The ‘spirit of education’ in Indonesian Pesantren

This paper employs Foucauldian theory to consider Islamic boarding school experiences in Indonesia. For some pupils ‘the spirit of education’ – a dimension of pleasure – comes to be highly valued, creating a lifelong passion for the pursuit of knowledge. Two school principals (both pesantren [Islamic boarding school] graduates themselves) articulated strong commitment to the ‘spirit of education’. Yet their respective boarding schools were very poor, not only by western standards but compared with Indonesian public schools, and conditions were austere. The embodiment of pesantren discourse as high academic achievement is illustrated by the example of Khadija – a young female pesantren graduate now studying at doctoral level in the United Kingdom. Explaining the embodied production of the ‘spirit of education’ demands looking at charismatic pedagogy, strict rules, austere conditions and sparse provision of learning resources as regimes of truth and power–knowledge relations that inhere in pesantren as lived experiences of pupils.     

Desire as interruption: young women and sexuality education in Ontario,Canada

Danger and pleasure are terms commonly employed to describe women's sexual experiences, including those of young women. This paper explores how young women's sexual danger and pleasure are represented and characterized in official discourses, specifically those of school‐based sexuality education. Drawing on Michelle Fine's four major discourses of sexuality education, this paper uses the Ontario Curriculum and its companion Course Profiles to analyze school‐based sexuality education in Ontario, Canada. This paper describes how the discourses of victimization and individual morality dominate in the curriculum while the discourse of desire is largely absent. Because there is considerable emphasis on danger/victimization and insufficient attention paid to pleasure/desire, the paper concludes by describing how a discourse of desire might be included in sexuality education curriculum.     

Mean girls,homosociality and football: an education on social and power dynamics between girls and women

Relationships between girls and women have typically been explored through the lexicon of ‘friendship’ or, where there is a presence of sexual desire, ‘lesbian’. This article suggests the complexity and impact of female (same-sex) sociality, and its relationship to heteronormativity and power dynamics between girls and women runs deeper than the terms ‘friendship’ or ‘lesbian’ give rise to. Exploring social and power dynamics amongst girls and women, this article explores how gender is policed and negotiated within a framework of homosociality. Drawing on empirical research within a women's Australian Rules football team, I explore the complexity of female same-sex bonds, the negotiation of gender embodiment and performance within female homosocial spaces, and the emergence of women's own lexicons in making sense of their relationships with other women in this particular social sphere, further considering how this might be applied to other female homosocial spaces, including same-sex educational and sporting sites.     

The use and misuse of pleasure in sex education curricula

Since Michelle Fine's writing on the missing discourse of desire in sex education, there has been considerable prompting among sexuality educators and feminist scholars to incorporate talk of pleasure into sex education curricula. While the calls for inclusion continue, few have actually examined the curricula for a pleasure discourse or explored how it is contextualised within sex education curricula. In this paper, we analysed curricula used in the USA in the past decade. A qualitative thematic analysis revealed that the discourse around pleasurable sex was often linked to a range of dangerous or negative outcomes including not using condoms, rushing into sex without thinking, regretted sex, and pregnancy or STDs. When the discourse around pleasure was included in sections on ‘knowing one's body’, this discourse took a medicalised, scientific tone. Pleasurable sex was also presented in more positive ways, either linked to marriage in Abstinence Only Until Marriage curricula, or within a more feminist discourse about female pleasure in comprehensive sex education curricula. Our research indicates that a discourse of desire is not missing, but that this discourse was often situated as part of a discourse on safe practice and there, continues to equate pleasure with danger.     

Charting new territories: re-assembling childhood sexuality in the early years classroom

Since the moral panic discourse is shutting down discussions about how children are making meaning of gender and sexuality, this paper argues that a new logic is needed for understanding childhood sexuality. A postdevelopmental logic is created by working with Deleuze and Guattari's [Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizoprhenia. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane. London: Athlone and A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. London: Continuum. (Orig. pub. 1980)] concepts ‘assemblage’, ‘desire’, and ‘territories’ to understand childhood sexuality in ways that do not rely on the notion of a ‘moral panic’. By re-assembling data generated from an exploratory study of talk by young children about gender and sexuality this paper creates new connections about childhood, gender, and sexualities. It does this by moving away from developmental framings, initiating a different dialogue about curiosities, human and nonhuman bodies, and desires, to chart new territories about childhood sexuality in the early years classroom.     

