The 'Moment of 1976' Revisited

This paper, which is a response to a previous one by Charles Batteson (1997) published in the Journal, challenges the view that James Callaghan's personal intervention in the politics of education in 1976 in making the Ruskin Speech was pivotal in shaping the subsequent direction of Labour' policies for school reform. The paper also queries the idea that the Ruskin Speech was the immediate harbinger of New Right education policies. Instead, it is suggested, the historical record points up that such policies gained ascendancy only some ten years later, the intervening period being dominated more by an acceptance of the educational consensus constructed by the Labour leadership in 1976–77.     

Book Reviews

Ronald Barnett and Anne Griffin (eds), The End of Knowledge in Higher Education
Donald McIntyre (ed), Teacher Education Research in a New Context, The Oxford Internship Scheme
Alan C. Kerckhoff, Ken Fogeiman, David Crook and David Reader, Going Comprehensive in England and Wales, A Study of Uneven Change
Paul Dowling, The Sociology of Mathematics Education: Mathematical Myths/Pedagogic Texts
Gary Thomas, David Walker and Julie Webb, The Making of the Inclusive School
Joan Stephenson, Lorraine Ling, Eva Burman and Maxine Cooper, Values in Education
Pat Sikes and Fazai Rizvi (eds), Researching Race and Social Justice in Education: Essays in Honour of Barry Troyna
David Hartley, Re-Schooling Society
Paul Black, Testing: Friend or Foe? Theory and Practice of Assessment and Testing
The Hillcole Group, Rethinking Education and Democracy: A Socialist Alternative for the Twenty-first Century
Peter Woods, Bob Jeffrey, Geoff Troman and Mari Boyle, Restructuring Schools, Reconstructing Teachers
Carol Hayden, Children Excluded from Primary School
Roger Crombie White, Curiculum Innovation: A Celebration of Classroom Practice
Audrey Osler, The Education and Careers of Black Teachers: Changing Identities, Changing Lives
Leonard Bickman and Debra J. Rog (eds), Handbook of Applied Social Research Methods
Tom Douglas, Change, Intervention and Consequence: An Exploration of the Process of Intended Change
Tony Edwards, Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon, Frank Hardman, Roy Haywood and Nick Meagher, Separate but Equal? A Levels and GNVQs     

Fee-free education,decentralisation and the politics of scale in Papua New Guinea

Policies aimed at both reducing the costs associated with schooling (particularly through fee-free education) and decentralising responsibility for education delivery have become a central part of international education doctrine. This article draws on the ‘politics of scale’ literature to highlight how these education reforms are contested at different scales, in turn leading to uneven administrative and material outcomes. It examines education policy reforms in Papua New Guinea, which have – contra international trends – sidelined non-state actors and strengthened the state’s role in managing education services. National fee-free education policy has been contested at different administrative scales. Church administrators have rallied (without much success) at national directives; subnational administrators and politicians have had greater success, rolling back some aspects of national policy; while local-level schools have employed their own tactics to resist national fee-free education policy. In turn, this case study highlights how fee-free educational policy shapes and is shaped by conflict at multiple administrative scales. The article’s findings have implications for debates about the relationship between fee-free education and decentralisation policies.     

Citizenship,civic education and politics: the education policy context for young Australian citizens

Citizenship education in Australia is embedded throughout the school curriculum. Despite a coherent policy context for the inclusion of citizenship and civic education at all levels of schooling, the links between education and civic minded citizens are tenuous. This paper explores these connections by drawing on the views of participants in an international community service program between Western Australia and Tanzania. By situating the interview data in relation to the policy goals, the paper argues that the current policy framework ‘sanitises’ the political nature of modern citizenship. The results from this study demonstrate that students have little understanding of the connections between the civic, the social and the political realms of citizenship. These results suggest that the current policy context does not adequately prepare young people to position themselves in the political realm.     

Promoting quality education in Chile: the politics of reforming teacher careers

ABSTRACT

Reformers in developing countries increasingly seek to raise education quality. Yet we know little about the politics of improving education. One significant and instructive case of reforms designed to boost education quality comes from Chile, where in 2016 the government enacted a sweeping reform of teaching careers. This paper first uses a quantitative analysis of appearances in the news to identify key stakeholders and then turns to process tracing to analyze how and when these stakeholders influenced reform dynamics. Comparatively, the Chilean case differs from similar reforms elsewhere in Latin America due to the absence of business, the strong role of policy networks, and the final negotiated settlement with the teacher union. Theoretically, the analysis confirms general theories that emphasize the roles of distributive politics and policy networks.     

