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Departments of Arts and Humanities globally face increasing financial threat from falling enrolment, rising costs, and 'strategic realignment' at university level. In the UK, in particular, cuts to the Arts and Humanities sector are becoming endemic, with complex ramifications for prospective students as well as academic and professional staff. In light of these structural and ideological challenges, this paper proposes a revisiting of the philosophical work of Richard Rorty. Rorty has argued compellingly for the morally educative importance of the arts as well as the distinct gift of a liberal education more generally. Ultimately, however, we argue that Rorty's liberal ideals are radically threatened in the present context of neoliberalism and that they have been particularly problematised in philosophical and literary work since Rorty's death in 2007. The theoretical writings of Lauren Berlant as well as the literary fiction of Nicole Flattery and Natasha Brown are our key exemplars here. Through our analysis of these texts, we interrogate what we might desire of education "beyond" the liberal paradigm underpinning Rorty's thought; and we sketch a framework for the Arts and Humanities perhaps more responsive to the crises of our contemporary age.

All countries in the developed world aspire to ever higher standards of education and training. Clearly this depends, at least in part, on having a sufficient supply of high-quality schoolteachers. In the UK on the two occasions in the last 75 years when there were reviews of this need (the McNair report of 1944 and the James Committee of Enquiry 1971), more attention was paid to the recruitment and initial education and training of teachers than to the need for their continuous professional development. Moreover, what priority afforded to the issue was largely ignored by governments of the day whose successors have continued to pay most attention to tinkering with the supply routes and the initial training of teachers rather than their in-service professional development once they have been appointed. This paper, having accepted the crucial importance of the sustaining of teaching quality to the call for ever higher standards of pupil outcomes, sketches and evaluates the history and the present needs and proceeds to set out a menu of measures which should be considered by a third commission/committee of enquiry along the lines of its two predecessors. (Contains 4 notes.)

The concept of capital has risen in prominence within educational policy and practice in the UK since Ofsted introduced cultural capital into its inspection processes in 2019. At the same time, fractured discourses exist across different types of capital -- one of which concerns capitals that are negative in constitution and/or impact. This paper addresses both through: (1) A systematic literature review of these negativities (in social, economic, and intellectual capital) and a thematic analysis of these papers, leading to the derivation of a definition of negative capital; (2) An evaluation of the merit of negative capital via its compatibility with Bourdieu's concepts of social field, social field homology, habitus, and hysteresis; and (3) The application of negative capital to a range of examples from educational practice and theory, including a challenge to Ofsted's use of cultural capital.

Research on the ethics of the home-school partnerships in secondary education is scarce. This paper uses data from three case studies to argue: students have a right to privacy which home-school partnerships can circumvent, parents can be used as a resource to leverage compliance from students which undermines young people's privacy, and developing trusting relationships between parents and teachers is complex when considering the power differentials within that relationship. This article concludes that specific areas around privacy that require greater consideration include: the use of parents to leverage behavioural change in students, the sharing of information students may legitimately believe is intimate without consent, and seeking a change in values within the home. We also consider the areas of resistance students have displayed towards an encroachment on their private spheres.

Universities are necessarily implicated in processes of globalisation and neoliberalisation. But this also finds an expression in the ways that they operate in the cities in which they are located. They are always located "in" place, but the question remains whether they can be understood to be of the places in which they find themselves, capable of contributing to their development as learning cities. That is the question explored in this paper, with the help of evidence drawn from a research project in the United Kingdom which examined the regional role of four contrasting universities in four different urban locations. The paper highlights the importance of understanding the complexity of the relationships between universities and their cities--universities negotiate their roles within particular urban settings, and they do so in instrumental ways, reflecting their own distinctive institutional priorities.

The vocational and academic routes that make up the English education system have different purposes, for different stakeholders, with different outcomes; they can be complementary routes but are not analogous. Consequently, calls for parity of esteem belie the fundamental intention and importance of each. While these calls have persisted for over 70 years, parity between the two routes has not been achieved. This paper questions whether the term parity of esteem is useful or simply political rhetoric. It argues that parity of esteem is unachievable when one of the routes is regarded without much esteem at all, and that political rhetoric focussing on social mobility through education, specifically higher education as a means to achieving it, actively undermines the vocational route, making parity of the routes a political pipe dream.

