Expanding Higher Education in the UK: From ‘System Slowdown’ to ‘System Acceleration’

This paper sets out to explore the implications of current patterns of participation and attainment, particularly among 16–19 year‐olds, for the further expansion of higher education in the UK. It uses a range of recent statistics on participation and attainment to describe what is termed ‘system slowdown’. It then explores a basis for ‘system acceleration’ through the development of five possible routes into higher education both for 16–19 year‐olds and for adults. We conclude the paper by looking briefly at a number of inter‐related strategies the Government could adopt to encourage ‘system acceleration’. We suggest that unless the Government is prepared to consider policy changes of this type, it is unlikely to reach the higher education participation target it has set itself and may also jeopardise the basis for a sustainable lifelong learning system for the 21st century.     

‘In praise of educational research’: formative assessment

Abstract The authors trace the development of the King's Formative Assessment Programme from its origins in diagnostic testing in the 1970s, through the graded assessment movement in the 1980s, to the present day. In doing so, they discuss the practical issues involved in reviewing research and outline the strategies that were used to try to communicate the findings to as wide an audience as possible (including policy‐makers and practitioners as well as academics). They describe how they worked with teachers to develop formative practice in classrooms, and discuss the impact that this work has had on practice and policy. Finally, they speculate about some of the reasons for this impact, and make suggestions for how the impact of educational research on policy and practice might be improved.     

Heidegger,Education and the ‘Cult of the Authentic’

Within educational philosophies that utilise the Heideggerian idea of ‘authenticity’ there can be distinguished at least two readings that correspond with the categories of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ utopianism. ‘Strong‐utopianism’ is the nostalgia for some lost Edenic paradise to be restored at some future time. Here it is the ‘world’ that needs to be transcended for it is the source of our inauthenticity, where we are the puppets of modernist‐capitalist ideologies. ‘Authenticity’ here is a value‐judgment, understood as something that makes you a better person. The ‘inauthentic’ person is simply deceived. ‘Weak‐utopianism’ is recognising the forces for change in the ‘everyday‐immanent’ where we do not look to overcome the world but own it as ‘heritage’. ‘Authenticity’ here is an ontological choice, a modification of inauthenticity, not its opposite. The ‘cult of the authentic’ relates to the ‘strong utopianism’ where ‘authenticity’ has become fetishized, harking back to a purer, pre‐modern state, untainted by the ideals of the Enlightenment and ethos of capitalism. ‘Authentic education’ is the overcoming of our environments and socio‐historical contexts, opening up new horizons of meaning. The radical notion of freedom that this implies, where one is free from rather than free in the realisation of constraint, may also be another dividing line between the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ readings, which lend themselves to a Messianic narrative. It will be argued that if ‘authentic education’ is understood through a ‘strong utopianism’ it actually re‐enforces those very same dystopian ideals they look to overcome as characterised by ‘enframing’.     

‘Core Subjects’ Policy and Arts Education for the Rich

What happens to art education when the national school curriculum in Israel follows a ‘core subjects’ policy? Allocating only two hours for all five art subjects (visual arts, music, drama, dance and cinematic arts) that remain outside the core curriculum increases the social‐economic gap between children whose parents can fund their art education privately and children whose parents cannot afford this. This also has worrying consequences for art teachers (most of them women) deprived of job security.     

From ‘consulting pupils’ to ‘pupils as researchers’: a situated case narrative

Schools in England are now being encouraged to ‘personalise’ the curriculum and to consult students about teaching and learning. This article reports on an evaluation of one high school which is working hard to increase student subject choice, introduce integrated curriculum in the middle years and to improve teaching and learning while maintaining a commitment to inclusive and equitable comprehensive education. The authors worked with a small group of students as consultants to develop a ‘student's‐eye’ set of evaluative categories in a school‐wide student survey. They also conducted teacher, student and governor interviews, lesson and meeting observations, and student ‘mind‐mapping’ exercises. In this article, in the light of the findings, the authors discuss the processes they used to work jointly with the student research team, and how they moved from pupils‐as‐consultants to pupils‐as‐researchers, a potentially more transformative/disruptive practice. They query the notion of ‘authentic student voice’ and show it as discursive and heterogeneous: they thus suggest that both a standards and a rights framings of student voice must be regarded critically.     