加强干部廉洁从政心理教育的必要性及其路径探析

加强干部廉洁从政心理教育,有利于抑制腐败动机的产生,有利于从源头上减少腐败行为的发生。本文对重视开展廉政心理教育的必要性进行了深入分析,并对其具体实现路径进行了初步探索。     

The new politics of Australian higher education: why universities get rumbled in the budget

This paper questions the dominant arguments that currently frame debate over the political ineffectiveness of the higher education lobby in Australia. Public choice theory is used to advance a more complex hypothesis that takes into account dramatic changes to the political environment over recent decades. This is tested against interview data from policy actors and vice‐chancellors.     

探析大学思想政治教育工作应如何改进

大学思想政治教育工作,是我国社会主义建设一个重要环节。因此我国必须对大学思想政治教育工作给与足够的重视,但是我国现阶段大学思想政治教育工作还是存在着一定的问题。故而本文主要是探讨我国现阶段大学思想政治教育工作中存在的问题,提出必要的改进策略。     

Localised politics in language education: untold stories

This study explores the political impact on English-language education in the historical context of Vietnam in the 1980–1990 period. Based on data collected from three participants’ narratives concerning their experience of learning English, the study indicates that English-language education, at that time, embraced a wide range of political dimensions specific to the geopolitics of Vietnam. The political factors include learners’ family background, mainstream concepts in the local community, materials for teaching and learning, ideologies of language teaching, historical events and socio-political discourses. These factors constituted three layers of politics embedded in English-language education in Vietnam. The findings of the study provide new insights into the themes pertaining to politics in English-language education, which are often associated with the spread of English as a global language. From an educational history perspective, the study makes a contribution to understanding and developing second-language education in relation to local geopolitics.     

The politics of gender segregation and women's access to higher education in the Islamic Republic of Iran: the interplay of repression and resistance

One of the significant achievements of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the increasing access of women to all levels of education. This paper focuses on women's access to higher education and its unexpected and paradoxical outcomes. Today women in Iran represent over 60% of university students at the undergraduate level. Against the dominant social imaginary of Muslim women, this paper explores how the contradictions and complexities of politics within the Islamic Republic impact women's lives and how women themselves have been able to bring gender justice to the core of Iranian politics.     

The politics of education policy in England

In this appreciative discussion paper I provide an overview of the reforms made to education in England, and engage with the politics of education through examining the simultaneous and inter-related processes of politicisation, depoliticisation and repoliticisation of educational matters. I engage in a discussion of the papers in this special issue through this framework.     

School collaborations within the contemporary English education system: possibilities and constraints

This paper’s focus is on an alliance of schools in England that came together as part of the National Teaching Schools initiative. Drawing on interviews from Head Teachers within the alliance, the paper explores issues of school collaboration from a premise that such collaboration is paramount to school improvement within the current climate of increased school autonomy and increasingly rigid accountabilities. The Head Teachers highlight key factors that supported effective school-to-school collaborations associated with sharing their expertise and fostering active and cooperative connections. They also, however, highlight factors that undermined genuine collaboration associated with a prioritising of the performative demands and economic imperatives of the audit culture. The impact of this prioritising should, it is argued, be considered in any analysis of school collectives within the current English education system – particularly given their proliferation and the responsibility placed on them in terms of school improvement.     

高校马克思主义理论课教学中的创新教育研究

创新教育是高校政治理论课教学改革中的重大问题。针对高校现行政治理论课教学中存在的问题，我们在马克思主义政治理论课教学中，要开展创新教育。创新教育要求政治课教师要更新教学观念、丰富教学内容、改善教学方法、提高教学能力，正确运用创新教育思想和方法，提高政治理论课教学效果。     

Catholic education in Zambia: mission integrity and politics

This article provides the history of Catholic state-aided schooling in Zambia for over a century. It notes how the Catholic Church came to view its school to be a pivotal means of church development. By cooperation with the state it entered more fully into the nation’s future by offering high-quality state-sponsored schooling. This proved to engender its acceptance because this is what the younger generation of Zambians treasured. Progressively, the Catholic school faced a major challenge by becoming embedded in a paradigm of learning that ran counter to its religious mission. It will be argued that this dilemma remains and that the future of the Catholic school in Zambia and beyond pivots on a satisfactory outcome if it is to make a distinctive contribution.     