This article focuses on the schools developed by Mary and David Medd within the Ministry of Education in Great Britain, 1949-1976. Their main contribution to the field of Educational Architecture was the definition of a design strategy known as "Built-in variety," where the self-contained classrooms ("empty-box-school") disappeared in favour of a variety of dissimilar places. Indeed, the Medds sustained a very innovative view from which primary educational architecture was profoundly reconceptualised, getting closer to a "home" than to an institution. Actually, the paper argues that it was precisely this driving principle -- school "as a home" -- that was responsible for the dismantlement of the traditional school types. This article proposes a close look into the design process as an object of study in its own right, in search for the underlying principles of the Medds' primary school designs. The acknowledgement of some features of the English house has been a good means of coming to understand the Medds' strategy and its domestic "aura," for the schools' spatial hierarchy recalls the internal spatial structure of Arts and Crafts houses of the late nineteenth century.

This paper uses data from the 1970 Birth Cohort Study in the UK to explore the well-established link between "liberal" social values and education. Whilst the link itself is well-established, the underlying mechanism is not; the paper explores empirically mechanisms that have been proposed for this link. In particular it considers the effects of social background, "ability", personal efficacy and field of study on social values to explore both direct and indirect effects of education. The paper finds that, whilst there are important effects of social background and ability on social values, these do not explain the effect of educational attainment. Moreover, differences according to field of study suggest that the most likely mechanism linking education with liberal values is one of socialisation.

This paper examines the positioning of the Welsh education system within contemporary policy debate and analysis. It begins by outlining some of the ways in which education policy and provision in Wales differs from that of its neighbour, England, and then goes on to critique how these differences have been represented in both the media and by members of the educational research community. Indeed, the paper argues that these representations constitute a form of misrecognition. It is tempting to counter this misrecognition with assertions of the superiority of the "Welsh way"--and certainly pronouncements of a "crisis" in Welsh education appear to be as much politically-driven as evidence-based. However, such an approach would underplay the very real challenges that face Wales--challenges which are both like and unlike those facing England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The paper concludes that we need a serious engagement with national divergences across the four nations of the UK--as well as elsewhere. The case of Wales highlights the need to undertake not only comparative analysis but also "relational" analysis if we are to enhance our understanding of the changing politics of education.

The December 2008 special issue of the "Oxford Review of Education" provided a review of education policy during Tony Blair's tenure as Prime Minister. This paper forms a response to the ten contributions to that special issue and discusses some of the issues raised in them. While a few positive aspects of education under New Labour were identified in the special edition, it focused more on the failures of New Labour than its achievements. A common theme to emerge from the papers included the government's pursuit of neo-liberal market policies at the expense of its professed commitment to social justice. While accepting that the government's failure to tackle the differences in educational outcomes between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils constitutes a major failing, the present author argues that significant achievements, such as early years provision, were neglected in the special issue. He also discusses the electoral considerations facing New Labour and the personal role of Tony Blair in determining policy. The paper goes on to consider whether New Labour's education policy has changed since the departure of Blair and identifies some hints of a potentially more progressive approach developing under Brown. It concludes by suggesting that contributing towards a debate about alternatives to Blairite policies should now become a priority for the "educational establishment".

The three main programmes of the Geneva-registered International Baccalaureate (IB) have grown substantially worldwide over the past decade, although the programmes have found a natural "home" in the United States. This paper charts the growth of the IB in the United Kingdom (UK) revealing that involvement there, mainly in England and mainly with the original pre-university Diploma Programme (IBDP), peaked at about 230 schools in 2010, but since then the IBDP has begun suddenly to decline. Yet, in no other country has there been a fall in IBDP provision. This paper offers some key explanations for this phenomenon, where a lack of funding and continued lack of university recognition in the face of Advanced Level (A-Level) reform and numerous "baccalaureate" developments has led to many state-funded schools in particular dropping the IBDP. Thirdly, this paper discusses a number of implications, both for the IB itself and education in the UK in general.

This paper summarises findings from several systematic research reviews about the contribution of research to effective continuing professional development and learning (CPDL) activities and their impact on pupils and teachers. It starts with a review of how teachers engage in and with research as part of CPDL, how teachers and researchers shape professional learning activities and identifies key processes linked to positive outcomes. Finally it explores how different research contributions can be developed to make a more visible contribution to CPDL.The paper highlights common characteristics of effective CPDL, including: sustained collaboration with professional colleagues, including both making use of specialist expertise and structured peer support for embedding specialist contributions; an understanding of and commitment to professional learning, including enquiry-oriented learning and learning to learn from looking; a focus on refining teaching and learning, working towards aspirations for specific pupils side by side with theory; and effective scaffolding and modelling of learning by both teachers and leaders for colleagues and for pupils. The key implications of these findings are explored in the conclusions and include the importance of conceptualising researchers' contributions to CPDL as specialist expertise and/or researchers and Masters tutors harnessing the potential of peer support between teachers. They also explore overlaps between core research and teaching skills and the need for a shared language between teachers and researchers to enable concepts like analysis, theory and criticality to be valued as practical tools for enhancing professional practice.

