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.     

Dialectics and dilemmas: psychosocial dimensions of ability grouping policy

Ability grouping in schools and classrooms constitutes something of a policy hiatus in the Australian context, in contrast to the conspicuous visibility of equity and quality as explicit policy goals. This article examines what I am calling the dialectics – i.e. moments of negation that allow for creation – and dilemmas inhering in the complex and contradictory relationship between policy priorities of quality and equity, and practices of ability grouping, in Australian schooling. I explore these dialectics and dilemmas between these dimensions both at a macro, social level of policy and at a micro, psychological level of the teacher as a policy worker, exploring the latter through a vignette of one pre-service teacher grappling with issues of ability grouping in schools and classrooms. The article concludes with an argument for the value of generating continual dialectical exchange between the conscious and the unconscious, between the imaginary and symbolic registers, between psychotherapeutic and educational discourses and between policy and practice, as an essential element in ongoing formation of ethically and politically agentive teacher identities that are capable of holding policy to account in a climate that often positions teachers as educational technicians and curricular transmitters.     

The responsible parent and networks of support: A case study of school engagement in a challenging environment

Research, policy and practice on education in recent years has focused attention on the mediating role that parents play in children's schooling. Parents have been constructed as responsible agents; as consumers, investors and partners in the performance-oriented educational project. Much of the literature has looked at parent–school relations from the vantage point of parents, particularly parents in disadvantaged areas. Less has been written on how parent–school relations look from a school's perspective. In this article we draw on data from a case study English school in a socio-economically deprived area and explore the nature of the construct ‘responsible parent’ from the perspectives of teaching staff. We utilise data from semi-structured interviews with teaching staff in one case study school located on the outskirts of an English city. Through the data we outline teachers’ conceptions of parents and an emerging network of engagement incorporating parents as part of a broader social and education project in schools. We argue that a dominant construct, the responsible parent, has resonances with the ways that teachers conceptualise parents. At the same time, the case study school inhabits a dual institutional space: it is captured within a neo-liberal discourse on the responsible parent as a key conduit for an outcomes-oriented education project and also goes beyond the narrow confines of formal educational structures in offering ‘challenging’ parents social and emotional support in connecting with their children and their schooling.     

论仪式文化对教师教育生活的建构功能

教师的教育生活由日常生活与仪式生活构成,教育仪式参演是教师专业发展的文化途径之一。教育仪式具有象征性、展演性、神圣性和建构性,它是推进教师发展的＂第二堡垒＂。教师仪式文化通过生产教育正统、权力操演与神圣力量的御用来维持着自己的暗箱运作。教育仪式是教师教育生活的缩影、中心与范本,仪式参演是教师与时代教育精神、教育生活沟通的微妙渠道,是变革教师教育生活图式的一条捷径。     

Lesson study for learning community (LSLC): conceptualising teachers’ practices within a social justice perspective

Under neo-liberal policies in many countries, there has been an extensive trend of educational reform which intensifies competition. Such educational reform is underpinned by direct government control, seen in centre to periphery forms of policy administration and implementation with strong emphasis on managerialism and test-oriented accountability models. There are critical views and opinions about such neo-liberal reforms, but a need still exists to discuss ways forward to protect the equality and right of teachers and student learners in schooling. This essay accordingly aims to discuss how the lesson study for learning community (LSLC) approach of school reform from Japan might signal a practical shift in emphasis away from competitive models of schooling fostered by school reform movements. The aim of this study is to discuss the philosophical underpinnings of LSLC, with particular emphasis on its social justice nature, particularly in reference to criticisms against neo-liberal reform agendas.     

The significance of materiality in shaping institutional habitus: exploring dynamics preceding school effects

This article examines the objective possibilities of Swedish schools to offer an equal and functional pedagogical practice for students’ acquisition of knowledge and skills. The data consist of policy documents, observations, and interviews with students, teachers, and head teachers in three educational settings distinguished by different social demographics. The focus allows for a comparative understanding of how tangible objects generate formations of schools as a relational phenomenon depending on geographic location and social background of students. The article indicates that the impact of materiality lies in its preceding power. It shapes the condition of institutions visualised in architecture, buildings, and the quality of and design of facilities and artefacts. From this material root emanates schools’ values, appeal, social status, and pedagogical organisations – school effects – that empower or weaken the school’s attraction and self-confidence. Different materialities influence each school’s institutional habitus, producing school effects with unequal educational outcomes.     

Gender Differences in Teacher Response to School Inspection

Teachers’ responses to inspection were investigated using a questionnaire survey of a random sample of 821 secondary school teachers who had undergone a full OFSTED inspection and in‐depth interviews with a further 35 teachers. The research found that inspection causes additional stress and that female teachers, regardless of level of seniority, felt more nervous about inspection than male teachers. Both male and female teachers felt more nervous when an inspector of a different gender to themselves was observing them in the classroom. Teachers’ affective responses to inspection alter their behavioural ones, thus affecting the resultant picture not only of the school itself but also of schools in this country‐‐a picture on which future advice and policy may be based. Explanations for gender differences are sought using the frameworks of stress and power differentials.     

