GOVERNMENT'S CONSTRUCTION OF THE RELATION BETWEEN PARENTS AND SCHOOLS IN THE UPBRINGING OF CHILDREN IN ENGLAND: 1963–2009

In this essay David Bridges argues that since most families choose to realize their responsibility for the major part of their children's education through state schools, then the way in which the state constructs parents' relation with these schools is one of its primary levers on parenting itself. Bridges then examines the way in which parent‐school relations have been defined in England through government and quasi‐government interventions over the last forty‐five years, tracing these through an awakening interest in the relation between social class and unequal school success in the 1960s, passing through the discourse of accountability in the 1970s, marketization in the 1980s and 1990s, performativity extending from this period into the first decade of the twenty‐first century, and, most recently, more direct interventions into parenting itself and the regulation of school relations with parents in the interests of safeguarding children. These have not, however, been entirely discrete policy themes, and the positive and pragmatic employment of the discourse of partnership has run throughout this period, albeit with different points of emphasis on the precise terms of such partnership.     

Microwave frequency sensor for detection of biological cells in microfluidic channels

We present details of an apparatus for capacitive detection of biomaterials in microfluidic channels operating at microwave frequencies where dielectric effects due to interfacial polarization are minimal. A circuit model is presented, which can be used to adapt this detection system for use in other microfluidic applications and to identify ones where it would not be suitable. The detection system is based on a microwave coupled transmission line resonator integrated into an interferometer. At 1.5 GHz the system is capable of detecting changes in capacitance of 650 zF with a 50 Hz bandwidth. This system is well suited to the detection of biomaterials in a variety of suspending fluids, including phosphate-buffered saline. Applications involving both model particles (polystyrene microspheres) and living cells—baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and Chinese hamster ovary cells—are presented.     

Back to the Future: The higher education curriculum in the 21st century

This paper begins by reviewing some of the dramatic changes which have been taking place in higher education in recent years and which are disrupting the traditional identities of place, of time and of the scholarly and student communities. These are producing for the 21st century a higher education system which operates under a greater variety of conditions than ever before (part-time/full-time, work-based/institution-based, face-to-face/ delivered at a distance, etc.) and which brings with it a student experience and an informal curriculum, which are both changed and increasingly diverse. The paper then looks more specifically at the competing epistemologies which are struggling to shape the formal undergraduate curriculum of the 21st century: the deconstruction of the subject, as reflected in, for example, the modularisation of the curriculum; the cross-curricular 'key' skills movement; the learning through experience movement and the shift of the seat of learning outside the academy; the profoundly disruptive potential of web-based learning. It observes too, however, the continuing power of the subject as a form of academic and organisational identity and the way in which the current dynamics of the research assessment exercise, the Quality Assurance Agency subject review process and even the Higher Education Funding Council's strategy for teaching and learning are working to reinforce the subject as the unit of organisation in higher education. It is this that prompts the hint in the title that the future may contain elements of familiarity as well as radical change.     

Young Children's Projective Abilities: what can a monster see?

Abstract A series of four tasks was presented to 3‐7 year‐old children in order to investigate their understanding of the way in which an obstruction restricts a person's view of an array. The results indicated that children's ability to predict another person's line of sight and field of view develops significantly during this period. The responses of most 4‐7 year‐olds in a nonverbal hiding game were consistent with their verbal judgments about what another person could see, but 3‐year‐olds’ responses in the hiding game were much more sophisticated than could be expected from their performance on the verbal tasks. The possibility is raised that satisfactory performance in hiding games may not always depend on a child's first working out what a seeker can see.