‘Come on girls,let's go to school’: an effort towards gender educational equity in Turkey

In many developing countries, women's education has been a highly prominent issue which is not adequately addressed in their education policies. The participation of female populations in education in most of the developing regions of the world has been much lower than the participation of their male counterparts [UNICEF. 2005a. “Report Card on Gender Parity and Primary Education.” www.unicef.org/turkey]. As a developing country, Turkey engaged in fairly vigorous and determined attempts to address the issues regarding women's education [Aydagül, B. 2008. “No Shared Vision for Achieving Education for All: Turkey at Risk.” Prospects 38 (3): 401–407] owing to the support, incentives, and pressure of the international organisations through various conventions in the last decade. The current paper scrutinises one of these attempts, namely, the campaign called ‘Come on girls, let's go to school’ which was initiated by the Ministry of National Education with the support of United Nations Children's Fund and World Bank, and considerably contributed to the increases in girls' enrolment and attendance rates in rural areas and southeast regions of Turkey. This paper utilises the social equity criteria as its conceptual framework drawing from Levin [1978. “The Dilemma of Comprehensive Secondary School Reforms in Western Europe.” Comparative Education Review 22 (3): 434–451] and Stromquist [2011. Educational Equity [Lecture Notes]. College Park: University of Maryland]. The analysis yields that the girls' education campaign in Turkey addresses to varying extents the criteria of accessibility, probability of enrolment, probability of participation, and length of participation, whereas it fails to meet the standard of educational results.     

Beyond the birds and the bees: constituting a discourse of erotics in sexuality education

A tradition of predominately feminist literature has revealed that there is a ‘missing discourse of desire’ in many sex education programmes. Building on this work, this article explores the gendered effects of this de‐eroticized and clinical form of education. It is argued that young women and men's (hetero)sexual subjectivities are differentially affected by the invisibility of desire and pleasure in this curriculum. To offer young women a sense of personal empowerment and entitlement, and young men a broader range of (hetero)sexual subjectivities, it is proposed that sex education include a discourse of erotics. This would comprise more than an acknowledgement of desire and pleasure and incorporate the embodied practicalities of these experiences. As a means of developing this discourse within sexuality programmes, empirical evidence of 17‐ to 19‐year‐olds' experiences of desire and pleasure are examined.     

From gender-not-an-issue to gender is the issue: the educational and migrational pathways of middle-class women moving from urban Bangladesh to Britain

This paper explores the educational and migrational pathways which a number of middle-class women from Bangladesh took as they grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. It draws on qualitative research, conducted between July and November 2011, with highly educated Bangladeshi women who migrated to Britain in the early 2000s. French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's critique of education, as a means of middle-class social reproduction [Bourdieu, P., and Jean-C. Passeron. ([1977] 1990). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. 2nd ed. Translated from the French by Richard Nice. London: Sage], and his notion of ‘academic capital’ [Bourdieu, P. 1984. Distinction: A social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated from the French by Richard Nice. London: Routledge; Bourdieu, P. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research For the Sociology of Education, edited by J. G. Richardson, 241–258. New York: Greenwood] are applied to this empirical data. While the participants’ experiences of early education confirms Bourdieu's arguments, in terms of the centrality of the family's educational and cultural capital in making a qualitative difference to their children's academic achievements, the analysis of the participants’ higher education complicates this picture. Here, the paper calls Bourdieu's umbrella term ‘academic capital’ into question. The author suggests that three categories of academic capital were needed to explain the different and unequal ‘value’ of the participants’ academic qualifications before and after migration. These are – elite, standard and general. Through this exploration of these women's educational and migrational pathways, and the classed and gendered nature which many of them took, this paper seeks to further the feminist project of making Bourdieu's theories ‘useful’ in understanding contemporary issues which affect women's lives (Adkins, L. 2004. “Introduction.” In Feminism After Bourdieu, edited by L. Adkins and B. Skeggs, 110–128. Oxford: Blackwell, 3).     

From Hope & Glory to Waterloo Road: mediating discourses of ‘crises’ surrounding schools and schooling in British television drama, 1999–2011

Popular television drama is an important discursive site engaging the public with debates about schooling and professional identity. Between 1999 and 2011, external discourses of ‘crisis’ (of academic achievement or students’ mental and emotional health) were mediated as alternative discourses of ‘crisis, failure, and salvation’ in which a Standards agenda predominated, or that of the school as a ‘caring community’. Genre analysis reveals how ‘school’ dramas exploited distinctive narrative types to privilege a particular discourse. Adapting Schatz's (1981 Schatz, T. (1981). Hollywood genres. London: McGraw-Hill. [Google Scholar]) scheme of Hollywood genre types, these dramas are characterised by a narrative strategy of ‘restoration’ of the ‘failing’ secondary (high) school to its public function of raising achievement, or after 2007 of ‘integration’ more concerned with assimilating ‘troubled’ students into the school community. This shift in representation is consistent with, and contributes towards, the ‘rise of therapeutic education’ where the Head Teacher and teacher are portrayed more as counsellor than educator.     

