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This paper draws on several projects over sixteen years which attempted to develop capacity in educational research at Addis Ababa University. It identifies what might be considered indicators of a thriving research environment as defined from a UK perspective, not simply the necessary skills and infrastructure requirements but also what might be considered "academic" or "intellectual" virtues. Having outlined specific project activities, our responses and mutual learning, the paper goes on to consider how such qualities might relate to an Ethiopian academic setting where cultural norms and political contexts have tended to encourage silence and caution rather than critique and argument. Thus through these comparisons, I argue that research capacity building is not just a body of knowledge or set of techniques to be delivered through workshops, but is about the importance of developing a research culture which engages with the underlying attitudes that derive from the country context. (Contains 5 notes.)

This paper explores the effects of enacting a collaborative and enquiry based model of teacher professionalism in the UK. Based on work with Chartered Teachers in Scotland, it indicates that the barriers to changing the basis of teacher professionalism are complex and multi-faceted because of the contested nature of teachers' work identities. Chartered Teacher status is achieved by qualification against an occupational standard which positions those who attain it as leading teachers, exerting a significant influence with their colleagues to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools. This paper looks at some of the conceptual and practical difficulties faced by Chartered Teachers as they try to enact what this new "status" means. It argues that those with an interest in the professional development of teachers need to position themselves as knowing agents in the complex systemic and political aspects of changing practice in schools.

The subject of geography is declining in popularity at secondary school level and recent developments following the "cultural turn" in Higher Education have had little impact in revitalising it. In this paper I explore the question: is there a problem with the school geography curriculum policy? After briefly sketching the history of the Geography National Curriculum policy (GNC), I focus on Caputo's (1997) commentary on Derrida and the idea of deconstruction and invention to explore the contemporary GNC policy text (1999) programme of study at Key Stage 3.

This paper asks the question: to what extent do inspection regimes, particularly the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), influence the work of a school, and how might that influence be conceptualised? It draws on an ESRC-funded study of 'policy enactments in secondary schools', which was based on case-study work in four 'ordinary' schools. Here the data set is re-examined to understand the extent to which Ofsted had an ongoing influence on the work of the leadership, management and teachers in these schools. We undertook a process of secondary analysis of the data from the project and found that the influence of the inspection agenda was strong in the schools, policy decisions were often being made to conform to Ofsted's expectations and the influence on leadership and management was clearly apparent. In resisting this agenda we also found that schools to some extent performed 'the good school' for inspections. Finally, we relate this empirical evidence to conceptions of governmentality and post-panopticism to shed new light on their theoretical relevance to contemporary inspection regimes.

Michael Young's work is central to debates about knowledge and the school curriculum. In recent years he has renounced his early argument that school subjects represent the "knowledge of the powerful", arguing instead that access and equality for all students are dependent on ensuring that all get access to "powerful knowledge". This paper provides an interpretation of Young's work.

This paper assesses the origins, character and legacy of the Standing Conference on Studies in Education (SCSE), established in 1951. In the historical and theoretical context of British educational studies, the SCSE, despite its outward appearance as an elite and conservative body, represented a progressive and even radical movement, and played a significant part in the emergence of a modernised and more fully developed approach to the study of education in post-war Britain. In contrast to Scotland, educational studies in the rest of Britain was slow to develop in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but came to the fore in the 1940s as a time of broader educational and social reforms. It was multidisciplinary in scope and led by interdisciplinary individuals, most notably Fred Clarke. Its journal, the "British Journal of Educational Studies (BJES)," founded in 1952, also represented a broad multidisciplinary ethos, although increasing disciplinary specialisation marked a trend towards the fragmentation of the field before the growth of new pressures towards the end of the century.

In this article, the author talks about a life with the sociology of education. He begins by describing the "old" and "new" sociologies of education. Then, he discusses the sociology of education policy and the relevance of Basil Bernstein, who remained the dominant presence within the sociology of education in the UK until his death in 2000 and beyond. He also talks about sociology and education policy today. He argues that work in the sociology of education should currently be doing more to inform public debate and, where possible, encouraging the development of policies that help enhance levels of achievement and participation amongst working-class children.

