Much Ado: ‘manpower shortages’ and educational policy reform in South Africa

This paper reviews the historical context behind the ‘manpower shortages’ argument underpinning proposed educational reform in South Africa circa 1980. It seeks to explain how such an argument became a dominant theme and ideological rationale for reform, by examining its passage through liberal reformist discourse into official state‐appointed commission reports. The paper then considers why the ‘manpower shortages’ argument was taken up at that particular time, and argues that it was part of an overall “Total Strategy’ for commodifying black labour through education in the face of the manifest failure of Bantu Education to achieve this end. The paper concludes by discussing briefly the failure of this strategy, and the disappearance of the ‘manpower shortages’ theme from arguments for educational reform.     

Comparative education,the ‘New Paradigm’ and policy borrowing: constructing knowledge for educational reform

Education reform in England is increasingly portrayed as a quest to create ‘world class’ schools through the transfer of features of ‘high performing’ school systems. The demand for evidence to support policy borrowing has been serviced by an influential intermediary network, which uses international data banks to compare education systems, and to identify and promote evidence of ‘what works’. The approach to comparisons has been portrayed as a ‘New Paradigm’ by its advocates, and whilst the network has been extensively critiqued, this has largely focused on its deviation from the norms of academic comparative education. This article explores how the ‘New Paradigm’ operates, identifying its inherent features and the strategies used to overcome the methodological issues associated with policy borrowing. This is pursued through an analysis of the rationale; assumptions; underlying ideology; methodology; omissions and silences; dealing with critics; and language and presentation of four of its influential publications.     

‘The more things change…?’: the Thatcher years and educational reform in Scotland

The period of the Thatcher Government continues to have special significance for politics and governance in Scotland. In the 11 years of the Thatcher Government, landmark legislation and reforms affected key areas of the Scottish society and economy. Education featured prominently in the Thatcherite agenda in Scotland. In Scotland, the education system’s association with national identity had particular implications for educational policy making and implementation in Scotland under the Thatcher Government. The distinctiveness of the Scottish education system presented particular problems for a government intent on challenging the social democratic consensus. Opposition to the Thatcher Government, especially its perceived attack on the social democratic underpinnings of the welfare state which included the state schooling system, re‐ignited the home rule campaign in Scotland in the late 1980s. The article examines both key legislation, namely the Education (Scotland) Act 1981, the School Board (Scotland) Act 1988 and the Self‐Governing Schools etc. (Scotland) Act 1989, and also key non‐legislative reforms to curriculum and assessment under the Thatcher Government in the area of public (state) schooling. The article argues that these reforms continue to influence the educational policy debates in Scotland today.     

Understanding: ‘Knowledge’, ‘Belief’ and ‘Understanding’

The following paper is intended as an exercise in friendly criticism of one of Harvey Siegel's and Mike Smith's (Knowing, Believing and Understanding, this volume). I'm in substantial sympathy with the general thrust of their paper and my remarks merely provide some criticism of their discussion's conceptual coherence and clarity and a correspondingly slightly adjusted version of what they have to say. My focus is limited to the conceptions of knowledge, belief and understanding and their inter-relationships in terms of which they offer suggestions to science educators.     

‘Impact’, educational influence and the practice of shared expertise

This paper argues that participants and locals should be seen as at the centre of all development, including international and health development work. Consequently, in contexts of health and wellbeing, patients should be seen as active participants, which also implies the need for the independence and freedom of all and the development of dialogical spaces in which all may negotiate what counts as a life worth living. ‘Impact’, on this view, should be seen from a lifeworld perspective of evaluating the effects of dynamic evolving practices where all are seen potentially as donors and beneficiaries within contexts of mutually negotiated reciprocal relationships. Data drawn from extensive fieldwork with local trauma surgeons, midwives and healthcare personnel in rural Cambodia provide the basis of new perceptions about processes of ‘passing on’ knowledge and expertise. The ideas presented have potential implications for normative understandings of the social organisation of healthcare in domestic and international settings.     

‘Soft power’, educational governance and political consensus in Brazil

This paper is concerned with the longstanding question of policy for those referred to nearly half a century ago by the Crowther Report as the ‘bottom half’; those mainly working class children who, in a sense, are ‘selected for failure’. The issue of selection is a matter of concern in countries around the world and has been at the centre of renewed political debate in Britain during 2005–2006. Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair has been keen to advance a policy of ‘freeing‐up’ secondary schools so as to provide ‘diversity’ and ‘more choice for parents and pupils’. Critics regard such a policy as involving ‘selection by other means’. This paper discusses questions of social class and inequality that are bound‐up with the issue of selection. The paper provides an account of ‘Blairite’ New Labour policy and discusses its closeness to new right education policy. The paper concludes with a discussion of radical proposals and observations on the prospects for the future.     

‘Mature regionalism’ and the genesis of ‘functional projects’: ‘educational regionalism’ in small (and micro-states)

This article advances that the movement towards ‘deeper’ Caribbean integration has generated a shift from ‘immature’ regionalism to a ‘mature’ form of regionalism. Thus, mature regionalism, a new governance mechanism, in regulating the institutional and legal framework of Caribbean Single Market and Economy is drastically altering national education governance within the Caribbean Community. In focusing on the functional aspects integration, this article suggests that mature regionalism in education is built upon collaborative governance and encompasses multipartner governance arrangement – with the state, private sector, civil society, and the community as well as hybrid public–private and private–social partnerships and co-management regimes. It concludes that the instrumentalisation of mature regionalism in education is giving way to ‘educational regionalism’ defined by the movement towards structured institutional mechanisms, to facilitate the deepening of Caribbean integration.     

