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Schools represent the primary setting where refugee children learn about Australian life and culture. They serve as a broad context for acculturation not only for academic development and language acquisition but for cultural learning too. This paper focuses on the after-school homework tutoring programme that uses University of Western Sydney (Australia) secondary teacher education students as tutors for African refugee students in secondary schools to facilitate their inclusion into Australian society. African refugees may receive lower returns for education in comparison with other Australian migrants. Using Bourdieu's theory of social capital and cultural reproduction as a conceptual framework, this paper discusses the part played by schools in constructing barriers that prevent under-represented groups such as refugees participating in the education process. It aims to explore the success of community engagement programmes like Refugee Action Support, which is designed to act in the interests of others (refugees) characterised as socio-culturally disadvantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores recent changes in tertiary education policy in New Zealand, which are designed to address legitimation deficits. By offering an analysis of the making, and the subsequent unmaking, of quasi-markets in tertiary education, this paper attempts to describe how the state dealt with legitimation deficits resulting from providers' of tertiary education use of the adult and community education funding category to increase their revenues. In providing this description, the paper helps to provide a way of understanding how the state in New Zealand has responded to legitimation deficits by introducing a new regime of governance. The paper concludes by arguing that, in terms of its treatment of category 5.1 funding, this regime is supportive of neo-conservative goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores issues of the educational marginality of migrant children in urban settings in two cities in China. The numbers of urban migrants exceed 100 million and are growing as China modernizes. This is creating tensions between residents and recent arrivals who lack residential registration and access to public services. As a result, migrant children often attend informal, private and usually unregulated schools of low quality organized by their communities. These tend to reinforce social stratification and reproduce marginality across the generations. The paper argues that state failure to provide basic education risks a growing divide between urban residents and recent migrants that has social consequences that must be addressed to remove discriminatory practices and resolve potential conflicts between hosts and migrant communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorists of friendship in contemporary society have suggested that our relationships with peers are characterised by their emphasis on openness, disclosure and emotional communication. Moreover, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue that friendship, as a deliberately sought, trusting partnership between two people, can play an important role in countering some of the negative consequences of a market-driven society, 'acting as a shared lifeline to take the weight of each other's confusions and weaknesses'. However, drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with students from nine different higher education institutions, this paper will argue that such theorists overlook significant complexity in the ways in which young adults choose to 'order' their friendships. Indeed, it will suggest that highly individualised and ruthlessly competitive approaches to academic study can be maintained alongside more socially cooperative relationships with friends and peers, played out in non-academic arenas. The paper will discuss the implications of this for both sociological theorising about friendship, and policy and practice within the higher education sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that competency-based training in vocational education and training in Australia is one mechanism through which the working class is denied access to powerful knowledge represented by the academic disciplines. The paper presents a modified Bernsteinian analysis to argue that vocational education and training students need access to disciplinary knowledge using Bernstein's argument that abstract, conceptual knowledge is the means societies use to think 'the unthinkable' and 'the not-yet-thought'. I supplement Bernstein's social argument for democratic access to the disciplines with an epistemic argument that draws on the philosophy of critical realism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In constructing a framework for the participation and inclusion in political life of subjects, the Enlightenment also produced a series of systematic exclusions for those who did not qualify: including 'idiots' and 'primitive races'. 'Idiocy' emerged as part of wider strategies of governance in Europe and its colonies. This opened up the possibility for pedagogy to become a key technology for the transformation of the savage, uncivilised Other into the citizen. This paper explores the transformative role of pedagogy in relation to colonial discourse, the narrative of the wild boy of Aveyron - a feral child captured in France in 1800 - and the formation of a medico-pedagogical discourse on idiocy in the nineteenth century. In doing so, the paper shows how learning disability continues to be influenced by same emphasis on competence for citizenship, a legacy of the colonial attitude. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I present the findings of a study which explored teacher-family collaboration in state primary schools in Cyprus. The research strategy was one of multiple case study, with a sample of seven teachers, their pupils and the pupils' parents. The research approach was ethnographic and the data set reported in this paper includes the data collected from the field of two of the sites. The analysis of the data showed that participant parents, regardless of their background, valued their children's educational success, wanted their children to do well in school, and correspondingly saw themselves as supporting their children in one way or another. The evidence, however, demonstrated a variation in familial perspectives and needs and a considerable distinction in how families of different background used their school contacts. These conclusions draw on Bourdieu's views of cultural capital and seem quite consistent with the findings of other researchers elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provisions of the Higher Education Act (2004) have renewed interest in widening participation research. Therefore, this paper explores the development