‘They have different information about what is going on’: emotion in the transition to university

Most new students experience school to university transition as challenging. Students from backgrounds with little or no experience of higher education are most vulnerable in this transition, and most at risk of academic failure. Emotion appears implicated in the differential way in which first-generation students and students with family familiarity of university experience the transition. This article draws on the voices of first-year dental and oral hygiene students at a South African dental faculty regarding university transition experiences. It draws on the construct of capital and Archer's [(2002). Realism and the problem of agency. Journal of Critical Realism Alethia, 5(1), 11–20] understanding of ‘competing concerns’ to examine how emotion shapes students' experiences of university transition and how they position themselves with regard to these experiences. The article explicates the ways in which emotional commentary and classed locations intersect, exploring the extent to which this intersection shapes young people's framing of their concerns of ‘being a student’ and ‘becoming a dentist’. The article identifies aspects of the university's material and cultural environments which shape students' emotional responses and which consequently are implicated in the perpetuation of class-based differential life chances.     

School exclusion and educational inclusion of pregnant young women

This article analyses the school exclusion and subsequent educational inclusion of pregnant young women participating in a course of antenatal and key skills education at an alternative educational setting. It examines the young women's transitions from ‘failure’ in school to ‘success’ in motherhood and re-engagement with education. This article draws on participant observation- and interview-based research carried out with pregnant young women and staff at an alternative educational setting in London in 2007–2008. The young women's participation in the course represented a severing of past negative experiences in mainstream education, allowing a renewed focus on education alongside a positive maternal identity. The setting represented a form of inclusion, and the young women appreciated the focus on their social and emotional well-being, yet the limited academic provision in some cases continued to reinforce an educational exclusion.     

Understanding policy: why health education policy is important and why it does not appear to work

Drawing on research investigating the impact of health imperatives around obesity, diet and exercise on the actions of teachers and pupils in schools, this paper offers a reflexive account of the relationships between the ‘noise’ of obesity discourse in the public domain, policies forged to tackle health issues and the realities of teaching in schools. Our analyses suggest that intersections of bio‐policies, body pedagogies and human agents forge assemblages of meaning that frame and regulate but cannot determine either teachers' or young people's lives. Teachers and pupils experience the capriciousness of policies as they flow through specific school contexts and intersect with ‘local’ institutional cultures, expectations and interests. We suggest that Basil Bernstein's concepts and poststructural social theory prove useful when addressing how the aforementioned processes are emplaced, enacted and embodied.     

‘The world must stop when I’m talking’: gender and power relations in primary teachers’ classroom talk

The present paper examines male and female teachers’ language practices in relation to ‘censuring’ talk in the primary classroom, in the context of the debate around boys’ ‘underachievement’ and the ‘feminisation’ of primary school culture. Through an analysis of classroom observations with 51 men and women teachers, it looks to see whether gender differences could be found in the ways individual men and women teachers communicated in terms of their ‘censuring’ comments of pupils’ work or behaviour. Secondly, the paper takes issue with the notion that teachers operate within a ‘feminised’ educational culture, by looking at the ways in which teachers’ classroom talk can be seen to be constrained by two contrasting discourses relating to the power relation between teacher and pupil: a ‘traditional’ disciplinarian discourse, and a more ‘progressive’ liberal discourse. Both discourses have complex gendered and class dimensions, challenging the conception of a ‘feminised’ primary school culture.     

School leadership for equity: lessons from the literature

Responding to Thrupp's [2003. “The School Leadership Literature in Managerialist Times: Exploring the Problem of Textual Apologism.” School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation 23 (2): 169] call for writers on school leadership to offer ‘analyses which provide more critical messages about social inequality and neoliberal and managerialist policies’ we use Foucault's [2000. “The Subject and Power.” In Michel Foucault: Power, edited by J. D. Faubion, 326–348. London: Penguin Books] theory of power to ask what lessons we might learn from the literature on school leadership for equity. We begin by offering a definition of neoliberalism; new managerialism; leadership and equity, with the aim of revealing the relationship between the macropolitical discourse of neoliberalism and the actions of school leaders in the micropolitical arena of schools. In so doing, we examine some of the literature on school leadership for equity that post-dates Thrupp's [2003. “The School Leadership Literature in Managerialist Times: Exploring the Problem of Textual Apologism.” School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation 23 (2): 149–172] analysis, seeking evidence of critical engagement with/resistance to neoliberal policy. We identify three approaches to leadership for equity that have been used to enhance equity in schools internationally: (i) critical reflection; (ii) the cultivation of a ‘common vision’ of equity and (iii) ‘transforming dialogue’. We consider if such initiatives avoid the hegemonic trap of neoliberalism, which captures and disarms would be opponents of new managerial policy. We conclude by arguing that, in spite of the dominance of neoliberalism, head teachers have the power to speak up, and speak out, against social injustice.     

