Centring and marginalizing: the “soft middle” and Japanese minority education

Examining the gap between national level minority education policies and local implementation in Japan, this paper considers this gap as a “soft middle” whereby local communities and schools have considerable leeway in how they implement policies. In particular, this paper focuses on Japan's largest minority group, the burakumin and their educational experiences. It traces the origins of educational policies targeting burakumin and how these policies were designed with this soft middle in mind. Following this, the paper considers two different localized approaches, both under policies directed at the burakumin and after the termination of such policies. It argues that schools can selectively implement policies while still fitting within the parameters of the law. Finally, it demonstrates that considering the soft middle provides for a richer, more nuanced understanding of educational systems, beyond monolithic assumptions of national systems.     

A Race to the Top From the Bottom of the Well? The Paradox of Race and U.S. Education Reform

Abstract

This article explores the paradox of “race” and U.S. education reform in the 21st century. I consider how the invisible ontology of race and its entangled relationship with class divert our attention from economic inequality and undermine policies intended to redress racial inequality in schools. I conclude that the education research community must unpack its use of “race” and focus on the role of racism in the maintenance of racial caste in America's schools.     

To “uplift the Aborigine” or to “uphold” Aboriginal dignity and pride? Indigenous educational debates in 1960s Australia

Abstract

The 1960s in Australia was a politically turbulent time with assimilation policies being questioned by moves in various spheres, including education, to address inequality. The late 1960s also saw the emergence of activist responses to racism as well as the groundbreaking 1967 Referendum, which called for the alteration of two clauses within the Australian Constitution that discriminated against the Indigenous population. A few months after the Referendum was held, a conference called Aborigines and Education was convened at Monash University. Education was seen to be vital in addressing what was described as “profound educational disadvantage” experienced by Indigenous people. The debates that ensued show how education was imagined to be able to solve the problems Indigenous students were encountering. In this article I confine my interest to a selection of papers and examine the features of two distinctive discourses that emerge: that of “uplifting the Aborigine” and that of “upholding” Aboriginal dignity and pride. In doing this, I demonstrate how particular “race logics” were employed and contested in these debates. I argue that the insights garnered through analysis of these discourses offer opportunities for education research and practices that are in solidarity with the emancipatory goals of marginalised communities.     

Legal Regulation and Professional Discretion in Schools

ABSTRACT

The paper aims to analyse how pupils’ equal educational opportunities are warranted. We focus on how regulations of adapted education and the right to special needs education provide school leaders’ and teachers’ room for discretionary decision-making, how it is interpreted and how discretionary power is justified. The paper draws on findings from an interdisciplinary study (education and law) on the transformation of legal standards into professional actions in schools. This paper employs interview data from three compulsory schools (grades 1–10), legal documents, and public reports, and the analysis is guided by a conceptual distinction between structural and epistemic aspects of discretion. Based on our findings, we question whether the discretionary space regarding special needs education gives too many opportunities for action and, hence, weakens pupils’ legal rights. Under the guise of a common school, there is a risk that pupils’ special needs are made invisible.     

Caciques,schools, and schoolteachers in Spain from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1920s

ABSTRACT

This article aims to show the influence of caciquism on the creation and functioning of public schools as well as its effect on the professional performance of teachers. We have used the model developed by Abram de Swaan, who suggested that three social sectors be distinguished to analyse the attitudes that spark the dissemination of literacy: the metropolitan elite; local dignitaries; and regional communities. Here, we describe and attempt to explain the uncooperative attitude of the local dignitaries or “caciques” towards public schools. The third section deals with the control of the educational administration by caciquism and the private profit that some of these local figures reaped from the budgets assigned to the public schools. Lastly, we will present examples of how the local authorities favoured schoolteachers who were political patrons of theirs and persecuted those who belonged to the opposition.     

