Educational quasi-markets,school effectiveness and social inequalities

Over the past few decades, the figure of the market has clearly made its way into the field of education. For some authors, it represents an alternative to regulation by the public authorities, a different form of co-ordination which is better able to meet the objectives of the education systems. Through a secondary analysis of the PISA 2006 database, we test this hypothesis, as well as an alternative one which suggests that the quasi-market, rather than being linked positively to effectiveness of the education systems, would be associated with the students’ achievement dependence on their socio-economic and cultural background and on the social composition of the school they are enrolled in. Our findings suggest that the quasi-market regulation (school autonomy and competition for student recruitment) (1) is not linked to effectiveness and (2) tends to be associated with a stronger link between schools’ social composition and student achievement.     

Books of the Month

John Dunning's Tune in Yesterday: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, 1925-1976 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976---$14.95 until January 1st, and then $17.95)

Vincent Terrace's The Complete Encyclopedia of Television Programs, 1947-1976 (South Brunswick, N.J.: A.S. Barnes, 1976---$29.95, two volumes)     

Priming Stereotypical Associations: Violent Video Games and African American Depictions

The following study examines the influence of racial representations in violent video games upon stereotype associations. Participants were assigned to play either a violent video game with a stereotypical African American avatar or a Caucasian avatar. Following game play, participants completed several measures related to aggression and an implicit association task. The results showed significant differences between the conditions for IAT response times. African American participants showed faster response times to stereotype associations of African Americans than participants who played as a Caucasian avatar. The results also showed a significant interaction effect between participant race and avatar race for aggressive affect.     

Children with dyslexia are slow writers because they pause more often and not because they are slow at handwriting execution

It is commonly assumed that children with dyslexia are slower at handwriting than other children. However, evidence of slow handwriting in children with dyslexia is very mixed. Thirty-one children with dyslexia, aged 9 years, were compared to both age-matched children and younger spelling-ability matched children. Participants completed an alphabet-writing task and a composition task on the surface of a digital writing tablet. Children with dyslexia wrote the same amount of letters per minute in the alphabet task but wrote fewer words per minute when composing their texts than children of the same age. Crucially, no differences were found between children with dyslexia and their same age peers for speed of handwriting execution, measured by the tablet, when writing the alphabet or composing their texts. However, children with dyslexia were found to pause within their compositions as often as the spelling ability matched group. Thus handwriting execution is not impaired in children with dyslexia. The slow writing that is typical of children with dyslexia is due to pausing more often when composing and is related to spelling ability. This may reflect processing problems in response to high cognitive load through having to contend with spelling and composing concurrently.     

Intersectional work and precarious positionings: Black middle-class parents and their encounters with schools in England

This paper reports on data drawn from a study exploring the educational strategies of 62 Black Caribbean heritage middle-class parents. In this paper, we consider the respective roles of race and class in the shaping of parents’ educational strategies, deploying an analysis that focuses on their intersection and seeks to hold both race and class in productive tension. Drawing on empirical data, we illustrate how parents’ classed and raced identities shape their interactions with school staff.     

Freeing the Mind of the Oppressed

This article examines the evidence that supports and rebuts the claims of school resegregation. By examining both types of evidence and considering them complementary (James 1986 James, F. 1986. A new generalized “exposure-based” segregation index: Demonstration in Denver and Houston. Sociological Methods and Research, 14(3): 301–16. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Kelly and Miller 1989 Kelly, P. and Miller, W. 1989. Assessing desegregation efforts: No “best measure.”. Public Administration Review, 49(5): 431–37. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), the author gives the reader a deeper understanding of the current trends in school segregation. First, the literature on the topic of school segregation is discussed. Then follows a discussion of the methods used in the study and the findings. The conclusion includes implications of the findings.     

Children’s friendships in diverse primary schools: teachers and the processes of policy enactment

Abstract

Drawing on data from a project exploring children's and adults’ friendships across social class and ethnic difference, this paper focuses on the enactment of national and institutional policy around children’s friendships as realized in three primary schools in diverse urban areas in London. Through a focus on the way in which social and emotional learning (SEL) and teachers’ understandings of children’s friendships seek to govern children’s friendship behaviours, we turn to Foucault’s work to explore how power shapes relations between policy frameworks and teachers’ practices, and between those who teach and those who are taught. We discuss the disciplinary potential of SEL and teachers’ ‘common sense’ understandings of children’s friendships, but conclude by noting possibilities for teachers to create spaces in which all children can safely explore the nature of friendships.