Given the disadvantaged position of working-class children in the education system, it is important to understand how parents and families might support their children to succeed academically. This paper reports on 35 case studies that were conducted as part of the Effective Provision of Pre-School, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE 3-16) research project. Using in-depth interviews with children and parents this study investigates parental involvement with school and learning during primary and secondary school years in working-class families with children who are academically succeeding above prediction and children who are progressing as predicted, given their background characteristics. The paper provides descriptions of emotional and practical support for academic learning in these families and discusses how parents explain their involvement or lack thereof. This paper identifies differences in socialisation practices between the two groups of working-class families: "accomplishment of natural growth" in families with children progressing as predicted (Lareau, 2003) and "active cultivation" in families with children succeeding above prediction.

The 'learning city' contains a range of non-formal learning economies. In recent years researchers have focused on, what has been termed, the non-formal arts learning sector, to document best practices, the emergence of new literacies and/or cultural practices, and to highlight interventions that support otherwise marginalised and underserved communities. Yet, for all of this attention, the non-formal learning sector has remained an opaque object, defined by hazy boundaries, diverse programme structures, and a presence in cities that is difficult to grasp. In this paper we develop an account of the non-formal arts learning sector for socially disadvantaged youth by treating it as a 'socio-technical assemblage' of the learning city. We draw on data from the "Youthsites" research project and examine the history, priorities, and tensions in the sector between 1995 and 2015, a period when the youth arts sector has become a significant feature of urban space. We trace the emergence of the sector in three global cities, analyse a series of paradoxes linked to income and property, the labelling of youth, and organisation aims, and show how these paradoxes shape the sector's broader relationship with the state, labour and consumer markets, and related institutions that allocate support for young people.

The decline in the number of UK universities offering undergraduate degree programmes in subjects such as sciences, mathematics, modern languages and humanities has been well documented and is now of real concern. It appears that economics may be going through a decline in new (post-1992) UK universities with many economics programmes having been withdrawn altogether. How market forces, government policy and other developments in UK higher education may have combined to stimulate the withdrawal of the undergraduate economics degree is explored in this paper. Data on the current level of provision and how this has changed over the last decade are presented. The study reveals how the economics degree, which until fairly recently was offered by old and new universities alike, appears to be expanding rapidly in the former but not in the latter. The withdrawal of economics undergraduate degree programmes from the UK's new universities coupled with the fact that these institutions are the primary conduit through which under-represented groups are able to access the UK's higher education system raises important questions about lack of equality of opportunity. The paper concludes by considering the implications of polarisation of access to economics degrees.

This paper explores the changing relationships between the UK government, its research councils and universities, focusing on the governing, funding and organisation of doctoral training. We use the Doctoral Training Centres (DTCs) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as a prism through which to study the shifting nature of university governance more broadly. Taking up ministerial policy "steers" around research selectivity, knowledge exchange and collaboration, the national research councils position themselves as active partners to universities, working closely with their selected institutional "investments". Drawing on interviews with directors of these DTCs, we document the range of ways in which universities are responding to these dynamic and sometimes unpredictable governance practices. This paper also highlights the growing number of collaborations between universities that are emerging. We use recent work in science governance to argue that, through the Doctoral Training Centres, these "lively" Research Council bureaucracies are reshaping the social sciences and universities more broadly.

From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, schools micro-computing in the UK developed from being a niche "hobbyist" activity to a prominent, officially mandated element of the national education system. Drawing on in-depth interviews with key actors of the time, this paper outlines the initial varied interpretations of schools micro-computing in the UK, identifying the social groups that were involved in pursuing these interpretations, and then considering which meanings and values gained dominance over others. This "social shaping" analysis highlights the processes that underpinned the gradual stabilisation of the meaning(s) around the micro-computer in an educational context. The paper concludes by considering how the eventually dominant interpretations of schools micro-computing can be explained in terms of the technological frames of relevant social groups--not least the differing determinist assumptions of groups hoping to encourage the radical computer-led transformation of schools and schooling, as opposed to those seeking the continuation of established interests.

This paper takes Mary Warnock's paper in the first issue of the "Oxford Review of Education" as its starting point, and explores how both philosophical thinking about equality in education and the landscape of educational provision have changed. It articulates a view of justice in education that emphasises benefiting the least advantaged; and shows that detailed philosophical thinking about values can be valuable for making policy decisions, while also showing that deploying careful value considerations is not a straightforward exercise.