The quotidianisation of the war in everyday life at German schools during the First World War

Abstract

The outbreak of the First World War had a powerful impact on German schools. Undoubtedly, schools were institutions of socialisation that did offer support to the war. Indeed, research has shown that a specific “war pedagogy” made an aggressive propaganda possible in the classroom. This research usually emphasises the enthusiasm for war that swept up teachers and students in schools, as in the rest of the population, in the first few months of the war. However, this emphasis on the war frenzy obscures the fact that schools were not easily transformed into war institutions. Even if schools made a great effort to align themselves with the war effort, they remained independent associations, and soon after 1914, a quotidianisation (akin to routinisation) arose within the schools. To date, source materials that show this lack of influence of wartime propaganda on schools have only been analysed in terms of what they reveal about the deprivations and hardships of schools during the war. However, records from the schools also shed light on the everyday routines that continued during the war, and such evidence calls on scholars to reconsider the conditions in schools in the First World War. This article analyses selected records including school chronicles and exam protocols from the war years and shows that school life was often distinct from war enthusiasm. A more complex view is therefore advocated of the relationship between the First World War and the German school.     

Reading at the front: books and soldiers in the First World War

Abstract

This paper focuses on the reading and educational practices of common soldiers during the First World War. It argues that the question of how war libraries were imagined and constructed by civilians needs to be framed in the larger context of pre-war Edwardian debates surrounding the “value of books” in society. Indeed, it was within this debate that “humanities activists” first sought to play a role in times of crisis, confident that the war library operation had the blessing of prominent authors. The paper analyses the experience of British self-improvers at the front, their enduring connections with adult education institutions at home and the opportunities that the war opened up to new Australasian common readers fighting as part of the colonial expeditionary forces.     

把全社会变成学生学习的大课堂——教育服务供给社会化的发展路径与监管策略

在我国教育现代化进程中,如何把全社会变成学生学习的大课堂,更好地满足人民群众的多样化教育需求,是一个亟待解决的重大现实问题。随着"互联网+教育"的发展,教育服务供给呈现出社会化趋势,为解决这一难题提供了新的可能。教育服务供给社会化是教育高质量发展和教育治理现代化的必然要求,将推动供给来源从"大包大揽"转向"多元协同",服务方式从"标准生产"转向"个性定制",教育监管从"野蛮生长"转向"有序发展"。依循这一思路,未来教育发展将从标准化走向精细化,业务分工更加细化,非核心、标准化和特需型教育业务将逐步实现服务外包。为了有效推进教育服务供给社会化的实践,一方面要积极探索学校购买教育服务的有效模式,支持学校购买教育服务,加强绩效评估和风险预防,培育教育服务新业态;另一方面,要完善新型教育服务监管机制,加强顶层设计,强化事中监管,注重行业自律,从而形成政府宏观调控、学校开放办学、社会广泛参与的治理格局。     

Choice,Competition, and Cognition: How Arizona Charter School Leaders Interpret and Respond to Market Pressures

ABSTRACT

A key goal of school choice policies is to generate competition between schools, which should theoretically drive school leaders to improve their programs to attract and retain students. However, few studies examine how principals actually perceive and define competition. This article empirically examines school leaders’ conceptions of competition and their strategic behaviors using cognitive frameworks from new institutional theory, including sensemaking theory. Drawing on data from qualitative interviews with 30 charter school leaders in Arizona, we explore how leaders’ cognitive understandings of competition influence their actions in an educational “marketplace.” We find charter school leaders make meaning of “competition” in different ways, influenced by their local contexts and their conceptions of what actions are legitimate. Our work suggests that it is important to study the meanings of competition to school leaders, as it has important implications for schools’ competitive responses and, ultimately, student outcomes. Our work has important implications for policy makers seeking to expand school choice as it sheds light on how competition works in practice, with implications for equity and access.     

“Terms of engagement” not “hard to reach parents”

This article presents findings of qualitative research commissioned by the Achievement for All project in a UK local authority. The research investigated how schools should engage parents, including those considered to be “hard to reach”. A focus group methodology was adapted to enable parents to provide answers to the research questions. The majority of parents contributing to the three focus groups were considered to be “hard to reach” by the schools that their children attended. The analysis employed an inductive thematic approach as a further means of listening to them. Main findings are presented as “a taxonomy for terms of engagement.” Implications for educational psychologists are raised.     

Understanding Integration and Policy Challenges Facing Multicultural Schools in South Africa

Abstract

This article reports on research that investigated integration challenges in multicultural schools. The inquiry followed a qualitative approach, using interviews, focus groups and open-ended questionnaires. The understanding of the integration of multicultural challenges in schools was done through the lens of critical race theory (CRT). Individual interviews were conducted with eight principals, followed by focus groups with 34 teachers, together with open-ended questionnaires which were administered to 82 participants. The findings revealed that policies on school integration present opportunities for integration but do not address the challenges of diversity in schools. The research highlighted the problem that integration is not recognised in schools although it is mandated by government policy. The research conducted highlighted the fact that it is not easy to implement a policy on integration because some schools do not see so-called “colour” in the learners. Schools alone cannot deal with and remedy the inequalities and segregation in multicultural schools, and communities should help at all levels to achieve positive transformation in schools.     

