Using Information to Promote Equal Opportunities and Improve Decision‐making

This article explores how information can be used to assist policy‐makers and practitioners: an issue central to the work of Desmond Nuttall. The narrative draws on Desmond Nuttall's work as Director of the Research and Statistics Branch of the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) and on seminars and workshops which the author ran jointly with him after the abolition of the ILEA. The paper focuses particularly on equality of opportunity.     

Typing with My Left Foot

The ILEA Resource Centre for Motor and Associated Communication Handicaps at Charlton Park School, London, finds that a considerable number of athetoid children in ILEA schools choose to type with their left foot, reports the centre's director, Edna Nicol     

Strategic decision making in higher education

One of the main objects of the recently developed policy for Dutch higher education regards the creation of a more diversified higher education system with flexible and adaptive institutions. The nature of the proposed system should, among other things, reveal itself in meaningful and discriminating institutional profiles, based on strategic institutional choices. This article reflects on the degree to which these objects are realized. After the introduction of the new planning system in Dutch higher education, the article deals with the possibility of strategic planning in higher education institutions in general. Three different, but not necessary independent, models are distinguished: the linear strategy model, the adaptive strategy model and the interpretive strategy model. It is argued that the latter model can be applied best to higher education institutions. Some evidence on strategic planning in Dutch higher education illustrates the practice in this field. Empirical evidence shows that the governmental aim to increase the diversity in Dutch higher education is not very successful up till now. On the contrary, it seems that various homogenizing developments emerge. The concept of institutional isomorphism helps to explain some of the problems institutions encounter when trying to formulate and implement their strategies.     

Teacher strategies to support the social participation of students with SEBD in the regular classroom

It is known that schoolteachers have difficulties supporting students with Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties (SEBD) in inclusive classroom settings. Despite the literature providing strategies for schoolteachers, little is known about strategy use in daily practice to influence the social participation of students with SEBD, and whether different strategies are used for students with different types of SEBD. Accordingly, the aim of this study was twofold: (1) to identify which strategies are suggested by primary schoolteachers as influencing the social participation of students with SEBD in the inclusive classroom; and (2) to investigate whether primary schoolteachers suggest different strategies for students with internalising and externalising behavioural difficulties. Qualitative data were collected through focus group meetings with Dutch primary schoolteachers (N = 41) and analysed with a multi-grounded theory approach. This resulted in a conceptual model demonstrating that the participants not only suggest strategies primarily focused on supporting social participation, but also suggest pre-conditional strategies, despite the differences between internalising and externalising behavioural difficulties in terms of characteristics and needs. The results are discussed in light of further investigation for schoolteacher support to meet the specific academic and social needs of all students, with or without SEBD.     

The Promise of Freedom and the Regulation of Gender-feminist pedagogy in the 1970s

This article argues that we need to understand feminist interventions- in education and other social domains- as both emancipatory and disciplining. While it is acknowledged that feminist reforms have made many positive and desirable changes in education, this article addresses the impact of these reforms from another perspective. It analyses the normative ambitions and the utopian hopes of feminist education and suggests that the Foucauldian concepts of 'technologies of the self' and 'governmentality' offer new and fruitful ways for theorising the relation between (feminist) strategies of social, educational and personal reform. These arguments are explored in dialogue with a historical case study of 1970s feminist pedagogical reforms in Australia. The article interprets pedagogical strategies based on sex-role socialisation models as developing techniques for regulating and remaking the self and as productive of feminist truths about gender identity and difference. These pedagogies articulated feminist ambitions to reform the sex role and to produce non-sexist, self-monitoring and androgynous pupils. Such attempts to remake gender illustrate some of the ways in which feminism, while a critical social movement which has achieved genuinely emancipatory outcomes, is also necessarily a governmental and normative practice. Finally, this article underlines the imperative for properly historical and self-reflexive accounts of familiar and favoured narratives about the promise of feminism.     

