School educational project as a criterion of school choice: discourses and practices in the city of Barcelona

In its advancement towards an education quasi-market, Catalonia has recently been driving the development of school educational projects in all schools (both public and private) as a tool to facilitate school autonomy and family choices. A school educational project is a formal document in which schools identify their pedagogical goals, missions and orientations, their academic resources and organisational structures. Through the analysis of 60 in-depth interviews with parents of children at the age of commencing universal pre-primary education (three years old) and data collected from surveys completed by a representative sample made up of 3245 families, this article explores the impact of this policy on discourses and practices of school choice amongst families in the city of Barcelona. On the one hand, we observe that interest in educational projects has penetrated the discourses of the most educated parents, even though, at the same time, we detect a generalised lack of knowledge of the content of such projects. On the other hand, we note that the social composition of schools is still a prominent factor in choice practices. Such findings question the ideal of the autonomous and rational citizen-consumer that underlies the policy of establishing educational projects.     

School choice: neoliberal education policy and imagined futures

The launch in Australia of a government website that compares all schools on the basis of student performance in standardized tests illustrates the extent to which neoliberal policies have been entrenched. This paper examines the problematic nature of choosing schools within the powerful political context of neoliberalism. It illustrates how key elements of the neoliberal worldview are normalized in the day-to-day practices of schooling and how certain norms and values that characterize neoliberalism are shaped and reinforced in the education system and also in personal, family and social imaginaries. The task for educational sociology, therefore, is to problematize and ‘re-imagine’ the prevailing neoliberal imaginary.     

The geography of school choice in a city with growing inequality: the case of Vancouver

This analysis aims to measure the impact of school choice policy on secondary school students’ enrolment patterns within the social geography of Vancouver, an increasingly polarized global city. The rationale for the study is to examine the impact of ‘education market’ reforms on the socio-economic composition of schools in a Canadian context, where a social welfare commitment to educational equality is being replaced by market-oriented policies and increasing social inequality. Our study is guided by Bourdieu’s theory of site in considering whether growing inequality and polarization of wealth in a city are correlated with the ways families choose schools. We apply a geographical methodology (Geographic Information System) to delineate spatial patterns of choosing schools. Our analysis shows that those who opt out of the under-subscribed schools come from the neighborhoods with relatively higher capital than those who remain in their assigned schools. Also, those who opt into the over-subscribed schools in the affluent areas come from the neighborhoods with above-average levels of capital in Vancouver. Overall, we find that the spatial inequality in school choice generally follows the uneven distribution of capital/wealth across the city. The pattern of student mobility indicates an increasing level of segregation.     

学校社会资本和环境适应

学校为适应环境,必须及时准确地获取环境变动的信息以及应对变动所需的资源.学校社会资本的利用,有助于学校提高觉察和应对环境变动的灵敏度.学校成员个体社会资本能帮助学校获得环境变动的信号和应对资源.通过中间群体层次充分开发个人社会资本,尽量使其转化为学校的社会资本,是学校适应环境的主要途径之一.     

现代学校制度变革：正式制度与制度社会资本的有效配合

科层化、官僚化的教育体制已使学校变成一个毫无生气的组织，一个不能激发人的主动性和创造性的组织。现代学校制度的危机就在于制度社会资本的下降。因此，当今改革的一条重要途径是让学校成为“自组织”治理体系，让其中的制度社会资本即非正式制度“复活”或“再生”，即充分发挥习俗、规范、学校化、学校氛围、隐蔽课程的作用，因为它们往往比正式制度具有更好的潜在约束作用，更能节约交易费用，从而更有利于学校发展。但是，良好的制度设计应该是正式制度与非正式制度达到有效配合。     

School choice,consumerism and the ethical strand in talk

Research on school choice highlights the extent to which a communitarian impulse informs the way some parents engage with their role as chooser. This suggests that the responsibilities of parents as consumers are often negotiated in collective as well as individualizing terms. Drawing on data from a group of mothers of diverse social class and racial backgrounds, this paper builds on some of these perspectives through deploying elements of a critical discursive analytic approach. Its aim is to explore how some mothers engage with the meaning and practice of school choice. Focusing on the emotional labouring that often underpins mothers’ rationalizations of choice, this paper examines the discursive role of emotion in these contexts as a form of social action geared towards achieving certain ends. In turn I discuss the implications of this for thinking through choice as a framing, function and discourse inhabited and performed by mothers.     

