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The Department for Education and Skills currently shows a high regard for the potential of technology transforming the British education system. Government White papers demonstrate e‐learning‐based unification strategies that reinforce the message that introducing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will raise standards in schools. This paper examines the effect of these developments on teachers and pupils, and questions the government’s motivation for change. The introduction of ICT has not been complemented by increased levels of effective professional development for teaching staff in the pedagogy of ICT across the curriculum and may have merely served to reinforce the generational digital divide. In attempting to enchant the pupils, the government may have alienated the teachers. This paper suggests that the Department for Education and Skills should place more emphasis on developing strategies and providing funding for solutions to gaps in the professional development of teachers in their pedagogical understanding of ICT across the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines claims that recent reforms to UK education have led to significant organisational changes in primary school and higher education. It also examines two main theoretical explanations for these, namely post-Fordism and New Managerialism. Examples of changes in both schools and universities, including flexibility and teamwork, are explored. Up to the mid-1980s, publicly funded educational organisations did display bureaucratic features, including rules, staff hierarchies and complex procedures. However, professionals employed in these organisations retained discretion and autonomy in their work. Since then, the introduction of an audit culture and a greater emphasis on management and regulation of the work of teachers and academics has decreased discretion and autonomy. This paper suggests that theories of New Managerialism offer a more satisfactory explanation of the changes explored than post-Fordism, which has more often been used as a normative model of what contemporary organisations should look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on research in three English Midlands local education authorities to analyse the changing role of the teacher trade union representative in schools. It focuses on representatives of the largest teachers' union in England and Wales--the National Union of Teachers. The paper draws on mainstream industrial relations literature, and more recent research into school sector industrial relations, to assess how the role of the union representative is changing in an era of autonomous schools. The research indicates that new issues are emerging in schools, and these have the potential to transform the role of the representative. Where representatives can respond to the emergence of these new issues there is the prospect of a new, more participative trade union culture developing in schools. However, it is far from certain that school union representatives will want to assume these increased responsibilities, and this poses a major challenge for the development of teacher trade unionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways in which British Chinese pupils are positioned and represented within the popular/dominant discourse of teachers working in London schools. Drawing on individual interviews from a study conducted with 30 teachers, 80 British Chinese pupils and 30Chinese parents, we explore some of the racialised, gendered and classed assumptions upon which dominant discourses around British Chinese boys and girls are based. Consideration is given, for example, to teachers' dichotomous constructions of British Chinese masculinity, in which British Chinese boys were regarded as 'naturally' 'good' and 'not laddish', compared with a minority of 'bad' British Chinese boys, whose laddishness was attributed to membership of a multiethnic peer group. We also explore teachers' constructions of British Chinese femininity, which centred around remarkably homogenised representations of British Chinese girls as 'passive' and quiet, 'repressed', hard-working pupils. The paper discusses a range of alternative readings that challenge popular monolithic and homogenising accounts of British Chinese masculinity and femininity in order to open up more critical ways of representing and engaging with British Chinese educational 'achievement'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to develop a more sophisticated notion of multiculturalism in Britain. It starts by examining the philosophical basis of the Crick Report on citizenship education to resolve the theoretical tension between liberal and multicultural approaches to the subject. To achieve this resolution, it compares the Crick Report to the Parekh Report on the Future of Multi Ethnic Britain, published on 11 th October 2000. The Parekh report is then used to critique the Crick report and re-theorise the practical imperatives of multicultural citizenship education. I claim that the Crick report, typical of liberal analyses, is suspicious of departure from the presumption of a unified social structure, and represents citizenship education as the imposition of a uniform standard applied to all groups and peoples. On this basis it is claimed that, although the Crick Report's conception of citizenship fails to adequately take account of cultural difference, it need not do so, as there is room within liberal approaches to citizenship education for a recognition of difference. The paper explains how such a resolution can be effected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although not fully established, the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) initiative is already being presented by both government and industry as offering students, teachers and school extensive freedom and autonomy in their day-to-day work. However, this paper argues that the official discursive construction of the NGfL in this way, as a ‘panacea’ to educational problems, obscures vital issues of power and control that may only become apparent once the initiative