Learning Environment Perceptions of European University Students

This article describes a study of the experiences of 610 Dutch students and 241 European students who studied at least three months abroad within the framework of an international exchange program. The Dutch students went to a university in another European country and the foreign students went to a Dutch university. Using a new questionnaire called the Inventory of Perceived Study Environment (IPSE), students, perceptions of eight characteristics of the university learning environment were measured concerning the home university, the host university and the ideal learning environment. With this instrument, the learning environment can be described in terms analogous to the learning strategies performed. Large differences were found between the different countries in university learning environments, but students from different countries had strikingly similar opinions concerning their desired learning environment. There was a strong preference for activating instruction with a low threshold in teacher-student interaction and more room for student alternatives.     

The administration of feminism in education: revisiting and remembering narratives of gender equity and identity

This article examines challenges in writing histories of feminist reforms in schooling and educational administration. The focus is gender equity reforms in Australian schools since the 1970s, looking at how those earlier interventions are now remembered, represented and forgotten, in policy memory and collective narratives. Such feminist endeavours were part of the policy landscape and the administration of schools during the 1970s and 80s. I argue that feminist agendas can also be examined as themselves sites for managing the conduct of teachers and students and for regulating new forms of identity and social relations. These paradoxical aspects of feminist reform are analysed through a Foucauldian lens. The discussion identifies contextual themes in JEAH before considering debates within gender and feminist history. A revisiting mood has initiated a stocktake of the stories told not only about feminism but also the accounts feminism gives of itself. Extending this, I propose that critical attention to memory and the movement of received and revised historical narratives is vital for analysing the legacies of feminist reforms and how they might be (re)animated in the present. More broadly, it is suggested that attention to policy memory offers fruitful directions for historical studies of educational administration.     

Meaningful participation for children in the Dutch child protection system: A critical analysis of relevant provisions in policy documents

Policymakers are increasingly focusing on the participation of children in the child protection system (CPS). However, research shows that actual practice still needs to be improved. Embedding children’s participation in legislation and policy documents is one important prerequisite for achieving meaningful participation in child protection practice. In this study, the participation of children in the Dutch CPS under the new Youth Act 2015 is critically analyzed. National legislation and policy documents were studied using a model of “meaningful participation” based on article 12 of the UNCRC. Results show that the idea of children’s participation is deeply embedded in the current Dutch CPS. However, Dutch policy documents do not fully cover the three dimensions of what is considered to be meaningful participation for children: informing, hearing, and involving. Furthermore, children’s participation differs among the organizations included in the child protection chain. A clear overall policy concerning the participation of children in the Dutch CPS is lacking. The conclusions of this critical analysis of policy documents and the framework of meaningful participation presented may provide a basis for the embedding of meaningful participation for children in child protection systems of other countries.     

Universities and the Development of Social Capital in Bulgaria: New Strategies for Change

This article offers some thoughts on the idea that universities can and should contribute to the development of social capital in countries undergoing profound social change, like Bulgaria. It discusses the role of universities in the transformation and development of civil society through an examination of institutional capacities for innovation and change. An analysis of the new responsibilities assumed through the social mission of universities reveals obstacles to the implementation of their strategies for the development of human capital. A consideration of the policy context identifies two different policy approaches to higher education that give rise to contrasting strategies for change. These are further explored in terms of institutional employment‐related strategies and policies for the transmission of cultural values.     

Feminist Policy Analysis: Expanding Traditional Social Work Methods

In an effort to move the methodology of policy analysis beyond the traditional and artificial position of being objective and value-free, this article is a call to those working and teaching in social work to consider a feminist policy analysis lens. A review of standard policy analysis models is presented alongside feminist models. Such a comparison should help practitioners and educators work and train students to advance understandings of society beyond the androcentric norms. Of significance is how the inclusion of feminist policy analysis in social work curricula can assist with program accreditation.     