This paper explores the media coverage of UK national examination results. Utilising the findings from a previous Economic and Social Research Council-funded investigation into the media coverage of the release of General Certificate of Secondary Education and Advanced-level General Certificate of Education results, the paper builds on the findings of that study to explore wider implications. The earlier study had revealed the use of some standard "media templates", which led to a fairly predictable range of news stories whatever the pattern of results might be in any given year. This paper explores ways in which Awarding Organisations and others might be more proactive in trying to improve the way in which assessments and examinations are portrayed in the media. It also considers the wider implications of the role of the media in influencing the public understanding of assessment issues.

This paper considers the public debate surrounding assessment in English education and presents evidence of the misuse of public data from national tests. Statistics generated by pupil assessments in schools and colleges in England are argued to be subject to misinterpretation by the media and policy makers. The discourse tends either to be sensationalist--for example, raising public anxiety by claiming falling standards--or politically charged--for example, where the incumbent government is criticised by its political enemies for pursuing failing policies--rather than being framed by objective and purposeful interpretations. Examples are provided to illustrate how interpretations by the media and policy-makers can be strikingly at odds with how the figures should properly be read. The paper analyses the propriety of these interpretations and makes suggestions as to how a more cautious approach to the use of results in the public sphere can be promoted.

East Asian dominance in international large-scale assessments is widely known. This is often explained as an outcome of highly competitive, exam-oriented education systems in East Asia, wherein students partake in a fierce competition for limited college entrance. Although achievement scores may be comparatively higher, the argument goes, the relative success comes at a steep price, with the emphasis on high-stakes tests heightening student stress and anxiety. In this paper we refute this persistent and out-dated stereotype by focusing on changes in Japanese education over the past several decades. The two original studies we report herein show that not only do Japanese students feel less school-related anxiety and stress than they once did, but these levels are now comparable to students in America, Australia, and the United Kingdom. In showing that stereotypes do not match empirical realities, we seek to open a richer discussion around East Asian student achievement. We conclude by extending the discussion to recent changes in China, Taiwan, and South Korea. We then raise the possibility that fundamentally different outlooks on the learning process explain both differences in achievement and the persistence of the West's distorted images of Japanese and East Asian education.

The paper provides an historical but critical context for examining the relation of the pursuit of greater equality in schooling to the development of curriculum. This requires a brief account of what one means by the principle of equality, before showing the different ways in which there have been curriculum responses underpinned by philosophical understandings which need to be examined closely. These different ways are explained in terms of: (1) "rational curriculum planning" with its detailed definition of "aims, objectives, methods and evaluation"--and thereby a "science of teaching; (2) "forms of knowledge" or "realms of meaning" to enable all pupils to have a basic understanding of the physical, social, and moral worlds they inhabit; (3) the pursuit of enquiry through which, for all learners, understanding is enlarged; (4) provision of common curriculum experience as a basis for citizenship; (5) taking diversity seriously; and (6) equalisation of opportunities through a common system of national standards and assessments.However, in the light of greater government involvement in the minutiae of curriculum reform, mainly through changes in qualifications and examinations, there is clearly a need to ask what sort of evidence is relevant to "what works".

The aim of this paper is to address the teaching and learning processes in schools from a Vygotskian perspective based on the notion of "identity artefacts" (IAs) which, for our purposes, consist of documents created by the learners about themselves, in which they try to capture all the things that make sense and are meaningful to them and which, subsequently, can be used by teachers to work on curricular and pedagogical content. We conceptualise the notion of the identity artefact from the broader notions of "mediation" and "cultural artefacts." We also provide a critical analysis of some examples of IAs.

Drawing on a qualitative study of 32 UK student teachers, this paper asks what constitutes the vocational culture of teaching by exploring contradictory discourses of care and authority as they are presented to, and interpreted by, trainee teachers along their journey to becoming newly qualified teachers. Introducing the concept of "vocational habitus" in relation to teaching, "ideal teacher narratives" recounted by respondents are examined and mismatches between the expectations of individuals, institutions and wider policy contexts are explored. The later part of the article focuses specifically on three trainee teachers who struggled more than other research participants with their new roles as teachers. Their experiences suggest that simultaneous and gendered notions of caring and commanding respect can present considerable obstacles for the acquisition of a "successful" vocational habitus. In light of proposed changes to teacher training in England, this paper argues that for government teacher education policies to be successful, they need to demonstrate an awareness and consideration of these contradictory notions.