of this scholarly field, primarily in the United Kingdom, by examining major trends in the study of higher education. Political debates related to higher education, the prevailing structure of the sector and predominant sociological perspectives have largely shaped the empirical and theoretical concerns of widening participation research. These delimiting factors have resulted in incomplete accounts of the barriers to higher education, which do not fully explore the relationship between students' social characteristics, learning experiences and university careers. Furthermore, contemporary research runs the risk of reinventing the wheel and replicating the mistakes of the past, since there has been a collective act of forgetfulness with respect to earlier contributions. In contrast, this paper provides guidelines to facilitate a holistic agenda for future widening participation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government support for the production and consumption of educational software is now a key element of New Labour's education technology drive. At present much attention is being directed towards marketing 'digital learning' to an educational sector traditionally wary of technological innovation. In an effort to understand the social shaping of this current phase of policy-making, the present paper examines the political and commercial discourses surrounding digital learning and associated initiatives such as Curriculum Online and the Digital Curriculum. After analysing a range of political and commercial texts produced from 2000 to 2005, the paper explores the dominant themes emerging from these discursive constructions - considering in particular the limitations of the often ambiguous yet structured ways in which digital learning is being shaped by its key actors. [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]

The Department for Education and Skills currently shows a high regard for the potential of technology transforming the British education system. Government White papers demonstrate e‐learning‐based unification strategies that reinforce the message that introducing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will raise standards in schools. This paper examines the effect of these developments on teachers and pupils, and questions the government’s motivation for change. The introduction of ICT has not been complemented by increased levels of effective professional development for teaching staff in the pedagogy of ICT across the curriculum and may have merely served to reinforce the generational digital divide. In attempting to enchant the pupils, the government may have alienated the teachers. This paper suggests that the Department for Education and Skills should place more emphasis on developing strategies and providing funding for solutions to gaps in the professional development of teachers in their pedagogical understanding of ICT across the curriculum. [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]

The market as educator has become firmly lodged at the centre of popular and scholarly debate commenting on the nexus between children, consumption and education/learning. In this paper, I appreciate this scholarly debate from the point of view of the sociology of consumption. The latter has been relatively silent on children’s consumption and education, focusing instead on adult learning. Nevertheless, I here draw on that sociology to forward an argument that favours consideration of a broader range of social relationships and cultural and contextual influences. I outline two models on the network of relationships that inform children’s consumption, and illustrate, through a discussion of Chin’s Purchasing Power, how children’s consumption-related learning may originate from outside the market. The paper finishes with a plea for more research that focuses on children and the domestic contexts of consumption. [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 upon a range of ideas and concepts developed by the British sociologist Basil Bernstein to examine recent challenges and changes encountered by members of professional occupations, including those who teach and research in higher education. The paper discusses and seeks to develop Bernstein's analysis of how particular structurings of knowledge may be related to the formation of occupational identities centred in what Bernstein refers to as 'inwardness' and 'inner dedication'. It then examines a range of challenges to such identities--particularly those arising from the 'regionalisation' of knowledge and from 'genericim'. The paper concludes by assessing the prospects for perpetuating such identities in an era of increasing marketization and managerialism. [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 seeks to outline and evaluate Pierre Bourdieu's work as it has appeared most recently in feminist studies and the field of gender and education. In particular, it suggests ways in which Bourdieu's theoretical insights could be seen to more effectively contribute to cutting edge debates in both social theory and feminist thought regarding concepts such as agency, identity and domination. It also argues that a more creative and empirical engagement with the recent work of Bourdieu, alongside an interdisciplinary reading of more recent cultural and social theories of power, would be a fruitful way forward in advancing a feminist sociology of education. In the present historical moment and against the tide of postmodern and post-structuralist feminist accounts, Bourdieu is often read as a determinist who has little to offer contemporary feminist debates or who argues that masculine domination is too tightly woven to social practices of a given field. In short, this paper argues that such a view is not only a misreading of Bourdieu's work on fundamental theoretical grounds, but fails to acknowledge the ways in which his more recent work on masculinity addresses both the cultural and social conditions underlying contemporary forms of symbolic domination. In short, the paper argues that Bourdieu's theory offers an analytical breadth and range beyond the scope of anything that a normative, liberal account of masculine domination could provide. Yet, in drawing from such diversity, Bourdieu's oeuvre is able to resist incomprehensibility. It stands as a highly focused, realistic and generative attempt ( McNay, 1999 ; McLeod, 2004 ) to chart the problems of subordination, differentiation and hierarchy, and to expose the possibilities, as well as the limits, of gendered self-hood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recognition of the need to involve parents in the life of the school grows in public policy, anxiety continues at the intervention of 'the angry parent'. This paper seeks to develop understanding of this communicative action and apply it to a study of parental voice in schools that identified