The Sociology of Education and the National Curriculum

The aim of this paper is to encourage sociologists of the curriculum to contribute more both to curriculum policy advocacy and the curriculum development process. It concludes by suggesting four areas of curriculum policy research around which both sociologists of education and curriculum studies ‘specialists’ could unite and which would go some way towards meeting the demands of the National Curriculum at the level of policy analysis and implementation.

No one should be expected to say all the time, at the same time, everything that is to be said. (Karl Popper[2] [2] Quoted in Schilpp (1974), p. 1167. View all notes)

     

Mapping Visual Culture in Comparative Education Discourse

It would be fascinating to map out the political implications of scopic regimes, but it can't be done too reductively. The perspectivalist regime is not necessarily complicitous only with oppressive political practices. Under certain circumstances it may be emancipatory; it really depends on how it is used. [1] [1] M. Jay (1988) Scopic regimes of modernity, in: H. Foster (Ed.) Vision and Visuality, pp. 3‐28 (Seattle, WA, Bay Press). View all notes

     

Leading professional learning in an Australian secondary school through school‐university partnerships

As the limitations of one‐off and disconnected professional learning programs for teachers are recognised, there is widespread interest in building learning communities and professional learning teams within schools. When considering how to build local learning communities, school and university partnerships are seen as offering rich possibilities for transformative professional action. Set in the context of the international agenda of “Education For All” (UNESCO, 2005 UNESCO. (2005). Education for all: Global monitoring project. Retrieved January 8, 2007, from http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php‐URL_ID=36004&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=36004&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html)  [Google Scholar]) a model of sustained on‐going professional learning, developed in one large secondary school in Australia, is analysed. The social practices that generate action and participation for partnership members are then scrutinised for the legitimacy of school‐university partnerships and the contribution to enhancing teacher learning.     

Repositioning of special schools within a specialist,personalised educational marketplace – the need for a representative principle

This paper considers how notions of inclusive education as defined in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Salamanca Agreement (1994 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). 1994. The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education, Paris: UNESCO. http://www.unesco.org/education/information/nfsunesco/pdf/SALAMA_E.PDF (accessed September 1, 2003) [Google Scholar]) have become dissipated, and can be developed and reframed to encourage their progress. It analyses the discourse within a range of academic, legal and media texts, exploring how this dissipation has taken place within the UK. Using data from 78 specialist school websites it contextualises this change in the use of the terms and ideas of inclusion with the rise of two other constructs, the ‘specialist school’ and ‘personalisation’. It identifies the need for a precisely defined representative principle to theorise the type of school which inclusion aims to achieve, which cannot be subsumed by segregated providers. It suggests that this principle should not focus on the individual, but draw upon a liberal/democratic view of social justice, underlining inclusive education’s role in removing social barriers that prevent equity, access and participation for all.     

Highbrows in University Education

Is it still possible to combine two programmes of study in higher education, and if so, what are the characteristics of these double‐students and what kind of obstacles do they face? In the Netherlands, about 10 percent of students in university education take two studies at the same time.

Different theoretical approaches offer hypotheses to explain the choice of students for a second study, compared to students who pursue the regular one‐study programme. Human capital as well as financial (socio‐economic) capital theory provides some insights in this choice process. Education programme‐related factors, as well as motivational and (social and academic) integration (Tinto, 1987 Tinto V 1987 Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition Chicago The University of Chicago Press  [Google Scholar]) factors, will possibly be important determinants for pursuing one or two study programmes in higher education.     

The Academic Ranking of World Universities

Shanghai Jiao Tong University1 1. Read about this key university in China at ?http://www.sjtu.edu.cn/www/english/?. View all notes has published on the Internet an Academic Ranking of World Universities that has attracted worldwide attention. Institutions are ranked according to academic or research performance and ranking indicators include major international awards, highly cited researchers in important fields, articles published in selected top journals and/or indexed by major citation indexes, and performance per capita. Methodological problems discussed here include quantitative versus qualitative evaluation, assessing research versus education, the variety of institutions, the language of publications, selection of awards, etc. Technical problems such as the definition and naming of institutions, the merging and splitting of institutions, and the search for and attribution of publications are discussed.     

ROMANIAN HIGHER EDUCATION DURING THE TRANSITION PERIOD

Romania has a long tradition of higher education, one which was stifled during the period of communist rule from 1948 to 1989 and is now, during the period of transition which began in 1990, beginning to re‐emerge. The system is confronted with shortages of academic personnel in a number of fields and with the financial inability to offer academic staff proper salaries or even to finance much needed improvements in infrastructure. The system, which used to be completely public, is now confronted with the mushrooming of private universities of dubious quality. The system of assessment and accreditation of the new institutions, both private and public, is described, as is the development of national standards for a final licenta ^{1 1} This degree/diploma, similar to the French licence, is the first degree/diploma of long‐cycle undergraduate higher education that is awarded in Romania. View all notes examination. The hope is that these and other reforms coupled to an annual expenditure of at least 4 percent of GNP on higher education will lead to steady improvement in the output of Romanian higher education institutions.

