Provincialising the world culture theory debate: critical insights from a margin

Neo-institutionalist theory of global ‘isomorphism’, or so-called World Culture Theory (WCT), has been much debated in comparative education. One notable feature of the debate is that the vast majority of its participants belong to a handful of closely knit comparative education communities. Ironically enough then, a debate that fundamentally concerns the globalisation of education has hardly been ‘globalised’, with virtually no comparative scholars participating from ‘other’ comparative education societies. Clearly, there is a need to critically engage with WCT by explicitly drawing on ‘other’ intellectual traditions of comparative educations. To this aim, I first discuss the critical methodological insights and underlying epistemic standpoint of Japanese comparative education scholars. I then employ their arguments as a starting point for my subsequent post-colonial critique of WCT and the WCT debate. Overall, this study illuminates the hitherto unacknowledged ‘epistemic ignorance’ of the on-going WCT debate in the English-language, ‘paradigmatic’ comparative education realm and suggests a way to move beyond this provinciality.     

The underachievement of girls in physics: Towards explanations

The recently initiated debate on the relationship between science and health education is discussed. The notions of ‘everyday’, ‘scientific’ and ‘applied’ knowledge are explored through interview material gathered from a sample of 15‐year old pupils. The topic of the interviews was the common cold. The pupils’ levels of biological knowledge, their mode of applying it, and the frameworks of their thinking about infection and related issues were investigated. It is argued that no simple ‘translation’ of scientific to health knowledge is possible. Some of the complexities of the relationship are explored. In particular, the implications of non‐scientific ('lay’ or ‘traditional') knowledge are taken up and it is suggested that scientific knowledge may face considerable obstacles in displacing these.

     

Exploring the interweaving of contrary currents: transnational policy enactment and path-dependent policy implementation in Australia and Japan

This article explores the neo-institutional theory of global policy convergence, or ‘isomorphism’, by comparatively examining one of its most recent manifestations – the global diffusion of national standardised testing – in Australia and Japan. By understanding the particular configurations of national testing as being conditioned by both nations' institutional frameworks and historical legacies of education policy development, this study illuminates how the conditioning effects of these frameworks and legacies resulted in the divergent ways in which a policy model circulating at the transnational level became translated into assessment policies that are ‘simultaneously similar and different’. These findings are related to the concept of ‘path dependency’, emphasised in particular by political science and historical institutionalism. The theoretical conclusions drawn on this basis indicate a promising direction of comparative education research, one that recognises global convergence and national divergence as processes that simultaneously shape the globalisation of education policy. In so doing, they summarise the implications of the study for the ongoing debate on the neo-institutionalist theory in comparative education.     

Emancipation,equality and education: Rancière's critique of Bourdieu and the question of performativity

Jacques Rancière's work has had significant impact in philosophy and literary theory, but remains largely undiscussed in the field of education. This article is a review of the relevance of Rancière's work to education research. Rancière's argument about education emerges from his critique of Bourdieu, which states that Bourdieu reinforces inequality by presuming it as the starting point of his analysis. What is at stake is the question of performativity, and the means by which discourse has effects. This debate has implications for considering the basis of claims to truth in literary and social science discourse. Parallels are drawn between Judith Butler's and Rancière's portrayal of the relationship between discourse and subjection, as well as their attention to discursive ‘imitation’ in making inequality representable. The article concludes with a discussion of the problematic which Rancière's work suggests for education research.     

British values and virtues: schooling in Christianity and character?

This article examines the antecedents of the ‘British Values’ (democracy, rule of law, equality of opportunity, freedom of speech and the rights of all men and women to live free from persecution) which it is incumbent upon British schools to teach. But it also seeks to move the debate forward by pointing to the ‘British Virtues’ without which it is impossible to live by ‘British Values’. The argument advanced here is that the inculcation of virtues (moral habits and dispositions underpinning good character) as well as values (beliefs and ideals) is foundational in schooling for life in a liberal democracy. On the view that schools are both ‘by’ and ‘for’ society (being the products of the society they seek to serve) the article problematises attempts to conceive of schooling in general, and character education in particular, in exclusively post-Christian terms. Although increasingly secular, as British culture is not quite the palimpsest that easily permits a millennium of Christian social and legal ‘writing’ to be ‘over-written’, some of its central concepts are drawn upon in the recommendations made here for the curriculum and governance of schools.     