The paper presents findings from a large-scale mixed methods study of young people's uses of new technologies at home to address a number of key conceptual issues in understanding the home as context for learning. First it is argued that young people's engagement with new technologies is fundamentally bound up with their own identity. It then goes on to explore the nature of learning in the home, arguing that simply to characterise it as "informal" is simplistic and misleading. By the application of Bernstein's ideas on the classification and framing of knowledge, the paper argues that using ICTs at home can support learning that may be formal, informal, quasi-formal or incidental. The final part of the paper identifies some of the "informal learning practices" that are available to young people when learning enters the home in this way. These informal learning practices, it is argued, increase their sense of agency in relation to their learning and therefore potentially make learning a richer and more fulfilling experience. (Contains 2 figures and 6 notes.)

Rhetoric about young people's "ownership" of future socio-technical change is a familiar part of much educational and political discourse. This does not, however, translate in practice into a meaningful dialogue with young people about the sorts of futures they might wish to see emerge. This paper argues that a number of social and technological developments currently being envisaged by researchers, developers, industry and politicians bring with them a responsibility to rethink the relationship between young people, education and socio-technical futures. It focuses specifically on trends in the areas of personal augmentation, digital working practices and intergenerational spaces and discusses the implications of projected developments in these areas for young people's educational, economic and democratic futures. It argues that schools need to be cognisant of these future possibilities and need to create spaces and practices that enable young people together to understand and explore these issues. The school also is not immune to socio-technical change. The potential growth of online learning communities, the emergence of a body of adults able to participate as informal educators and the development of networked publics, in particular, have the potential to change the relationship between school, young people and society. These changes have the potential either to erode or to radically reinvigorate the capacity of schools to act as public spaces within which young people can be supported to negotiate and explore future socio-technical change. (Contains 7 notes.)

The aim of this paper is to bring critical attention to the ways in which notions of "success" and "failure" are applied to teaching and learning in schools in England and Wales. The main philosophical text that guides the discussion is Derrida's "Signature event context", which contains a reading of J.L. Austin's theory of the performative utterance. Derrida finds much to admire in Austin's philosophising. However, he argues that Austin's treatment of context misses something important about how things are done with words. Derrida maintains that, having shown how truth claims are bound up with performative concerns, Austin takes a step backwards by fixating on external contextual factors that must be in place for the performative utterance to be happy--for it to "succeed" in doing what the speaker intends it to do. This ignores the iterability of language and the ways in which words are ultimately bound neither by the intentions of the speaker, nor by any other aspect of the environment in which the utterance takes place. The current thinking in regards to successful teaching and learning invites a comparison with Austin's treatment of context--for a lesson to be successful, a set of contextual factors must be put in place. In this paper, I argue that treating teaching and learning in these terms represents an overdetermined understanding of "success" and "failure" that sees language as something to be tamed by context. Once we recognise that words cannot always or necessarily be brought under control then this will open the door to creative ways of thinking about teaching and language. (Contains 16 notes.)

The characteristics, experiences and long-term prospects of young people outside the labour market and education have attracted widespread international attention in recent decades, and the specific category of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) has been a policy concern for the UK Government since 1997. This paper examines the analytical and empirical basis of our knowledge of NEET young people, in the light of more general conceptualisations of social exclusion and the individualisation of social risk. It relates the NEET category to a conception of social exclusion in which the central policy focus is on moving young people across a boundary between participation and non-participation, and inequalities within education and employment receive less attention. This focus, allied with discourses of individualisation, obscures the structural basis of inequality in education and training. However, the paper argues that the research evidence shows that individualised approaches based on personal and cultural characteristics of NEET young people are inadequate to understand this group and frame policy. The paper proposes that stronger versions of social exclusion need to be used in constructing solutions which acknowledge the basis of NEET issues in wider social inequalities. (Contains 2 notes and 3 tables.)

Reason is a heterogeneous word with many meanings and functions. Instrumental reasoning is the "useful but blind" variant that, for Horkheimer, presupposes "the adequacy of procedures for purposes more or less taken for granted and supposedly self-explanatory". The paper argues that the root of instrumental reasoning is to be found in Hume and Weber and suggests that the problems associated with portraying reason as "inert" or "formal" underpin many areas of education policy today. A scrutiny of discourses on managerialism, skills and creativity suggests that they are not only bound by instrumental reasoning but tied to unacknowledged purposes associated with what Marcuse called "capitalist rationality". The paper concludes by reflecting upon Habermas' notion of substantive reasoning that offers education a way forward.

This paper considers Thomas Hobbes's educational thought both in its historical context and in the context of his political philosophy as a whole. It begins with Hobbes's diagnosis of the English Civil War as the product of the miseducation of the commonwealth and shows that education was a central and consistent concern of his political theory from an early stage. For Hobbes, the consensus on civil matters required for peace could be secured only through rigorous and universal civic education overseen by the sovereign in the universities, the pulpit, and the family alike. While some scholars have condemned Hobbesian education as unacceptably authoritarian, others have cited it approvingly as evidence for a more liberal Hobbes. This essay argues that neither reading adequately grasps the subtle relationship between persuasion and authority that characterises Hobbes's conception of education and, indeed, his political philosophy more generally. (Contains 21 notes.)

