Profession, “performance”, and policy: teachers,examinations, and the state in England and Wales, 1846–1862

Abstract

When historians discuss the impact of examinations on elementary education in mid-Victorian England and Wales they typically focus on the Revised Code of 1862. The Revised Code is famous for instituting a policy of “payment-by-results” for teachers in state-supported voluntary schools. “Payment-by-results” made government grants to schools – and, by extension, for teachers’ salaries – contingent upon student attendance and pass rates in reading, writing and arithmetic. As this article emphasises, however, “payment-by-results” was not the first, or even the most significant, instance in which competitive examination was used by the state as an instrument for establishing the pedagogical fitness and salaries of teachers. Less often explored by historians is the formative role that state-mandated competitive examinations for teachers played in developing a professionally aspirant body of schoolteachers and, consequently, the schoolteachers’ later role in developing competitive examination as a broad-scale national accreditation apparatus. But while the use of competitive examinations came to shape modern British academic and professional life in fundamental ways, the strengthening effects that they had for certain occupations and institutions, such as physicians, civil servants and middle-class secondary schools, were in fact ultimately denied to state teachers and the elementary education sector generally. With the introduction of “payment-by-results” in 1862, competitive examinations were converted into an instrument that weakened rather than strengthened teachers’ professional identity and policy influence. This article explains how the nineteenth-century English state structured examinations and examination results to manipulate the professional status of teachers in order to suit state priorities during different stages of national development. This historical narrative is framed in reference to present-day examination-based reforms of teacher compensation systems such as performance-related-pay and value-added modelling.     

Poverty,violence, and family disorganization: Three “Hydras” and their role in children's street movement in Bangladesh

The increasing number of children running away from home in Bangladesh is a major concern, and in need of critical attention. This yearlong study explores why children leave home with a sample of street children in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Purposive sampling from three locations in Dhaka yielded a sample of 75 homeless children aged 10–17. For each participant, a 60–90 min in-depth qualitative interview was conducted multiple times. While the dominant explanations rely on poverty or abuse, the findings of this study reveal that the cause is actually three heads of a Hydra monster: poverty, abuse, and family disorganization and their interactions. It shows that the primary reasons for children breaking from their family are all interrelated. The findings from this study are likely to add knowledge regarding the issues and may lead to preventative interventions for street children and their families.     

Experts and exiles: organic intellectuals,education, and the “Indian Problem” in postwar Ontario,Canada

Abstract

This article brings the Italian activist and thinker Antonio Gramsci’s theory of organic intellectualism and the Canadian historian Ian McKay’s theory of liberal state-formation to bear on the “Indian Question” – or how best to yoke Indigenous children and young people to the modern Canadian state. From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, often violent and disease-ridden “Residential Schools” were the primary means to this end. In the 1960s, a new approach was sought by the province of Ontario, culminating in the landmark education reform document, Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario (1968). Gentler forms of progressive educational “normalisation” informed by social science were pursued by the committee as a means of generating consent to a Canada now redefined as a postwar “Peaceable Kingdom”. This ostensibly kinder strategy nevertheless carried the colonial assumptions of the earlier period into the later one. This was made clear to the committee during the report’s preparation by Indigenous intellectuals advising them on Indigenous issues. They saw this liberal-technocratic approach for what it was – a novel form of neocolonial pedagogical violence. Though they were largely ignored by the committee, their dissent is instructive (as is the committee’s resistance to it) and allows us to put the darker corners of Canadian progressive education into historical perspective.     

Collective Identity and the Burden of “Acting White” in Black History,Community, and Education

After more than 15 years of comparative study of minority education, I concluded that I would have to study two additional factors, namely collective identity and cultural frame of reference to more fully explain the variability in minority school performance. In 1986, I published an article with Signithia Fordham on how oppositional collective identity and cultural frame of reference or oppositional culture contributed to Black students' school performance. Many critics have misinterpreted the joint article and even constructed a different thesis of oppositional culture than the one we proposed in the joint article. The thesis is that Black students do not aspire to or strive to get good grades because it is perceived as acting White. Furthermore, they have translated my cultural–ecological theory into an oppositional culture theory. I am writing this paper to correct the misinterpretations of the joint article in order to advance scholarship on the subject. I begin by explaining the meaning of collective identity and distinguishing it from other concepts of identity. Specifically, I summarize the evolution of oppositional collective identity and cultural frame of reference or oppositional culture among Black Americans and discuss the Black experience with the burden of acting White in the contemporary United States. Finally, I suggest some continuity between Black historical and community experiences with the burden of acting White, as experienced by Black students.     

Thai Image in “Lost in Thailand”and“Lost in Intercultural Communication”

<正>In the Chinese Spring Festival of 2012,the comedy movie of Lost in Thailand with the small investment of 30 million yuan was released in Chinese mainland and obtained the box office of 1.264billion yuan,becoming the Chinese movie with the highest box office income in Chinese movie history.In a cross-cultural perspective,the"Thai Image"shaped     

“Voice” and “voicelessness” in rhetorical studies

This essay begins with the observation that the term “voice” is frequently used in rhetorical studies literature. Interestingly, rhetorical “voice” means different things to different scholars. This essay seeks to accomplish two tasks related to “voice.” First, it clarifies the conceptual confusion regarding “voice” found in the literature by relating it to a tension between “speaking” and “language.” Second, to avoid this tension, this essay presents a case study in which a notion of “voice” is posited that is constitutive of the public acknowledgment of the ethical and emotional dimensions of public discourse.     

