‘Critical friends’: exploring arm’s length actor relationships to local government in education

Abstract

Discussions charting the changing role of local government in education have often focused extensively on ‘concrete’ policy changes over time, but have provided less detail on the contribution to changing power relations of less tangible shifts. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of discourse and governmentality, in this paper, detailed rationalities of local third-sector and other ‘arm’s length’ actors in English education are explored, with a focus on their relationship to local authority (LA) school admissions teams. The paper aims to provide deeper understanding of tactical struggles for authority which happen within competitive local sociopolitical spaces. Data is utilised from a study of ‘Choice Advice’ (CA) in 10 LAs, within a background context where arm’s length agents deployed to deliver CA have been co-opted into central government marketisation regimes, but local state planning of schooling is arguably more equitable for vulnerable families than are logics advancing a marketisation of education. The research reveals: (1) discourses valourising ‘independence’ and ‘distance’ from local state ‘agendas’; (2) discourses separating the interests of ‘parents’ and ‘schools’, with LAs positioned as representing the latter; (3) dehumanising representations of LA officers as ‘faceless’, obstructive and requiring regulation from ‘critical friends’.     

A theoretical framework for building online communities of practice with social networking tools

This paper proposes a theoretical framework as a foundation for building online communities of practice when a suite of social networking applications referred to as collective intelligence tools are utilized to develop a product or solutions to a problem. Drawing on recent developments in Web 2.0 tools, research on communities of practice and relevant theories of learning, and the authors' own action research experience in collaborative knowledge creation utilizing Web 2.0 tools, this paper discusses a learning community's spiraling process as it moves from a given sociocultural context through discourse, action, reflection, and reorganization toward socially mediated metacognition.

Un cadre théorique pour construire des communautés de pratique en ligne en utilisant des outils de maillage social

Cet article propose un cadre théorique sur lequel édifier des communautés de pratique en ligne lorsqu'on utilise, pour mettre au point un produit ou des solutions à un problème, une série d'applications destinées à la construction de réseaux humains et connues sous le nom d'outils d'intelligence collective. En s'appuyant sur les évolutions récentes des outils Web 2.0, sur les recherches sur les communautés d'usage et les théories de l'apprentissage pertinentes ainsi que sur l'expérience propre aux auteurs en matière de recherche action sur la création collaborative de savoir en utilisant le Web 2.0, le présent article examine le processus en spirale d'une communauté d'apprentissage qui part d'un contexte socio culturel donné et qui passe par le discours, l'action la réflexion et la réorganisation pour atteindre la métacognition reposant sur la médiation humaine.

Ein Theorierahmen für den Aufbau von “Online‐Communitives of Practice” mit Hilfe von Anwendungen für Social Networking

In diesem Beitrag wird ein theoretischer Rahmen als Grundlage für den Aufbau von Online‐Praxis‐Gemeinschaften vorgestellt, wenn eine Reihe von Social Networking Anwendungen, auf die man sich als kollektive Intelligenz‐Tools beziehen kann, benutzt wird, um ein Ergebnis oder eine Problemlösung zu entwickeln. Wenn man den neuesten Entwicklungsstand bei den Web 2.0 tools mit einbezieht, die Forschung im Kommunikationsbereich, die relevanten Lerntheorien und die eigenen Forschungen und praktischen Erfahrungen des Autors in der Benutzung von Web 2.0‐Anwendungen auf dem Gebiet der gemeinschaftlichen Wissensermittlung, belegt dieses Papier den spiralförmigen Prozess beim Bewegen von einem bestimmten soziokulturellem Kontext aus durch Diskurs, Aktion, Reflektion und Reorganisation hin zu sozial vermittelter Metaerkenntnis.

Un marco teórico para la construcción de comunidades de práctica en línea con herramientas de creación de redes sociales

Este artículo propone un marco teórico como base para la construcción de comunidades de práctica cuando se utiliza una serie de aplicaciones sociales en redes (conocidas como herramientas de inteligencia colectiva) para desarrollar un producto o solucionar tal o tal problema. Basandose en las evoluciones recientes de las herramientas Web 2.0, en las investigaciones sobre las Comunidades de Uso y las teorías del aprendizaje más pertinentes así como en la experiencia propia de la investigación/acción por parte de los autores sobre la creación colaborativa de conocimiento a través del uso de herramientas Web 2.0, este artículo examina la evolución « en espiral » de una comunidad de aprendizaje que sale de un contexto socio cultural determinado y pasando por el discurso, acción, reflexión, alcanza la metacognición basada en la mediación humana.     