a number of expressions of 'storming'. The paper argues that these occasions were reactions to events in school and the underlying 'performative attitude' of parents in their communications was to seek mutual understanding. The disposition of the school, however, while enabling communicative understanding on some concerns (such as welfare) was less amenable to negotiating agreement on issues it regarded as core professional practice (such as control of the learning and teaching process). Parental cultural capital, nevertheless, could exercise a space of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines notions of 'educational time' with particular reference to the work of Basil Bernstein. It focuses closely on the 1967 Plowden report as a particularly appropriate policy case study to demonstrate how different constructions of time can exist within the same document. It then develops educational models originally mapped out by Bernstein, arguing that a full understanding of the areas of consensus and conflict among these models is vital if we are to understand how teaching professionals think about the future. The paper addresses the following questions: How does time affects education? What influence does this have on educational outcomes? How does this relate to public policy initiatives? Assuming a tacit, collective understanding of time and the future can undermine the very policy intentions a government might be seeking to promulgate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Childcare is a condensate of disparate social forces and social processes. It is gendered and classed. It is subject to an excess of policy and political discourse. It is increasingly a focus for commercial exploitation. This is a paper reporting on work in progress in an ESRC funded research project (R000239232) on the choice and provision of pre-school childcare by middle-class (service class) families in two contrasting London locations. Drawing on recent work in class analysis the paper examines the relationships between childcare choice, middle-class fractions and locality. It suggests that on the evidence of the findings to date, there is some evidence of systematic differences between fractions in terms of values, perspectives and preferences for childcare, but a more powerful case for intra-class similarities, particularly when it comes to putting preferences into practice in the 'making up of a middle-class child' through care and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to develop a more sophisticated notion of multiculturalism in Britain. It starts by examining the philosophical basis of the Crick Report on citizenship education to resolve the theoretical tension between liberal and multicultural approaches to the subject. To achieve this resolution, it compares the Crick Report to the Parekh Report on the Future of Multi Ethnic Britain, published on 11 th October 2000. The Parekh report is then used to critique the Crick report and re-theorise the practical imperatives of multicultural citizenship education. I claim that the Crick report, typical of liberal analyses, is suspicious of departure from the presumption of a unified social structure, and represents citizenship education as the imposition of a uniform standard applied to all groups and peoples. On this basis it is claimed that, although the Crick Report's conception of citizenship fails to adequately take account of cultural difference, it need not do so, as there is room within liberal approaches to citizenship education for a recognition of difference. The paper explains how such a resolution can be effected. [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]

Studies on bullying at school proliferate, but the discourse is seriously lacking in sociological perspective. The explanation as to why some students bully others has been sought primarily within the personal attributes of the bully and the victim. Despite the fact that the school is the place where most bullying occurs, school factors that are correlated with the prevalence of bullying have been under-investigated. In Japan, however, schools have been subject to great scrutiny. By reviewing the Japanese literature on bullying (ijime), this paper discusses factors that appear to contribute to the school climate in which bullying among students becomes commonplace. These include authoritarian, hierarchical, and power-dominant human relationships, alienating modes of learning, high levels of regimentation, dehumanising methods of discipline, and highly interventionist human relationships in an excessively group-oriented social environment. The paper suggests the paradigm of student bullying needs to be re-thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of higher education (HE) choice have tended to draw a strong contrast between the decisions made by young people from working-class backgrounds and those of their middle-class peers. This paper draws on a qualitative, longitudinal study to argue that such assumptions about social class homogeneity overlook the very different ways in which students from a similar (middle class) location come to understand the HE sector. It also suggests that while families have a strong influence on young people's conceptualisation of the sector, friends and peers play an important role in informing decisions about what constitutes a 'feasible' choice. Indeed, this paper shows how rankings within friendship groups were, in many cases, transposed directly onto a hierarchy of HE institutions and courses. On the basis of this evidence, it concludes that a two-step interaction between family and friends best explains the decision-making processes in which these young people were engaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of globalisation and hegemonic neoliberalism, the state's ability to legitimate the economic system and its own policies cannot be assumed as a positive automatic effect. The economic and political conditions that once framed state action have changed, and it is reasonable to think that the emergence of a new accumulation regime implies also a shift in the traditional strategies used by the nation-state to legitimate its policy-making. This paper reviews how the neoliberal educational agenda develops a new political rationality that changes the traditional forms in which the state has managed its legitimation crisis. In addition, the paper argues that context-based factors, nationally specific, show that this political rationality may not be uniformly applied among different nation-states. The case of semiperipheral countries provides some evidence on the necessary combination of old and new strategies developed by the state to legitimate a neoliberal agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The society of Hong Kong objected strongly when the government instructed schools to change their medium of instruction