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The role of the technical teacher in training skilled workers within the FE system has perhaps been one of the least examined aspects of the researched education system in Britain It is not my intention here to explore why this is the case, particularly in view of contemporary debate about the importance of industrial training, but rather to examine the part technical teachers play within the existing arrangements of FE and work practice [1] The paper analyses how the technical teacher perceives the role of teacher as secondary to his occupational status within his former trade In addition, the paper examines the implications of this for his practice, his relations with apprentices and perceptions of his subject matter The main argument questions the assumption that the craft teacher and apprentice, by virtue of their common industrial experience, share a 'special relationship' which unites them in their work The paper is divided into three inter-related parts The first explores the basis upon which such a 'special relationship' is seen to exist the second considers how the conditions of FE practice prevent teachers from exploiting that sense of communality with apprentices which they consider important Finally, the third section analyses how the technical teacher, despite his allegiance to 'trade practice', gradually adopts 'educationist' and 'teacher' strategies to legitimate his training 'function' In so doing, the paper examines the uneasy coexistence which is seen to characterise the relations between 'education' and 'training' in Further Education [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines claims that recent reforms to UK education have led to significant organisational changes in primary school and higher education. It also examines two main theoretical explanations for these, namely post-Fordism and New Managerialism. Examples of changes in both schools and universities, including flexibility and teamwork, are explored. Up to the mid-1980s, publicly funded educational organisations did display bureaucratic features, including rules, staff hierarchies and complex procedures. However, professionals employed in these organisations retained discretion and autonomy in their work. Since then, the introduction of an audit culture and a greater emphasis on management and regulation of the work of teachers and academics has decreased discretion and autonomy. This paper suggests that theories of New Managerialism offer a more satisfactory explanation of the changes explored than post-Fordism, which has more often been used as a normative model of what contemporary organisations should look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways in which British Chinese pupils are positioned and represented within the popular/dominant discourse of teachers working in London schools. Drawing on individual interviews from a study conducted with 30 teachers, 80 British Chinese pupils and 30Chinese parents, we explore some of the racialised, gendered and classed assumptions upon which dominant discourses around British Chinese boys and girls are based. Consideration is given, for example, to teachers' dichotomous constructions of British Chinese masculinity, in which British Chinese boys were regarded as 'naturally' 'good' and 'not laddish', compared with a minority of 'bad' British Chinese boys, whose laddishness was attributed to membership of a multiethnic peer group. We also explore teachers' constructions of British Chinese femininity, which centred around remarkably homogenised representations of British Chinese girls as 'passive' and quiet, 'repressed', hard-working pupils. The paper discusses a range of alternative readings that challenge popular monolithic and homogenising accounts of British Chinese masculinity and femininity in order to open up more critical ways of representing and engaging with British Chinese educational 'achievement'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on research in three English Midlands local education authorities to analyse the changing role of the teacher trade union representative in schools. It focuses on representatives of the largest teachers' union in England and Wales--the National Union of Teachers. The paper draws on mainstream industrial relations literature, and more recent research into school sector industrial relations, to assess how the role of the union representative is changing in an era of autonomous schools. The research indicates that new issues are emerging in schools, and these have the potential to transform the role of the representative. Where representatives can respond to the emergence of these new issues there is the prospect of a new, more participative trade union culture developing in schools. However, it is far from certain that school union representatives will want to assume these increased responsibilities, and this poses a major challenge for the development of teacher trade unionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on questionnaire responses from senior commissioning editors located within nine of the major UK education publishing outlets. It explores changing priorities in educational publishing with reference to authorship, readership and the changing policy context within which publishing 'lists' are conceived, developed and marketed. The shift of orientation within educational publishing from a 'general' to a 'professionalised' public is central to the argument of the paper. That argument is pursued through an analysis of how the changing priorities of educational publishing are impacting upon academics and practitioners. Central to that analysis, however, is a recognition that publishing houses, schools and institutions