96 results
Search Results
2. Have the changes introduced by the 2004 Higher Education Act made higher education admissions in England wider and fairer?
- Author
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Neil Harrison
- Subjects
Economic growth ,Higher education ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Public administration ,Social class ,Education ,Principal (commercial law) ,White paper ,State (polity) ,Political science ,business ,Socioeconomic status ,media_common - Abstract
‘Widening participation’ and ‘fair access’ have been contested policy areas in English higher education since at least the early 1990s. They were key facets of the 2003 White Paper – The Future of Higher Education – and the subsequent 2004 Higher Education Act, with stated objectives that the reach of higher education should be wider and fairer. In particular, there has been considerable concern about admissions to ‘top universities’, which have remained socially as well as academically exclusive. The principal policy tools used by the Act were the introduction of variable tuition fees, expanded student grants, discretionary bursaries and the new Office for Fair Access (OFFA). This paper draws on publicly available statistics to assess whether the changes implemented by the 2004 Act have indeed made access to English higher education wider and fairer in relation to young people progressing from state schools and colleges and from lower socio‐economic groups. It concludes that, while there is some evidence...
- Published
- 2011
3. Actantial construction of career guidance in parliament of Finland’s education policy debates 1967–2020
- Author
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Tristram Hooley, Janne Varjo, Mira Kalalahti, Department of Education, and Koulutussosiologian ja -politiikan tutkimusryhmä
- Subjects
Parliament ,4. Education ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,Career Guidance ,Public administration ,Education ,Actantial Analysis ,Education Politics ,050106 general psychology & cognitive sciences ,Political science ,0502 economics and business ,516 Educational sciences ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Education policy ,Set (psychology) ,050203 business & management ,media_common - Abstract
In this paper we examine the objectives and meanings of the career guidance provided in comprehensive education as set out in discussions in the Parliament of Finland. We approach the topic through an exploration of parliamentary sessions concerning three major legislative proposals for reforming compulsory education in Finland. The premise is that the parliamentary discussions concerning guidance provided in comprehensive education reflect the rationalities that underpin guidance in different eras in Finland and elsewhere. Examining these rationalities provides a way to explore the principles which frame career guidance policy in Finland. Using the actantial model as a methodological tool, the analysis aims to discover the actantial positions in the parliamentary discussions and the interactions that emerge between these. The various actantial narratives demonstrate the way in which guidance is influenced by wider ideological trends. The actantial analysis portrays a shift from the more structural corporatist approaches of the 1960s when the object of guidance was to fulfil the needs of society, towards more third way individualism in 1990s. The current reform of 2020 to extend compulsory education and reinforce guidance may represent some return to more structural approaches. In this paper we examine the objectives and meanings of the career guidance provided in comprehensive education as set out in discussions in the Parliament of Finland. We approach the topic through an exploration of parliamentary sessions concerning three major legislative proposals for reforming compulsory education in Finland. The premise is that the parliamentary discussions concerning guidance provided in comprehensive education reflect the rationalities that underpin guidance in different eras in Finland and elsewhere. Examining these rationalities provides a way to explore the principles which frame career guidance policy in Finland. Using the actantial model as a methodological tool, the analysis aims to discover the actantial positions in the parliamentary discussions and the interactions that emerge between these. The various actantial narratives demonstrate the way in which guidance is influenced by wider ideological trends. The actantial analysis portrays a shift from the more structural corporatist approaches of the 1960s when the object of guidance was to fulfil the needs of society, towards more third way individualism in 1990s. The current reform of 2020 to extend compulsory education and reinforce guidance may represent some return to more structural approaches.
- Published
- 2021
4. Practitioner advocates in Japan: bringing in knowledge of practice for policy translation
- Author
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Sam Bamkin
- Subjects
practitioner advocates ,Process (engineering) ,05 social sciences ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,Moral education ,Education ,dōtoku ,0504 sociology ,Japanese education ,policy trajectories ,policy enactment ,Engineering ethics ,Sociology ,0503 education ,moral education - Abstract
The research was undertaken as a member of the School Improvement and Policy Studies Research Group, Graduate School of Education, University of Tokyo. The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link. This paper examines mechanisms in the Japanese education system that ‘bring in’ knowledge of practice to the process of policy translation. The paper firstly draws on the enactment of recent curriculum reforms in Japan to define a group of actors – practitioner advocates – who utilise their identity as members of the teaching community to mediate and translate policies, from a position outside the school and often outside the municipality. Their collaboration with school administrators and teachers effectuates policy transactions that make sense to teachers, developed in reference to knowledge of practice but legitimised in reference to policy, bending its meanings. Secondly, examining the work of practitioner advocates invites questions that might otherwise go unasked, and provides a fresh perspective on the particularity of the Anglo-American context. It draws attention to the possibility that the Anglo-American structural, institutional or cultural context is peculiarly susceptible to a kind of deliverological managerialism that shuts out experience of practice.
- Published
- 2021
5. Taking education to account? The limits of law in institutional and professional practice
- Author
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Murphy, Mark
- Subjects
Law ,Political science ,Appeal ,Professional practice ,Education - Abstract
Recent years have seen the spread of a litigation culture in the UK education sector, with members of the public increasingly seeking recourse to the law to appeal, complain, or achieve compensation. The increasing tendency of people to resort to litigation suggests that recourse to the law is seen as a more immediate form of taking education services to account. While in theory an effective accountability tool, this development has unfortunately produced some less than desirable consequences in educational institutions, most notably the avoidance of risk. This paper argues that such consequences need to be understood as a reflection of the limits placed on legal regulation, once it encounters the already highly regulated world of educational institutions. To flesh out this argument, this paper examines these limits as a set of consequences relating to the following: increasing juridification; the intersection of law and mechanisms of accountability, judgement and professional discretion; and the relation between risk and trust. The argument draws on the ‘law in context’ literature, as well as recent debates over the pathologies of legal freedom.
- Published
- 2020
6. Test-based accountability in the Norwegian context: exploring drivers, expectations and strategies
- Author
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Camphuijsen, Marjolein K., Møller, Jorunn, Skedsmo, Guri, Educational Studies, and LEARN! - Educational governance, identity and diversity
- Subjects
Education reform ,Test-based accountability ,Education policy ,Context (language use) ,Norwegian ,Public administration ,Globalisation ,Education ,Globalization ,0504 sociology ,Political science ,Standardised testing ,test-based accountability ,policy instruments ,Norway ,4. Education ,05 social sciences ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,16. Peace & justice ,language.human_language ,global education reforms ,Test (assessment) ,New public management ,Accountability ,language ,New Public Management ,Policy instrument approach ,0503 education - Abstract
This paper investigates how and why test-based accountability (TBA), a global model for education reform, began to dominate educational debates in Norway in the early 2000s, and how this policy has been operationalised and institutionalised over time. In examining the adoption and retention of TBA in Norway, we build on the cultural political economy framework, in combination with a political sociology-driven approach to policy instruments. The analysis draws on two data sources: four White Papers and 37 in-depth interviews with top-level politicians, policy-makers and stakeholders, conducted between September 2017 and February 2018. The findings indicate that ‘scandalisation’ of Norway’s below-expected PISA results and promotion of standardised testing as a neutral device contributed to the relatively abrupt adoption of national testing in the early 2000s. The increasingly dominant policy discourse equalising education quality and learning outcomes led to the institutionalisation of TBA, developed to ensure equity and quality standards in a decentralised education system. Increased visibility, benchmarking and administrative control are identified as key mechanisms in putting pressure on local actors to re-orient their behaviour. The study provides original insights into the drivers, expectations and strategies underlying TBA in a social democratic institutional regime.