“The Quare in the Square”: Queer Memory,Sensibilities, and Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is perhaps the most well-known historical homosexual in the public imagination. However, for a new generation of queers less connected to “gay” labels, Wilde appears other and forgettable. To reanimate Wilde's memory for twenty-first-century queers and ensure his legacy going forward, I read the 1997 Oscar Wilde monument in Dublin, Ireland. Through discursive, visual, and material analyses, I argue the monument first complicates Wilde's sexuality, casting doubt on his gay label. Second, the monument reframes Wilde as the practitioner of a proto-queer sensibility. In doing so, the monument marks historical anachronisms and renders Wilde a more resonant figure for contemporary queer audiences.     

after,in,later辨“以后”

一、after用作介词,是“……时间以后”之意,它通常有两种用法。1.表示“从过去某个时间算起若干时间之后”,作时间状语,常表示“一段”时间,此时应用过去时。如:Jim came back to China after two years.两年后Jim回到了中国。He went to London after three months.三个月后他去了伦敦。2.表示某个时间、日期或事件以后,这时的时间状语常表示某一“点”时间,时态可以根据实际情况用过去时或将来时。如:After lunch he went out for a walk.午饭后他出去散步了。He will be back after four o’clock.他将在四点钟以后回来。另外,after…     

Scientific “Laws”, “Hypotheses” and “Theories”

Science describes the world of phenomena in terms of scientific “laws”, “hypotheses” and “theories”. There appears to be a widespread confusion about the precise meaning and significance of the three terms. This article attempts to ascertain the meanings of the terms by examining their actual use in scientific literature.     

Of,in,among与“最高级”

在含有“最高级”的句中,常常有表示比较范围的of,in,among引起的短语。如何正确使用这三个介词呢?A.介词“of”指在同一类人、物中,表示属性,后面接:a.代词all,或“all the(one’s) 名词复数形式”,如:1.Thethirdtruckiscarryingthefewestofall.2.Thesunisthenearesttousofallthestars.3.Meimeihasthemostapplesofallthegirls.4.LiPingisthehardestofallMissGreen’sstudents.b.“the 基数词”,或“the 基数词 名词复数形式”,如:1.Whichtruckhasthemostbaskets,thefirst,thesecondorthethird?Thefirstonehasthemostbasketsofthethreet…     

Seeing,hearing, reading,writing, speaking and things: on silences,senses and emotions during the “zero hour” in Germany

This article focuses on senses, emotions and cultural practices such as writing, reading and speaking in West Germany after 1945. The period immediately following the end of the Second World War – the so-called Stunde Null, or “zero hour” – has generally been seen as a time of new beginnings, also with regard to cleansing the German language and breaking the silences of the past. This historical examination of sensory-emotional and material contexts and related cultural practices takes as its source Hanns-Josef Ortheil’s autobiographical novel Die Erfindung des Lebens (The Invention of Life), published in 2009. Ortheil’s novel is about a child’s enormous struggle to learn how to feel, see, read, write and speak. This so-called “ego document”, told by a first-person narrator, focuses on the links between things, objects, senses, emotions, and the acquisition of cultural skills and techniques while at the same time providing subtle commentary on post-war West German society.     

Personal Transformation and Readjustment in “Homecoming”

ABSTRACT

Studies support the observations by college psychotherapists that students returning from study abroad adventures often have a difficult time readjusting to being back “home.” We consider what the internal developmental challenges might be that relate to this transitional step. We weave first-hand comments of students into our article.     

Obama in Selma: Deixis,rhetorical vision,and the “true meaning of America”

I argue that Barack Obama’s immediate, imaginary, and discursive deictic references to the actions and character of ordinary citizens, specific geographical markers within the “landscape of American history,” and sacred moments in U.S. history extended and enlarged the relational, spatial, and temporal contours of the national narrative in his 2015 speech on the fiftieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday. In so doing, the president offered a compelling (re)definition of patriotism, civic responsibility, and “the true meaning of America.” More broadly, I argue for an expanded notion of deixis within rhetorical scholarship. Beyond a linguistic “pointing” to bodies, places, and objects within the audience’s immediate vicinity, I detail how indexicals bring various images before the eyes of the audience, link individual texts to their political, historical, social, and cultural contexts, and direct our attention to the most important parts of the national narrative even as they deflect our attention from other parts of the story. Ultimately, I suggest that deixis illuminates theories of rhetorical vision in ways that have gone unnoticed, and it is only when we recognize the psychological and cognitive effects of deictic speech that we can fully appreciate the central role phantasia plays in persuasion, deliberation, and moral judgment.     

“Illegitimate” Bodies in Legitimate Times: Life,Liberty, and the Pursuit of Movement

Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concepts of state racism and biopower, the author of the 26th Delphine Hanna Lecture presents several claims: (a) that the idea of the illegitimate outsider in Western world governments like the United States has largely been influenced by ancient Greek ideals, (b) that a host of policies and intentional actions by power brokers create derision and hierarchies between “old” and “new” immigrant groups, and (c) neoliberal ideology couched in actions that aim “to protect the state” is nothing more than a recoding of traditional racist rhetoric that expands systemic racism. The author identifies the capabilities approach, asset based community development, and framing movement and physical activity as issues of justice as critical strategies to ensure equal rights for all.