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This paper explores the salience of sport in the lives of eight-year-old and nine-year-old South African primary school boys. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, I argue that young boys' developing relationship with sport is inscribed within particular gendered, raced and classed discourses in South Africa. Throughout the paper I show differences and durability of meanings across the social sites that affect and position blacks, white, boys and girls. It is argued that young boys' early association with sport is centrally about identity and doing sport, or at least establishing interest in sport is one important way in claiming to be a real boy. The findings have implications for the call by the South African Government to get the nation to play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-considers some of the evidence for low and declining social mobility in Britain, showing that one study based on a re-analysis of cohort figures appears to have had an impact on policy-makers out of all proportion to its scale and rigour. The study claimed to show that the income of parents and children were more closely related for sons born in 1970 than in 1958, and that therefore social mobility was declining. It also claimed to show that the incomes of fathers and sons were more closely related in Britain than in countries such as Norway. However, a reconsideration of the same results in this paper leads to very different conclusions. This example is considered in detail here to illustrate the point that it is not always a good thing for research to have influence. The most important and ethical challenge facing social research in education is to improve its quality rather than its impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by highlighting the concerns of a number of commentators about what they perceived as an unprecedented incursion of market-oriented instrumental values in higher education in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Bernstein's analysis of these issues is shown to draw upon Durkheimian concepts of the sacred and the profane. Similarities and differences between Durkheim's and Bernstein's definitions of these concepts are examined, and Bernstein's use of them in relation to the formation of pedagogic identities is a major focus of the paper. The second part of the paper examines two particular aspects of Bernstein's exploration of the consequences of growing marketization and managerialization for identity change in education: the displacement of 'singulars' by 'regions', and the introduction of 'generic' pedagogic modes. In both cases, although perhaps to differing degrees, the sacred is displaced and, under certain conditions, the profane 'outer' is in danger of becoming the subjective 'inner'. Bernstein's discussion of generic modes is illustrated by reference to recent changes in teacher training in England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to that of Moore and Muller 'The Discourse of Voice and the Problem of Knowledge and Identity in the Sociology of Education', which appeared in Volume 20 of this journal. It starts by summarising and endorsing their criticisms of 'voice discourses' but argues that their case is weakened by their failure to distinguish clearly between the 'debunking of knowledge' associated with the postmodernist theories that underpin 'voice discourses' and the general propositions of a social theory of knowledge. The idea that knowledge has a social as well as an epistemological basis is now widely accepted in philosophy as well as sociology. The paper draws on a paper by Stephen Toulmin and makes a distinction between anthropological and sociological approaches to the idea of knowledge having a social basis. It goes on to use some ideas from the author's recent work on the issue of knowledge specialisation to suggest the kind of contribution that a sociological approach to knowledge can make to current curriculum issues as well as to educational policy more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of recent research and theorising relating to contemporary patterns of household formation amongst British youth. The first part provides a necessarily brief summary of current trends, focusing on both the initial process of leaving home and on the different outcomes of that process. The second part considers the theoretical models which underpin research on household formation, highlighting first the defining characteristics of dominant models of constraint, before moving on to examine the potential relevance of recent sociological theorising on the changing nature of social relationships in the context of late modernity. The paper concludes that whilst economic factors have undoubtedly acted as powerful catalysts for recent demographic trends, serious consideration should also be given to the importance of changing attitudes towards traditional forms of household and family living prevalent amongst contemporary youth. [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]

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 builds on Lingard's paper (1990a, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11, pp 171-188) analysing the present secondary school assessment system in Queensland by presenting comparable material for Victoria from 1856 to 1979 All Lingard's tools of analysis are used, but particular attention is paid to Offe's concept of "economic connections" and to operationalising it by the use of the financial accounts of examination boards Only by employing such tools in the service of sociological theory will an approach be made to theories about assessment systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the special issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy journal entitled Education, Training and Economic Performance. In a speech to the annual conference of the Association of Colleges of Further and Higher Education in London on February 15, 1989, Kenneth Baker, British Secretary of State for Educational and Science, speaking on Further Education a new strategy, talked about the problems of sludge speak, which dominates the rhetoric of further education and has to be translated into everyday language. If one examines the sludge speak of his speech and the vision of further education he has, then it is clear that in everyday language people might conclude, in polite phraseology, that is a real mess. This series of papers from the Oxford Review of Economic Policy provides a clear set of well-argued articles which students of the field should find more than useful in their essays and dissertation work. The special issue begins with a historical review of education, training and economic performance and quotes a lecture in 1852 on Industrial Instruction on the Continent which argued that improvements in technical education were urgently required if British manufacturers were to maintain their lead over foreign competitors.

