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Despite the considerable media time devoted to the teachers' industrial dispute in England and Wales during 1985-86 little or no effort was made to represent the conduct of the dispute in particular school or through the experiences of individual teachers. The impression conveyed was of a uniform type of 'action' and similar effects in different schools, although some were reported as being 'harder hit' than others, that is more days on strike. In reality, although related to a set of general conditions affecting teachers' work, the dispute was enacted and experienced very differently in different schools and localities. The conduct of the dispute in particular school emerged from and was related to a variety of 'local' factors. In this paper some of these institutional variations are examined. The paper consists of two sections. The first attempts to describe and analyse recent structural changes affecting the conditions of work of teaching and thus provide a context for the 1985-86 industrial action in schools. The second section explores teachers' interpretations of and involvements in the industrial action in particular schools. The data on which the paper is based were collected as part of a more general research study on school organization and micro-politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on research with a group of one‐year Postgraduate Certificate in Education secondary trainee teachers during their initial teacher education and training in England. It considers tensions between trainees’ prior experiences and conceptions of teaching and their training programme. In doing so, it seeks to examine how a trainee’s dispositions as revealed through practice in various contexts are reflective of Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’. Associated with this, the paper also examines how particular forms of pre‐existing cultural capital and manifestations of biographical identity also pre‐dispose trainees to form affinities and disaffinities within particular fields. Lacanian concepts of the symbolic, imaginary and real are used to help explain how trainee teachers articulate resonance and dissonance during their field experiences, particularly in relation to ontological concerns of securing a professional stable sense of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of education management has grown rapidly in the past 30 years with members positioning themselves in all parts of the education system. The main claim for distinctiveness is working with and on behalf of the practitioner, and intellectual positioning is based on the nature of intervention with the practitioner such as empirical research, course provision, and consultancy. In undertaking an intellectual analysis of the field, Bourdieu's theory of practice, developed through and with Habitus and Field, is used to think with and to develop an understanding of the 'possibilities' and 'traps' for the professional practice of field members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]