Policy enactment,context and performativity: ontological politics and researching Australian National Partnership policies

Recently, critical policy scholars have used the concepts of enactment, context and performativity as an analytic toolkit to illuminate the complex processes of the policy cycle, in particular, the ways in which a multitude of official education reform policies are taken up, challenged and/or resisted by actors in local, situation-specific practices. This set of theoretical tools are usually deployed to analyse interview data collected from a single school or cluster of schools to draw findings or conclusions about the complex processes of policy enactment. We aim to build on this critical policy studies work by, firstly, highlighting key aspects of these theoretical/methodological constructs, secondly, exploring the performative role of research in the materiality of specific contexts and, thirdly, theorising education policy research in terms of ontological politics. We ground this work in a recent collaborative enquiry research project undertaken in Queensland, Australia. This research project emerged in the Australian policy context of National Partnership Agreement policies which were designed to reform public or government-funded schools servicing low socio-economic communities, in order to improve student learning outcomes, specifically in literacy and numeracy as measured by high-stakes national testing.     

战略导向国内外研究述评与未来展望

战略导向领域的文献已经非常丰富,然而综述性文献及整合框架的缺失阻碍了该领域未来的发展。因此,本文通过系统梳理战略导向的内涵与分类、多种战略导向之间的相互作用、战略导向研究的后果变量、不同情境下战略导向研究结果比较、战略导向影响后果变量的内在机理,构建了一个战略导向研究领域的整合框架,力图揭示目前研究的不足以及未来具体的研究方向。     

Including migrant worker children in the learning and social context of the rural primary school

Many of the larger towns and cities within the UK have long experienced a cosmopolitan mix of cultures, resulting in ethnically and linguistically diverse schools. However, the wider expansion of the European Union in 2004 has brought about significant changes and challenges for many schools, particularly for those in more rural areas. This article arises out of a 3-year qualitative study (January 2008–December 2010), which focused on identifying the experiences of stake-holders (children and parents of Eastern European heritage and their teachers), where migrant children enter primary schools which have previously had limited exposure to cultural and linguistic diversity. Although many migrant children settle successfully and progress within the UK education system, much can be done in terms of educational policy and practice to ensure that these learners are appropriately supported. This article examines some of the factors impacting upon migrant children's learning and well-being, and offers guidance to practitioners as how to develop inclusive and individualised learning and social contexts for these learners.     

Local partnerships: blowing in the wind of national policy changes

Drawing on data from a three‐year study (2008–2011) of partnerships of schools and colleges delivering the 14–19 Diplomas in England, this article examines how the dynamics of local partnerships were shaped by a contradictory policy landscape in which some policies strongly promoted collaborative working whilst others reinforced competition between institutions. Semi‐structured interviews with 136 Diploma consortium leads and case studies of 30 Diploma consortia were undertaken. Most partnerships founded in direct response to government demands for collaboration were strategically and operationally less effective than those that had been formed earlier as a positive, dynamic response to locally identified interests/needs and had evolved over time. When key levers towards collaboration were removed by the new UK Coalition government (2010) and new policies restated the arguments for institutional autonomy and competition between institutions, the fragility of the ‘enacted’ partnerships became immediately apparent. Although members of Diploma consortia with a history of effective partnership working remained committed to the principle of collaboration, other policy developments such as the introduction of the English Baccalaureate and the recommendations of the Wolf Review on vocational education contributed to uncertainty about whether partnership working could, or indeed should, be sustained.     

Expanding “within context” to “across contexts” learning: a case study of informal and formal activities

Learning happens not only in schools, but also in every context that affords new experiences and opportunities for metacognition. We aim to maximize the different activity-milieux in which learners are engaged in developing their life-long learning dispositions to learn within and across contexts. This paper is a follow up of an earlier published paper in which a framework on interpreting learning as how the self interacts with phenomena and reifications was proposed. Grounded in this learning framework, our research seeks to expand the “within context” learning to “across contexts” learning with evidence from a case study examining a 10-year-old boy's learning process. Through the case study, we will describe the interplay between bowling and schooling and how strategies learned from one context is situated into another drawing upon Ito et al.'s (2010 Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M, boyd, d., Cody, R., Herr-Stephenson, B., Horst, … Pascoe, C.J., Perkel, D., Robinson, L., Sims, C., Tripp, L. (2010). Hanging out, messing around, and geeking out: Kids living and learning with new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press [Google Scholar]) developmental trajectory of “hanging out-messing around-geeking out” perspectives. The findings show that for learning to be meaningful and authentic for the twenty-first century, it is essential for the learner(s) to be in constant dialectical interactions and relationship with oneself, others, and with the social-cultural artifacts that afford the learning. We conclude with practical implications derived from the study.     