Minority young men’s gendered tactics for making space in the city and at school

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to explore young minority men’s relation to school and city space in Helsinki from the perspective of their everyday experiences of racialisation in public spaces. The article uses the concept of ‘power geometrical’ relations of space by drawing on several research traditions, including youth and masculinity studies, studies on social space, racialisation and ethnicity, and human geography. The evidence shows the school to be an important site of local and national power geometry (Massey, D. [1994]. Space, Place and Gender. Cambridge: Polity Press), in which ‘informal’ and ‘physical’ spheres are dominated by peers and connect to streets and public spheres (Gordon, T., J. Holland, and E. Lahelma. [2000]. Making Spaces: Citizenship and Difference in Schools. Houndsmills et al. London: MacMillan Press Ltd). The article shows how young minority men knew their place both in narrow local power geometries, and within the wider city and school spaces, exploring how they formed their own lived spaces (Lefebvre, H. [1991]. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell), claimed their spaces and marked their spaces with diverse tactics. Some tactics were socially open, such as making friends; some were very mobile, such as claiming their own urban spaces by mobility, or marking and ‘hanging around’; and some involved big groups of friends, crowds, defence and embodied accounts.     

Voice,empowerment and youth-produced films about ‘gangs’†

This article explores the dissonance between the expansive discourses imagined by the advocates for youth media as helping foster ‘empowerment’ and ‘voice', versus the more circumscribed realities of participatory media production. I focus on a two-part case study – considering both a film-making project for ‘at risk’ young people in South London and the English national government funder that provided the resources for the young people to take part. This case study allows for an exploration of the political economy of youth media, and the relationship between youth media funding and how and why young people in my research often chose to make films about ‘gangs', a striking topic of concern across 11 youth media case study sites. I use this empirical example as a means to analyse how ‘empowerment’ in youth media projects, understood as both critical media literacy and youth voice, moves from abstract discourse to on-the-ground practice.     

Masculinity and respect in flux: Olli's story

This study examines change and the conditions of change in the masculinity of Olli, a working-class Finnish school boy. It explores respect as a status bound to masculine reputation, resources for obtaining respect in gendered identity work, and the negotiation of power in peer relations. I discuss how a ‘banal balancer’ discourse – a local, normalised, culturally idealised discourse and the most common discourse of school boy masculinity – has the power to induce school boys to balance their acquisition of the respect and peer likeability dimensions of status. Olli's story illustrates why locating oneself or being located in a ‘toughie’ discourse, in which the pursuit of respect through fear and violence is present, has limits in terms of peer relations and why it is crucial to make room for aspirational hegemony in schools instead of a dominant, regressive form of hegemony.     

A systematic form of Japanization in Okinawa: Japanese identity construction through a Japanization discourse in textbooks and a textbook guide

This research examines some modes of Japanization through education in Okinawa where Japanese influences on education have permeated after Japan’s annexation. I investigate how a book excerpt entitled Mizu no Tōzai, included in high school textbooks in Okinawa, constructs Japanese identity. Mizu no Tōzai functions as nihonjinron discourse, which is characterized by ‘Japanese culture,’ ‘Japanese uniqueness,’ and ‘Japaneseness.’ The ‘East-West’ dichotomy, depicted in this nihonjinron discourse, induces students to choose ‘Japan’/‘Japanese culture’ and become ‘Japanese.’ Practice sections of Mizu no Tōzai in textbooks as well as a textbook guide operate to be complicit in this Japanese identity construction. Through a critical analysis of discourse, I reveal that the nihonjinron discourse operating as official knowledge, in collusion with the other discursive texts, produces a position subjected to the discourse of Japanization within which Okinawans become ‘Japanese.’ I problematize these discursive texts as a systematic form of Japanizing Okinawans’ minds through education.     

Children’s lived experiences of ‘ability’ in the Key Stage One classroom: life on the ‘tricky table’

ABSTRACT

Within the wealth of research on ‘ability’ in education, there is a missing perspective: the perspective of the child. Whilst ‘ability’ informed practices such as ‘ability’ grouping are commonplace in the UK, how these are experienced by the young child has previously received only limited attention in research. Using case study evidence, this article demonstrates that children’s lived experiences of ‘ability’ are highly individual and shaped by a broader range of social, structural and pedagogic aspects of classroom life than previously thought. Implications are that a wide range of teaching choices can potentially affect a child’s experience of ‘ability’ and that the impact of these are particularly profound for some children, shaping their perceptions of themselves and others. Children’s perspectives therefore offer a challenge to the hegemonic discourse of ‘ability’ in education and the classroom practices upon which it is based.