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The debate surrounding educational research in the UK has been fuelled by four recent government-funded publications that have thrown doubt on the validity, relevance and applicability of educational research. In this paper, the author offers a critique of these publications and questions their privileged role in informing government policy. She challenges the current trend towards instrumentalism in funded educational research, and explores the ways in which theories, rather than evidence, provide an essential infrastructure to teachers' day-to-day thinking and practice. Finally, she compares the restrictive effect of a narrow focus on 'what works' with the opportunities offered by postmodernism for broadening the scope, purpose and interpretation of the research of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The utilisation of non-formal educational methods has long been advocated as a means of supporting marginalised young people. For many in this cohort, the adverse social circumstances that confront them can limit their sense of hope and leave them susceptible to educational under-achievement and/or engagement in anti-social behaviour. Research indicates that sport can act as an effective back-drop for the promotion of non-formal educational programmes especially in relation to marginalised youth. However, there is contention over the role that such programmes play in providing a foundation for enhanced aspirational goals and social integration. Drawing upon research conducted on one UK-based sporting intervention, this paper explores how project engagement enabled participants to enhance their sense of hope, especially around education, training and employment. In so doing the paper demonstrates how the pedagogical approach adopted by project staff, drew parallels with critical education, and nurtured an increased sense of hope amongst participants.

This paper examines the gender gap at GCSE in eight contrasting English secondary schools, and discusses the reality and rhetoric of classroom interactions, focusing on the views of teaching staff, the perspectives of Year 11 students, and observations of teacher--student, interactions in the classroom. In an earlier paper (British Journal of Sociology of Education, 17 (3)), the authors examined the extent to which there was less positive teacher-support for the learning of boys than for the learning of girls, and this issue is reviewed in differing school contexts. Research in this broader context suggests that most teachers believe that they give equal treatment to girls and to boys, particularly in support of their learning, but focus group interviews with students and classroom observation suggest that this is rarely achieved; in most schools, boys appear to dominate certain classroom interactions, while girls participate more in teacher--student interactions which support learning. If the underachievement of some boys is to be addressed successfully, these patterns of interaction need to be challenged, to enable boys to begin to develop the very learning strategies which many girls employ effectively to enable them to learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores, through the life histories of a group of first and second generation immigrant pupils from the 'Asian' and 'African' diasporas, the complex ways in which 'black' identities have evolved in British society over the past two decades. The phrase 'black identities' is used here not as a racially descriptive term but rather as a signifier of ethnic 'otherness'; to make distinct (from white society) and, at the same time, to unify the experiences of disparate groups of ethnic minority groups as marginals within metropolitan societies. Charting the life histories of a group of students in an inner-city comprehensive school in their own collective and individual voices, the paper provides a glimpse of their perceptions of their status as citizens, their views on cultural identity, and their dreams, aspirations, hopes and desires as young people growing up in contemporary British society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contract researchers constitute an expanding occupational group in UK higher education and contribute significantly to national research output Despite recent concern and debates over their marginal status and inferior conditions of employment, little is known about the actual complexities of contract researchers' working lives. Drawing upon qualitative interviews, an attempt is made to remedy this lacuna, by portraying certain kinds of occupational knowledge and practices utilised by social science contract researchers. The paper focuses on the understandings and strategies which are developed and refined as researchers attempt to sustain employment in a highly insecure realm. What is portrayed is not the technical expertise required for this kind of research, but rather the knowledge, acumen and action which are more informal, tacit and indeterminate. This paper examines the cognitive and interactional processes which need to be developed and combined with technical expertise, if employment is to be maintained in such a competitive and insecure field. [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]

This paper explores some of the relationships between the understanding of gender equity and gender issues in education held by academic staff in an institute of higher education, and their views on the importance of incorporating gender into the curriculum. The paper discusses findings pertaining to how academics approach gender issues in their teaching in their relationships with students and with other members of staff In so doing the question is raised--what messages are trainee teachers receiving about gender issues? The findings also discuss some of the pedagogical implications arising from the absence of theoretical perspectives or orientations in relation to gender in preservice teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the emerging consensus around post-compulsory education and training. It argues the notion of settlement needs to be developed to incorporate concepts of race and gender. It suggests a settlement is developing amongst the major political parties and other constituents who have a stake in post-compulsory education and training. These constituents share a common analysis of the problem facing education and training. Whilst these different groups have varying strategies to address the problem these are held under the sway of a capitalist logic. Post-Fordist arguments celebrate the progressive possibilities that inhere in a high skill, high trust economy; however, such optimism is easily co-opted and colonised by capitalist interests. [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]

