Pedagogic practices in a deregulated upper secondary school: Students’ attempts to influence their teaching

Abstract

This article explores strategies, targets, and responses to young people’s attempts to influence pedagogic practices, and the variations between different programmes in a deregulated upper secondary school system. Using Basil Bernstein’s code theory, the study draws on ethnographic data from two of the most popular academic programmes in one upper secondary school in Iceland, the natural science programme and the social science programme. Students tried to a greater extent to influence the ‘how’ of their everyday education rather than the ‘what’. That is, neither of the student groups tried to influence the content of their lessons or courses. There was a strong framing of the selection of knowledge but variations in the framing of pacing and teaching methods, which presented students with various options as to what they tried to influence. The findings imply that mathematics within the natural science programme was a gatekeeper to students’ further studies as it was strongly framed and classified, and students’ attempts to slow down the pacing were unsuccessful. The students in the social science programme targeted monotonous teaching methods, without success. Some of the students responded to the failed attempts by interrupting classes and reducing lesson time for the whole group. The findings indicate that the deregulation of the upper secondary school curriculum needs to be considered, as it leads to stronger classification between schools, subjects, and programmes.

Introduction

International policies have long emphasised the fostering of democratic citizens (Council of Europe, 2004; United Nations Human Rights, 1989), and democratic schooling, student influence, and participation have been prominent in the educational policy of the Nordic countries (see e.g., Arnesen et al., 2014). Similarly, Icelandic education policy has emphasised democratic education for decades (Harðarson, 2010). It has been framed more explicitly in current curricula, for example with democracy and human rights as one of the fundamental pillars of education (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2012). Also, the Icelandic Upper Secondary Education Act (No. 92/2008:33) added a new statement to previous Acts stipulating that ‘Students shall have the right to express their views on the study environment, learning arrangements, the organisation of schooling, and any other decision concerning them’(Government of Iceland, 2013). These changes are in consonance with travelling policies in which concepts such as learner-centred education and student autonomy have been in focus (e.g., Biesta, 2017; Schweisfurth, 2015).

Along with the emphasis on student influence, the Icelandic Upper Secondary Education Act from 2008 and the national curriculum (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2012), presented a change towards deregulation and increased curriculum flexibility. Those changes were also in line with recent developments internationally, to which decentralised and deregulated bodies for decision-making have been central (Daun, 2007; Dovemark et al., 2018). Therefore, the changes in the Icelandic educational policy simultaneously entailed increased emphasis on student influence and increased authority for individual upper secondary schools to develop their education and programmes according to their own traditions and preferences, and thereby adhere to students’ needs and wishes (Ragnarsdóttir, 2018a). Moreover, the national curriculum states that the increased authority of individual schools ‘is to give schools an opportunity to respond systematically to the requirements of the pupils . . .’ (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2012: 7).

The changes towards more deregulated decision-making on the upper secondary school level, paired with its emphasis on student influence in education policy, sparked our interest to examine student influence on teaching within the two most popular academic programmes at the upper secondary school level in Iceland, natural science and the social science programmes. The research questions proposed are: How do young people try to influence pedagogic practices, what areas do they target and how do schools respond? How do variations in pedagogic practice create different spaces for student influence?

Previous research on student influence

Previous research shows that there is generally little support for student influence in pedagogical practice (e.g., Coppock and Phillips, 2013; Rosvall, 2011; Thornberg and Elvstrand, 2012; Waage et al., 2013; Zyngier, 2013). In particular, students are rarely seen to influence the content of teaching, whereas they are more likely to affect form aspects as the sequencing of content or when to take a test (Dovemark, 2004). Several studies have been conducted on student influence in the Nordic context, as Nordic educational legislation and curricula maintain the importance of student agency in everyday classroom practice (Arnesen et al., 2014). They indicate that even when students are invited to influence, their responses have little effect on school decisions (e.g., Beach et al., 2011; Jónsdóttir and Sigþórsson, 2013; Rönnlund, 2014).

Research also point to substantial variations in student influence across educational contexts, related to for instance local school discourses (Lanå, 2015), the interest and efforts of individual teachers, or the subject studied (Beach et al., 2011). Also, several studies suggest that there are significant differences between programmes regarding student influence (e.g., Bjarnadóttir and Geirsdóttir, 2018; Hjelmér and Rosvall, 2017; Nylund et al., 2018). Key subjects within the natural science programmes, such as mathematics, are usually strongly framed and less open to innovation and influence (Bernstein, 2000; Bjarnadóttir, 2018; Cause, 2010; Hjelmér, 2011), whereas there are some indications that students from programmes other than the natural sciences are able to exert more influence over their learning (Bjarnadóttir and Geirsdóttir, 2018; Hjelmér and Rosvall, 2017). Beach (2008) has suggested that a strong performativity culture has profound implications for whether students want to influence their learning, as students in those contexts need to feel assured that they have accumulated the knowledge they need to succeed. That can explain the clash between performativity and students’ will and opportunities to influence their learning.

