Where are we now? Auditing the implementation of an equal opportunities policy ‘on the ground’ in a new university

Abstract

A strongly held belief in the importance of individual merit makes it difficult for universities to move beyond a limited liberal interpretation of equal opportunities, which emphasizes equality of opportunity focusing on the absence of overtly discriminatory practice. Using the findings of a faculty equal opportunities’ audit, this paper demonstrates the conflict at ground level between traditional notions of academic excellence and the more radical aspirations of equality of outcome. It also reveals that an exclusive focus on conventional generic areas of discrimination such as gender, ethnicity and disability can obscure more contextually specific issues such as the perceived devaluing of ‘non‐academic’ staff by their academic colleagues.

The faculty audited was sited in a new university and comprised four departments with an overall total of 1115 students and 153 staff. Data was gathered in four stages namely (a) compilation of a demographic data base, (b) semi‐structured interviews with heads of departments, (c) two course audits including questionnaires to staff and students, and (d) semi‐structured interviews with administrative and technical staff. Findings were also related to those being generated by simultaneous audit activity in other parts of the university.     

Gender complexities in Jamaican secondary education: class culture and the ‘elephant’ in the room

ABSTRACT

This article utilizes a combination of the masculinity and intersectionality frameworks to argue that the underachievement of boys occurs in the intricacies of patriarchy, region (rural area), and class culture. The article utilizes data drawn from a qualitative study at two rural institutions in the parish of Manchester, Jamaica, to critically analyze the gendered nexus between boys’ underachievement and educational policies. The low grades merited by boys raise questions of patriarchy in the educational system in which they and their female teachers operate. While the failure of boys is not generalizable to the entire population, underachievement is also located in the mismatch between curriculum and the culture of these boys.     

Linking curriculum theory and linguistics: the performative use of ‘equivalence’ as an educational policy concept

The linguistic turn has helped to create new methods within social and educational theory. This study draws attention to the constitutive force of political language and the performative dynamics of one essentially contested concept—equivalence—in Swedish educational policy at both the national and the local level. It illustrates the way in which different interpretations of the concept of equivalence produce different truths, the performative concept thereby becoming a way of advocating particular understandings of the purpose of education.     

Privatization and ‘destatization’: school autonomy as the ‘Anglo neoliberalization’ of Irish education policy

Symbolic of the rise of neoliberal principles in Irish education policy, there is now a move towards advancing school autonomy and decentralizing decision-making to individual schools, possibly emulating the academy model that has become widespread in England. Increasing the freedom and independence of schools may involve using private actors to provide what has traditionally been the service of the state, but it will most definitely involve schools behaving more like private sector organizations. While some of the new powers that would be devolved to schools might seem attractive, especially in how they are presented at an official level, this paper highlights how features of autonomous schools that may initially seem appealing are, in practice, likely to be unsuited to the Irish context. In this regard, this paper advises that school autonomy should not be advanced in Ireland.     

Not just a ‘boy problem’: an exploration of the complexities surrounding literacy under-achievement

This paper examines literacy under-achievement and the limitations of gender-based literacy reforms grounded in essentialist notions of masculinity. It draws on qualitative case-study research conducted in one Ontario secondary school in a working-class community. It focuses on two grade 9 students and their teacher who participated in a larger study which examines how the norms and values associated with school-based literacy practices contribute to under-achievement. The cases highlighted in this paper are employed to raise critical questions about the way in which literacy under-achievement continues to be articulated as a ‘boy problem’. This paper also illustrates how the complex and situated nature of the students’ gendered and classed identities, interwoven with contextual and pedagogical factors, contribute to literacy under-achievement for some boys and some girls. In addition, it argues that the disjuncture between in- and out-of-school literacy practices warrants further study.     

Shaping the educational policy field: ‘cross-field effects’ in the Chinese context

This paper theorises how politics, economy and migrant population policies influence educational policy, utilising Bourdieusian theoretical resources to analyse the Chinese context. It develops the work of Lingard and Rawolle on cross-field effects and produces an updated three-step analytical framework. Taking the policy issue of the schooling of internal migrant children as an example, it analyses how a range of fields – political, economic and public policy – ‘export’ their logics of practice into the educational policy field (as a sub-field of the public policy field) and consolidate the changes. The cross-field effects shape the state school enrolment policy and the relative positions of agents and the relative value of their capital in the educational policy field. This paper demonstrates the analytical capacity of Bourdieusian theoretical resources for policy analysis in the Chinese context, by illustrating how the inequalities experienced by migrant families have been intensified in education by cross-field effects.     

