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.     

Dimensions of Eighteenth‐century Educational Thinking in Germany: Rhetoric and Gender Anthropology

The development of pedagogical science in eighteenth‐century Germany unfolded in close connection with the emergence of the modern bourgeoisie and its emancipation from a still absolutist society. While social and political structures in Britain and France were changed by revolutions, the relative weakness of the German bourgeoisie led to the adoption of a reformist strategy to effect social modernization. In this context, pedagogics, education, schools and schooling became a vital means of political and economic transformation towards a modern, bourgeois‐capitalist society. Therein the emergence of modern pedagogical thought and the development of the bourgeoisie were mutual preconditions: several initially quite disparate strands of thought coalesced to form a new pedagogical thinking in Germany during the later Enlightenment. The essay reconstructs how new thinking emerged by charting the integration of two bodies of knowledge into this renewal and refounding of pedagogics: the transformation of elements of rhetoric into building blocks of modern pedagogical thought, on the one hand, and of gender anthropology as its foundation, on the other.     

Unemployment,Training and Manpower Policy in Inter‐War Britain

Abstract

The development of public training policy in Britain between the 1880s and 1930s was profoundly shaped by three continuing preoccupations. The first was political, and related specifically to unemployment: governments were required to respond to unemployment in the interests of survival, and at times it was believed that agitation amongst the unemployed endangered the socio‐political order. Second, training programmes were developed, at first out of the poor relief system and subsequently out of the ministry of Labour, in response to fears that human capital was deteriorating through protracted disuse and required ‘reconditioning’ if it was to remain active and mobile in the labour market. Third, there was a subsidiary but significant concern with renewal of the white population of Britain's dominions; governments sporadically sought to fit, through training, an urban, industrial labour force for migration to agrarian societies. Despite repeated concern between 1880 and 1939 for the competitiveness of British industry, governments were reluctant during peacetime to intervene in industrial training for fear of seeming to support socialist solutions to the problems of private enterprise. The First World War brought about short‐lived changes in emphasis, but post‐war Reconstruction measures renewed the division between liberal education (bound up with debates over ‘citizenship') and vocational training policies. By 1939, public training policy in Britain was characterised by (1) an exclusive preoccupation with training or retraining the unemployed, more to keep the work ethic alive than encourage the acquisition of new skills; (2) a considerably stronger orientation towards social and regional policy objectives than to labour market planning; and (3) growth through disjointed incrementalism, enjoying substantial bipartisan support, rather than throughopen debate and strategic change.     

Educational Accountability and Market Ideology: some socio‐legal considerations

ABSTRACT

Sociology of education, particularly in Britain and to a limited extent the USA, is examined in its relations to law and socio‐legal discourse. It is argued that in order to develop our understanding of educational accountability a fuller exploration of the institutional interface between law and education will be required. Several lines of scholarship and empirical inquiry are suggested, particularly with respect to the functions of law professionals and legal institutions in the contexts of ’public choice’, ‘juridification’ and the institutionalisation of irresponsibility in education.     

Case‐Based Teaching: Four Experiences in Educational Software Design

Abstract

Good teaching is good story telling. Case‐based teaching exploits the basic capacity for students to learn from stories and the basic desire of teachers to tell stories that are indicative of their experiences. The premise of software that used case‐based teaching would be to place a student in a situation that the student found interesting and where the telling of a story would be appreciated. First, case‐based teachers teach the student what he or she needs to know at precisely the point of becoming interested in knowing the information. This information should be presented in the form of stories. Law schools and business schools have been teaching this way for years. They teach cases rather than rules because, by and large, they don't have rules to teach. The second critical part of learning in a case‐based environment is teaching a student to abstract from what the student has been told, and adapting it to situations for which the student was not specifically trained.

At the Institute, we have, to date, built four examples of case‐based teaching software. The programs are:

VICTOR — a voice and image courtesy tutor — built for Ameritech

DUSTIN — a language experience — built for Andersen Consulting

CREANIMATE — a biology experience‐built for schools and supported by IBM

TAXOPS — a tax opportunity advisor and cross seller — built for the Tax division of Arthur Andersen     

Educational psychologists and multi‐agency working: exploring professional identity

This research was conducted in the light of the Every Child Matters (Department for Education and Skills, London, 2003 Department for Education and Skills (DfES). 2003. Every Child Matters, London: The Stationery Office.  [Google Scholar]) agenda which highlights the importance of multi‐agency working. The research explored the professional identity of Educational Psychologists (EPs) with experience of multi‐agency working in six Local Authorities within the Midlands area. Ten EPs participated in detailed semi‐structured interviews.