Exploring the educational aspirations–expectations gap in eighth grade students: implications for educational interventions and school reform

Over the past three decades, more and more students are expressing a desire to attend college, yet for many members of disenfranchised groups, this goal is often not attained. While many factors contribute to these disparities, research has shown that students begin adjusting their expectations (what they think they can achieve) for the future in relation to their idealised aspirations (what they would like to achieve). The current study explores this gap among 207 eighth grade students from two urban middle schools. Using the School Attitude Assessment Survey-Revised, three factors were found to predict expectations which matched student aspirations. These factors were academic motivation and self-regulating behaviours, academic self-perception and attitudes towards teachers. Implications for educational interventions and school reform are discussed.     

‘The lady is not returning!’: educational precarity and a social haunting in the UK coalfields

Drawing on research in de-industrialised coal-mining communities in the north of England, this article focuses on how experiences of some young people might be approached through a notion of precarity linked to the idea of a ‘social haunting’ of the coalfields. Concentrating on data gathered in the period after the 2010 change of UK government, the article considers how localities suffering under the impact of ‘austerity’ measures have also witnessed moments of vivid, carnivalesque resurgence linked to celebrations of the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in April 2013 and of the thirtieth anniversary of the 1984–1985 UK miners’ strike during 2014–2015. These celebrations mark a watershed in the cultural and affective life of the communities, one aspect of which relates to how young people with very different educational trajectories have become involved alongside each other in those events as a result of their different experiences of precarity.     

Boys’ educational ‘underachievement’ in the Caribbean: interpreting the ‘problem’

Education ministries in the Caribbean countries have directed considerable attention over the last decade to ‘solving’ the ‘problem’ of boys’ underachievement. Rather than considering such interventions, our central concern in this paper is to revisit debates about the interpretation of the issue, to explore whether boys’ underachievement is indeed a ‘problem’, in the sense of both an empirical reality and an issue requiring political attention. In this paper, we explore contestations over the reality and complexity of educational underachievement and whether this relates to broader political–economic marginalisation (or privileging) of boys. We turn then to explore the relationship between material realities and gendered subjectivities. Overall, we argue that boys’ underachievement should neither be ignored nor be the exclusive focus of attention and that a move from ‘boys’ underachievement’ to a broader analysis of ‘gender and education’ is needed, to place the debate in a gender relational context.     

Creating home–school partnerships: examining urban and suburban teachers’ practices,challenges, and educational needs

This study examines suburban and urban teachers’ family involvement practices, challenges they face in involving families, and their educational needs. A questionnaire was administered to 89 teachers. Data were coded using a constant comparative analysis. Codes were analyzed to determine the number of teachers whose responses fell into each category and by comparing suburban and urban teachers’ responses. Results of this study suggest that although urban and suburban teachers share some similarities in terms of their practices, challenges, and needs, a number of differences were evident. Overall, suburban teachers’ responses were more detailed and included specific strategies. We also found that urban teachers’ interests in further education did not necessarily align with the areas in which they reported challenges.     

‘Picturesque and dramatic’ or ‘dull recitals of threadbare fare’: good practice in history teaching in elementary schools in England, 1872–1905

This article draws on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century teaching manuals, reports of Her Majesty's Inspectors, history textbooks (‘readers’), other administrators' and teachers' accounts, policy documents and pupils' reminiscences to refute common and generalised assessments of the period (often by those who have not looked closely at these specific sources) that the teaching of history was a negative and boring experience, limited mainly and simply to reading comprehension of lengthy pages devoid of timelines and visual materials. The article concentrates on the experience of English elementary schools and draws comparisons between past and present teaching approaches. The findings show that there is extant evidence that there did exist in the late Victorian period clear conceptions of how to make history accessible to children, many of which reflect current best practice in the subject. They also show that many leading educationalists, and probably the teachers who read them, were aware of the need to make the subject accessible to children. The pupils themselves have left very little evidence of their experience, but some pupils were enabled to develop picturesque understandings of the past of benefit to their lives beyond the classroom.     

‘It's not bullying’, ‘It's just a joke’: Teacher and student discursive manoeuvres around gendered violence

Threats or harassment related to the enforcement of gender norms remain largely unchallenged in many schools. Possibilities for meaningful interventions have been undermined by an over-reliance on individual, psycho-pathologised understandings of ‘bullying’ and a reluctance to examine contextual and socio-cultural mechanisms of power. Poststructural feminist approaches offer an alternative view of gendered violence and its responses—one that focuses on the meanings that individuals and groups constitute through discourse around gender, violence and ‘bullying’. This article examines focus group data from teachers and students from one Australian school that experienced a significant event of gendered violence referred to as ‘Kick a slut in the head day’. Results demonstrate that participants minimised or dismissed the ‘seriousness’ of this event through employing particular ‘discursive manoeuvres’ drawn from hegemonic discourses of ‘bullying’. Teachers utilised essentialist discourses to illustrate that the incident was ‘not bullying’, while students suggested that it was a ‘joke’ or that the girl/s were deserving of the treatment. These findings suggest that ‘discursive manoeuvres’ are a helpful indicator for understanding contextual resistance to addressing gendered violence.