The UK is typical of many industrialised countries at the present time in searching for new kinds of assessment procedure which will be appropriate on the one hand to the goals of the more vocational curricula currently being developed and, on the other, be relevant to the whole range of pupil needs and achievement. The paper explores the impetus behind such changes and argues that the policies so generated embody a number of political and educational contradictions. Using recent developments in England and Scotland as a case study, the paper argues that, despite their egalitarian potential in educational terms, the underlying political climate of cost-efficiency and laissez-faire individualism which in turn inhibits any substantial change in traditional educational values is likely to result in reinforced, rather than reduced social divisions being associated with such initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines changes in stale policies and ideologies about women's education in Britain for the period 1944-1980 It links policies and shifting ideologies about women to the development of the stale, dominant political ideology, the economy and general social policy, tracing the gradual evolution of policies and ideologies encouraging women`s education and their participation in paid work through the period of social democracy which spanned the late 1950s, the 1960s and early 1970s The twin consequences for women, of the collapse of social democratic ideology and a decline in the consensus about education, in the period since the early 1970s are also considered, and an attempt made to explain the limited impact of legislation on sex discrimination The paper concludes by arguing that although some aspects of women educational inequalities have been remedied, many still remain, in a political, economic and ideological climate that increasingly emphasises women's place in the home, and that educational inequalities can only be effectively tackled by women's development of an alternative set of coherent social and economic policies which challenge both capitalist and patriarchal social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the intensifying pressures on critical research and academic integrity in a research policy context that has come to be increasingly dominated by an instrumentalist mind-set. Using sensitising resources drawn from Geoff Whitty's critique of the 'what works' agenda, we reflect on the current conditions of academic labour and some of the key issues and dilemmas they pose for critical researchers in the sociology of education and beyond. In particular, we underline the trend for 'what works' agendas to become constitutive of academic identities and practices, including at micro-levels, such that the option of 'standing outside' them is shifting from being merely personally taxing to being institutionally disallowed. In addition to highlighting the dilemmas this creates for critical researchers and the threat this poses to expansive and democratic approaches to education, the paper emphasises the centrality of relationship-forming in understanding and underpinning academic integrity.

This paper presents an account of the development of the sociology of education in the UK, by means of an analysis of papers published in the field's flagship journal, the British Journal of Sociology of Education and its US equivalent, Sociology of Education. In particular, we examine the representation of two contrasting traditions in addressing social inequalities: 'political arithmetic'; and the more recent 'cultural turn'. We find that in the UK, the cultural turn dominates; whilst in the US, it is political arithmetic which does so. In accounting for these contrasting national profiles, we argue that they are underpinned by divergent social infrastructure and organisation. We also discuss some of the implications of the dominance of the cultural turn in the UK, specifically in terms of the relationship between the fields of academic research and policy and the development of a cumulative evidence base to address social inequalities in education.

This paper is based on findings from an email interview study with 20 academics (17 women, 3 men) in the UK on short-term, insecure or 'casualised' contracts. The paper focuses on their perceptions of the effect their contract status has on the lecturer/student relationship: particularly in regard to student perceptions of their legitimacy and status. Using a poststructuralist theoretical lens, we explore lecturers' concerns or anxieties as to whether they may be interpreted as less legitimate than permanent staff; and the emotional labour involved in the work done to 'cover' for the difficulties that a lecturer's contract status causes for the quality of their teaching content and organisation. We also explore the considerations of some participants to voluntarily 'disclose' their status to students and the possibilities of such acts as a form of resistance to dominant discourses of the legitimate academic.

This paper argues that the sociology of education would benefit from greater integration with social scientific research focused on morality. This body of research offers a rich set of resources that can illuminate and extend many of the sociology of education's intellectual concerns. In support of this argument, the paper draws on data from Millennium Cohort Study in the UK to empirically examine how a wide range of socio-demographic characteristics are related to young people's moral attitudes. The analysis focuses on the extent to which adolescents state that a range of actions are wrong. In doing so, the paper makes an important contribution to studying the moral lives of young people.