of further and higher education are subject to social and economic pressures that not only shape the educational agenda, but help determine what groups, individuals, institutional interests, etc. constitute the 'public' debate around that agenda. Through a specialist focus on educational publishing, the paper is able to identify some of the key issues that need to be addressed in order to revivify the public sphere and reintegrate it into what is becoming an increasingly 'professionalised' debate on education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore the process of subjectification (sometimes also called subjectivation, or simply, subjection) through which one becomes a subject—a process that Butler describes in terms of simultaneous mastery and submission, entailing a necessary vulnerability to the other in order to be. I examine the conceptual work Butler has undertaken to extend the Foucauldian concept of subjectification, and I draw on some encounters between teachers and their students in order to make these processes of subjectification understandable in the context of education. I conclude the paper with some notes toward an ethics of classroom practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a brief and vigorous appearance in the 1980s, labour process theory has become a marginal presence in the contemporary literature on teachers' work. This paper argues that a key reason for this marginal status is that, in the education literature, labour process theory has been unable to shake clear of its historical connection with the Braverman proletarianisation thesis. This has produced a focus on a single mode of control (scientific management) and its effects (e.g. deskilling and intensification), rather than on the forms and purposes of control of teachers. As a consequence, labour process theory has appeared deterministic. If it is to fulfil its potential as an important lens through which to analyse empirical research into the work of educators, labour process theory requires theoretical renovation, particularly in relation to the special contexts and circumstances of education and teachers' work. The paper contributes to one aspect of that task--the nature of control and its purposes in relation to state teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professionals were once considered to be the civic leaders, the deliverers of the - society However, the old order has cracked under the pressure of social change, leaving a very different relation between professionals and their publics. This paper addresses some of the questions occasioned by these changes. Where does the altered pours relation between parents, students and teachers leave the notion of teacher professionalism? What is the role of professionals within the emergent order? The paper is a product of the ESRC-funded New Forms of Education Management Project (Local Governance Programme) It argues that, within the new management of education, the professional codes and practices point to a changing relation between teachers and what has traditionally been seen as their specialist knowledge. An outcome of this altered relation is the empowerment of parents and students in relation to teachers However, the new relation depends upon new shared understandings and new sets of agreement-making and these in turn depend upon new processes of agreement-making and a radically altered power relation between parents, students and teachers as they jointly develop these processes The paper reviews the changing purposes of professionalism during the second half of the 20th century and outlines a new version of teacher professionality based upon the enabling of learning, the accommodation of difference, and the practice of agreement Agreement is then 'theorised' in terms of the nature of agreement and the institutional structuring of agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the argument is made that forms of consciousness, knowledge, sentiments and values that teachers use as part of their cultural repertoires in schools are the result of social constitution The `social' is composed of a number of overlapping discourses that are characteristic of schools everywhere `Teacher culture' is a signifier for the production and consumption of these discourses Recent trends to emphasise the plurality of teacher culture(s) are countered by a review of work that suggests more uniformity in teacher culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of bricolage, as it is developed by Levi-Strauss, is useful in characterising the form of teacher's work, it subsumes extensive research on the form of teacher's work and provides a heuristic device for developing causal explanations of the form of teachers' work as well as drawing together and unifying explanations developed in the literature. This assists and informs interventions to promote progressive pedagogy. The paper begins with an account of bricolage and its relationship to a science of pedagogy Next,features of teachers' work which push it toward bricolage are discussed, viz. Conservatism, limited creativity, repertoire enlargement, teacher' use of theory, the use of devious means, and ad hocism. Causal explanations of various of these features are discussed, viz. anticipatory socialization, aspects of preservice teacher education experiences and constraints in the work situation. