‘Yes,but if we have students think all day when will we get anything done?’: two conceptual resources to engage students in democratically dangerous teaching

While the politics of curriculum reform occupy adults, high stakes get played out in crowded classrooms. As a component of democratic inquiry, how might teachers engage students in a study of those agendas shaping their education? What sorts of conceptual resources could help? To begin to answer these questions, I briefly review scholars who address the emergence in several countries of what Kliebard names as a ‘social efficiency’ agenda in education. I then examine two strong examples of literature in ‘authentic’ practices as a curriculum conversation contesting this agenda. While supportive of the intent of scholars concerned with authentic practices, I assert that they insufficiently address ways in which students might engage with issues shaping their experience of formal education and offer two conceptual resources with which to do so.     

‘If the child cannot come to the school,then the school must go to the child’: The railway station platform schools in Odisha,India

Despite its constitutional obligation of ensuring universal primary education, the Indian Government has not been able to find a way to educate its 18 million street children. It is widely accepted that the government lacks the capacity – financial, managerial and human resource – to provide meaningful education to those who are left out of the formal education system. Many civil society organisations across India are trying to bridge the gap by educating children living in high-risk settings. One such initiative, the Railway Platform School started by Ruchika, proves that quality bridge or condensed courses are an effective way of encouraging children to access the formal education system. This article argues that the government needs to appreciate and support this kind of innovative initiatives, and also government and other civil society actors needs to operate under a collaborative framework to ensure reach out to children, who have been left out of the Government schooling system.     

‘Making do’, understanding the economic ‘possible’: social positioning,money and mother’s economic habitus in the school context

This paper is a qualitative consideration of how working-class mothers manage money, daily life, their children’s education and, in the process, internalise a particularistic economic position. It is uncommon that educational sociology incorporates a critical engagement of the daily drudge of extending money, and the implications of managing the varied and frequent costs of keeping children at school. I draw on Bourdieu’s model of practice and particularly that of the economic habitus. For these mothers, ‘making do’ refers not only to stretching the economic but to mental dispositions that emerge out of negotiating the economic, ‘not as a universe of possibles … but rather … impassable barriers’. The data reveals in wider and narrower cycles how economic conditions are foregrounded in the doing of ordinary life and in lives of heightened economic difficulty planning, or calculating dispositions towards the future are curtailed.     

‘Why don’t they show those on TV?’: documentary film festivals,media and community

The importance of alternative forms of information is undeniable in a democratic society. Yet mass media often ignore important issues as well as grassroots struggles and victories. Over the past two decades, citizens of one small Canadian town have initiated a documentary film festival as a means to learn about diverse problems and/or share stories of successful community development and victorious social movements around the world. This sparked a series of documentary film festivals in other small Canadian towns. This article examines a study of two of these documentary film festivals and the learning reported by members of the audience.     

‘Just don’t tell them what’s in it’: Ethics,edible insects and sustainable food choice in schools

Supporting young people with global crises mitigation strategies is essential, yet loaded with ethical dilemmas for the educator. This study explores whether young people will make ethical decisions regarding the sustainability of food choice in schools, and based on the processes identified, what educators’ needs are in supporting transformative learning. This study is the first of its kind, where young people under the age of 14 have been tasting edible insects and discussing their role in a more sustainable diet. The article draws on mixed-method research with over 180 young people and their teachers in three schools in Wales and examines responses to a possible introduction of edible insects into school canteens. Highlighted is the complexity of sustainable food choices—likely to be identifiable with other young people and educators in western countries. The article considers how educators and policy makers may need to frame routes to positive sustainable action and the associated impacts these may have on personal, social, political and environmental spheres.     

‘The best school for my child?’ Positions,dispositions and inequalities in school choice in the city of Barcelona

This article deals with the discourses and practices employed by families involved in school choice processes in the city of Barcelona (Spain). It draws upon a study conducted by the authors in 2008/09, and it is based on surveys completed by a representative sample made up of 3245 families, as well as 60 in-depth interviews with families with children at the age of commencing universal pre-primary education (three years old). Firstly, the article focuses on the types of concerns and pressures that families experience when choosing a school for their child. Secondly, we analyse the level and type of knowledge that parents have at their disposal about the field of school choice, as well as how they use and benefit from available information channels. Finally, we identify three unequal positions in which families find themselves when negotiating the field of school choice: ‘maximising’, ‘guaranteeing’ and ‘displaced’. These positions are, in turn, directly related to families’ locations in the social structure, which are also unequal.     