Employing students to market higher education (HE) and widen access is established practice in the United Kingdom and other developed countries. In the United Kingdom, student ambassadors are held to be effective in aspiration and attainment-raising work and cited as ‘role-models’ for pupils. The focus of this paper is student ambassador outreach work in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics including medicine) at two contrasting universities. The study deployed ethnography and approaches from across the social sciences to trace and analyse discourses surrounding ambassadors, and to explore their positioning within learning contexts, relationships with pupils and the learning that takes place. Findings indicate that where ambassadors work collaboratively with pupils in contexts with ‘informal attributes’, pupils can identify closely with them. However, in contexts with more ‘formal attributes’, differences, not similarities, are highlighted. Stakeholder interests are found to significantly impact on learning contexts and on ambassadors’ efficacy as HE ‘role-models’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being a graduate is no longer sufficient to secure a fulfilling and rewarding graduate role. This paper drew on Tomlinson's Graduate Capital Model to analyse the job-seeking narratives of recent computing graduates searching for a graduate job. Participants (n = 38), drawn from a national placement programme, were interviewed up to 12 months after they had graduated. Narrative interviews were analysed using the five graduate capitals of the Model, providing empirical evidence of the acquisition and application of graduate capitals, in particular through experiences of student work placements. The study found strong claims of human and cultural capital, arising from placement experience, while social and identity capital acquisition was found, but to a lesser extent. Fragile psychological and identity capitals were eroded by multiple unsuccessful job applications. This work empirically tested the Graduate Capital Model, contributing to understanding of capitals and their interplay.

Robust academic research on the topic of students involved in the sex industry is in its infancy, yet the relationship appears consistent and permanent. This paper draws on findings from the largest study into the stripping industry in the United Kingdom to explore the relationships between students, sex work and consumption. To make sense of the relationship between students and participation in the sex industry, a deeper understanding of other social and cultural processes is needed. In this discussion we argue that the following points are relevant and interlinked: changes to the nature of sexual commerce and sexual consumption as they become part of the marketplace; changes in social attitudes and the rise of ‘respectability’ in sexual commerce; the ‘pleasure dynamic’ amongst students; and changes in the higher education structure that place students as consumers as well as financially fragile. We set out a future research agenda given that this relationship is set to grow as the individual bares the cost of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

This article responds to criticisms, put forward by Harrison and Waller in this issue, of an earlier paper by Noble and Davies. In particular, we argue that our interpretation of earlier quantitative research is correct, that Harrison and Waller have misconstrued the purpose of our previous paper and the analysis it contains, and that they (mis-)attribute to us a series of propositions and standpoints that are not in our paper. In the light of increasing policy interest in the extent to which providing information can lead to "more well-informed choices" about participation in higher education, we remain of the view that researching the role of cultural capital in the students' "immanent choices" is a matter of considerable importance.