Activity Theory was used to facilitate the comparison of aspects of the EPs' two work roles, as part of the Educational Psychology Service (EPS) and as part of a multi‐agency team (MAT). Each EP was asked to consider different elements of their two roles, using a series of questions designed to elicit relationships between the ways in which they worked, the contexts and the other people involved. From these questions, issues of professional identity emerged and these were then explored in more detail.

The experiences of EPs working in MATs were generally described very positively. It appeared that multi‐agency working enhanced feelings of professional identity. In some cases participants indicated that this was aided by the clarification and development of their own skills and in other cases by being afforded the opportunity to work creatively in a wider range of contexts. The flexibility of multi‐agency working appears to have presented opportunities for individuals to work to their strengths and increased positive feelings EPs have of their own professional identity.     

Educational historiographical meta‐analysis: rethinking methodology in the 1990s

Relations among literary discourse constructed during oral storybook reading, current theories of reader response to literature, and research in classroom storybook reading are explored in this paper. Pursuing a Bakhtinian analysis of five readings of one picture storybook, the meaning‐making strategies used by kindergarten students and their teacher to appropriate literary discourse and, thereby, to define the situation in these storybook events is discussed. The paper is framed by a symbolic interactionist approach to the social negatiation of meaning, especially as meaning is negotiated in context through language.     

Elephants,Donuts and Hamburgers: young children co‐operating to co‐operate and co‐operating to compete in two primary schools

Abstract A total of 152 5‐6‐year‐old schoolchildren worked alone or in groups, cooperatively within groups or competing against another group, over 4 weeks. New measures allowed us to consider their preferences for collective or individualistic styles. Three factors: individualism/collectivism, sociability and altruism were identified. The first two were found to be stable over time; the third changed and was related to whether the children worked co‐operatively or competitively. Differences were found in collectivism/individualism. Girls (particularly older girls) preferred working co‐operatively significantly more than boys at Time 1; however, this decreased over time for girls, whilst boys became less individualistic over time. Younger children scored significantly less than older children on a sociability factor, but this increased significantly over time compared to the older children‐‐artificially in the group co‐operative condition. Findings are discussed in light of curriculum and pedagogy of primary schools and social psychological research with children.     

Education and school‐to‐work transitions in post‐communist Poland∗

Abstract

Unemployment in Poland rose throughout 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993 but the proportion of school‐leavers among the unemployed peaked in 1990. Unlike in most western market economies, the best‐ educated young people in Poland did not prove the least vulnerable to unemployment. This paper uses evidence from studies of young people in Gdansk, Katowice and Suwalki to argue that one reason why young people from professional and vocational secondary schools have not borne a heavier share of Poland's unemployment since 1990 has been the flexibility and responsiveness of these schools to Poland's new labour market conditions. Since the reforms many of these schools have contracted drastically. Some have closed. But others have thrived The latter have often benefited from favourable local labour market conditions, but their success has usually been at least equally due to their own resourcefulness in introducing new courses which teach skills that are in demand, and securing various kinds of sponsorship from employers. Three reasons are offered to explain the responsiveness of education in Poland to the changing labour market conditions: general support for ‘the reforms’, the schools’ experience of making informal deals with employers under communism, and the post‐communist authorities’ willingness to force unsuccessful schools to close and to see teachers made redundant.

     

Empowerment and Debilitation in the Educational Experience of the Blind 1 in Nineteenth‐century England and Scotland

In earlier ‘humanitarian’ accounts, Britain’s voluntary blind institutions exemplified successful nineteenth‐century philanthropy and later became effective partners of the state. From the 1970s, Victorian charity came increasingly under criticism and subsequent studies on disability condemn the exclusion and utilitarian training of a Foucauldian ‘Age of Confinement’. Recent defences of the private record in blind welfare and education claim voluntarism’s survival proves its value and strengths. Social responses to blindness have often been complex and those involved in the early education of the blind should not be judged too categorically. The comparative poverty of Britain’s overall provision may be explained by the long absence of the state but positive initiatives did emerge. Worcester College’s pupils attained academic excellence and encouraging attempts at integration by some school boards demonstrated an alternative to confinement. The relatively small impact of these experiments, nationally, was attributable to particular elements in Britain’s educational culture.     

