Achieving changes to education practices and structures is a significant issue facing reformers internationally, and researchers have confronted how such changes, and the conditions for these, might be conceptualized. These issues resonate particularly as researchers grapple with imagining a post-COVID-19 landscape where social and educational norms may change. Tyack and Tobin, in their 1994 article ‘The “Grammar” of Schooling: Why has it been so hard to change?’ argued that several features of the American education system are so persistent as to warrant being understood as the ‘grammar’ of schooling. In this article, we reconceptualize this ‘grammar’ by taking seriously Tyack and Tobin’s insistence that ‘grammar’ organises meaning. Starting here, we argue that what they took to be grammatical features are the products and not the producers of meaning. We draw on the cases of the United States and England to argue that four international discourses have performed this meaning-making work: industrialization; welfarism; neoliberalism and neoconservatism. These are the ‘grammars’ of schooling—and of society. Their discursive products, including age grading and sorting into subjects are, we suggest, ‘lexical’ features that express the grammar. We use lexical features to explain the multi-directional interplay between discourse and educational feature: the lexical may endure longer than the grammatical, changes to which may be effected and/or legitimated through appealing to a lexical feature. We conclude by outlining key implications for realizing and conceptualizing educational change, including for a post-COVID-19 landscape.

中文翻译：

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用“词汇”特征思考重新定义学校​​教育的“语法”：将重点从学校转移到社会

实现教育实践和结构的改变是国际改革者面临的一个重要问题，研究人员已经面临如何将这些变化及其条件概念化的问题。这些问题尤其引起共鸣，因为研究人员正在努力想象一个社会和教育规范可能会改变的后 COVID-19 景观。Tyack 和 Tobin，在他们 1994 年的文章“学校教育的“语法”：为什么改变如此困难？争辩说，美国教育系统的几个特征是如此持久，以至于需要将其理解为学校教育的“语法”。在这篇文章中，我们通过认真对待 Tyack 和 Tobin 的“语法”组织意义的坚持来重新定义这个“语法”。从这里开始，我们认为，他们认为语法特征是产品而不是意义的生产者。我们借鉴美国和英国的案例来论证四种国际话语已经完成了这种意义创造工作：工业化；福利主义；新自由主义和新保守主义。这些是学校教育和社会的“语法”。他们的话语产品，包括年龄分级和主题分类，我们认为是表达语法的“词汇”特征。我们使用词汇特征来解释话语和教育特征之间的多向相互作用：词汇可能比语法持续更长时间，通过诉诸词汇特征可能会影响和/或合法化其变化。最后，我们概述了实现和概念化教育变革的关键影响，