- Published
- 2020
7. Problematising policies for workforce reform in early childhood education: a rhetorical analysis of England’s Early Years Teacher Status
- Author
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Linda Henderson, Louise Kay, Elizabeth Wood, and Joce Nuttall
- Subjects
Early childhood education ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,responsibilisation ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,Public administration ,Policy analysis ,Education ,Early Childhood Education (ECE) ,0504 sociology ,Political science ,Rhetoric ,Workforce ,workforce reform ,Rhetorical question ,Quality (business) ,Early childhood ,Construct (philosophy) ,0503 education ,rhetorical analysis ,media_common - Abstract
This paper examines workforce reform in early childhood education in England, specifically the policy trajectory that led to implementation of the Early Years Teacher Status (EYTS) qualification in 2014. Taking a critical perspective on policy analysis, the paper uses rhetorical analysis to make sense of the how EYTS is understood within workforce reform. From an assemblage of salient policy documents, we report our critical analysis of two key texts: Foundations for Quality and More Great Childcare. Both documents identify policy levers and drivers for reform, but from markedly different perspectives and with contrasting recommendations. By using rhetorical analysis to examine how these policy texts construct not only problems but also preferred solutions, we illustrate the paradoxical nature of early childhood policy in England as it relates to aspirations to raise the status of the sector and improve quality through the implementation of EYTS.
- Published
- 2019
8. Eyes wide shut: the fantasies and disavowals of education policy
- Author
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Matthew Clarke
- Subjects
media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,Neoliberalism ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,Public policy ,Policy analysis ,Education ,Competition (economics) ,0504 sociology ,Excellence ,Political science ,Political economy ,Power structure ,LB ,Education policy ,0503 education ,Inclusion (education) ,media_common - Abstract
This paper examines the tensions between education policy’s attachment to notions such as excellence and inclusion and its investments in managerial tropes of competition, continuous quality improvement, standards and accountability that are at odds with and which undermine its attachments. In order to explore these tensions, I draw on the psychoanalytic notion of fantasy, explained through Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes wide shut. My argument is that while the individual and society are both constituted through unavoidable division, antagonism and opacity, these notions are obscured through the operations of fantasy which holds out the promise of wholeness, harmony and redemption. In particular, education serves as a key site in which these fantasmatic ideals are promoted and pursued, a claim I substantiate via an analysis of the UK government’s 2016 white paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere. Specifically, I read the white paper in terms of five fantasies of: control; knowledge and reason; inclusion; productivity; and victimhood. My argument is that while fantasy is an inescapable element that inevitably structures what we take to be ‘reality’, education policy might strive to inhabit fantasy differently, thereby finding ways of escaping its current mode of seeing education with eyes wide shut.
- Published
- 2018
9. Teacher or friend? – consumer narratives on private supplementary tutoring in Sweden as policy enactment
- Author
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Stina Hallsén and Marie Karlsson
- Subjects
supplementary tutoring ,consumer narratives ,business.industry ,Pedagogy ,05 social sciences ,Pedagogik ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,Public relations ,Homework support ,Private sector ,Education ,Variety (cybernetics) ,positioning theory ,0504 sociology ,Political science ,policy enactment ,Positioning theory ,Narrative ,Private education ,business ,0503 education - Abstract
Private supplementary tutoring (PST) is a worldwide enterprise that comes in a variety of forms and with a growing number of students. Sweden, together with the other Nordic countries, has a relatively short history of large-scale organised supplementary education, which can be explained by its confidence in regular mainstream education. In recent years though, this picture has partly changed, and today families in Sweden are offered different kinds of education services outside the ordinary school system. This paper targets how PST is legitimized and justified through marketing as a solution to problems related to the education of children. Through a positioning analysis of three consumer narratives published online by a PST company, this paper aims to further our understanding of which functions PST fills within the Swedish education system. Results show that private tutors appear in the consumer narratives as compensating for shortcomings in schools and families as well as complementing the support that parents and teachers can offer children. These findings signal that PST marketing creates demands for different kinds of support which may, in the long run, rewrite the map of the Swedish education landscape.
- Published
- 2018
10. In pursuit of quality: early childhood qualifications and training policy
- Author
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Mona Sakr, Dilys Wilson, Jayne Osgood, Alex Elwick, and Leena Helavaara Robertson
- Subjects
Government ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Discourse analysis ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,Public relations ,Training (civil) ,Teacher education ,Education ,Order (exchange) ,Political science ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Quality (business) ,Meaning (existential) ,Early childhood ,business ,0503 education ,050104 developmental & child psychology ,media_common - Abstract
This paper aims to critique policy discourses around the pursuit of quality in early years education. Taking England as a focal point, it problematizes the use of the term ‘quality’ and attempts to standardise its meaning; highlighting the disconnect that exists between policy and practice. The paper combines discourse analysis of a small number of key government documents with a series of interviews with early years stakeholders in order to identify issues that will have resonance and can inform a much needed continuation of debates about what quality might mean. Over the course of the research it became apparent that there was considerable disquiet amongst early years practitioners with regards the current qualifications and training landscape, particularly with regards to what many viewed as ideologically-driven policy-making, not informed by proper dialogue with the sector.
- Published
- 2017
11. Assembling the actors: exploring the challenges of ‘system leadership’ in education through Actor-Network Theory
- Author
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Annelies Kamp
- Subjects
Actor–network theory ,business.industry ,Corporate governance ,05 social sciences ,0507 social and economic geography ,050301 education ,Public relations ,Education ,Empirical research ,General partnership ,Sociology ,business ,050703 geography ,0503 education ,Social theory - Abstract
This paper presents insights into the leadership implications of recent shifts in a range of policy contexts towards notions of collaboration and partnership. The paper draws on empirical research ...
- Published
- 2017
12. Closing the attainment gap – a realistic proposition or an elusive pipe-dream?
- Author
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Joan Mowat
- Subjects
Government ,Economic growth ,Corporate governance ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,Capacity building ,Public policy ,National curriculum ,Educational attainment ,Education ,Intervention (law) ,Economics ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Education policy ,Positive economics ,0503 education ,050104 developmental & child psychology - Abstract
The attainment gap associated with socio-economic status is an international problem that is highly resistant to change. This conceptual paper critiques the drive by the Scottish Government to address the attainment gap through the Scottish Attainment Challenge and the National Improvement Framework. It draws upon a range of theoretical perspectives but principally examines the problem through the lens of Steiner- Khamsi’s (2014) concepts of ‘reception’ and ‘translation’ of policy and through examination of the international and national (Scottish) policy contexts. The paper argues that, rather than focussing narrowly upon attainment outcomes, an holistic approach should be adopted which takes account of the economic, social and relational constraints which impact upon families in poverty, calling for a systems-level approach. ‘Schools cannot go it alone’: there is a need to focus upon a wide range of public policy to redress inequalities in society. Whilst the Scottish Government has looked to the London/City/National Challenge as a potential solution to the problem, the complexities and limitations of policy borrowing need to be understood. Higher Education Institutions, government agencies, local authorities and schools need to work in partnership to develop research informed practice which will impact upon learning outcomes for all children and young people.