汽车零部件制造商运用装配制造商知识的情境分析

一个长期困扰汽车零部件制造商的问题是,著名车企（汽车装配制造商）是否可以作为重要的技术知识来源。对于这个问题,以往的实证工作从宏观的视角给出了总体上的观察结果,尚缺乏微观视角的分析和验证。本文旨在厘清汽车装配制造商的技术知识运用于零部件制造商创新中的真实作用,即探讨在不同的创新情境中的不同作用。我们提出两个维度作为区分不同情境的基础：零件商创造能力和创新的激进程度。交叉这两个维度得到四种创新情境,我们分别讨论零部件制造商在各种情境中运用著名车企知识的作用。以美国汽车行业中的零部件制造商作为研究对象,以他们发布的专利作为样本,以专利数据构建变量,开展了实证研究。结果显示,只有在“能力较弱的零部件制造商在开展激进程度较低的创新”情境中,运用装配制造商的技术知识会对创新质量产生显著的促进作用。另外一个重要的结果是,在“能力较强的零部件制造商在开展激进程度较高的创新”情境中,运用越多装配制造商知识,创新质量越差;进一步的探索发现,在这种情境中零部件制造商应当从更为广泛的外部来源中获取知识,并加以运用。     

An investigation of the stability and variability in young children's self-regulated learning behaviors in kindergarten

The authors examined the relative stability and variability of self-regulated learning (SRL) in kindergartners across various contexts (teacher-directed activities, small-group work, and independent work). They assessed the role of temperament and context on children's use of SRL while seeking to identify if there are optimal contexts for promoting SRL in particular children. The results revealed that although temperament was not related to SRL, children's regulation strategy usage was heavily dependent on context, contradicting the idea that children are either high or low self-regulators. The relative stability of SRL varied by child, with some children showing more sensitivity to context than did others. Optimal contexts for eliciting SRL also differed by children, with some children exhibiting elevated regulation during small-group activities and others during teacher-directed activities.     

Teaching groups as midlevel sociocultural contexts for developing teaching and learning: a case study and comparison to microcultures

Using a case-study approach, the structures, interactions and cultures in four teaching groups at a New Zealand university are explored. The aim of the research is to better understand the potential of teaching groups for assisting academic development. To contextualize this work, the case-study outcomes are compared to research on microcultures. Similarities between strong teaching groups and strong microcultures are found, pointing to the potential of drawing on findings from microculture research. In particular, the use of social commons as a theoretical framework seems indicated, presenting teaching quality as a group and not just individual concern. Differences between the contexts stem from the sole focus of teaching groups on teaching compared to the combined research and teaching mandate of microcultures. As research often dominates teaching, the suggestion is made that teaching groups provide more suitable contexts for addressing teaching issues. The research recommends that organizational units in higher education should identify and analyse teaching groups and build on those groups in addressing teaching quality.     

从“一语双文”到“双语双文”

“一语双文”论在逻辑与方法层面存在问题。宜将“一语双文”发展成“双语双文”,立足于交际来架构语文教育内容。如此,可构想出一系列语文概念和语文教育范畴,开辟语文教育研究的新天地;同时赋予语文教育以交际意识,显著提升其育人成效。     

Teaching a Selection of Heaney’s Troubles Poetry to Upper Post-primary Pupils in Northern Ireland’s Divided Schools: Educational Contexts and Pedagogical Opportunities

Centred on a carefully chosen selection of Heaney’s Troubles poems, this paper explores pedagogical opportunities that the poems present in the context of upper post-primary classrooms in Northern Ireland’s divided schools. Five poems are evaluated in total. These are: ‘The Other Side’, ‘A Constable calls’, ‘The Toome Road’, ‘The Strand at Lough Beg’ and ‘An Ulster Twilight’. While these five poems represent only a small selection of Heaney’s Troubles poems, they nonetheless cover an interesting spectrum in terms of their politico-cultural perspectives. The analysis of the poems focuses on exploring how teachers could use the poems to enable pupils to examine their traditional identities and allegiances and perhaps re-evaluate them in the light of new insights provided by the poems. While suggestions for this pedagogical exploration is at the heart of the paper, the early section establishes some relevant theoretical and educational contexts and the concluding section situates the paper in the context of previous, related curricular initiatives with Northern Ireland. It is to be hoped, finally, that the curricular initiative proposed by the paper could contribute, if even in a small way, to the ongoing search for peace and reconciliation between Northern Ireland’s two main, and still divided, communities.