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for teacher education of taking seriously the suggestion that teachers' work is bricolage and taking seriously the associated causal explanations. It is argued that a critical starting point for progressive change in educational practice is the provision of inservice for tertiary educators who may themselves be bricoleurs. Without this, the significant necessary changes to preservice student's on-campus and within school experiences are unlikely to be supported or legitimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformational leadership is widely recognised as being central to the implementation of educational reform. In this paper I draw on selected educational speeches made by New Labour politicians in order to locate shifting discourses of leadership within the broader accountability framework through which the terms of the relationship between central government and head teachers have been re/configured in the United Kingdom. The gendered politics of transformation are examined, highlighting new and renewed forms of masculinity embedded within new leadership ideals. It is suggested that a gendered critique of transformational leadership offers an important contribution to critical analyses of the neo-liberal and managerialist educational project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines issues of selection, merging an analysis of policy with data from a qualitative case study. It focuses on the 'modernisation of the comprehensive principle' proposed by New Labour, in which selection within schools (through setting 'by ability') is increasingly encouraged. Data collected at an inner-city, multi-ethnic comprehensive school are used to illustrate how discourses on selection are being reworked locally. The school was largely supportive of setting, despite some teachers acknowledging that the practice prioritised high-achieving pupils with perceived 'good attitudes'. In the form under study, setting involved disadvantaged pupils from ethnic-minority backgrounds, particularly those who received support in English as an Additional Language. It is concluded that setting did not contribute to an inclusive agenda for education, in spite of government claims of increased 'standards for all'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed leadership has come to prominence in school management discourse as a means to achieve the participation and empowerment of teachers and to create democratic schools. In this paper I explore the contradictions between these claims and both the hierarchical power structure of schools and the use of distributed leadership to secure the commitment of teachers to government education agendas. I examine how the relationship between distributed leadership and managerial power is addressed in the discourse of education management theorists and the practice of headteachers. Examples of authentically democratic schools based on collective self-management provide the basis for questioning the hegemonic hierarchical model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports findings from two studies, both of which used resistance theory to explain students" response to education. One study focused on an inner-city primary school characterized by high student opposition to both teachers and schooling. The other study examined how students, previously considered failures in mainstream education, responded to a 'second chance' programme aimed at providing access to tertiary education. Each study considered the relationship between students, teachers and the curriculum, and how this relationship was produced, negotiated and transformed within the everyday culture and language of the students. The first study identified conditions which led students to reach a decisive moment in their lives where a free, and arguably final, choice was made to reject school and education more generally. The second study identified factors in students' lives, both educational and personal, which led either to the educational access they desired or further frustration and failure. In reporting these findings, this paper will explore the theoretical and empirical common ground, and also the tension, between each study, thus offering a deeper understanding of student response to education along a broad educational continuum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon data from an ongoing series of life history interviews with a young lesbian PE teacher, called Jessica (a pseudonym), who has recently started her career in a secondary school. Various moments from her life as told and written are provided in order to present a view of schooling from a particular standpoint that, for the most part, has been repressed. Therefore, how Jessica experiences homophobia and heterosexism in educational institutions, how she relates these experiences to other moments in her life, and the identity management strategies she adopts to cope with specific situations, provide important insights into a reality that is oppositional to the taken-for-granted reality of the dominant and privileged sexual class in schools, that is, heterosexuals. These insights illustrate how Jessica is systematically denied an essential freedom that is systematically granted to heterosexual teachers in a way that legitimises a distinction between her private and public lives that is partial, distorting and perverse. It is concluded that taking action against homophobia and heterosexism is the responsibility of all educators regardless of their sexual identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an analysis of the concept of agency is undertaken. The traditional or agonistic definition of agency which assumes that to be a person is to have agency is rejected, in favour of a definition that shows the way in which agency may be discursively constructed as a positioning made available to some but not to others. This analysis is then applied to an episode in a primary school classroom to see whether the discursive practices in that classroom can be said to position the students as agentic. The particular