Paradoxical images of the student in Spanish educational reforms (1990-2002)

Abstract

After the Franco dictatorship was over, Spanish education entered into an era of educational reforms that culminated in 1990 with the establishment of a new legal regulation of the system that has a distinctly social democratic nature. This situation has encouraged the proliferation of discourses about education, and especially about its principle actors who identities and functions continue to be discussed. In this paper we study the contradictory images about the student (and about childhood in general) that appear in discourses concerning educational reform. We draw upon data taken from interviews with diverse actors in the politics of Spanish education that were conducted as part of a research project supported by the European Commission. This analysis finally extends to the foreseeable and drastic reorientation of these reforms that is being proposed at present by the new conservative government with the Law of Educational Quality.