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This paper focuses on the learning experiences of lower attaining boys attending Stone Acre, a non-selective state Secondary school in England, and how these were shaped by teachers' gendered beliefs and practices. It argues that despite changes in our theoretical understandings of gender, those found in the context of everyday practice in schools may continue to be rooted in biological understandings of masculinity that tend to reinforce rather than challenge assumptions of deficit. It argues that these interactions form part of a gender regime that also includes the lower-status learning spaces disproportionately occupied by lower attaining boys, with selective grouping practices and the curriculum both contributing to the limiting understandings of boys' educational potential that are ultimately reflected in persistently gendered patterns of attainment. The small number of boys who took part in this study clearly recognised the less favourable positioning of boys as a group. Despite this, they went on to achieve beyond expectations, suggesting that they maintained some agency as learners. Teachers at Stone Acre were also under pressure to ensure achievement against performance threshold levels, suggesting that there may have been some mitigating, trickle down effects. The paper concludes that there is a continuing need for teachers to develop more inclusive understandings of masculinities and of the effects of these on everyday practices in schools.

Policy makers internationally are increasingly preoccupied with the need for education systems to be developed in ways that mitigate unfairness. What is more contestable is what might need to change. In England this emphasis has informed the development of fair access policies that aim to improve the representation of 'disadvantaged' young people of high 'potential' at high status universities. Drawing on research conducted at the inception of one fair access intervention, this paper provides original insights into a process of policy translation that requires multiple encodings and decodings of two constructs that defy ready definition, with their intersection being a particular point of difficulty. Behind the apparent objectivity of commonly used selection criteria sits a process of situated decision-making that incorporates not only the particularities of institutional context and the understandings of key actors, but also macro level pressures that reinforce the need for changes in understandings of fairness at the top.

The deployment of Teaching Assistants (TAs) to support learning has been the subject of much critical debate, including the particular concern that TAs too often becomes a less skilled replacement for the teacher rather than acting as an additional source of support. Despite efforts to encapsulate the TA's contribution to learning within specific models of deployment, wide variations in practices make the role and its contribution to learning difficult to define. Drawing on data gathered in four secondary schools in England, this paper explores TA deployment practices through six typologies that provide an opportunity to explore the relative contributions of the TA and where applicable, the teacher, "in situ": The Island; The Container; The Separate Entity; The Conduit for Learning; The Partner and The Expert. Illustrated graphically, these bring key elements together in a more contextualised and dynamic way. The paper concludes that the spatial and relational dimensions of deployment warrant more nuanced treatment and that more emphasis on partnership and mutuality and rather less on difference and hierarchy might be productive.

Practitioners working to widen participation to universities in England are an increasingly important and professionally diverse group but surprisingly absent from the academic literature and lacking in access to bespoke professional development pathways in HE. In England current approaches within policy and research also tend to position them as gatherers of evidence with a mission to inform change rather than developing their capacity to be(come) agents of change in their own right. Drawing on the perspectives of three widening participation practitioners who had recently completed a research-based MA, this paper explores the opportunity that this provided to illuminate the complexities encountered in routine practice, contributing to positive change. Rather than being methodologically inferior, practitioner research emerged as highly complementary and in the case of WP its transformative potential is currently hugely under-tapped.

This paper addresses the shortage of studies on the 'success' of care-experienced young people in Higher Education (HE) internationally. It draws on the findings of a study of a near peer, pre-entry coaching intervention developed in England to address stakeholders' concerns around a lack of 'success' post entry to university, linked to gaps in knowledge and the challenge of providing ongoing support. In delivering reciprocal benefits to the coaches, some of whom were care-experienced themselves, the "HE Champions" model promoted the possibility of longer term 'success'. The personalised nature of the young people's programme experiences and difficulties in recruitment highlighted the need for 'success' to be conceptualised as 'small steps' despite pressure to deliver more measurable outcomes. The research also highlighted the importance of reflexive, human-scale systems that put care and relationships at the centre.