from English to Chinese at the junior secondary level soon after Hong Kong was reunited with the People's Republic of China in 1997. This paper tries to make sense of the objection to this piece of politically correct and pedagogically sound policy. It analyses the situation from Bourdieu's ideas of habitus and various types of capitals. The paper argues that the government's effort to persuade Hong Kong society to accept mother-tongue education on pedagogical grounds alone was to no avail because the English language has not only become a habitus of society; it also serves to distinguish Hong Kong people from mainland Chinese. The failure of the government was partly due to its insensitivity to the nature and social functions of language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses producer agency in the structural setting of the schools public-market. The initial focus for this analysis was the nature of competition, but, it is argued, the character of engagement with the public-market is better represented by inter-connecting and mutually influential modes of engagement (competitive, professional, bureaucratic, cultural) elaborated in the paper. These have been developed through analyses of headteachers’ accounts (one of the data sets in a study of the impact of competition on secondary schools), in a process of ‘dialogue’ with relevant literature, and build upon prior work by the author. The elaboration of the modes is set within the theoretical frame of analytical dualism. Conclusions highlight, inter alia, the tendency for competitive engagement to be present in a subordinated, although nevertheless significant, form, and the continual inter-weaving of different foms of engagement, at the core of which is an increasingly permeable public professional model . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although not fully established, the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) initiative is already being presented by both government and industry as offering students, teachers and school extensive freedom and autonomy in their day-to-day work. However, this paper argues that the official discursive construction of the NGfL in this way, as a ‘panacea’ to educational problems, obscures vital issues of power and control that may only become apparent once the initiative is fully integrated at the classroom level. Drawing initially on the work of Foucault, and then Poster’s more recent conception of the electronic ‘SuperPanopticon’, this paper re-examines the basis of the NGfL and its role in extending and reinforcing existing power configurations in education. The paper concludes by considering directions for future research into the NGfL, and educational use of the Internet in the light of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning from the argument that the sociology of educational knowledge remains a sociology without a theory of knowledge, this paper illustrates the significance of the structuring of knowledge for the development of intellectual fields through a study of cultural studies in British higher education. The paper presents a means of bridging the divide between analyses of ‘relations to’ and ‘relations within’ education (Basil Bernstein) by conceiving educational knowledge as legitimation, i.e. as both positioned strategies within a field of struggles and potentially legitimate truth claims. First, the institutional trajectory of and claims made for cultural studies by its proponents are outlined. Analysis of the underlying principles of this language of legitimation is developed into a generative conceptualisation of modes of legitimation, and cultural studies is defined as a knower mode, where knowledge is reduced to the knower and epistemology replaced by sociology. Using this framework, cultural studies is then analysed in terms of: (i) relations to its institutional trajectory (developing Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘field’ approach); and (ii) relations within its mode of legitimation, focusing on their ramifications for the field’s structure. It is argued that legitimation embraces the insights of both approaches, thereby contributing to a cumulative and epistemological sociology of educational knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically reviews historical and contemporary debates around the study of youth transitions and social change in the sociology of education and elsewhere. It argues that current accounts of recent social change of the 'post' variety tend to both over state and simplify the character of these changes. The paper suggests that it is more appropriate to think of change in terms of the reconfiguration of relationships between 'inflexibility' and 'flexibility', independence and dependency, and the public and the private. Substantively, these things can be studied through the 'intergenerational transfer' of 'assets' of various kinds within kin networks. On this basis, the paper argues for a shift away from a narrower focus upon parents that has been the basis for some recent useful and relevant work on educational decision-making in sociology of education in the UK. These issues about decision-making are related to the developing debate around Rational Action Theory and culturalist vs structural approaches. It is suggested that recent work in the areas of stratification and class formation theory would prove of value to these, and other, concerns in the sociology of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is derived from a study of excluded students' perceptions of their educational experience. It is based on the accounts of 33 young people, all permanently excluded from school. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews a number of salient features of the school experience were raised. One of these features is the students' relationships with teachers. This paper considers excluded students' perceptions of teacher qualities that either foster or hinder the development of positive relations, disciplinary practice as a particularly significant set of interactions that affect relationships, and the hierarchical social structure in which these relationships are formed and operate. The result is an ideal model of the teacher-student relationship based on the excluded students' accounts. This model reconsiders power relations in order to create a set of interactions that recognises the students' non-child status while, at the same time, highlighting teacher-specific responsibilities such as duty of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-16 providers in the UK now offer a wide range of courses and training in order to respond to the expanded, diversified and 'non-traditional' post-16 market. School leavers are invited to 'choose' from a range of courses and pathways which are being provided in a variety of post-16 educational institutions. These providing institutions