The European Union's discourse of ‘equality’ and its education and training policy within the post‐compulsory sector

This paper provides a critical overview of the development of European education and training policy and its relationship to the discourse of ‘equality’. This development reflects significant shifts within the European Union's discourse of economic growth and peaceful unity‐‐that is, the economic and social concerns of the European Commission. Interwoven into both these discourses is the European discourse of ‘equality’.

In the first section of the paper the historic development of the Commission's education and training policy is considered in relation to the discourses of equal opportunities and social exclusion, paying particular attention to the influence of the Action programmes for equal opportunities between women and men. This is followed by a brief section in which the recent interpretation of EC policy by the UK government is examined. In the final section the focus is on the equality discourse itself and the consequences of its application for under‐educated long‐term unemployed people. The paper concludes that although the differences between equal opportunities and social exclusion can appear as radical redefinition, they are nevertheless simply discursive shifts in a fundamentally unchanged equality discourse. Their significance, however, lies in the need for such an apparent shift.     

WISE Choices? Understanding Occupational Decision-making in a Climate of Equal Opportunities for Women in Science and Technology

Since the launch of the Women into Science and Engineering (WISE) campaign in 1984, many initiatives to increase the participation of women in these areas of work have been launched under its banner and the WISE approach has come to represent the dominant discourse on equal opportunities for women in science and technology, having a major influence on both policy and practice. This article examines the WISE discourse in depth, arguing that WISE has had only very limited success because it is so narrowly focused on women's 'choices', which it understands as being constrained both by a lack of information about scientific and technological work and by a masculine image of science and technology which, it infers, is alienating to women. Drawing on empirical research which examined both women's and men's occupational decision-making processes, this article takes issue with this construction of the problem, arguing that whilst the assumptions of the WISE discourse cannot be supported empirically, the discourse itself nevertheless continues to structure and limit the space women have to speak of the conflicts and contradictions they experience, explanations for which require a better understanding of the ways in which subjective experiences of both gender and sexuality impinge upon work choices.     

Equal Opportunities: rhetoric or action

During the last 10 years many higher educational institutions following the ILEA initiatives and equal opportunity (EO) legislation of the mid 1970's, announced they were equal opportunity institutions. This paper questions whether such pronouncements and declared policies have had any more than a marginal effect on the power structures and day to day running of institutions. It proposes that a positive action programme should be adopted to increase the proportion of women lecturers in higher education. More idealistically still, it discusses a transformational model of EO which would challenge the public private divide and democratise institutions. It draws on the experience of equal opportunities initiatives in a number of higher educational institutions and emphasises the importance of understanding resistance to change.     

Unfortunate or scrounger? Ambivalence,stereotype and the adult unemployed

This paper uses Bhabha's concept of colonial discourse to explore how the subject of the educational discourse concerned with the education of the adult unemployed is constituted by a variety of stereotypical representations. The paper examines in some detail a key policy text which appeared at a critical moment in the establishment of REPLAN, a UK policy initiative for the education of unemployed adults, in 1984. It explores how the problem of education for the unemployed adult was made visible, the first arena for analysis in Scheurich's ‘policy archaeology’. A number of ‘regularities’—race, gender, sexuality, pro‐fessionalization, class and governmentality—serve to constitute that problem and, to a lesser extent, its solution. Educational policy is seen as a highly problematic play of fantasy and materiality, where policy texts produce and perpetuate inequalities. This critical reading attempts to subvert official discourse on education and unemployment.

there is no reason at all why people should wander about in a loafing and idle manner; if they are not earning their living they ought to be put under some control. (Winston Churchill, 1909).     

The Trouble with Equal Opportunities: The case of women academics

Women's position in the academic labour market remains a largely marginal one, despite equality legislation in the 1970s and subsequent initiatives at national and local level. This paper examines the development of equal opportunities at just one university, Bristol (UK), in the context of contemporary gender divisions in higher education and more general experience with equal opportunity policies in other sectors of employment. In discussing the possibilities but also limitations of equal opportunities, it raises a number of key questions about both the way in which issues of gender equality are often handled, and the terms on which women's place in the academic profession is understood. We argue for more rigorous empirical data on promotion chances, for tighter arguments on discrimination, and for full recognition of the complex cultural and other institutional barriers to equality.     