流动人口子女教育问题:现状与反思

当前我国流动人口子女教育问题的现状不容乐观,问题主要表现在流动人口子女的受教育机会、学业成绩、心理状况以及民工子弟学校的师资和教育教学设施等方面。流动人口子女教育反映出的众多问题实则是我国较为保守的、传统的社会管理体制不能适应和不断提升的城市化进程的必然产物。它牵涉面广,已远远超出了义务教育的范畴,也远远超出了纯粹的教育范畴,它与户籍管理、财政制度、税收政策、社会保障、公民权利等一系列社会、政治、经济问题相联系。未来流动人口子女教育政策的构建必须立足于这些复杂的、深层次的问题的解决。     

Justifying the Need for Control. Motives for Swedish National School Inspection during Two Governments

This paper analyses the political motives that underlie the increased educational control exercised by reinstalling and reinforcing school inspection during the periods of 2001–2003 and 2006–2008. These periods cover both social democratic and non-socialist governments, with different parties in office. The paper draws on an approach to scrutinize the process of problematization in public policy making applied on political policy documents. Overall, school inspection has been politically and ideologically unchallenged and justified on similar grounds by the two governments. By focusing on quality, equivalence and, in the latter period, educational and pupils' academic results, school inspection was legitimized and framed in a way that leaves no room for party political opposition.     

Gender in schools and culture: taking stock of education in Italy

When politicians discuss Italy's position in terms of achieving equality between men and women, the school environment is rarely called into question or mentioned. This is despite the fact that gender inequality remains a prominent feature of the Italian education system. The reason for this failure to perceive the problem, and the consequent lack of investment in policies for gender equality in education, derives from a massive misunderstanding: school is perceived by the public and the political class as one of the few environments within the highly sexist Italian social fabric in which equality has been achieved. On closer examination, however, it is clear that the Italian school is merely the image of a sexist society which in turn acts as the driving force for a traditional and stereotypical view of male and female roles. This article will discuss this perspective and investigate three areas of education that are problematic in gender terms: gendered educational choices; sexist stereotypes transmitted through textbooks; and the lack of adequate training for teachers.     

Educational leadership and social activism: a call for action

The purpose of this article is to argue for a social activist stance in educational leadership that fundamentally addresses social change and human emancipation. This call for social activism is framed within neoliberal, neoconservative, and authoritarian populist discourses in the USA, which to social justice educators and leaders had devastating effects on education. Empirical data from an activist high school principal, activist university professor, and activist priest reflects their development of political clarity, political capacity, political collaboration, and an ethic of risk. It is suggested that the work of socially active educational leaders needs to be broadened to include such things as public policy advocacy, networking, organising, community development, and scholarship. Finally, the article concludes with a variety of ways educational leaders can demonstrate their social, moral, and political activism as they challenge the status quo, fight for social justice, and come to understand the politicised notion of leadership.     

Special educational needs: a public issue

This article explores the contribution of sociological scholarship to understanding and analysing the notions of ‘special educational needs’ and ‘disability’ and the ways in which the two notions have been reconfigured and theorised as ‘public issues’ rather than ‘personal troubles’. Barton's contribution is signified both in terms of his contribution to the evolution of the ‘sociological imagination’ – as a powerful theoretical tool for unravelling the highly political and contested nature of disability and special educational needs – and also in terms of his analysis of the emergence and development of sociological theorising in the field. The parochial obsession with deficit and medical‐oriented approaches to dealing with ‘difference’ and ‘need’ have been significantly challenged through the ‘sociological imagination’ aimed at pointing up the highly political and complex nature of disability and ‘special educational needs’. Times have changed and sociological theorising has evolved, but presumed ‘personal troubles’ are still not unequivocally conceptualised as being intertwined with, resting upon and emanating from ‘public issues’ embedded in the social, cultural and political edifice of educational, social and national communities. The ‘sociological imagination’ should be constantly invoked and deployed in order to expose and challenge the sophisticated ways in which individual pathology accounts and special educational imperatives re‐invent themselves through more inclusive linguistic veneers.     

Elite power and educational reform: An historiographical analysis of Canada and the United States

In this article, I reopen some of the seminal theoretical debates among critical scholars on the nature of educational reform, arguing that there has been a consistent tendency in the literature to dismiss or downplay the significance of “instrumentalist” analyses in favour of cultural/hegemonic and structuralist explanations. As a result, education scholars who advance the instrumentalist emphasis on elite intervention in the policy process and the importance of organised class action have often been dismissed as one-dimensional and conspiratorial. To support this argument – and, by extension, those made by instrumentalist theorists – I bring together historical evidence from Canada and the United States in three historical periods: the mid-nineteenth century, the early twentieth century and post-Second World War. In each of these historical periods, I demonstrate how the structure and purpose of educational institutions were modified largely at the behest of economic elites (closely associated with political power and the professional educational establishment) in order to shape and implement a particular model of educational reform. Central to my argument is that powerful economic actors have always recognised the political nature of schooling and that elite class consciousness is and has been well-developed with respect to educational issues. The concluding section outlines the implications of my arguments for the future of educational reform.     