- Published
- 2017
13. The misdirection of public policy: comparing and combining standardised effect sizes
- Author
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Adrian Simpson
- Subjects
Research design ,Evidence-based practice ,Actuarial science ,Computer science ,05 social sciences ,Psychological intervention ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,Public policy ,Education ,Intervention (law) ,Educational research ,0504 sociology ,Meta-analysis ,Openness to experience ,Econometrics ,0503 education - Abstract
Increased attention on ‘what works’ in education has led to an emphasis on developing policy from evidence based on comparing and combining a particular statistical summary of intervention studies: the standardised effect size. It is assumed that this statistical summary provides an estimate of the educational impact of interventions and combining these through meta-analyses and meta-meta-analyses results in more precise estimates of this impact which can then be ranked. From these, it is claimed, educational policy decisions can be driven. This paper will demonstrate that these assumptions are false: standardised effect size is open to researcher manipulations which violate the assumptions required for legitimately comparing and combining studies in all but the most restricted circumstances. League tables of types of intervention, which governments point to as an evidence base for effective practice may, instead, be hierarchies of openness to research design manipulations. The paper concludes that public policy and resources are in danger of being misdirected.
- Published
- 2017
14. Employability and higher education: the follies of the ‘Productivity Challenge’ in the Teaching Excellence Framework
- Author
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Jo Frankham
- Subjects
LB2300 ,Government ,Higher education ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,ComputingMethodologies_IMAGEPROCESSINGANDCOMPUTERVISION ,Neoliberalism ,050301 education ,Employability ,Education ,Excellence ,New public management ,0502 economics and business ,Pedagogy ,Performativity ,Accountability ,Sociology ,business ,GeneralLiterature_REFERENCE(e.g.,dictionaries,encyclopedias,glossaries) ,0503 education ,050203 business & management ,media_common - Abstract
This article considers questions of ‘employability’, a notion foregrounded in the Green and White Papers on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The paper first questions government imperatives concerning employability and suggests a series of mismatches that are evident in the rhetorics in this area. This summary opens up elements of what I am calling the first ‘folly’ in the field. The second section of the paper considers recent research with individual academics engaged in employability activity. This research suggests another series of mismatches in the aims and outcomes of ‘employability initiatives’ and opens up a further series of ‘follies’ in the day-to-day practices of academics and students’ responses to them. The third section of the paper turns to academics’ reports of student behaviour in relation to the outcomes of their degree. This section develops an argument that relates to the final ‘folly’ associated with the current focus on employability. I argue that students’ focus on outcomes (which at face value suggests they have internalized the importance of employment) is contributing to the production of graduates who do not have the dispositions that employers – when interviewed – say that they want. The highly performative culture of higher education, encouraged by the same metrics that will be extended through the TEF, is implicated then in not preparing students for the workplace. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
- Published
- 2016
15. Policy in transition: the emergence of tackling early school leaving (ESL) as EU policy priority
- Author
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Denise Mifsud and Donald Gillies
- Subjects
Discourse analysis ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,Human capital theory ,Lisbon Strategy ,Public administration ,Human capital ,Education ,0502 economics and business ,Power structure ,Sociology ,Education policy ,050207 economics ,0503 education ,Economic problem - Abstract
This paper explores, from a Foucauldian perspective, the emergence and nature of the current EU education policy priority issue of ‘early school leaving’. The paper suggests that a number of problematisations developing from the failure to secure Lisbon Strategy objectives have served to create a much stronger focus on the issue of young people deemed to be leaving education and training early in EU states. In examining how EU policy discourse positions such young people (subjectivation), the paper highlights how this has narrowed to a concern with young people as economic problems and principally positioned as economic units which are required to be more productive. Education and training are understood as investments in human capital and as the principal means to secure the dominant global economic position desired by the EU. The paper suggests, however, that human capital theory has been modified within this approach so that merely being retained in an educational setting is seen as proxy for t...
- Published
- 2016
16. Legitimation, performativity and the tyranny of a ‘hijacked’ word
- Author
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Rob Vickers, Andrew Clapham, and Jo Eldridge
- Subjects
Discourse analysis ,05 social sciences ,Judgement ,Media studies ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,Performative utterance ,Public administration ,Grounded theory ,Education ,0504 sociology ,Legitimation ,Performativity ,Narrative ,Sociology ,0503 education ,Legitimacy - Abstract
Outstanding education is a high level policy narrative in England rehearsed by school leaders, politicians, policy makers and inspectors alike. Lyotard’s (1979) work on the 'legitimacy' of knowledge and performativity, and Foucauldian discourse-based analysis (1972, 1991), are mobilised to examine outstanding. The paper explores how informants in the English state secondary education sector described and experienced outstanding. From examining policy documents and empirical data, the paper suggests that outstanding has become a performative tool "hijacked" by inspection regimes. It concludes that, despite the informants' best efforts, the neo-liberal and performative policy discourses which surround outstanding appear to increasingly wield a disproportionate, even tyrannical, influence upon the English education system.
- Published
- 2016
17. Media accounts of school performance: reinforcing dominant practices of accountability
- Author
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Aspa Baroutsis
- Subjects
Government ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,050801 communication & media studies ,Academic achievement ,Public relations ,Public administration ,Education ,Newspaper ,Power (social and political) ,0508 media and communications ,Performativity ,Accountability ,Sociology ,business ,0503 education ,News media ,Reputation ,media_common - Abstract
Media reportage often act as interpretations of accountability policies thereby making the news media a part of the policy enactment process. Within such a process, their role is that of policy reinforcement rather than policy construction or contestation. This paper draws on the experiences of school leaders in regional Queensland, Australia, and their perceptions of the media frames that are used to report on accountability using school performance. The notion of accountability is theorised in terms of media understandings of ‘holding power to account’, and forms the theoretical framework for this study. The methodological considerations both contextualise aspects of the schools involved in the study, and outline how ‘framing theory’ was used to analyse the data. The paper draws on a number of participant experiences and newspaper accounts of schools to identify the frames that are used by the press when reporting on school performance. Three frames referring to school performance are discussed in this paper: those that rank performance such as league tables; frames that decontextualise performance isolating it from school circumstances and levels of funding; and frames that residualise government schools.
- Published
- 2016
18. Softly, softly: genetics, intelligence and the hidden racism of the new geneism
- Author
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David Gillborn
- Subjects
media_common.quotation_subject ,Critical race theory ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,050109 social psychology ,Hereditarianism ,Racism ,Education ,Epistemology ,Scholarship ,Critical theory ,Law ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Meaning (existential) ,Education policy ,Sociology ,Ideology ,0503 education ,media_common - Abstract
Crude and dangerous ideas about the genetic heritability of intelligence, and a supposed biological basis for the Black/White achievement gap, are alive and well inside the education policy process but taking new and more subtle forms. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, the paper analyses recent hereditarian writing, in the UK and the USA, and highlight a strategy that I term racial inexplicitness; this allows hereditarian advocates to adopt a colorblind facade that presents their work as new, exciting and full of promise for all of society. The paper is in two parts: the first exposes the racism that lies hidden in the small print of the new geneism, where wildly misleading assertions about genetic influences on education are proclaimed as scientific fact while race-conscious critics are dismissed as ignorant ideologues. The second part of the paper sets out critical facts about the relevant science, including the difference between the mythic and real meaning of heritability; fundamental problems ...