Taken together then, students seem to have rather meagre prospects of influencing their teaching, but this also relies on their targets and the contexts and framing of teaching. By looking into these contextual conditions, it is possible to understand better the nature and variations of student influence, for example in the context of curriculum changes involving deregulation. The changes allow variations in the local curriculum that are worth exploring.

The local context: towards a deregulated upper secondary school curriculum

In education, deregulation has been framed as a process of removing or reducing state regulations, for example concerning the ‘internal work of schools, such as the subjects taught, number of lessons, [and] student behaviour’ (Dovemark et al., 2018: 123). Drawing on Nieveen and Kuiper (2012), curriculum deregulation centres on trusting schools and teachers to interpret and implement site-specific curriculum guidelines. Along similar lines, the most recent Icelandic curriculum presents a policy in which schools can develop their own programmes that can vary in terms of content, credits, and lesson hours, instead of four national academic programmes and dozens of vocational and practical programmes (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1999, 2012). These changes were geared towards increasing the diversity of study programmes offered in upper secondary schools and allowing schools to specialise according to their location, mission, and organisation. Only five subjects and subject fields crossing all academic programmes are now listed in the curriculum. These are: Icelandic; English; Mathematics; one Nordic language; as well as another third language (German/Spanish/French) (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2012).

According to Ragnarsdóttir (2018b), these changes were motivated by two factors. One is the international, neo-liberal trend in education that has spurred changes in Iceland as well as within other Western countries (see e.g., Daun, 2007; Lawn, 2011; Simons et al., 2013), of which the European Qualification Framework has been influential (Mikulek, 2017). The second factor, according to Ragnarsdóttir (2018b), involves aims to motivate and empower practitioners’ professionalism at the school level. Parallel to these changes, schools were supposed to shorten the length of the academic programmes from four to three years (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2014; Jakobsdóttir, 2014; Parliamentary document no. 815/2014–2015). Consequently, individual schools and their staff were given the power to determine what content should be included in or excluded from different programmes, because of the deregulated curriculum design. The argument concerning shortening the time centred mostly on international comparison and economic reasons (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2014) and had been ongoing for decades (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1994, 2003). It is important to note here that the educational authorities in Iceland did not include any measures or assessments as part of the reforms, neither towards the shortening nor the deregulation of the upper secondary school curriculum. From the perspective of student influence, this is interesting as increased deregulation at the upper secondary school level might encourage curricular and pedagogic innovation, and it also creates larger space for within-school and between-school differences regarding the general education and university preparedness of students. Now schools have three years to prepare students for university education, instead of four.

For decades, some university programmes, mostly within the field of engineering, mathematics, medicine, and law, have controlled access by requiring (or strongly proposing) minimum credits in key-subjects or by using entrance examinations or numerus clausus. Deregulation at the upper secondary school level seems to have started to impact entrance requirements at the university level, as the University of Iceland claims that ‘the ever-increasing variety in upper secondary education has created a need for the development of Icelandic entrance examinations for the university level’ (University of Iceland, n.d.). Consequently, some of the previously mentioned programmes within the University of Iceland have developed additional entrance examinations to verify students’ abilities (University of Iceland, 2019, 2016). The entrance requirements and the new entrance examination mainly apply to programmes that are traditionally selective and for which upper secondary school natural science programmes have traditionally prepared students (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 1999). Most of the other programmes in Icelandic universities do not have any specific requirements and accept all applicants who have completed upper secondary education.

Theoretical background

Basil Bernstein’s (2000) code theory guides this study. It provides a critical angle for the conceptualisation of student influence through the discussion of power and control within the school and the classroom, and the ways in which students can and should influence how and what they learn. Two of the core concepts of Bernstein’s (2000) code theory are classification and framing. Classification is applied here for the analysis of power relations caused and explained by the curriculum and refers to the power relations made visible by the boundaries that exist between different categories, such as school subjects and spaces (Bernstein, 2000; Hoadley and Muller, 2010). Classification can also refer to the relation between objects or persons within categories or spaces, such as between persons within the same classroom. That kind of relation is referred to as ‘internal classification’ (Bernstein, 2000). Bernstein and Solomon (1999: 273) discuss that this boundary, ‘may vary in terms of whose interest is promoted or privileged by the boundary’. Consequently, it can be more easily bridged by some than others.

Straehler-Pohl and Gellert (2013) have taken the boundary discussion further. They use the concept gaps, and argue that these are crucial to the understanding of Bernstein’s classification. For instance, they suggest studying how the gaps between different categories, such as programmes and subjects, are organised, as well as what makes a student aware of whether he or she is sitting in a mathematics lesson or a sociology lesson. According to Bernstein (2000), the clearer the boundary between those (and other) categories, the stronger the classification. In a school context, strongly classified education programmes and subjects can lead to knowledge roadblocks for students, as it is difficult to move between them (Lynch and McGarr, 2016). Previous research has shown that classification is especially strong between mathematics and other subjects (e.g., Bleazby, 2015; Cause, 2010).

