Gendered Conflicts in Secondary School: Fun or enactment of power?

This article discusses relationships and conflicts between girls and boys during the secondary school years, trying to reflect on the fine line between playing which is 'just fun' and behaviour that is experienced as harassing. The method used is to examine the parallel patterns of different kinds of data: classroom observations in secondary schools, ethnographic interviews of students at the age of 13-14, and school memories of the same young people at the age of 17-19. These varied data reveal diverse interpretations to gendered interactions. The article suggests that sex-based harassment acts as a form of social control that constitutes a way of maintaining and policing gender boundaries and hierarchies. 'Whole school policy' is needed to counteract it. The article draws from an ethnographic research study in two secondary schools and its follow-up, conducted together with Tuula Gordon.     

Living with parental involvement: A case study of two 'open schools'

This account is based on case study data collected in two first phase schools (5-8 years) in England. The focus is the response of parents and teachers to a supposed opening up of schools through increased parental involvement in schooling. With acknowledgement of appropriate education policy and critical educational research, the authors argue that government policy depoliticises both educational outcomes and parent-teacher relations. The idea of the 'open' school dominates the data; it emerges as a metaphor of convenience and is pivotal in the way in which parents and teachers use it to explain and sustain parent-teacher relations of a mutually acceptable kind. Value is placed by both parties on an atmosphere of open communication, informality and routine. In the process of parent-teacher relations the advantage lies with the teachers, and parental empowerment is something of a myth. The metaphor of 'openness' is not questioned by parents and teachers, and it covers a process where trading is taking place between routine parental needs and the professional power and control of the teachers. There are clear indicators in the data which show that what drives parental involvement in these schools is teacher priorities coupled with some parental compliance, under the cover of the 'open' school, and not government policy imperatives.     

The bullied boy: masculinity,embodiment, and the gendered social-ecology of Vietnamese school bullying

This article considers the ways in which school bullying is both gendered and embodied. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two lower-secondary schools in northern Vietnam, the article focuses on the experiences of one ninth-grade boy, who was regularly bullied by his classmates, and whose experiences of bullying appeared to be embodied for all to see. Inspired by Arthur Brittan’s notion of masculinism, Elizabeth Grosz’s use of the möbius strip metaphor for understanding embodiment, and Urie Bronfenbrenner’s conceptualization of the ecological environment, I argue that school bullying needs to be understood not only in terms of the interactions between individuals or groups of individuals, but also in terms of the specific gendered social-ecological environment within which those interactions occur.     

Homophobia and Heterosexism in Public School Reform: Constructions of Gender and Sexuality in California's Single Gender Academies

This article examines heterosexist assumptions and the role of homophobia in students' experiences in California's public "Single Gender Academies," in an effort to include issues of sexuality in current discourses on adolescent gender identity and public school reform. Interviews with students, conducted as part of the most comprehensive research on public single-sex schooling in the U.S. to date, reveal a critical link between students' notions of sexuality and definitions of masculinity and femininity. Alongside dichotomous, static notions of gender, the ideology and structure of the Single Gender Academies largely promoted heterosexist assumptions of students' sexuality. Such assumptions pervaded school policies and practices as well as peer relations and students' sense of gender identity. Students, in turn, both actively constructed and resisted a theory of gender which framed boys and girls in opposition and promoted heterosexuality as the norm. This article provides an analysis of homophobia among students and the influence of academy assumptions on students' attitudes. Such a focus allows for an investigation of gender and sexuality at both individual and institutional levels. While the research is based on data collected at public single-sex schools, the findings provide insight into students' articulations of gender and sexuality across a variety of school contexts.     

The camera never lies?: analysing photographs in research on sexualities and schooling

This article is concerned with how to analyse photographs produced during research on sexualities and schooling. Photo-diaries and photo-elicitation were employed in an examination of the sexual cultures of two New Zealand secondary schools. This visual methodology sought to disclose spatial and embodied dimensions of sexualities at school while centring and valuing students’ perspectives. In an attempt to answer the question ‘what does this photograph really mean’, the author experiments with a series of analytical accounts conceptualised as ‘realist’, ‘interpretivist’, ‘performative’ and ‘materialist’ approaches. These readings are interrogated for their political and ontological effects. On the basis of the project's aims of taking young people's perspectives seriously and foregrounding material reality, an argument for a ‘materialist’ reading is made.     

Sometimes less is more: educational effectiveness of English as a foreign language instruction in German classrooms

This article challenges one of the central orthodoxies of much school effectiveness and school improvement work – namely that schools should strive to become more consistent environments for pupils and teachers. It reviews the arguments for consistency; the success of centralised systems, and the 'mirroring' of factors of effectiveness at the different levels of organisation but also examines the evidence which seems inconsistent with this thesis. For example, the differential performance of boys and girls in some schools and of certain ethnic groups in some school environments. Whilst not suggesting that 'consistency' theories should be rejected in all circumstances the article argues that the motivation of students is the key factor which needs to link school organisation and school context. Drawing on organisational literature the analysis concludes that effective schools are most likely to be those which are able to differentiate their structures, strategies and policies for different groups of pupils and different learning tasks.     