- Published
- 2016
19. Following policy: networks, network ethnography and education policy mobilities
- Author
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Stephen J. Ball
- Subjects
Mobilities ,business.industry ,Corporate governance ,05 social sciences ,0507 social and economic geography ,050301 education ,Public administration ,Policy analysis ,Education ,Argument ,Information and Communications Technology ,Nation state ,Sociology ,Education policy ,Information and communication technologies for development ,business ,050703 geography ,0503 education - Abstract
Based on the ‘case’ of educational reform in India, this paper explores the emergence of both new trans-national spaces of policy and new intra-national spaces of policy and how they are related together, and how policies move across and between these spaces and the relationships that enable and facilitate such movement. The paper is an attempt to think outside and beyond the framework of the nation state to make sense of what is going on inside the nation state. In particular, it takes seriously the need to rethink the frame within and scales at which the new policy actors, discourses, connections, agendas, resources, and solutions of governance are addressed – and the need to move beyond what Beck calls ‘methodological nationalism’ . In other words, the paper argues that thinking about the spaces of policy means extending the limits of our geographical imagination. To address this argument, it combines the presentation and discussion of data with some more general discussion of policy networks a...
- Published
- 2016
20. Education policy: explaining, framing and forming
- Author
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Paul Adams
- Subjects
business.industry ,Discourse analysis ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,Public policy ,050109 social psychology ,Public administration ,Policy analysis ,Education ,Epistemology ,Policy studies ,Framing (social sciences) ,Content analysis ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,LB ,Sociology ,Education policy ,Information and communication technologies for development ,business ,0503 education - Abstract
This paper presents a new heuristic device for the analysis of educational policy. Through an examination of the Evaluative State and the work of Brian Fay, the paper considers the way in which educational policy is subject to rational and linear forms of policy action and implementation. To counter this, positioning theory is deployed to consider the way in which we are produced both by discourse and the language of the 'moment' in discursive acts. Using the work of Gee, the paper contends that policy texts and policy Discourse 'themselves form policy, that is, they position policy explanation and policy framing within the bounds of the institution and so give policy form'. Problematically, such mechanisms may succumb to the 'death of subject' and accordingly I offer a third method by which we might conceive of education policy: the discursively produced position call. Subsequently, I propose a tri-partite theory for the examination and understanding of policy: policy explaining, the production of policy texts; policy framing, the ways in which all can be positioned by texts and Discourse to produce the meanings imbued upon policy; and, policy forming, the impact of moment-by-moment conversational acts for their production of the policy text itself, that is, the ways in which policy is locally formed rather than locally mediated.
- Published
- 2015
21. Obliged to calculate:My School, markets, and equipping parents for calculativeness
- Author
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Brad Gobby
- Subjects
Government ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,Neoliberalism ,050301 education ,050801 communication & media studies ,Public relations ,Public administration ,School choice ,Education ,Test (assessment) ,Scholarship ,0508 media and communications ,Action (philosophy) ,Sociology ,business ,0503 education ,media_common - Abstract
This paper argues neoliberal programs of government in education are equipping parents for calculativeness. Regimes of testing and the publication of these results and other organizational data are contributing to a public economy of numbers that increasingly oblige citizens to calculate. Using the notions of calculative and market devices, this paper examines the Australian Government’s My School website, which publishes academic and organizational information about schools, including national test results. While it is often assumed that such performance technologies contribute to neoliberal reform of education through school choice, the paper argues the website is technically limited in its capacity to facilitate the economic calculations and calculated action of parents resulting in school choice. The paper instead opens My School to analysis as a technique of governmental self-formation. Using the theoretical resources of actor-network theory and Foucauldian scholarship, this paper complicates assumpt...
- Published
- 2015
22. Asking the ‘right’ questions: the constitution of school governing bodies as apolitical
- Author
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Helen Young
- Subjects
Semi-structured interview ,Constitution ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Corporate governance ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,Public administration ,Policy analysis ,Leadership ,Democracy ,Education ,Law ,0502 economics and business ,Education policy ,Sociology ,0503 education ,050203 business & management ,media_common ,Qualitative research - Abstract
School governing bodies in England have considerable powers and responsibilities with regard to the education of pupils. This paper draws on an analysis of policy and on qualitative research in the governing bodies of four maintained schools. It explores two policy technologies through which education and the work of school governing bodies are constituted as apolitical. Firstly, it considers the move to recruit governors with (unspecified) ‘skills’ rather than those with a representative role who might provide diverse perspectives. Secondly, it considers the technology of ‘prescribed criticality’ through which ‘effective’ governors are provided with the ‘right’ questions to ask. The paper argues that the operation of these policy technologies has significant implications for possibilities for democratic engagement in schools.
- Published
- 2015
23. State school inspection policy in Norway and Sweden (2002–2012): a reconfiguration of governing modes?
- Author
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Jeffrey Brooks Hall and Kirsten Sivesind
- Subjects
Corporate governance ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Control (management) ,Control reconfiguration ,Norwegian ,Public administration ,Performance audit ,language.human_language ,Education ,State (polity) ,Content analysis ,Comparative research ,language ,Economics ,media_common - Abstract
There is growing research interest in school inspection throughout Europe; however, there have been few comparative studies between Swedish and Norwegian school inspectorates. Such a study is necessary since little is known about how inspection policies are shaped through ‘governing modes’ in the two Nordic countries. This paper explores the similarities and differences between state school inspection policies within the two countries from 2002 to 2012. Based on a rigorous, comparative document analysis of 23 policy documents, a particular focus is given to how school inspection adheres to professional-bureaucratic control as a mode of governing and/or details national expectations through performance audit, potentially intervening into school practices. We demonstrate that even if the cases of public administration seem to be somewhat homogenous from the outside, there is substantial evidence of major differences in the inspection policies of these two countries which can be explored by comparative analysis. Specifically, this paper contributes both conceptually and comparatively to understanding how a study of purposive and evaluative modes of governing can add to the field of school inspection studies. The final version of this research has been published in the Journals of Education Policy. © 2014 Taylor & Francis
- Published
- 2014
24. A logic of enumeration: the nature and effects of national literacy and numeracy testing in Australia
- Author
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Ian Hardy
- Subjects
Practice theory ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Standardized test ,Context (language use) ,Cultural capital ,Literacy ,Education ,Test (assessment) ,Numeracy ,Pedagogy ,Curriculum development ,Sociology ,business ,media_common - Abstract
This paper reveals the array of practices arising from strong policy pressure for improved student results in national literacy and numeracy tests in Australia: the National Assessment Programme in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). The paper provides an account of a policy context characterised by significant pressure upon teachers and principals to engage in practices to ensure improved outcomes on standardised literacy and numeracy tests, and of teachers and principals’ responses to these policy pressures. Drawing upon Bourdieu’s theory of practice, the article argues that what is described as the ‘field of schooling practices’ has become increasingly dominated by a ‘logic of enumeration’, and that high test results on standardised literacy and numeracy tests are increasingly valued capitals, evident in a strong focus upon teachers meeting, discussing and informing one another about NAPLAN; engaging in curriculum development practices which foreground NAPLAN, and; actively preparing students to sit the te...
