Inclusive schooling: if it's so good – why is it so hard to sell?

What does the take-up of new technology have in common with the adoption of inclusive pedagogies to support students with additional needs in regular classrooms? Both are profound changes in the way we do things. Both are in response to changes in society. Both are championed by true believers and villainised by those more resistant to change. In this paper I consider why inclusive education has been so difficult to sell within schools, despite empirical evidence that is highly supportive of this practice. I review meta-analyses on the academic outcomes of students with disability in inclusive and segregated environments and discuss why the apparent benefits of this approach are not universally appreciated by Australian classroom teachers. I then compare the adoption of inclusive education with the uptake of innovative technology to develop an appreciation of what may be required for teachers to gain an understanding and commitment towards inclusive education.     

Politics,knowledge and objectivity in sociology of education: a response to the case for ‘ethical reflexivity’ by Gewirtz and Cribb

The present article examines the relationship between political values and social research, with particular reference to the case for ethical reflexivity in sociology of education put forward by Gewirtz and Cribb. It is argued that their case for such reflexivity is flawed by conceptual imprecision and over‐determination of the links between value commitments, knowledge and the political implications of research. Drawing on a case study of a controversy in sociology of education, combined with a more discriminating conceptual analysis of political values in social research, it is suggested that the Gewirtz–Cribb ‘manifesto’ for routine ethical reflexivity may be inefficient and impractical. An alternative way of thinking about political reflexivity in sociology of education is offered, as are some possible avenues of philosophical resolution between the main protagonists of the longstanding debate on ‘what to do about values’ in sociology of education.     

From citizenship of God’s Kingdom to liberal individualism? A critical historical analysis of Finnish religious education

The aim of this paper is to explore the history of Finnish religious education (RE) from the perspective of civic education. The research is based on a historical and content analysis of the data, which consist of written pedagogical and curricular material on Lutheran RE from the last 150 years. The analysis, which employs the Foucauldian concept of governmentality to explore the changes in the relationship between citizenship and religion, morality and power, demonstrates that RE has been a powerful tool in shaping civic identities throughout its history. However, the justifications for RE have differed markedly according to the social conditions of the day. This study further claims that liberalisation and individualisation are the main ideological and moral concepts that describe the change in the notion of citizenship. The main contribution of this analysis is to address the importance of understanding how the formation of civic identity is always shaped by historical and ideological currents and particularly how the externally controlling power of the nation state has been replaced by less visible ways of governing the liberal subject.     

‘Catholic schooling with a twist?’: a study of faith schooling in the Republic of Ireland during a period of detraditionalisation

The role of faith-based schools is increasingly debated within a context of school reform, rights and plurality in multi-ethnic societies. The Catholic schooling system in the Irish Republic (always referred to as Ireland in the text) represents an interesting case internationally because of the extent to which Catholic education is structurally embedded as normative across the education system. Yet, Ireland is in a process of detraditionalisation and wider societal change. Drawing on Bourdieu and Bernstein, and a mixed methodological study of Catholic secondary schools, the article presents a typology of Catholic schooling in transition. This identifies a continuum of Catholicity among the study schools that is mediated by dynamics of social class in an increasingly competitive and diverse system. It is argued this has implications for considering the role of a recontextualised model of Catholic faith schooling, underpinned by principles of social justice in a multicultural and more secularly oriented society.     

Marginalization of democratic values: a gendered practice of schooling?

Contemporary Swedish debate is much occupied with young men's attraction to anti-democratic ideals and the fact that they seem to learn less than girls about democratic values in school. Within politics, voices have been raised in favour of putting more effort into the schooling of young people's—especially boys'—social competence and democratic understanding. This paper analyses present school practice and discusses how schools go about handling issues of democracy. This will be done by reference to empirical results from two Swedish studies carried out in the 1990s. The presentation will focus in particular on the marginalization and gendered fostering of democratic values in school. It will also touch upon the implications for the kind of masculinities and femininities reproduced.     

Puzzling history – the personal file in residential care: a source for life history and historical research

Since the turn of the century large groups of former institutionalised children have exercised their right to see their ‘personal files’, and this has drawn widespread attention to these documents and their potential in scholarly research. This article explores the meanings of personal files from the period 1945–1984 as sources for both historical researchers and adult care leavers themselves, in the context of the orphanages in Ghent, Belgium. Based on the experiences of those who have consulted their files, we come to the conclusion that the personal files of the Ghent orphans provide some new information but, at the same time, leave a lot of issues unresolved. Although the files offered significant insights for researchers studying the most recent period in the history of the Ghent orphanages, it is difficult to see them as ‘keys to the past’ for former orphans who are trying to (re)construct their own, individual life histories.     

