The permanent secretary as policy-maker,shaper, taker,sharer, and resister in education – reflections on Sir James Hamilton as a centralising outsider

Given that elevation to permanent secretary is widely recognised as the apotheosis of a career in the Whitehall bureaucracy, it is remarkable that so few have been the subject of sustained biographical research and that this key role remains largely un-theorised. As such, this paper reports on aspects of a longitudinal study which set out to examine, evaluate, and categorise to what extent, and how, permanent secretaries influence policy. Based on recorded interviews with those who held this office at the DES from 1976 to 2002, along with those they served and others, it argues that if the role of senior civil servants can be labelled ‘meta-political’, they do influence policy in significant ways. As such, it suggests that their praxis can be interrogated in terms of their activities as makers, shapers, takers, sharers, and resisters of policy in education. Focusing on the career of a committed centraliser, James Hamilton, it examines the contribution he made as permanent secretary to a variety of departmental policy initiatives including the pursuit of voucherisation and the case for a national school curriculum.     

Towards an uncertain politics of professionalism: teacher and nurse identities in flux

This paper is about the nature of contemporary professional identity. It looks at the ways in which ‘discursive dynamics’ come to re-write the professional teacher and nurse as split, plural and conflictual selves, as they seek to come to terms with a political impetus written through what the authors term an ‘economy of performance’ in uncertain conflict with various ‘ecologies of practice’. The teacher and nurse are thus located in a complicated nexus between policy, ideology and practice. Epistemologically, the paper offers a deconstruction of professional identities, and criticizes the reductive typologies and characterizations of current professionalism. Politically, it reaches towards a more nuanced account of professional identities, stressing the local, situated and indeterminable nature of professional practice, and the inescapable dimensions of trust, diversity and creativity.     

Implementing policy for homeless kids in schools: reassessing the micro and macro levels in the policy debate in Australia

This study suggests that the debate over the nature of policy is far from resolved. The extent to which the extremes of the debate about the role of the state in policy, about interpretations about power in policy process and about the differential nature of fine‐grained examinations of policy at the local level versus larger scale theorizing, affect interpretation are questioned. Based on a case study of the implementation of a policy dealing with homeless student in four Victorian, Australia, High schools, this paper suggests that the conceptualizations of the state and understanding the nature of power relations in policy process are more complex than any other authors have suggested. The analysis of the policy implementation process showed that whilst at certain times the power of the state appeared to be crucial and central, at other times the power of the state was decentred and significantly reduced, with power and control of policy being refocused at the school level.     

Finding an identity and meeting a standard: connecting the conflicting in teacher induction

This article has the apparently contradictory aims of describing a discourse of new teachers that is at odds with the policy‐derived competence‐based discourse of the professional standard for teachers, and of also seeking to find some points of connection that may help start a dialogue between policy and research. The experience of new teachers is conceptualised as personal stories of identity formation with a clear emotional‐relational dimension and a sense of self and intrinsic purpose in which others, especially colleagues and children, are central – themes not visible in the standard. The empirical context is that of new teachers in Scotland but the argument is supported through a wider literature that extends beyond the traditional limits of teacher education, drawing on, for example, notions of self‐identity, pure relationship and ontological security in the work of Giddens. Whether a more constructive dialogue can begin depends partly on the extent to which the formal standard can be expected to capture the complex, personal nature of the beginner’s experience, and partly on the possibility of research identifying particular areas of competence, such as understanding difference, that connect in some way to the standard.     

Collaborative learning in the Scottish curriculum for excellence: the challenges of assessment and potential of multi-touch technology

Scottish educational policy advocates the benefits of collaborative learning as a way of developing critical life skills, across the primary curriculum. In this paper, the rationale for collaborative learning, and specifically the Critical Skills (CS) approach, is considered along with an account of the perspectives of primary teachers implementing the methodology in their classroom. Based on the results of semi-structured interviews and an electronic survey, this article considers teachers’ opinion on the effectiveness of the CS approach, and highlights challenges relating to attaining, effectively retaining and analysing the evidence of impact gained via collaborative learning. It concludes that the latest technologies, including multi-touch technology, present scope to ease the challenge of assessing the collaborative process.     