In this article, the author reflects on key events and issues with which he has been involved for 50 years. First, he gives a brief account of the Schools Council--what it meant in terms of the limited role of government in governing education, and in terms of the role of teachers as curriculum thinkers, not deliverers. Its demise in the 1980s coincided (necessarily) with a more centralised educational service. But that earlier, more subservient role of government gave rise to some of the most significant educational reports ever written which covered the whole expanse of education and training. Second, he briefly notes, in what was called "the great debate", the battles of ideas which took place in the 1970s over the content and aims of education, and the felt need of government to change the partnership between central and local government and the teachers. Third, that of course was made possible through not only the increased central accountability of the teachers, but also the gradual demise of local government and responsibility. There is now little between the schools and the Secretary of State. Fourth, he illustrates how far that partnership has been transformed, indeed to the point of disappearance. Fifth, the author looks to the future. Such a future is no doubt reflected through the nostalgic spectacles of the past, but that past embodied the ideal of local responsibility and accountability for education and of public service. It rightly in his view was built on a fear of an all-powerful government without the counterbalancing forces of local control. And it saw the centrality of a teaching profession which was not beholden to political masters in the content and methods of teaching. They, the teachers, should be the thinkers, not the deliverers.

One figure who was transitional between educational philosophy and philosophy of education, and who by his industry and prominence laid the foundation for the London school of analytical philosophers of education, was Louis Arnaud Reid who was appointed at the London Institute of Education to the first UK professorship in the philosophy of education. In this article, the author discusses Reid's article, "Education and the Map of Knowledge" that appeared in the "British Journal of Educational Studies" ("BJES") as the first article in 1952. The author considers educational philosophy within a broad context, examines some recent philosophers of education and concludes with the observation that the "most worthwhile educational theory is contextual and practical". (Contains 9 notes.)

The issue of levels of participation in post-compulsory education has been emphasised by the current policy initiatives to increase the age to which some form of participation is compulsory. One of the acknowledged weaknesses of research in the field of children's intentions with regard to participation is the lack of longitudinal data. This paper offers a longitudinal analysis using the Youth Survey from the British Household Panel Survey. The results show that most children can express intentions with regard to future participation very early in their secondary school careers and that these intentions are good predictors of actual behaviour five years later. Intentions to stay on are more consistent than intentions to leave and most children who finally leave at 16 have at some point said they want to remain in education post-16. The strongest association with participation levels is attainment at GCSE. However, there are also influences of gender and parental background and these remain, even after attainment is held constant. The results show the value of focusing on intentions for participation at a very early stage of children's school careers and also the importance of current attempts to reform curriculum and assessment for the 14-19 age group.

Despite the "progressive" influence of the English Plowden Report and Scottish Primary Memorandum on British primary curricula from the 1960s onwards, secondary education has generally continued to follow a more traditional subject-centred route and post-war educational theorists have not generally been favourably inclined to other than subject-based modes of curriculum planning and organisation. However, in the light of current curriculum reviews on both sides of the Scottish border--calling for more educationally meaningful curricula--the perennial issue of how school knowledge might best be ordered for the coherent educational experience of pupils seems worth revisiting. To this end, this paper examines some of the influential post-war philosophical arguments against integrated and interdisciplinary approaches to the curricular organisation of knowledge, concluding that they are not as compelling as they might formerly have seemed.