is fully integrated at the classroom level. Drawing initially on the work of Foucault, and then Poster’s more recent conception of the electronic ‘SuperPanopticon’, this paper re-examines the basis of the NGfL and its role in extending and reinforcing existing power configurations in education. The paper concludes by considering directions for future research into the NGfL, and educational use of the Internet in the light of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-16 providers in the UK now offer a wide range of courses and training in order to respond to the expanded, diversified and 'non-traditional' post-16 market. School leavers are invited to 'choose' from a range of courses and pathways which are being provided in a variety of post-16 educational institutions. These providing institutions are in competition with one another and 'need' the students as their funds are contingent upon successful recruitment (and retention). As a result, many post-16 providers are turning to aspects of marketing in order to publicise their courses and maintain or increase their share of the market. This paper examines two major tactics in the promotion and marketing of post-16 provision--brochures and open days--in relation to issues such as access, targeting, response to 'difference' in the client group/market segment and 'professionalism' of approach. The paper argues that market tactics do semiotic 'work' as class-taste markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant research on family migration for education has focused almost exclusively on the education of children. We thus know very little about family migration when it is driven by the educational projects of parents. To begin to redress this gap, this paper explores the experiences of families who have moved to the United Kingdom primarily to enable the mother or father to pursue a degree. It argues that, in common with what we know of UK student-parents, both choices about and experiences of higher education are strongly differentiated by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The notion of ‘competitive excellence’ is an enduring cornerstone of UK educational policy. Most recently, expanding and adapting New Labour’s Academy project with the introduction of free schools, the Coalition’s approach advances and embeds competitive market-based forms of community engagement in education. Responding to this policy paradigm, this paper draws upon history in order to open up the notion of excellence. Through examining alternative practices of achievement and success in histories of community education, I aim to disturb the unquestioned attachment of educational excellence to the ideals of competitive meritocracy. Comparing across two community educational movements – Socialist Sunday Schools (established 1892) and Black Saturday Schools (established 1968) – I explore how achievement and excellence have been mobilised to very different educational aims. In distinct times and circumstances, both of these community initiatives practiced versions of educational achievement that challenged dominant knowledge hierarchies and underlying assumptions of incapability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Family learning has been an important mode of education deployed by governments in the United Kingdom over the past 20 years, and is positioned at the nexus of various social policy areas whose focus stretch beyond education. Drawing on qualitative research exploring mothers’ participation in seven different family learning programmes across West London, this paper looks at how this type of education is mobilised; that is, how mothers are ‘encouraged’ to participate and benefit from this type of programme. Framed by a neo-liberal policy climate and Foucauldian writings on governmentality and surveillance, we explore how participating mothers are carefully ‘targeted’ for this type of learning through their children and through school/ nursery spaces, and how programmes themselves then operate as a supportive social space aimed at facilitating social networks, friendship and personal development linked to positions of gender, ethnicity, class and migrant status. It is the socio-spatial workings of ‘supportive’ power and power relations that enable family learning to be mobilised that ensures its popularity as a social policy initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the context of the ongoing debate between critical race theory (CRT) and Marxism, I begin in this paper by examining the origins of CRT in Critical Legal Studies (CLS) in the United States. I go on to describe CRT’s entry into education, first in that country, and then in the United Kingdom. I move on to a discussion of current debates between critical race theorists and Marxists, focusing on an analysis of arguments for the existence of abstract racial domination. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores Indian women's views on arranged marriages in the United Kingdom. It is based on research carried out with 32 Indian women studying at a university in the South East of England, UK. The article draws on Wenger's social theory of learning to explore how Indian women's participation in communities of practice in higher education contributes to their participation in arranged marriages. The concept of 'social capital' is used to discuss how women are able to negotiate their participation in arranged marriages, It is used to examine the knowledge and identity resources that women develop through their participation in higher education, which provides them with the means from which to develop the necessary 'bridging ties' leading to their active participation in the wider South Asian community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses findings from a small-scale empirical exploration of the views, experiences and educational practices of middle-class minority ethnic families in the United Kingdom. It draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with 36 parents, pupils and 'young professionals'. Analyses consider to what extent generic class resources, as identified by the US work of Lareau, are evident within the