An exploration of the features of effective collaboration between teachers and teaching assistants in secondary schools

This article explores notions of support and collaboration between teachers and teaching assistants (TAs) in two secondary schools in England. In particular it reviews how team members created opportunities and established collaborative practices aimed at including each other in the task of providing support for children who are described as having difficulties in learning. The data from the ethnographic study, which were collected through a variety of methods and were generated with the support and participation of teachers, heads of departments, special educational needs co‐ordinators (SENCOs) and teaching assistants, suggest that the successful inclusion of students is dependent on how schools as organisations and communities are able to support the inclusion of adults as well.     

METHODS OF REORDERING THE CORRELATION MATRIX TO FACILITATE VISUAL INSPECTION AND PRELIMINARY CLUSTER ANALYSIS

Using the notion of parallel items this paper presents a family of new criteria for cluster analysis. Instead of looking at the item correlation matrix one could look at a matrix of similarity coefficients. These coefficients are standardized raw dot products of columns in the correlation matrix or related numbers. After discussing the properties of this matrix the discussion will move to a classic example of a factor analytic problem in personality assessment, an item pool concerned with Fromm's marketing orientation, and a brief discussion of problems outside of cluster analysis will conclude the paper.     

Narrative Reflection in the Philosophy of Teaching: Genealogies and Portraits

How has philosophical reflection contributed to the ways that we think about teaching? In this paper I explore two forms of narrative reflection on teaching—genealogies and portraits. Genealogies tell a story about the origins of teaching; portraits find expression in myths and other narrative forms. I explore two genealogies of teaching—one deriving from the sophist, Protagoras, in which teaching is viewed as a technical skill employing methods of instruction; the other, deriving from Plato, in which teaching is seen fundamentally in terms of a special relationship between teacher and pupil. The Platonic account of the origins of teaching that finds expression in the myth, recounted in the dialogue Phaedrus, gives rise to a tradition of pedagogic portraiture that views the teacher/pupil relationship as foundational and presents the teacher as a wounded healer. This paper explores the grounds of this image and suggests that a tradition of portraiture in which the teacher is represented as a wounded healer can be traced back from Plato to the myth of Chiron and forward to St Augustine, Rousseau, and Nietzsche.     

Agency and Sovereignty: Georges Bataille's Anti-Humanist Conception of Child

Georges Bataille (1887–1962) is one of the most significant thinkers of the 20th century, whose anti-humanist anthropology influenced subsequent existentialist and post-structuralist philosophy. His wide-ranging writings (across philosophy, archaeology, economics, sociology, poetry, erotica and history of art) frequently mention children, childhood and childishness, and yet there has hitherto been little to no attention paid to this aspect of his work. This article opens up a neglected theme in Bataille studies, and also explores the consequences of Bataille's presentation of the human condition for our understanding of the pedagogical relationship. Of particular interest is the idea of the agentic child, which occupies such an important place in childhood studies, educational theory and public policy. In the light of Bataille's anthropology, I shall explore the idea that the pursuit of children's agency is the victim of its vaunting ambition.