- Published
- 2014
25. The ‘datafication’ of early years pedagogy: ‘if the teaching is good, the data should be good and if there’s bad teaching, there is bad data’
- Author
-
Guy Roberts-Holmes
- Subjects
Early childhood education ,Datafication ,media_common.quotation_subject ,computer.software_genre ,Literacy ,Education ,Coalition government ,Numeracy ,Political science ,Educational assessment ,Synthetic phonics ,Accountability ,Pedagogy ,computer ,media_common - Abstract
Following the election of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat UK coalition Government in 2010, there has been an urgent intensification and focus upon early years numeracy and literacy and promoting systematic synthetic phonics. This paper argues that the current narrowing of early years assessment, along with increased inspection and surveillance, operates as a policy technology leading to an intensification of ‘school readiness’ pressures upon the earliest stage of education. The paper suggests that this governance has encouraged a functional ‘datafication’ of early years pedagogy so that early years teacher’s work is increasingly constrained by performativity demands to produce ‘appropriate’ data. The article argues that early years high-stakes national assessments act as a ‘meta-policy’, ‘steering’ early years pedagogy ‘from a distance’ and have the power to challenge, disrupt and constrain early years teacher’s deeply held child-centred pedagogical values.
- Published
- 2014
26. Expert moves: international comparative testing and the rise of expertocracy
- Author
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Sotiria Grek
- Subjects
business.industry ,Corporate governance ,Field (Bourdieu) ,Public relations ,Making-of ,Europeanisation ,Education ,Politics ,Narrative ,Sociology ,Product (category theory) ,Positive economics ,business ,Field theory (sociology) - Abstract
Through a sociological analysis of the knowledge and actors that have become central to international assessments, the paper focuses on the processes that influence the production of shared narratives and agendas, adopting the position that their existence is not organic, but rather the product of undertakings that often fabricate and manage, rather than strive for ‘real’ consensus. The paper suggests that limiting the analysis to the role of travel and exchanges of experts and policy- makers in the making of policy is, in fact, the construction of an ‘ideal-type’ of an international policy-making world. Recent research on these encounters suggests that one needs to focus on actors’ conflict and struggles, rather than processes of ‘collective puzzling’. Using the concept of ‘political work’, as well as elements of Bourdieu’s field theory, the paper shows the ways that international comparative testing in the field of education has not only offered policy-makers with much needed data to govern, but has in fact almost fused the realms of knowledge and policy; expertise and the selling of undisputed, universal policy solutions have now drifted into one single entity and function.
- Published
- 2013
27. Interventions for resilience in educational settings: challenging policy discourses of risk and vulnerability
- Author
-
Lydia Lewis and Kathryn Ecclestone
- Subjects
Social psychology (sociology) ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Social change ,Vulnerability ,Public relations ,Social constructionism ,Education ,Emotional competence ,Pedagogy ,Sociology ,Psychological resilience ,business ,Construct (philosophy) ,media_common ,Social policy - Abstract
‘Resilience’ has become a popular goal in research, social policy, intervention design and implementation. Reinforced by its conceptual and political slipperiness, resilience has become a key construct in school-based, universal interventions that aim to develop it as part of social and emotional competence or emotional well-being. Drawing on a case study of a popular behavioural programme used widely in British and American primary schools, this paper uses a critical social understanding that combines bio-scientific and social constructionist ideas in order to evaluate key challenges for policy, research and practice framed around resilience. The paper argues that although critical social perspectives illuminate important contemporary manifestations of old problems with behavioural interventions, and challenge narrow, moralising definitions of ‘risk’ and ‘vulnerability’, they coalesce with behavioural perspectives in a search for better state-sponsored responses to the shared question of how to build res...
- Published
- 2013
28. ‘Power on’: Googlecracy, privatisation and the standardisation of sources
- Author
-
Manuel Souto-Otero and Roser Beneito-Montagut
- Subjects
Centralisation ,business.industry ,Public administration ,Public relations ,Education ,Power (social and political) ,Argument ,Ask price ,H1 ,The Internet ,Sociology ,Education policy ,Objectification ,business ,SDG 4 - Quality Education ,Diversity (business) - Abstract
The paper aims to contribute to the sociological analysis of power through the study of the structuration and retrieval of information on the internet. The main argument of the paper is that, paradoxically, in an age when the availability of information has increased exponentially, there is a risk that diversity in the use of sources for the construction of knowledge becomes more restricted than in the past and that information search moves towards greater objectification and centralisation. Knowledge management systems increasingly shape the ways in which we think about the questions we ask and how we try to answer them, which raises fundamental and largely neglected questions for education policy. The paper illustrates these trends with particular reference to the use of Google and Google Scholar.
- Published
- 2013
29. ‘Ordinary kids’ navigating geographies of educational opportunity in the context of an Australian ‘place-based intervention’
- Author
-
John Smyth and Peter McInerney
- Subjects
business.industry ,Place-based education ,Psychological intervention ,Context (language use) ,Public administration ,Public relations ,Education ,Disadvantaged ,Phenomenology (philosophy) ,Intervention (law) ,Criticism ,Sociology ,Location ,business - Abstract
This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as ‘disadvantaged’ in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much more complex process by which aspirations are formed, sustained, contested and maintained by young people who regard themselves as ‘ordinary’ and as being engaged instead in a process of navigating educational opportunities on the basis of resources available to them.
- Published
- 2013
30. A logic of appropriation: enacting national testing (NAPLAN) in Australia
- Author
-
Ian Hardy
- Subjects
business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Professional development ,Standardized test ,Literacy ,Education ,Appropriation ,Politics ,Numeracy ,Pedagogy ,Sociology ,Faculty development ,business ,media_common - Abstract
This paper explores how the strong policy push to improve students’ results on national literacy and numeracy tests – the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) – in the Australian state of Queensland influenced schooling practices, including teachers’ learning. The paper argues the focus upon improved test scores on NAPLAN within schools was the result of sustained policy pressure for increased attention to such foci at national and state levels, and a broader political context in which rapid improvement in test results was considered imperative. However, implementation, (or what this paper describes more accurately as ‘enactment’) of the policy also revealed NAPLAN as providing evidence of students’ learning, as useful for grouping students to help improve their literacy and numeracy capabilities, and as a stimulus for teacher professional development. Drawing upon the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the paper argues that even as more political concerns about comparing NAPLAN results ...
- Published
- 2013
31. Educational markets in space: gamekeeping professionals across Australian communities
- Author
-
Barbara Rissman, Bronwyn Browning, and Catherine Doherty
- Subjects
Value (ethics) ,Government ,Class (computer programming) ,Middle class ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Neoliberalism ,Distribution (economics) ,Space (commercial competition) ,Public relations ,Investment (macroeconomics) ,Education ,Sociology ,business ,media_common - Abstract
This paper argues that the logic of neoliberal choice policy is typically blind to considerations of space and place, but inevitably impacts on rural and remote locations in the way that middle-class professionals view the opportunities available in their local educational markets. The paper considers the value of middle-class professionals’ educational capitals in regional communities and their problematic distribution, given that class fraction’s particular investment in choice strategies to ensure their children’s future. It then profiles the educational market in six communities along a transect between a major regional centre and a remote ‘outback’ town, using publicly available data from the Australian Government’s My School website. Comparison of the local markets shows how educational outcomes are distributed across the local markets and how dimensions of ‘choice’ thin out over the transect. Interview data offer insights into how professional families in these localities engage selectively with th...