The concept of framing will be applied to further analyse power relations in the classroom and who has control over how knowledge is selected, sequenced, paced, and evaluated. When the teacher maintains control, the framing is strong and students have little opportunity to influence decisions regarding those aspects of pedagogic practices; however, in cases where the framing is weak, students have apparent control and can influence their schooling to a greater extent. Furthermore, Bernstein (2000) distinguishes between internal and external framing. Examples of external framing would be communications between the school and its local community or between the school and other school levels. External framing is central as a point of departure in this article, as the Icelandic upper secondary school system is deregulated. The increased freedom with which each school has been provided to develop their programmes also creates space for influences and pressure from stakeholders outside of the schools, such as local communities and the university level (see Ragnarsdóttir, 2018b).

Previous Bernsteinian research has shown that strong framing of assessment, where the evaluation criteria are made explicit, is especially important for the successful learning of all students (Hoadley and Muller, 2010; Morais, 2002; Morais and Neves, 2011). Strong framing of assessment requires weak framing of pacing, where students have some control over the time of their knowledge realisation. On the other hand, strong framing over pacing tends to favour students who are better positioned to get help from each other or from parents or from private tutoring (Arnot and Reay, 2004; Bernstein, 2000; Hoadley and Muller, 2010; Morais, 2002, Morais and Neves, 2011; Young and Muller, 2013). Research has shown that pacing in strongly classified subjects, such as mathematics, is often organised around the hardest working students (Hjelmér, 2011) and that students’ requests for slower pacing often fail (Bjarnadóttir and Geirsdóttir, 2018; Hjelmér, 2011). That warrants serious consideration in this context.

Bernstein’s (2000) pedagogic codes can be used to distinguish between two forms of pedagogic practice, in terms of whether the classification and framing are weak or strong. These two forms are visible and invisible pedagogy. The pedagogy is visible when the hierarchical relations are explicit and the framing is strong. The teacher is the authority in such practices and that is clear to everyone. Invisible pedagogic practice, on the other hand, is identified with weak framing. According to Bernstein (2000: 110), ‘[I]t is as if the pupil is the author of the practice and even the authority’. Classification is strong in the case of visible pedagogy but weaker in the case of invisible forms.

Framing and classification are, therefore, two interacting concepts. When framing is strong within spaces and subjects, the classification of those spaces and subjects is usually strong as well. The internal and external classification and framing, as well as the concepts of visible and invisible pedagogy, can provide important understanding of the power relations between and within the two programmes in this study in a school system that was assumed to give both students and staff more power.

Methods and data production

Upper secondary schools in Iceland are, with few exceptions, state-run and charge no tuition fees. Most upper secondary schools are comprehensive schools that offer both academic and vocational programmes. Some schools are categorised as grammar schools that offer exclusively academic university preparatory programmes. There are currently 30 upper secondary schools in Iceland, of which only a few are categorised as grammar schools. Those are among the most established and selective upper secondary schools in Iceland (Blöndal et al., 2011). The school chosen, Björk, is a medium-sized grammar school. The criteria from which the school was selected were that: (1) it is an academically oriented grammar school; and (2) the first author, who conducted the fieldwork, had no personal connection with the school, its staff or its students. This study draws on fieldwork from two academic programmes, the natural science programme (NSP) and the social science programme (SSP). The NSP focuses on mathematics and natural sciences while the SSP involves sociology, psychology, and history, among other subjects. These programmes were chosen because they are the most popular ones among upper secondary school students in Iceland (Blöndal et al., 2011).

Comprehensive field notes of participant observations, interviews, and conversations with students and staff comprise the data. Drawing on Fangen’s (2005) guidelines, the participant observations were a combination of participation and observation, in which a balance was found between participation in students’ daily activities without being too disruptive and intrusive. A compressed time mode of ethnography was conducted (Jeffrey and Troman, 2004), where the research site was inhabited almost permanently during a four-week period, consisting of 20 school days. That involved being present from morning to the end of each school day, following students’ daily schedules, studying all the relevant places and having conversations with as many people as possible in the field. During this period, lessons were attended with students (60 hours), time was spent with them in breaks, and informal conversations with them as well as semi-structured interviews were conducted. The data were collected in the second half of the 2010s. ¹

Two classes from Björk participated in the study, one from each programme. Time was divided between the classes with two weeks spent in each class. All students from the two classes were invited to participate in interviews and most of them agreed to do so. In all, 37 students participated: 26 girls and 11 boys; 20 from the SSP and 17 from the NSP. Five students were not interviewed; one opted out, two did not show up and two declined because of time limitations. Most of the student interviews were conducted individually but some students preferred group interviews. Considerable time was spent in teachers’ lounges, and six teachers from core subjects within each programme were interviewed individually. The core subjects were mathematics, chemistry, and biology (NSP), and sociology, psychology, and general science (SSP).

The observations focused on interactions and students’ attempts to exert influence in the classroom, including their targets, means for change and teachers’ responses. The interviews took place late in the fieldwork and focused on incidents of influence from lessons as well as students’ and teachers’ experiences and perceptions of this from the school. The interviews were all conducted in Icelandic and excerpts were later transcribed into English and checked by a bilingual proofreader. The same applies to the field notes.