In this paper we offer a unique contribution to understandings of schooling as a site for the production of social class difference. We bring together the rich body of work that has been conducted on middle-class educational identities, with explorations of the centrality of the feminine in representations of class difference from the field of critical girlhood studies. This is done in order to explore how young femininities mediate the representation of class difference in the environment of the private girls’ school. Drawing from our two research studies, located in private girls’ schools in Australia and the United Kingdom, we argue that the notion of ‘disgust’, commonly used in recent engagements around class, has only limited purchase in understanding the representation of class difference in these schools. It is the inconsistencies and complexities in how class and class relations are produced that we wish to illuminate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the layered transitional experiences of a semi-professional athlete named Jack (a pseudonym) between the fields of professional sport and further and higher education. Our analysis is framed by the quadripartite framework of structuration and focuses on Jack’s ‘in-situ’ practices at his college and university in order to illustrate how these can operate to reproduce, transform, and challenge the habitual discourses and rituals that circulate within these institutions by generating forms of corporeal empowerment for young athletes who have valued conjunctural knowledge. The findings highlight the fragility of the transition process and raise questions regarding how the experiences of young people are shaped by the relationships between employment and post-16 education. Jack’s experiences have implications for both policy and practice within further education and higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper problematizes dominant discourses of social mobility. It begins by discussing social mobility from a philosophical perspective before examining current policies on social mobility in the United Kingdom, drawing on data from both recent mobility studies and the contemporary labour market. I then broaden out the discussion by exploring subjective aspects of social mobility, juxtaposing my own personal history with Jackson and Marsden’s classic study ‘Education and the Working Class’ in order to exemplify the complexities of mobility journeys. Finally, I argue for better ways of achieving a socially just society, ones that, echoing Tawney, make a case for less distance and greater parity between social classes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on the role of curricular content on social mobility, an issue largely neglected by social mobility studies. Using data from the National Child Development Study we investigate the extent to which secondary school curricula account for social class differences in the chances of entering into the service class and avoiding a low-skilled occupation. The results show that curriculum matters in the acquisition of different social classes of destination but it matters more for children from advantaged social backgrounds than for children from lower classes of origin. This is because of their higher propensity to choose subjects such as languages, English, mathematics and science, which were found to be highly valued in the labour market. Moreover, net of the effect of origin class and individual ability, all or most of the advantage associated with attendance at selective schools is accounted for by the curriculum studied there. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores how teachers respond to the requirement to promote 'fundamental British values' (FBV) to their pupils. It offers a preliminary analysis of data drawn from interviews with teachers and (mostly lesson) observations in schools. It argue that, first, the policy cannot be understood without a consideration of the multi-layered context in which it is being enacted in schools. Second, it locates the policy to promote FBV as a liberal nationalist one and considers some of the problematic issues that arise from this philosophy. Third, it turns to schools and teachers to consider their reactions and responses. It is concluded that teachers and schools in this research often did attempt to neutralize potentially exclusionary readings of the policy and were effective in absorbing the requirement to promote British values. However, doubt is cast on the policy's ability to meet its aims and the paper also raise concerns about the limited amount of time given to pupils' engagement with the values.

The provisions of the Higher Education Act (2004) have renewed interest in widening participation research. Therefore, this paper explores the development of this scholarly field, primarily in the United Kingdom, by examining major trends in the study of higher education. Political debates related to higher education, the prevailing structure of the sector and predominant sociological perspectives have largely shaped the empirical and theoretical concerns of widening participation research. These delimiting factors have resulted in incomplete accounts of the barriers to higher education, which do not fully explore the relationship between students' social characteristics, learning experiences and university careers. Furthermore, contemporary research runs the risk of reinventing the wheel and replicating the mistakes of the past, since there has been a collective act of forgetfulness with respect to earlier contributions. In contrast, this paper provides guidelines to facilitate a holistic agenda for future widening participation research.

This paper illustrates how critical use of Basil Bernstein's theory illuminates the mechanisms by which university knowledge, curriculum and pedagogy both reproduce and interrupt social inequalities. To this end, empirical examples are selected from the findings of the ESRC-funded project ‘Pedagogic Quality and Inequality in University First Degrees' (RES-062-23-1438, November 2008–January 2012). The project investigated sociology-related social science degrees in four social science departments in universities in different positions in influential UK higher education league tables. A Bernsteinian lens throws fresh light on how university education might contribute to a more egalitarian society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the last two decades, undergraduate medical education in the United Kingdom has undergone several important changes. Many of these have revolved around a paradigmatic shift from ‘paternalistic’ to ‘patient-centred’ approaches to healthcare. Adopting a Foucauldian understanding of power and borrowing from Freire’s critical pedagogy, in this paper I draw upon ethnographic data from one UK medical school to illustrate the recurrence among medical students of narrow and uncritical understandings of patient-centred practices. These understandings highlight a tension between the ideals and frameworks of medical education policy and students’ conceptualisations of professional learning and practice. I explore this tension by tracing some possible links between students’ views of patient-centredness and the teaching practices at the medical school. I argue that more critical approaches to medical learning are sorely needed and suggest some directions for medical education that would help support the personal and professional development of more critically aware practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The present paper examines efforts by government and government agencies in England to prescribe and control the knowledge base of a teaching profession that has, under successive New Labour administrations since 1997, been subjected to 'modernisation'. A theoretical framework drawn from aspects of the work of Basil Bernstein, and of Rob Moore and Lynn Jones, is drawn upon to examine in some detail one key aspect of this ongoing process of governmental appropriation of professionalism: the specification by the Training and Development Agency for Schools of new 'standards' for both initial teacher training and teachers' subsequent career progression. It is argued that although this enterprise represents itself as a species of purely common-sense reform, it is in fact a mode of competency training that is rooted in selective appropriation of elements of post-fordist management theory and a loose form of behaviourist psychology. The capacity of this training discourse to suppress awareness of its own presuppositions and of alternative or competing conceptions of professions and professionalism is explored. [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]