Calling for change: A feminist approach to women in art,politics, philosophy and education

Abstract

Michel Foucault showed by his genealogical method that history is random. It comprises sites of disarray and dispersal. In those sites, Simone de Beauvoir wrote philosophy through lived experience of woman as Other in relation to man as the Absolute. Here lies a fecund site for revisionist analysis of female cultural production and its relevance to a philosophy of education. The paper works with a feminist approach to the politics of knowledge, examining textual and political strategies in the recording of history and the ‘othering’ of women through dominant cultural discourses. Infusing this discussion is a feminist politics of interrogation on cultural change for women. The paper investigates contributions of women to fields of art, politics, education and philosophy, and to the ways their contributions have been considered, received, positioned. Different approaches to feminism become apparent in the different conditions of knowledge under discussion. This leads to a final consideration of feminist challenges in context of the politics of neoliberalism as it seeks to identify a feminist potential for ‘a cleansing fire’. The interventions in this paper trace political strategies and challenges for a philosophy of education to keep the momentum of feminist histories and issues to the forefront of scholarly enquiry and political/social action.     

“Back to the Backlash?” Primary Practitioner Discourses of Resistance to Gender-inclusive Policies

In this article I discuss how observed discourses of resistance indicate the exclusion of the standpoint of primary school practitioners from feminist theorization, as well as the exclusion of feminist perspectives from primary school practice. I do so from a feminist position which sees the modernist policy framework of the gender-inclusive curriculum as still having transformative potential in the postmodern era, whilst also perceiving the need for much more specific analysis of the varied discourses of resistance. The data is selected from a wider longitudinal case study that investigated the conceptualization and enactment of a gender-inclusive curriculum policy in the state of Victoria in Australia since 1975. I focus this discussion on interviewed “exemplars” who observed primary practitioner resistance to gender inclusive curriculum policy. I conclude that this case study empirically demonstrates the failure of “backlash” in accounting for the significant specificities of primary practitioner discourses of resistance.     

Kairos and the time of gender equity policy in Australian schooling

ABSTRACT

Almost 20 years ago the Australian government released Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools (1997). It was adopted by all states but almost immediately disappeared from sight after a conservative change of government. This was followed by the dismantling of gender equity units in each state, and a turn to boys’ education that eclipsed the more complex strategies and theoretical underpinnings of the Framework. This paper takes up the Gender Equity Framework (1997) as a case of policy emergence, mutation and dissipation. In particular, it attends to feminist temporality, and its affective force, to begin to trouble conventional accounts of these policy shifts. Close readings of sections of the policy document and of interviews with policy actors working at that time are analysed through the notion of kairos – timeliness, or political actions that open opportunities, breaks and ruptures – in order to provide new insights into the policy moment of gender equity in Australian schooling.     

The struggle for comprehensive education in the Netherlands: the representation of secondary school innovation in Dutch newspaper articles in the 1970s

This article focuses on how Dutch newspapers represented the debate in the Netherlands in the 1970s on comprehensive education and thus influenced the Dutch Middle School experiment. Wiborg’s identification of key factors of success in Scandinavia was used as a point of reference. The article shows that these key factors did not exist in the Netherlands because of the polarisation of liberals and social democrats. Furthermore, the article shows how newspapers played different roles, varying from disseminators of new ideas to sparking debate and from communicators of political views to a barometer, consequently influencing the political strategies chosen.     

张玲译作中的女性主义干涉方式研究

西方女性主义翻译理论是女性主义与译学结合的产物。分属女性主义翻译理论的女性主义干预性翻译强调女性主义译者如何操纵语言干涉意义的生产以影响目的语文化。在翻译策略上,女性主义译者要求对翻译文本进行以女性主义为价值取向的干涉和改写。本文以我国著名的翻译家张玲的翻译作品为研究对象,试探究张玲在其翻译过程中所采用的女性主义翻译干涉方式。     

创造性叛逆——女性主义话语策略及其翻译观

女性主义翻译观认为翻译是译者／女性实现其理论及政治主张的载体,主张翻译采用女性主义话语策略,使翻译活动为译者／女性提供话语生存空间。本文主要论述了女性主义翻译的三种主要实践方式：增补、劫持以及加写前言和脚注,旨在探讨女性主义翻译在翻译策略上实现文学翻译的创造性叛逆,从而实现其男女平权的政治诉求。     

