Defining curriculum policy through slogans

This article explores the upper secondary (or post‐16) school market. The study on which it is based, funded by the Swedish Research Council, was entitled ‘Upper‐secondary education as a market’. Empirical data include official statistics, policy documents, school publications, company reports and school visits. Printed and other news media were also scrutinised to identify how the marketisation of education is represented in public discourse. A number of themes emerged from the study which included mapping the expansion of the school market, chains of ownership and influence, marketing strategies, choice and the school market and issues raised in the media. These imply that there is a new market discourse which represents a clear break with previous social democratic education policies primarily aimed at enhancing citizenship and wider democratic values within an inclusive public school. However, critiques have also emerged including a call for strengthened regulations of and control over independent schools and concern about an education market equated more with shares and profits rather than pedagogy and student citizenship.     

A Critique of the Stem Pipeline: Young People’s Identities in Sweden and Science Education Policy

In this article, we develop critiques of the pipeline model which dominates Western science education policy, using discourse analysis of interviews with two Swedish young women focused on ‘identity work’. We argue that it is important to unpack the ways that the pipeline model fails to engage with intersections of gender, ethnicity, social class and nationality, and their impact on science and with debates about science as elitist and implicated in neoliberalism.     

CREATIVITY, KNOWLEDGE AND CURRICULUM IN FURTHER EDUCATION: A BERNSTEINIAN PERSPECTIVE

ABSTRACT:  This paper draws on the work of Basil Bernstein to offer a (re-) conceptualisation of creativity for the English further education (FE) sector. It begins by locating creativity within the political economy of FE and argues that teaching and learning is constrained by an instrumental remit for the sector, which prioritises perceived economic needs over broader conceptions of education and training. The paper goes on to analyse the FE curriculum, relating Bernstein's work on generic modes to critiques of competence. It proposes a central role for knowledge and broad conceptions of skill in FE in order to contest an instrumental approach to teaching and learning arising from official discourse on competitiveness. The paper uses Bernstein's typology of vertical and horizontal discourse to argue that creativity needs to be re-defined in a way that recognises the value of principled, conceptual knowledge in vocational education whilst acknowledging the socially constructed nature of creativity and knowledge.     

试论“体育教育”的话语困境

一个多世纪以来,“体育教育”这个富有争议的词语,为什么能够经常出现在日常话语、期刊杂志甚至各类政策文件之中？究其根源,在于缺乏术语规范意识和学术批判精神。文章在对“体育教育”一词使用状况及其受质疑状况进行考评的基础上,从传播学、语言学、术语学和教育学四个维度进行了重新解读和辨析,最后得出结论:“体育教育”之说确实具有明显的不合理性,不符合学术思想表达的一般规范,必须特别谨慎地使用,并自觉区分它在政策话语、实践话语和理论话语中的实际内涵。     

Multicultural Education From a Pedagogical Perspective: A Response to Radical Critiques

This paper critically reviews radical critiques of multicultural education from a pedagogical perspective. Goals for the paper are: to reveal agreement between radical and multicultural discourse about transformative pedagogy, exemplify a body of literature about pedagogical struggles not recognized by radical critics, and encourage interchange between these groups in regard to critical multicultural education.The authors are interested in transformative, multicultural pedagogy, which is associated with critical multicultural education. They seek to know the extent to which transformative multicultural pedagogy is addressed within radical critiques of multicultural education. They question the extent to which voices of teachers and students engaged in real transformative pedagogy are acknowledged by radical critics.Ideological agreement is found between radical critics and multicultural educators in regard to transformative pedagogy. However, radical critics do not acknowledge this agreement, or perceive multicultural education as transformative. In response, the authors reference a growing body of literature that portrays real, transformative, multicultural pedagogy in action in school and university classrooms. They encourage radical critics to read this literature and consider alliances between radical and multicultural theory and practice.     