The contribution of the discipline of geography to the field of education is complex since they have both been dependent upon the contributions of other social science disciplines, particularly those in the mainstream of social sciences (economics, sociology and political science). Indeed, the number of researchers who would consider themselves as working within the sub-discipline of the geography of education is small, but apparently growing. While the paper suggests that to date there has been relatively little debate at the intersection of these two fields of enquiry it goes on to propose that the potential contribution this would have for both fields remains significant. The pivotal contribution of geography to all the social sciences, that of space (and place), has been central to UK education research since the early origins of a national education system and the roles education and curricular developments have played in nation building. The role of space has also featured heavily in analyses of territorial justice and governance at the level of local authorities and further down in scale to spatial analyses of the classroom. But in order to fully appreciate its contribution the paper utilises the related concept of "scale" to systematically explore the relationship between space and education, in terms of its analytical, theoretical and methodological uses. The paper also considers the recent "spatial turn" in education (and the social sciences more generally) and the equivalent focus on education matters within the field of human geography. In developing this approach it becomes apparent where interdisciplinary research across and between the disciplines of geography and education remains limited and what further contributions from geography would be beneficial to the field of education. (Contains 2 notes and 5 figures.)

This contribution provides a brief endpiece to the Special Issue in honour of Harry Judge from the point of view of a journalist active over much of the period discussed. It focuses particularly on two papers concerned with teacher training in the UK and USA.

This study addresses the challenges faced by organisations and individual professionals, as new practices are developed and learned in multi-agency work settings. The practices examined in the paper involve working responsively across professional boundaries with at-risk young people. The paper draws on evidence from the Learning in and for Interagency Working Project, a four year ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme study of inter-professional learning which has examined the challenges involved in what Victor and Boynton (1998) term "co-configuration" work. In the context of professional collaboration for social inclusion, co-configuration involves on-going partnerships between professionals and service users to support young people's pathways out of social exclusion. This work demands a capacity to recognise and access expertise distributed across local systems and to negotiate the boundaries of responsible professional action with other professionals and with clients. The paper outlines the activity theory derived theoretical platform adopted by the project and describes the intervention methodology that is being developed, as we study the learning challenges identified by children's services practitioners in UK local authorities. (Contains 2 figures and 2 notes.)

This paper explores the idea of thinking skills approaches as tools for pedagogical inquiry and in so doing seeks to develop the link between the promotion of inquiry-based learning, which is a central tenet of thinking skills, and inquiry-based teaching as an approach to professional development and school improvement. The first part of the paper examines the impact of teaching thinking skills on teachers by drawing upon a systematic review of research evidence. The second part of the paper sets the characteristics identified in the context of research into teachers' development and considers the contribution of a pedagogy based on thinking skills approaches to continuing professional development.

This study considers the influence on British education (particularly schools) of Alan Bullock, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University from 1969 to 1973 and distinguished contemporary historian. It quotes extensively from Bullock's own writings, including his developing personal views on education, and reflections on his own experiences. Following a brief biographical section, the paper reviews his work as chair of Government committees and advisory bodies, notably the Schools Council and the eponymous "Bullock Committee" to consider all aspects of the teaching of English. These experiences contributed to his increasing disillusion with formal political power structures as a means of bringing about social change. I examine Bullock's long period as a dominant figure in the administration of the University, and the consequences for schools of the changes which occurred over that time, especially the move towards admissions policies based almost entirely upon academic merit, and towards becoming a leading scientific university. St Catherine's College, which he founded, played a significant part in these changes. Bullock's personal views on the need to offer in schools a broader education, which would be attractive to young people searching for values of their own, were developed in his later writings and are briefly summarised. The paper speculates that he would not have been happy with the competitive and measurement-oriented system of today. (Contains 1 note.)

A. H. Halsey has been a professorial fellow (now emeritus) at Nuffield College in Oxford University since his appointment in 1962 as Director of Oxford's Department of Social and Administrative Studies. This paper explores his contribution to education throughout his career, as an academic and as a national and international policy advisor, and the interface between these two. Halsey worked in what he termed the "political arithmetic" tradition throughout his career, with the dual tasks of documenting the state of society, and addressing social and political issues through "experimental social administration", that is the field testing of social innovation and social policy in advance of national implementation. The paper focuses on Halsey's "activist" role in policy development in the UK and internationally, through his work on educational reform at the OECD and as research advisor to Crosland at the DES with the introduction of comprehensive schooling in the UK and in particular the Educational Priority Areas (EPA) programme, and traces through the impact of his work. His major contribution as one of the leading sociologists of education in the second half of the 20th century is also discussed, but the wider impact of this aspect of his work requires a much more extensive assessment than is possible in this paper. (Contains 43 notes.)