School choice in England: evidence from national administrative data

We study school choice in England using a new dataset containing the choices of all parents seeking a school place in state secondary schools. We provide new empirical evidence to inform how the school choice market functions, including the number of choices made, whether the nearest school is the first choice and the probability of an offer from the first choice school. These indicators show that school choice is actively used by many households in England. We use the rich data available to describe how choices vary by pupil, school and neighbourhood characteristics and how school choice is used differently by different groups and in different parts of the country. For the first time, we are able to present national data on how the school choices made by parents vary according to pupils’ ethnic group and across urban and rural areas. We show, contrary to some existing literature that has relied on smaller and less representative samples of parents and pupils, that school choices do not vary significantly by social background. We show that parents pro-actively use the choice system and present new evidence on the extent to which the current school admissions criteria that prioritise distance penalise poorer families.     

社会资本与文化资本视野下的现代学校制度变革

社会阶层与教育获得之间存在着密切的联系。由于社会分层、社会流动以及家庭结构的变迁,导致人们之间社会资本与文化资本的差别日益扩大,从而使教育不平等问题愈加凸显。在某种程度上,一个好的学校制度能够降低出身的不平等或者降低家庭背景的重要性,因此,当今学校制度改革的一个重要方面就是弥补人们之间社会资本与文化资本方面的差异,即通过建立“公平教室”、创建“功能共同体”、改革考试制度等,以促进教育平等。     

四维空间下的社会结构与城市危机

通过空间属性与城市发展、资本逻辑下的城市四维空间衍化的分析,提出了极不稳定的空间格局极易被打破,从而导致以空间利益失衡为基本特征的＂城市危机＂,并进一步提出了中国城市空间变迁的危机与挑战。     

School choice in an English village: living,loyalty and leaving

In late modernity, the marketisation of public services has become a global policy phenomenon. In the case of schooling, this has resulted in parents discursively positioned as consumers of education making a choice between providers of education. To date the majority of research on parental choice has focused on the urban; this paper is concerned with the rural. Using ethnographic data collected through interviews (N = 24) and observations in one English village, it explores the ways in which parents engage with primary school choice. The research draws on Bourdieu's interrelated concepts of field, habitus and capital to discuss how the dispositions and resources parents had impacted upon the school choices they made. In presenting its findings, the paper distinguishes between the long-term residents (villagers) and more recent arrivals (newcomers) to suggest a differentiated commitment to place and schooling.     

重建制度社会资本:当今西方学校制度改革的新视角

现代学校制度在西方建立以来,一直遭受人们的批判,其中以"非学校化运动"为代表的教育思潮打破了制度化价值的神化,促使人们以理性的眼光重新审视现代学校制度.近年来,西方学校制度进行了一系列的变革,从社会资本的角度而言,其共同特征就是试图重建制度社会资本.良好的学校制度应该是正式制度和制度社会资本的有机统一,过分强化正式制度的作用,忽视制度社会资本的价值,只会导致现代学校制度的危机.     

Race,school choice and transfers to opportunity: implications for educational stratification in South Africa

This study investigates the links between race, school choice and educational stratification in South Africa. It focuses on racial differences in families’ efforts to take advantage of choice by transferring to opportunity (i.e., transferring to a school perceived to offer students better access to educational opportunity than their current school) and explores the implications of those transfers for emerging patterns of racial stratification in access to high quality schools. Findings reveal significant racial variation in transfers to opportunity and suggest a complex link between race and the ways in which historically disadvantaged groups have engaged with the post-apartheid educational opportunity structure.     