Emerging relationships between religious education and citizenship education: teachers’ perceptions and political dilemmas in Cyprus

This article explores the ways in which a group of primary school teachers in Cyprus interprets the relationship between religious and citizenship education. The contextualisation of the meaning of religious education shows the extent to which social, historical and political elements shape teachers’ perceptions about the entanglements between religious and citizenship education. In particular, the present study reveals two important findings – one concerning the conceptualisation of each school subject and their perceived relationship and the other concerning the contextualisation of this relationship in the cultural and political contexts of Cyprus. The findings also reveal important constraints and political dilemmas for the possible trajectories of ‘religious citizenship education’ in Cyprus. The article discusses the implications for curriculum and policy deliberations, as well as further research on ‘religious citizenship education’ in specific cultural and political settings.     

Subtle discourses on equality in the Finnish curricula of upper secondary education: reflections of the imagined society

Assurance of citizens’ social rights and minimization of social differences have been central tenets that have framed the educational policy of Finland and the other Nordic welfare states. Equality has been on the official agenda in educational politics and policies since the comprehensive school reforms of the 1960s and 1970s. However, the conceptualization of equality has fluctuated, reflecting the political climate in which the policy statements have been created. In this article, we analyse Finnish curricular documents concerning upper secondary education from the 1970s to the 2010s in order to find out how the aims of educational equality are presented. Drawing on different conceptualizations of equality and social justice, as well as feminist theorizations of intersectionality, we scrutinize how gendered, classed and ethnised patterns are emphasized, challenged or muted in documents. Through the longitudinal data of this study it is possible to analyse the growing impact of this neo-liberal educational restructuring into Finland, which has a reputation for equal education and excellent records in the Programme for International Student Assessment tests. Hence, we ask how the Finnish society as an imagined community is reflected in the documents of different decades.     

Paying the price for being inclusive: the story of Marshlands

This article illustrates, through the story of one mainstream primary school, the tensions between the inclusion agenda and the standards agenda. The school is situated in an area of social deprivation and nearly half of the school population have been identified as having special educational needs. The story presented in this article illustrates powerfully the inherent injustice of the performative culture which pervades education and the effects of this discourse for children with special educational needs and their teachers. I argue that a policy change is needed to create a more equitable education system and that, in the absence of such a change, schools such as the one presented here will risk being categorised as failing schools. This will have disastrous consequences for the teachers' careers, children's self‐concepts and the inclusion agenda itself.     

The teaching and learning of pupils in low-attainment sets

This study explored the ways in which schools addressed the needs of pupils in low-attainment class groups, or sets, in the context of multiple and contrary government policy directives and inconclusive research findings about setting. In this article we have focused on school and classroom practices as well as the organisational processes through which low-attaining pupils were identified, grouped and reviewed within schools. The empirical data reported here predominantly refer to case studies involving classroom observations and interviews with teachers, pupils and other staff in 13 schools – both primary and secondary – from four local authorities (LAs).

In the latter part of the article, however, we also draw on survey data collected from a larger sample of schools in 12 LAs in England. Although the study found ample evidence of innovative school practices and efforts by individual teachers aimed at optimising the learning opportunities for children in low-attainment class groups, the findings also raise important questions about some of the processes of set allocation, the lack of mobility between sets, and the over-representation of particular social groups in low-attainment classes. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for equity and inclusion that moves beyond an emphasis on classroom practice to include questions about the in-school processes of social selection and educational mobility for pupils identified as low-attaining.     

论政治象征理论在当代美国教育政策分析中的工具价值

"文字的含义蕴含在它的运用之中."政治象征理论主张,从政策的生产、传递和接受三个层面,来分析"字面上"的政策是否被实施,从而质疑语言的政治性和作为性.在政治象征理论的分析视域中,20世纪80年代保守主义阵营在公共教育政策文本中生产出"优异"与"选择"两个"象征符号",并通过"学校大辩论"实现了政策的合法化,最后在与新进步主义的"民主对话"中实现了政策的社会化.     

Theory and praxis: reflections and lessons from a bilateral educational aid programme in Guinea-Bissau

This article examines Portuguese official aid (POA) in Guinea-Bissau, based on the experience of a bilateral educational aid Programme – PASEG (2000–2012). It explores the theory and praxis (understood as instructed action) of PASEG as a complex and transversal intervention in a context of fragility and political uncertainty. It discusses the transition from an aid programme which focused mainly on the individual dimension at the school level to an approach which tried to integrate the organisational dimension and capitalise on the enabling environment. Drawing attention to the idiosyncrasy of the political, historical, cultural and social aspects of Guinea-Bissau, the article highlights the tensions which arise in the attempt to reconcile the technical/academic dimensions of project implementation with the political agendas of POA.