School is for Meeting Friends: Secondary school as lived and remembered

The present article discusses young people's manifold and ambivalent feelings towards school as an institution, and towards their own school in particular. The questions are explored using different kinds of data: associations and metaphors that students provided on 'school', their reflections on an ideal school and their own school, as well as memories of secondary school a few years later. It draws on an ethnographic research in secondary schools and on a longitudinal life-history study in which the transitions of the same young people to post-16 education are traced. The empirical conclusions concerning students' perceptions on school are presented with four interlikned themes: students' lack of autonomy, the importance of informal relations, the importance of space and time in school, and the complexities of gender patterns. The article also raises a methodological question on nostalgia in memories - especially in ethnographers' memories.     

‘Sitting on embers’: a phenomenological exploration of the embodied experiences of inclusion of newly arrived students in Sweden

What can we learn from and with the body in order to understand more about the (lived) experiences of newly arrived students in schools? This question has hitherto been given little attention in relation to the field of migration and education. Using the perspective of Ahmed's critical feminist phenomenology, this article aims to explore the embodied experiences of the different contexts that newly arrived students encounter in a rural monolingual school in Sweden. The empirical data are based on participant observation conducted in introductory and mainstream classrooms, as well as interviews undertaken with newly arrived students during a year of fieldwork. The findings of our study show how close attention to newly arrived students' embodied experiences can help to dispel prevailing myths surrounding inclusion, bringing to light thereby how the current lived conditions of inclusion in fact carry with them lines of exclusion.     

Exploring the Politics of Blame: School inspection and its contestation in New Zealand and England

This article examines how New Zealand's Education Review Office (ERO) and England's Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) attempt to construct school failure as the clear responsibility of schools in order to gain ideological power as agents of accountability. These 'politics of blame' are contested in both settings by an alternative 'contextual' claim which seeks to take account of broader social and political constraints on schools. It is argued that whereas New Zealand academics have been distrustful of the ERO's agenda, English school effectiveness and school improvement researchers have often provided support for OFSTED's politics of blame. However this relationship represents a double-edged sword for OFSTED because some school effectiveness/school improvement researchers also partly support the contextual claim. The article concludes that the politics of blame and their contestation will continue to be important in these settings and elsewhere.     

Long-term Consequences of Curriculum Choices with Particular Reference to Mathematics and Science

If what is taught is important but how well it is taught has only a trivial impact, then much of the work on 'school effectiveness' may be studying short term effects which quickly disappear from the system and have no long term consequences. If such were the case, then school effectiveness researchers would need to give greater consideration to what is studied, rather than simply how well it is studied. The influence of schools on curriculum choices may be more important than their influence on relative performance or "value added". In the UK 'A' levels represent a useful point at which to look at the impact of curriculum choice since students typically have to choose to study only two or three subjects for the final 2 years of secondary school. The choices are made at the age of 16 with little evidence available regarding the long term consequences. This article presents an exploration of the consequences of taking or not taking 'A' level mathematics. Evidence was available from a 5 year follow-up study of students who took 'A' levels in 1988. There were substantial differences between institutions in the extent to which students were attracted into mathematics, that is in the "Pulling Power" of mathematics departments. Focusing on students who appeared sufficiently able to have taken mathematics at A-level it was found that those who did and who were in high "Pulling Power" institutions, reported, 5 years later, a higher quality of life and a higher expectation for salaries than similarly able students who had been in institutions with low "Pulling Power" for mathematics and who had taken English at A-level.     

Switching Schools? A Closer Look at Parents' Initial Interest in and Knowledge About the Choice Provisions of No Child Left Behind

Whether public and private school choice initiatives usher in widespread enrollment changes or whether they cater to a small niche of students critically depends on the decisions that parents make on behalf of their children. Thus far, participation rates in most programs have proved disappointing. This article focuses on parents' knowledge of and interest in the choice provisions under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), for which a miniscule percentage of qualifying students nationwide have enlisted. Drawing from a survey of Massachusetts public school parents completed in the summer of 2003, 18 months after NCLB's enactment, two basic findings emerge. First, although parents claimed to be familiar with NCLB, the vast majority of those who in fact qualified for the act's choice provisions did not know that their child's school was on the state's list of underperforming schools. Second, parents with children in underperforming schools were especially interested in pursuing alternative schooling options. This interest, however, did not derive from pointed dissatisfaction with their current schools, and it was regularly directed toward options that NCLB does not afford-specifically, private schools. An essential point underscores these findings: If advocates of NCLB are to boost participation rates, and if scholars are to accurately predict the likely scope of other kinds of school choice programs, parents require considerably greater attention than they have received up until now.     