Uncoupling the Articulation Between Girls' Education and Tradition in Tanzania

This article explores theoretical and historical problems associated with representations of gender and race in the Third World. Using a feminist cultural studies approach, the author examines representations associated with the concept of African tradition that have shaped colonial and post-colonial education policy for girls in Tanzania. Archival materials from missionary, colonial, and African sources reveal the multiple and often conflicting views of tradition conveyed through programmes intended to increase African girls' participation in school. The uses of tradition in colonial policy making are compared with its meanings in contemporary educational programmes for girls in an attempt to further feminist scholarship and action around the issue of girls' education.     

New perspectives on an old problem: the position of women academics in British higher education

Women academics in Britain are an elite group among women. Nevertheless, there is abundant evidence that they are disproportionately in lower grades and less secure posts than their male counterparts. These are longstanding inequities which appear to have been met with complacency rather than commitments to bring about change. This paper draws upon feminist theory to outline a range of perspectives which can be used to analyze this situation. Different approaches define the problem differently: it can be located in sex-typed socialization; family-career role conflicts; under-investment in women's education; sex discrimination; or the working of capitalism and patriarchy. The strategies which follow from each approach are discussed and evaluated. Certain features of the British university system may operate to the detriment of women, and there is no network of powerful liberal feminist organizations that can act as a watchdog to safeguard their interests. The unsettled situation of higher education in Britain would seem to make this an inauspicious time to initiate reform, but there are contradictions which might be a basis for feminist action. Socialist and radical feminist frameworks go further than liberal ones in making sense of the entrenched inequalities and resistance to change. Yet there is a case for pursuing liberal feminist strategies, at least in the short run.     

Tracking the nomadic life of the educational researcher: What future for feminist public intellectuals and the performative university?

Is the idea of the liberal university dead, has the postmodern university any chance of being emancipatory, has the theory-practice divide merely collapsed in an era of ‘new knowledge work’, or has the university just become one aspect of market states and global capitalism? Knowledge-based economies locate universities as central to the commodification and management of knowledge, while at the same time the legitimacy of the university and the academic as knowledge producers is challenged by postmodernist, feminist, post-colonial and indigenous claims within a wider trend towards the ‘democratisation of knowledge’ and a new educational instrumentalism and opportunism. What becomes of the educational researcher, and indeed their professional organisations, in this changing socio-political and economic scenario? Is our role one of policy service, policy critique, technical expert or public intellectual? In particular what place is there for feminist public intellectuals in a so-called era of postfeminism and public-private convergence? The paper draws on feminist and critical perspectives to mount a case for the importance of the public intellectual in the performative postmodern university.     

Poststructural feminist pedagogy in English instruction of vocational-and-technical education

The purpose of this study was to develop a poststructural feminist pedagogical model and to investigate whether vocational-and-technical college students receiving poststructural feminist instruction would exhibit better learning achievement and critical thinking ability, and express greater satisfaction with their classes than those receiving traditional instruction. In applying a poststructural feminist model, the researchers intended to help both the teacher and students work together to overcome the estrangement and alienation that have long been the norm in the contemporary Chinese education system. The research results show that the poststructural feminist pedagogy had a positive effect upon the participants in the experimental group. Several conclusions are elicited from the study. First, in the English language achievement post-test, the participants receiving the poststructural feminist instruction significantly outperformed those receiving the traditional banking instruction in terms of listening, vocabulary, grammar, and reading. Second, in the critical thinking ability post-test, the participants significantly outperformed those receiving the traditional banking instruction in terms of length, focus, content, organization, and style. Third, in regard to the students’ satisfaction, it was clearly shown that the students who received the instruction informed by poststructural feminist pedagogy expressed significantly greater satisfaction than those who had received traditional banking instruction in terms of instructional objective, teaching method/materials, teacher quality, class environment, and assessment.