Although it
is well known in the sociology of comparative educational knowledge that
this data does not merely represent the state of affairs, but plays a considerable
role in shaping it,69
in this document, this particular knowledge was
present not as a mere “re-presentation” of reality in the meaning of “againpresenting,”
but a direct presentation – immediate reality.70
Through a direct
and active proposal, “our strategy of change has three pivotal points,” “our
strategy has three visions,”71
the text actively states the problematic reality.
The Technology of Appearance – Data Cites Itself
The demonstration of non-mediated reality in the text was achieved in several
ways. On the one hand, this was done visually by displaying short cuts
from a variety of analyses or reports in pictures of speech bubbles, featuring
brief information in bold together with a brief interpretation and citation of
the source. The speech bubbles were “speaking to” another picture: a scheme
of the geographical borders of the Czech Republic. The data spoke itself to
the Czech Republic itself, as if in a lecture; it was not recorded in the text as
citations but as a manifestation.
On the other hand, it was achieved discursively, in that this “speaking
data” did not manifest mere neutral information, but highlighted problem
information which awaited remedy (for example: “the world is changing very
fast, and the Czech educational system is increasingly lagging behind.”);72
this speaking data became the carrier of problematic reality. These pieces
of information denoted the problems of education themselves and consequently,
themselves, also determined solutions (for example: “the Czech
Republic invests the lowest share of GDP in basic and secondary education
69
Fenwick, Mangez, and Ozga, Governing Knowledge; Radhika Gorur, “Producing Calculable
Worlds: Education at a Glance,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 36,
no. 4 (2015): 578–95; Sverker Lindblad, Daniel Pettersson, and Thomas S. Popkewitz, eds.,
Education by the Numbers and the Making of Society: The Expertise of International Assessments
(New York: Routledge, 2018).
70
Lyotard, Differend, pt. Kant notice I.
71
EDUin and Vzdělávání přede-vším, Problémy českého vzdělávání, 3 (both headlines).
72
Ibid., 2.
Jitka Wirthová
325
compared to all the OECD countries.”).73
Such a statement implies the only
possible solution very clearly. In the bubbles, the data was not cited – the
data itself cited the reality.
Such knowledge refers immediately to reality without mimetic mediation
– it is introduced as the referent itself. It differed from the AA document,
where many authorities bore witness, and the mediation was admitted,
while in this NAA document, the mediation was displaced. This displacement
is a case of more than “perfect mimesis: recognisable by the writer’s
effacement.”74
This is a rejection of mimesis, imitation, re-presentation, it is
the non-mediate presentation.
Relevance – Why? ... for Modernisation
With regard to much of the data delimiting the problematic reality, the
relevance – the answer to the “why” – took the form of modernisation. Modernisation
for a better future:
A new generation of parents has grown up in Czech society, and the topic of
education is becoming a societal priority. In the following expert document, we
describe the current state and propose possible solutions. The vision of Czechia
as a state with a modern educational system has the potential to solve many
fundamental aspects of our future simultaneously, and thus become the key
point in the voting programme.75
In this citation, a tightly complex argument is established by actual linkages
among competence to speak (we describe) to an audience (promoters of
voting programmes, parents) by reasonable means (in an expert document)
to prove the relevance of problems (modern vision) – These linkages expose
the relational nature of a proof – a cultural argument, which can have many
shapes, forms, and contents. Such arrangements fitted the relevance of the
demands: they will solve future problems, not past criticism (as in the case of
AA), and they will, according to the present problematic reality manifested
by data, lead to conscious systematised expert changes.
Since in the document, the problems were framed as “lagging behind,”
the answer to “why” took the form of systematised, knowledgeable, and
planned modernisation in terms of more (more effectiveness, more personal
73
Ibid.
74
Lyotard, Differend, pt. Plato notice: Selection.
75
EDUin and Vzdělávání přede-vším, Problémy českého vzdělávání, 1.
How to Write a Proof
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skills, more flexibility, more analysis, more data, more openness, more
diversity, more responsibility, a stronger relationship to democratic values,
more stress on quality, etc.). We can see that although democratic values and
freedom were stressed – “Open the school to the world: we need to breathe
freely!”76
– the notions which could refer to the content of such modernisation
couched in economic and managerial vocabulary.77
Audience – Someone First
Not only in the complex argument (who, what, how, and to whom) cited
above, where the document addressed the voting programmes’ creators as a
possible audience, but also in other parts of the document, the possible audience
was hierarchically differentiated around its importance for educational
modernisation.
In section “Vision 1.”: “The basis of a good system is a triangle: ‘directorteacher-quality,’”
it was the director who was more important. Although the
subsection of this Vision (“What needs to be done”) contains a demand for
an increase in the salaries of directors as well as teachers, the importance of
an increase in directors’ salaries was justified by:
Director is a key person in the modernisation and transformation of the school.