The study followed the ethical guidelines set by the University of Iceland (Research Ethics Committee, 2014). The participants, who were all 18 years or older, were informed about the aim of the research, its focus and publication intentions before they gave their consent. They were also informed that they could withdraw from the study and were promised anonymity. The study was reported to the Icelandic Data Protection Authority.

Analysis and findings

Before presenting the results of students’ attempts to influence pedagogic practices, the school setting will be described, particularly in relation to the classification of the two programmes. The analyses from the observations point to three main targets of influence, confirmed by the interviews: (1) the pace of teaching; (2) the methods of teaching; and (3) space for non-school work, by reducing lesson time and interrupting teachers’ planning. Requests for changes in pace and methods of teaching were explicitly communicated during lessons. Attempts to create space for non-school work, on the other hand, were communicated in more implicit ways through noises, movements, interruptions or suggestions that changed the focus of the teaching. Targets and teachers’ responses were typically found to vary between the two programmes.

Strong classification between the two programmes

Björk offers a few academic programmes leading to the matriculation examination, of which the most popular are the natural science and social science programmes. These programmes have been on offer in Björk for decades, but were subject to changes following the current national curriculum (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2012). That entailed reduction of study time from four years to three and curriculum changes, developed by leaders and teachers in the school. Since Björk is a relatively popular school, it is selective and applications exceed vacancies. Therefore, students have above average grades from compulsory school. Björk is located in the capital city area of Reykjavík, where over 220,000 people live, but the students come from different suburbs and municipalities in the Reykjavík area. Despite having other schools in their own neighbourhoods, some of the researched students travelled by bus for up to one hour each way to attend Björk. Students and staff described the school as having a relaxed and friendly ethos, in which they did not have to be a certain type to fit into the school. In Björk, there is informal differentiation in enrolment requirements between the two programmes. There is harder competition for a place in the NSP programme giving the NSP students an even stronger academic status.

There was a strong classification between the two programmes in terms of physical location and social interactions. The teachers had their desks in different areas of the schools and there were also distinctive staffrooms. Most of the teaching took place in classrooms in the same area as the corresponding staffrooms, preventing regular interactions between students and teachers from the two programmes.

Another example of the strong classification is the reasons for students’ choices. In general, the NSP students claimed to have chosen the NSP because of their future aspirations and because they wanted to keep all their options open, while most of the SSP students chose the SSP because they were not strong in mathematics. There was a perceived status hierarchy between the programmes. Berglind, an SSP student, experienced being judged for her choice. She said:

When I said that I wanted to go to Björk, to the social science programme, they were all just mathematics, mathematics, business, engineering, accounting. . . . [A member of the family] judged me for this decision. She said, ‘Well, you just change programmes after the first year. You will go to the natural science programme. Only stupid people go to the social science programme’.

Student participation in the school’s social activities differed between the two programmes. Many students from the SSP were members of committees and clubs within the student organisation, while the NSP students did not participate as much in the school’s social offerings. The main reason they gave was lack of time due to the great workload in their studies. Íris, an NSP student, explained, ‘The social life is very good in Björk, I think. But I do not participate much because I do not have the time’.

There was also a clear division between sitting in an SSP or NSP classroom (Straehler-Pohl and Gellert, 2013), as the NSP students were more study-oriented. The SSP students explained that they were different from the NSP students, since they were lively and liked to talk. They had an image of the NSP students as being boring nerds, ‘probably calculating in their brains or something’, while they perceived themselves as fun to be with. This was somewhat supported through informal conversations in the teachers’ lounge, with expressions such as ‘Oh, you are with that class’, usually followed by a grin and a discussion about SSP classes in general.

Students’ requests for changes in teaching

Changing the pace of teaching

Students in both programmes recurrently made explicit attempts to influence pedagogic practices. These attempts especially concerned direct requests for slower pacing in mathematics among the NSP students, as mathematics, within the NSP, seemed to be the most strongly framed subject at Björk and nearly impossible to change. That is in accord with previous research from other countries (e.g., Öhrn et al., 2011).

In mathematics, the NSP students reported that they had to work intensely and stay alert in all lessons; otherwise, they risked falling behind in the subject. This was a recurrent theme in all conversations with the NSP students, summed up in the words of Ída, who identified herself as one of the class’s highest achievers in mathematics:

It is kind of always that I do not understand what is going on and I do not have time to understand because [the teacher] is going too fast . . . we are just writing the [mathematical] problems.

