Uncertain pathways: foundation skills tutors and marginalised students in neoliberal times

This article deals with the work of polytechnic tutors on adult foundation programmes and describes how their work has been affected by the current neoliberal climate in the education sector. Inclusive neoliberalism is characterised by heightened regulation, reduced support for the public sector and a greater requirement for individual responsibility. The push to improve skills to meet labour demand is promoted as addressing social needs. Policies devised to promote these neoliberal values have led to numerous and far-reaching changes in adult education. In this study 73 foundation skills educators drawn from 8 institutions were interviewed to gain their insights into the effects of these policies. The article discusses three types of detrimental effects: the growing distrust between teaching staff and management; unsettling changes to institutional policy and its effects on staffing issues; and threats to the professionalism of teaching staff, the delivery of foundation studies, and the students themselves. Finally, the article suggests alternative possibilities for addressing these issues.     

Disseminating development initiatives in British higher education: a case study

The Effective Teaching and Assessment Programme (ETAP) was commissioned and funded by the Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Scotland and Wales and ran during the academic year 1993–4. Its aim was to identify and disseminate best practice in specific subject areas, student support and resource based learning. ETAP supported five projects, each undertaken by a consortium of British higher education institutions. This paper reports an evaluation of the programme based on interviews with leaders of the individual projects, along with a questionnaire survey of potential users of the products of the programme. A framework is offered for interpreting the results of the evaluation. Six different meanings of the word dissemination are identified, corresponding to the different degrees to which users actively engage with the materials produced. These distinctions are applied to the data collected and the findings are summarised in terms of the key notions of awareness of what is available, the attitude of teaching staff towards centrally-produced materials, and the accessibility of those materials. The implications of these three concepts are discussed in relation to the technical, organisational and presentational issues which promote or hinder the effectiveness of the dissemination. A number of policy recommendations for Funding Councils and institutions are outlined.     

The uses and abuses of power: teaching school leadership through children's literature

There are relatively few studies of how representations of teachers, schools and educational administrators in popular films and television might be, and are, used in leadership preparation. This paper seeks to add to this small body of work; it reports on an exploratory study of the representation of headteachers in contemporary children's fiction. Thirty-one texts are analysed to ascertain key themes and the major characterisations. The paper draws on children's literature scholars to argue that both the historical school story and its contemporary counterpart focus heavily on the power of the head to control the micro-world of the school. Because these fictional accounts deal with issues of power and justice more openly than many mainstream educational administration texts, this makes them particularly useful in the preparation of potential school leaders.     

Impact of a Scientist–Teacher Collaborative Model on Students,Teachers, and Scientists

Collaborations between the K-12 teachers and higher education or professional scientists have become a widespread approach to science education reform. Educational funding and efforts have been invested to establish these cross-institutional collaborations in many countries. Since 2006, Taiwan initiated the High Scope Program, a high school science curriculum reform to promote scientific innovation and inquiry through an integration of advanced science and technology in high school science curricula through partnership between high school teachers and higher education scientists and science educators. This study, as part of this governmental effort, a scientist–teacher collaborative model (STCM) was constructed by 8 scientists and 4 teachers to drive an 18-week high school science curriculum reform on environmental education in a public high school. Partnerships between scientists and teachers offer opportunities to strengthen the elements of effective science teaching identified by Shulman and ultimately affect students’ learning. Mixed methods research was used for this study. Qualitative methods of interviews were used to understand the impact on the teachers’ and scientists’ science teaching. A quasi-experimental design was used to understand the impact on students’ scientific competency and scientific interest. The findings in this study suggest that the use of the STCM had a medium effect on students’ scientific competency and a large effect on students’ scientific individual and situational interests. In the interviews, the teachers indicated how the STCM allowed them to improve their content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and the scientists indicated an increased knowledge of learners, knowledge of curriculum, and PCK.     

New books in review

BULWER AND MACREADY: A CHRONICLE OF THE EARLY VICTORIAN THEATRE. Edited by Charles H. Shattuck. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1958; pp vii+278. $5.75.

THE KABUKI THEATRE. By Earle Ernst. New York: Grove Press, 1959; pp. xxiii+296. With 58 half‐tone illustrations. Paper $2.45.

JAPANESE THEATRE. By Faubion Bowers. New York: Hill and Wang, 1959; pp. xxi+294. Paper $2.25.