     

ERASMUS: THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY'S HIGHER EDUCATION ACTION PROGRAMME IN ITS FIRST YEAR

On 14 May 1987, the Education Ministers of the Twelve reached agreement on the European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students (ERASMUS). With a total of 85 million ECU** ** One ECU is worth approximately $ 0.8131 United States dollars. View all notes earmarked for its initial phase (1 July 1987 to 30 June 1990), the programme will aim at encouraging increased student and staff mobility throughout the European Community by means of the creation of a European University Network, the award of grants to individual students, arrangements for the mutual recognition of qualifications and courses or parts of courses, and a range of additional supporting measures. In the following article, the authors will examine, in some detail, the Actions provided for in the Programme, which was formally adopted by the Council on 15 June 1987.

     

From Board of Education to Department for Education and Employment

’The rise of a central authority for English education had been a slow, tortuous, makeshift, muddled, unplanned, disjointed and ignoble process.‘ ¹ 1. A.S. Bishop, The Rise of a Central Authority for English Education (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1971), 276. View all notes

     

Change in Teacher Education: interpreting and experiencing new professional roles

In this paper we consider the effect of moves by the British Government to make initial teacher education (ITE) in England and Wales more school‐based (Blake, 1993). To monitor the impact of this shift towards school‐based training we conducted a fine grain study of what was happening on the ground within the one‐year Secondary School‐Based Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the Chichester Institute of Higher Education (ChIHE). * *At the time the research was conducted, the Institute's name was the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education, hence interviewees refer to ‘WSIHE’ and ‘West Sussex’. View all notes Data were gathered from questionnaire surveys and interviews. Findings from our regional case study indicate that while school‐based ITE programmes may offer student teachers greater insight into school life, this should not be at the expense of developing students’ analytical and theoretical understanding of education and schooling promoted within higher education‐based work.     

Gender and Religious Tradition: the role‐learning of British Hindu children

Much of children's attitude to gender is developed in their home. For children from a Hindu background dharma (right conduct) involves all aspects of life. It includes family and ritual responsibilities and they are largely gender‐specific. This article is based on research among 8‐13 year‐old Hindu children of Punjabi and Gujarati origin in Coventry [2] [2] The Hindu Nurture in Coventry Project and the Punjabi Hindu Nurture in Coventry Project, both parts of the Religious Education and Community Project, directed by Robert Jackson, were made possible by generous funding from the Leverhulme Trust. The Punjabi Hindu Nurture in Coventry Project focused upon children in two low caste communities, namely the Valmikis and being conducted among children in other faith communities as part of the Religious Education and Community Project with funding from the Economic and Social Research Council ‘Project number R000 232489’. View all notes. I contend that gender is significant in the religious involvement of both boys and girls. This article draws attention to areas of their experience as young British Hindus in which their gender is decisive and examines these in relation to the role expectations enunciated by the children.

     

ASPECTS OF REVIEW AND EVALUATION OF UNDERGRADUATE COURSES A CASE STUDY

This paper ⁽¹⁾ (1) I would like to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to all members of the BAP A Course Board whose collective contribution to the recent CNAA progress review made the writing of this paper possible. View all notes traces the evaluation process of the BA Public Administration course at the Glasgow College. The process ran from September 1985 to November 1986, during which time, the author, a senior lecturer in the Law and Public Administration Department, was a member of the course review committee at the centre of the process, liaising with staff, Faculty, CNAA, external examiners, students, graduates and employers. The outcome was that the CNAA awarded retrospective approval, thus enabling students, enrolled in October 1986, to transfer to the new scheme, and the course board was given delegated authority to make changes without prior approval.

     

Sexual Health Education for Individuals with Disabilities: A Call to Action

Expressing sexuality is part of the human experience, yet sexual health is often ignored in regard to persons with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities are at risk of sexual abuse and exploitation, unwanted pregnancies, and sexually transmitted diseases. Additionally, many adolescents with disabilities lack the knowledge needed to develop a healthy sexual identity, therefore, increasing their vulnerability (Baladerian, et al., 2013 Baladerian, N. J., Coleman, T. F., &; Stream, J. (2013). Abuse of people with disabilities: Victims and their families speak out: A report on the 2012 national survey on abuse and people with disabilities. Retrieved from http://disability-abuse.com/survey/survey-report.pdf [Google Scholar]; Boehning, 2006 Boehning, A. (2006). Sex education for students with disabilities. Law &; Disorder, 1, 56–66. [Google Scholar]; Preston, 2013 Preston, M. (2013). ‘Very very risky’: Sexuality education teachers' definition of sexuality and teaching and learning responsibilities. American Journal of Sexuality Education, 8(1-2), 18–35. doi:10.1080/15546128.2013.790223.[Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]; SEICUS, 2012 SIECUS: Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. (2012). Bibliography: Sexuality and disabilities. Retrieved from http://www.siecus.org [Google Scholar], 2014 SIECUS: Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.siecus.org [Google Scholar]). Resources have been developed to improve the sexual health of individuals with disabilities; however, those who need this education may not have access to the resources. The purpose of this literature review is to examine sexual health education for individuals with disabilities; it focuses on risks to people with disabilities, current barriers to education, and available resources.     