- Published
- 2013
32. Relays and relations: tracking a policy initiative for improving teacher professionalism
- Author
-
Jenny Reeves and Valerie Drew
- Subjects
pedagogy ,Process (engineering) ,business.industry ,Lifelong learning ,Professional development ,Public relations ,policy implementation ,Education ,Politics ,networks ,Teachers In-service training ,Teachers Training of ,Tracking (education) ,Education policy ,Sociology ,Teacher leadership ,professional standards ,Faculty development ,business - Abstract
This paper offers a new way of exploring some of the complexities inherent in attempts by policy makers and others to promote educational change. The focus of this study is on the current drive in education policy to alter the basis of teacher professionalism through the application of principles of lifelong learning to teachers’ professional development. Drawing upon data from two studies of the Chartered Teacher initiative in Scotland the paper examines the formation of successive transmission points as material relays of relations during the process of implementing this policy objective. It explores how three key discursive elements of a professional standard for accomplished teaching: collaborative action, critical reflection and enquiry, and teacher leadership, were progressively recontextualised during the introduction of Chartered Teacher status in schools. The findings indicate some of the conceptual and political struggles involved at the critical junctures where policy implementation requires the movement of a discourse from one social context to another. The paper suggests that a discursive analysis of how a centrally mandated initiative is transmitted can help to promote an understanding of the complexities of this process and increase critical awareness of the issues at stake for those involved.
- Published
- 2012
33. Teaching within and against the circle of privilege: reforming teachers, reforming schools
- Author
-
Lawrence Angus
- Subjects
media_common.quotation_subject ,Political science ,Accountability ,Power structure ,Ideology ,Public administration ,Discipline ,Disadvantage ,Privilege (social inequality) ,Education ,Disadvantaged ,Managerialism ,media_common - Abstract
Three decades of neo-liberal education in western countries, particularly English-speaking countries, have not served most children well. The evidence is mounting that the neo-liberal experiment has been a failure on many grounds, not least because of its deprofessionalizing effect on teachers. The disciplinary effects of neo-liberal policy frameworks on education remain powerful, but there are numerous teachers and schools who have resisted the regime of managerialism and accountability. This paper celebrates such activists. It argues that the internal focus on the delivery of instruction and test-taking inside schools ignores the point that the major influences on the school performance of children exist outside rather than inside the school. The paper argues that young people who have been ‘othered’ and put at a disadvantage by the neo-liberal education system deserve to be treated in a more dignified, engaged and respectful manner than seems to be the case within the ideology of accountability and top...
- Published
- 2012
34. ‘I think a lot of it is common sense. …’ Early years students, professionalism and the development of a ‘vocational habitus’
- Author
-
Carol Vincent and Annette Braun
- Subjects
Early childhood education ,Government ,Adult education ,ComputingMilieux_THECOMPUTINGPROFESSION ,Vocational education ,Workforce ,Pedagogy ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,Self-concept ,Habitus ,Cultural capital ,Psychology ,Education - Abstract
This paper reports on research from a small-scale project investigating the vocational training of students in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in England. We draw on data from interviews with 42 students and five tutors in order to explore the students’ understandings of professionalism in early years. In the paper, we discuss first, the then Labour Government’s drive to ‘professionalise’ the workforce and second, critically analyse the concept of professionalism, drawing on sociological literature. We then turn to the data, and argue that students’ understandings of professionalism are limited to generic understandings of ‘professional’ behaviour (reliability, politeness, punctuality and so on). The idea of their occupation being a repository of a particular knowledge and skills set is undercut by the students’ emphasis on work with young children being largely a matter of ‘common sense’. Our fourth point is to highlight the processes by which students are inducted into a respectable and responsible carer identity, as illustrated by an emphasis on clothes and appearance. We conclude that the version of professionalism offered to students training at this level is highly constrained, and discuss the implications of this.
- Published
- 2011
35. Curriculum theory, curriculum policy and the problem of ill‐disciplined thinking
- Author
-
Richard Harris and Katharine Burn
- Subjects
Value (ethics) ,Government ,Corporate governance ,media_common.quotation_subject ,National curriculum ,Curriculum theory ,Education ,Dilemma ,Pedagogy ,Engineering ethics ,Ideology ,Sociology ,Curriculum ,media_common - Abstract
This paper examines the implications of policy fracture and arms length governance within the decision‐making processes currently shaping curriculum design within the English education system. In particular, it argues that an unresolved ‘ideological fracture’ at the government level has been passed down to school leaders whose response to the dilemma is distorted by the target‐driven agenda of arms length agencies. Drawing upon the findings of a large‐scale online survey of history teaching in English secondary schools, this paper illustrates the problems that occur when policy‐making is divorced from curriculum theory, and in particular from any consideration of the nature of knowledge. Drawing on the social realist theory of knowledge, we argue that the rapid spread of alternative curricular arrangements, implemented in the absence of an understanding of curriculum theory, undermines the value of disciplined thinking to the detriment of many young people, particularly those in areas of social and econom...
- Published
- 2011
36. Knowledge exchange with Sistema Scotland
- Author
-
Julie Allan, Celia Duffy, Nikki Moran, and Gica Loening
- Subjects
Higher education ,business.industry ,Social change ,equity/social justice ,Public administration ,Music education ,Social justice ,Education ,inclusion ,Transfer of training ,Sociology ,business ,Inclusion (education) ,health care economics and organizations - Abstract
This paper reports on a knowledge exchange project, funded by the Scottish Funding Council and undertaken by a group of researchers from three higher education institutions in Scotland and the project partner, Sistema Scotland. This newly established charity is attempting to implement a major programme of social change, developed in Venezuela, within the Raploch, a disadvantaged area of Scotland. The researchers' combined knowledge of education, music and psychology has guided their knowledge exchange activities with the project partner and among themselves. The paper outlines the development of Sistema Scotland and the programme, El Sistema, on which it is based. It details the knowledge exchange activities undertaken, which used Derrida's notion of aporia to try to engage Sistema Scotland with different perspectives and understandings, and a practical method for conducting meetings based on Open Space Technology. The various 'encounters' with children, service providers and stakeholders are reported and this is followed by a critique of the processes of knowledge exchange. The paper ends with a discussion of the prospects for successful knowledge exchange.
- Published
- 2010
37. Education, meritocracy and redistribution
- Author
-
Manuel Souto-Otero
- Subjects
Poverty, work and justice ,Economic growth ,Inequality ,Poverty ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Redistribution (cultural anthropology) ,Social mobility ,Educational attainment ,Education ,Meritocracy ,Economics ,Normative ,Positive economics ,Socioeconomic status ,media_common - Abstract
This paper analyses the relationship between education, meritocracy and redistribution. It first questions the meritocratic ideal highlighting how it relates to normative expectations that do not hold fully neither in their logic nor in practice. It then complements the literature on persistent inequalities by focusing on the opportunities for change created by current trends in the economy and in social aspirations. As the meritocratic argument that education is strongly linked to certain rewards in the labour market comes under pressure, increasing social dissatisfaction with education and skills wastage could be expected, as already noted in part of the political economy literature. This literature, however, has tended to conclude from such observations that educational expansion cannot deliver equality. The paper contributes to the debate by focusing on the opportunities created by current trends for the reorganisation of the relationship between education, the economy and society.