‘I don’t want to catch it’. Boys,girls and sexualities in an HIV/AIDS environment

This paper examines young South African school children’s understanding of HIV/AIDS. Based on ethnographic work in two schools in Greater Durban, it explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on the ways in which gender and sexuality are articulated against the backdrop of race and class specific contexts. The first part of the paper examines the children’s discourses of sex, sexuality and HIV/AIDS. We show that young children’s meanings of sex, sexuality and are not straightforward and are actively produced and defined through a range of social processes. These processes shape the extent to which young children experience sexuality within discourses of fear and pleasure. Young children’s meanings of HIV/AIDS are explored in the second part of the paper. Here we show how their knowledge of HIV/AIDS is socially structured through class/race and gender and these forms of social relations provide the framing and reference points for children’s constructions of meanings around HIV/AIDS. We finish the paper by raising some theoretical and practical/political questions about the implications of what we have found for HIV/AIDS education in South Africa.     

Institutional narratives within the performative preschool in Sweden: ‘if we write that we're no good,that's not good publicity!’

An increasingly important part of the work of preschool staff in Sweden today is to present their activities outwardly, including producing and presenting quality accounts of their activities and making them visible to a public audience. To grasp the local narratives, interviews were conducted with a few teachers and their school leader, aiming to describe how they reason about the work of formulating their activities in publicly accessible documents, and the consequences of this work. Theoretical concepts used for analysis and conclusions are performativity, which views performances as a means of control and change, and institutional narratives, as means to understand the effects of the local context on how activities and teaching are performed. Results show that the staff find and discuss detours in the presentation of their activities, where possible failings are made opaque. Paradoxically, such ‘detour actions’ will at the same time be disciplinary as the teachers adjust to the logic of performativity. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

We don’t play with gays,they’re not real boys … they can’t fight: Hegemonic masculinity and (homophobic) violence in the primary years of schooling

Whenever masculinity and school violence are considered in South African research, the focus is often on the high school. In this paper, we consider a different direction by drawing on Connell’s (1995) concept of hegemonic masculinity to understand the workings of power and violence amongst a group of South African primary school boys. Little is known about how forces of hegemonic masculinity operate to shape every day gender relations amongst younger boys. Against this background, this paper focuses on a particular group of boys, between 10 and 13 years old, who attend a ‘black’, working-class primary school in South Africa. In addition, they identify themselves as ‘real boys’, where being a ‘real boy’ is inextricably linked to violent ‘performances’ of hegemonic masculinity on the school playground during break time. The paper explores how these boys use forms of violence to claim control of the playground space and to exclude, marginalise and denigrate the other group of boys whom they construct as ‘unmasculine’ and ‘gay’. The findings raise implications for ways of curbing the violence, such as working with the boys to promote non-violent interpretations of performing, being and becoming a ‘real boy’.     

Medical educators’ metaphoric talk about their assessment relationships with students: ‘you don’t want to sort of be the one who sticks the knife in them’

Current perspectives in cognitive linguistics highlight the conceptual nature of cognition and how the conceptual metaphors we hold affect ways we think, talk and act. This study examines medical educators’ metaphoric talk to understand ways in which assessment relationships with students are conceptualised in order to understand why educators might ‘fail to fail’ underperformance in medical students. We conducted 10 focus groups with 70 educators at two UK medical schools. The audiotapes were transcribed and analysed using systematic metaphor analysis. The analysis revealed six over‐arching metaphors associated with the target domain of assessment relationships, i.e. assessment relationships as journey, war, sport, parentalism, machine and medicine. While medical educators conceptualised students’ academic failure in relatively innocuous ways (e.g. students’ failure to arrive at their destination; journey), they also conceptualised failure in harmful ways (e.g. students’ death; war). If medical educators hold the concept of assessment relationships as war, it is perhaps unsurprising that they are reluctant to fail students. We discuss these findings in light of existing literature and provide recommendations for designing training sessions through which assessors can address reluctance to fail underperformance. Such faculty development may aid assessors in identifying and using alternative metaphors to conceptualise the assessment relationship.     