Lena, who voiced similar opinions said, ‘If you are not following [the teacher], you are just in deep shit. And he just continues really, no matter what’. Ída and Lena were both referring to the ways in which the teacher solved the mathematical problems in the textbook, usually by writing rapidly on the whiteboard, without allowing much time for explanations. During lessons, the students repetitively asked the teacher to slow down or even stop writing on the whiteboard. The teacher usually responded to these requests by waiting for students for one or two minutes before continuing. The following excerpt is from the field notes:

The teacher had been writing mathematical problems on the whiteboard. The students wrote everything down and the pacing was very fast. The teacher had just finished writing problem no. 45 and was starting problem no. 46 when Gunnar, one of the high achieving boys in the class, said, ‘Can we please write this one down first before you start the next one?’ The teacher stopped for two minutes and checked the attendance before starting problem no. 46. Right after he had finished writing that example on the whiteboard, he started no. 47. Then Gunnar stopped the teacher again and said, ‘Please, can you stop? We are still writing the previous example, you know!’ (Field notes, mathematics, NSP)

In the interviews, the students were asked if they had addressed the pacing problems they experienced, either with the teacher or the school leaders. Some of the students confirmed that they had and some related accounts of complaints because of a chapter examination that they found too difficult. Anita explained, ‘There have been complaints. . . . We were very unhappy about his chapter exam. It was just, so terribly difficult and really unfair’. The students found it particularly unfair that the two mathematics teachers that taught the same course during this term did not prepare the chapter examinations together. That meant that those attending that particular mathematics course, which was a common core subject for all NSP students, had different chapter examinations, depending on which teacher they had. For example, Hekla said:

I think the girls . . . when they found [the chapter examination] unfair, spoke [to the head of the department] about the exams and that they should be the same. I do not know how it went.

During the fieldwork, it was time for the next examination and some students addressed their discontent with the previous test. Klara asked the teacher if the examination would be as difficult as the last one. He replied, ‘The last exam was not difficult . . . the test made [by the other teacher] was too easy’. It was clear that he was not going to change anything regarding the examination. He thought it was better to have a difficult chapter examination to enhance students’ preparation for the final examination. As he explained:

I prepare them myself, I have my own chapter exams. There were some students who even went to the head of the department and wanted the same exams for everyone, but it is not possible . . . the students think I prepare difficult chapter exams, but it is better to have it difficult than easy, because in the final exam they all get the same test and then they are better prepared for that.

In an interview with the mathematics teacher, he was asked if it would be possible to make some changes on the mathematics course, to respond to students’ wishes for a slower pace. He said that it would be difficult, because he had to cover the entire syllabus before the final examination. That would not change. The teacher explained:

This final exam . . . I am so afraid that I will not be able to go through the syllabus. Because there will be an exam, final examination, and what, how would [students] feel if I have not covered everything?

Thus, the teacher found himself in a tight spot, following the curriculum while meeting students’ needs for a slower pace. He also sympathised with the students who were preparing for university education in fields such as engineering, not least because the school had a good reputation. He explained that according to information from the engineering department in the University of Iceland, students from Björk were among the best and implied that it was a good feeling. ‘It would be possible [to reduce the content] but how would they then get into an engineering programme in a university?’ Björk, like other upper secondary schools in Iceland, has shortened the length of the academic programmes. But since the university level has even strengthened their entrance requirements, the situation has become more difficult. As the mathematics teacher explained:

because we have shortened . . . they were learning this in four years and now they only have three years . . . and we need to cover all the syllabus that used to be covered in four years.

Thus, the NSP’s mathematics curriculum and its strong pacing is greatly influenced by a conjunction of factors, such as the university’s entrance demands, curricular changes, and the school’s status.

Hjelmér’s (2011) study on students’ agency in a natural science programme in a Swedish upper secondary school showed that the workload was great in mathematics and the pace was organised around the hardest working students. The students had a hard time coping with the pacing and their requests for change did not turn out to be fruitful, that is, the teachers found it important to prepare students for the hard work of their future education and professional positions. Similarly, Arnot and Reay (2004) have pointed out that when the framing of pacing is strong, the control of the pace is minimal for those pupils having most difficulty with it. In Björk, even the hardest working students found it difficult to keep up with the pace.

As Bernstein (2000) argued, the social context of the school supports the cycle of social division through various aspects of communications within the school context. This applies to mathematics in Björk. The strong pacing appears irreversible, that is, due to the perceived demands from the university level. This makes mathematics at this level a subject only accessible to a limited number of students, who must overcome several obstacles and have access to external resources before being able to complete the NSP. In the researched NSP class, it was a matter of course for the students to pay for a mathematics course at the end of every semester, organised by a private company. Some had a parent or a friend who could help, but nearly all the interviewed students explained that they had to seek extra lessons outside of school. The pacing was too strong for them, so comprehension was impossible without private tutoring, even though the students worked intensely during mathematics lessons. Several studies show that private supplementary tutoring is necessary to cope with strong pacing in subjects such as mathematics (e.g., Arnot and Reay, 2007; Bjarnadóttir and Geirsdóttir, 2018; Bray, 2007; Hjelmér and Rosvall, 2017). That was also the case in Björk, even more so in the aftermath of the deregulation of the upper secondary school curriculum, since the study time in the NSP was shortened. Blöndal et al. (2011) argued that the prestigious schools in Iceland do not necessarily see it as a problem when students leave before completing their academic programmes since they simply do not meet the programme’s standards. Therefore, the strong classification and framing of the NSP should not be surprising.

