Work‐related learning for students with significant learning difficulties: relevance and reality

The 14–19 proposals brought work‐related learning to the forefront of educational policy. We look at how the tenets, which underpin them, can be interpreted and applied for students with significant learning difficulties. We examine the nature of vocational or work‐related learning for students with severe and or profound and multiple learning difficulties as currently reported by schools in England. Its relevance for this group of learners is discussed in the light of the proposals and we consider the reality of current practice in relation to the slippery concept of vocational learning. Finally, we reflect on important recent policy commitments relevant to our research, but published after its completion, outlined in the White Paper 14–19 education and skills. We note and welcome its explicit consideration of the needs of students with significant learning difficulties. At the same time we remain concerned and perturbed about its affirmation of educational aims that are narrowly conceived in relation to an economic imperative.     

On the shortcomings of our organisational forms: with implications for educational change and school improvement

This article informs school improvement and educational change from a radically different perspective. Building upon work done recently in neural psychology, primatology and ethology, the article examines four common and general types of organisational form: the cell, the silo, the pyramidal, and the network types of organisational structures. Status and dominance hierarchies are discussed, as are the dynamics of collaboration/competition and collectivism/individualism. Final consideration is given to the concepts of culture and community, especially as they manifest in the school improvement literature.     

Deliberative speech in a forensic context: Andrew Hamilton at the Peter Zenger trial

Through an analysis of the defense at the trial of John Peter Zenger, the author attempts to define a relationship between forensic success and ability to adopt deliberative frames of reference in forensic contexts.     

A comparative criticism of Hugh Blair's essay on taste

This essay surveys key decisions on libel handed down by the United States Supreme Court and the resulting distinction between private persons and public officials/public figures. A corresponding distinction in treatment of the two categories with respect to proof of defamation is also examined. Criticism of the Court's position is offered and a change in policy is recommended.     

Practising empathy: enacting alternative perspectives through imaginative play

This article reports on a collaborative study using an innovative methodology, based on ‘insiders’ who are Steiner practitioners knowledgeable and practised in Steiner philosophy and ‘outsiders’ from UK mainstream early years and primary perspectives. Although the study as a whole focused on assessment and observation used in Steiner kindergartens, it yielded a rich data source on imaginative play that offers practice in empathy. We contextualise the data presented from a Steiner perspective in the wider literature on the imagination and affect in order to theorise how such play develops empathy through its links to feelings and prosocial behaviour. We critically examine how empathy and the imagination are nurtured in the context of eight kindergarten classes in five Steiner schools in England in order to illustrate how these conditions might also help other early years and primary schooling to foster long-term benefits for ethical and fulfilling lives through encouraging empathic understanding.     

‘Knowing your place in the world’: how place and culture support and obstruct educational aims

There is increasing international interest in learning outside the classroom; place-based education is one manifestation of this. In this article, some conceptualisations of place are considered and attention drawn to alignments with habitus at micro, meso and macro levels. I develop a concept of cultural density as an explanatory tool to theorise how place and culture intersect to support some educational aims and interfere with others within a cross-sectional research study of a place-based curriculum centred on three schools located in the Southwest of England. Cultural density refers to the nature, thickness and dominance of habitus and norms of practice in places. Reflecting on the interface between how young people come to ‘know their place in the world’ and learning opportunities, careful alignment of purpose, pedagogy and place considering past, present and future is argued as a means of maximising the opportunities afforded by learning outside the classroom.