Healthism and Physical Education

Health has become a symbolic category of considerable importance, expressing a range of notions relating to well‐being, consumption and normality. A particular view of health as corporeal and individualistic has become pervasive within the new health consciousness, and school physical education represents one site among many where the ideology of healthism is produced. This paper draws on a study of an innovative programme in primary schools in Queensland, Australia. It explores how on the one hand the instructional discourse of ‘daily physical education’ varied across a number of sites of meaning production and how on the other hand this instructional discourse was embedded in the regulative discourse of healthism which set limits on the extent to which the people operating at these sites could make their own sense of daily physical education. We argue that a corporeal and individualistic concept of health, in which body shape and fatness play a central role, is being produced through health‐based physical education programmes like daily physical education. These programmes in turn represent an important site of the production of an individualistic and internalised mode of corporeal control.     

‘Looking for the perfect beat’: the power of black student protest rhetorics for academic literacy and higher education

Drawing on three modes of inquiry—personal narrative, teacher research and historical work on black student protest in higher education—this article describes the writer's experience first as a college student and then as a teacher in a classroom where a student activist shaped the social consciousness of his peers. The politics of the student activist is set in the context of a historical continuum that goes back to the black student protests of the 1950s. A distinct set of black student protest rhetorics is used to locate deep‐rooted political critiques of higher education. These rhetorics are critical for re‐imagining vernacular and discursive possibilities in the academy and encompass very different notions of language and literacy from standard tropes of academic discourse as access.     

Issues of power and control in STEM education: a reading through the postmodern condition

STEM, or the integration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, has rapidly become a dominant discourse in political, economic and educational spheres. In the U.S., the STEM movement has been boosted by global economic-based competition and associated fears, in terms of STEM graduates, when compared with other nations. However, many critiques question the nature and goals of this competition, as well as, the possibilities to improve STEM talents through the current dominant conceptualizations and practices of STEM education. In addition, the apparent lack of significant and coherent embracement of (and sometimes silence about) socioscientific and socio-political issues and perspectives renders STEM education incapable of preparing learners for active citizenships. Building on these critiques, I argue that these problems are possible consequences of STEM as a construct of power. My arguments are based on Lyotard’s conceptions of knowledge in postmodern society (as reported in The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge, University Press, Manchester, 1984), which I use to analyze some aspects of the STEM educational movement. Throughout the paper, I explore the construction of STEM education within competitive frames that place prime value on high performativity. There seem to be two characteristics of current STEM education that support performativity; these are an increased focus on technological and engineering designs, and a tendency for interdisciplinary education. At the same time, the eagerness for performativity and competition seems to drag STEM education into selectiveness, thereby jeopardizing its possible benefits. Recommendations are also discussed.     

Toward Collegiality: Competing Viewpoints Among Teacher Educators

A series of recent speeches, articles, and books have outlined a radical perspective on physical education derived from critical theory, feminism, and postmodernism. This radical discourse has been particularly critical of what it describes as positivistic approaches to research and technocratic views of teaching and curriculum. This article outlines our concerns with this literature, including (a) polemical presentations and vitriolic language, (b) zero-sum arguments that polarize, (c) cartooning, (d) a lack of evidence to defend assertions, and (e) assumptions that it alone occupies high moral ground. We acknowledge that the radical literature has not only brought moral issues to the ongoing forum among physical educators but has also had a direct, positive influence on our work. Areas where we might engage in a collegial discourse include the nature of the subject matter called physical education, the basis underlying a moral perspective on professional work, and the nature of teaching skill development.     

Analysing the Effects of Critique Techniques on the Success of Interior Architecture Students

In architectural design education, the most significant part in the curriculum is the design studio, where students learn how to design. Critique has a crucial role in the design studio, and in determining the best and most beneficial critique type for the architectural design education process. Student attitudes toward critiques and student satisfaction level with each critique technique are also significant. To that end, this article explores design studio learning by reviewing the design learning process and types of design critiques. Focusing on three critique techniques used in design education (desk critiques, pin‐up critiques and group critiques), the article analyses correlations between student attitudes toward each technique and its contribution to the design process. Research was conducted with 84 third‐year interior architecture students from the 2014–15 Fall semester at a university. No statistically significant differences were found between group and pin‐up critiques in terms of students’ preferences and their final performance scores; however, there was a statistically significant relationship between student preferences toward desk critiques and student success. Furthermore, the contribution of a critique technique to the design process was found to be highly correlated with student preference for this technique.     