This paper is concerned with a case study regarding the `rise and fall' of a promotions committee within an Australian College of Advanced Education The paper considers the internal organisational factors involved with the abolition of promotion by merit as part of increasingly dominant managerialist practices The paper attempts to contextualise these institutional developments in terms of the restructuring of the Australian economy and concomitant pressures upon state expenditure and consequent increasing pressures on tertiary education institutions to `pay their own way' The study fits within the `imperialist strategy' within organisational analyses where the study of organisations is "merged within a wider analytical framework geared to the examination of historical transformations in institutional structures and the principles which underlie these long-term historical movements" In the concluding section, some critical remarks are proffered regarding the way senior administrators within tertiary education institutions have responded to these privatisation pressures upon them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines New Right argument on educational provision, including the establishing of a voucher scheme and the introduction of elements of a 'free market' into public sector education. The paper examines the right-wing allegation that educationalists have 'captured' the school curriculum and the argument on the need for 'consumer capture' of education. It discusses the New right tactic of privatization by stealth, and the argument that gradualism provides the most effective means of securing educational reform. The paper discusses arguments put forward by the right on the idea of a General Teaching Council (GTC) and argument on the need for the development of a teacher labour market freed from national salary scales. It goes on to examine Mary Warnock's proposals for a GTC and her views of teacher education. The paper examines the likely effects of the implementation of right-wings education policy, concluding that the 1988 Education Reform Act will prepare the ground for the privatization of education and the development of a teacher labour market of the kind proposed by the New Right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the apparent internal coherence of a programme of agrarian development in India and the distortions and contradictions arising out of its practical implementation. Our object is to examine official policy with regard to tribal residential schools in India, known as ashram shalas. These schools represent an innovation and are different from the general type of day primary schools seen in rural India. In ashram schools, tribal pupils are provided free boarding facilities, together with free school uniforms, text books and other learning materials. These schools are expected to impart elementary education in areas which are remote and sparsely populated and where, on account of the geographic spread of the numerous hamlets, single teacher schools cannot be established. Our study is aimed at understanding official policy in the context of ashram schools, and at providing an arena for bringing to the surface the fundamental contradictions played out in areas of the school situation, specifically relating to: (a) the school organizational structure; (b) the teaching practice; (c) dropout; (d) school-community relations; and (e) area development. The paper is presented in two major parts: (a) the first section will try to relate the functioning of the ashram schools to how the state plans and administers schools with respect to access to them; (b) the second section examines the ashram school as a locus of a wider and general social problem of relating education to social economic and developmental purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 stresses the complexity of further education (FE) In order to take cognisance of this complexity a number of themes are discussed The role of FE in `reproducing' social and technical relations is discussed and it is argued that social relations are crucial in the formation of technical relations However, in order to grasp the nature of FE, technical relations need to be accorded `relative autonomy' An additional thematic of the paper is that the concept of social relations needs to be broadened so that a is no longer conceived of narrowly in terms of productive relations It is argued that structures which are analytically outside of production need to be incorporated into the concept of social relations Reference is made to the structures of race, patriarchy and generation and it is argued that we need to consider the way in which these various structures intersect with one another thereby structuring the form of social relations An important concept that would enable us to do this is that of struggle Indeed it is suggested that struggle should be central, to the analysis A final thematic of the paper is the epistemological suggestion that one's theories to be adequate need to approach in a meaningful way the complexity of that with which they are concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editorial. French sociologist and internationally renowned public intellectual Pierre Bourdieu died in 2002. He developed a remarkable capacity for critical social analysis and epistemic reflexivity. He also organized a network of progressive social scientists into the group "Raisons d'agir" and launched a publishing house of the same name to bring sociological analyses of contemporary civic issues to a broader public. Bourdieu also succeeded in developing a highly individual brand of sociology. His scholarship was a synthesis of philosophy, social anthropology and sociology underpinned by a passionate commitment to social justice. An acute interest in social inequality and the ways in which it is masked and perpetuated became an enduring contribution preoccupation that influenced his writings.

