Economic ‘revelations’ and the metaphors of the meltdown: an educational deconstruction

This article subjects contemporary informed discourse on the Credit Crunch/Great Recession/Long Recession to educational analysis and deconstruction. Such pro‐capitalist but not uncritical discourse is well represented by the UK Financial Times, whose columns between 2008 and 2012 comprise most of our data. We argue that the metaphors of the ‘meltdown’ are significant and performative, allowing variously moralised narratives to emerge as implicit diagnoses and remedies. In particular we identify a ‘domestic’ register of metaphors whose contained and homely tropes of austerity, prudence, book‐balancing and so on stand in dramatic contrast to a more melodramatic register, centring on various disaster scenarios. What is of most interest is that financial journalists and commentators switch between these registers, and allow ‘crossovers’ between them which are powerful in their discursive effects and political persuasiveness. These metaphorical discursive resources are intimately connected to the sorts of educational registers that characterise the ‘knowledge economy’. We conclude that our cultural ability to tell these sorts of stories rests as much on an underlying moral and theological storying as it does on any ‘scientific’ economic account (if such there can be, which we doubt). In this way we seek to educate economic discourses that are, as it were, ‘economical with the truth’.     

Learning about Mentoring; the Enfield experience

Over the last few years there has been a growing body of knowledge, both nationally and in Enfield, of the expertise required for mentoring newly qualified teachers (NQTs). Coordinating the LEA support for this group we identified a gap in the provision for those in their second and third years of teaching. The article describes the efforts that were made through the accreditation of teachers' work to support teachers new to the profession to develop as reflective practitioners. This work is based mainly on the experiences of a group of teachers who were NQTs in 1992–93 and who wrote assignments that were submitted in May 1994. It is in three parts. In Part One we identify the problem as we see it; in Part Two we present our model for filling the ‘gap’; and Part Three explores the learning outcomes for the new teachers and ourselves.     

Promoting mental model building in astronomy education

While astronomy has recently re-emerged in many science curricula, there remain unresolved teaching and learning difficulties peculiar to astronomy education. This paper argues that mental model building, the core process in astronomy itself, should be reflected in astronomy education. Also, this crucial skill may promote a better understanding of the nature of science by pupils and it resonates with current understandings about pupils' learning in science. However, three practical questions to be considered are: the expressed reservations about the connection between mental model building and meaningful learning; the earliest age of pupils for whom mental model building is appropriate; and the lack of research into pupils' prior ideas about the role of models in science. The paper describes how a four-phase general pedagogical strategy was adopted to create an astronomy teaching and learning package to promote mental model building. The package consists of notes explaining the mental model building followed by an overview of the teaching-learning approach and suggested outlines of the 12 lessons. Research investigated whether that package can help Year 7-8 pupils interrogate and refine their mental models of the Sun-Earth-Moon system within the constraints of an ordinary class of 33 pupils. The results showed that all four phases of the general strategy were necessary and effective in that most pupils were able successively and successfully to critique their mental models of the Sun-Earth-Moon system while also achieving traditional astronomy knowledge goals. Implications are that pupils as young as Year 7-8 may be able to construct other appropriate mental models, such as those for biological populations, atomic structure and plate tectonics.     

School‐tertiary collaboration: a long‐term view

In 1985, a group of teachers and academics began what was intended to be a two‐year, collaborative, action‐research project they called the Project for Enhancing Effective Learning (peel). At the end of two years they found that, for several reasons, they could not stop and PEEL has continued to the present day during which time it has spread to over 20 schools in Australia and overseas. The paper draws on the experiences of the past nine years with PEEL groups and addresses three questions: what issues of teacher change, and especially of long‐term teacher change emerged over nine years? What are characteristics of successful school‐tertiary collaboration? Is it realistic to hope for the widespread emergence of teacher‐researchers?.     