are in competition with one another and 'need' the students as their funds are contingent upon successful recruitment (and retention). As a result, many post-16 providers are turning to aspects of marketing in order to publicise their courses and maintain or increase their share of the market. This paper examines two major tactics in the promotion and marketing of post-16 provision--brochures and open days--in relation to issues such as access, targeting, response to 'difference' in the client group/market segment and 'professionalism' of approach. The paper argues that market tactics do semiotic 'work' as class-taste markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis in this paper has its origins in a critical account of the sociology of education (Bernstein, 1975) where the various approaches to the study of sociology were taken as the distinguishing feature of the discourse. This matter was further developed (Bernstein, 1996), with the distinction between vertical and horizontal discourses and their various modalities introduced in the context of differentiating this mode of analysis from more 'Bourdieuan' perspectives. This present paper is concerned with filling out and extending the sketches adumbrated in earlier work in a more accessible form. The model proposed generates a language which relates the internal structure of specialised knowledges, the positional nature of their fields or arenas of practice, identity constructions and their change, and the forms of acquisition for successful performances. [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]

This paper is one of a number of related pieces which address the issue of parental choice through a careful Straussian analysis of interview data. The focus here is upon the structures and processes underlying the use of grapevine' knowledge, which parents elicit and disseminate in choosing a school. It is argued that this immediate or `hot' knowledge is of particular importance to many parents and is set over and against the `cold' formal knowledge produced by schools themselves or published as examination results or league tables. Grapevine knowledge is socially embedded in networks and localities and is distributed unevenly across and used differently by different social-class groups. The Paper concludes by suggesting that the stress and anxiety involved in choice for man)' parents is a product of unstable cultural values, and the slippery signs systems now surrounding `school' at a time of increased economic uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few years, we have been gathering data on the educational careers of a previously researched group of students who were identified as 'academically able' in their early teenage years. The 347 young men and women who have taken part in this later research attended 18 different secondary schools and are now in their mid-twenties. This paper attempts to make sense of their school experiences using Basil Bernstein's theorisations on the 'sources of consensus and disaffection in education'. Despite a number of recent critiques directed at theories of 'socio-cultural determinism' in general, we argue that Bernstein's framework provides a useful means to unravel some of the varied biographies of our sample of students. More specifically, in this paper we compare and contrast different levels of student involvement at two of our 18 research schools. Data from these schools, our sample of students and some of their parents are used to make connections between the cultures of the schools, family perceptions and subsequent forms of student involvement. Although these connections are by no means straightforward, we argue that they provide a way of understanding many facets of our respondents' various orientations to schooling that are significant not only for their own educational careers, but also for future educational decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a response to some criticisms by James Tooley of our research on parental choice The paper argues that many of Tooley's criticism are based on systematic misinterpretations and misreadings of our work, ignorance of the procedures of qualitative research and the we of untenable speculations about sampling, data collection and the interpretation of data It is suggested that Tooley's criticisms are ideologically driven and that if taken senously would make qualitative social research impossible [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the social and cultural importance of photography in modem societies, photographic education is an area that has inspired very little in the way of academic research Photographic education is generally perceived in very narrow tows, as an area of technical training, lacking any broader intellectual significance It is the argument of this paper that in his/her many guises the photographer is an important figure in contemporary culture, and that the impoverished, or total lack of, understanding of photographic education is a significant omission The aim of the paper is to begin to address this gap through a qualitative look at the way in which professional photography students talk about their practice It is argued that photographic education has its own professionalised discourse, which students are encouraged to adopt, thereby excluding alternative perspectives I discuss examples of students' talk about practice as evidence oft/as discourse In the final section of the paper I consider some alternative approaches that have been developed outside the context of mainstream photographic education, and the possibilities they offer for rethinking what it means to teach photography [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various books on educational markets and school choice. Michael Barber's "The Learning Game: Arguments for an Education Revolution," that appears to think that school choice is of little significance in present and future education Barber's project is to design an education system that will match that of the Asian Tigers but remain strongly democratic. Barber's analysis is very personality centered. The book "Choice and Diversity in Schooling: Perspectives and Prospects," is made up of 12 brief chapters, representing a range of methodologies, approaches and levels of the education system, that were originally presented to an ESRC-sponsored conference on the issues of school choice and a more market-like environment in schools. The editors identify three major themes in the papers, diversity, hierarchy and school responsiveness, though not all the papers fit easily into this grouping. "Markets, Choice and Equity in Education" begun with a powerful analysis and critique of existing work in the field. Authors locate the school market in a wider political context that sees it as focused, framed and influenced by the political objectives of the Conservative government.