Massive Open Online Change? Exploring the Discursive Construction of the ‘MOOC’ in Newspapers

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been a prominent topic of recent educational discussion and debate. MOOCs are, in essence, university‐affiliated courses offered to large groups of online learners for little or no cost and are seen by many as a bellwether for change and reform across higher education systems. This study uses content and discourse analysis methods to examine how understandings of MOOC‐related ‘change’ were presented in US, UK and Australian newspapers. Drawing on detailed analysis of 457 newspaper articles published between 2011 and 2013, the findings point to a predominant portrayal of MOOCs in relation to the massification, marketization and monetization of higher education, rather than engaging in debate of either ‘technological’ or ‘educational’ issues such as online learning and pedagogy, instructional design or student experience. The article then considers the reasons underpinning this restricted framing of what many commentators have touted as a radical educational form—not least the apparently close association between MOOCs and the economics of higher education.     

Factors Influencing Student Choice of One‐Year and Two‐Year Teacher‐Training Courses

The paper briefly reviews the current debate about consecutive and concurrent initial training courses and describes the new ‘2 + 2’ course at Loughborough. It analyses replies to a questionnaire examining students’ reasons for choosing either the ‘2+2’ or the ‘3 + 1’ (PGCE) course, and discusses factors influencing student choice. In the light of this analysis some general conclusions are drawn.     

Marxist state theory and state autonomy theory: the case of ‘race’ education in initial teacher education

Abstract

In recent times, there have been a number of critiques of Marxist and neo‐Marxist analyses of the state and education policy. These have drawn on postmodernist, ‘quasi‐postmodernist’ and state autonomy perspectives. While the postmodernist and ‘quasi‐postmodernist’ approaches have attracted critical response, to date, the state autonomy perspective has, to our knowledge, gone unchallenged. To address this theoretical lacuna, this paper analyses one writer's attempt, via an historical case study, to uphold state autonomy theory by detailing the ongoing relationship between one quasi‐state agency and the practice of ‘race’ education in initial teacher education. We argue that there are serious conceptual weaknesses in this latest attempt to apply state autonomy theory to educational policy analysis. The arguments in the case study under consideration are seriously compromised by a basically flawed hypothesis, a misrepresentation of contemporary (neo‐) Marxist education policy analysis and by a failure to look at ‘the big picture’.     

Sumak kawsay: Social Empowerment through Participatory User‐Centred Design in Ecuador

The aim of this article is to direct the social design debate to constructivist approaches to design education in the Global South. This article provides insight into the process of participatory user‐centred design involving Ecuadorian third year graphic design students and cocoa cultivators of limited resources in Ecuador. The students and cacaoteros become codesigners of a brand identity for the farmers’ association by means of an extensive review of literature on cocoa cultivation and commercialisation in Latin America, in‐depth interviews with community members on the traditional farming practices of cocoa growing communities in Northern Ecuador and the data collected from the students’ participation in and observation of the lifestyle within the community. This article illustrates the ‘wicked’ problems faced by these design students and the relevance of their experience to the study of social design practices and design education in developing countries.     

Education and political engagement

While the robust and positive relationship between education and political engagement has been widely documented, the direct causal link is still a subject of debate. This study contributes to the ongoing debate by presenting suggestive evidence for the ‘cause’ view on the causal effect of education on political engagement. Exploiting the plausibly exogenous variation in education induced by the compulsory schooling reforms across 39 countries, we find that education cultivates political interest, promotes the acquisition of political knowledge, and fosters supportive attitudes towards political freedoms. Nevertheless, the better educated are no more likely to vote in elections nor adopt any specific position in the left–right political spectrum.     