- Published
- 2010
38. Further education in England: the new localism, systems theory and governance
- Author
-
James Avis
- Subjects
Further education ,business.industry ,Corporate governance ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Public sector ,Context (language use) ,Public administration ,Democracy ,Education ,Adult education ,Performativity ,Economics ,Localism ,business ,media_common - Abstract
The paper explores the changing forms of governance currently being applied to the English further education sector – changes that emphasise the importance of locality. The paper sets the sector within its socio‐economic and policy context, examining current policy changes that intend to alter the way in which the sector is managed. It relates these changes to their contextual location and to a set of conceptual notions that derive from a particular understanding of systems theory and what has been described as the new localism. It concludes that whilst these changing forms of governance are in continuity with earlier policies that had a regional dimension, they remain set on the terrain of performativity and new public sector management. Nevertheless, there remains a residual potential to develop more democratic forms of engagement in these changes.
- Published
- 2009
39. What are Academies the answer to?
- Author
-
Stephen Gorard
- Subjects
LB Theory and practice of education ,Opportunity cost ,LB1603 Secondary Education. High schools ,Local authority ,Public administration ,Policy analysis ,computer.software_genre ,Education ,Educational assessment ,Political science ,Mathematics education ,Sociology of Education ,computer ,L Education (General) - Abstract
This paper builds upon an earlier analysis presented in this journal. Using official figures for school compositions and for outcomes at KS4 from 1997 to 2007, this paper considers each of the annual cohorts of new Academies in England, from 2002 to 2006. It shows that their level of success in comparison to their predecessors, national averages, their changing compositions, and their changing exam entry practices, are insubstantial. Of course some schools are gaining higher scores since Academisation, but others are gaining lower scores. Using the most recent results available there is no clear evidence that Academies produce better results than local authority schools with equivalent intakes. The Academies programme therefore presents an opportunity cost for no apparent gain.
- Published
- 2009
40. Panoptic performativity and school inspection regimes: disciplinary mechanisms and life under special measures
- Author
-
Jane Perryman
- Subjects
Pedagogy ,Accountability ,Performativity ,Panopticon ,Public policy ,Sociology ,Audit ,Policy analysis ,Discipline ,Education ,Primary research - Abstract
This paper looks at Ofsted and particularly special measures regimes as part of a disciplinary mechanism. It examines issues such as school effectiveness theories, the increasing powers of Ofsted, and life under special measures and links it to performativity, discipline and surveillance using the metaphor of the panopticon. The change in teachers’ accountability is traced, along with the rise in the audit culture in teaching, and the increase in the power of Ofsted. The research context is a case study of a school over the period 1999–2003. During this time the school was placed into special measures and provided an opportunity to examine the effects of a key Government policy. The issues researched were Ofsted, special measures and the effects that these had on schools and teachers. The paper argues that a special measures regime is an example of panoptic discipline which I call panoptic performativity. The primary research is echoed by much of the existing research and first hand accounts of Ofsted ins...
- Published
- 2006
41. The ‘everywhere and nowhere’ English language policy in Queensland government schools: a license for commercialisation
- Author
-
Anna Hogan, Susan Creagh, Bob Lingard, and Tae-Hee Choi
- Subjects
TheoryofComputation_MATHEMATICALLOGICANDFORMALLANGUAGES ,inclusion ,English as an additional language (EAL) ,privatisation ,commercialisation ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,policy enactment ,structural reform ,Education - Abstract
The paper explores the policy logics of privatisation through service provision for students with English as an Additional language or dialect (EAL/D) in the state education system of Queensland, Australia. In the context of EAL/D, specifically targeted policy has been subsumed by a broader umbrella or meta-policy of inclusion, whilst at the same time, funding support for EAL/D learners is substantial. The devolution of EAL/D support to individual schools through autonomous targeted funding results in policy ‘everywhere’, distributed across broad portfolios dedicated to ensuring schools provide quality education services for all learners, but also ‘nowhere’, lacking systemic support and detail on how inclusion should be enacted for EAL/D and with no accountability placed on schools to demonstrate that they are addressing EAL/D learner needs. The co-location of EAL/D policy with a broad systemic policy of inclusion, the absence of systemic professional support, combined with devolution to school sites has had real effects on the policy in practice. The analysis demonstrates there is the potential opening of EAL/D provision to market forces at school sites, where the private sector can potentially sell commercial ‘solutions’ directly to schools, which have greater autonomy over one-line budgets.
- Published
- 2022
42. A new learning and skills landscape? The central role of the Learning and Skills Council
- Author
-
Sheila Edward, Richard Steer, Ann Hodgson, Ian Finlay, Frank Coffield, and Ken Spours
- Subjects
Cooperative learning ,Adult education ,Active learning ,Educational technology ,Open learning ,Sociology ,Public administration ,Experiential learning ,Learning sciences ,Education ,Skills management - Abstract
This is the first paper from a project which is part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Programme of research into “Teaching and Learning”. The project, entitled “The Impact of Policy on Learning and Inclusion in the New Learning and Skills Sector”, explores what impact the efforts to create a single learning and skills system (LSS) are having on teaching, learning, assessment and inclusion for three marginalised groups of post-16 learners. Drawing primarily on policy documents and 62 in-depth interviews with national, regional and local policymakers in England, the paper points to a complex, confusing and constantly changing landscape; in particular, it deals with the formation, early years and recent reorganisation of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), its roles, relations with Government, its rather limited power, its partnerships and likely futures. While the formation of a more unified LSS is broadly seen as a necessary step in overcoming the fragmentation and inequalities of the previous post-16 sector, interviewees also highlighted problems, some of which may not simply abate with the passing of time. Political expectations of change are high, but the LSC and its partners are expected to carry through ‘transformational’ strategies without the necessary ‘tools for the job’. In addition, some features of the LSS policy landscape still remain unreformed or need to be reorganised. The LSC and its partners are at the receiving end of a series of policy drivers (eg planning, funding, targets, inspection and initiatives) that may have partial or even perverse effects on the groups of marginalised learners we are studying.
- Published
- 2005
43. The intellectual capital of schools: analysing government policy statements on school improvement in light of a new theorization
- Author
-
Anthony Kelly
- Subjects
business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Public policy ,Public administration ,Public relations ,Human capital ,Education ,Intellectual capital ,Blame ,Friendship ,Accountability ,Sociology ,Ideology ,business ,Competence (human resources) ,media_common - Abstract
"Ideology without competence is a dangerous vice. But competence without ideology is a limited virtue." (D. Miliband, Minister of State for School Standards, DfES).Opportunistic attempts have been made by successive governments to establish - some would say impose - sets of criteria against which the effectiveness of not-for-profit organisations like schools can be gauged. Most have been subjective: the extent of staff involvement in decision making, the appropriateness of the leadership shown by senior managers, the percentage of inspected classes regarded as ‘good’, and so on. Lately, UK government rhetoric, using a lexicon borrowed from Business and Economics, suggests a willingness to move to new systems of reportage; centred on improvement rather than blame, on critical friendship more than on confrontation. There appears no longer to be the puritanical tendency among policy-makers to adopt measures that cause pain in the belief that they alone can be right, but do they constitute (as critics like Thrupp suggest) a random collection of well-intentioned but poorly theorised policies, or can they be cogently conceptualised into a whole? Previously, improvement measures judged schooling simply, in terms of external stakeholder outcomes, but failed to capture the essence of what it was to be (or what it took to become) a successful improving school. This paper suggests that current government policy, whether knowingly or not, is essentially describing improvement from a different perspective - an internal perspective of ‘Intellectual Capital’. The paper knits together government policy statements on school improvement with a re-conceptualisation of Intellectual Capital specifically designed for schools, offering an imposed coherence to government policy that could potentially change the way we think about inspection.