A quality school is always ensured by a quality director. We need professionals
on these positions – a combination of good pedagogue and managerial skills.78
While the importance of an increase in teachers’ salaries was only: “It brings
new people to education, and the good ones will not leave.”79
In these statements, we can see the hierarchical roles of diverse actors
in education and policymaking. In the document, they were primarily the
experts (NAA) and the stakeholders who were decisive for education policymaking
and, together with school directors, decisive in the modernisation
of the education system. It was not as if the teachers would not be present
76
Ibid., 5.
77
Precisely such a mixture of liberal ideas with managerial vocabulary is explained by many
studies in educational discourse as neoliberal ideology, pointing to the neoliberal political
economy, and on the level of writing strategies and discourse regime to ideology. Nevertheless,
the current criticism of the critique of neoliberalism should not be forgotten: Ema Rowe et
al., “Exploring Alternatives to the ‘Neoliberalism’ Critique: New Language for Contemporary
Global Reform,” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 40, no. 2 (2019): 147–49.
78
EDUin and Vzdělávání přede-vším, Problémy českého vzdělávání, 4.
79
Ibid.
Jitka Wirthová
327
in the audience, but the nature of their role did not include an agency in the
desired changes – the modernisation of the education system. Teachers were
not agents of change but tools – in terms of quality and effective teaching.
Despite the different importance, and someone first roles, the discur-t
sively privileged audience (parents, politicians, directors) were not in the
position of dialogical partners. Since the demonstrators of the problematic
reality were the data, there was nothing to debate about and nobody to
debate with. Despite the somewhat passive role of the audience in both of
the documents that were researched, the NAA document differed from the
audience created in the AA document (the turn to many non-hierarchical
audiences). Here, in the NAA document, the turn to the audience was not
achieved through a direct call, but through data statements and in relation
to the form of the organisation’s expert competence. “We are ready to help by
our professional expertise.”80
Heralds of Reality
The specific technology of appearance of the knowledge and the specifically
defined knowledge, together with the temporality of the relevance of
the organisation’s claim to educational change, were in close relation to the
making up of the NAA’s competence. Through the explicit assertion that
the authors of the text were the experts, the substance of their expertise lay
in systematised knowledgeability. “Vision 3.” reads thus:
The changes of the systems are conscious, aimed, and informed. What is specifically
needed to do is to analyse carefully the impact of accepted changes and
laws on real life at schools. If the data shows that an arrangement has missed the
target, it is necessary to respond flexibly by making it more effective, remedying
it, or abrogating it.81
Indeed, the competence of the NAA document to propose rested in the
effacement of authorship. In this document, the expertise was the agent who
says what the problem is and what to do, not “other authorities” as in the
case of AA. The NAA knew the data, and they were able to hear it speaking;
the authors of the document only showed what data itself manifests. In the
document the competence was connected with the ability to hear the data
speaking, but did not necessarily go together with the authorship of this
80
Ibid., 7.
81
Ibid., 6.
How to Write a Proof
328
data – this data did not have an author – it was the referent itself. The authors
of the documents were not necessarily present – they were heralds of reality.
The manner of justification, therefore, lay in the absence of human authorship
of the denunciations. Authorship does not lie within the authors
of the document, for the data was itself the author. Nevertheless, the authors of
the NAA document were active – in conveying this disinterested and objective
data – they were the actors who are experts, “ready to help with their expert
expertise.” We can conclude that the expertise, in this case, means actively
presenting pure reality, which has no author since it is reality itself. Expertise
in this way is a kind of knowledge which must be produced somehow (“to analyse
the impact carefully”), but not showing any other produced knowledge
(as in the case of the several-stages mimesis of AA), for expertise shows only
reality. Such expertise inherently refutes imitation (mimesis).
Comparison – Two Ways of Connecting to Reality
To begin the comparison, let us first specify the common features among
the documents under scrutiny. One of them lay in the absence of the writers’
own authorship of their proof and the second in the restricted roles of the
audience.
We have seen above that the proof of the need for educational change
can be attached to many mediators, or only one. In both cases, the addressor
of the proof was not the same as the author of the text. It does not mean
that the authors of the document were not present, only that their voice was
indirect, in one case as a non-responsible messenger and evaluator (AA), inr
the second as an expert herald of direct reality. These two relationally patterned
assemblages of justification, with their specific knowledge regimes,
the specific meaning of expertise, specific answers to the question of why
to make a change to the educational system present, after all, different ways
of connecting with reality, whether directly – “expertly,” or non-directly –
“adaptively.” This means, at least in the context of this paper, that not all
policy documents are of the same nature and that the way they prescribe
something, regardless of the content of the prescription, could involve divergent
systems of reasoning – which could generate the difficulty of achieving
a united vision of education.
In the case of the second common feature, the present interpretation
allows us to state, together with Lyotard,82
that these two documents were
82
Lyotard, Differend, pt. Plato notice: Strong and weak; Impiety.
Jitka Wirthová
329
written in a pious genre of discourse in the sense that they “remain committed
to the gods.”83
They did not allow the gods to be talked about andt
did not admit debate about them. In one case the document brought many
gods’ messages (human and non-human authorities), in the second the god
(reality) speaks for itself. The role of the audience in both cases was listening
and following appropriately, although in the case of AA at least a channel for
dialogue were present.