The impact of neoliberal reforms of education systems on the work of teachers and school leaders, particularly in relation to high-stakes accountability frameworks, has been extensively studied in recent decades. One significant aspect of neoliberal schooling is the emergence of quasi-autonomous public schools (such as Academies in England, Charter Schools in the USA and Independent Public Schools in Australia), characterised by heterarchical governance models, the promotion of entrepreneurial leadership cultures, and the promotion of a discourse of pursuing educational equity by means of 'achievement for all'. This paper explores the emergence of a mode of teacher professionalism characteristic of these quasi-autonomous schools, and conceptualises this as being 'neo-performative'. The neo-performative profession is shaped by the shift in the focus of the regulation and management of schools from 'governing to governance', and the consequential rise of the 'responsibilised profession', and marked by the emergence of an entrepreneurial model of school leadership. The paper argues that this new conceptualisation of teacher professionalism requires further, more focused, empirical study in order to explore how neoperformative teachers and school leaders articulate their vision of educational equity and social justice, and how they enact this vision in an increasingly intensified high-stakes accountability culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the case study of Anglesey and its pioneering comprehensive scheme, this paper aims to re-examine education reforms and interventions by central government c.1918–1950. This is undertaken in a bid to reveal the significance of such reforms for the way in which comprehensive secondary education was able to evolve at the local level. Lesser-known consequences of well-known reforms will be explored with a view to assessing their significance for a Local Education Authority with a comprehensive vision. Furthermore, these localized findings will be discussed with the aim of discerning their significance beyond the local level. Attention will be paid to what the implications of the inclusion of the 'Welsh dimension' might mean for the wider historiography of comprehensive schooling in England and Wales. It will be argued here that this re-examination of education policy has implications for how the consequences of some of the key educational reforms of the twentieth century can be viewed and re-evaluated. Perhaps even more significantly, the findings from this investigation suggest that by re-examining the influence of key policies and central government intervention, our understanding of the pioneering of comprehensive schooling can be further developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the evolution of further education colleges in England is marked by both continuities and change, and provides evidence to show that they retain many of the characteristics and the underlying rationale present at the turn of the twentieth century. A defining characteristic remains the colleges’ need to respond to student demand in a continued climate of voluntarism and lack of policy commitment to the education of young people beyond school-leaving age. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Within the context of fierce global economic competition, school diversification and specialist schools have been seen by governments as cornerstones of education policy to engineer school improvement in both England and Singapore for more than a decade. In both systems, the policy has manifested in different school types, school names and sometimes buildings – in England, specialist status schools, academies and most recently free schools; and in Singapore, specialist schools and niche schools. Diversification is promoted by each school emphasising distinctiveness in its curriculum – often with implications for its funding and degree of autonomy – which differentiate it from others. There is normally the intention to scale-up curricular innovations school-wide. The paper addresses three aims in respect to both countries: first, it profiles the evolution of specialist schools' policies in both states in relation to school improvement and secondly, social justice; thirdly, it undertakes a comparative policy analysis in order to draw conclusions as to how the relationship between central government and schools has re-configured in both countries – arguing that the policy in England is radical, that in Singapore, conservative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws on recent work by John Clarke and Janet Newman and their colleagues to analyse a relatively coherent governmental project, spanning the decades of Conservative and New Labour government in England since 1979, that has sought to render teachers increasingly subservient to the state and agencies of the state. Under New Labour this has involved discourse and policies aimed at transforming teaching into a ‘modernised profession’. It is suggested that this appropriation of both the concept and substance of professionalism involves an attempt to silence debate about competing conceptions of what it might be to be a professional or to act professionally. The overall process is thus arguably one of de-professionalisation in the guise of re-professionalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade higher education policy in England has gradually switched from a stance of ‘government as purchaser’ to ‘government as informer’. During 2012 this policy stance has been intensified through new requirements for the advice provided by schools and the introduction of ‘Key Information Sets’ which are intended to ‘drive up quality’ through informed choice. This paper documents this policy shift and subjects it to critical scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The UK Coalition Government has recently introduced a number of education policies that aim to reform initial teacher development in England. It has argued that the training of new teachers will be improved by giving greater priority to the development of ‘key teaching skills’. This narrowly practical and overly managerial approach to initial teacher training (ITT) is mistaken as it fails to recognise the developmental value of what might be described as powerful educational knowledge. As such, recent reforms of ITT seem unlikely to raise teaching standards. Standards of ITT might be improved, however, by giving new teachers access to powerful educational knowledge, such as that developed by Emile Durkheim. Powerful educational knowledge supports the development of new teachers by building their commitment, understanding and creativity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Examines how school admissions policies and practices in Great Britain are affected by educational reforms. Analysis of the 1988 Education Reform Act; Overview of the criteria for school admission; Problems associated with school admissions; Necessary prerequisites for school admissions.

Examines the way in which criticism of the work of primary school teachers in Great Britain have attempted to redefine the professional identity of early years teachers. Objection to the manner in which critiques have been formulated; Call for educational researchers to adopt a less reverential attitude to government proposals for the reform of primary education.

Discusses the tension between the central government's responsibility for provision and the principled assertion of independence on the part of the providers that constitutes the main themes of teacher education in Great Britain. Series of changes in professionally trained graduate profession; Requirements that makes professional training desirable; Changes in the validating bodies both reflected and influenced conflicting curriculum philosophies; Need to balance training between primary and secondary shift; Development of secondary courses within certificates.

This article examines the participation of ‘third-sector’ organisations in public education in England. These organisations act as a cross-sectoral policy network made up of new kinds of policy experts: mediators and brokers with entrepreneurial careers in ideas. They have sought to make education reform thinkable, intelligible and practicable in terms of a computational discourse consisting of code, networks, interactivity and feedback, and related ideas of decentralisation, open methods and personalisation. What characterises this style of thinking is an ‘anti-political’ preoccupation with computer-coded systems and the idea of networks as a model for new political and educational forms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What purpose is served by renovation or redesign of professionalism, and how successful a process is it likely to be? This article addresses these questions by examining the effectiveness as a professional development mechanism of the imposition of changes to policy and/or practice that require modification or renovation of professionalism. The ‘new’ professionalisms purported to have been fashioned over the last two or three decades across the spectrum of UK education sectors and contexts have been the subject of extensive analysis, and this article avoids going over old ground and revisiting issues that have already been much debated. Nevertheless, the example of UK government education policy during this period is used as a basis for considering the pitfalls associated with mechanisms for modifying professionalism through a reform and standards agenda. The article's analysis incorporates re-definition and examination of the concept and substance of professionalism and offers new perspectives in the form of three distinct conceptions: demanded, prescribed and enacted professionalism. Exploring the existentialist status of ‘new’ or ‘modified’ professionalisms and the relationship between professionality, professional culture and professionalism, it examines how professionalism may be interpreted and utilised for the development of education professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the economic assessment of schooling quasi-markets in Great Britain. Schooling reform on economics; Conditions necessary for quasi-markets to promote socially optimal decision-making; Behavior of school and consumer; Market outcomes in private and social welfare.

