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This paper explores physical education (PE) teachers' views of the inclusion of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in PE from a figurational sociological perspective. Starting from the premise that teachers' views cannot be adequately explained by studying the concept of inclusion or the teacher in isolation, it is argued that we can only begin to make sense of such views by locating teachers within the figurations of which they are a part and by exploring two particularly salient features of those figurations: namely, teachers' habituses and contexts. In doing so, the paper focuses upon the training teachers receive, the constraints imposed upon them by their colleagues and pupils, and, most importantly, the suitability of the National Curriculum for meeting the needs of pupils with SEN. The paper concludes by highlighting some of the unintended consequences of the inclusion of pupils with SEN in PE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to explore processes involved in cultural and social reproduction with specific reference to commercial studies in a Queensland Secondary School Reproduction theories are discussed and a framework for analyzing school experience is developed. It is argued that this broad approach to the study of school experience encompasses the formal and informal, the overt and covert, and social relations as well as content aspects of the curriculum Empirical data on the structuring of school experience in commercial studied are presented under the categories organization, content, methodology and general values. The final section of the paper considers the relationship between school experience and the occupational structure with respect to commercial studies. These subjects can be seen to reproduce the patriarchal and hierarchical relationships of office work however, a number of recent changes in the structure of the workforce and the nature of office work, have resulted in a number of 'contradictions' in the school/work relationship. The implications of the study in relation to educational and social change are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an analysis of the attempt in Tanzanian Secondary School to alter the conventional academic school curriculum by the inclusion of productive work. It describes the broad aims of the policy of education for self reliance as a text, focusing in particular on those elements in the policy which imply a redefinition of the relationship between the dominant literate curriculum and the productive, or essentially practical, projects carried out by the schools. The paper includes some research evidence which suggests that, in practice, teacher have been unable to adopt the 'unified' approach advocated by President Nyerere. The paper outlines different practices carried out by teacher in response to the policy imperatives and present three critical factors affecting teachers' actions. These are the relationship between schools and the division of labour, the difficulties of specifying what 'unity' may mean in terms of pupil action and the problems of school organization related to the inclusion of productive activity. The paper concludes by arguing that in the context of the 'unsympathetic' environment suggested by these factors, the issue of implementation becomes increasingly important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private schools in Australia are a large, influenced and heavily subsidizing sector of secondary education, offering academic and social advantages to their mainly professional and managerial clients. Their influence on patterns of inequality in higher education and career recruitment is usually seen as a function of their homogeneity of intakes and higher resources levels. This paper argues that these factors become important, not through the operation of networks and family allegiances, but because of the way in which private schools exploit the curriculum. Private schools enable families to exercise scholastic power, not only social and political power. But this depends on maintaining an academic curriculum and on the ability of private schools to exploit the cultural values embedded in this curriculum. success reinforces the authority of the curriculum over all schools, not just private non-Catholic establishments, and through this a wider influence is exerted over social structure. This argument is developed through an analysis of the changing relationship of Australian private schools to the curriculum over the first four decades of the post-war period. [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]

This article reviews the publication Improving Secondary Schools (Hargreaves Report), by the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA). The publication adds to a mounting wave of publications which seek to develop understanding of effectiveness in the education service. Yet the Hargreaves Report is set apart from all the others as a quite outstanding achievement because of its attention to the learning process, theorizing of the new pedagogy and radical commitment to the dispossessed of our inner cities. The Hargreaves Report forms the most articulate and comprehensive statement we possess of what the author proposes to call the emerging new education a theorizing of the conditions for effective secondary schooling which argues for a redefining of achievement together with a fundamental shift in the curriculum that is offered, the way it is taught and the form in which it is assessed. The author wishes to explore further this account of educational effectiveness to analyze some of its implications for management at the level of the local authority. The Hargreaves Report seeks to describe strategies for improving secondary schools, focusing in particular upon the processes of schooling. In so doing it will become an exemplar for a growing number of LEA which are directing their energies towards improving curricula and pedagogy as the most secure means of transforming the achievement of young people especially the disadvantaged.

Drawing on a recent empirical study of curriculum change in English secondary school mathematics, an attempt is made to develop a model for analysing how and why changes occur in the legitimacy of particular definitions of secondary school mathematics and science subjects Specifically, the author seeks to articulate various insights from the work of Kuhn, Bucher & Strauss, Archer and Bhaskar in a manner which allows structural and interactional perspectives to be simultaneously brought to bear on the phenomenon of subject redefinition Material from the empirical study is used, where appropriate, both to illustrate and support the arguments presented in favour of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]