Supporting behaviour support: developing a model for leading and managing a unit for teenagers excluded from mainstream school

In the UK, mainstream schools can decide to exclude students because of their behaviour. Students are then placed in pupil referral units (PRUs, sometimes known as short-stay schools) until their needs can be more thoroughly assessed so that they can then be placed appropriately. This article outlines the development of one particular approach to leading and managing a PRU for students aged 11–14. Beginning with the idea that staff and students all have a range of needs to be met, the approach draws on psychoanalytic ideas of containment, holding and attachment, as well as recent neuro-developmental research, to demonstrate how students' needs can be best met through meeting the professional needs of staff. A range of interventions and areas of practice are then described to illustrate how containment, management and support are operationalised in day-to-day practice. Specific areas of impact of these interventions for students and their families are then highlighted.     

‘Capitalizing on sport’: sport,physical education and multiple capitals in Scottish independent schools

This paper draws on a research study into the existence and use of different forms of capital – including social, cultural and physical capital – in three independent schools in Scotland. We were interested in understanding how these forms of capital work to produce and reproduce advantage and privilege. Analysis is framed by a multiple capitals approach drawing on and developing the work of Putnam and especially Bourdieu. We suggest that sport plays a role with important effects for strong bonding and for the production of symbolic capital in the form of branding by each school.     

Slippage and/or symbolism: gender,policy and educational governance in Scotland and Sweden

This article provides an overview and analysis of the relationship between gender, educational policy, and governance in Scotland and Sweden and the two countries’ response to European Union and global legislative and policy change. In Scotland, gender is mainly invisible in recent policies on inclusion, achievement beyond academic attainment, and the idealisation of the child. Gender is thus marginalised within a range of factors contributing to social in/equality. In Sweden, in contrast, gender has higher visibility in policy and governance as both an indicator of democracy and a means of preserving social democratic consensus and prosperity. However, recently its privileged position has come under attack. We draw on social capital, gender, and policy theory to analyse the range of influences on gender and educational governance in the two countries including that of the social capital of organised feminism.     

Voices and Perspectives of Latina Paraeducators: The Journey Toward Teacher Certification

This study employed open-ended questions on a survey, a focus group interview and participant observations to document the perspectives of Latina paraeducators concerning the challenges and support systems they encountered in order to complete college and gain admission to a teacher certification program. Findings reveal that their challenges included a lack of knowledge about higher education, unresponsive institutional bureaucracies, and the need for financial aid. Family and a cohort group of peers were identified as important sources of support and motivation. As a result of the struggles they experienced these paraeducators expressed a strong commitment of helping others to pursue academic and professional goals. This work highlights the need to critique and transform fundamental inequities within institutional structures that obstruct equal educational opportunities and hinder the recruitment of bicultural teachers.These authors are affiliated with Department of Elementary and Bilingual Education, California State University Fullerton, CA.     

‘A guided walk in the woods’: boundary crossing in a collaborative action research project

This article discusses the ideal and practice of collaboration in a collaborative action research project in which university researchers work together with staff from the field of primary education. A qualitative case study was conducted using the theory of boundary crossing to make sense of the ways collaboration took place within the project team. The main theme, also a major dilemma in the project, referred to the transition from a democratic towards a more directive approach within the project design after the first year. The members of the project team took shifting and ambivalent positions within the project as they were trying to cross boundaries between the different goals of the project. Also, boundary objects on different levels contributed to the collaboration. We conclude that clear boundaries between groups or a strong shared identity, as proposed by an insider–outsider model of action research and the notion of first-order democracy, are not helpful in complex collaborative action research projects. Instead, we need the development of second-order democracy means in order to cross boundaries and sustain a critical dialogue about differences.