Challenging the Dichotomy Between “Urban” and “Suburban” in Educational Discourse and Policy

Abstract

This article builds a case for nuanced conceptualizations of “urban” and “-suburban” educational contexts and issues. The author analyzes data across two studies—one of upper-middle-class White parents with children in Chicago public schools, and the other of Black low-income and working-class parents who moved from Chicago to a Wisconsin suburb. The findings suggest that monolithic framings of urban and suburban educational issues and populations can mask patterns of inequality within and across particular locales.     

The effect of schools on school leavers’ university participation

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the role that schools have in determining whether school leavers participate in higher education or not. It examines the association between schools and university participation using a unique dataset of 3 cohorts of all young people leaving maintained schools in Wales. School “effects” are identified, even after controlling for individual-level factors, such as their prior attainment, socioeconomic circumstances, ethnicity, and special educational needs. Schools appear to have a particular “effect” on the likelihood that a young person enters an elite university. However, the findings suggest the concept of a school “effect” on higher education participation is not straightforward – schools appear to have different levels of effectiveness depending on the gender of the young people and the nature of their higher education participation. These findings are considered within the policy contexts of school effectiveness and widening access to higher education.     

STEM课程校本开发的国际经验与启示

在STEM教育起步阶段,课程选择是教学实践的首要问题。通过文献分析发现,“国家或地方非营利性组织机构”提供的支持或指导型STEM课程、“第三方机构”提供的直接交付型STEM课程以及学校自主开发或与其它组织合作开发的校本开发型STEM课程构成了STEM课程可选择的三种类型。其中,兼具“学生发展立场-学校改革创新-教师专业实践”多重内涵的“校本开发型STEM课程”是办学主体实践智慧的凝结。国际上主要从教育决策、学校发展定位、教师专业发展、课程开发方法和策略等四个方面展开STEM课程校本开发的研究和实践。STEM课程校本开发的国际经验为我国STEM教育起步和发展提供了有益借鉴。     

Labels and Labelling in the Field of Educational Leadership

This paper reports on theorising based on developing histories of the field of educational leadership in higher education in the UK. These histories are being constructed through the collection of professional biographies of field members, reading the outputs of the field in the form of journals and books, and analysing the papers from the British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society. In this paper I focus on how the field has changed its label over the last forty years from “educational administration” to “educational management”, and more recently “educational leadership”, and the link between labels and knowledge claims. In particular I argue that while there is a continuity of knowledge underpinning this relabelling process there is also a mutation in the form of management in education that has become performance leadership in schools. The latter is official government policy and practitioners are being located in an all‐embracing training framework. The paper argues that knowing about knowledge claims and field labels is an important means by which we can control our practice and identities. Through Bourdieu's theory of practice I describe and explain the development of the field and the struggle to be located and to stay located within higher education. By putting Bourdieu to work in this way I also seek to analyse how habitus and field can contribute to the development of explanatory frameworks regarding the power structures underpinning knowledge production.     

农村两类学校布局优化的现实问题与方向选择

城镇挤乡村弱是当前我国义务教育阶段最为显著的结构性问题。学校布局作为肇始之基,为更好补齐学校短板提升教育质量,现阶段的工作重点已聚焦至农村两类学校,重心也逐渐转向优化。在城乡义务教育一体化的时代背景下,为实现“就近入学”与“上好学”的优化目标,农村两类学校布局优化工作在农村教育为农与离农的冲突中,应服膺人本理念进行消解;在教育公平优先与教育效率先行的矛盾中,应合理配置教育资源进行平衡;在“由‘小’到‘寄’”与“由‘寄’到‘小’”的纠葛中,应明确两类学校定位进行调适,以助力农村学校布局工作。     

