IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hig/wpaper/51edu2019.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

‘Formalizing The Unformalizable’: Discursive Resistance To Unified State Examination By The Teacher Community

Author

Listed:
  • Elena Minina

    (National Research University Higher School of Economics)

Abstract

This paper investigates the logics of teachers’ discursive resistance to the Unified State Examinations (USE) almost two decades after its introduction into the Russian education system. By drawing upon NVivo-aided Discourse analysis of online teacher discussions, interview and focus group data, the analysis critically examines the pedagogical underpinnings of USE vis-a-vis the traditional assessment system in the teaching community in two Russian cities: Moscow and Rostov-on-Don. Drawing on the concept of ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’ the analysis shows how, when interpreted through the lens of grassroots pedagogical values, the semantics of the globalized concepts of ‘educational standardization’ and ‘standardized testing’ takes on domestic culturally-specific meanings complementary and, at times, contradictory to the intended ones. In Russia specifically, the notion of ‘standardization’ comes into conflict with the pedagogical idea of a creative personalized and, therefore, profoundly ‘non-standard’ education, while academic assessment continues to be perceived as the non-quantifiable and subjective outcome of teacher-pupil interaction over time. The analysis underscores the interpretative and symbolic dimensions of educational policy and calls for more nuanced efforts to culturally tailor and translate borrowed educational meanings on the part of educational elites.

Suggested Citation

  • Elena Minina, 2019. "‘Formalizing The Unformalizable’: Discursive Resistance To Unified State Examination By The Teacher Community," HSE Working papers WP BRP 51/EDU/2019, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hig:wpaper:51edu2019
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://wp.hse.ru/data/2019/07/02/1491561206/51EDU2019_revised.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vladimir Gel’man & Andrey Starodubtsev, 2016. "Opportunities and Constraints of Authoritarian Modernisation: Russian Policy Reforms in the 2000s," Europe-Asia Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 68(1), pages 97-117, January.
    2. Prakhov, Ilya, 2012. "The unified state examination and the determinants of academic achievement: Does investment in pre-entry coaching matter?," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 27(3), pages 86-108.
    3. Sonia Hirt & Christian Sellar & Craig Young, 2013. "Neoliberal Doctrine Meets the Eastern Bloc: Resistance, Appropriation and Purification in Post-Socialist Spaces," Europe-Asia Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 65(7), pages 1243-1254.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Polina Bugakova & Ilya Prakhov, 2020. "Regional Accessibility Of Higher Education In Russia," HSE Working papers WP BRP 58/EDU/2020, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    2. Leetmaa, Kadri & Bernt, Matthias, 2022. "Special issue Intro: housing estates in the era of marketization – governance practices and urban planning," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 38(1), pages 1-15.
    3. Ilya A. Prakhov, 2014. "The Dynamics Of Investment In Pre-Entry Coaching And The Returns From Private Tutoring In Russia," HSE Working papers WP BRP 18/EDU/2014, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    4. Lyubimov, Ivan, 2016. "Are educational reforms necessarily growthenhancing? Weak institutions as the cause of policy failure," BOFIT Policy Briefs 7/2016, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    5. Prakhov, Ilya, 2015. "The dynamics of investment in pre-entry coaching and the returns from private tutoring among university applicants in Russia," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 37(1), pages 107-124.
    6. Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, 2019. "Power, ideas and culture in the ‘longue durée’ of institutional evolution: theory and application on the revolutions of property rights in Russia," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(5), pages 1483-1506, November.
    7. Ilya Prakhov, 2014. "Effects of Investments in Preparation Courses on the USE Scores," Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 3, pages 74-99.
    8. Poldin, Oleg & Silaeva, Vera & Silaev, Andrey, 2014. "Comparing quality of admission to universities by the results of olympiads and unified state exams scores," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 36(4), pages 118-132.
    9. Ilya Prakhov & Denis Sergienko, 2017. "Matching between Students and Universities: What are the Sources of Inequalities of Access to Higher Education?," HSE Working papers WP BRP 45/EDU/2017, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    10. Andrey Ampilogov & Ilya Prakhov & Maria Yudkevich, 2013. "One or Many? Using the New Opportunities of the Unified State Exam in Russian University Admissions," HSE Working papers WP BRP 12/EDU/2013, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    11. Ilya Prakhov, 2019. "The Determinants Of Expected Returns On Higher Education In Russia: A Human Capital Theory Perspective," HSE Working papers WP BRP 50/EDU/2019, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    12. Simola, Heli, 2021. "Long-term challenges to Russian economic policy," BOFIT Policy Briefs 11/2021, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    13. Mihail Eva & Alexandra Cehan & Alexandra Lazăr, 2021. "Patterns of Urban Shrinkage: A Systematic Analysis of Romanian Cities (1992–2020)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-23, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    neoliberalism and education; Unified State Examination; post-Soviet Russia; standardized testing; discourse analysis.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Z - Other Special Topics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hig:wpaper:51edu2019. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Shamil Abdulaev or Shamil Abdulaev (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hsecoru.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.