Making 'Good Citizens': The social and political attitudes of PGCE students

This article arises from a research project examining the understanding of 'citizenship' amongst trainee teachers in UK primary and secondary schools. The study covers attitudes to a broad range of social, political and moral issues and examines how these affect the students' perception of the socio-political dimension of their future professional role. Tracking a group of students through their postgraduate training year highlights the relationship between the individual's political world-view and their response to the school experience. One of the key findings is the high degree of political disengagement and cynicism about the operation of democracy in the UK; this is particularly strong amongst the youngest students, those coming to adulthood during the 1990s. Although the majority of students are positively inclined to fostering 'good citizenship values' in schools, there was much confusion over what it means to be 'a good citizen'. The concept of 'citizenship' was felt to be tainted with negative imagery, although a sense of 'being part of a community' was thought to be vital for social cohesion. In addition to this, a small minority of students displayed social attitudes and values incompatible with a pluralist, tolerant society. The teacher education experience did not appear to have given students a clear picture of what to teach or how to teach it, and both the pressures of the National Curriculum and the changing climate of schooling, favouring a more 'traditionalist' approach, may result in a greater unwillingness to tackle challenging issues.     

Education reform in England: quality and equity in the performative school

This article argues that contradictory forces affect teachers' work in the neo-liberal school system in England, with a diversity of governance models alongside increasingly dominant orthodoxies of what constitutes ‘effective practice and leadership’. School reforms in England have focused on increasing overall attainment and on closing the achievement gap for pupils from ‘disadvantaged communities’; whilst there is evidence that reforms have delivered on the former, evidence is inconclusive on the latter, with some critics arguing that some reforms have increased social inequality. The future for teachers’ professional identity and practices in this landscape is uncertain. Whilst this article broadly concurs with many studies of teacher identity which argue that the ever-extending reach of performative mechanisms has restricted teachers’ opportunities to develop as activist professionals with ‘a moral purpose’, it also argues that the diversified landscape may provide the opportunity for new autonomous spaces. It goes on to suggest that further research is needed into the forms of locally determined values and practices emerging in ‘quasi-privatised’ academies and free schools in England, to explore whether these professional communities will be entirely managerialist/entrepreneurial in character, or whether models of practice underpinned by a concern with social equity and social justice issues may emerge.     

Widening participation in higher education: the role of professional and social class identities and commitments

Since the neoliberal reforms to British education in the 1980s, education debates have been saturated with claims to the efficacy of the market as a mechanism for improving the content and delivery of state education. In recent decades with the expansion and ‘massification’ of higher education, widening participation (WP) has acquired an increasingly important role in redressing the under-representation of certain social groups in universities. Taken together, these trends neatly capture the twin goals of New Labour’s programme for education reform: economic competitiveness and social justice. But how do WP professionals negotiate competing demands of social equity and economic incentive? In this paper we explore how the hegemony of neoliberal discourse – of which the student as consumer is possibly the most pervasive – can be usefully disentangled from socially progressive, professional discourses exemplified through the speech and actions of WP practitioners and managers working in British higher education institutions.     

Not Saint Darwin

Charles Darwin’s name is going to be heard, read about, or spoken a lot this year, as it is the second centenary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species. And as great as his contribution to science and the modern world is, we might ask ourselves whether we are making rather too much of this man. Is Darwin the important person he is being taken to be? To answer this question I shall raise three more: first, why do we celebrate individuals in scientific history, when it is the work of many scientists that gives us the results? Second, how original was Darwin anyway — who else did the important work? And third, what role do scientific heroes play in current science? Answers to these questions will give us a better, more sober and balanced, and more useful explanation of actual science both in the past and the present, and perhaps also in the future.     

Representations of childcare in the Australian print media: An exploratory corpus-assisted discourse analysis

While an increasing body of Australian and international research has explored the relationship between media and education, few studies have examined this relationship in the context of early childhood education. This paper contributes to this research gap by reporting on a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of how childcare is represented in 801 newspaper texts from six Australian newspapers. As a foundational paper of a broader study investigating public and political influences on parents’ childcare choices, the paper details the use and utility of corpus linguistic tools for exploring the discourse construction of childcare in a large corpus of media texts. It also highlights the value of analysing media corpora via media ownership, focusing on the two dominant Australian media organisations, Fairfax and News Corp. Analyses reveal similarities but also key differences in the representation of childcare in Fairfax and News Corp newspapers. In Australia, print media still sets the daily media agenda and reflects the dominant discourse constructions surrounding major public issues. Accordingly, the beliefs, practices and decision-making of current and potential parent users of formal childcare may be differentially influenced depending not just on their (direct or indirect) access to print media, but by the format (tabloid or broadsheet) and thus ownership (Fairfax or News Corp).     

Talent management in transnational higher education: strategies for managing academic staff at international branch campuses

The study investigates the practices of academic staff talent management at international branch campuses, with the aim of identifying a range of practical strategies that may address the unique challenges of managing talent in campuses located far away from the home country. These strategies are intended to improve service quality and add value to institution profiles. Based on an online questionnaire, ad hoc email correspondence and publicly available information, five case studies are presented. Talent management emerges as a key strategic area, directly managed at dean/president level. Referrals and online portals are commonly utilised as channels to attract talent, and the need to sometimes uplift local packages to recruit and retain talent is recognised. It is concluded that the development of academic staff should be viewed as an investment, and the availability of research funding and teaching awards on campus may be used to attract, develop and retain talent.     

Using Self-Efficacy as a Construct for Evaluating Science and Mathematics Methods Courses

The focus of this study was elementary preservice teachers’ development as effective teachers of science and mathematics as influenced by their participation in elementary science and mathematics methods courses. Preservice teachers’ reports of factors that influenced their perception of their teaching abilities were analyzed according to Bandura’s (1994) 4 sources of efficacy: mastery experiences, vicarious experiences, social persuasion, and stress reduction. This investigation allowed the researchers to evaluate the courses based on these sources. The analysis indicated all 4 sources influenced preservice teachers’ teaching self-efficacy beliefs, with mastery experiences considered the most influential. Embedded within discussions of mastery experiences were references to the other sources of efficacy, which suggest an interrelationship between mastery experiences and the other sources.     

Student performance–university preference model: a framework for helping students choose the right A‐level subjects

Every year, many students in the UK fail to achieve a place at their preferred university because they take the wrong A‐level subjects. This study aims to suggest a framework for helping students choose the right subjects. Data on student achievement in A‐level examinations were obtained from a UK sixth form college over a four‐year period. Statistical techniques were employed to support our hypothesis that a student’s choice of A‐level subjects should be based on both the student’s ability and a university’s preference for particular subjects and grades. Despite the limitation of small sample size, a model has been created that will maximise a student’s chance of achieving a place at his/her university of choice. The model presented could easily be extended in future to incorporate more levels in each of the attributes considered, and in this way it could provide the optimal choice of subjects for each individual student given his/her particular aspirations.