Linking ‘The Book of Nature’ and ‘The Book of Science’: Using Circular Motion as an Exemplar beyond the Textbook

Bacon exhorted the natural philosophers of his day to read and interpret the book of nature by clever and cunning experimentation. The increasing scientific activity after Bacon and Galileo, however, quickly produced a second book. This was a book of interpretations of nature, namely the the book of science. Newton went beyond Bacon and Galileo and developedan ongoing dialogue between these two books, a repeated give and takebetween mathematical construct and physical reality. Unfortunately, thephysics textbook, the book of science the students read, does not acquaintthem with this style of reasoning. As an example of high-grade scientificthinking this paper discusses Newton's long struggle with the concepts ofinertia and especially of centrifugal force. In his quest to understand thedynamics of circular motion Newton clearly progressed through four levelsof conceptualizations, leading to progressively less severe discrepancies, inhis ascent to a full understanding of centripetal acceleration. While it is notpossible or desirable to expect teachers or students to recapitulate high-gradescientific thinking, partial retelling of the intellectual struggle that was involved in establishing important scientific concepts must be seen as important. This kind of pedagogy, however, requires that physics teachers have a good understanding of the history of scientific ideas as well as the findings of cognitive science.     

Making policy with ‘good ideas’: policy networks and the ‘intellectuals’ of New Labour

The educational reforms being enacted in Singapore can be considered exceptional in that they are being undertaken within a highly effective system. We explore these reforms using Brown and Lauder's ideal-typical analysis of ‘neo-Fordist’ and ‘post-Fordist’ models of national economic development. Singapore's reforms have been extensive, ranging from changes to early childhood education through to tertiary education. We examine the nature of state-market relations in education within the context of Singapore's ‘soft authoritarian’ political culture and assess the chances of success of the reforms.     

Moving policy forward: ‘brain drain’ as a wicked problem

The mobility of scientists and the concerns surrounding ‘brain drain’ are not new. Even in the Ptolemic dynasty, the first king set out to attract and influence the movements of scholars to shift the centre of learning from Athens to Alexandria. Yet after all this time, there is still much policy discourse and debate focused on attempting to define, redefine and solve this ancient problem. I argue that the continuing circularity of the debate supports the proposition that the policy issue of brain drain would value from being reconceptualised as a ‘wicked problem’, in order to move policy forward. Drawing upon a historical documentary analysis of the issue from 1990 to 2007 and interviews with current policy‐makers, I propose that reconceptualising this issue will enable actors to collectively and explicitly recognise the fundamental and conflicting perspectives inherent in this social problem that cannot be resolved. This reconceptualisation provides a platform from which policy‐makers can pursue a range of policy responses, attentive to the different perspectives on this issue, rather than spend more time and resources in futilely attempting to achieve a single definitive position and policy response.     

Cinema Education as an Exercise in ‘Thinking Through Not-Thinking’

In this article we explore the educational potential of cinema. To do this we first analyse how the American critical thinker Henry Giroux tries to give body to an educational theory in relation to cinema. His ‘film pedagogy’ is described as developing a critical response of the learner in relation to the public sphere of film. Giroux’s approach, however, seems to forget rather than explore the potential that is specific to the medium. Secondly, the article analyses Walter Benjamin’s (1936, Illuminations, London, Pimlico) essay ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, because here we find not a different educational response to cinema, but one of the first studies on cinema that describes its ontological nature and the potential of moving images for thought. Finally, the article discusses the cinema philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, who, in contrast to Giroux, does not construct a Cartesian framework around cinema. Rather, he recognizes and explores cinema’s potential for thoughts like Benjamin did. In this way, Deleuze reverses Giroux’s question of how education should respond to cinema. A pedagogical discussion hereby comes to the fore that does not ask the question of what methodology should be used in education to think critically about cinema, but what the implications are of the nature of cinema for thought and for education.     

Teachers’ work in complex times: the ‘fast policy’ of Swedish school reform

This paper analyses recent educational reforms on teachers’ work in Sweden following the 2010 Education Act, and up to the School Commission Report released in April 2017. We draw upon key policy texts and associated documents from the Ministry of Education, and the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket). We consider the background to the reforms, their relations with one another and how they have played out in the Swedish educational policy context. We argue that these reforms exhibit features of ‘fast policy’ in terms of how they have taken on an increasingly centralised and neoliberal character, and the rapid-fire way they have been directed at teachers as individuals, rather than broader schooling structures. We show how the fast policy reforms have recentralised schooling and teachers’ work—effectively de-professionalising educators.     