Changing the methods of teaching

The SSP students’ explicit requests for change mostly targeted teaching methods in general science, which is one of their core subjects. Their attempts concerned more varied and challenging teaching methods in general science, as they found the lessons monotonous. Some of the students asked the teacher to change their way of teaching, which typically relied heavily on PowerPoint presentations that were read aloud to the students:

Once, in the beginning of class, the teacher was starting a briefing with the help of PPT [PowerPoint] when a girl asked if there would be a slide show today. When the teacher said yes, Anna said sarcastically ‘Yes, that works best for us!’ Ósk continued, ‘You have to make it more interesting’. Jón then said quietly, ‘Will there really be a PowerPoint show?’ The teacher did not respond to these comments and started briefing from the slides. (Field notes, general science, SSP)

This excerpt from the field notes shows how students attempted to address their dissatisfaction, both directly but also through sarcasm. Students also expressed their frustration by sighing or yawning loudly:

The teacher started reading from the slides and the majority of the class did not seem to be paying attention to what the teacher was saying. There was a complete silence apart from the teacher’s talk, when Jón yawned deafeningly. Then a few other students also started yawning loudly. (Field notes, general science, SSP)

Near the end of that class, the teacher addressed the critique by telling the students that he used the PowerPoint a lot because ‘it was difficult to teach an old dog new tricks’; after this lesson and the unsuccessful attempt to influence the teaching methods, some of the students expressed their dissatisfaction in an interview. For example, Ósk said:

Like, we told [the teacher] earlier today, you know, could we do something else? Could we perhaps have an assignment or something like that instead, so that we learn something? Then we come home and must teach ourselves before the exam.

Although students appeared distressed by a lack of interesting and adequate teaching, some of them commented that the attempts to influence the teaching methods might have been more successful if they had tried harder. Ósk said that the class was probably not ambitious enough to go further in their requests for more demands on teaching methods. Most of the students had low expectations regarding the course; they had not bought the textbook and since the subject was not within the social science field, it was outside their field of ambition. As Katrín explained:

We only aim at passing [the course] . . . because a minimum grade in the natural science courses is okay. But then everyone is competing for good grades in, for example, sociology.

Still, the students did repeatedly try in class to change the teaching methods. But as in the case with the mathematics teaching, their attempts did not bring about any noticeable changes. But while the mathematics teacher within the NSP felt in a dilemma, the teacher in general science within the SSP had room to make changes because the syllabus was not permanently fixed, but decided on grounds of individual preferences. He described that he decides for himself what he does. ‘But it is expected of me that I attend classes, or at least make sure that students have something to do in classes. . . . In this subject I organised the syllabus from scratch.’ He explained that he liked briefing with the help of PowerPoint even though he was aware of the shortcomings, ‘I just find it very comfortable to stand and talk. When I started teaching, that worked but now it does not really work.’

Both subjects are organised in the context of the deregulated curriculum. However, mathematics is identified with a strong external framing (Bernstein, 2000), as seen in the indirect controls by the university level and other external factors, and the general science for the SSP students has a weak external framing. There were no strong external factors that influenced how the course was organised by the teacher so that should not have stopped him from adhering to students’ wishes for more interesting teaching methods.

Students’ attempts to reduce lesson time and interrupt teachers’ planning

During the fieldwork, repeated examples of students using implicit means to create space in school for non-school work were observed, and unlike their explicit requests for changes in teaching, their attempts were usually successful. This occurred most frequently in the SSP classes, and appeared to be a part of students’ responses to unsuccessful requests to influence teaching methods. A small group of students, usually the same group of girls, influenced the reduction of lesson time for the whole class, by five to 15 minutes. This happened on several occasions in different subjects. They did this by creating a turmoil and then they, along with the other students, simply stood up and left the lesson, as described in the following excerpt from the field notes:

There were five minutes left when Sara said, ‘The lesson is up,’ and everyone stood up and left. (Field notes, general science, SSP)

This influence that students had on the reduction of lesson time might seem random or not deliberate but it turned out to be quite thought through by the students, as the following conversation between Inga, Sara, and Ósk, shows:

Inga: Like today, you started to move the table like everyone was standing up and trying to make noise.

Sara: I do this often. Then everyone starts to pack and prepare to leave. Then it starts, it catches on, everyone else starts to leave and the teacher is just like. . .

Ósk: Yes, then the teacher becomes stressed.

Sara: Okay, time is up.

Sara was the leader of the group, admitting that she deliberately started to move her table and make noise, because she knew that it was a way for students to end lessons. Other students also interrupted the lessons and used the concept of ‘closing’ lessons when they wanted to reduce lesson time. Not all students identified themselves with the group of girls who deliberately ‘closed’ lessons by leaving early. Katrín, a girl who was relatively new in the student group said that this behaviour had surprised her at first:

When they want to leave they just stand up and leave the lesson. You know, they just stand up and leave. I was so shocked because, when they stood up and left, the teacher was still talking!

Markús, one of the few boys in the class said:

They absolutely know the possibilities they have to make things comfortable and usually they take those chances. Like they can. There is an intent purpose with this, yes, leaving early, making turmoil, and so on.

