Page 60 - Looking_after_school

Looking after school: a critical analysis of personalisation in education

can be judged as more or less normal, and because of the connection
of course content and age, the abnormality of a school career often refers
to delays (or accelerations) or to dropping out of school.
The basic principle of this modern educational institution is the obser-
vation of students and, in accordance, the normalisation of interven-
tions and corrections. Surveillance, correction, and uniform subject
matter intertwine in an educational institution, and correcting mea-
sures (rewards, punishments, extra exercises) are justified by its goal:
normal development within a socially normalised curriculum. Today,
however, norms and the idea of normality are under fire. The most
obvious indications of this are proposed alternatives to linking age,
content level, and learning time (in a class group) and the steps which
have been taken towards inclusive education. Naturally, we tend to see
this moving away from the norm immediately as a positive and liber-
ating development: at last, students are freed from the strangulation
of the norm and at last we can do justice to each and every student!
Before expressing such an appreciation, however, it is important to
sketch in more detail the architecture of the organisation of educa-
tion and learning that comes to replace the former, or that is – at least
- embraced more and more as an ideal today.

The architecture of the learning environment
The new architecture of education and of learning has different build-
ing blocks and organisational principles. The main building blocks of
this new architecture are competencies. On the one hand competencies
are learning outcomes, which are results of learning processes that can
be unambiguously identified and evaluated. On the other hand, they
express a specific or generic performance level or level of proficiency.
Competencies refer thus to the concrete learning outcomes that are
needed in order to gain access to another educational institution or
to the job market. The assumptions of the European qualification
framework – implemented in most member states of European Union
- clearly exemplify what we mean:

“The EQF uses 8 reference levels based on learning outcomes (defined in
terms of knowledge, skills and competences). The EQF shifts the focus
from input (lengths of a learning experience, type of institution) to what
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