educational practices of British middle-class, minority ethnic families. It is argued that generic class resources and practices were evident to the extent that parents expressed a desire for personalised education, felt comfortable voicing their opinions and concerns to schools, and were willing to climb the ladder of authority to get their voices heard. However, it is also argued that 'race' plays a significant and complicating role that calls for a qualification (but not a negation) of Lareau's theorisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Second World War, education in advanced capitalist societies has been perceived as the main 'saviour' of the meritocratic ideal. In this paper I will investigate some of the implications of the lasting emphasis that has been placed upon education in Britain, in the pursuit of a more just and equal society. Initially, I will present two main strands of thought vis-a-vis meritocracy. I will then show how these different approaches have shaped the pertinent debate. The main line of reasoning will be that the 'meritocracy through education' discourse can potentially conceal inequalities and injustices in contemporary market-driven British society. This contention will be supported by evidence from social mobility research, which clearly indicates that the expansion of educational provision and the increase in educational qualifications of the past 60 years has done little to eliminate social class differences and associated privileges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The understanding of feminist pasts has been largely ignored in the history of education. This paper suggests that the historical sociology of Olive Banks provides fresh starting points for future research exploring the relationship between the history of social and political movements and a reassessment of contemporary and historical forms of 'radical education.' The article proceeds to use group biography to explore a municipal socialism that has been over-ridden in historical memory by the classic political histories that take the view from Westminster and Whitehall. In so doing it seeks to show the contribution of six educator activists who were participants in the making of a metropolitan political elite emerging from the association between feminism, socialism and the labour and trade union movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the educational experiences of a group of African Caribbean and mixed ‘race’ young people from the perspectives of their parents. The discussion is set within a national context where children of African Caribbean origin are one of the lowest achieving minority ethnic groups in the UK and are disproportionately one of the highest ethnic groups of children excluded from school. The parents recount a pattern of cumulative negative experiences which for many of the children results in academic underachievement and becoming demotivated to learn, by a system that they feel has rejected them, or imposed exclusion. The story is hardly new but it provides important further evidence that schools need to tackle head-on factors such as low teacher expectations and negative stereotyping of young black people and their contribution to black underachievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite rapid growth in UK postgraduate education and a current focus on issues of access to higher education, consideration of possible social class differentials at the postgraduate level is missing from the sociological literature. Using Higher Education Statistics Agency data, this paper presents a preliminary investigation of the relationship between social class and progression to postgraduate study in England and considers the interplay with other salient variables, including subject of study, institutional type and first–degree achievement. Evidence of a social class differential in progression to higher degrees is used to test various sociological theories, particularly those proposed by Bourdieu. There is support for the concept of ‘institutional habitus’ developed in recent UK studies. It is concluded that there is scope for further in–depth empirical research into social class and postgraduate study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is based on ethnographic work with doctoral students, their supervisors and postdoctoral researchers in three contrasting disciplines biochemistry, artificial intelligence and physical geography It explores how stability and continuity in scientific disciplines are sustained through socialisation processes of doctoral research It identities the inter-generational transmission of knowledge, skills and assumptions within the institutional setting of laboratory or the research group Working on `standardised packages' in such social contexts, doctoral students are enculturated into scientific work Despite setbacks and uncertainties in getting their research to `work' doctoral students express faith that their problems are `doable' Drawing on these empirical findings we suggest that these forms of pedagogic continuity are of more significance in the enculturation of doctoral students and the reproduction of scientific knowledge than the presence or absence of a `critical mass' of active researchers (as has been suggested by the recent Horns renew of postgraduate education in the UK) We therefore suggest that recent UK policy formation that has emphasized the notion of critical mass deserves critical scrutiny, and that there is need for perspectives more sensitive to disciplinary cultures and departmental organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I take issue with the claim of Ozga (1992) that because of the poor quality of many recent texts on education management, and their lack of a sociological perspective, they are not proper material for analysis in the British Journal of Sociology of Education. I argue that sociological analysis of such texts is an urgent priority because they have gained credibility among education practitioners and provide a spurious legitimacy to new right policy directions. This general argument is illustrated by focussing on four specific limitations of one