Adult learners and professional development: peer‐to‐peer learning in a networked community

This paper analyses how adult learners on a professional development course learn and develop through online dialogue. The research uses Wenger’s community of practice framework, and assesses whether the concept of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ is useful in relation to this specific case study in which the students are practitioners and parents of individuals with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). The study focuses on peer‐to‐peer learning and analyses a sample of asynchronous online discussions from three separate online tutorial groups. The first part of the study combines quantitative analysis of distribution patterns, with qualitative discourse analysis that measures central concepts associated with communities of practice. The second part of the study addresses whether the concept of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ is useful in this context. The contribution of one key individual in each group is analysed in order to provide a narrative about how that person communicates with the others, shares values and repertoires with them and gradually becomes a central member of the community. The data supports the notion that these forms of interaction and approaches to learning can favour the construction of knowledge and help to develop reflective skills and a sense of ‘togetherness’ in the group through sharing stories with one another, developing identity through the discussions and through this enabling the development of community. The findings indicate that the learners are provided with opportunities to consider the strengths and weaknesses of ideas from multiple perspectives and that key students play a role in enabling other students to move from a position of legitimate peripheral participation to becoming full members of the community.     

Encouraging Positive Justice Reasoning and Perspective‐taking Skills: Two Educational Interventions

Abstract

There has been a need for developmentally appropriate methods of social/moral instruction in the primary grades, particularly methods that would require little teacher preparation or financial investment in materials. This study investigated the efficacy of two such methods: role‐play and structured discussion. Subjects were 90 children from Grades One‐Three who participated over an eight‐week period. Interviews of positive justice reasoning and perspective‐taking skills showed significant growth for both role‐play and structured discussion subjects when compared to those in a control group.     

Kohl berg's Cognitive‐Developmental Theory in Educational Settings: Some Possible Abuses

Abstract

Kohlberg's cognitive‐developmental theory provides teachers with a framework for understanding the change and development of moral judgment and decision‐making of their pupils. One major abuse, however, may be when teachers take the stage labels associated with the hypothesized stage levels of moral judgment as indicative of static student qualities or characteristics, by placing more emphasis on perceived and labelled qualities than on the actual moral reasoning of the student. This, it is suggested, together with some empirical examples, may obscure the developmental trend of the student's moral judgment or even affect the teacher's expectations and consequently student's performance, and fails to take into account such factors as environment and interpersonal interaction. A study is reported in which curriculum consultants exposed to moral development theory were tested to determine whether they would use Kohlbergian labels of stage content or actual moral reasoning when required to make assessments. Suggestions are put forward as to how moral development theory can be more closely linked to pedagogy.     

Educational action research in Singapore: to prove or improve?

The rise of educational action research amongst schools in Singapore can be attributed to the government's belief that educational research and reform can improve school performance and help Singapore keep pace with the impact of globalization. However, against a backdrop of neo-liberal educational reform where efficiency, accountability and demonstrable outcomes are valued, the underlying intent of the action research projects would seem to be inconsistent with the emancipatory intent normally associated with action research. A systematic review was conducted of 71 action research projects submitted to a local educational conference in 2006. Of concern to us is how action research has been narrowly interpreted and recruited simply as an evaluative tool with the emancipatory potential largely ignored. The paper is theoretically framed by governmentality and performativity to explore the embedded power relations that may “fabricate” the action research projects. The findings and discussions suggest a need for the government, schools and teacher-researchers to reflexively question the current expectation of action research and to be clear about its broader purpose.     

Strangers and Professionals: Positioning Discourse in ESL Teachers’ Work

English Language Learners (ELLs) usually spend most of the school day with regular classroom teachers. The ability of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers to help these students, then, depends in part on their ability to influence how the classroom teachers think of ELL students and ESL itself. One way ESL teachers do this is through “positioning discourses”—discursive practices that connect the children in certain ways to neighborhood reputations, political imagery, policy priorities, and professional responsibilities. This paper examines how ESL teachers in two contrasting school systems produce different kinds of positioning discourses in responding to different contextual constraints and pressures. Drawing on interview data, we show how teachers in an urban setting use elements of neighborhood reputation to position their students, while teachers in a more affluent suburb use discourses of expertise and professional knowledge to reshape the way ESL is understood. Our goals are to explicate how these discourses are produced and used.