This paper draws on research conducted in four publicly funded secondary schools in the South-East of England that explored the higher education decision-making of prospective first-generation university entrants accessing school-based widening participation interventions. It begins by introducing an 'ecology of intersecting influences' approach that opens up the multifactorial and uncertain nature of decision-making. Interviews with staff and focus groups with young people (aged between 13 and 18) highlighted the incremental and inter-dependent nature of higher education decision-making but also the importance of attending more closely to the diversely constituted, non-linear intersections between its situated, structural, material, temporal and relational dimensions. In the English context, these include a highly socially stratified university sector and graduate labour market plus significantly increased personal costs, all of which make it harder to calculate the individual 'worth' of a university degree. The paper concludes that when higher education decision-making is conceptualised as both an 'ecology of intersecting influences' and an 'elastic plane', this better captures how opportunities and constraints differently play out in the decision-making of prospective first-generation entrants over time, avoiding the imposition of normative, homogenising and limiting assumptions about the difference made by different family/social positionings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the learning experiences of lower attaining boys attending Stone Acre, a non-selective state Secondary school in England, and how these were shaped by teachers' gendered beliefs and practices. It argues that despite changes in our theoretical understandings of gender, those found in the context of everyday practice in schools may continue to be rooted in biological understandings of masculinity that tend to reinforce rather than challenge assumptions of deficit. It argues that these interactions form part of a gender regime that also includes the lower-status learning spaces disproportionately occupied by lower attaining boys, with selective grouping practices and the curriculum both contributing to the limiting understandings of boys' educational potential that are ultimately reflected in persistently gendered patterns of attainment. The small number of boys who took part in this study clearly recognised the less favourable positioning of boys as a group. Despite this, they went on to achieve beyond expectations, suggesting that they maintained some agency as learners. Teachers at Stone Acre were also under pressure to ensure achievement against performance threshold levels, suggesting that there may have been some mitigating, trickle down effects. The paper concludes that there is a continuing need for teachers to develop more inclusive understandings of masculinities and of the effects of these on everyday practices in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing emphasis internationally on better understanding the links between inequalities and processes within school systems. In England there has been a particular focus on rates of school exclusion because the national data has consistently highlighted troubling patterns of over-representation. This paper argues that a move away from recorded exclusion to other forms of sanction and provision makes more contextualised readings of these data key to better understanding their association with inequalities. It also explores the challenges faced by key stakeholders working to reduce inequalities within an increasingly marketised system. It concludes that embedding consistent good practice across the system remains a critical challenge.

Exclusion from school is a disciplinary sanction used in English schools to manage behaviour by limiting a young person's attendance at school and the over-representation of Black pupils in national exclusions statistics has been a long-standing cause of concern. This paper reports on the findings of a small-scale, qualitative study that explored the opportunities that the student teachers in the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) departments of four English universities had to gain an understanding of this particular form of educational inequality and how it might be addressed. Despite a strong focus on diversity and social justice within each institution, interviews with the student teachers highlighted gaps and inconsistencies in their opportunities to learn about exclusion from school and its disproportionate impact on Black young people. Nevertheless, Initial Teacher Education programmes emerged as an important space from which to explore student teachers' understandings of this issue, with a view to moving them beyond the sort of more individualised understandings that militate against recognition of this as an equalities issue.

Although a great deal of previous literature has explored the ways in which social class affects parental engagement in educational processes, there has been surprisingly little discussion of the way in which social class shapes the parent-professional interaction that occurs in school exclusion processes specifically. School exclusion processes are complex and those parents who become involved in them have to negotiate not only the formal processes that surround the use of permanent and fixed-term exclusion but also the less well-regulated and increasingly favoured processes that are associated with the use of alternatives to exclusion from school. This paper draws on the perspectives of professionals working in a wide variety of roles and contexts in one local authority in England and on those of a small number of mothers of children with longer and more complex histories of involvement in school exclusion processes. It argues for greater recognition of the impact of social class on parent-professional interaction in school exclusion processes because of the way in which it helps to perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of social and educational disadvantage.

English education policy has increasingly focused on the need to intervene in an intergenerational cycle of poverty and low attainment. The accompanying policy discourse has tended to emphasise the impact of family background on educational outcomes. However, as the capacity of parents to secure positive educational outcomes for their children is closely linked to the quality of their own education, low attainment is rather more closely connected to what happens in schools than this focus suggests. Pupils from groups known to be at increased risk of low attainment are also known to be at increased risk of involvement in the disciplinary processes of schools. This paper draws on the findings of a small-scale qualitative study to highlight some of the limitations in the educational provision accessed by Secondary age pupils involved in school exclusion processes. The assumptions and tensions at practice level that underpinned this provision are also discussed. In the conclusion it is argued that a much stronger focus on the learning of these pupils could improve their attainment and contribute to a reduction in social and educational inequalities in the future.