民国时期学校“性教育”的基本特征及现实启示

民国时期性教育的实施是家庭、学校、社会共同努力的结果,但因当时的父母囿于旧道德观念的束缚,缺乏性教育所需知识,而社会又处于百废待兴的状态,性教育的重担自然落到了学校的肩膀上。整体而言,民国时期的学校“性教育”存在以下特征：在教育目的上,经历了从“教性”到“教养”的转变;在教育主体上,主张以“教师为主,医师为辅,父母配合”;在教育内容上,主张建立渗透式的泛课程体系,将性教育渗透进具体的课程中进行教授;在教育方式上,按照“分阶段、分性别、个别与团体相结合”的方式实行。分析民国时期学校“性教育”的特征,对现今我国学校“性教育”的发展具有启示意义。     

Community and the myth of the ideal school: Circulation and appropriation of the Hamburg Gemeinschaftsschulen in Spain (1922–1933)

The progressive education movement was known in Spain from its very inception, and in fact many of its pedagogical theories and practices reached Spain before reaching other European countries. Yet traditional historiography has always maintained that Spain was never integrated in the progressive education movement, a misconception that helps explain the lack of research in the field. Recent historiographical research, however, has shown that numerous Spanish schools served as laboratories for the implementation of progressive education methods in the 1920s and 1930s. The Spanish educational system proved itself to be especially open to international innovation in general and Spain actually enjoyed a privileged position for the study of how innovative pedagogical ideas could be incorporated and appropriated. Proof of this affirmation can be found in the introduction and dissemination throughout Spain of the experimental public school movement of Hamburg known as Gemeinschaftsschulen.

This article will focus on the way this movement was received in Spain. We will examine the phenomenon from a double perspective, corresponding to the different positions that scholars found themselves in within the educational panorama of the time. On the one hand we will examine the role of the “grass-roots” educators who wished to change schools “from below”, starting with classroom practices. On the other hand we will take a look at the representatives of “high pedagogy”, who were intent on formulating a pedagogical theory on which to base a political–ideological model that would serve to change the school “from above”. Tensions arising among the different pedagogical groups, along with the ambiguity of the translation into Spanish of the term Gemeinschaftsschulen, led to the different groups appropriating the concept in different ways. The evolution of the term Gemeinschaftsschulen, from its original identification with a localised school experiment in Hamburg to its becoming a symbol for virtually all European school vanguards, will be addressed at the conclusion of the article.     

Towards an oral history of educational ideas in New Zealand as a resource for teacher education

Studies of the educational theories which have influenced teachers have traditionally relied heavily on the textual analysis of policy documents and syllabi. While such studies are crucial, they offer a “top-down” view of the educational terrain and can imply that teachers passively absorbed the dominant policy initiatives. This paper is taken from a wider study of the educational life—histories of 150 teachers and former teachers ranging in age from 21 to 98. The aim of the overall project is to map the tides and current of educational thought as lived by New Zealand teachers from the 1920s to the mid-1990s and to produce a resource for teacher education which will help dissolve the “theory-practice split” experienced by many of our students. Life-history methods enable a focus on how teachers create educational theories within the possibilities and constraints of their circumstances—biographical, historical and political, geographical, cultural and discursive. This paper uses three case studies as a basis for discussion of the impact of “neo-progressivist” (or student-centred learning) ideas in secondary schools from the 1950s to the 1980s.     

Silence as borderland: a semiotic approach to the “silent” pupil in nineteenth-century vocal education

Abstract

At the heart of the nineteenth-century educational soundscape lies a paradox. Whilst “modern” classrooms generally strived for orderly silence, the goal of its educational practices was the production of competent “citizens”. Middle-class boys in particular were expected to acquire a voice fit for business, the professions, or even (political) public speech whilst quietly listening to a teacher. This silence within the educational institution has generally been understood as an element of discipline. In this paper I want to examine the paradox of the silent classroom and the speaking citizen. I will focus specifically on those instances where the clear goal of education was vocal sound (i.e. fluent speech, civilised pronunciation, and song) and look at how silence was mobilised by educators. I will argue that the silences employed in these educational practices were not (only) tools of order and discipline, but rather means to create a “borderland” where the leap between childhood and its uncivilised noises, and adulthood and its rational speech, could be made.

I will draw upon the interpretations of silence as “in between” signs as it has been developed by semioticians to analyse a corpus of sources consisting mainly of French, German, and English pedagogical literature focusing on the development of children’s voices. Reframing the place of silence in “institutionalised” education allows us to delve deeper into the specific ways in which “discipline” (re)produced and articulated dichotomies of power.