Lesson Study and Pedagogic Literacy in Initial Teacher Education: Challenging Reductive Models

This paper argues that teacher learning is not reducible to lists of ‘performative’ standards. Funded by the Society for Educational Studies, we used ‘lesson study’ as a vehicle to develop new teacher expertise, following which we concluded that conceptualising ‘learning to teach’ as acquisition of standards is insufficient for understanding the process of teacher growth. We propose an alternative holistic vision.     

The importance of internal conversations and reflexivity for work-based students in higher education: valuing contextual continuity and ‘giving something back’

This paper utilises the theories of Archer to explore the impact of student ‘internal conversations’ upon the development of reflexive approaches employed by work-based students (WBS). The study informing this paper draws on the voices of a range of WBS on a Foundation Degree in Educational Support within a new university. A range of reflexivities are identified within the strategies students employ to ‘make their ways’ through the often unfamiliar and sometimes alienating contexts of higher education (HE). Whilst routinisation can be viewed as in decline people are not equally placed to be liberated or to liberate themselves from structurally determined biographies. Importantly for this paper, liberation is not strongly identified by participants as a site of what they ‘care most about’. It is argued in the conclusion to this paper that students have an ‘empirical tendency’ to employ the reflexivity that enables them to remain knowledgeably embedded to their social context, to move on but not necessarily ‘out’ of their social circumstances; so the autonomous reflexivity of Archer’s study is less relevant to many of these students.     

‘Send three- and four-pence; we’re going to a dance’: Forward generating research

As my playful title suggests, I am referring to the process where the statement, ‘send reinforcements; we’re going to advance,’ is said to have become, ‘send three- and four-pence; we’re going to a dance’.¹ This quotation springs to mind when asked to think about how research gets picked up and recommendations from research are implemented in schools. This paper draws on the professional experiences of the author who has held a variety of roles in schools and the system and has also worked with a university as a system representative on a ‘collaborative’ research project. This paper focuses on the ‘Transient Students Project’² that has recently been described in Changing Schools (DEST and DoD 2002). This example is described as having many of the features of ‘forward-reaching research’, as described in ‘Backtracking practice’ (Figgis et al 2000), in Chapter 3 of The Impact of Educational Research (DETYA 2000). At the heart of this paper is the question ‘who is research for?’     

Audio-Visual aids in education - the beginning

The many achievements of the Educational Foundation for Visual Aids and the National Committee for Audio-Visual Aids to Education, under the leadership of the late Dr J A Harrison from their inception until his death last year, might lead many ‘Educational Media’ leaders to think that the audio-visual movement in Education was essentially a postwar development. That this is not so is evidenced by the fact that more classroom teaching films were being made in Britain n i each of the years 1934—39 than are being made today! There were annual conferences organised by the British Film Institute and the Educational Handwork Association; there were frequent articles on the subject and reviews of new films in Sight & Sound, World Film News, The Schoolmaster, The Times Educational Supplement, British Journal of Photography, even one on Schools' television etc, and several books had been published: ‘The Cinema in Education’ in 1925, ‘Report on Educational and Documentary Films’ by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1930; ‘The Film in National Life’ 1932; ‘The Film in the Classroom’ 1932; ‘The Cinema in School’ 1933; ‘The Film in the School’ 1935; etc.     

TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TO EDUCATIONAL CONTROVERSIES

This study is based on the expressed attitudes of practising teachers; it is claimed that this procedure may be more valid than the usual one of testing the attitudes of students or teachers on advanced courses. ‘Educational controversies’ refers to teachers’ attitudes to streaming, 11 plus selection and corporal punishment; scores on these scales were correlated with scores on the Oliver ‘Survey of Opinions’ scales and the ‘Study of Values’ scales. Suggested interpretations of the matrix of relationships are offered. A small group of teachers on a full‐time in‐service course completed the ‘educational controversies’ scales at the start and completion of their course: the scores changed to what is interpreted as a more ‘progressive’ pattern.     

Patterns and styles in the supervision of teachers

This paper is an edited version of ‘The patterns and styles in the supervision of teachers in individual conferences following classroom observations’, which was first presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association at Chicago in 1972. This edition of the original material has been prepared for the British Journal of Teacher Education by George Brown, University of Nottingham.     

Fractured academic identities: dyslexia,secondary education,self-esteem and school experiences

ABSTRACT

Identity construction for individuals with dyslexia is significantly moulded by their transition to and experiences within secondary education. This is an interview-based study with 20 participants living in England. Support-related school experiences, relationships with teachers, societal perceptions about the importance of literacy and academic achievement and the reactions of others around them are the core focus. The findings are theorised using symbolic interactionism, and this paper aims to extend Goffman’s notion of ‘spoiled identity’ into a more specialised term for children with Special Educational Needs, resulting in the alternative term ‘fractured academic identity’, the elements of which are developed throughout this paper from the experiences of learners with dyslexia. The findings revolve around identity development as result of academic experiences, and are mainly aimed at teachers, to inform their knowledge around identity issues and to also inform their practice.     