This paper considers Olive Banks' work on charting the history and development of British feminism, and particularly her use of collective biography as a research and analytic tool. It is argued that while this has been seen as the least 'fashionable' aspect of her work, it took forward C. Wright Mills' contention for one definition of sociology as the interaction between biography and history, and predated by a decade or so similar work on prosopography by Bourdieu from the 1990s onwards. More recently other sociologists and educationists have taken up this methodological approach, including Jane Martin and Bronwyn Davies and Susanne Gannon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Olive Banks' study of the sharp contrasts of 'parity and prestige' in English secondary education was published when sociological study of education was only beginning in Britain. It fitted neatly into that study's preoccupation with the interactions of social class, educational opportunity and social mobility. This paper is not an updating of her analysis, but an application of her perspective to some later manifestations of those interactions. It considers in particular the continuing market value of traditional academic schooling, the continued segregation of educational routes, and the 'waste' of ability through 'modernised' forms of social selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the experiences of British parents who have children identified with ‘special education needs’ within mainstream education. Expectations of mainstream education can have a negative affect on parents when a child is unable to maintain his or her education within a mainstream school. In England and Wales, ‘inclusion’ within mainstream schools is implemented by the current government and promoted as anti‐exclusionary. However, current research indicates that actual ‘inclusion’ (the child experiencing inclusion as well as being placed in a mainstream environment) is not necessarily occurring in practice. As it stands, the conflict is between desires to embrace difference based on a philosophy of ‘equal rights’ (‘inclusive’ education) and prioritising educational performance, structuring it in such a way that it leaves little room for difference and creativity due to the highly structured testing and examination culture. Qualitative analysis of parents who have children identified with special educational needs indicate that they have hopes and expectations for their children. These hopes and expectations are challenged recurrently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent empirical work on the lived experience of learners in post‐compulsory education. The starting point is a brief examination of the socio‐economic context of the sector. Despite the sophistication of analyses of learning cultures, a more radical approach is needed. Failure to do so renders these analyses amenable to appropriation by ‘new labour’ modernisers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 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 introduction of Internet access into over 30,000 UK schools has led to the adoption of a variety of disciplinary policies, procedures and practices. Critically engaging with writings on panopticism, this paper explores the surveillance of student online activity. It is noted that Internet surveillance in schools includes control through physical observation and limited use of computer databases. For from being passive subjects of observation, some students actively resisted surveillance through physical concealment, virtual concealment and ‘sousveillance’. Noting that an often-ignored feature of panopticism is entertainment, it is suggested that student resistance of Internet surveillance is best understood in terms of play and the desire to test authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of the Internet in the classroom has often been characterized as a practice that disconnects the teacher from traditional forms of externally imposed influence. This paper examines this assertion by mapping the emerging field of cybereducation and considering how endemic knowledge is contextualized by national curricular authorities. The field theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein are employed in order to demonstrate the relationship between expert discourse and classroom pedagogy, using the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) as a case study. This attempt to capture the dynamics of cybereducation ultimately suggests how this emergent intellectual field's fragmentation and decoupling from State education forces offers policymakers the capacity to influence use. Progress of the UK government in integrating knowledge from an emergent educational field with its incumbent priorities is gauged, demonstrating the way in which national education officials have attempted to constrain potential departures from unregulated, officially mandated curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses upon relationships barely explored in the sociology of education either in the UK or elsewhere that lie between the practices and processes of formal education and the aetiology (the 'causations') and development of eating disorders, specifically, anorexia nervosa (AN) in young women and girls. In so doing, it also touches on other relationships relatively under explored in the sociology of education, between formal education and 'the middle class'. Our analyses point to the ways in which social trends outside schools relating to 'the body' and health generate and intersect with what we refer to as performance and perfection codes following Bernstein (2000) and Evans and Davies (2004) . These create conditions of school work that, while increasingly difficult for many students, may be deeply damaging to the identities and health of the vulnerable few, especially if they coincide with other problematic features of their lives. Our request, as articulated through the voices of the young people in our study, is for greater understanding of the ways in which formal education and schooling may be implicated in the production of disordered eating and ill-health. Such understanding might better equip teachers and others to help young