A comparison of the development of spatial conceptual abilities of students from two cultures

Efforts are underway to determine if there are any ways unique to Navajo thinking and thus to the way that they might learn. Studies have shown a consistent lag in achievement levels for Native Americans. The purpose of this investigation was to examine spatial thinking abilities of sixth and tenth grade students from 2 locales—a school on the Navajo Reservation and schools in Mesa, Arizona. A battery of 10 Piagetian-type tasks were administered individually to the subjects. A chi-square one sample procedure was used to test for significant differences between subsamples at each grade level. Significant differences were detected for two of the tasks at the sixth grade level, and one task at the tenth grade level. The overall findings of this study support the contention that there were no substantial time delays or advances in the development of selected spatial abilities of Navajo sixth and tenth grade students compared to those of parallel non-American Indian students. The concern of modifying instruction in science courses in order to adapt them to supposed 'different' spatial structures possessed by Navajo students appears to be unfounded.     

School Choice in London,England: Characteristics of Students in Different Types of Secondary Schools

In England, parents make “choices” (in reality, “preferences”) for the state-maintained secondary schools they wish their child to attend. If there are more applicants than places, the school's published admissions criteria are used to give priority to applicants. This article examines how school composition in London varies by first comparing schools that are overtly academically selective with those that are nominally “comprehensive” (“all ability”); second, comparing “comprehensive” schools that control their own admissions with those that do not; third, comparing schools with and without selective admissions criteria; and fourth, comparing schools that use religious criteria with those that do not. We find that school compositions vary. Academically selective schools have fewer students from poor households than comprehensive schools in the same area and have fewer Black and more Indian and Chinese/Other Asian students. Comprehensive schools with autonomy over admissions admit higher attaining students and have fewer students from poor households and with special educational needs, and those with selective admissions criteria admit higher performing children. There are fewer Bangladeshi/Pakistani students and more Black students in schools with a religious character than in those without. Although a range of factors are likely to play a role in explaining the variation in school composition, the evidence suggests that there is “selecting in” and “selecting out” of more desirable students by some schools. Implications for policy are highlighted.     

The effect of peer group stability on achievements: Evidence from Poland

This article reports on a study using data from nation-wide standardised examinations in Poland. We analysed the extent to which grade 9 student achievements have depended on the stability of their peer group over the course of middle school. We controlled for the fixed effects of schools attended by the students, as well as for individual achievements prior to middle school enrolment. To mitigate the risk for endogeneity, analysis was informed by a consideration of the fact that middle schools operate in different institutional relations with nearby primary schools. This also allowed us to distinguish between the effect related to peer group stability and the one connected to the stability of the learning environment in general. The results of our analysis show that instability significantly reduces students' expected performance in mathematics and science. The impact of peer group stability on test achievements varies strongly across the student ability distribution. Very low-performing students and top performers were most affected. The average students were largely unaffected. One category of students that seems to benefit from the change when moving to middle school are students from very competitive primary schools who have average skills.     

Secondary modern schools: are their pupils disadvantaged?

There are still 10 English local educational authorities (LEAs) that are wholly selective and a further 10 with some grammar and secondary modern schools. This article examines the academic performance of pupils in secondary modern schools and the funding of these schools using national data sets matching pupils' performance at Key Stage 2 and General Certificate of Education (GCSE) as well as data on funding from Section 52 statements. Students in secondary modern schools gained one less grade on average than equivalent students in comprehensive schools while grammar school pupils obtained five grades more. After taking account of the cost factors and grant entitlements that influence funding per pupil, secondary modern schools in the years 2000/01–2002/03 were funded around £80 less per pupil while grammar school pupils received over £100 more per pupil compared to comprehensive schools. Secondary modern schools were more likely to be in financial deficit than comprehensive and particularly grammar schools. Thus, students are academically disadvantaged by attending secondary modern schools, which in most selective LEAs do not receive sufficient additional funding to offset the depressing effects on attainment of the increased social segregation arising from a selective system.     