A model‐based approach to science exhibition evaluation: A case study in a Brazilian astronomy museum

A models and modelling approach was adopted to investigate the educational potential of a science museum exhibition. It focused on patterns of relationship between the teaching models proposed by designers and students models in regard to four exhibits concerning astronomical cycles. Student’s models were elicited by interviewing 21 pupils selected from among those who showed a change of their models between pre‐visit and post‐visit questionnaires. Four patterns of relationship were identified, ranging from low to high degrees of convergence between designers and students. Exhibits designed by fragmenting the phenomena (analytical approach) tend to promote less convergent patterns than exhibits that maintain the complexity of the phenomena (synthetic approach). We argue that the two approaches are complementary: without synthetic models visitors find it difficult to identify the phenomenon addressed by analytical models, while the latter may bring to visitors’ attention aspects that otherwise might be hidden by the complexity of synthetic models.     

DEPICTING TEACHERS' ROLES IN SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOCIAL FRONTIER, 1934–1943

According to the dominant historiographical narrative, the social reconstructionists were a homogeneous group with a shared social, political, economic, and educational agenda. However, the pages of the journal The Social Frontier are replete with evidence that they were not in agreement on significant issues, especially when it came to the proper role of teachers in reform efforts. In fact, a close look reveals that the social reconstructionists presented multiple, overlapping, and often conflicting theories and strategies to advance the reconstruction of society, while explicating different roles for teachers therein. When teachers are placed at the center of the investigation, their factionalism, which has been discussed previously by C.A. Bowers and James Giarelli in their studies of the journal, is conspicuously apparent. Analysis of the different conceptions of teachers presented in The Social Frontier (subsequently titled Frontiers of Democracy) reveals that collectively, the social reconstructionists engaged in “more than one struggle”; and individually, they held views that were influenced by personal priorities and responses to the Depression, the spread of Communism and Fascism, the start of war in Europe and Asia, and, eventually, the involvement of the United States in World War II.     

Responding to Hong Kong’s political crisis: moralist activism amongst youth

ABSTRACT

Discourses of morality are prevalent in contemporary Hong Kong youth activism. This paper suggests that this moralist disposition is the product of youth frustrations towards Hong Kong’s political crisis, whereby the power gap between civil society and the government renders the former incapable of exerting substantial influence over the governance of the city. Rather than ascribe the cause of this power imbalance solely to government policies, this paper reveals that civil society also contributed towards the making of this political crisis. By reviewing the citizen-led pro-democracy movement throughout the decades, it is shown that civil society has been ineffective in implementing political reforms because its actors and organisations harbour a political subjectivity that prioritises economic considerations over democratic aspirations, and are thus inclined to compromise with the government to preserve economic stability than to demand for political reforms. As a result, contemporary youth activists describe Hong Kong civil society as “uncaring” and lacking in moral commitment towards realising democratic reforms that will facilitate the development of a just society. Seeking to reconfigure such political attitudes that currently prevail in civil society, youth activists refashion themselves into political actors embodying a form of moral personhood that embraces notions of responsibility and of wanting to do good for the city, to show that another way of being politically engaged in Hong Kong is possible.     

Enacting culturally relevant pedagogy: asset mapping in urban classrooms

In an attempt to confront monolithic perceptions of achievement and an educational narrative that defines communities of Color by their supposed deficits, the current study presents asset mapping as an example of culturally relevant pedagogy in action. Asset mapping is a pedagogical tool for students to visually represent personalized stories of their cultural assets and participate in a community-based gallery walk to showcase their maps. Interviews and focus groups with third- and sixth-grade teachers and students from an urban public school revealed learning about self, learning about others, and building community as emergent themes after completing the project. We present these themes and discuss asset mapping as a possible model for strength-based pedagogy that centers the lived experiences of students, their families, and their shared stories in classroom curriculum.     

Training for Impact: Improving the Quality of Staffs Performance

The study reported in this article examines the effects of training, feedback, and on–the–job coaching on the quality of staff performance. Forty staff members in three units of a psychiatric hospital were trained in a new system for writing patient progress notes. Initial training (Training 1) included a) establishing the importance of progress notes, b) rules and format for good notes, and c) examples of properly written notes. Training 1 resulted in slight improvement in performance over baseline. A second training program (Training 2), including examples and non–examples of well–written notes, was followed by a substantial increase in quality of staff notes. The quality of notes reached desired levels only after a feedback component was added in which the trainer posted data showing overall quality of notes and provided individual coaching to staff members regarding quality of group notes. We conclude from these results that the quality of staff performance of an organizationally significant task can be improved by a combination of training, feedback, and on–the–job coaching. Training using both examples and non–examples of properly completed tasks is superior to training using examples only. Training followed by feedback and on–the–job coaching is superior to training alone. The results support our conclusion that omitting a basic element of performance technology will yield low quality performance.