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This paper explores the declining trend of fine arts education in secondary schools. We examine mechanisms that may explain this phenomenon on structural levels of policymaking and policy implementation in different areas of the education system. What will be defined as the "selection device" refers to the structurally determined selection of educational content at various policy levels of society. We argue that the choices politicians, principals, students, and parents make are regulated by "nudging" as an underlying principle of the selective device. By presenting students with "rational choice" alternatives, they are gently pressuring them away from selecting arts courses. This redirection is discursively conveyed by schools, but systematically governed by national and international guidelines in which the fine arts have a relatively low status. The declining legitimacy of arts subjects in secondary education can thus be seen as an outcome of policies embedded in the education system. By manipulating the features of the selection device, the transnational movement of the New Right exerts control over educational policy.

This article examines how specialist music secondary schools in England present themselves on their websites and social media platforms. We consider visual communication codes and how such patterns reflect cultural distinctions and social boundaries. Multimodal critical discourse analysis is used to demonstrate how the choice of semiotic resources convey the meaning of specialisation in a socially exclusive manner. Although the schools in question use different resources, similarities in function can be noted in their self-promotion. A school's social matrix and use of classical aesthetics are conveyed through non-verbal, visual communication. An elite code associates advanced musical training with certain principles of behaviour and social values. Those, in turn, represent class-based distinctions, cultural boundaries, and characteristics of privileged education.

As a result of international neoliberal and neoconservative trends, the status of the arts has been devalued in secondary school curricula. This paper examines why the arts are not considered core educational knowledge in pedagogic discourse arising from the New Right policy agenda. In a case study analysis of Swedish educational policy debates, curriculum codes and their underlying principles of recontextualization are weighed as they bear on the arts. Discursive positionings and socio-political networking between political standpoints and stakeholders have been analysed based on official Swedish documents associated with the legislative process of curriculum revision. Our findings show how justifications of arts education clash with coding orientations arising from a strong classification between what is presumed to be valuable and non-valuable knowledge, which in turn is due to an underlying principle of visibility. While advocates argue that artistic practices promote transversal competences and have intangible benefits, this same argument unwittingly strengthens the non-autonomous status of the arts. The illegitimacy of the arts also stems from the belief that they are only marginally related to visible market values. Taken together, the arts are not considered core knowledge because of their perceived relative unimportance for higher academic learning or vocational competence.

This study examines parental involvement in urban public schools, focusing on how parents in organised school-centred networks support, navigate, and negotiate from their different social positions. The multiple case study of specialised music programmes provides insights into parent strategies and behaviours in intermediate practices between school-based socialisation and extracurricular activities largely run by the parents associations. The paper draws on data from in-depth focus group interviews with members of parents associations in socially, culturally, and historically different schools. Findings demonstrate that parent approaches to specialised education and their modes of involvement vary according to social class, resources, and school culture. There are class-based differences in parent strategies and the way their collective symbolic capital is used in policy negotiation. However, relationships between a parents association and the school administration are generally regulated by the social and cultural history of a particular school.

The following article examines the emerging historical legitimacy of specialised comprehensive schools in Sweden. During the 1980s, neoliberal ideas were gaining ground in Swedish educational policy. As a result, the social democratic government began to relax the rigour of the unified, state-regulated educational system. Specialised music classes played a significant role in this context, as such programmes were increasingly considered models for specialisation and deregulation. The establishment of specialised music classes in Sweden was symptomatic of the national adoption of neoliberal principles in education policy. The case study design uses qualitative document analyses of archive materials including public investigations, minutes of political meetings, and newspaper debates. The discursive legitimation of specialised comprehensive education is seen as dependent on three interrelated frame factors: ideology, economics, and law. Within this framework empirical knowledge of the transformative educational policy of the 1980s is analysed.

This paper reports on a study of the recent curriculum reform of the Swedish upper-secondary school, "Gy11." Although aesthetics were not made compulsory subjects by this reform, all students have a statutory entitlement to be offered a minimum of one course in an aesthetics subject. We wished to determine whether students are actually being given the opportunity of choosing such subjects. The study is a theory-based and content-oriented evaluation. Data are based on curriculum studies and a comprehensive survey of upper-secondary school principals. Our findings indicate that while principals have generally organized aesthetics courses, students seldom choose this kind of educational content. Instead, students' selection is ruled by indirect methods of manipulation.