classroom was chosen on the basis of the teacher's explicit wish that his students be agentic, but what the analysis shows is the extreme complexity involved in actually carrying this off given all of the contradictory beliefs and practices that militate against children actually being agentic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on gender and education has burgeoned since the mid-1970s Inequality in the classroom has been one theme in such research, including the charge that teachers give preferential treatment to boys. Another has been the identification of school processes and practices which convey particular conceptions of and boundaries between masculinity and femininity Less often studied is the teacher herself of himself. In particular, the question arises of why, after a decade or so of feminist research on sexism and education, teacher appear to make relatively little effort to implement antisexist initiatives. The paper considers four possible explanations for this situation. Antisexist initiatives may be particularly uncongenial or threatening by their nature or mode of introduction. Characteristics of teachers such as age, sex or social class may influence receptivity to reform. Teacher ideologies about gender or education may set limits to what appears acceptable Conditions under which teachers work may not be conducive to enthusiastic innovation. The Challenge for sociologists is to tease out interrelationships and assess the relative weights of these factors, the challenge for feminists is to transcend the gap between principled scholarship and practical strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the assessment and evaluation of teachers in state provided schooling in Britain has never been simply a matter of technical competence. Judging teachers has always involved social, ideological and political considerations which have varied in different historical periods. An analysis is made of attempts to apply principles and procedures of assessment especially to teachers in urban working class schools. It is shown that these attempts have historically moved from a 'visible' strategy of direct imposition and surveillance to an 'invisible' strategy through the ethic of legitimated professionalism. Current developments in British schooling suggest, however, a possible return to more direct and visible procedures as 'teacher incompetence' is placed at the center of the education problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with the theoretical constructs of Bourdieu and their contribution to understanding the reproduction of social and cultural inequalities in schooling. While Bourdieu has been criticised for his reproductive emphasis, this article proposes that there is transformative potential in his theoretical constructs and that these suggest possibilities for schools and teachers to improve the educational outcomes of marginalised students. The article draws together three areas of contribution to this theme of transformation; beginning by characterising habitus as constituted by reproductive and transformative traits and considering the possibilities for the restructuring of students' habitus. This is followed by a discussion of cultural capital and the way that teachers can draw upon a variety of cultural capitals to act as agents of transformation rather than reproduction. The article concludes by considering the necessity of a transformation of the field to improve the educational outcomes of marginalised students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teacher's body has a dubious status within contemporary pedagogic practice. The impact of progressivism in many western countries, with its emphasis on student-centred learning, has resulted in a marginalisation of the teacher's role in many classrooms. While its influence appears to be waning, in Australian primary schools, student-centred methodologies such as group-based and independent learning tend to dominate classroom practice. Relegated to the role of facilitator the teacher's overall presence and bodily impact in classrooms has been greatly reduced. Drawing on a study of the practice of two kindergarten teachers in two schools in Sydney, Australia, this article will examine the ways in which they embody pedagogic space, the regimen they create and the techniques they employ in teaching their students how to write. In a sense the title 'Disparate bodies' has a dual focus. Not only does it relate to the different ways in which the two teachers deploy their bodies in the classroom, it also refers to the differential embodiment of their students which results from the affects that their teachers' pedagogies engender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of education management has grown rapidly in the past 30 years with members positioning themselves in all parts of the education system. The main claim for distinctiveness is working with and on behalf of the practitioner, and intellectual positioning is based on the nature of intervention with the practitioner such as empirical research, course provision, and consultancy. In undertaking an intellectual analysis of the field, Bourdieu's theory of practice, developed through and with Habitus and Field, is used to think with and to develop an understanding of the 'possibilities' and 'traps' for the professional practice of field members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers in Tasmania, Australia, gave accounts of their experience of increased workload in the 10 years between 1984 and 1994. They reported working longer hours, teaching more students and having increased professional, pastoral and administrative duties. The reasons for this increased workload include: (1) less money being