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7 - Educational Reform in Scotland

Policy, Governance and Professional Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2025

By
Mark Priestley  and
Walter Humes
Edited by
Colleen McLaughlin  and
Alan Ruby
Colleen McLaughlin
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Alan Ruby
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

This chapter takes as its starting point the features identified as critical in understanding the process of educational reform, set out by McLaughlin and Ruby in their review of the case studies in Implementing Educational Reform: Cases and Challenges. These are: the historical and political context; models of implementation; timescale; internal and external actors; communication and discourse. It examines the relationship between structure and culture in promoting successful change in educational systems focusing particularly on the role of external actors in shaping the Scottish Government’s management of change and the tension between the broad curricular intentions and the narrow conception of assessment in upper secondary school. It also examines the extent to which governance reform is capable of enabling sustained cultural change; and the best means of encouraging teachers to develop a sense of agency, not simply the implementers of policy devised by external ‘experts’. It illustrates how educational reform in Scotland is complex, contested territory in which the policy intentions of government are interpreted and mediated through bureaucratic agencies, professional networks and an expanding field of interest and pressure groups.

Keywords

Scotlandcurriculum reformrole of external actorstensionscultural change
Type
Chapter
Information
Politics and Knowledge Shaping Educational Reform , pp. 99 - 114
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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