Neo‐liberalism and Hegemony Revisited

This paper builds on Iris Young's work to argue that social justice in education has to be understood in relation to particular contexts of enactment. More specifically, the author argues that it is not possible to make cross‐national or other comparative assessments of social justice without consideration of the ways in which justice is enacted in practice. The contextualized approach to justice that the author is advocating involves: first a recognition of the multi‐dimensional nature of justice and the potential for conflict between different facets of justice; second, attention to the ways in which concerns of justice are mediated by the other norms and constraints that motivate actors; and third, a consideration of the way in which contradictions between different facets of justice and these other norms and between justice concerns and the constraints that compete with justice are differentially shaped by the levels and settings in which the actors are operating. This contextualized approach is illustrated using an interview with one mother's encounters with the English education system.     

The Education‐Tolerance Relationship: is it biased by social desirability?

A hypothesis in the literature suggests that the well‐documented education‐tolerance relationship is upwardly biased because of social desirability in responses. The main argument is that highly educated individuals have a better understanding of which opinions are less socially acceptable and will tend to hide their true reactions when certain items are brought up in survey interviews. They present themselves as more tolerant than they in fact are, making the relationship appear artificially large. This article reviews the possibility of such a bias in the effect of educational background on intergroup attitudes. A model is developed that takes into account potential distortions, when no direct measures for social desirability are available. We make use of the LISREL framework for specifying competing hypotheses about education and social‐desirability mechanisms. Alternative measurement models are compared in analyses based on data from a recent Norwegian survey on attitudes toward new immigrants. When hypothesized additional links are allowed for, the estimated effect of education on intergroup attitudes does not go down. Thus, the main results question the assumption usually made.     

Education and self‐change

This paper explores three psychological theories of self – Kenneth Gergen's theory of the crystallised self, Carol Dweck's theory of the incremental self and William Swann's theory of the homeostatic self – for their ability to account for personal change in general, and radical self‐change in particular. Special attention is paid to their educational implications. The overall conclusion is that whereas all three theories provide important insights into self‐change, none of them gives a fully satisfying account.     

Australia Revisited: 1973‐1988

Abstract

The author recounts the joys and foibles of 18 months spent as an Acting Director of the Learning Resources Centre in an Australian college of advanced education located in rural New South Wales. It is his contention that both the successes and failures of the project could have been maximized and minimized respectively had there been greater efforts made to bridge existent cultural gaps between the Australian and overseas participants. He further reflects upon some axioms learned in retrospect which might be helpful to others who would consider accepting future overseas assignments. Finally, he had waited with keen anticipation to return to the scene of his 18‐month experience which he describes as having been filled with joy, love, and despair. This reunion took place in July of this year. He is happy to report a total absence of despair, just joy and love.

It was a rainswept night in July 1973 and the passenger terminal adjoining Sydney Harbour was aflurry with activity. Eighteen months earlier, to the day, I had disembarked at the same terminal, filled with the excitement of what the future would bring — a future to be spent, in large part, some 300 miles distant from this thriving capital city of New South Wales. Now the time had arrived when I would once more board a ship and return to my homeland.

The emotions I felt when leaving on that dark rainy evening ranged from joy to love to despair. I was joyful in knowing that, as the ship slowly eased away from the quay, I could see no less than 100 friends who had come to bid me farewell, some from several hundred miles distant. I experienced the kind of love one has for a true richness of experience which one knows will never occur again, at least not in the same meaningful way. That love extended to all who were waving goodbye to me from the dockside, and to many hundreds more people from all walks of life who, while not able to join me in a last farewell celebration, had made the past 18 months for me the most memorable ever, but there was also an intense sense of despair—a feeling that I had not accomplished half of what I had envisaged back in February 1972 when I first stood on Australian soil.

Now, in August 1988, some 16 years after my departure, I was once more headed for that fabled ‘Land Down Under’ and before I did so I wanted to resurrect those cherished memories of 1972‐73. In so doing, I wanted to see if there might be lessons to be learned, ideas that would come to mind which — examined in retrospect — might prove both helpful and interesting to those vast legions of international educators who would follow where I had trodden, not necessarily in Australia but in any country other than that of their birth. That is the intention of this article.     

Role‐taking Revisited: narrative and cognitive‐developmental interpretations of moral growth

Abstract

For some decades the cognitive‐developmental approach to moral psychology has dominated discussions of moral action and growth, and the concept of role‐taking has been central to related understandings. Narrative, both as conceptual approach and as method of investigation and interpretation, is presented here as a critical and complementary adjunct to the cognitive‐developmental case.     

General Education,General‐Technical Education and Integration

Summaries

English

Answers to questions pertaining to general education and basic subjects, as well as to vocational education (general‐technical education in particular) and the principle of integration cannot be reduced to formal speculations or to bare definitions, no matter how elegant and correct. In our era, which is the era of logic and of data‐processing, of automation and computers‐‐the analysis of the question of general and general‐technical education and the corresponding basic subjects of contemporary education must have the qualities of logical and epistemological necessity. The renaissance of formal and mathematical logic in contemporary general education and the inroads made by these subjects into the content and structure of contemporary vocational training‐‐are facts and trends without precedence in the history of education and school. Other developments from which there can be no retreat are the inclusion of data‐processing into the content and structure of the general education school, and the heavy reliance on mathematics in the process of vocational training, combined with elements of cybernetics, formal and mathematical logic, and science of management and control. Also, the time has come for a new principle of teaching, the principle of integration.     