Historical construction and Australian Catholic education: accounting for school funding policy from the cultural politics of Australian education

This paper seeks to explain why the policy history of school funding in regard to Australian Catholic Education looks and sounds the way it does today through the production of a genealogy of the subject. The questions addressed are, first, why has the funding of Catholic schools in Australia become an occluded historical site since the 1970s, despite the controversy in which popular accounts of the funding of Australian schools is mired, and when its prevalence so completely dominated the discourses of Australian education in the prior century? Second, has funding policy discourse been defined and contained and what basis is there for contesting such discourse in light of events since that period of time? Third, which or whose policy version triumphs and becomes the accepted policy process and which other policy approaches are obliterated in this process? The theoretical perspective adopted in this paper draws from both postmodern critiques and cultural theories of historical construction, as framed within Foucauldian Studies.     

Environmentalization of the physical education curriculum in Brazilian universities: culturally comparative lessons from critical outdoor education in Australia

‘Environmentalizing’ curriculum in Brazil is a worthy goal of global educational reform for sustainability but is challenging given the limits to rational change thesis already argued in critical social science and post-structural deconstructionism. The federal government mandate to environmentalize undergraduate physical education programs poses the question of which aspects of physical education are conducive to change. ‘Nature’ sports, or outdoor/adventure activity education, is the most likely candidate. In Australia over the past three decades, the environmentalization of ‘old’ physical education outdoor activities has led to the development of ‘new’ discourse practices that integrate environmental studies and outdoor education and are designed for ecological responsibility and social sustainability. In this culturally comparative light about the possibilities for curriculum change in environmental, outdoor and physical education, we examine the potential for change in Brazilian approaches to physical and sport education by critiquing broader ‘environmentalizing’ issues as they have occurred historically within the Australian outdoor education context in the university and secondary schooling sectors.     

Beyond national states, markets, and systems of higher education: A glonacal agency heuristic

This paper offers an overarching analyticalheuristic that takes us beyond currentresearch, anchored in conceptions of nationalstates, markets, and systems of highereducation institutions. We seek to shapecomparative higher education research withregard to globalization in much the same waythat Clark's (1983) ``triangle' heuristic hasframed comparative higher education research inthe study of national policies and highereducation systems. Our ``glonacal agencyheuristic' points to three intersecting planesof existence, emphasizing the simultaneoussignificance of global, national, and localdimensions and forces. It combines the meaningof ``agency' as an established organization withits meaning as individual or collective action. Our paper critiques the prevailing framework incross-national higher education research,addressing the liberal theory that underpinsthis framework, the ways scholars address therise of neo-liberal policies internationally,conceptual shortcomings of this work, andemergent discourse about ``academic capitalism'. We then discuss globalization and ourheuristic. Finally, we provide examples of howstates, markets, and institutions can bereconceptualized in terms of global, national,regional, and local agencies and agency.     

Additional workload or a part of the job? Icelandic teachers' discourse on inclusive education

The aim of this article is to examine the discourse of Icelandic compulsory school teachers on inclusive education. From 1974 and onwards, the education policy in Iceland has been towards inclusion, and Iceland is considered to be an example of a highly inclusive education system with few segregated resources for students with special educational needs. In particular, the article focuses on what characterises and legitimises teachers' discourse on inclusive education, the contradictions in the discourse and how teachers have involved themselves in the process. We use the approach of historical discourse analysis to analyse the discourse as it appears in interviews with teachers and media articles on education as well as in key documents issued by the Parliament. The article provides an insight into the complexities of this topic and draws attention to underlying issues relevant to inclusive education.     

Gender and the Problem of Diversity: Action Research in Physical Education

This purpose of this paper is to explore the intersecrion of gender, equity and the discourse of diversity. The authors argue that while the goal of diversity in a democratic society is an admirable one, its advocacy could limit any real educational change. To explore the differences between the discourse of diversity and language of equity, they draw upon two action research studies conducted by two elementary school reachers who were not elementary physical education specialists. Through their action research projects, which included direct instruction as a way to confront the gender discrimination that was occurring in the physical education component of their classrooms, these teachers found that they had to abandon the discourse of diversity and embrace the language of equity for meaningful educational change to occur.     

