Agency in the darkness: ‘fear of the unknown’, learning disability and teacher education for inclusion

This paper proposes inclusion phobia as a sharper and more operative definition of the ‘fear of the unknown’ often cited as an explanation for resistance to inclusive education. Using ‘severe and profound learning disability’ as the paradigm case, we situate the phobia surrounding this label in its social and historical context. Our hypothesis is that resistance to inclusion for this group is not rational but amounts to a thought disorder in a psychiatric sense. Using qualitative case studies of pre-service teachers on practicum and headteachers engaged in decisions about admissions, we demonstrate the workings and impact of inclusion phobia. We illustrate its trajectory from a general social dysfunction, to the systems that channel it to the individuals caught up in it. Our aim is to expose inclusion phobia so that, teacher educators, teachers and pre-service teachers might, in knowing it, find new ways to remedy it. In doing so, long standing resistance to inclusive education is made more tractable. We conclude with our own proposals for an anti-phobic curriculum for teacher education.     

Pakistani diaspora in Britain: intersections of multi-locationality and girls’ education

The South Asian diaspora and its impact on the lives of dispersed communities is a complex phenomenon finding expression in a range of issues and debates. However, the nature and scale of the challenges and issues vary in each case and context, and even over generations. These issues become more sensitive and poignant when underpinned by cultural and belief systems. This paper debates the impact of dominant discourses and values on schooling choices and the related concerns to explore issues linked to girls’ education among Pakistani diaspora in England, drawing on relevant literature and the evidence from a recent study of single-sex schooling. It argues that multiple emotional, social, cultural, historical, political, economic and other affiliations influence the patterns of behaviour and the terms of civic engagement in the adopted country leading to a struggle over meanings and competing positions over values and practices that are fluid and dynamic.     

Elementary education and the practices of literacy in Catholic girls’ schools in early modern Germany

Girls’ schools in the early modern era were largely run by nuns and can therefore be distinguished as Catholic institutions of learning. These schools flourished in the Catholic parts of Europe since the turn of the seventeenth century. Despite their focus on religious education, elementary skills such as reading, writing and sometimes arithmetic were taught as well. Based on curricula, didactical methods and the texts used in class, the article analyses the practices of literacy in Catholic girls’ schools in seventeenth and eighteenth century Germany. As the intentions of school founders and teachers reveal, the acquisition of literacy by the female population was not an end in itself. It rather served the denominational, gender- and class-specific socialisation of the girls. Nevertheless, learning to read and write enabled the girls to participate in the literate culture of their times. The impact of schooling on female literacy can be measured by correlating literacy rates and data on school attendance. Compared to coeducational schools where girls often only learned to read, whereas the boys were also taught writing, girls’ schools proved to be the better alternative.     

Sex‐role stereotyping and gifted girls’ experience and education

Recent research and literature indicate that many parents, teachers and counselors of the gifted continue to reflect attitudes and sex‐stereotypes that are detrimental to the expression of the abilities of gifted girls.     

Interactive fiction: An experience of the ‘Writers in education’ scheme

The idea of bringing children, students, and teachers into contact with living writers was initially implemented by the Literature Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1969, but since 1980 the scheme had devolved upon the Regional Arts Associations, embracing single visits, workshop sessions, talks, readings, and short-term and long-term residences and attachments of various kinds, with the Regional Arts Association generally bearing half the cost of fees, plus travel. The scheme now operates in a wide range of venues in addition to schools and colleges, incorporates in-service and residential courses, and includes illustrators, storytellers, dramatists, and performance poets alongside novelists, poets, and short-story writers.Fay Sampson is the author of 16 books for young people. For many years she has combined teaching and writing in England, winning awards from the South West Arts regional council for her work. She is currently a full-time writer and an adult education tutor in writing.     

Boys’ and girls’ educational choices in secondary education. The role of gender ideology

This study aims to explain why boys and girls in secondary education choose different educational tracks. We argue that adolescents internalise gender expectations as to what is “appropriate” male and female behaviour in their gender ideology. Gender ideology can affect educational choices by influencing (1) how adolescents evaluate their competence in certain subjects (competence beliefs), (2) what they find important in a future occupation (occupational values) and (3) what school subject they prefer right now (subject preferences). Longitudinal data collected among adolescents at age 15 and 16 (N = 1062) are used. Multinomial path models show that gender ideology shapes boys’ occupational values and subject preferences, whereas for girls it shapes their competence beliefs. Only for boys this leads to gender-stereotypical educational choices, however. Our results support the idea that gender expectations are stricter for boys than for girls and may prevent men from entering more feminine career tracks.     

Irish education and the legacy of O’Connell

In 1831, the British Government decided to become directly involved in the provision of elementary education in Ireland, a country over which it then had jurisdiction. By European standards of the time this was a highly unusual step. A number of scholars have interrogated the factors that led to this outcome as well as the role played by various individuals. Daniel O’Connell’s activities, at this time, have been described as relatively limited, which appears incongruous given that he is considered the most powerful Irish politician of this era and was then at the height of his powers. It is the central contention of this article that O’Connell was, in fact, intimately involved in bringing about a national system of elementary education. Of more lasting significance is the manner in which he defined the role of the politician vis-à-vis the Church authorities in educational policy-making. In this regard he established a pattern that remained unchanged for over a century and indeed, it could be argued, largely persists to this day.     