people, irrespective of their class and cultural background, avoid falling prey to conditions that may damage or even potentially destroy their young lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I begin by taking a brief glimpse at the current state of global capitalism. I then look at attempts in Britain and the US to argue the case, within educational theory, that postmodernism and poststructuralism can be forces for social change and social justice. Concentrating on some of the work of Elizabeth Atkinson, Patti Lather and Judith Baxter, I argue that such claims are illusory. I make the case that Marxism remains the only viable option in the pursuit of social change and social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education policies introduced in the past two decades necessitated the adoption of a managerialist discourse in the restructuring, running and inspection of schools. In this paper, we critically review the nature of such discourse and outline the historical conditions that contributed to the establishment of OFSTED. Having set the scene, we report on the experiential impact of managerialist discourse on the lives of primary school teachers in the period running up to, including, and in the year following OFSTED inspections. Exploring the accounts of teachers, we draw attention to the effects of intensified control on the overall well being of teachers and, by implication, the quality of classroom experience for children. Foucault's notions of the 'disciplinary regime' and 'normalizing judgement' prove useful in framing teachers' descriptions of themselves feeling professionally compromised, intimidated and stressed by the inspection process. Despite the evident intensity of the OFSTED experience, teachers in our study uniformly indicate that, 1 year after inspection, it has had no lasting impact on what they do in the classroom. If OFSTED has questionable direct influence on teaching practice outside nominal compliance with its formal procedures in the run-up to and during the inspection visit, we are left to question what purpose it actually serves. Our conclusion is that, just as teachers 'stage manage' a performance for the visiting inspectorate, the whole OFSTED apparatus itself is little more than a grand political cipher created and maintained to satisfy the imagined scrutinising gaze of a wider public. In short, OFSTED is stage-managed public 'accountability'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether schools are racist continues to be the subject of intense debate in Britain. Those writing from an avowedly anti-racist stance argue that schools are responsible for the differential treatment of African-Caribbean pupils and that it is incumbent on them to reflect on their existing practices, while their critics writing from an expressed apolitical stance argue that perfectly appropriate professional practices result in badly behaved pupils receiving differential treatment, that African-Caribbean pupils only receive such treatment because they are more likely to misbehave and that there is no need therefore for schools to re-examine their practices. It is suggested that a way out of this impasse is to recognise that differential treatment and bad behaviour are part of a vicious cycle. While accepting that the evidence for racial discrimination in schools is stronger than the critics maintain, this paper argues, however, that we should be cautious in seeing such discrimination as the major factor accounting for the complex pattern of ethnic differences in educational achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With reference to the 'meritocratic' and 'equal opportunities' (EO) paradigms, the paper discusses the problem of explaining the relationship between changing differentials in educational attainment and changes in social opportunities more generally It is argued that, for the farmer, progressive changes expected to follow from social democratic educational reforms failed to occur and, for the latter, unanticipated improvements in the relative attainments of girls and blacks have occurred In both cases, the paradigms fail to provide systematically-convincing explanations of these events Essentially, there is a conflict between accounts of the ideological positioning of categories of pupils within education and their positions within the system of relative attainment It is argued that this situation relates to the manner in which the sociology of education in Britain has been, to a significant degree, relocated within the educational field through its association with teacher training and functions more as a sociology for education than as a sociology of education [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conservative critiques of education and proposals for reform show striking similarities in Canada, Britain and the US. All seem to reflect what Haberrnas referred to as "the affirmative stance towards social modernity and the denigration of cultural modernity". The paper uses this distinction to describe and analyse New Right criticisms of educational progressivism and conservative efforts to promote a new sympathy for business values, market discipline and market relations in schools and colleges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when almost every area of social policy in the UK is undergoing a period of radical 'top-down' reform, several writers have identified a key role for ethnographic research, which examines the social processes through which macro changes in structure and funding are experienced and reconstructed at the micro level. This paper presents one such study. Empirical data are used to chart the complex, interconnected processes through which national reforms helped destroy the previous balance of micro-political power in a school, ultimately leading to fundamental changes in policy and practice in a previously 'progressive' comprehensive. The school's fate highlights the importance of micro-political power, but also compels us to consider the wider forces at work on the school. The teachers" micro-political struggles make sense only when viewed against the backdrop of sweeping conservative reform at the macro level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]