This paper reports on a study of students choosing the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma over state-based curricula in Australian schools. The IB Diploma was initially designed as a matriculation certificate to facilitate international mobility. While first envisaged as a lifestyle agenda for cultural elites, such mobility is now widespread with more people living 'beyond the nation' through choice or circumstance. Beck and others highlight how the capacity to cross national borders offers a competitive edge with which to strategically pursue economic and cultural capital. Beck's 'border artistes' are those who use national borders to their individual advantage through reflexive strategy. The study explored the rationales and strategy behind the choice of the IB Diploma curriculum expressed by students in a focus group interview and an online survey. This paper reports on their imagined transnational routes and mobile orientations, and how a localised curriculum limits their imagined mobile futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of school social class composition on pupil learner identities in British primary schools. In the current British education system, high-stakes testing has a pervasive effect on the pedagogical relationship between teachers and pupils. The data in this paper, from ethnographic research in a working-class school and a middle-class school, indicate that the effect of the 'testing culture' is much greater in the working-class school. Using Bernsteinian theory and the concept of the 'ideal pupil', it is shown that these pupils' learner identities are more passive and dominated by issues of discipline and behaviour rather than academic performance, in contrast to those in the middle-class school. While this study includes only two schools, it indicates a potentially significant issue for neo-liberal education policy where education is marketised and characterised by high-stakes testing, and schools are polarised in terms of social class. [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 raises questions about the use of the concept of reputation in sociological studies of the relationship between higher education and the labour market. Sociologists of education have yet to subject the concept of reputation to sustained critique and evaluation. This situation is unsatisfactory because a number of critical scholars claim that graduates earn a premium as a consequence of attending an elite institution for no reason other than the institution has such a reputation. However, research generally does not provide unequivocal support for such an effect and neither is the source of this effect clearly theorised or identified. One result of this lack of clarity is confusion over what is driving the formation of reputation. This paper advances field theory as a way of developing a sociology of reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores the fascist vision for education in 1930s Britain through the presentation of extracts from official publications of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), as well as from the writings of Party members. The paper presents a socio-historical study of British adherents to fascism and provides an account of their thinking in relation to education and schooling, exposing a milieu of ideologues, Party functionaries and serving teachers who were animated by their political commitment. Following a brief outline of the early years of British fascism, there is an account of some key members and their educational ideas, followed by a discussion of the BUF's educational policies and of its approach to internal education and training. The orientation of the BUF and its membership to education, and the Party's formulated policies in this field present a modernist vision that was calculated to have particular appeal to educational professionals. There is a consideration, through memoirs, of the experiences of two BUF members who were teachers. The paper reveals a relatively hidden episode in the social history of British educational politics; one that contained paradoxes of intent and outcome, and of means and ends, when ostensibly progressive and socially elevating concepts were employed in ways that had an ultimately destructive impact on individuals, both personally and professionally, as well as on whole societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the class distribution of young people, aged 16-17 years, in colleges of further education (FE) using data from the Youth Cohort Study. It finds that, contrary to popular perceptions of FE colleges as being for 'other people's children', middle-class students as well as working-class students are well represented. However, this does not imply that FE colleges are institutions of choice; middle-class representation is often related to lower achievement and, for low-achieving working-class students, leaving education entirely is more likely than entry to FE. These findings are explored using notions of habitus and field. Their relationship with studies of the education of middle-class children is also discussed, and the paper suggests that research on class in FE colleges must come to terms with middle-class presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines male and female teachers' language