Identity politics,the ethos of vulnerability,and education

In this article, identity politics is understood as a form of politics stressing collective but malleable group identities as the basis of political action. This notion of identity politics also allows thinking of identity as intersectional. The focus of this article, and a problem related to identity politics, is that when discussed in the context of the neoliberal order, identity politics has a tendency to become harnessed by the ethos of vulnerability. Some implications of the ‘vulnerabilizisation’ are considered in the field of education, which is a field currently thoroughly affected by neoliberalism. Therefore, it is also important to look closer at the relationship between identity politics and the ethos of vulnerability. In addition, we re-consider poststructuralist thinking as a theoretical and political approach to see what it can offer in terms of re-thinking identity politics and in analyzing the ethos of vulnerability. When categories of vulnerability keep expanding into various psycho-emotional vulnerabilities defining subjects that can be known and spoken about, it is crucial to ask whether we regard these changes as educationally and politically progressive. The article discusses some problematic policies in educational environments and the phenomenon of trigger warnings.     

Ambivalence and the politics of knowledge: The struggle for change in German higher education

This article argues (a) that universities are profoundly ambivalent institutions; (b) that this ambivalence explains a great deal about their behavior that would otherwise remain inexplicable; (c) that one of the most striking manifestations of this ambivalence can be found in universities’ attitudes towards change; and (d) that this ambivalence has its roots in a fundamental tension in modern society about the university’s purposes. There is good reason to believe that this set of observations holds true for universities everywhere, albeit to different degrees and in different ways. As a case in point, this article focuses on the process of change (and non-change) in German higher education over the past ten years.     

Articulation of medium of instruction politics in the Malaysian Chinese press

In postcolonial multilingual societies, matters of education are deeply rooted in the discourse of ethnicity. In Malaysia, the interface between ethnicity and education is reflected in recent debates on the choice of medium of instruction (MOI). In 2002, the Malaysian government introduced English as MOI by replacing Malay, the national language, for teaching mathematics and science, at the school level. However, in 2009, the policy was reversed to Malay. This policy initiative has been actively contested in the Malaysian media. Through an analysis of news reports on the controversy published by the Malaysian Chinese newspaper, Nanyang Siang Pao, this paper aims to illustrate how a sizeable ethnic minority is able to position itself vis-à-vis a national policy. To explain the ethno-political construction of MOI debates in the newspaper, we use two concepts, namely, ‘plurality of struggles’ (Laclau, 2006a, 2006b; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985) and ‘transmission of the speech of others’ (Bakhtin, 1981). These notions are contextualized in the macro-context of a multi-ethnic polity in which Chinese society, Chinese press and Chinese education are seen to co-construct community interests.     

网络环境下高校思想政治教育工作实效性的思考

在当前高校思想政治工作网络的大环境下，从网络和教育本身的特点出发，探索网络环境下高校思想政治教育工作的实效性。作者认为，网上思想政治教育的内容应以引导为主，建立健全各种规章制度和网上道德规范，积极倡导建设文明的校园内容，引导学生文明上网。同时，在网络预防和监控技术、设备以及从事思想政治教育工作阶段建设方面应加大投入，以适应网络环境下高校思想政治教育工作的需要。     

工具理性视域下的高职思想政治教育

通过对工具(技术)理性和价值理性概念的梳理,做出我国工业化过程中工具理性的膨胀带来了价值理性缺失的基本判断,进而分析社会主义市场经济条件下工具(技术)理性对高职思想政治教育目标、经费投入、教育者素质、受教育者学习风气等四方面产生的负面影响,并针对现状提出了在教育观念、主题、课程设置到教育内容、方法等方面高职思想政治教育的对策与出路,以期实现工具(技术)理性和价值理性在高职思想政治教育中的有机结合,进一步增强高职思想政治教育的实效性。     

Equity,markets and the politics of aspiration in Australian higher education

This paper provides a critical discussion of contemporary policy agendas to raise aspirations for university study among students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. It traces the politics of aspiration from the working class ‘poverty of desire’ thesis propounded by British socialists at the turn of the twentieth century to recent concerns about the educational aspirations of low SES groups. These concerns are manifest in the current aspiration-raising agenda in Australian higher education, which aims to realise equity objectives by cultivating market-rational behaviour and dispositions to maximise self-investment in human capital. However, changes in contemporary global education and labour markets present significant obstacles to the ‘good life’ promises made by advocates of human capital theory, and even when these promises are realised, deficit constructions of aspirations persist. The paper identifies a tension in aspiration-raising logics between (1) human capital promises of economic rewards for enterprising behaviour and (2) the policing of aspirations and associated behaviours according to dominant social values.