‘Who likes fish? And I don’t mean fish fingers!’ Taste education,culinary capital,and distinction in a rural middle-class primary school

ABSTRACT

This paper explores how middle-class distinction is produced in a primary school by focusing on four different ‘scenes’. Using Bourdieu’s notion of distinction, this paper shows how children are educated on matters of middle-class taste. I argue that privilege is produced through food education in different formats. This taste education goes beyond what one should merely eat and consume. It is situated within a middle-class nostalgia for rural ‘villageness’. While this type of distinction is not in and of itself problematic, this paper discusses the implications for when these ideas are taken up in policy, and expected of all schools. I argue educators need to be aware of how these values are being rolled out as universal values, expected of schools in diverse areas. Educators should pay attention to how middle-class distinction and privilege is produced and reproduced in schools, in order to create a more inclusive food education.     

‘Get a blue and you will see your money back again’: staffing and marketing the English prep school, 1890–1912

This article explores the ways in which English prep schools were staffed and marketed in the years before the First World War. Its aim more specifically is to employ a biographical approach to consider the emphasis that the schools placed upon sport, and in particular the extent to which they recruited Oxford and Cambridge Blues as teachers (and/or as coaches). It will be suggested that while prep schools certainly placed enormous emphasis upon sport, few of them employed Blues; and that even the small number which did, generally did so only on a part-time, seasonal or casual basis – and made virtually no mention of them in their marketing.     

‘Oh no,nothing, we didn’t learn anything’: sex education and the preparation of girls for motherhood,c.1930–1970

This article investigates how girls were educated about sex, pregnancy and childbirth during the years 1930 to 1970. Based on the results of 92 oral‐history interviews with Oxfordshire women, it explores how national debates surrounding sex education influenced what girls in Oxfordshire were taught. In addition, it examines how successful the women themselves thought this education had been in equipping them for maternity and whether they believed women could indeed be educated for motherhood.     

‘I don’t do the mothering role that lots of female teachers do’: male teachers,gender, power and social organisation

The present article reports on a research project investigating the experiences of male primary teachers in Queensland, Australia. While its findings cannot be presented as indicative of all male teachers in all contexts, it does, however, send a warning to policy‐makers that the employment of more male teachers may not be in the best interests of gender justice unless such strategies designed to attract more male teachers are informed by sophisticated understandings of gender and social power. Utilising a (pro) feminist post‐structuralist theoretical perspective, it is demonstrated how some male teachers contribute to the maintenance of segregated work roles, which is of central importance to the continuance of gender power differentials in a patriarchal society. The research method focused on social relationships and involved a series of semi‐structured/life history interviews with 11 male teachers, six female teachers, two male principals and two female principals. An important implication from this research is that the employment of male teachers must be accompanied by an awareness of how teacher practice impacts upon the socialisation of students and how such practice reinforces or contributes to change in the broader gender system.     

Inbound,outbound or peripheral: the impact of discourses of ‘organisational’ professionalism on becoming a teacher in English further education

This article explores constructions of teacher identities at a time of significant changes to public service professionalism. The article draws on different discourses of professionalism, contrasting ‘organisational’ and ‘occupational’ professionalism, with discourses of ‘personal’ and ‘critical’ professionalism, to explore changing meanings and enactments of teacher professionalism in the 2000s. Narratives of three novice teachers, followed over eight years, are used to consider the impact of dominant discourses of ‘organisational’ professionalism in English further education, resulting in inbound, outbound and peripheral trajectories. In response, the article considers how practitioners might engage critically with current changes, arguing that it is necessary to work with what matters to teachers, such as their relations with students, teaching and learning and subject specialism. Such work might create, at least temporarily and locally, spaces in which more favourable conditions towards socially just and enabling educational practices can be worked towards.     

University leaders and university performance in the United Kingdom: is it ‘who’ leads, or ‘where’ they lead that matters most?