Administrative practices as institutional identity: bureaucratic impediments to HE ‘internationalisation’ policy in Japan

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how bureaucracy impedes the implementation of higher education (HE) policy at Japanese universities. Administrative systems employ Weberian legal-rational bureaucratic practices that are central to the institutional identity of a university. Rather than the means to internationalisation and reform in general, these systems themselves become the end, usually in direct opposition to not only innovation and change but, indeed, the university mission itself. After first outlining the macro-level processes and policies of the internationalisation of Japanese HE, I take an ethnographic approach to illustrate the micro-level administrative practices and assumptions at the university, framing them within the social theory of bureaucracy to allow for comparison with HE in other parts of East Asia and worldwide. As a way forward, I propose we borrow theories on social entrepreneurship to potentially resolve the challenge of embedded administrative practices and static institutional identities, a bureaucratic ‘utopia of rules’ [Graeber, D. 2015. The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. New York: Melville House].     

Professionals’ views on the new policy for special educational needs in England: ideology versus implementation

In 2014 a new policy for special educational needs and disability (SEND) provision was introduced in England. As it has been the case in countries where SEND reforms were introduced, these changes raised challenges and opportunities for the professionals supporting children with SEND. However, to date, little systematic and large-scale evidence has been made available on how professionals perceive these changes. In this study, the views of 349 professionals were ascertained using a semi-structured online survey. The results revealed that although many professionals agreed in principle with some of the key changes introduced, several constraints were reported including tight timelines, budget cuts, and difficulties in the collaboration between education, health and care, suggesting a rather fragmented implementation of the new policy. No significant differences were found between groups of professionals for most items, however educational psychologists and special needs co-ordinators disagree on the extension of the provision age range, on how well the children’s needs are described in the education, health and care plans, and on the professional requirements of this process. The findings are discussed in light of their implications for meeting children’s needs and in comparison with other policy changes worldwide.     

‘Getting stuck’ in analogue electronics: threshold concepts as an explanatory model

Could the challenge of mastering threshold concepts be a potential factor that influences a student's decision to continue in electronics engineering? This was the question that led to a collaborative research project between educational researchers and the Faculty of Engineering in a New Zealand university. This paper deals exclusively with the qualitative data from this project, which was designed to investigate the high attrition rate of students taking introductory electronics in a New Zealand university. The affordances of the various teaching opportunities and the barriers that students perceived are examined in the light of recent international research in the area of threshold concepts and transformational learning. Suggestions are made to help students move forward in their thinking, without compromising the need for maintaining the element of intellectual uncertainty that is crucial for tertiary teaching. The issue of the timing of assessments as a measure of conceptual development or the crossing of thresholds is raised.     

Education recoded: policy mobilities in the international ‘learning to code’ agenda

Abstract

Education policy increasingly takes place across borders and sectors, involving a variety of both human and nonhuman actors. This comparative policy paper traces the ‘policy mobilities,’ ‘fast policy’ processes and distributed ‘policy assemblages’ that have led to the introduction of new computer programming practices into schools and curricula in England, Sweden and Australia. Across the three contexts, government advisors and ministers, venture capital firms, think tanks and philanthropic foundations, non-profit organizations and commercial companies alike have promoted computer programming in schools according to a variety of purposes, aspirations, and commitments. This paper maps and traces the evolution of the organizational networks in each country in order to provide a comparative analysis of computing in schools as an exemplar of accelerated, transnationalizing policy mobility. The analysis demonstrates how computing in schools policy has been assembled through considerable effort to create alignments between diverse actors, the production and circulation of material objects, significant cross-border movement of ideas, people and devices, and the creation of strategic partnerships between government centres and commercial vendors. Computing in schools exemplifies how modern education policy and governance is accomplished through sprawling assemblages of actors, events, materials, money and technologies that move across social, governmental and geographical boundaries.     