Multi-level Discourse Analysis in a Physics Teaching Methods Course from the Psychological Perspective of Activity Theory

In this paper, we present and apply a multi-level method for discourse analysis in science classrooms. This method is based on the structure of human activity (activity, actions, and operations) and it was applied to study a pre-service physics teacher methods course. We argue that such an approach, based on a cultural psychological perspective, affords opportunities for analysts to perform a theoretically based detailed analysis of discourse events. Along with the presentation of analysis, we show and discuss how the articulation of different levels offers interpretative criteria for analyzing instructional conversations. We synthesize the results into a model for a teacher's practice and discuss the implications and possibilities of this approach for the field of discourse analysis in science classrooms. Finally, we reflect on how the development of teachers' understanding of their activity structures can contribute to forms of progressive discourse of science education.     

Exploring women faculty's experiences and perceptions in higher education: the effects of feminism?

This study analyses women faculty's discourse about feminism, themselves, and their professional experiences as scholars in the North American university context. This case study pushes at the boundaries of what we believe we know about ‘the gender question' in the academy, opening a discursive space for scholars to examine university policies and practices. Poststructuralist emphasis on the complexity and changing nature of power relations offer a framework that makes sense of the ways in which women are simultaneously affected by power relations and engage in power relations. I use feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis to analyse women's talk about their experiences in order to carve a path for moving beyond the deconstruction of discourse in order to unpack how it marginalises and silences women, even within and to themselves.     

Educational Equity Policies and the Centralization of American Public Education: The Case of Bilingual Education

Sixty years ago, federal guidelines regarding the instruction of special populations in American public schools were nonexistent. Racial minorities, language minorities, women, the poor, and those with physical and mental disabilities had not been identified as groups that needed special protections. Much has changed since then. Federal legislation that is designed to ensure that all of these groups have access to equal educational opportunities in the United States is now in place. This article examines the evolution of policies surrounding bilingual education to illustrate that the need to ensure the educational opportunities of certain student populations compelled the federal government to become more involved in the governance and oversight of American public education. The implementation of such federal “protection policies” designed to expand educational opportunities for traditionally underserved groups of students ultimately fortified and solidified the federal government's more pronounced role in public education.     

To what extent is the culture of a university department supportive of equal opportunities for women?

Most British universities now have equal opportunities policies but the extent to which these policies have brought about real change in university departments is not clear. Management theory suggests that when trying to implement change in an organisation it is important to understand that organisation's culture. Opportunity 2000, a business initiative to try to increase the number of women (especially managers) in the British workforce stresses the importance of cultural change. However, there has been little attempt to 'measure' culture in relation to gender in university departments. This article explores the findings from an attempt to use Johnson & Scholes's cultural web to 'measure' the culture in a business studies department in an 'old' British university     

Towards a Pedagogy of Sexual Difference: education and female genealogy

The equality‐difference antinomy found in pedagogy today cannot be resolved within the neuter/masculine logic of pedagogic discourse and political theories of education, if by difference we mean sexual difference. This antinomy will be resolved by the historical realisation of a ‘sexualised’ order, that is, by splitting into two the subject that possesses and transmits knowledge, that educates and theorises on education (bi‐sexualisation of the pedagogic logos). The pedagogic ideal of universality can take on substance only if it becomes twofold. Societies in which emancipation and equal opportunities policies are highly developed allow the fulfilment of women as (neuter?) human beings, but they minimise or cancel the fact that these beings belong to the female gender. It is time we freed ourselves from subjection to the male subject's educational theories and practices, which refer back to a patriarchal genealogy centred on the father‐son couple, and that take and rely on women as the sources of authority for our educational activity and for our work of conceptualising the principles and forms of this activity. We should (re)construct a female genealogy centred on the symbolic mother‐daughter couple, which has been cancelled by patriarchal culture. We need a female gender ‘transcendence’, so that the measure of our improvement as human beings will not be the male, but a female source of values.     

Free choice and free play in early childhood education: troubling the discourse

This article troubles the established discourse of free choice and free play in early childhood education, and develops post-structural approaches to theorising children's agency in the context of institutional and relational power structures. It is widely accepted that planning a curriculum based on children's needs, interests and patterns of learning promotes agency, self-regulation and control. However, contemporary research extends this discourse through critical examination of child-centred and developmental perspectives, and by theorising children's agency as a means of enacting power relationships in play. Using naturalistic, interpretive methods for documenting children's choices of play activities, this small-scale study focuses on 10 children in an Early Years Foundation Stage setting in England. Combining contemporary sociocultural and post-structural theories, the findings indicate that children's choices are situated within shifting power structures and relationships, involving conflict, negotiation, resistance and subversion. These activities create opportunities for exercising and affirming group and individual agency. The study raises critical questions about how children make and manage their choices, and examines the implications for policy and practice in light of restrictive curriculum frameworks.     