Core skills assessment to improve mathematical competency

Many engineering undergraduates begin third-level education with significant deficiencies in their core mathematical skills. Every year, in the Dublin Institute of Technology, a diagnostic test is given to incoming first-year students, consistently revealing problems in basic mathematics. It is difficult to motivate students to address these problems; instead, they struggle through their degree, carrying a serious handicap of poor core mathematical skills, as confirmed by exploratory testing of final year students. In order to improve these skills, a pilot project was set up in which a ‘module’ in core mathematics was developed. The course material was basic, but 90% or higher was required to pass. Students were allowed to repeat this module throughout the year by completing an automated examination on WebCT populated by a question bank. Subsequent to the success of this pilot with third-year mechanical engineering students, the project was extended to five different engineering programmes, across three different year-groups. Full results and analysis of this project are presented, including responses to interviews carried out with a selection of the students involved.     

Digital games and the US National Research Council’s science proficiency goals

This review synthesises research on digital games and science learning as it supports the goals for science proficiency outlined in the report by the US National Research Council on science education reform. The review is organised in terms of these research-based goals for science proficiency in light of their alignment with current science education standards and reform documents worldwide. Overall, the review suggests that digital games can support science learning across the four strands but also suggests that there are few strong quantitative studies examining some of the strands. Much of the research conducted to date has centred primarily on the potential of games to scaffold conceptual knowledge, engagement and participation. Less research has focused on epistemological understanding and science process skills. While much debate has asked whether digital games are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for learning, the research across the strands highlights that the design of digital games, rather than their medium, ultimately determines their efficacy for learning.     

The challenges of partnership: an examination of parent–teacher meetings and school reports in the context of partnership

This paper begins with the observation that in education today, partnership is ubiquitous, in that partnership is mentioned in virtually all policy documents emanating from the Department of Education and Science, Ireland. However the lack of a clear understanding of partnership may mean that its usage in educational debate may obscure more than it illuminates. For this reason, a definition of partnership is offered and explained in the first part of this paper. The second part of this paper begins by highlighting the increasing importance of parent–teacher meetings and school reports on children's progress in current education. These two strategies are then examined in the context of partnership. In both cases, the argument is presented that while both strategies can be implemented according to the partnership model, it is possible for schools to conduct parent–teacher meetings and issue school reports that do not conform to partnership. The challenge then for schools is to assess to what extent their parent–teacher meetings and their school reports adhere to the principles of partnership.     

Reading comprehension instruction in Irish primary classrooms: key insights into teachers' perspectives on classroom practices

Despite a wealth of international research indicating the importance but also the dearth of explicit reading comprehension instruction in classrooms, current classroom reading pedagogy does not appear to have acknowledged and addressed this shortcoming to any significant degree. This is cause for some considerable concern, as today's students require effective, metacognitive reading comprehension strategies in order to succeed in a vastly expanding multi-literate textual environment. This paper will discuss a recent study, involving a survey (n=278) and interviews (n=12), which examined current beliefs and understandings regarding reading, as well as reading pedagogy and practice among teachers at primary level in Ireland. The findings revealed that current reading pedagogy, as indicated by the surveyed teachers, relies heavily on decoding instruction and an affective approach to reading while explicit comprehension instruction practice remains secondary and more the exception rather than the rule. The paper will attempt to examine possible reasons as to why current reading pedagogy remains ‘un-balanced’ in this manner while also exploring possible avenues for improvement.     

The Pedagogy and Politics of Art in Postmodernity: Cognitive Mapping and The Bothersome Man

This essay inquires into the pedagogical and political dimensions of art in the contemporary moment. Specifically, it seeks to reanimate Fredric Jameson's notion of “cognitive mapping,” which he introduced as a response to the postmodern problem of representing the social totality. To that end, the essay begins by explicating the twin impulses of cognitive mapping. It, then, undertakes a sustained rhetorical analysis of Jens Lien's award-winning 2006 Norwegian film, The Bothersome Man, demonstrating how the film employs entropic satire to, at once, map and critique the cultural logic of late capitalism. The essay concludes by reflecting on the important contributions rhetorical scholars can make to a renewed interest in cognitive mapping.