practices in relation to 'censuring' talk in the primary classroom, in the context of the debate around boys' 'underachievement' and the 'feminisation' of primary school culture. Through an analysis of classroom observations with 51 men and women teachers, it looks to see whether gender differences could be found in the ways individual men and women teachers communicated in terms of their 'censuring' comments of pupils' work or behaviour. Secondly, the paper takes issue with the notion that teachers operate within a 'feminised' educational culture, by looking at the ways in which teachers' classroom talk can be seen to be constrained by two contrasting discourses relating to the power relation between teacher and pupil: a 'traditional' disciplinarian discourse, and a more 'progressive' liberal discourse. Both discourses have complex gendered and class dimensions, challenging the conception of a 'feminised' primary school culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores the conceptual limitations of the bully discourses that ground UK anti-bullying policy frameworks and psychological research literatures on school bullying, suggesting they largely ignore gender, (hetero)sexuality and the social, cultural and subjective dynamics of conflict and aggression among teen-aged girls. To explore the limitations of bully discourses in practice, the paper draws on a pilot, interview-based study of girls' experiences of aggression and bullying, illustrating how friendships and conflicts among the girls are thoroughly heterosexualized, en-cultured and classed. Drawing on girls and parent interview narratives, I also trace some of the effects of bully discourses set in motion in schools to intervene into conflicts among girls. I suggest these practices miss the complexity of the dynamics at play among girls and also neglect the power relations of parenting, ethnicity, class and school choice, which can inform how, why and when bullying discourses are mobilized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper Gewirtz and Cribb offer a response to Hammersley and Abraham's criticisms of their arguments about the place of values in social research published in this issue of BJSE. In doing so, they make clear that most of the positions that Hammersley and Abraham attribute to them are ones that they do not identify with and that, like Hammersley and Abraham, they would reject. In order to further clarify and specify their own position, Gewirtz and Cribb argue that: their advocacy of ethical reflexivity rests on the assumption that there are many incompatible sets of values in play within even a single vantage point; researchers should sometimes take an interest in knowledge use although they should not always be required to do so; and, whilst at the level of propositions it is always possible to abstract out and distinguish between factual claims and value claims, at the level of practice there can be significant resonances and linkages between the two, so it is important to be ethically reflexive about these entanglements. Finally, the authors agree that values should not be seen purely as a source of contamination but that attention to values can help to underpin 'objectivity'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper maps the global dimension of higher education and associated research, including the differentiation of national systems and institutions, while reflecting critically on theoretical tools for working this terrain. Arguably the most sustained theorisation of higher education is by Bourdieu: the paper explores the relevance and limits of Bourdieu's notions of field of power, agency, positioned and position-taking; drawing on Gramsci's notion of hegemony in explaining the dominant role played by universities from the United States. Noting there is greater ontological openness in global than national educational settings, and that Bourdieu's reading of structure/agency becomes trapped on the structure side, the paper discusses Sen on self-determining identity and Appadurai on global imagining, flows and 'scapes'. The dynamics of Bourdieu's competitive field of higher education continue to play out globally, but located within a larger and more disjunctive relational setting, and a setting that is less closed, than he suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the operation of heteronormativity in online and face-to-face dialogues about sexualities and schooling, and seeks to tease out the means through which this operation is enacted. The data arise from two linked research projects focusing on participants' perceptions and concerns about addressing issues related to sexual orientation in school contexts. Analysis of data from both sources showed that participants' narratives were embedded (often without the participants' recognition) in the heteronormative, through the inscription and reinscription of specific identity categories that fixed heterosexuality as the normative centre. Revisiting these data as a whole, we draw upon Youdell's notion of 'wounds and reinscrptions' and Bakhtin's notion of carnivalistic inversion to explore the virtual impossibility of imagining the homonormative. From this exercise we derive important lessons for ourselves as educators and researchers about how offering new imaginaries