With key performance indicators (KPIs) part of everyday life in the higher education (HE) sector, universities have become increasingly concerned with league tables and performance indicator-led strategy and planning. The choice an institution makes concerning the KPIs it wishes to be evaluated on depends on its mission and objectives, with a Head of Institution (VC) appointed to deliver against this. As such, this raises the question as to whether institutional performance can be related in any way to the characteristics of its leader. The purpose of this research, therefore, was to identify any empirical justification for the socio-demographic characteristics which those responsible for searching and appointing VCs appear to have favoured over the past 10 years. Also, whether these can be shown to be related to the performance of their institutions. Using data available in the public domain and for UK (excluding Scotland) VCs in service for, at least, some time during 1999–2004 inclusive, evidence for the importance of VC characteristics for institutional performance was limited. Indeed, our findings suggest that, whilst the performance of a university may be ‘moulded’ by the characteristics of its’ leader, most of the variability is explained by non-leadership factors. We also found highly significant correlations amongst the KPIs used in HE, which has very significant implications for those wishing to differentiate themselves from other institutions.     

A comparison of performance and attitudes in mathematics amongst the ‘gifted’. Are boys better at mathematics or do they just think they are?

This paper explores gender differential performance in ‘gifted and talented’ 9‐ and 13‐year‐olds in a mathematics assessment in England. Boys’ and girls’ attitudes to mathematics and their views about which gender is better at mathematics are also considered. The study employs the use of a matched sample of boys and girls so that school, age and previous achievement in mathematics can be controlled whilst exploring performance on World Class Test items. The main result of this research was that there was no significant gender difference in performance for the 9‐ or the 13‐year‐olds. However, attitudinal differences were found, including a seemingly commonly held stereotypical view of mathematics as a boys’ subject. These results are important since the uptake of higher level mathematically‐based courses by girls is poor. Further findings reveal that where ‘gifted’ girls perform as well as ‘gifted’ boys, their confidence in the subject is lower than their performance might suggest. This work is also discussed in the light of related research findings and in relation to stereotype threat theory.     

‘I think a lot of it is common sense. …’ Early years students,professionalism and the development of a ‘vocational habitus’

This paper reports on research from a small-scale project investigating the vocational training of students in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in England. We draw on data from interviews with 42 students and five tutors in order to explore the students’ understandings of professionalism in early years. In the paper, we discuss first, the then Labour Government’s drive to ‘professionalise’ the workforce and second, critically analyse the concept of professionalism, drawing on sociological literature. We then turn to the data, and argue that students’ understandings of professionalism are limited to generic understandings of ‘professional’ behaviour (reliability, politeness, punctuality and so on). The idea of their occupation being a repository of a particular knowledge and skills set is undercut by the students’ emphasis on work with young children being largely a matter of ‘common sense’. Our fourth point is to highlight the processes by which students are inducted into a respectable and responsible carer identity, as illustrated by an emphasis on clothes and appearance. We conclude that the version of professionalism offered to students training at this level is highly constrained, and discuss the implications of this.     

‘Go,go on and go higher an’ higher’. Second‐generation Turks’ understanding of the role of education and their struggle through the Dutch school system

With reference to capital theories and rational choice theory, this paper aims to understand how abilities and schooling ambitions are intertwined with social class, gender and ethnicity. By drawing on 16 in‐depth interviews carried out with highly educated second‐generation Turks in the Netherlands, the paper discusses the resources, opportunities and educational attitudes of young people, together with the role of the school system and that of teachers in perpetuating ethnic inequalities in schooling, with special emphasis on gender differences in schooling ambitions.     

‘I would say nine times out of 10 they come to the LSA rather than the teacher’. The role of teaching assistants in supporting children's mental health

This research explored how seven primary school teaching assistants (TAs) experienced their role in supporting children's mental health. Interviews were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The participants believed that they supported children's mental health and particularly referenced the close relationships that they formed with children. Throughout their accounts of supporting children, the TAs referenced helpful factors (e.g. support from other staff) and challenges (e.g. hierarchy) within the school system. Supporting children’s mental health was an emotional experience for the TAs; they discussed the rewarding element, however, the topic also elicited fear. The findings provide several implications for school staff and external professionals about how TAs can be supported in their role. These include involving TAs in training opportunities, providing TAs with supervision, considering communication systems in schools, and introducing a mental health policy.