Problems,survival and transformation: religious education in Scotland – a historical review, 1962–1992

This paper is an examination of the history of Scottish religious education (RE). Focusing on 1962–1992, it distinguishes the temporal processes that unfolded during this period to identify the circumstances that led to a serious case of neglect of the subject, especially in the non-denominational sector. Next, it highlights the less emphasised but important issue of how RE ‘survived’ in public education, going on to explicate the antecedents of a paradigm shift in the subject. Finally, curriculum reforms undertaken in the subject from the 1980s onwards are described, showing how these reforms helped to transform Scottish RE into an ‘academic’ subject well aligned with the curricular principles of ‘5–14’, the country’s first (1992) ‘educational’ RE programme.     

“Straw bonnets” to superior schooling: The “failure” of the charity school movement in the context of nineteenth-century Ireland – a reappraisal

The spectacular growth and equally spectacular decline of the eighteenth-century charity school movement prompts this examination of the contribution made by the movement to nineteenth-century schooling – particularly superior or secondary schooling. Educational historians have argued that the movement was a failure. This paper argues that only in the case of one charity school-type – the charity day school – may failure be safely attributed to the charity school movement. The charity boarding schools, hospitals and asylums were far from being a failure. Indeed, in nineteenth-century Ireland, these schools, in response to social change, advanced from “straw bonnets” to superior schooling. Historians have also noted that the real difficulty surrounding the charity school is that of defining it. For Jones, it was an omnibus term that embraced all schools of a like nature. And indeed charity schools constitute a broad genre of schooling. In order to qualify the received assessment of the charity school movement in terms of “failure”, it has been found necessary to classify the charity school types within the broad genre they constitute. The paper assembles a number of charity school types and identifies the charity boarding school as that institution that successfully made the transition to superior status. The characteristics of the superiorisation process are outlined, as are the unique circumstances of nineteenth-century Ireland that facilitated, indeed required, it.     

Teaching ethics to engineers – a research-based perspective

This paper describes research underpinning a course, developed in Australia, on ethics for engineers. The methodology used, that of identifying the principal ethical issues facing the discipline and designing the course around these issues, would be applicable to other disciplines and in other countries. The course was based on the assumption that identifying the major ethical issues in the discipline, and subsequently presenting and analysing them in the classroom, would provide the future professional with knowledge of the ethical problems that they were likely to face on graduation. The student has then to be given the skills and knowledge to combat these concerns, should he/she wish to. These findings feed into several components of the course, such as the development of a code of ethics, the role of a professional society or industry association and the role of ethical theory The sources employed to identify the issues were surveys of the literature and about 30 case studies, in Australia and overseas. The issues thus identified were then put before a sample of engineering managers to assess the relevance to the profession.     

Adult learners in France in the 1960s: a socio‐historical approach to ‘the relationship to knowledge’

This paper uses a socio‐historical approach to explore the emergence in French theoretical literature in the mid‐1960s of a new notion, the ‘relationship to knowledge’ (rapport au savoir), and its success in the emerging field of professional adult education within the Complex of Nancy, France. The increasing use of this notion, first, in the research on adult pedagogy, and then, more generally, in educational research, will be used as a starting point in this paper to question the effects in France of the said research on the shift from teaching to learning from the late 1960s onward. Finally, this paper will present an attempt to compare ‘relationship to knowledge’ with ‘way of knowing’.     

Labour,Learning and the Economy: a ‘policy sociology’ perspective

This paper considers Labour's education policy portfolio in two loosely related ways. Firstly, I argue for the need to see the policy continuities between the Conservatives and Labour in an international context and to suggest that in a sense Labour's policies are not specific to Labour at all; they are local manifestations of global policy paradigms. Secondly, I begin to sketch out an argument which suggests that in one key respect Labour's policy thrust is contradictory in its own terms. That is, the over‐riding emphasis on education's role in contributing to economic competitiveness rests on a set of pedagogical strategies the effects of which are actually antithetical to the needs of a ‘high skills’ economy. This contradiction arises in part from an inherited, and ultimately self‐defeating, impoverished view of ‘learning’. I shall also point to some of the effects of performativity in relation to teaching and learning     

Building self-discipline to promote learning: students’ volitional strategies to navigate the demands of schooling

Volitional issues are important in today’s classrooms where autonomous students are expected to manage school demands on their own. A new kind of challenge has appeared with the advent of free Internet access in the classroom. Motivational conflicts may therefore arise between (1) immediate rewards of electronic chatting, surfing, and games and (2) the long-term rewards of academic achievement. Paradoxes of our educational system are emerging in the technology-rich classroom, for example, the basic need of student autonomy versus dealing with constraints to regulate one’s own behaviour. The main purposes of this article are, first, to discuss volitional issues on a theoretical level. Second, a field study is used to identify how students are using volitional (or self-discipline) strategies in technology-rich laissez-faire classrooms. Third, how schools may design institutional arrangements which can scaffold the student’s use of self-discipline strategies are discussed. The strategies which are enumerated may contribute to school programs that are to build self-discipline. Understanding how to design institutional features to influence students’ choices in directions that improve their academic achievement is one of the major challenges in education.