might enhance the possibilities for social justice and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the organization and representation of time in certain kinds of undergraduate programs, here represented by a sociology program in a US university. Written requirements for the major are analyzed as constituting a 'chart' that defines academic time in terms of units of before-after relationships. The paper shows how students 'reuse' these temporal units when charting paths through the university and reckoning their academic work to specific futures. [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 reports on the social factors influencing the learning of two cohorts of school students and their experience of compulsory secondary education in a city in southern England - the secondary schooling phase of a 12-year, longitudinal ethnographic study that also tracked the same children's experiences through primary schooling. We embed our report of secondary school findings within the theoretical models and understandings generated by the Identity and Learning Programme as a whole. The paper addresses three key issues. First, we trace how social influences on learning broaden as young people develop through adolescence, and illustrate why viewing learning as social activity is so important. Second, we discuss evolving processes of social differentiation in relation to gender and social class. We draw particular attention to the dangers of over-simplified models of social reproduction. Finally, we review an analysis of strategic action and identities, contrasting the differentiated experience of young people attending independent and selective schools compared with those attending non-selective comprehensive schools. Overall, this analysis seeks to complement studies of differentiated educational outcomes by suggesting possible social processes that could help to account for them. The Identity and Learning Programme, both in its secondary phase and as a whole, shows clearly how individual agency enables young people to cope with their circumstances. However, in so doing, they both reproduce elements of constraint/opportunity and construct others anew. This has significant implications for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a comparative account of two conceptualisations of pleasure. The first draws on Foucault's analysis of bio-power. The second provides a phenomenological account where pleasure is viewed as an aspect of our immediate consciousness. These conceptualisations are illuminated through an analysis of employees' accounts of learning at work. Overall, the paper demonstrates how, in a Foucauldian analysis, pleasure disappears as it becomes a cipher for power whereas within the phenomenological account pleasure is foregrounded but power disappears. The concluding section focuses on the problems of both conceptualisations and explores whether we should simply accept that different analytical frameworks do different work for us or whether we should be more concerned at the losses, and gains, associated with theoretical choices. The conclusion further asks whether a concern to foreground pleasure in accounts of learning represents an antidote to the pessimism of much critical analysis or whether we should treat pleasure as a morally duplicitous category that encourages political apathy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Judith Butler’s conceptualisation of how gender is routinely spoken through a hegemonic heterosexual matrix has been pivotal for many social scientists researching within and beyond educational settings for exposing the ways in which children’s normative gender identities (‘intelligible genders’) are inextricably tied to dominant notions of heterosexuality. In dialogue with a growing body of research queering children’s gendered and sexualised childhoods, this paper addresses how being a ‘normal’ girl or boy involves investing in and actively pursuing hegemonic heterosexual identities and relations (from sexual bullying to relationship cultures). Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork into the sexualisation of gender and the gendering of sexuality in children’s identity‐work in their final year of primary school, I explore the ways in which a ubiquitous heterosexual matrix regulates boy–girl intimacies, from play and friendships to physical proximity. I also highlight the diverse and fluid ways in which children deploy discourses of (hetero)romance and sexual innocence in their role as ‘girlfriends’ and ‘boyfriends’, and how particular gendered subject positions (e.g. tomboy) offer an escape route from coercive and frequently compulsory heterosexual positionings. The paper concludes by highlighting how queer analyses of children’s gendered and sexual cultures and identity‐work needs to further scrutinise how discourses of generation (e.g. early or middle childhood) intersect with discourses of gender and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended as a contribution to the longstanding debate about the best way of handling value judgements in social research. In it we make a case for more ‘ethical reflexivity’ in the sociology of education and argue that a systematic attention to value questions should be viewed as a taken‐for‐granted component of methodological