of the most popular current texts on education management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women constitute a very small minority of the full time academic staff in British universities and are concentrated in the lower grades. Statistical evidence points to the fact that an important reason for this is that discrimination exists within the academic profession. However, there is very little empirical information on the nature of this discrimination and the institutional processes that serve to maintain it. The study reported here seeks to identify and illuminate these processes through the experiences and perceptions of women academies themselves. A total of 43 women were interviewed at length using a semi-structured interview schedule, exploring issues such as recruitment and selection, probation, career development, appraisal, positions of power and the roles of women academics. It is suggested, in this paper, that we can begin to understand some of the factors which limit women's access to and success within the profession by examining the evidence of women who have survived within the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The market alternative in education is gaining ground in policy-making circles on both sides of the Atlantic. Parental choice and school competition are seen as ways of achieving reform and raising standards while at the same time reducing State intervention into education planning. This paper interrogates the arguments made for markets and against public monopoly schooling,, and it is argued that on both counts of advocates are partial and flawed. The failure to address the bases and effects of inequalities of the market are given particular attention. It is argued that markets in education provide the possibility for the pursuit of class advantage and generate a differentiated and stratified system of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debate on teacher quality and quality in teaching and teacher education has been as vigorous in Australia as it has been in the UK and the USA In Australia, however, reform in teacher education has been subsumed within a national metapolicy of corporate federalism which is an amalgam of beliefs or discourses including neo-corporatism, economic rationalism, corporate managerialism and human capital The paper analyses the most recent document on reform of teacher education in Australia (the Ebbeck Report) and shows how its policy formulation is influenced by the discourse of corporate federalism It also shows how micro-economic reform in this sector is related to reforms in other sectors of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the special issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy journal entitled Education, Training and Economic Performance. In a speech to the annual conference of the Association of Colleges of Further and Higher Education in London on February 15, 1989, Kenneth Baker, British Secretary of State for Educational and Science, speaking on Further Education a new strategy, talked about the problems of sludge speak, which dominates the rhetoric of further education and has to be translated into everyday language. If one examines the sludge speak of his speech and the vision of further education he has, then it is clear that in everyday language people might conclude, in polite phraseology, that is a real mess. This series of papers from the Oxford Review of Economic Policy provides a clear set of well-argued articles which students of the field should find more than useful in their essays and dissertation work. The special issue begins with a historical review of education, training and economic performance and quotes a lecture in 1852 on Industrial Instruction on the Continent which argued that improvements in technical education were urgently required if British manufacturers were to maintain their lead over foreign competitors.

This paper argues that the assessment and evaluation of teachers in state provided schooling in Britain has never been simply a matter of technical competence. Judging teachers has always involved social, ideological and political considerations which have varied in different historical periods. An analysis is made of attempts to apply principles and procedures of assessment especially to teachers in urban working class schools. It is shown that these attempts have historically moved from a 'visible' strategy of direct imposition and surveillance to an 'invisible' strategy through the ethic of legitimated professionalism. Current developments in British schooling suggest, however, a possible return to more direct and visible procedures as 'teacher incompetence' is placed at the center of the education problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents several articles offering sociologists' views on cuts in British higher education as of 1984. John Brennan contributes a nation-wide view of the cuts in the public sector, outlines institutional policies and prejudices and suggests strategies for survival. His paper also shows that the distinctive ecology of public sector higher education poses both threats and opportunities for sociology. Meanwhile, Alan Waton provides a macro-view of the UGC action. Rosemary Deem writers of her experience as a County Councilor involved in working for the retention of courses in a public sector college and provides the only contribution with a happy ending. Also Ivan Reid discussed the problems and potentials of strategies for survival. According to Brennan, there never was a golden age for the polytechnics. He further said that they have experienced cuts and financial stringency over a long period of time. He also said that the effects have been gradual and have become almost taken for granted. Ivan Reid stated that it is difficult to establish whether sociology and sociology of education face threats over and above that posed to higher education in general. The intimate relationship of sociology of education with teacher education has meant that it has shared the fate of closures and cut-backs with the other disciplines of education and faced many of these well before the present situation.