Girls in the Education Market: Choice,competition and complexity

ABSTRACT This paper considers the role of girls' schools in the UK education market and, concomitantly, the positioning and 'value' of girls in the education market place. Themarketing and public presentations of two schools are examined and the messages and impressions presented to parents are analysed. The relationships of these schools to their 'competitors' are also explored. These are set against the 'choices' and choice-making of a sample of local parents considering the possibility of single-sex schooling for their daughters. It is argued that the current conditions of competition in the UK education market offer some advantages to girls but that these advantages have to be set against the continuing contradictions and oppressions of single-sex schooling.     

In Their Own Voices: Middle Level Girls' Perceptions of Teaching and Learning Science

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Citizenship discourse in Hong Kong: The limits of familial tropes

This article traces how citizenship in Hong Kong is constructed via familial tropes that privilege sameness and a politics of identification; this rhetorical representation, I argue, not only perpetuates a jus sanguinis model of citizenship that privileges ethnic blood ties, but also allows the state and the dominant citizenry to justify neoliberal and racist practices that exclude brown bodies. By analyzing the citizenship claims made by the marginalized South Asian community in Hong Kong and the subsequent responses they receive from the mainstream public, I demonstrate that racialized populations face a rhetorical double bind: on the one hand, they must deploy the familial metaphors commonly used by the existing citizenry to demonstrate their sense of belonging, but, on the other hand, such tropes reinscribe them in a power hierarchy that undermines their subjectivity. This case study illuminates that while it is commonly seen as a viable rhetorical tactic for marginalized rhetors to resist and participate, the repurposing and redeployment of dominant tropes have significant limitations as they are constricted by power structures that are staunchly in place.     

China’s International Education Initiatives and View of Its Role in Global Governance

China is becoming an increasingly important actor in global governance. This paper contends that China participates by promoting its own global governance concepts on the one hand and by complying with the established global norms on the other. The paper introduces several key global governance concepts of the Chinese government and argues that they are likely to persist due to their roots in traditional Chinese Daoist and Confucian philosophies. It then focuses on China’s initiatives in education—the creation of Confucius Institutes and China’s involvement in United Nations (UN) educational initiatives—as examples of the Chinese approach. Finally, the paper discusses China’s educational profile in relation to its broader role in global governance.