This article explores and attempts to rectify current conceptual confusion found in secondary art education in the UK between procedural knowledge or "knowing how" and declarative knowledge or "knowing that". The paper argues that current practice confuses procedural knowledge with declarative knowledge. A corollary is that assessment evidence for "knowing how", which is shown or demonstrated, is confused with assessment evidence for "knowing that", which requires spoken or written forms of reporting. The confusion is replicated in the national examination, the General Certificate of Secondary Education, taken by students at the age of 16. The article traces this confusion to three dualisms: the Cartesian dualisms of mind and body, an individual mind and the distributed mind of culture, and the more recent mind-in-brain hemisphere dualism. The article advocates a Wittgensteinian embodied, sociocultural view of mind as a way of solving the current conceptual confusion that prevails in art education in the UK.

British-Chinese pupils are the highest achieving ethnic group in the British education system, and British-Chinese boys performance equals that of girls. This paper investigates aspects of British-Chinese pupils constructions of learning, focusing particularly on subject preferences and their constructions of themselves as pupils. The results are analysed according to gender as well as social class, and demonstrate that British-Chinese pupils' constructions of gender, subject preference and self-image as pupils differ in some respects from those of pupils from other ethnic groups. Reasons for such differences are considered, and the paper also reflects on the implications of these findings in relation to broader findings concerning the stereotyping and "othering" of the British-Chinese within the British education system.

Essay-based examinations form a cornerstone of the public assessment system in the UK, but comparatively little research has been conducted into the processes involved in designing, answering and appraising essay-based questions/responses. This study explores the idea of examination validity through a qualitative review of these processes, based on materials sourced from the June 2002 OCR Politics AS/A2 module 2596 (Politics of the UK). Through a detailed analysis of question papers and candidate scripts (informed by mark schemes, curricula and examiner reports), a model of current processes is advanced. Issues related to question design are highlighted, and a methodology for future quality assurance in essay-based examinations is derived from philosophical considerations such as "fairness" and "validity". This paper resulted from research conducted as part of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate's ongoing work to develop a system of procedural guidelines and example questions to facilitate robust question design.

School diversity in the UK is not a new phenomenon. However, recent reforms to "modernise" the secondary school system towards greater diversity of provision, primarily in England, needs to be explored in more detail. The article begins by proposing three phases in the development of state-funded school diversity and provision between 1944 and 1997. It then goes on to consider such reforms with the introduction of a Labour government in 1997. We argue that school diversity under New Labour represents a distinct fourth phase within this broad policy agenda. While there is some continuity in the expansion of school diversity this most recent phase is characterised by greater governmental intervention and a stronger commitment to provide greater resources for schools in disadvantaged communities. However, the paper then critically analyses the relationship between recent programmes of education diversity and equity. In particular, we go on to discuss the extent to which critics' fears about the emergence of a two-tier system are justified. We conclude that while the fourth phase in the UK school diversity agenda may aim to be more equitable, complementary and collaborative it perhaps fails to recognise that the education system today is more competitive and consumer-led.

In this paper we present the findings of an investigation into the ways in which the discourses and practices of school design produce educational spaces which influence the discourses and practices of teaching and learning when the building is occupied. It expands notions of post occupancy evaluation (POE) research by exploring how the objects/motives of an educational vision which informed an initial school design, those of the final build, and those of the people who occupy that building interact in a way which influences experiences of the end users. Crucially we looked at the social interactions that arose within a building as it was used over time. The focus is on the changing relationships between design and practice through time.

For the first time in 2001 the Census for England and Wales included a question on religious identity. The campaign for the inclusion of this question was largely pioneered by the Muslim community who argued that religious identity was a more significant indicator of social and public significance than ethnicity. This paper tests the thesis that Muslim identity predicts distinctive values of public and social significance among male adolescents (13-15 years of age) who participated in a survey conducted across the four nations of the United Kingdom. From the 11,870 participants in the survey the present analysis compares the responses of 158 male students who self-identified as Muslim with the responses of 1932 male students who self-identified as religiously unaffiliated. Comparisons are drawn across two domains defined as religiosity and as social values. The data demonstrated that for these male adolescents self-identification as Muslim encased a distinctive profile in terms both of religiosity and social values.