Markús and Katrín did not oppose these incidents, but clearly a few students had control of other students’ lesson time. The reason for the reduction of lesson time within the SSP class was related to their requests for changing the methods of teaching, as they found some of their lessons boring. María said, ‘We do not cope with this kind of teaching. We cannot cope with the PowerPoint’. Hanna explained:

When the teacher is talking about something really boring, it is so easy to zone out. I downloaded a computer game earlier because I was so bored. And I was just playing it in the lesson.

This pattern indicates a strong framing (Bernstein, 2000) of the organisation of lessons, as the teacher controls the content and teaching methods and does not make changes even though students show their discontent and lack of motivation. However, there was space for the SSP students to reduce the lesson time when they wanted to. Part of the reason for doing that, also discussed in the previous section, was that the students in the SSP reported that they did not like the teaching methods and their requests for changes were unsuccessful.

The attempts to reduce lesson time were mostly visible within the SSP class, but both classes targeted the events of lessons, to interrupt what the teachers had previously planned. This did not occur with all their teachers, but only those who made it possible by weak framing of communications and pacing. The habitual procedure would be to disturb the teacher by asking irrelevant questions, asking the teacher to watch certain YouTube videos, or disturbing the class in other ways. On one occasion in a psychology lesson with the SSP students, the teacher had decided to give a briefing about a new theme. The following excerpt describes the way the lesson proceeded:

It was 9:30 on a Friday morning and the teacher was starting to introduce a new theme when Dís asked him to review something from the year before. The teacher started explaining what Dís asked him to and then showed students YouTube videos. The first ones were related to the subject, but then Dís suggested one or two random videos that the teacher allowed the class to watch before turning back to the PPT [PowerPoint]. Then Dís asked ‘Are we going to watch the dog experiment?’ The teacher started looking for that video and Dís gave a thumbs up to another girl and said quietly, ‘Oh, I just wanted to watch more videos’. (Field notes, psychology, SSP)

During the interviews, some of the students reflected on this incident and were aware of how much control individual students had over how time was used in lessons and how little learning took place. After this lesson Markús explained, ‘They do it a lot, like in [the lesson earlier today]. ‘Hey, can we watch a video about the experiment’ and [the teacher] did not plan to do that’.

Similar incidents happened repeatedly in biology classes in the NSP. The framing of communication was rather weak (Bernstein, 2000) between the teacher and the students. It was common in lessons that some of the students would converse with the teacher, who became easily distracted by their questions, as they were often irrelevant to the subject and sometimes personal. These lessons, unlike other lessons with the NSP students, normally started late and finished early. Marta, a high achieving student from the class acknowledged the responsibility and control the teacher had, both in terms of learning and non-learning:

The teachers control the atmosphere in lessons . . . like in biology, you do not really have to learn in lessons . . . if the teacher was stricter, it would be easier to learn.

This quote from Marta is quite demonstrative regarding the reasons for students’ attempts to interrupt the biology lessons. The combination of weakly framed communications and monotonous teaching methods in biology did not seem to motivate students, as the teacher’s most common practice was briefing with the help of PowerPoint slides. Ída explained ‘I do not learn a lot when he is talking by the whiteboard, because, you get away with not doing anything’. Similarly, Marta said:

The PowerPoint slides are on the Internet so you do not have to spend the lesson learning. It pays off to work well in [other NSP subjects] while it does not pay off in biology.

The biology teacher was aware of the shortcomings of his teaching methods, or as he explained, ‘this is not working . . . this is kind of repetition of the book through PowerPoint, as you have probably noticed in lessons. And this is not delivering much.’ He explained that he found the organisation of the course difficult, but he had inherited the course from an older teacher. He explained that he had the freedom to change the course but had not taken the time or made an effort to do that.

Some of the NSP students indicated that they found the interruptions in class annoying and were aware of how little learning took place. For example, a male student in the NSP, Jónas, said this about their biology lessons:

I think that we are not using the time wisely. We are often just chatting and doing nonsense. Though it might be fun in precisely that lesson, you start learning for the exam and then just, wow, what is this!

A girl from the same class said, ‘Of course it is annoying, some days you really want to learn’. However, the quieter students from both programmes who wanted to make use of the lesson time spoke about how disrespectful they found some of their classmates and how difficult it was to concentrate in this environment. This particularly applied to the NSP students, but not solely. One girl from the SSP class said: ‘The class is the most draining thing I have ever experienced. And I have five younger siblings!’

There was an apparent difference between different subjects in terms of how the student groups used their time in school. The NSP students usually had to use every minute of the lessons to keep up, since the framing of pacing was very strong and the teachers had the control over lessons. However, there was not a clear-cut difference between the programmes, since the framing of communications and pacing in the NSP biology was weak enough to create space for students to influence the proceedings of lessons. That resulted in interruptions and reduction of lesson time. Biology classes were, therefore, an exception from the strongly framed lessons within the NSP. Drawing on Bleazby (2015), mathematics is highest up in the subject hierarchy while other natural science subjects have a slightly lower status. That could explain why the framing is considerably stronger in mathematics than biology within the NSP. Interestingly though, the pattern was relatively consistent within the SSP group, as students could commonly influence the lesson time and interrupt teachers’ lesson plans.