Exploring Baccalaureate Social Work Students' Self-Efficacy: Did it Change over Time?

This study explored baccalaureate social work students' self-efficacy at a rural southern university. Bandura's concept of self-efficacy is used as a theoretical base for the study. Students (N = 43) in introductory social work courses and in the field practicum course completed the Foundation Practice Self Efficacy Scale. Following The Council on Social Work Educations 2008 Council on Social Work Education. (2008). Educational policy and accreditation standards handbook. http//www.cswe.org/Accreditation/Handbook/Ovierview14745.aspx#chaper14753 (http://http//www.cswe.org/Accreditation/Handbook/Ovierview14745.aspx#chaper14753)  [Google Scholar] Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards, which recognizes field education as the signature pedagogy of social work education, field students were hypothesized to have higher levels of self-reported self-efficacy than entry-level students. Results suggest that senior level students were more confident in their abilities to practice social work than those students enrolled in an introductory social work course. Implications of this research for social work education are discussed, including the value of using self-efficacy scales in evaluating social work educational program outcomes.     

The reintegration of Tongan postgraduate scholars after study abroad: knowledge utilisation and resituation

Higher education has seen increasing educational mobility as students finance themselves or get financial support from their families to study abroad (Shields Comp Educ Rev 57(4):609–636, 2013; Verbik and Lazanowski in World education news and reviews. http://www.wes.org/educators/pdf/StudentMobility.pdf, 2007). Another significant source of support, particularly for students in developing countries, is that from international aid scholarships. This research presents the reported experiences of 15 Tongan postgraduate scholars who successfully completed overseas postgraduate studies. The study focuses on the perceptions of qualifications and of scholars, as well as knowledge utilisation and knowledge resituation in and beyond the workplace. Knowledge utilisation, sometimes referred to as knowledge management, is how others support returnees’ to share and make use of their knowledge; while knowledge resituation is a personal and individual process in which knowledge gained in one context is tuned to and made use of in a new context (Eraut in Expertise development: the transition between school and work. Open Universiteit, Heerlen, pp 52–73, 2004a, Pedagogy and practice. Culture and identities. Sage, London, 2008; Franken 2012). Given the challenges the scholars faced, we advocate for a more explicit recognition of what knowledge and skills returning scholars bring home, and a more proactive and strategic use of these by their workplaces in particular.     

Raising standards 1988 to the present: a new performance policy era?

This article explores the context of the period following the Education Reform Act 1988 in terms of the efforts by successive governments to raise academic standards. These attempts are illustrated by discussion of the impact of the introduction of market forces and parental choice, a centralised National Curriculum and associated assessment regime, the increasing cultures of performativity and surveillance in schools and the resulting commercialisation of education. The article then examines the current Secretary of State for Education, Mr Gove's, plans for the future standards agenda1 ¹Department for Education, The Importance of Teaching: Schools White Paper (Runcorn: Department for Education, 2010). View all notes, speculating that the current trend of raising standards and emphasising standards and performance is nearing the end of its useful life. Finally, drawing on Barker's2 ²Bernard Barker, The Pendulum Swings: Transforming School Reform (Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham, 2010). View all notes advocacy of progressive community schools and the best of the progressive tradition the article suggests a counter argument to the creeping commercialisation and narrow results-based focus on standards in schools since 1988.     

Interpreting biography in the History of Education: past and present

Epigraph

At the time I began work in university, I entered a world which was leisured, privileged and patriarchal, in the United Kingdom at least…. I came from a world in which only 3% of the population aspired to university. I belonged to a world in which, having got where I was through the eleven-plus and ‘A’ levels, there was almost a sense that society owed us a living. (Roy Lowe, 2002 ^{1 1}Roy Lowe, ‘Do We Still Need History of Education: Is it Central or Peripheral?’ History of Education 31, no. 6 (2002): 492–3. )

Women were not obviously on the outside when I attended my first conference – a day conference in 1976 at what was then the Birmingham Polytechnic, now University of Central England. Many women attended although in the first years few were keynote speakers. More importantly there was little about women in the history itself except in the meetings of the Women’s Education Study Group where Carol Dyhouse, June Purvis, Penny Summerfield and Gaby Weiner were all dominant. (Ruth Watts, 2005 ^{2 2}Ruth Watts, ‘Gendering the Story: Change in the History of Education’, History of Education 34, no. 3 (2005): 226. )

In 1967, aged 11, I moved on from my primary school in south London, and was selected to enter the local grammar school. I left most of my friends behind and began a daily routine of walking nervously through the council housing estates in my school uniform. By the time I left this school, seven years later, it had moved to one of the more prosperous suburbs of London to avoid being turned into a comprehensive. In the early twenty-first century, it is one of the leading academic secondary schools in the country, which it certainly was not in 1967. (Gary McCulloch, 2007 ^{3 3}Gary McCulloch, ‘Forty Years On: Presidential Address to the History of Education Society, London 4 November 2006’, History of Education 36, no. 1 (2007): 6. )