DIRECTING THE PLAY: FROM SELECTION TO OPENING NIGHT. John Wray Young. New York: Harper, 1958; pp. xiv+171. $3.50.

THE ANATOMY OF AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE, 1840–1861. By Carl Bode. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959; pp. xxii+292. $6.00.

ERNESTINE ROSE AND THE BATTLE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS. By Yuri Suhl. New York: Reynal, 1959; pp. x+310. $5.75.

“SUNSET”; COX: IRREPRESSIBLE DEMOCRAT. By David Lindsey. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1959; pp. xx+323. $5.00.

ROAD OF PROPAGANDA: THE SEMANTICS OF BIASED COMMUNICATION. By Karin Dovring. Introduction by Harold D. Lass‐well. New York: Philosophical Library, 1959; pp. 158. $4.75.

PERSONALITY AND PERSUASIBILITY. By Irving L. Janis, Carl I. Hovlund, and others. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959; xiv+333. $5.00.

FALLACY: THE COUNTERFEIT OF ARGUMENT. By W. Ward Fearnside and William B. Holther. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice‐Hall, 1959; pp. vi+218. Paper $1.95.

TEACHING: A PSYCHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS. By C. M. Fleming. New York: John Wiley, 1958; pp. xiii+291. $5.00.

THEORY AND TECHNIQUE OF INTERPRETATION. By Martin Cobin. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice‐Hall, 1959; pp. xii+256. $4.50.

CREATIVE DISCUSSION. By Rupert L. Cort‐right and George L. Hinds. New York: Macmillan, 1959; pp. xii+303. $4.50.

REPRESENTATIVE AMERICAN SPEECHES: 1958–1959. The Reference Shelf, Vol. 31, No. 3. Edited by A. Craig Baird. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1959; pp. 195. $2.50.     

‘Building Schools for the Future’: ‘transformation’ for social justice or expensive blunder?

This article is based on research undertaken between 2009 and 2012 into the former Labour government's extremely ambitious ‘Building Schools for the Future’ (BSF) Programme and its withdrawal by the Coalition government. The project, which utilises analysis of policy documents, case studies in six local authorities (LA) and semi‐structured interviews with national and local policy actors, is being funded by Roehampton's Centre for Educational Research in Equalities, Policy and Pedagogy and the British Academy (SG100363). The focus of this article is the implications for social justice of BSF and its subsequent withdrawal. The structure of the article comprises an introduction to BSF and a summary of some of the main issues arising from it. We then move on to explore the social justice dimension of BSF as it is expressed in LA documents and in relation to the social policy aspirations of the former Labour government. In July 2010 the Coalition government discontinued the BSF programme and we track events and policy from that time, particularly focussing on the radical shift away from Labour's transformational and communitarian agenda in favour of criteria based on efficiency and value‐for‐money. We present data from our interviews with local actors on the equality and social justice impacts of this re‐orientation of policy. We conclude by arguing against the view that Labour abandoned social justice suggesting that BSF was one of a number of policies through which equality was pursued, albeit by stealth.     

Re-presenting the ‘forgotten estate’: participatory theatre,place and community identity

In this article, we discuss the work undertaken in the first phase of a participatory theatre project which took place on a council housing estate in the Midlands of England, in which residents were invited to share their memories for a production which would present the history of the estate. This community is often characterised as deficient, ageing, welfare-oriented, low in educational attainment and aspiration. Interviews and field notes suggest that there was not a great amount of hope within the community for the success of a participatory arts project such as this. However, the performance attracted a large number of participants who performed to full houses over five nights. Using a place-based approach, we argue that a model of open participation led to the presentation of alternative, more positive, narratives of this community as a place to live.     

‘How are we going to do it?’ An exploration of the barriers to access to higher education amongst young people from disadvantaged communities

The number of young people progressing to higher education (HE) in Ireland has grown significantly over the last three decades but inequality of access and participation remain a major policy challenge. This article sets out to explore the factors which impact on levels of participation in HE by young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, based on interviews and focus groups with 70 secondary school students and 25 parents in three case-study locations. In line with previous research, we found that financial considerations continue to have an important influence on decisions about whether to go on to higher education. The findings in relation to young people’s aspirations and orientations to HE present a more complex picture. While the majority of students aspired to go on to HE, this was countered by a lack of confidence in relation to certain aspects of college life, both social and academic.