Deal‐making and rule‐breaking: behind the façade of equity in academia

A glass ceiling for women still exists in academia after two decades of equal employment opportunity (EEO) legislation in Australia. There are complex factors that when combined make gender inequity in the higher education sector highly resistant to change. Using personal histories as a reflexive device, the paper makes explicit the embedded male patterns of behaviour in academia that operate beneath the façade of policies and rules put into place to counter inequity. In particular, the paper focuses on the cognitive dissonance individuals experience due to the disparity between formal organizational policies promoting equity, such as workload allocations, and perceptions of the unequal opportunities for women and men. Using social identity theory and the leader member exchange (LMX) framework, the daily experiences of three academic women are interpreted, the impediments to equality identified, and suggestions made for more fundamental change to gendered organizational structures within academia. The analysis of such behaviours shows that the traditional emphasis of EEO legislation on formal policies and procedures to bring about gender equity in academia needs to be accompanied by cultural change programs that make explicit and challenge behaviours that reproduce and reinforce male hegemony in academia.     

Gender positioning in teacher education in England: New rhetoric,old realities

This article presents data from a series of life-history interviews with female student teachers of physical education. The intention is to forge links between the experiences of female student teachers, and their 'gender positioning' within the micro-politics of teacher education and the wider discourse that informs these interactions. On first entering teaching these women tended to adopt or enter 'survival mode', which endorsed particular professional identities that were consolidated by a form of instrumental rationality. These professional identities were closely tied to conventional conceptions of masculinity, and legitimated and contributed to, the reinforcement of particular gender inequalities in teacher education. The analysis suggests that a liberal discourse of equal opportunities masks the institutionalisation of social 'otherness' and inequality and supports the 'essentialisation' of male and female identities.     

Men in academic school psychology: A national survey

There is a paucity of research examining the experiences and perceptions of men employed as school psychology academicians. The purpose of this investigation was to ascertain male school psychology academicians' perceptions of their respective academic climates, levels of support, incidences of harassment, and levels of stress, and to compare these results with a previous survey conducted with women in similar positions. A total of 146 male school psychology academicians (41% response rate) completed the 48‐item survey entitled, “Men in School Psychology: Academia Questionnaire.'' The findings suggested that men were more likely than women to indicate that climate and opportunities within their department were equal, whereas women indicated that the climate and opportunities tend to favor men. When men indicated that inequalities exist, they reported believing that women were favored. Results are discussed in terms of implications for faculty in school psychology. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Skills versus pedagogy? Doctoral research training in the UK Arts and Humanities

The traditional ‘lone scholar’ view of an Arts and Humanities doctoral student sits uneasily with the skills-based discourse underpinning policies aimed at enhancing researcher development and employability. This paper reports on a case study of a research training programme for doctoral students in the Arts and Humanities at a UK university. It calls for the embedding of the generic skills agenda within a more clearly articulated pedagogic discourse and formulates four pedagogic principles for research training programme design. Additionally, the paper problematises the research trainer role and highlights the importance of paying attention to the students' own learning agendas and the learning value they are prepared to derive from training.     

Problems of Insularity and Specialisation within British Educational Culture: the case of Development Studies

Abstract

This paper reports some experiences of teaching a university third year degree level option paper on Equal Opportunities to students on an Applied Social Studies degree programme. It examines the social context in which courses on equal opportunities have developed, issues of course design and assessment, teaching materials, and the students and their response to the course. Among the observations drawn from the first year of teaching are the importance (and difficulty) of conveying to students the variety of concepts of equal opportunities, and the need to recognise an age gap in both knowledge and also often attitudes of staff and students, which meant that younger students tended to take equal opportunities for granted, as being simply the law, while lecturers started from the perspective that equal opportunities policies had come about as a result of struggles for equality by social movements such as the Civil Rights movement in the USA, the feminist movement and the disability rights movement. Experience of teaching the course also indicated, as anticipated, the importance of maintaining academic standards of objectivity in teaching and assessment of controversial social issues. There were also important presentational issues which emerged in teaching literature critical of the operation of equal opportunities policies in practice, since this literature can be misunderstood by students to imply that equal opportunities policies are ineffective and therefore not worth maintaining and defending.     

Training for Film and Television in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article traces the development of training for Britain's film and television industry from the mid‐1970s to the present time. It highlights the range of training opportunities currently available, linking these to government training policies in general and to the specific problems of this industry. The evolution of college and university courses, industry‐based initiatives, the relationship between media education and media training and the difficulties of financing training are all addressed, together with some very recent developments which may further influence the quantity and quality of training available over the next decade.