Parental preferences in school choice: comparing reputational hierarchies of schools in Chile and Finland

Parents evaluate the reputations of the schools when making judgements about their desirability. They try to approximate the quality of schools and the social environment and contrast those with their hopes and fears concerning their child’s education. We aim to clarify how the reputations of schools are constructed in Finland and Chile and what sorts of reputational categories, hierarchies and preferences of schools and classes families form when making a choice. Bernstein’s instrumental and expressive orders are applied as tools to analyse these reputations from qualitative interview data. The amount and type of expressive order turned out to be the crucial factor when comparing schools’ reputations and in the making of choices. While in Chile the expressive-social order in terms of contributing to habitus was seen as the most important factor in constructing school reputations and shaping preferences, in Finland the expressive-personal order in the form of school contentment was highlighted.     

社会资本视野下的学校能力建设

当前,我国学校发展面临许多问题,其中组织能力建设是关键。文章从社会资本的角度,分析了社会资本与学校的关系,探讨了学校能力建设的内涵,着重论述了我国学校合作能力、筹资能力和公信能力建设的主要内容,并探讨了社会转型时期我国学校能力建设的发展方向。     

文化视角下我国体育广告语言选择策略

体育广告作为文化传播的重要介质,其广告语言所传递的价值理念对社会有着深远的意义。通过实际收集到的体育广告语言文本,分析文化视角下体育广告语言的选择策略及其深层原因,探讨体育广告语言创作的文化发展趋势。     

社会资本、市场力量与学校变革

在世界上许多国家包括中国 ,人们开始以市场力量来对学校这种公共部门进行改革 ,以革除当今学校存在的弊端 ,提高学校运作效率 ,满足公众日益多样化的需求 ,并提升教育公平 ,这实际上深受新自由主义思潮的影响。然而 ,以市场为导向的改革就像一柄双刃剑 ,它提高了资源的利用效率 ,扩大了消费者的选择权 ,似乎给予所有的人以同等的选择的机会 ;但是改革也有可能加大学校之间的差距 ,加重社会不公正现象 ,扩大强势群体与弱势群体之间的不平等。因此 ,仅仅依赖市场是不够的 ,创造、提升或重建学校的社会资本是对市场魔力的一种平衡 ,也是当今学校变革的“第三条道路”。     

国外择校研究的前沿图景:现象与政策

环顾全球,择校在一些国家表现为一种社会现象,而在另一些国家则体现为一项变革政策。近年来,国外择校研究继续向着广与深的方向发展,这既拓宽了我们观察全球择校现象的视野,也深化了我们对西方国家择校政策的认识。本文基于近三年来国外择校研究的最新文献,从择校现象的动因、择校政策的设计和成效方面,描绘本研究领域的前沿图景,并思考相关启示。     

关于选择函数形式的Arrow不可能性定理的注记

研究了社会选择中的不可能性定理．首先定义社会选择函数，给出理性社会选择函数的形式化描述，并定义选择函数形式的Pareto准则、无关方案独立性条件和非独裁性条件．在此基础上，探讨了选择函数据架下的不可能性定理，得到了选择函数形式的Arrow不可能性定理和Sen寡头独裁不可能性定理.     

Languages,cultural capital and school choice: distinction and second-language immersion programmes

This paper argues that languages, increasingly marginalised in schools in English-speaking countries, are gaining ‘elitist’ ground as part of the ‘value-added’ marketisation of schools and parents’ desire for their children to gain ‘positional goods’ through schooling. In arguing our case, the paper draws on survey and other data derived from second-language immersion programmes in two Queensland secondary schools, where key learning areas such as mathematics and science are taught through the medium of another language. As a corollary, we also argue that some schools – in our case, government schools – are using their immersion programmes as markers of distinction in a period of post-comprehensive schooling and emerging school markets, which includes both government and non-government schools. There is also a global policy context to such programmes in respect of countries such as Spain, China and Germany supporting the teaching of their respective languages in nations around the world.     

由一种选择题所想到的──兼谈语言学理论对英语教学的指导意义

目前对语言交际功能的研究日益突出。运用主述位理论对语言进行的动态研究，对当前中学英语测试中选择题最佳答案的确定十分有利。语言学理论对英语教学越来越重要，中学英语教师应加强语言学理论的学习与应用。