苦学、混日子或放弃：高考改革背景下县中农村高中生的日常学习

近年来,以农村生源为主的县中升学状况不容乐观。许多研究将其归咎于超级中学抢夺县中的优质生源和优秀教师,鲜有研究留意到高考改革背景下农村高中生的日常学习行动。本文借助布迪厄的实践理论分析河南省一所县中农村学生在高考改革后“学”的常规实践：苦学、混日子或放弃。由于家庭文化资源匮乏、学校教学方式僵化,苦学成为农村学生竞逐升学机会的基本途径。然而,随着高考改革越来越强调活学活用,农村学生的苦学成为死读书,很难在高考中脱颖而出。在强烈感知到苦学效用有限时,他们诉诸混日子或弃考。本文指出,扭转县中升学困局有赖于调整农村学生付出学业努力的方式,而改变学校僵化的教学方式至关重要。     

Making 'Good Citizens': The social and political attitudes of PGCE students

This article arises from a research project examining the understanding of 'citizenship' amongst trainee teachers in UK primary and secondary schools. The study covers attitudes to a broad range of social, political and moral issues and examines how these affect the students' perception of the socio-political dimension of their future professional role. Tracking a group of students through their postgraduate training year highlights the relationship between the individual's political world-view and their response to the school experience. One of the key findings is the high degree of political disengagement and cynicism about the operation of democracy in the UK; this is particularly strong amongst the youngest students, those coming to adulthood during the 1990s. Although the majority of students are positively inclined to fostering 'good citizenship values' in schools, there was much confusion over what it means to be 'a good citizen'. The concept of 'citizenship' was felt to be tainted with negative imagery, although a sense of 'being part of a community' was thought to be vital for social cohesion. In addition to this, a small minority of students displayed social attitudes and values incompatible with a pluralist, tolerant society. The teacher education experience did not appear to have given students a clear picture of what to teach or how to teach it, and both the pressures of the National Curriculum and the changing climate of schooling, favouring a more 'traditionalist' approach, may result in a greater unwillingness to tackle challenging issues.     

Social,Moral and Religious Attitudes of Secondary School Students

In Australian schools, "inclusion" is a term that is used to challenge a previously narrow focus on students with disabilities and their integration within and distribution amongst "mainstream" schools and classrooms. Nevertheless, this article argues that, as a concept, "inclusion" requires further broadening and deepening, particularly in arenas of practice, if it is to serve the interests of all students. Informed by notions of recognitive justice, the paper advocates rethinking inclusion to accommodate student differences in more socially just ways - emphasising students' contributions rather than their disabilities - and what this means for the organisation of classrooms and schools. Within the article, research data are focused primarily on students with learning disabilities and draw on twenty semi-structured interviews conducted with parents and teachers across six Australian state primary and secondary schools. Three sets of conditions are proposed as necessary for inclusive classroom and school processes: specifically, those that promote self-identity and respect, self expression and development and selfdetermination and decision-making.     

Emotional and behavioural difficulties: the effects of structures,ethos and understandings on provision in Irish post-primary schools

Emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) in mainstream schools in Ireland attract much attention and significant resources, yet little research has been conducted in the Irish context about how this concept is understood by practitioners, what influences that understanding nor how that influences provision in schools. This paper is based on the findings of a study which investigated these issues among principals, special education teachers and guidance counsellors in mainstream post-primary schools, employing questionnaires (n = 36) and semi-structured interviews (n = 10). Several themes are presented regarding how EBD is conceptualised and responded to. The findings of the study suggest definitions of EBD appear to focus mostly on intrapersonal characteristics of students and suggest a resignation in the attitude of practitioners. The effectiveness of behaviour policies is ambiguous due to an imperative to produce written policies in many areas, traditional views of the homogeneity of the school population and a tendency to rely on SEN policy to address EBD issues. Responses to EBD vary considerably. Responsibility for most aspects of the school experience of students presenting with EBD appears to rest predominantly with special education teachers, even where there is access to guidance counsellors. Gender impacts on several of these issues, particularly in the type of language used in schools when discussing EBD.     

Literacy Pedagogies that may 'make a difference'

In this paper we analyse literacy pedagogies in a state-designated disadvantaged secondary school. The specific purpose of the analysis is to identify modes of pedagogy that may make a difference in the overall literacy outcomes of students attending these schools in general, and targeted 'at risk' groups including Samoan students. Interview data collected from Samoan paraprofessionals working in low socio-economic schools, in addition to the research literature on Pacific Islander students, are used to identify salient features of effective pedagogies. This information is used to orient the analysis of classroom data collected from one case study secondary school. The analytic focus is on the accomplishment of disruptive student behaviour within the enactment of everyday classroom interaction; specifically, the transition between whole class spoken preparatory discourse and individual seatwork. The analytic framework consists of concepts from Basil Bernstein's sociological theory of pedagogy that give purchase on the explicitness of teacher control of 'the what' of instruction (content or subject matter) and 'the how' (interactive forms of teacher–student relations). The general finding of the study is that less explicit teacher control of the selection and organisation of knowledge is associated with the disruptive student behaviours identified as sources of disadvantage by the Samoan paraprofessionals. In addition, some general features of literacy pedagogies that may 'make a difference' in educational outcomes for students enrolled in the designated disadvantaged secondary school are identified.