Adult education and the modern nation‐state: reflections on ’Social Commitment and Adult Education‘

This paper, which is situated within a discourse of inclusivity, is concerned with Higher Education's response to the needs of groups, such as working class adults with negative experiences of school, who are currently excluded from higher education throughout Europe. It argues, using illustrations from a case study, that there are a variety of organizational and pedagogical implications that must be addressed if participation is to be widened which relate to both individual ability and attitude and to institutional and situational barriers. It concludes that all universities have conceptions of equity which reflect ideological positions and influence the practice that is seen as acceptable. The dilemma facing those committed to social inclusion is that too much emphasis on the structural can imply that the efforts of individual students are of little consequence in determining success or failure. It is argued that a counter-balancing position is needed in which, whilst acknowledging the contribution of the student, course managers and institutions build structures to challenge the negative effects of inequality.     

Masculinity and social class,tradition and change: the production of ‘young Christian gentlemen’ at an elite Australian boys’ school

High fee-charging non-government schools for boys comprise a small but significant sector of the Australian schooling market. In different ways in different historical periods these schools have represented themselves as being concerned with more than just an instrumental or utilitarian education, making both explicit and implicit claims about the kinds of values they work to instil in their students and the kinds of men they aim to produce. This article looks closely at one such school in order to gain an understanding of how it sought to shape a particularly classed, leadership-oriented masculinity, during a period of institutional change. The historical context for the study is the final decade of the twentieth century, a period that saw the approximate beginning of a ‘boys’ crisis’ in Australian education, which for schools like the one in this study meant a degree of reconceptualisation of practices and ideologies of masculinity. The article draws on a set of oral history interviews with former students and executive staff of the school.     

‘The learning sticks’: reflections on a case study of role-playing for sustainability

Use of role-plays to develop deep student-learning has many advocates. Role-play is a powerful approach for learning that develops relevant skills in a range of disciplines and situations. In Higher Education, sustainability programmes role-play pedagogy appears to have great relevance for developing the competencies that these graduates will need. The ability of role-play pedagogy to develop these competencies was assessed through a case study of students in a first-year subject/course at an Australian university. Analysis of the students’ written comments indicate that the students were involved in significant learning, and had made substantial progress in developing five key skills for sustainability. The enjoyment and engagement they demonstrated was an added benefit of their experience and potentially of the role-play approach. While it is acknowledged that a role-play requires careful planning and support, and may be considered resource intensive, it can be argued that the student learning achieved is worth the effort.     

Emotionally‐vulnerable subjects and new inequalities: the educational implications of an ‘epistemology of the emotions’

Motivated by very different goals, various interest groups argue that the British government should address problems with citizens’ emotional well‐being. Concerns about emotional vulnerability and poor emotional well‐being amongst growing numbers of children, young people and adults produce ideas and approaches from different branches of psychology and psychoanalysis. These compete for legitimacy throughout the education system. In part, such developments can be seen as the latest manifestation of a long‐running tendency to psychologise intractable educational and social problems. The roots of the psychologisation of emotional vulnerability also lie in a deeper philosophical and political disenchantment with an externally‐seeking, autonomous human subject and forms of curriculum knowledge that support it. One effect of these related trends is an epistemology of the emotion that privileges an emotionally vulnerable identity as integral to contemporary human subjectivity. One outcome is to offer emotionally‐focused pedagogy and knowledge, particularly for those deemed to be educationally and socially disadvantaged. The paper argues that, despite being highly unfashionable in sociological, political and philosophical theory, a humanist view of subjectivity challenges the new inequalities and diminished forms of pedagogy and knowledge this epistemology offers.     

‘Power on’: Googlecracy,privatisation and the standardisation of sources

The paper aims to contribute to the sociological analysis of power through the study of the structuration and retrieval of information on the internet. The main argument of the paper is that, paradoxically, in an age when the availability of information has increased exponentially, there is a risk that diversity in the use of sources for the construction of knowledge becomes more restricted than in the past and that information search moves towards greater objectification and centralisation. Knowledge management systems increasingly shape the ways in which we think about the questions we ask and how we try to answer them, which raises fundamental and largely neglected questions for education policy. The paper illustrates these trends with particular reference to the use of Google and Google Scholar.     

Teacher reflections on ‘bumpy moments’ in teaching: a self‐study

This study recounts a practicing teacher's attempt to describe reflections during the course of teaching at the primary level. A self‐study was conducted to address teacher thinking during ‘bumpy moments’ in teaching, offering an insight into how we might capture the details of teachers' unseen reflections. Through an analysis of the many ‘bumpy moments’ in teaching, several important findings emerged about the nature of reflection and how reflection actually occurs in the classroom context. Results of this study have implications for future research, teacher education and improvement of the teaching practice.     