This paper outlines the theoretical and empirical starting-points for a research project addressing the role of parents' organizations in the education system. It argues that a study of relationships conducted between homes, schools and parents' groups and organisations has the potential to illuminate key concepts an education, considering as examples `citizenship' and `community'. The paper as divided into three main sections. The first briefly describes the study's background, its scope and methodology. The second section considers the use of some of Antonio Gramsci`s work in providing a theoretical starting-point with which to explore the construction and maintenance of hegemonic discourses surrounding parenting. The concluding section of the paper widens the discussion to consider two key concepts, community and citizenship. It is argued that the discursive positioning of these concepts, in other words, how they are understood and defined, influences the ways in which relationships between parents and the education system are perceived and constructed. This is illustrated with reference to readings of `citizenship' and `community' which emphasis, not consensus and homogeneity as in traditional definitions, but conflict, difference and multiplicity. The paper concludes that there is a continued need for empirical data focusing on everyday citizen and citizen-state interactions. Such reveal how individuals live within, and understand and experience these relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on patents' involvement with their child's schooling and the possible influences upon this. At a time when parental involvement is regarded as being highly important to a child's school achievement and given the Government's promotion of the role of parents in education, the conditions should be particularly conducive to involving all parents in this significant role. It will be argued, however, that in spite of increased statutory rights and a changing attitude towards parents by teachers and schools, parents' social class location continues to have a direct impact upon their ability to intervene in their child's schooling. The paper concludes that increased parental involvement is probably desirable but the nature of this and its operationalisation needs to be carefully thought out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks back at the cares of the sociologist Karl Mannherm, who died 50 years ago. It considers how far Mannheim's work remains relevant and discusses what lessons it may still have to offer Quoting Sir Fred Clarke as saying that educational theory and education policy that took no account of changes in the wider social order would be not only blind but positively harmful, the paper suggests that a similar case applies today. It therefore remains essential that Mannheim's legacy is preserved and that the sociological imagination is exercised in relation to contemporary education policy and education research . In the light of Mannheim's own shift from diagnosing the crisis to prescribing the remedies, the paper also reflects on how far it is legitimate for sociologist of education to make such a more. Finally, the paper consider how Mannheim's notion of planning for democracy might be superseded by more genuinely democratic forms of education policy-making in the aftermath of current neo-liberal policies of deregulation. [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]

This paper provides an external account of the demise of the `old' Marxist educational theory flowing from social reproductionism/resistance theory. Five developments are explored in terms of how they have undercut the 'old' educational Marxism, hyper-academicism, dislocations/disfuncions between theory and practice, the postmodern challenge; the new liberal `Left' challenge, and, the `death of Marxism' syndrome. The first two elements from the basis of some important `lessons' for the revitalisation of Marxist perspectives on education. It is also argued that, although the five bends and developments have posed a serious challenge fir the `old' Marxist educational theory, nevertheless, it will probably circulate for some time-given revival revisits, and as a source of easy critisism for anti-Marxists Finally, there has been a recent flowering of new approaches to theorising education from a Marxist perspective, which this paper maps out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews and critiques significant developments within contemporary ethnography. The first part of the paper traces the antecedents of ethnography in an anthropology which was itself closely identified and entwined with colonialism and imperialism. The paper then goes on to review contemporary developments within ethnography, particularly those associated with postmodernism. Attempts to establish a critical ethnography are reviewed and critiqued in the following section. The paper then goes on to suggest ways in which the concepts of 'really useful knowledge' and the processes of action research might be combined in order to assist in the construction of critical ethnography. The paper concludes by acknowledging the difficulties which exist for educational researchers and practitioners who wish to practice critical ethnography in the current educational climate in both Britain and North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is presented in two parts. The first part explores the methodological and epistemological implications of working as a black, female researcher studying issues of social justice and equality in a faculty of