Women's leadership of ‘much needed national work’ in wartime education

While there is a wealth of feminist research on women's educational leadership and policy-making in the interwar years, this article extends the discussion into the Second World War. My focus is the educational leadership of Dorothy Walker, head teacher of St Peter's Infant School and the youngest head teacher in Birmingham, and Lillian de Lissa, longstanding principal of Gipsy Hill Training College (where Walker trained) and national advocate for early childhood education. I highlight Walker and de Lissa's ongoing challenges to patriarchal authority and their continuing commitments to progressive education, as well as many war-related issues they encountered in their lives and work. Working at different levels of policy-making and contrasting in age, Walker and de Lissa invested their leadership with a national significance during the war.     

Body_machine? Encounters of the human and the mechanical in education,industry and science

This paper unveils the body_machine as a key element of dynamic mental maps that have come to shape both educational praxis and research. It traces and analyses instances in which the human and the mechanical encountered each other in metaphorical, material and visual forms, thereby blurring to some extent the boundaries between them while capturing and mobilising specific forms of knowing and acting. The paper studies, first, how certain ‘orienting frames of reference’ and associated ‘experimental systems’ managed to materialise around the body_machine and penetrate theory and praxis; and, second, what visual and textual sources related to a vocational school may reveal about where and how the body_machine has come to operate in education, industry and science. The paper centres on early twentieth-century photographs and analyses these not only as media presenting, representing and interrogating common thought and practice but also as agents of meaning-making around the body_machine.     

Capabilities and the global challenges of girls’ school enrolment and women’s literacy

The education Millennium Development Goals have been highly influential on the priorities for education and concentrated policy efforts on numbers of girls enrolled in public sector schools offering basic education. This focus has been justified by human capital calculations of the social rates of return to basic schooling. This concern with quantities has met criticism from more qualitative researchers concerned with understanding not only why girls are not enrolled in school, but also why they may be irregular attenders and poor performers in public examinations even if they are enrolled. Alongside the efforts to achieve the education Millennium Development Goals have been initiatives to improve adult women’s literacies, often combined with an empowerment objective. This paper uses Sen’s capability approach to argue that improving deliberative processes is relevant for the well-being of girls and women of all ages.     

‘Intelligent capitalism’ and the disappearance of labour: Whitherto education?

This speculative paper enquires into the discourse of the ‘end of labour’ or ‘disappearance of labour’ as a result of the development of ‘intelligent capitalism’ clearly seen in ‘intelligent manufacturing’ systems that are now pursued and developed as Industry 4.0 strategy in East Asia, Germany and others parts of the world. When ‘intelligent capitalism’ becomes the norm rather the exception what happens to labour as a factor of production and what happens to economy and society based on capital and labour? The paper briefly reviews the sociology of labour from a Marxist view to examine conceptions of Fordist and post-Fordist capitalism, and explore the advert of ‘intelligent capitalism’ to pose the question concerning education.     

Len Barton,critical education and the problem of ‘decentered unities’

In the process of discussing the significant contributions that Len Barton has made to the sociology of education and to disability studies, I argue that a good deal of critical analyses of power and inequality in education are impoverished by some of their essentialist and reductive tendencies. I use an example taken from disability rights to show how parts of these tendencies can be overcome. I suggest that disability rights movements provide powerful possibilities for the interruption of capitalist ideological forms and their attendant ways of organising and controlling labour. They do this by challenging some of the most fundamental assumptions that underpin capitalist economies and ways of life. By strongly resisting the ways in which paid work and paid workers are treated, new relations are made possible. I connect this example to some of the insightful analyses of the place of affective equality in the struggle for social justice in both a politics of redistribution and a politics of recognition. Building on these arguments, I then argue for a broadened conception of critical research and critical action. I describe nine tasks in which the critical scholar/activists should engage if they are to be true to an enlarged conception of the ‘public intellectual’ and ‘public sociologist’.     

“Brains before ‘beauty’?” High achieving girls,school and gender identities

In recent years educational policy on gender and achievement has concentrated on boys' underachievement, frequently comparing it with the academic success of girls. This has encouraged a perception of girls as the “winners” of the educational stakes and assumes that they no longer experience the kinds of gender inequalities identified in earlier studies. However, trying to balance academic achievement with being seen as a “proper girl” presents girls with difficult challenges, particularly in terms of being accepted and approved of by classmates and securing the attention of teachers. This paper explores the views of a group of high achieving 12‐ to 13‐year‐old girls who indicate that being regarded as “clever” continues to be negotiated within acceptable frameworks of femininity.     

‘The fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom’: A defence of religious education in county schools

ABSTRACT

It is argued here that understanding John Dewey's thought as that of a prodigal liberal or a fellow traveller does not capture the complexity of his work. It is also important to recognise the portion of his work that is historie morale. In the very best sense it is epic, encapsulating the hopes and dreams of a history of the American people in the early 1900s. It is a work that simultaneously pursues modernity and the past – for the sake of coping with the present. It also calls attention to an unnoticed element in his work ‘inexperience’.