Moments of Inclusion and Exclusion: pupils negotiating classroom contexts

This paper uses evidence from a small-scale study of two English primary school classrooms to examine school inclusion in its political contexts. We argue that ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ are complex processes, enacted moment-by-moment by pupils and teachers. Our focus is on the pupils' negotiation of these moments, and we examine how their negotiations are contingent on (although not determined by) a web of intersecting indices of ‘difference’, including differences of social class, ethnicity, gender/sexuality, perceived academic ability and physical appearance. We take a post-structuralist approach, well-known in feminist educational research but less often used in research and thinking about ‘inclusive’ schooling, to foreground children's active role in making sense of social conditions that are not of their own making or choice. We conclude that a politically literate understanding of the processes of inclusion and exclusion is necessary both to highlight the continuing reproduction of educational inequality, and to produce the necessary conditions for egalitarian change.     

Design Employment Trends

During 1991 BTEC (the Business & Technology Education Council) researched into how far design programmes in colleges in North East and North West England were meeting employer needs. The research involved gathering information from colleges in the regions, and from employers. A selected sample of employers were consulted and their perceptions of design education and training matched against the range of provision available. At the same time employers were asked to comment on how they used design within their organisations and from where they recruited designers. Set against a background of economic recession, the research gave rise to some interesting findings. In particular, it highlighted the move toward more broad-based and multi-disciplinary provision in some colleges as a response to employer demand for designers who were flexible and adaptable. Transferability was seen as important by both colleges and employers for fighting recession. Design courses that had originally been set up to answer specific industry needs were now having to adopt a wider remit to place students in employment.     

Academic Hiring Policies and Projections: A Survey of CACREP- and APA-Accredited Counseling Programs

This study investigated 84 counselor education and counseling psychology programs to determine the academic hiring policies and projections for employment in the next 10 years.     

Effects of Supervised Counseling on Dominance

To ascertain the effects of supervised counselor experience on measures of dominance, graduate students were drawn from three departments at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and given the dominance and self-acceptance scales of the California Psychological Inventory and the California Fascism Scale. In the analysis of variance, the experimental group scored significantly higher (p <.05) on dominance than did the control group from pretest to posttest, and the correlation between dominance and self-acceptance was. 66 (p<. 01). The correlation between dominance and fascism was not significantly different from zero. When the effects of participants' additional counselor (or teacher) experience were partialed out of posttest dominance scores, the results were not significantly changed. The results implied that a supervised counseling practicum effected more of an increase in participants' feelings of well-being than did other counselor (or teacher) experience.     

'Part of Who we are as a School Should Include Responsibility for Well-Being': Links between the School Environment, Mental Health and Behaviour

Drawing from a Scottish study, this article examines ways in which the school environment can impact upon the well-being of pupils and their associated behaviour. It identifies tensions between existing school structures and cultures and the promotion of positive mental health, particularly in relation to the curriculum, pastoral care, discipline and teacher/pupil relationships. In many cases, schools attempt to address mental well-being by bolting fragmented initiatives onto existing systems, and we argue that a more fundamental review of values, policies and practices throughout the school is needed. This paper also looks at the roles of interagency workers in schools, and reports that, in most cases, these workers are seen as offering a parallel service to the mainstream school, targeted at the most troubled or troublesome pupils. We suggest that schools should draw on the skills and understandings of these workers to help build new cultures throughout the school for the benefit of all children and young people.