- Published
- 2004
44. An analysis of continuous teacher development in Hong Kong
- Author
-
HM Ng
- Subjects
ComputingMilieux_THECOMPUTINGPROFESSION ,business.industry ,Political science ,Professional development ,Pedagogy ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,System level ,Public relations ,business ,Competence (human resources) ,Boom ,Teacher education ,Education - Abstract
Education in Hong Kong has developed rapidly since the 70s in parallel with the economic boom. To support such development, the government has invested heavily in initial teacher education and will soon impose professional training and graduate qualifications as prerequisites for entering the profession. Continuous teacher education (CTE), generally regarded as equally important as initial teacher education if not more so, is not given comparable emphasis. This paper aims to study CTE in Hong Kong, including its policy, practice and provision at the system level. Some special features of the system are identified and scrutinized, including ad hoc, policy led, and competence based. The centrally provided CTE is also closely examined in terms of its relevance to the profession, impact on schools, and cost‐effectiveness. The paper ends with a close look at its latest developments, obstacles encountered and prospects.
- Published
- 2003
45. Towards an uncertain politics of professionalism: teacher and nurse identities in flux
- Author
-
Brian Corbin, Tony Warne, Olwen McNamara, Sheila Stark, and Ian Stronach
- Subjects
Politics ,Nursing ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Situated ,Identity (social science) ,Sociology ,Ideology ,Deconstruction ,Creativity ,Nexus (standard) ,Education ,media_common ,Diversity (politics) - Abstract
This paper is about the nature of contemporary professional identity. It looks at the ways in which 'discursive dynamics' come to re-write the professional teacher and nurse as split, plural and conflictual selves, as they seek to come to terms with a political impetus written through what the authors term an 'economy of performance' in uncertain conflict with various 'ecologies of practice'. The teacher and nurse are thus located in a complicated nexus between policy, ideology and practice. Epistemologically, the paper offers a deconstruction of professional identities, and criticizes the reductive typologies and characterizations of current professionalism. Politically, it reaches towards a more nuanced account of professional identities, stressing the local, situated and indeterminable nature of professional practice, and the inescapable dimensions of trust, diversity and creativity.
- Published
- 2002
46. Inequalities in educational opportunities in France: educational expansion, democratization or shifting barriers?
- Author
-
Marie Duru-Bellat, Annick Kieffer, Institut de recherche sur l'éducation : Sociologie et Economie de l'Education (IREDU), Université de Bourgogne (UB), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Laboratoire d'analyse sociologique et de méthodes appliquées aux sciences sociales (LASMAS), Université de Caen Normandie (UNICAEN), Normandie Université (NU)-Normandie Université (NU)-École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), and Theurel, Bertille
- Subjects
Economic growth ,Secondary level ,050402 sociology ,Démocratisation ,Inequality ,[SHS.EDU]Humanities and Social Sciences/Education ,4. Education ,media_common.quotation_subject ,[SHS.EDU] Humanities and Social Sciences/Education ,05 social sciences ,International comparisons ,050301 education ,Social stratification ,Education ,Inégalité des chances ,0504 sociology ,Social inequality ,France ,Sociology ,Democratization ,0503 education ,Period (music) ,Educational development ,media_common - Abstract
International audience; This paper is concerned with inequalities in educational opportunities in France and presents data collected from cohorts born between 1919 and 1973, a period characterized by educational expansion. Data from large-scale representative French surveys were compiled in such a way as to make accurate historical and international comparisons possible. The paper argues that there has been a shift in social inequalities, from entry into collège (lower secondary school) to entry into lycée (upper secondary school leading to the baccalauréat). Finally, policy implications have been drawn from international comparisons of data on the reduction of social inequality. Cet article traite de l'inégalité des chances dans le système éducatif français à partir de données sur des cohortes nées entre 1919 et 1973, période de démocratisation dans l'accès à l'enseignement. Les données issues d'enquêtes réalisées à grande échelle ont été regroupées afin de permettre des comparaisons historiques et internationales précises. Ce texte montre qu'il y a eut un déplacement des inégalités sociales, de l'entrée au collège à l'entrée au lycée. Enfin, les implications politiques sont soulignées à partir de comparaisons internationales de données sur la réduction des inégalités sociales.
- Published
- 2000
47. The ‘web of conditions’ governing England’s climate change education policy landscape
- Author
-
Melissa Glackin, Heather King, and Kate Greer
- Subjects
Political science ,Regional science ,Climate change ,Education policy ,Education - Abstract
Environmental and climate change education remains on the margins of education and climate change policy. This paper draws on Foucauldian theoretical resources to examine England’s climate change e...
- Published
- 2021
48. 1996: the OECD policy-making assemblage
- Author
-
Ian Buchanan, Sam Sellar, Greg Thompson, Thompson, Greg, Sellar, Sam, and Buchanan, Ian
- Subjects
education policy ,Policy making ,05 social sciences ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,Deleuze and Guattari ,Education ,Economic cooperation ,0504 sociology ,Work (electrical) ,assemblage ,Political science ,Political economy ,OECD ,Global policy ,Assemblage (archaeology) ,Education policy ,0503 education - Abstract
Recent analyses of education policy have used the concept of the assemblage to explain how the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s education work contributes to global policy convergence and new forms of policy mobility. These analyses often use Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage to designate relations between things (as actors) and people (as actors). In this paper, we argue that Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage thinking offers promising analytical insights that education policy studies have not fully explored. We propose that revisiting the problematics which animated Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory can broaden the conceptual apparatus at our disposal for analysing global education policy and the work of international policy actors. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2021
49. Critical inter/multicultural education and the process of transnationalisation: a view from the semiperiphery∗
- Author
-
Luiza Cortesão, Stephen R. Stoer, and Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação
- Subjects
Educational sciences ,Globalization ,Process (engineering) ,Multicultural education ,National identity ,Educational sciences [Social sciences] ,Context (language use) ,Gender studies ,Ciências da educação ,Sociology ,Ciências da educação [Ciências sociais] ,Social science ,Education - Abstract
In the first part of this paper the claim that education is the privileged mechanism for the preservation and affirmation of national identity is questioned in light of the transnationalisation process and some of the specificities of Portugal as a semiperipheral country (in the European context). In the second part, critical inter/multicultural education is considered in an epoch of globalisation as a challenge to the formation through schooling of national and minority identities. ∗ An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 13th World Congress of the International Sociological Association, Bielefeld, July 1994.
- Published
- 1995
50. Pragmatic policy development: problems and solutions in educational policy making
- Author
-
Stephen Crump
- Subjects
Politics ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Legislature ,Foreign policy analysis ,Assertiveness ,Context (language use) ,Sociology ,Education policy ,Conservatism ,Public administration ,Policy analysis ,Education ,media_common - Abstract
Educational reforms and legislative initiatives in Australia and internationally during the late 1980s imposed new political solutions on to the problems experienced in educational settings. This paper aims to explore the significance of education to politics, through a brief history and reference to comparative studies. While schools in western democracies have always operated within a political context, the paper argues that the radical conservatism of the 1990s makes it even more important that educators take on an assertive policy role. One possibility is identified through reference to a research‐based procedure identified as ‘pragmatic policy development’.
- Published
- 1992
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