These common features pose an important question about the nature
and role of a policy document in contemporary societies, which have received
many names, “postmodern” among many. In modern policy ideas,
these were the matters of fact, which replaced the role of gods, and which
were not subjected to debate. In any case, policy documents, since the origin
of the writing of legal texts (although policy documents are not of that
mandatory nature) have not been stages in a dialogue; they were not written
in the sense of an argumentative transaction among partners, and their role
was not a dialogical debate over desired education. As the modern strategy
of the planning of the “great project” states, they are prescriptions, but the
problem is whether such modern prescriptions are capable of prescribing
something in societies which are described as “reflexive,” “pluralistic,” and
“postmodern,” what could currently be prescribed and by whom? However,
this issue must be left to another study. The documents studied in this paper
were related to modern policy design in many features, but in many features,
they transgress this role – by imposing the responsibility on others (AA) and
by particular kinds of evading authorship of the justification, of proof – as
being somebody else’s prescriptions (the authorities – AA, data – NAA).
Although many actors today call for the truly dialogical debate over desired
education, in the limited case of the documents under interpretation, the
actors did not present a model of the world within which such a dialogue
would be possible.
Nevertheless, the interesting findings lay primarily in the ways in
which the documents differed – there were many variations between them
and the proofs written within them. Below is a table (see Table 1) illustrating
the fourth stage of interpretation, which summarises the differences as
described in the analytical sections above.
83
Ibid.
How to Write a Proof
330
Categories Legitimisation
AA NAA
Competence Disqualification – they – the
Ministry’s decision
Institutional (authorised)
legitimacy
Non-responsible evaluators
Passive
Qualification – we, the authors
of this expert document
Non-mediated propositions
Active
Reasonability Pertinence – human knowledge
(extensive citations) – we are,
too, aware of the same as others
Apologetics
Justification with reference to
the adaptation to the changing
world
Expressible in curricular
documents
Pertinence – Transcendental
knowledge – expert data says
what the problem is
Denunciation, propositions
Justification with reference to
(non-)effectivity, (in-)flexibility
Expressible in the vocabulary of
flexibility, effectivity, and quality
Audience Qualification, voices of other
actors (your opinion)
You
Disqualification – some first
(experts – politicians – directors
– teachers – parents)
Stakeholders
Relevance Past – present – answering
previous question, functions
not fulfilled
Adaptation
Because everybody (society) ...
Present – future – stating
problems, not lagging behind
Modernisation
Because data ...
Proof We, like others (competence
dependent on others – the
Ministry, Finland, society, the
world), are redesigning the
revision of reform
= impossibility of objection
We (competence of experts)
are showing what the data says
(circular reasoning)
= impossibility of objection
Table 1. 4th
level of interpretation – patterns of justification in the two strategic
documents
Jitka Wirthová
331
Conclusion
In this paper, I have tried through the relational approach to writing strategies
to present two different ways of constructing a non-arbitrary need
for educational change. I have analysed two popularising policy documents
which I have chosen according to their relevance in the pre-election educational
debate in 2017. In these documents, the non-arbitrariness was
developed with different kinds of proof. Proof could be located in the past
or the future; proof can rest in transcendental data or authoritative pretexts.
Proof can be written by other people, by the world, or by data. However,
both of them were “pedagogical” writings with their purpose being to state
what must be done and why, but one wanted to write a guideline but did not
want to be responsible, whereas the second refuted the mimesis of reality and
wanted to address “more important audiences.”
The contribution of this study, which lies in the detailed characterisation
of ways of proving and knowledge usage,84
dwells in two linked layers. The
study shows what possible forms of competence, knowledge, expertise, and
proof can appear in the educational debate in the Czech Republic; but also
shows some new linkages among categories, which appeared to transcendent
traditional modern policy project, and which could be followed when
studying the knowledge in our contemporary societies. It suggests being
sensitive to transfers of authorship, to ways of activeness and the layers of
this activeness, to presuppositions of conveying reality (mirroring nature
in a Rortyian sense), to the ways in which knowledge is aggregated and
produced, and, last but not least, to the constitution of the audience and the
characteristics of its competence to be part of the proposition about education
and in which sense, because these various ways of justification structure
the meaning of relevant problems, possible solutions, competent authority,
reasonable knowledge, and therefore possible action.
It shows that sociological tracing of such categories (instances of event
universe) connects with the traditional ethical claim to give those with no
voice the chance to speak. In social sciences specifically, this means to find
the layers of the differend, which commonly remain unpronounceable, unpresentable.
The solution, which educational claim should be followed, which
educational content should be taught, is not the aim of this work, although
the interpretations of these documents alone here present something – the
models of the educational world within these documents. Nevertheless, the
84
The design of this micro research of two documents does not allow of any generalisations
about the nature of Czech educational reform debate as whole.
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332
solutions rest upon political debate in the broad sense as Arendt and Lyotard
both put it, which means, after all, to be exposed to plurality.
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