Linking ‘The Book of Nature’ and ‘The Book of Science’: Using Circular Motion as an Exemplar beyond the Textbook

Bacon exhorted the natural philosophers of his day to read and interpret the book of nature by clever and cunning experimentation. The increasing scientific activity after Bacon and Galileo, however, quickly produced a second book. This was a book of interpretations of nature, namely the the book of science. Newton went beyond Bacon and Galileo and developedan ongoing dialogue between these two books, a repeated give and takebetween mathematical construct and physical reality. Unfortunately, thephysics textbook, the book of science the students read, does not acquaintthem with this style of reasoning. As an example of high-grade scientificthinking this paper discusses Newton's long struggle with the concepts ofinertia and especially of centrifugal force. In his quest to understand thedynamics of circular motion Newton clearly progressed through four levelsof conceptualizations, leading to progressively less severe discrepancies, inhis ascent to a full understanding of centripetal acceleration. While it is notpossible or desirable to expect teachers or students to recapitulate high-gradescientific thinking, partial retelling of the intellectual struggle that was involved in establishing important scientific concepts must be seen as important. This kind of pedagogy, however, requires that physics teachers have a good understanding of the history of scientific ideas as well as the findings of cognitive science.     

The allure of ‘easy’: reflections on the learning experience in private higher education institutes in Egypt

Private institutions are increasingly visible in the higher education landscape of Egypt. Many of these institutions, however, are within the ‘demand-absorbing’ category, offered at relatively lower fees and requiring lower test scores for admission. Building on interview data, this paper looks at how the graduates of some of these institutes reflect on their learning experience. In the discourse of these graduates, the learning experience is described as ‘easy’ and less demanding. This ‘easy’ education is accepted, justified and even celebrated. Credential fetish and the social status associated with a higher education degree are central to the perpetuation of the allure of ‘easy’. However, ‘easy’ education is also condemned for its compromised quality and low status. The paper seeks to situate these competing and overlapping discourses on private institutes within the analysis of the structure of the education system in Egypt and the global neoliberal tide for education reform.     

The legacy of the ‘care challenge’: re‐envisioning the outcome of the justice‐care debate

The current study investigated whether parents are accurate judges of their own children’s lie-telling behavior. Participants included 250 mother–child dyads. Children were between three and 11 years of age. A temptation resistance paradigm was used to elicit a minor transgressive behavior from the children involving peeking at a forbidden toy and children were subsequently questioned about the transgressive event. Mothers were asked to make predictions about whether their child would peek and then watched a video of their child being questioned about their peeking behavior. Mothers were asked to detect whether or not they thought their child was lying. Overall, 59.6% of parents accurately predicted their child’s lie-telling behavior. Mothers had more difficulty detecting older children’s lies. Signal detection analyses revealed parents had a strong tendency to believe their child was honest. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for parent–child relationships.     

Coherence and manageability: reflections on the National Curriculum and cross‐curricular provision

This is a revised version of a paper first presented at the Curriculum Association's annual conference at the University of York in April 1990.     

From sociological fictions to social fictions: some Bourdieusian reflections on the concepts of ‘institutional habitus’ and ‘family habitus’

This paper expresses serious reservations regarding the increasingly popular Bourdieu‐inspired notions of ‘institutional habitus’ and ‘family habitus’ in education research. Although sympathetic to the overall theoretical approach and persuaded of the veracity and importance of the empirical findings they are used to illuminate, it argues that, from a Bourdieusian point of view, they actually present several difficulties that threaten not only to overstretch and reduce the explanatory power of the French thinker’s concepts but to stifle analysis of the kinds of struggles and complexities that both he and, somewhat contradictorily, the researchers in question spotlight. Bourdieu had his own ways of making sense of the themes raised, and although there is indeed a need to push him further than he went, to say what he did not and to emphasise what he would not, this has to be guided by consistent logic and not simply pragmatic empiricism.     

The Best of Times,the Worst of Times: the ‘post’ in ‘postmodern’

As teacher educators we are in perhaps one of the most demanding of professions in terms of constant upgrading of qualifications and updating of skills and knowledge, keeping abreast of new developments in education. As we question the relevance of what has become traditional discourse to inform our practice (such as Marxism on the Left of the political spectrum and various forms of discourses of the Right) we raise serious questions as well in reference to the ideological basis for academic boundaries that have become established, that have in effect structured the way in which we have been taught, the way we have engaged in learning, and in turn, the way we engage in our own practices of teaching and learning in our dealings with subject disciples and knowledge formations. It is now that we are seriously criticizing such discourses as having ignored the socially constructed nature of what is taught, how it is taught, and not only the underpinnings of the way they are evaluated, but how they are actually valued. This paper points to some of the implications of postmodernism for practioners.     

The construction of the ‘ideal pupil’ and pupils’ perceptions of ‘misbehaviour’ and discipline: contrasting experiences from a low‐socio‐economic and a high‐socio‐economic primary school

This paper examines the effect of school social class composition on pupil learner identities in British primary schools. In the current British education system, high‐stakes testing has a pervasive effect on the pedagogical relationship between teachers and pupils. The data in this paper, from ethnographic research in a working‐class school and a middle‐class school, indicate that the effect of the ‘testing culture’ is much greater in the working‐class school. Using Bernsteinian theory and the concept of the ‘ideal pupil’, it is shown that these pupils’ learner identities are more passive and dominated by issues of discipline and behaviour rather than academic performance, in contrast to those in the middle‐class school. While this study includes only two schools, it indicates a potentially significant issue for neo‐liberal education policy where education is marketised and characterised by high‐stakes testing, and schools are polarised in terms of social class.