Starting to make a difference: responding to the challenges of recent developments in the early years

Recent national changes in ‘Early Years’ policy are likely to have major impact on the practice and profession of educational psychology. In this paper, implications at the individual, service and systemic levels are examined and practice examples given of how an Educational Psychology Service (EPS) might rise to the new challenges these major changes engender. The paper concludes that in order to maintain a clear overview of the continuing developments and demands in this area and to ensure that there is a co-ordinated response, the ‘Early Years’ should increasingly become recognised as an area for a Senior Specialist educational psychologist (EP). This EP would be charged with the responsibility for drawing up the service development plan for the Early Years and at the same time ensuring that the opportunities offered by the ongoing developments in this area are capitalised upon.     

On Flying,Writing Poetry and Doing Educational Research

This article is written in a personal capacity; it is based on a presentation entitled ‘If the child is father to the man, can the researcher be mother to the poet?’ given as part of the ECER symposium, ‘Telling stories: truth and fiction in educational research’ hosted by David Bridges, at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Edinburgh, 23 September 2000. It is meant as a stimulus to discussion about the relationship between poetry as a species of ‘creative’ writing, and research writing—how and why they might be complementarities as well as opposites. Rather than attempting a theoretical paper, the author uses excerpts from her own poetry—and those of the prize‐winning poet, Jane Draycott, with whom she recently co‐authored a book, and whose ideas have contributed to this article—to explore these ideas.     

Why does technology integration fail? Teacher beliefs and content developer assumptions in an Indian initiative

Educational technology research and development - This paper explores technology integration and the role of teacher beliefs in this integration to assess a ‘smart-class’ initiative...     

Introduction

This paper conceptualises think tanks and edu-businesses in relation to education policy work in the Australian polity. It situates the enhanced influence of both in relation to the restructured state, which has lost some key capacities in relation to the generation of research and ideas for policy. This restructuring has been strongly influenced by the techniques of new public management, the auditing of education through national and international testing and new forms of network governance, which have opened up spaces for the increased influence of think tanks and edu-businesses across the policy cycle in education. We see here the workings of a ‘polycentric state’. The paper also considers changing concepts of ‘evidence’, ‘expertise’ and ‘influence’ in respect of the involvement of think tanks and edu-businesses in circulating policy ideas and affecting policy development in Australian education. This introduction to this special issue of The Australian Educational Researcher serves as a provocation to further research on this new policy scenario.     

The Professional Status of Educational Research: Professionalism and Developmentalism in Twenty-First-Century Working Life

‘How helpful and how necessary is it for at least some of us to see ourselves as professional educational researchers?’ asked Donald McIntyre in his 1996 presidential address to the British Educational Research Association. Still pertinent to consideration of the direction in which the British educational research community ought to focus its development, this question is revisited through examination of whether or not educational research is a profession. Located within a sociological framework, the paper first examines some of the earliest work that established the sociology of professions as a field of study. It then compares this with recent work in the field, before considering whether or not – against the various criteria for professional status that these studies identify – educational research(ing) may be categorised as a profession. Using Noordegraaf’s three categories, the case is examined for considering educational research(ing) as a ‘pure’, a ‘hybrid’ or a ‘situated’ profession. The conclusion is that it represents none of these, but that, within the context of twenty-first-century working life, this is less important than the need for educational research to embrace a culture of developmentalism.     

What (a) to do about ‘impact’: a Bourdieusian critique

This paper presents a research‐based, theoretically‐informed contribution to the debate on ‘impact’ in educational research, and specifically a response to Gardner's 2011 presidential address to the British Educational Research Association. It begins by discussing the development of the research ‘impact’ agenda as a global phenomenon, and reviews the current state of debate about ‘impact’ in the UK's Research Excellence Framework. It goes on to argue that a radical alternative perspective on this agenda is needed, and outlines Bourdieu's sociology—including his much‐neglected concept of illusio—as offering potential for generating critical insights into demands for ‘impact’. The term illusio in particular calls us to examine the ‘stakes’ that matter in the field of educational research: the objects of value that elicit commitment from players and are ‘worth the candle’. This framework is then applied first to analyse an account of how an ESRC‐funded project that I led was received by different research ‘users’ as we sought to generate impact for our findings. Second, it is used to show that the field of educational research has changed; that it has bifurcated between the field of research production and that of research reception; and that the former is being subordinated to the latter. The paper concludes by arguing that, despite many educational researchers' commitments to ‘make a difference’ in wider society, the research ‘impact’ imperative is one that encroaches on academic freedom; and that academics need to find collective ways in which to resist it.     