education. It is argued that many of those researching social issues and motivated by the desire to facilitate change are faced with an apparent contradiction between a commitment to producing objective, value free research and their commitment to equality and justice. This apparent contradiction haunts them in their negotiations with gate keepers, research funders, employers, the academic community and with policy makers and other practitioners. It is argued that the contradiction is indeed only apparent and that it is based on mistaken notions of 'objectivity' and 'universal values'. I argue that as 'committed' researchers we need to move beyond such false contradictions while at the same time accepting a dual role, of empowerment and critical engagement. In part two of the paper, it is suggested that a radical humanist, critical and reflexive form of action research, one that is informed by a concern for social justice and emancipation, may be constructed that is grounded on Habermas's conception of a 'pathology of communication'. Such research would be directed at the dominant mode of academic and educational production itself. The Gramscian conception of the 'organic intellectual' is invoked in elaborating a research model that might go beyond the kind of 'simultaneous-integrated' action research that has been described by researchers such as Alison Kelly while being radically distanced from work being carried out under the rubric of 'teacher as researcher' or other possibly technicist and managerial action-research models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an investigation into central features of institutional schooling that, collectively, constitute the 'symbolic architecture' of education. In particular, this paper provides an analysis of the practices associated with school uniform, badges and mottoes, drawn from a sample of over 500 schools in the state of Queensland, Australia. The analysis reveals a large degree of uniformity in the meaning content of these school icons, derived from a common core of educational values established during the formative decades of universal school but resting on older heraldic principles. The authors contend that the propagation of these values within the iconic discourse of schooling constitute a significant ideological practice that focuses a pupil's consciousness towards social norms and further reifies the institutional character of education. These processes are not .straightforward but are often contested in instances where pupils recreate mottoes in ways which mock the values that are consecrated in the formal symbols of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dilemmas posed by the analysis of working class issues in education by professional sociologists. There are two central themes in the paper. First it suggests that the inequalities experienced in the education system by working class people has been colonised by middle class academics for their own professional purposes. This colonisation has been greatly facilitated by the nature of the scholastic context itself. To globalise one's point of view in academic writing requires both freedom from the urgency and necessity of survival, and intellectual legitimacy. Working class people lack both. The paper also suggests that working class people occupy a structurally contradictory role in relation to education: on the one hand, social mobility generally requires that they be well educated. Yet if they are to succeed in the education system they have to abandon certain features of their class background. They cease to be working class at least to some degree. Other oppressed or marginalised groups in education, do not lose their defining minority identity or status by being educated: an educated woman never ceases to be a woman, an educated black person never ceases to be black, and a physically disabled person who is educated never ceases to be disabled. The structural relationship between social class and education, is fundamentally different therefore to that of gender, race and ethnicity and this issue needs to be re-assessed in educational analysis. Finally, the paper suggests that the failure to incorporate a working class perspective on educational inequalities leads to the impoverishment of academic analysis as the interests of professional academics rather than working class people dominate the agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper begins with a brief reference of some of the inaccuracies in accounts of the so called 'Honeyford affair'. The main purpose of the paper, however, is not to compare differing accounts, but rather to examine aspects of Honeyford's discourse in its own terms. These aspects include his notion of 'racism', his concern with 'tolerance and coherence' and his account of what he refers to as 'the human character'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the difficulties in conceptualising and presenting research, in particular doctoral work in education, in the current climate of intellectual theorising. It argues that many researches experience a phenomenon described in the paper as 'post-modernist tension' when trying to write in an atmosphere of theoretical and methodological uncertainty. The author elaborates the 'symptoms' of post-modernist tension, and makes a critique of some elements of contemporary social theorising. Nevertheless, the author acknowledges the usefulness of contemporary social theory in challenging traditional research, despite its density and inaccessibility to many researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]