Educational research has shown the importance of adopting a multimodal approach to pedagogy by combining, integrating, and organizing diverse semiotic resources for learning. As aesthetic content and forms are significant aspects of multimodality, arts integration is crucial to achieve multimodal knowledge practices. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework for analysing, discussing, and designing arts-integrated processes of teaching and learning. The framework integrates a social semiotic theory of multimodality and the Legitimation Code Theory of Semantics as a methodology through which teachers may avoid segmental learning practices in favour of an arts-integrated cumulative pedagogy. In this way, multimodal approaches to text and context relate to a social realist view on knowledge building, where boundaries between knowledge practices are weakened and meaning is condensed through processes of cumulative learning.

Is the most important function of education to provide students with basic skills and useful knowledge in order to eventually become employable? In many parts of the world knowledge league tables and policy documents inform us this is the case. As the question of what should form the educational content seems to be answered, teachers can concentrate on how they should teach, and researchers can concentrate on what method is the most effective. In the current rhetoric, however, many vital pedagogical issues have been placed in the background and the aesthetic subjects are downgraded. These tendencies worried Frede V. Nielsen who stated that didactic studies and philosophical inquiries yet again are needed to explore and give substance to the content dimension. Nielsen's writings on didactics form the basis for this essay, where we highlight which perspectives and dilemmas could be placed on a critical, philosophical didactic study agenda. The starting point is the field of tension between the what and the why of education.

This article draws on a study designed to analyse parental expectations of the Swedish municipal school of arts (hereafter MSA) (in Swedish: kommunal musik- och kulturskola). The study is based on in-depth interviews conducted and informed by grounded theory. Although parental expectations are scarcely uniform, the study reveals a hope that the whole child will be nurtured, both musically and socially. It also transpires that parental expectations vary according to the activities offered by the particular school. The MSAs are administered and financed by the local authorities, and parents therefore expect them to be distinguished not only by their educational ambitions and the range of cultural choices available, but also by their democratic norms and values.

This paper explores the declining trend of fine arts education in secondary schools. We examine mechanisms that may explain this phenomenon on structural levels of policymaking and policy implementation in different areas of the education system. What will be defined as the "selection device" refers to the structurally determined selection of educational content at various policy levels of society. We argue that the choices politicians, principals, students, and parents make are regulated by "nudging" as an underlying principle of the selective device. By presenting students with "rational choice" alternatives, they are gently pressuring them away from selecting arts courses. This redirection is discursively conveyed by schools, but systematically governed by national and international guidelines in which the fine arts have a relatively low status. The declining legitimacy of arts subjects in secondary education can thus be seen as an outcome of policies embedded in the education system. By manipulating the features of the selection device, the transnational movement of the New Right exerts control over educational policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of international neoliberal and neoconservative trends, the status of the arts has been devalued in secondary school curricula. This paper examines why the arts are not considered core educational knowledge in pedagogic discourse arising from the New Right policy agenda. In a case study analysis of Swedish educational policy debates, curriculum codes and their underlying principles of recontextualization are weighed as they bear on the arts. Discursive positionings and socio-political networking between political standpoints and stakeholders have been analysed based on official Swedish documents associated with the legislative process of curriculum revision. Our findings show how justifications of arts education clash with coding orientations arising from a strong classification between what is presumed to be valuable and non-valuable knowledge, which in turn is due to an underlying principle of visibility. While advocates argue that artistic practices promote transversal competences and have intangible benefits, this same argument unwittingly strengthens the non-autonomous status of the arts. The illegitimacy of the arts also stems from the belief that they are only marginally related to visible market values. Taken together, the arts are not considered core knowledge because of their perceived relative unimportance for higher academic learning or vocational competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study of the recent curriculum reform of the Swedish upper-secondary school, Gy11. Although aesthetics were not made compulsory subjects by this reform, all students have a statutory entitlement to be offered a minimum of one course in an aesthetics subject. We wished to determine whether students are actually being given the opportunity of choosing such subjects. The study is a theory-based and content-oriented evaluation. Data are based on curriculum studies and a comprehensive survey of upper-secondary school principals. Our findings indicate that while principals have generally organized aesthetics courses, students seldom choose this kind of educational content. Instead, students' selection is ruled by indirect methods of manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]