Students ‘at‐risk’ policy: competing social and economic discourses

Within a context of global reform agendas that promote economic ideologies in education the discourses surrounding ‘school failure’ have shifted from ‘individual risk’ to ‘a nation at‐risk’. Enhancing the quality of schooling through improving educational outcomes and standards for all, and thereby reducing ‘school failure,’ is simultaneously constructed as enhancing both social justice and a nation’s economic advantage in the global marketplace. Within this broader context, this research explores the complexity of issues related to policy for students at educational risk through an analysis of the Education Department of Western Australia’s ‘Making the Difference: Students at Educational Risk Policy.’ This research adopted a theoretical framework of a ‘policy cycle’ (that allowed for an exploration of power relations within the policy process. Primarily, consideration is given to the competing social and economic discourses found within the policy text and subsequent tensions reflected and retracted throughout the policy process from macro (system), to meso (district) and finally to micro levels within the schools and classrooms.     

TELEVISION AND THE EDUCATION OF THE YOUNG

This paper, from the 1979 Conference, ‘Television In Society’ begins by defining the educational process as one of persisting, despite initial failures, to acquire understanding or mastery, and underlining the uniqueness of each individual learner. The author reports on the results of a one‐year study of the viewing habits of pre‐school children. Little ‘rising fives’ are such heavy viewers that they must feel a sense of loss when school attendance deprives them of ‘their’ television, perhaps the most valuable ‘child‐minder’ of all. Television delights these veteran under‐five viewers and provides an aid that parents and teachers can welcome; it also seems to stimulate little or no ‘participation’ and to inhibit language skills. Older children are also voracious viewers, but the author's experience suggests that television does not of itself inhibit reading and that to blame violent behaviour on viewing of violence is humbug. In conclusion it is suggested that educators are as yet failing to recognize the paramount importance of television in children's lives: there is an urgent need for education to acknowledge this in its curricula and for children (and adults) to find out more about how television is created. The Educational Television Association could play an important role here.     

Objects and issues—a Sunday Supplement view of continuing professional development in higher education

This paper draws on the presentation of three online pilot ‘series’ of learning objects aimed at offering university staff convenient updating opportunities around issues connected with e‐learning. The ‘Hot Topics' format presented short themed sets (series) of learning objects to a wide‐range of staff, encouraging sampling strategies to support variable levels of engagement and re‐scheduling within the series which reflects each participants’ personal preferences, time or other constraints. Developed by the Institute of Educational Technology (IET) at the UK Open University, and delivered using IET's knowledge‐sharing Knowledge Network, this format suggests a new way of facilitating continuing professional development in HEIs, and also offers fresh insights into the consequences of using learning objects for staff development and the difficulties of evaluating staff development activity based on learning objects. This paper is particularly concerned with the consequences of offering choice to the series' participants and more flexible options for dissemination to potential contributors.     

Rodgers on calls for observable verbs*

This paper takes up Shannon Rodgers’ 2016 critique of curriculum writers’ call for observable verbs (‘Minding our metaphors in education.’ Educational Philosophy and Theory 48 (6), pp. 563–578), and argues that a more effective line of critique should focus not on metaphorical thinking, but on the notion of observation itself, by way of Nietzsche on metaphor, the history of astronomy, the non-existence of dragons and dissuading indigenous people from voting.     

Talking back to power: snowballs in hell and the imperative of insisting on structural explanations

This viewpoint explores and shares our experience of ‘doing’ feminism in the context of its apparent ‘demise’. We were recently invited to attend an event at the Cabinet Office, to ‘discuss the impact aspirations and expectations within the community have on the educational achievement of young people in deprived areas’. The seminar was entitled, ‘Expert Seminar with the Minister for the Cabinet Office: Community Aspirations and Educational Attainment’. Appalled, both at the grammar (!), and the deficit account implications underpinning the Cabinet Office Invitation, we made contact with one another, and agreed that we would attend the seminar with the specific intention of challenging this discursive premise. We seek to use this Viewpoint to reflect on the experience in relation to academic activism and ‘speaking back’, as well as to take the opportunity to re‐state a few of the key points that detonate the deficit discourse in relation to the educational attainment of working‐class pupils.     

The Future of Evaluation: a retrospective

This article gives an account of the 5th International Conference on Educational Evaluation. It represents discrepant views of contemporary evaluative research, ranging from the ‘disinterested’ approach of Stake, through the pragmatic interventions of Stem, to the ‘committed’ standpoint of Troyna‐‐ the ‘hands‐off’, ‘hands‐on’ and the ‘hands‐up’ schools of evaluation. The authors offer a deconstruction of the conference debates and explore the reconceptualisation of evaluation roles and practices. They conclude (somewhat playfully) that the range of emotional and intellectual responses may be characterised by ‘post‐modern grief’.