rigour. We elucidate what we mean by ethical reflexivity, why we think it is important and suggest what it entails in practice. Our arguments are developed through a discussion of, and in contrast to, Martyn Hammersley’s analysis of the role of values in social research. The central problematic that the paper addresses is the tension between, on the one hand, the goal of insulating the research process from ‘value bias’ and, on the other hand, the goal of contributing to political and social change through research. We suggest that the reason for the intractability of the problem of values in social research is a persistent failure to recognise that, in practice, these two goals are inseparable. We argue that rigour in research demands that both these goals are taken seriously and we set out some of the challenges involved in trying to combine them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changing nature of professional practice in English further education. At a time when neo–liberal reform has significantly impacted on this under–researched and over–market–tested sector, little is known about who its practitioners are and how they construct meaning in their work. Sociological interest in the field has tended to focus on further education practitioners as either the subjects of market and managerial reform or as creative agents operating within the contradictions of audit and inspection cultures. In challenging such dualism, which is reflective of wider sociological thinking, the paper examines the ways in which agency and structure combine to produce a more transformative conception of the further education professional. The approach contrasts with a prevailing policy discourse that seeks to re–professionalise and modernise further education practice without interrogating either the terms of its professionalism or the neo–liberal practices in which it resides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that a critical realist perspective can contribute to a critique of evidence-based practice, while at the same time not abandoning the idea of evidence altogether. The paper is structured around a number of related themes: the sociopolitics of ‘evidence-based’; epistemological roots and a critical realist critique; the debate in action based on the recent systematic review of personal development planning; and theory to practice gaps. The advocacy of evidence-based practice is currently being used to undermine professional autonomy and to valorise the ‘gold-standard’ of randomised controlled trials. However, the paper proposes that evidence can properly be claimed for critique and emancipatory projects, and that its current discursive location at the core of New Labour thinking is not the only one available. Moreover, thinking from a critical realist perspective liberates the space for theoretically informed work, whereby arguments about method, and in particular randomised controlled trials, do not become a proxy for the open examination of ontological and epistemological assumptions. One of the underlying themes in critical realism is that of critique and emancipation, and evidence properly understood aligned to clear theoretical argumentation is part of this project. Existing models of systematic review fall far short of this aspiration and are of little help to practitioners. As researchers and practitioners we have every reason to maintain a critical stance towards the way evidence is being deployed in debates about policy and practice. [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 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 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]

'Age' is an important social category used to define individuals and groups within our society and, often, to structure access to power, prestige and status. However, within educational research, age has been relatively neglected when compared with other social categories such as gender, class and ethnicity. In an attempt to begin to explore the impact of age within schools and colleges, this paper focuses on students' and teachers' experience of mixed-age learning groups within the UK further education sector. First, the paper outlines various assumptions about the distinctiveness of age groups that underpin much sociological theorizing as well as current educational policy within the United Kingdom. It then draws on an empirical study of six further education colleges in Yorkshire and the south-east of England to suggest that the ways in which students and members of staff construct notions of 'age' and 'age difference' bear little resemblance to the models adopted by policymakers. Nevertheless, the paper goes on to argue that, although there was little consensus about where the boundary between 'younger' and 'older' learners should be drawn, most respondents were able to identify specific age-related differences that they believed affected the process of learning. In particular, mixed-age classes were believed to offer considerable advantages over more age-homogeneous groups. The final part of the paper explores some of these putative advantages and discusses their significance in the light of current debates about the 'postponement' of adulthood and the nature of inter-generational relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]