From Condescension to Complexity: post‐Plowden schooling in the inner city

The 2004 Higher Education Act introduced variable tuition fees of up to £3,000 for full‐time undergraduates in England. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) charging the maximum tuition must give low‐income students bursaries of £300. On top of this mandatory minimum, HEIs now provide additional discretionary financial support exceeding this level to these and other students. The degree to which these new bursaries and discretionary financial support have become a policy instrument for improving access and widening participation has not, as yet, been documented. Little is known about why the government introduced bursaries and what the government saw as their role. Even less is known about the type of bursaries HEIs have introduced or how they are being used, because up till now they have not been examined systematically. This article presents the first such analysis. It concludes that, from the evidence currently available, a mismatch exists between government aspirations and HEIs’ actual use of bursaries and scholarships. Moreover, the bursaries and scholarships put in place may perpetuate existing divisions within and across higher education.     

Neo‐liberal individualism and a new essentialism: a comparison of two Australian curriculum documents

This article explores a significant shift in the science curriculum in Victoria, Australia, in the mid‐1990s by using the idea of essentialism to compare two science curriculum documents that span the shift. The accounts given in these documents of desirable approaches to teaching science, science itself and the proper scope of curriculum, are compared to show that the document written in the mid‐1990s is open to a more essentialist reading than its predecessor. I argue that the market‐driven approach to education frames each learner as a neo‐liberal individual separated from society; consequently, it leaves ideas of community largely unexamined and unsupported. As a result, important curriculum and policy debates are short‐circuited and essentialist explanations for commonality become easier to accept. I describe this as new de facto essentialism, in that it arises from an insistence on individuality that denies the agency of society, rather than a consideration of positive evidence. Finally, I briefly examine the shaping paper for science in the first Australian National Curriculum for potential to avoid essentialist readings.     

Learning to be a person – East and West

This paper falls into two parts – a Western interpretation and an Eastern critique of the same process. The first part provides an interpretation of how we learn to become culturally embedded individuals. The paper notes the learning processes in the formation of the cultural and national self. We, in the West, have traditionally assumed that the process and its interpretation is universal because we have assumed the universality of human nature. Thereafter the paper seeks to adopt the philosophy of the East in which we move away from individualism and recognise that all people live in a universal network: this calls for a different interpretation of the process of becoming selves and so some of the implications of this Eastern approach are examined.     

Writing to learn writing skills – a case study

The paper describes a case study in which the main objective is to understand how engineering students can improve their writing skills, regarding spelling and syntax, when taught specifically on these issues. The methodology Writing To Learn is applied in two courses and, making use of the written texts, the students’ writing skills are assessed and evaluated. In one course, writing skills are taught and assessed and in the other they are only assessed. The comparison allows conclusions on the success of teaching writing skills, the influence of text styles and the differences between basic and advanced writing skills. It was found that writing skills were successfully taught, particularly with regard to basic writing skills. Advanced writing errors are twice as common as basic writing errors. Schematic writing styles favour a reduced number of writing errors.     

Transition to formal schooling: Do transition practices matter for academic performance?

This study examined whether the transition practices implemented in preschool-elementary school pairs contribute to children's academic development during the first year of elementary school. Participants were 398 children who moved from 36 preschools to 22 elementary schools in two Finnish towns. Children were tested in respect to their reading, writing, and math skills in the preschool spring and in the grade 1 spring. The most common practices reported by preschool teachers were discussions about the school entrants and familiarizing preschool children with the school environment and the new teacher. Multilevel latent growth modeling showed that the more the preschool teachers and elementary-school teachers implemented various supportive activities during the preschool year, the faster the children's skills developed from preschool to grade 1 spring. Co-operation over curricula and passing on written information about children between the preschool and the elementary school were the best predictors of the children's skills, although they were the least commonly used practices. The need to restructure the transition to elementary school and the use of multiprofessional resources are discussed.     

Learning to teach in a context of education reform: liberal studies student teachers' decision‐making in lesson planning

Liberal studies is a new subject in the new senior secondary curriculum in Hong Kong. This study attempted to identify factors that shape liberal studies student teachers' decisions in lesson planning. Based on interview data and lesson plans developed by the student teachers, this article maintains that four factors interacted with the subject features of liberal studies to shape the student teachers' planning decisions, namely, teacher knowledge, curriculum requirements, materials and resources, and interaction with equal and more capable partners. This paper further looks into how teacher knowledge expresses itself at different stages of lesson planning. The findings suggest that to facilitate enquiry learning in students, liberal studies teachers need to adopt an enquiry stance in lesson planning. This paper argues that the limitations of liberal studies student teachers' content knowledge need to be addressed in teacher preparation programmes and suggests teacher networking as one way to strengthen novice liberal studies teachers' content preparation. The implications for teacher education are discussed.