A case-study of the predictive validity and reliability of Key Stage 2 test results,and teacher assessments,as baseline data for target-setting and value-added at Key Stage 3

This case-study investigates the predictive validity and reliability of Key Stage 2 test results, and teacher assessments, for target-setting and value-added assumptions at Key Stage 3. (In England Key Stage 2 tests are taken in the core subjects of English, Mathematics and Science at the age of 11. Key Stage 3 tests are taken in the same subjects at the age of 14. Teacher assessments are also completed for these subjects at both key stages.) The study employed the type of linear regression analysis recommended in several government reports, to correlate Key Stage 2 test results, and teacher assessments, in core subjects, with Key Stage 3 test results, and teacher assessments, in both core and non-core subjects. Following government recommendations that the use of any other form of testing - such as the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) Cognitive Abilities Test (CAT) - was now no longer necessary to provide baseline data for value-added calculations, or to set targets, correlations were also investigated between results on the CAT, and test results and teacher assessments at Key Stage 3, for both core and non-core subjects, to see whether this recommendation was well founded. The results of the case-study suggest that Key Stage 2 data, both in the form of test results and teacher assessments, have little or no predictive validity, or reliability, for test results or teacher assessments at Key Stage 3. Indeed, the predictive validity for non-core subjects at Key Stage 3 was so low as to be negligible. However, the CAT average score correlated more highly with both teacher assessments and test results at Key Stage 3 in core subjects, although this relationship was not reflected in non-core subjects. These findings suggest that the predictive validity and reliability of Key Stage 2 data is seriously open to question as baseline data for either value-added, or target-setting procedures, at Key Stage 3. It should be pointed out, however, that these findings are provisional, since they are based on data from two intake years, but preliminary analysis of data from a further three intake years appears to indicate that the concerns identified are well founded.     

Educational and Vocational Policy and Construction of the European Union

Drawing on the author's current ESRC-funded research (The Impact of Performance Threshold Assessment on Teachers' Work), this article focuses on a current policy initiative in England, namely, the establishment of a performance management regime in schools and, in particular the Threshold Assessment. They examine three aspects of these developments. First, the manner in which the policy was initially established and the current situation regarding its development and implementation. Next, drawing upon the research they are undertaking in schools, they consider what the process of Threshold Assessmenthas felt like for various actors within the school context. Finally, they place this particular initiative within a global setting by drawing upon interviews recently undertaken in Australia and connecting these discussions to more general debates around 'globalisation'.We have progressively established a kind of 'Macworld' capitalism, where product choices whether for hamburgers or computers are increasingly homogenized and standardized across all countries, and where systems and tastes are alike controlled and developed in a proprietary mode by large corporations … The scale of markets and competition has decisively escalated in some areas, screening out local solutions and corporations in favour of transnational companies, dominant brands and standardized solutions. Cultural barriers to product acceptance have crumbled even in areas where they once seemed insurmountable. (Dunleavy, 1994, p. 50)     

Language,discipline and ‘teaching like a champion’

This article presents an analysis of various language policy mechanisms currently circulating in secondary schools in England, with a particular focus on those that intermingle ‘language’, ‘standard English’ and ‘discipline’. Although the connections between language, ideology and behaviour are well established within critical educational linguistics, this has not been explored in relation to current education policy in England, which is characterised by an overt focus on standardised English and behaviour ‘management’. In a grounded approach, I explore how the disciplining of language correlates with the disciplining of the body, based on ethnographic-orientated fieldwork undertaken in a London secondary school and drawing on a broad range of policy mechanisms such as curricula, textbooks, classroom artefacts and Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion industry. I show how the current linguistic conservatism found within government policy gets reproduced in school-level policies, pedagogies and classroom interactions, and highlight these relations within a network of policy actors and key terms associated with so-called ‘zero-tolerance’ and ‘no-excuses’ schools. I show how teachers are positioned as language policy managers who work within a system of surveillance, compliance, coercion and control. As such, this article contributes to current thinking within critical language policy and the sociology of education by offering an expanded view of language ideologies in schools, whereby connections between language and discipline are explicitly illustrated and critiqued.     

The development of academics’ feedback literacy: experiences of learning from critical feedback via scholarly peer review

Abstract

The emerging literature related to feedback literacy has hitherto focused primarily on students’ engagement with feedback, and yet an analysis of academics’ feedback literacy is also of interest to those seeking to understand effective strategies to engage with feedback. Data from concept map-mediated interviews and reflections, with a team of six colleagues, surface academics’ responses to receiving critical feedback via scholarly peer review. Our findings reveal that feedback can be visceral and affecting, but that academics employ a number of strategies to engage with this process. This process can lead to actions that are both instrumental, enabling academics to more effectively ‘play the game’ of publication, as well as to learning that is more positively and holistically developmental. This study thus aims to open up a dialogue with colleagues internationally about the role of feedback literacy, for both academics and students. By openly sharing our own experiences we seek to normalise the difficulties academics routinely experience whilst engaging with critical feedback, to share the learning and strategies which can result from peer review feedback, and to explore how academics may occupy a comparable role to students who also receive evaluation of their work.