EDUCATION AND THE MIDDLE CLASSES: AGAINST REDUCTIONISM IN EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND RESEARCH

ABSTRACT:  This paper critiques what it sees as a tendency on the part of certain social researchers to engage in moralistic critiques of middle-class parents, especially in relation to the choices and actions of such parents within educational quasi-markets. It proceeds to a linked critique of the influence within education of certain aspects of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, with particular reference to the concepts of symbolic violence and the depiction of cultural meanings as arbitrary. It is argued that both these developments involve unhelpful and unjustified forms of reductionism that could have the effect of alienating middle-class support for a range of broadly progressive political endeavours within and beyond education.     

Expert Perspectives on the Future of Physical Education in Higher Education

Despite physical education teacher education/physical education sport pedagogy’s (PETE/PESP’s) significant strides in the past century, there are concerns about its future. Grounded in participatory research, and through an interview-Delphi method, this study purposefully sampled five male PETE/PESP scholars’ expert critiques of current threats, projections of probable and preferable futures, and recommendations for transformation. Data were analyzed through an interpretive approach. Findings included: (a) limitations in physical education policy, teacher preparation, and status as key threats; (b) more of the same conflicts in the probable future and increased cooperation regarding conflicts in the preferable future; and (c) proactively revising the subdisciplinary framework and doctoral studies as transformative recommendations. We interpret issues critiqued as threatening PETE/PESP’s future, and projections of the probable future, as reflective of neoliberal rationality that has renormalized academic work in de-democratizing ways. We interpret that projections of preferable futures and transformative recommendations call for a re-emphasis on ethical academic attitudes to resist neoliberalization and reclaim democracy.     

The Changing Context of K–12 Education Administration: Consequences for Ed.D. Program Design and Delivery

This article explores the changing context of school leadership in our nation, a context that requires education leaders who are skilled and knowledgeable with a new set of dispositions to lead complex, diverse, and innovative institutions. The article also discusses recent critiques of existing leadership preparation programs, with emphasis on what has been said about the Ed.D. and Ph.D. degrees in educational leadership. Data are provided about trends in advanced degree offerings in higher education institutions, and the mission statements of top-ranked graduate programs in education leadership are assessed. Finally, the article discusses the consequences that these trends, critiques, and the changing context of school leadership might have upon the design and delivery of leadership preparation programs for current and aspiring school leaders.     

‘I love a curry’: student-teacher discourse around ‘race’ and ethnicity at a UK university

This paper presents aspects of a small scale study that considered student teachers’ language and discourse around race and ethnicity at a university in the northwest of England. The first part of the paper critiques current education-related policy, context and practice to situate the research and then draws upon aspects of critical race theory and whiteness theory as frames of reference. In the research, 250 student-teachers completed questionnaires that invited responses to statements about race and ethnicity and this was followed by two semi-structured group interviews. A discourse analysis approach was taken to analyse the language used in the questionnaire responses and, in particular, the group interviews. Recurrent discursive configurations were characterised by language that signified othering, correct knowledge, personalisation and discomfort. Hesitations and silences during group discussions perhaps intimated thinking time and also maybe a reluctance to talk about aspects of race and ethnicity, and what was not said remains significant. It is suggested that a reconstruction of a teacher/educator subjectivity that fosters self-reflection on values and racial positioning, is needed in teacher education, alongside critical examination of the silences and discomfort surrounding race and ethnicity.     

网络媒介环境下高职院校思想政治教育话语权提升策略研究

随着网络媒介的快速发展与信息传播方式的变革,高职院校思想政治教育的生态环境发生了重要改变。网络媒介传播即时性、传播价值多元化以及信息传播泛娱乐化大大削弱了思想政治教育的话语权,给高职院校思想政治教育工作带来了巨大挑战。而网络媒介时代思想政治教育话语权彰显着高职院校思想政治教育对于学生的综合影响力,为了提升思想政治教育话语权,高职院校必须积极推进话语方式转变、推动传统媒介与网络媒介融合发展、提高思想政治教育工作者的话语驾驭能力等,以增强思想政治教育的实效性。