Transformational professional development: (re)claiming agency and change (in the margins)

With performativity and evidence-based teaching, the development of action research (AR) by teachers brings tensions and challenges as teachers move outside their comfort zones and question their practice. This article draws on a small-scale research study developed with teachers. It was funded as part of a professional development initiative by a Teaching School Alliance to support partner schools with university support to build teacher-led systematic research into everyday practice. The dataset combined interviews with teachers about their motivations and experiences, field notes from the sessions, the teachers’ final written reports and their evaluation surveys about the project. This article offers a unique perspective on teachers as researchers in a new age of work-based AR with the risk of research by teachers in schools being regarded as part of an uncritical ‘tick box’ performative and celebratory culture. However, the authors argue that teacher research can contribute to a transformational approach to professional development working as an antidote and a source of (re)professionalization based on the outcomes of collaboration, reflection and attention to the singularity of their ‘contexts-for action’ and specific pupils’ needs.     

Evaluation policy in education: the effects of international standards and performativity on Brazil’s postgraduate programmes of excellence

The educational reforms that began in the 1990s have changed Brazilian universities’ direction from welfare state institutions to market organisations. In postgraduate education, strategic alliances with international agencies, governments and corporations have become closer. At the same time, there has been a push for internationalisation of knowledge and more efficiency – with quality assurance and accountability systems. This study, based on the theory of ‘policy enactments’ proposed by Stephen Ball and collaborators, aims to analyse the interpretation and translation of Brazil’s postgraduate education programmes’ evaluation policy. The data are derived from interviews with co-ordinators of four Brazilian postgraduate programmes in education – all regarded by the Higher Education Co-ordination Agency, CAPES, as programmes of excellence and of international standard (during the assessment triennials of 2004, 2007 and 2010). The data analysis provided a critical understanding of the evaluation policy as policy enactment, and of the small margin for manoeuvre in decision-making in response to the policy and performativity’s effect on academic subjectivity and collective practice.     

Losing the whole child? A national survey of primary education training provision for spiritual,moral, social and cultural development

International concerns about the performativity agenda in schools gives rise to concerns about the neglect of a holistic approach to teaching and learning. Whilst schools in England and Wales are legally obliged to promote the spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development of children, little is known about how initial teacher training providers prepare trainees to do so. This project aims to address this gap in the literature. This paper details the findings of phase one of a National Survey which investigates trainers’ approaches to delivery and their views on the place of SMSC in primary schools. Findings suggest that trainers value SMSC, but time devoted to it is relatively low and policy changes are perceived to threaten SMSC’s security. The paper argues that it is vital that trainers empower trainees to understand the importance of holistic themes of their respective curricula, informed by critical engagement with theory, in order to avoid them being overshadowed by the performativity discourse.     

性别表演或构建——《新夏娃的激情》的性别艺术

安吉拉＆#183;卡特的代表作《新夏娃的激情》既否定了父权文化下的两性关系,也不推崇母权文化激进派所向往的“安息地”,而是表达作者希望通过变性和变装的方式来说明并没有绝对的男性女性之分,生理性别、社会性别和身体都是社会建构的。本文从朱迪斯＆#183;巴特勒的性别表演角度解读《新夏娃的激情》,进一步论证性别构建、性别表演在小说中的体现。     

The accountability generation: exploring an emerging leadership paradigm for beginning principals

School leaders in Queensland, Australia, are working in a rapidly shifting policy landscape, expected to work towards system-defined improvement measures involving increasingly higher external accountabilities. This article analyses a group of long-term case studies of the effects of school improvement expectations on principals since the introduction of National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) in 2008. Foucauldian theory is used to analyse the influence of performative cultures on a group of Queensland principals. A unique feature of this geographical region is the large proportion of small-school principals, the majority of whom are in the early stages of their teaching careers. Having joined the teaching profession post-NAPLAN, the influence of these accountabilities emerges as a point of difference between them and longer-established principals. The article identifies the emergence of this new leadership paradigm as an area inviting further inquiry within the field of educational leadership research, exploring the influence of rapidly shifting expectations on leadership practices.     

The social life of Learning Analytics: cluster analysis and the ‘performance’ of algorithmic education

This paper argues that methods used for the classification and measurement of online education are not neutral and objective, but involved in the creation of the educational realities they claim to measure. In particular, the paper draws on material semiotics to examine cluster analysis as a ‘performative device’ that, to a significant extent, creates the educational entities it claims to objectively represent through the emerging body of knowledge of Learning Analytics (LA). It also offers a more critical and political reading of the algorithmic assemblages of LA, of which cluster analysis is a part. Our argument is that if we want to understand how algorithmic processes and techniques like cluster analysis function as performative devices, then we need methodological sensibilities that consider critically both their political dimensions and their technical-mathematical mechanisms. The implications for critical research in educational technology are discussed.