‘Download’: ‘Postcards Home’ Contemporary Art and New Technology in the Primary School

‘Postcards Home’ using photography, scanning, digital image manipulation, text and colour printing was the third ‘Download’ project devised by the education department of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England. It was led by artist Laurie Long with teachers and pupils from Pooles Park primary school in Islington, an inner city borough in North London. Based on the production of a postcard featuring an image of personal significance, the children were involved in exploring and constructing their own and others' identities whilst developing their technology skills in creative ways. The project raises interesting questions about the applicability of contemporary art practices to the primary classroom. The research is based on participant observation and includes the voices of the artist and teachers involved.     

Race and ‘Disability Passing’ in a Chicago Public School Art Classroom

Race, history and visibility have a great deal to do with how disability operated socially and educationally in the Chicago public high school art classroom where I taught for ten years. I am severely near‐sighted, and I am also white, educated and often, but not consistently, able to pass for non‐disabled. A large number of my students were identified as having learning, emotional and behavioural disabilities, diagnoses which were certainly conditioned by the institution, but diagnoses which perhaps also underrepresented the amount of socially and historically occasioned impairment or debility that existed in the low‐income majority‐Black community served by my school. In this article I reflect on the overlapping social performances that occurred in terms of ‘disability passing’, a state that can characterise both hidden and exaggerated or invented impairments. My reflections examine my own individual experience in contrast to the long‐term experience of the African diaspora in and beyond the USA, in order to think about other ways to parse the complex factors determining how disability plays out in educational environments.     

Motives for ‘Laddishness’ at School: Fear of failure and fear of the ‘feminine’

‘Laddish’ behaviours in school have been identified as impediments to the academic progress of some boys and girls. This article provides and discusses empirical evidence to support Jackson's proposal in an earlier article that ‘laddish’ behaviours may act to protect the self‐worth and/or social worth of many boys, and that ‘laddishness’ may be prompted by both a fear of academic failure and a fear of the ‘feminine’. Drawing upon data from interviews with 50 boys across two secondary schools, the article focuses upon a key characteristic of ‘laddishness’, namely, the overt rejection of academic work. It is suggested that overtly rejecting academic work serves a dual function for some boys. First, it enables them to act in ways currently consistent with hegemonic forms of masculinity in their schools. Secondly, it provides an excuse for failure and augments success.     

Learning How to Learn,Art Education and the ‘Background’

This paper describes the conditions that make learning how to learn in art possible. Rather than privileging risk-taking or the playfulness of primary process thinking, I will use a Wittgensteinian understanding of mind to argue against this approach in favour of one that raises students’ awareness of the cultural and cognitive ‘backgrounds’ (forms of life and language games) against which our individual actions and risks are framed and understood. Instead of building art education on a metaphysical view of the self, this paper will advocate a social constructivist approach to curriculum, pedagogy and assessment to create a cognitive map for ‘the background’ of art. When these three are practised in a mutual way they connect individual minds to the resources or mind of culture which, in turn, makes lifelong learning possible, reclaiming the idea of art-for-life’s sake.     

Higher Education in Germany: a Case of ‘Uneven’ Expansion?

This paper investigates the expansion of student numbers in higher education (HE) in Germany. The quantitative sources indicate a constant increase in student numbers in the 1990s, but show that this growth was uneven and differentiated. The paper discusses a number of factors that influenced the increases in student numbers since the early 1990s, including the opening up and restructuring of HE in eastern Germany, and the strong increases in female participation and in the number of international students. Growth has been particularly significant in certain subject areas, as well as at Fachhochschulen and at private HE institutions. Current developments regarding the introduction of tuition fees and changing structures regarding access to HE are outlined, and their impact on the future expansion of HE is discussed.