Cold comfort in the primary school

This paper contributes to the debate about conceptualising policy research by considering Howell's (1990) call that researchers reveal the ‘principle of choice’ which guides the selection of topics, strategies and resources in research. Specifically, it addresses the question of what information must be made available to other researchers so that there can be productive continuing conversations’ (Ball 1994:174) about policy research and its conceptualisation. An examination of the policy sociology literature indicates that the specification of the ‘principle of choice’ requires discussion of the intellectual resources deployed in the research and a consideration of the processes of intellectual work which render these resources meaningful. This specification is then applied in relation to my current research, the ‘Social Organisation of Education Practice’ (soep) project to investigate the changing relationship between education and training in Australia. The products and processes of intellectual work that have constituted the principle of choice in my own research are outlined and justified. The way this principle of choice has shaped the conceptualisation of the soep project is discussed and attention drawn to the practical limits of explicit conceptualisation and justification in research. The paper concludes by affirming the importance of making the principle of choice explicit but queries how this can be done in shorthand.     

Future teachers debate charter schools on Facebook: analysing their political subjectivities

We argue that Garrett and Segall’s concepts of ‘doing school’ and ‘pushing back’ are valuable tools for analysing pre-service teachers’ political views of neoliberal education reforms such as the introduction of charter schools. We extend Garrett and Segall’s conceptualization by hybridizing ‘doing school’ and ‘pushing back’ in order to move beyond a simplistic celebration of student resistance, which often overlooks forms of resistance that are compliant with the status quo, in this case the neoliberal status quo. We analyse participants’ political views as they emerged in a debate about charter schools in New Zealand. Garrett and Segall’s concepts, in conjunction with poststructuralist theories of subjectivity, are deployed as analytical tools for understanding the complexity of students’ political subjectivities in a debate conducted on a Facebook page set up for that purpose.     

Politics,knowledge and objectivity in sociology of education: a response to the case for ‘ethical reflexivity’ by Gewirtz and Cribb

The present article examines the relationship between political values and social research, with particular reference to the case for ethical reflexivity in sociology of education put forward by Gewirtz and Cribb. It is argued that their case for such reflexivity is flawed by conceptual imprecision and over‐determination of the links between value commitments, knowledge and the political implications of research. Drawing on a case study of a controversy in sociology of education, combined with a more discriminating conceptual analysis of political values in social research, it is suggested that the Gewirtz–Cribb ‘manifesto’ for routine ethical reflexivity may be inefficient and impractical. An alternative way of thinking about political reflexivity in sociology of education is offered, as are some possible avenues of philosophical resolution between the main protagonists of the longstanding debate on ‘what to do about values’ in sociology of education.     

Boys’ educational ‘underachievement’ in the Caribbean: interpreting the ‘problem’

Education ministries in the Caribbean countries have directed considerable attention over the last decade to ‘solving’ the ‘problem’ of boys’ underachievement. Rather than considering such interventions, our central concern in this paper is to revisit debates about the interpretation of the issue, to explore whether boys’ underachievement is indeed a ‘problem’, in the sense of both an empirical reality and an issue requiring political attention. In this paper, we explore contestations over the reality and complexity of educational underachievement and whether this relates to broader political–economic marginalisation (or privileging) of boys. We turn then to explore the relationship between material realities and gendered subjectivities. Overall, we argue that boys’ underachievement should neither be ignored nor be the exclusive focus of attention and that a move from ‘boys’ underachievement’ to a broader analysis of ‘gender and education’ is needed, to place the debate in a gender relational context.     