Discussion and conclusion

This study set out to explore how students tried to influence pedagogic practices, the areas they targeted, and how teachers responded. Bernstein’s code theory was used to analyse and explain the variations between the different programmes and subjects under study. As we have demonstrated, students tried to a greater extent to influence the ‘how’ of their everyday education rather than the ‘what’. That is, neither of the student groups tried to influence the content of their lessons or courses. There was a strong framing of the selection of knowledge but variations in the framing of pacing and teaching methods, which presented students with various options as to what they tried to influence. In this respect, there were differences between the pedagogic codes of the subjects within the two programmes.

Mathematics was the most classified subject and the pedagogic practices in mathematics were characterised by visible pedagogy (Bernstein, 2000). The teacher–student relationship was strongly framed and the teacher had control over the content, sequence, pacing, and assessment. Students knew what to expect and what was demanded of them but had a hard time to keep up. Although they were unhappy with the pacing and tried to change it, they were not successful. The external classification was strong, meaning that the university level and certain programmes influenced and justified the strong pacing, which appeared impossible to change. This trend was further revealed in Ragnarsdóttir’s (2018b) study on the contemporary change towards deregulation, in which school leaders experienced that the universities protected certain subjects at the upper secondary school level. In particular, the faculty of natural sciences at the University of Iceland was seen to act as a top-down actor in restraining change within related subjects in the upper secondary schools. In addition, it is evident from this study that the teacher in mathematics in the NSP programme felt a strong pressure both in connection to the students’ future and in what the university wanted. The school’s reputation and status also contributed to the strong framing of mathematics within the NSP. Thus, various external factors influence the organisation of courses and programmes in a deregulated curriculum such as the one at Björk.

Achievement in mathematics seems to be the key to many university programmes within the field of natural sciences and technology, since it is one of the core subjects within the natural science programme. Current educational debate also emphasises mathematics as a key link to economic growth in an uncertain future. Therefore, the strong classification and framing of mathematics within the NSP can close the doors for many students who aspire to future studies within the field of natural sciences. In that context we need to ask ourselves why the school system should further restrict access to that knowledge (e.g., Lynch and McGarr, 2016). The natural science programme in this study was strongly classified and pacing was perceived as too strong, even for the strongest students in the class. Such an educational environment is selective and has a gatekeeping effect. Scholars have argued that the framing of pacing can be weakened without lowering conceptual demands, providing further educational opportunities for all students (e.g., Morais and Neves, 2016).

The apparently weak framing of the SSP presents other difficulties and demonstrates that the Icelandic upper secondary school deregulation has not, in the researched school, been followed up by strong local regulations. In this respect, the analysis confirms suggestions that decentralisation and deregulation create space for larger within-school differences, as research has shown that upper secondary schools responded very differently to the policy changes (Ragnarsdóttir, 2018b). The students in this study were highly selective in whose classes they tried to influence, and it matters who had control over what. The somewhat invisible pedagogy, in which students had a lot of control, is not necessarily desirable or just, since it can easily result in less learning for everyone in the class. In the case of Björk, a few students could interrupt lessons and reduce lesson time for the whole group. Therefore, similarly to Rosvall’s (2011) study on student influence in a vocational programme, it was easier for students to exert influence that resulted in non-learning than to demand better teaching. The internal classification (Bernstein, 2000) was strong within the NSP, that is, there seemed to be a clear boundary between students’ leisure time and lesson time. That, however, did not apply to biology lessons, as those lessons were more like the SSP lessons, in which there was not always a clear boundary between leisure time and lesson time. The atmosphere was often rowdy and students had fun instead of focusing on learning. Monotonous teaching practices, in which the teacher briefed with the help of PowerPoint presentations seemed to have impacted students’ behaviour. The interruptions and reduction of lesson time seemed to be a response to the students’ failed attempts to request changes to the teaching methods. Nonetheless, this study shows that the emphasis on student influence presented in the Icelandic Upper Secondary Education Act (No. 92/2008:33) (Government of Iceland, 2013) needs to be considered more critically and systematically, as the results of students’ attempts to influence their learning does not seem to benefit the learning of all students.

The deregulation of the current upper secondary school curriculum (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, 2012), possibly causing stronger classification between schools, subjects, and programmes, needs to be considered. Following the changes, the number of academic programmes leading to matriculation have increased, although it is not at all clear how many there are (at least more than 120) or what the difference between them may be (Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, n.d.). As the deregulation of the upper secondary school curriculum was influenced by international and European trends in education, related to neoliberalism and marketisation (e.g., Mikulek, 2017; Simons et al., 2013), these findings should be considered in an international context. Ball (2013) has argued that the fuzzier the system of schools, the more difficult it is for those without the right cultural assets to find their way through it. Therefore, as Apple (2002) has argued, school reforms that are supposed to be liberating and progressive, have traditionally failed to change society but instead reproduced the social division in more hidden or complicated ways.