spent on education; (2) changes in student assessment from a norm basis to a criterion basis; (3) a change in the administrative structure within the state colleges in which most respondents teach; (4) a change in the student population. The result, they reported, was that their workload was both increased and extended (intensified), leading to a much more complex workplace. Significantly, complexity was also produced by the attempt of teachers to maintain their professional commitment while adapting to the economic rationalist policies of administrators. However, loss of teachers through redundancy, stress and a move to part-time work has meant that those teachers remaining have had to rationalize their work and reduce their professional commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our small scale, exploratory study of four black supplementary schools, we adopted a genealogical approach. By uncovering the subjugated knowledges and hidden history of black supplementary schools we found evidence of a female centred new social movement. Our analysis of black female agency in these organic grassroots' organisations enabled us to interrogate the normative mainstream discourse on 'rate' and education. The narrators of black women educators consistently decentred assumptions of mainstream schooling. Supplementary schools' provided a context in winch whiteness is displaced as central and blackness is seen as nonnative. Parental involvement showed the dffectiveness of black working class agency, in a discourse which assumes their passivity. We conclude by arguing that women's work within black supplementary schools embrace strategies for inclusion-such as emphasis on the formal 3Rs, and dialogue with the mainstream-which though appearing on the surface to be conservative and contradictory, in effect subverts the mainstream discourse on black underachievement and offer transformative possibilities from the margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing pressure on educational resources and the intensification of the work of teachers has strengthened claims that teaching is a labour process and that teachers are being proletarianised. At the same time, the education system is being subjected to concerted attempts to subordinate it to the interests of capital and national competitiveness, appearing to reinforce those perspectives viewing education as part of the capitalist state apparatus and teachers as agents of capital. This article examines these claims and attempt to resolve the contradictory emphases through an analysis of class relations which stresses the significance of teaching as state employment, the growth of hierarchies within schools and the contradictory functions of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The success of the Conservative government's project for education depends upon securing the compliance of teachers. The key elements of the new management regime which is being installed in the school system are the intensification and regulation of teachers' work, an attack on conditions of employment, and the creation of a new organisational culture in the schools. The new management regime in the schools has both similarities and differences with new workforce management strategies in the private sector and other sectors of the welfare state. It is the product of a specific combination of state regulation and quasi-market relationships. It is however facing growing resistance from teachers and their unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the difficulties students encounter in problem solving in the area of sciences. The aim of the study is to see the extent to which the students have recognition and realisation rules in the micro-context of problem solving and to find out the reasons which may underlie their difficulties. Thus the data obtained are related to social class, race and gender and also to pedagogic practices and school science achievement in high level cognitive competencies. They are also related to children`s cognitive level. The sample was made up of 80 students equally distributed throughout four classes in the fifth and sixth years of schooling, taught by the same teacher in the subject natural sciences. The school contains a fundamentally working-class population of white and black children, and is located in a suburban area of Lisbon, Portugal. To have heterogeneous classes was the main criterion for organising the four groups of pupils. Each one of the classes was organised to have an equal number of girls and boys.

The article examines the specificity of the institutional dialectical dynamics of how recent policy impacts on teacher cultures and in turn how teacher cultures impact on policy. The study illustrates the complexity of the development of Occupational strategies and identifies at a time of rapid organisational change. This could not have been predicted on the basis of a "priori" sociological assumptions concerning teacher responses. Further theory-led empirical work might serve to demonstrate the wide range of responses to the restructuring of teachers' work. This may enable one, in relation to student responses to schooling, to move beyond a search for a teacher typology and construct a grammar of modes of challenge, which accounts for hegemonic and counter-hegemonic tendencies. This may facilitate the generation of theoretical models that help one to incorporate one's understanding of school work-pIace micro-politics within more general explanations of the changing nature and structure of teachers' work, at a time of rapid socioeconomic, political and technological change. In turn, this may provide much needed support at a critical time for State teachers, students and comprehensive schooling.