The role of HE in professional development: some reflections on a foundation degree for teaching assistants

Rapid change in higher education (HE) has lead to a reappraisal and debate about the role and ‘mission’ of the university and the university teacher. In the diversification of the HE sector, it is possible to see a shift away from the ‘advancement of knowledge’ as the primary purpose of the HE sector as a whole. This article focuses on a particular dimension of this change referred to as the ‘vocationalisation’ of HE and evident in the growing role of work-based learning (WBL) in the academy. In particular, foundation degrees provide a context for examining the role of WBL and the university in professional development. Analysis of interviews with 19 students on, or progressing from a foundation degree for teaching assistants reveals how they construct their learning and the relationship between work-based and academic learning. The author concludes that notions of ‘equivalence’ between work-based and academic learning are flawed and fail to recognise HE's distinctive contribution to professional learning, and argues for recognition of the distinctive contributions that both WBL and ‘academic’ learning make to professional development.     

Preparing British Design Undergraduates for the Challenge of Sustainable Development

The first part of this paper argues that higher education (HE) institutions have an obligation to nurture sustainable development awareness. This is viewed against the UK Government's recommendation and guidance on sustainable development education. In particular, this focuses on the Government's sustainable development education specification for design education and the challenge this poses to UK tertiary design education. The concluding part of this paper discusses the emergence of new design dialogues, which are grappling with the task of synthesising the precepts of sustainable development with the ‘act of designing’. This has led to discourse on the need for defining viable strategies that invent new forms of design education and practice and for the provision of new professional choices to students. This paper takes into account the evolution of language in this educational subject area, from ‘environmental education’, to ‘environment and development education’, to ‘education or learning for sustainability’. The desired outcome of learning for sustainability is often expressed as ‘responsible global citizenship’. At the moment some of these terms are interchangeable. For my purposes, the term ‘sustainable development education’ will be used though out, unless for historical accuracy or specific reasons.     

Art School Building: the Old/New Chelsea

In the wake of the recent demolition of the 1965 Chelsea School of Art building on Manresa Road in London, this article seeks to explore the relationship between art school architecture and art school pedagogy. Research on art school buildings, both national and international, and British art school education of the 1960s, is brought to bear, on the former ‘New School of Art in Chelsea’ building. In addition to an account of how this building came about, drawn from archival records and interviews with architects and former Chelsea students and staff, the correlation of utopianist values in post‐war British society, modernist architecture and higher education in art is examined. The reports of the National Advisory Council on Art Education (NACAE), which, in the 1960s, ushered in fundamental changes to British art education, are touched upon, and an account of the building design developed between art educationalists (including Chelsea Principal Lawrence Gowing and Chairman of the NACAE William Coldstream) and architects of the London County Council, is given. Photographs of the building, in the 1960s and during its demolition in 2010, are included. In addition to a historical account and case‐study, and despite the difficulties inherent, art school building is approached as an imaginative and socio‐political gesture, as a utopian act; ‘art school building’ in both senses (‘building’ as a verb and as a noun).     

Integrated or inclusive education versus interactive education: the need for a new model

ABSTRACT

In an attempt to stimulate informed and critical debate, the nature and pedagogical implications of ‘integrated education’ and the more recently proposed ‘inclusive education’ are examined, and an alternative model, described as ‘interactional education’, is proposed and evaluated. Because of the political and economic implications of these three approaches, it is suggested that the appropriate forum for discussion is one which is Pan‐European.     

The Private Sector of Education in Britain: a review of past research and recommendations for future work

The paper reviews research and debate on the private sector of education in Britain. Research undertaken to date is described as having taken place at three main levels, referred to as the ‘political’, ‘outcomes’ and ‘individual‐psychological’ levels. Following the review of research at these three levels, a number of neglected areas are identified, the investigation of which would contribute significantly to a greater understanding of the private/ state school debate. These areas are: a focus on girls and young women in private schools; the experiences of Assisted Place Scheme pupils; the study of the attitudes and values of private school pupils; the investigation of private school ethos and culture; exploring how private school pupils gain the ‘edge’ over state school pupils; and the isolation of school effects from social class and family background effects.