Education towards self‐actualization and interdependence

This study examined whether gifted students in Texas who had learning disabilities were being identified for gifted programs. Results from a survey of gifted program coordinators (n = 388) demonstrated that few school districts (n = 75) reported selecting gifted children with learning disabilities for gifted programs. However, districts that did modify their selection process in order to include these children as well as school districts that identified more than 5% of their students for gifted programs were the most likely to include children with learning disabilities.     

Moving Images: Propaganda Film and British Education 1940‐45

Village School (1940) and Children's Charter (1945) are two propaganda films produced on behalf of the British government at the beginning and the end of the second world war and are key visual sources for educational history, quite accessible but so far much neglected by educational historians. This paper examines the two films as case studies of the visual in the making of educational space at one moment in history. The historical moment is the second world war in Britain, and the space is the public space in which educational policies and ideologies are promoted.

The two motion pictures are located in their historical context, followed by comparative and critical comments from three perspectives: the image as a document of relations between producer and consumer; the image as a medium of expression; and the image in its relation to a wider iconography of education. A major focus for this paper is the way in which promotion of a progressive curriculum and teaching method is inscribed within a film on schooling in wartime evacuation, and it also highlights the complexity of reading motion pictures, and especially propaganda film, as historical evidence.     

The Genesis and Evolution of Pre‐vocational Education: England

Abstract

In the following article, the author attempts to provide a skeleton overview of the movement for pre‐vocational education, stressing that present concern regarding such issues as the purpose of education and the extent to which a utilitarian approach is acceptable, school‐to‐work transition, and emphasis on particular work‐related skills have, in fact, formed a recurring debate dating back at least a century. Anxiety regarding Britain's hegemony over Europe, particularly Germany, has always featured in the debate, as has the issue of education versus training. Key educational legislation provides four key stages in the development of the debate, culminating in close examination of the implications of the Education Reform Act of 1988 for the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI).     

Education and disadvantage: the role of community‐oriented schools

The proposed development of extended schools in England is part of an international movement towards community‐oriented schooling, particularly in areas of disadvantage. Although on the face of it this movement seems like a common‐sense approach to self‐evident needs, the evaluation evidence on such schools is inconclusive. In order to assess the likelihood that community‐oriented schooling will have a significant impact on disadvantage, therefore, this paper analyses the rationale on which this approach to schooling appears to be based. It argues that community‐oriented schools as currently conceptualised have a focus on ‘proximal’ rather than ‘distal’ factors in disadvantage, underpinned by a model of social in/exclusion which draws attention away from underlying causes. They are, therefore, likely to have only small‐scale, local impacts. The paper suggests that a more wide‐ranging strategy is needed in which educational reform is linked to other forms of social and economic reform and considers the conditions which would be necessary for the emergence of such a strategy.     

“Really Just Lip Service”: Talking About Diversity in Suburban Schools

Suburban school districts are in the midst of rapid racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversification, although the teaching force remains much more homogenous. This article examines how educators in increasingly more diverse suburban schools conceptualize diversity. Qualitative data comes from interviews of 40 teachers, 23 principals and assistant principals, and 16 other school staff in six suburban school districts across the country. Using critical discourse analysis (van Dijk, 1993), I identify three primary discourses: an aspirational commitment to preparing students for a diverse society; color-muteness and insistence on individuality; and a deficit perspective on students from diverse racial/ethnic, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In particular, educators perceived cultural deficits in students’ families and communities (Valencia, 2010). Finally, a small number of participants recognized structural forces that impeded the achievement of students of color. The discussion analyzes how such discourses threaten to reproduce educational inequality as suburban districts continue to diversify and concludes with recommendations for districts and schools.     

Just Another Tool? IT Pedagogy and the Commodification of Education

This article investigates the social relations being produced through the incorporation of information technology (IT) into educational practices. Drawing upon field research with the Los Angeles public school system, the article analyzes social relations in three technology classrooms, discusses gender and ethnic inequalities with technology, and documents the kinds of educational technology programs that teachers and administrators find valuable. Rather than IT being an apolitical tool, these examples illustrate how technologies operate within larger ideological systems, linking students and public institutions intimately with globalization processes of privatization and commodification. In conclusion, an alternative framework for technology pedagogy is introduced, one that confronts the politics of technology by perceiving information technologies as social media rather than simple tools.Torin Monahan is the author of the forthcoming book Globalization, Technological Change, and Public Education (Routledge, 2005). He is Assistant Professor of Justice & Social Inquiry at Arizona State University. With training in the .eld of science and technology studies (STS), his scholarly research focuses on the design of information technology infrastructures and their associated political and social rami.cations. He conducts ethnographic research on telecommunication networks in schools, surveillance and biometrics systems in public places, and the techno-spatial transformation of cities. Address correspondence to Torin Monahan, Arizona State University, School of Justice & Social Inquiry; e-mail: torin.monahan@asu.edu.