Looks at the political background to the introduction of the Education Act of 1992 to the British Parliament. Changes to the Her Majesty's Inspectorate brought about by the act; Conversion of policy into act of Parliament; Reactions of proponents of reform.

Calls for the need of the government to implement educational reforms to give education to disadvantaged individuals in Great Britain. Attention given to create market forces within the state education service; Challenge for the government to recall that the rights of parents qua parents are grounded in their duties of trusteeship or agency in securing children's actual or future interests; Benefit of quasi-mystical faith in the wisdom of the forces of the market to provide an adequate substitute for intelligently planned educational policy.

Reflects on the forty one years which have passed since the 1944 Education Act, the major developments of the period, and the aspirations of the post-war period in Great Britain. Processes of change in which educational issues represent themselves in different forms against the background of changing demography, politics and economics, and the unfolding social priorities which emerge from the evolution of the culture; Specific educational policy concerns intended for the 1944 Act; Consequences of expansion and development.

Looks into the post-war impact of war-time reform in educational government in Great Britain, both local and institutional level. Nature of the governmental process emerging in education; Political popularity of educational expansion; Significance of contemporary initiatives in funding and controlling aspects of further education and of vocational education in schools.

Focuses on issues related to compulsory curriculum in the education system of Great Britain. Contentions regarding the justification of the initiative; Difference in the interpretations of compulsory curriculum between those who favor the program and those against it; Presumption that any attempt to prevent children from doing what they want in morally unjustifiable.

Focuses on the question of implementing educational reform in Great Britain. Assumption of consensual basis to social organization by educational research; Impact of reforms on schools; Introduction of a socio-political model for reform.

Examines the impact of educational policy and practice on research in Great Britain. Movement of educational research from the macro to the micro study; Investigation on the external influences of the education system; Origin of the move towards naturalism and the proliferation of studies within the classroom.

Comments on the issue of misguided integration of individualism in the British educational system. Distinct forms of individualism; Impact of the country's individualistic society on the development of students and the teaching profession; Need for a school-based moral education to counter excessive individualism.

The article focuses on issues concerned with educational studies in Great Britain. It is reported that the consequences of population growth will have a major impact on the educational sector in Great Britain. Owing to the escalating population growth, the establishment of a special government office which is responsible to British parliament for reviewing the plans of various departments is highly recommended. The proposed office was also to publicize the consequences of excessive family growth and the desirability of family planning. The result of improved practices of genetic screening made it possible to identify various transmitted handicaps, genetic counseling that are developed to satisfy natural anxieties among normal parents. It is found that the handicaps of large families were independent of social class. Further, experts opine the view that the British government in the vanguard of population education and instruction in population and related themes should be introduced into schools, colleges and universities.

Examines the consideration of considerational educational change during 1933–1938 in Great Britain. Effort of Labour Party in protest against the educational policy advanced by the national government in the election of 1935; Reference on secondary education offered an opportunity to call for administrative change.

This article presents information on the controversy over the 1902 Balfour's Education Act. It was an educational success is shown by the torrent of secondary education which it undammed. But of all the educational advances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this Act was decided on grounds other than educational on political and religious grounds. In all the debates on the Bill, in or out of Great Britain's Parliament, in the sermons preached about it and the pamphlets issued in their thousands, little was heard of the child. He or she was a mere pawn-it was the system that mattered. Not even Robert Morant, the brains behind the 1902 Act, had anything to say about the pupil as such. And the intense opposition which the Act aroused was based again on religious and political issues-or upon doubts as to whether the new system was the most efficient one, not so much for the child as for the nation. For the national need, then as now, was one of the prime motives for educational reform.

Reports on the education bills introduced in Great Britain. Intention of the bills to increase the accountability and quality of schools and further education colleges and to reorganize and improve access to higher education; Aim of the Education (Schools) Bill to ensure parents receive a summary of the reports of school inspections and an action plan drawn up by the school governors to tackle any problems highlighted; Impact of the reforms on the British education service.