Describes the difficulties facing local education authorities (LEA) during the revolutionary period in British education. Illustrates that the role of the LEA has changed by exploring various definitions of LEAs proposed by the Audit Commission, the Conservative Government's White Paper "Self Government for Schools," and the White Paper "Excellence in Schools." (CMK)

Research shows that a lower proportion of women than men are in graduate level jobs, six months after leaving seven top UK universities. This paper presents new empirical evidence from a unique dataset on the significantly different attitudes and behaviours between Oxford men and women undergraduates that might explain why women are less likely to have secured a graduate level job than men. Lower self-assurance, firmer beliefs in gender stereotypes, strong prestige and gender-characterisation of occupations, and favouring sectors with informal and low-status entry, all contribute to a lower proportion of women securing graduate level jobs. Despite many advances in recent years narrowing the gap between men and women, there remain policy implications for curriculum delivery and co-curricular courses to increase women's self-assurance and assertiveness, and thereby enable them to aspire to and then secure a wider range of higher prestige occupations.

There are large social class inequalities in educational achievement in the UK. This paper quantifies the contribution of one mechanism to the production of these inequalities: social class differences in school "effectiveness," where "effectiveness" refers to a school's impact on pupils' educational achievement (relative to other schools). It builds on the small number of existing studies, whilst overcoming a number of their limitations. It estimates the effectiveness of the (state) schools attended between ages 7/8 and 10/11 by a cohort of children born in the 1990s in Avon, a former county of England, and then compares the effectiveness of the schools attended by children from different social classes. It finds that "higher" social class children attend more effective schools, on average, and that these social class differences in average school effectiveness between ages 7/8 and 10/11 account for 7% of social class differences in average educational achievement age 10/11. This is not a causal analysis, however.

The Good Friday Agreement (1998) between the UK and Irish governments, and most of the political parties in Northern Ireland, heralded a significant step forward in securing peace and stability for this troubled region of the British Isles. From the new-found stability, the previous fits and starts of education reform were replaced by a determination for modernisation and innovation, infused with a new energy and momentum. This sense of purpose embraced a complex weave of ideas and ideals; all designed variously to smooth, celebrate and harness community differences for the collective good. Much progress has been made in the intervening years since 1998, particularly in political structures and relationships. However, the euphoria of the new dawn of the Agreement had barely begun to shape the future before entrenched "tribal" tensions reproduced the same political and legislative impasses of former years and visited their all-too-familiar blight on the economic, cultural and educational landscapes. This paper focuses on two signature dimensions of education that have been sustained by this partisanship: segregation by religion and segregation by academic selection.

This review examines the kinds of relationship between research and practice that have been envisaged in programmes designed to provide opportunities for beginning teachers to engage in "research-informed clinical practice". Although the terminology varies, scope for inclusion is defined by an intention to facilitate and deepen the interplay between the different kinds of knowledge that are generated and validated within the different contexts of school and university. A variety of approaches have been taken to achieving this kind of integration; not merely extending the time that beginning teachers spend in school, but focusing on the processes by which professional knowledge is created, for example, by equipping beginning teachers to act as researchers, adopting a problem-solving orientation to practice. A range of approaches within and beyond the UK are examined, acknowledging the policy contexts in which they have been developed and comparing the rationales advanced in support of them. Finally the paper examines the claims advanced for the impact of such research-based clinical practice and the quality of the evidence that underpins them, in relation both to beginning teachers' professional learning and to student outcomes.

This paper examines the roles of research in teacher education across the four nations of the United Kingdom. Both devolution and on-going reviews of teacher education are facilitating a greater degree of cross-national divergence. England is becoming a distinct outlier, in which the locus for teacher education is moving increasingly away from Higher Education Institutions and towards an ever-growing number of school-based providers. While the idea of teaching as a research-based profession is increasingly evident in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, it seems that England, at least in respect of the political rhetoric, recent reforms and explicit definitions, is fixed on a contrastingly divergent trajectory towards the idea of teaching as a craft-based occupation, with a concomitant emphasis on a (re)turn to the practical. It is recommended that research is urgently needed to plot these divergences and to examine their consequences for teacher education, educational research and professionalism.

Once societies embarked on programmes of mass education home schooling became essentially a middle-class project and remains so. This paper looks at the educational experiences of some lower middle class women at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for whom the resources of the middle-class home were simply not available. It explores both their experiences of formal schooling and of the educational provision they chose to seek and found among other groups and institutional frameworks in their society. The range and extended chronology of their educational experiences highlight the need to reconceptualise education as extended processes of physical, intellectual and moral socialisation not necessarily limited to the years of childhood and/or adolescence or time-stopped in any way.