Addressing the "the social class attainment gap" in education has become a government priority in England. Despite multiple initiatives, however, little has effectively addressed the underachievement of working-class pupils within the classroom. In order to develop clearer understandings of working-class underachievement at this level, this small research study focused on local social processes by exploring how secondary school teachers identified and addressed underachievement in their classrooms. Our analysis shows how teachers' identifications of underachieving pupils overlapped with, and were informed by, their tacit understanding of pupils' social class position. While many teachers resisted the influence of social class, they used stereotypes to justify their practice and expectations, positioning pupils within educational and occupational hierarchies. This, we conclude, suggests the need for more systematic attention to the micro-social processes that provide the conditions through which working-class underachievement is produced. (Contains 1 note and 2 tables.)

The social class attainment gap in education is now attracting an increased level of concern. Despite the efforts of the British New Labour government to address the continuing underachievement of working class pupils in England, there has been little progress. This paper reports on one aspect of a wider research study carried out in an Initial Teacher Education department in which this persistent educational problem was explicitly addressed. In this study student teachers were prompted to explore their own understandings of social class and underachievement by acting as school-based researchers. The data collected by the student teachers revealed both silence and resistance surrounding social class in educational contexts. They identified social class and underachievement as overlapping constructions that were inextricably linked to the perceptions and practices of the teacher. Importantly, in reflecting on their experiences of the research process the student teachers were able to identify significant implications for their own future professional practice. This paper concludes by emphasising that Initial Teacher Education (ITE) provides an important context in which to raise social class issues and to ensure that student teachers are effectively prepared to recognise and address the institutional barriers to learning faced by underachieving working class pupils.

Policy makers internationally are increasingly preoccupied with the need for education systems to be developed in ways that mitigate unfairness. What is more contestable is what might need to change. In England this emphasis has informed the development of fair access policies that aim to improve the representation of 'disadvantaged' young people of high 'potential' at high status universities. Drawing on research conducted at the inception of one fair access intervention, this paper provides original insights into a process of policy translation that requires multiple encodings and decodings of two constructs that defy ready definition, with their intersection being a particular point of difficulty. Behind the apparent objectivity of commonly used selection criteria sits a process of situated decision-making that incorporates not only the particularities of institutional context and the understandings of key actors, but also macro level pressures that reinforce the need for changes in understandings of fairness at the top. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practitioners working to widen participation to universities in England are an increasingly important and professionally diverse group but surprisingly absent from the academic literature and lacking in access to bespoke professional development pathways in HE. In England current approaches within policy and research also tend to position them as gatherers of evidence with a mission to inform change rather than developing their capacity to be(come) agents of change in their own right. Drawing on the perspectives of three widening participation practitioners who had recently completed a research-based MA, this paper explores the opportunity that this provided to illuminate the complexities encountered in routine practice, contributing to positive change. Rather than being methodologically inferior, practitioner research emerged as highly complementary and in the case of WP its transformative potential is currently hugely under-tapped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deployment of Teaching Assistants (TAs) to support learning has been the subject of much critical debate, including the particular concern that TAs too often becomes a less skilled replacement for the teacher rather than acting as an additional source of support. Despite efforts to encapsulate the TA's contribution to learning within specific models of deployment, wide variations in practices make the role and its contribution to learning difficult to define. Drawing on data gathered in four secondary schools in England, this paper explores TA deployment practices through six typologies that provide an opportunity to explore the relative contributions of the TA and where applicable, the teacher, in situ: The Island; The Container; The Separate Entity; The Conduit for Learning; The Partner and The Expert. Illustrated graphically, these bring key elements together in a more contextualised and dynamic way. The paper concludes that the spatial and relational dimensions of deployment warrant more nuanced treatment and that more emphasis on partnership and mutuality and rather less on difference and hierarchy might be productive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]