Educational expertise: the concept of ‘mind frames’ as an integrative model for professionalisation in teaching

Professionalisation in teaching has been the topic of extensive research in recent years, following in general two different approaches: the ‘competence-based approach’ and the ‘critical reflection approach’. With large-scale comparative studies such as PISA, TIMMS and PIRLS at the beginning of the 21st century, the former approach came to dominate the field and—especially in Germany—a specific model of professionalisation advanced to the status of a paradigm. However, this model does not seem unproblematic when one considers its roots. In this article I begin by inquiring into the concept and methodology behind the status quo in order to reveal its limitations. As a means of developing this concept further, I then introduce a model of educational expertise that takes as its theoretical foundation the didactic triangle, which has a rigid systematic structure for critical and reflective thinking about teaching and is backed up by empirical findings. At the core of this model of educational expertise are mind frames, a concept established by John Hattie. They may be seen as a theoretically founded and systematically structured interaction between competencies and attitudes backed up by empirical findings. Thus, they stand for an integrative model for professionalisation in teaching. Finally, I use this model to provide an outlook on university teacher education.     

A policy sociology reflection on school reform in England: from the ‘Third Way’ to the ‘Big Society’

This article presents a policy sociology reflection on Bernard Barker's book, The Pendulum Swings: Transforming School Reform. The book represents Barker's attempt to intervene in education policy during the lead-up to the 2010 UK general election and is framed by what he imagined might be possible under a new Conservative government. Barker draws inspiration from the Red Tory communitarian position articulated by Phillip Blond. In hindsight, we are less sanguine about these possibilities in the context of the Coalition government and its ongoing response to the ongoing financial crises. Indeed, what has emerged is a rearticulated neo-liberalism in the guise of ‘Big Society’ rhetoric. We agree with Barker's critical deconstruction of the five illusions underpinning New Labour schooling policy, but argue for a broader agenda of redistribution, both in social policy and with respect to schools. Policy needs to recognise and support teachers and good pedagogies, and we also see a pressing need to rethink richer forms of educational accountability. All of this must be located within a politics that pursues a new social imaginary. Nonetheless, we commend Barker's contribution towards post neo-liberal thinking in respect of school policy, specifically in England, but with relevance to other locations and systems.     

The fault is in ourselves: looking at ‘failures in implementation’

While implementers are often blamed, reformers themselves are usually responsible for sub‐optimal implementation of educational reform projects. This article shows that the conditions for successful implementation, which are known and accessible, are frequently ignored. The case study concerns a university that is engaged in in‐service teacher education reform in Pakistan, focusing on introducing a ‘learner‐centred’ approach in schools. The research identified severe shortcomings related to implementation of the new approach, mostly relating to a failure by the teacher‐educators to understand and adapt to the actual contexts in which the teachers work. Finally, we suggest reasons why there are so many instances of failed reforms in developing countries.     

The teacher as a ‘colony’: a case study of agentive responses to ‘colonising’ education policy in Vietnam

Neo-liberal educational policies that are being implemented globally work to foster competition among schools and teachers, as well as among children. In this situation, teachers must often come to accept the dominant representations of curricular policy developed by higher authorities. In this study, a case study design is used to describe how one school in Vietnam shifted away from this state of ‘colonisation’ by reforming the school under the framework of lesson study for learning community (LSLC). This paper subsequently argues that there is a need for school-level policies that democratise school culture and practices, resisting the negative impacts of colonising policies.     

Changing times in the classroom: teaching as a ‘crowded profession’

Abstract

This article reports on a study of teachers in New South Wales (Australia) and their practices surrounding outcomes assessment and reporting, which took place in 2003 and 2004 as a follow-up to a major study in 1995. The study explored whether the main focus of a teacher's work involves planning, teaching, assessing, rewarding and sharing in their classroom and with colleagues, and whether this focus suffered many distractions in the flurry of reforms of the past decade. One example of ‘changing times’ in the classroom has been the devolution of school management, which caused a number of diversions of energy and time away from teaching and learning. Yet even in the area of curriculum schools were struggling with a range of issues, many brought on by the advent of outcomes-based curricula. In seeking to change what happens in schools, teachers argued that they needed clear and well-argued reasons to change. This article thus provides an update on the relevant research, beginning with national and international experiences, before a discussion of workload, the place of parents and school organizational effects. One finding is that alongside a ‘crowded curriculum’, teaching has become a ‘crowded profession’. The article concludes with reflections on how changing times in the classroom mean social reform as well as educational reform, in which teaching and learning shape effects and consequences from educational events so that knowledge grows through experiences, measuring possibilities not outcomes.