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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 paper examines the re-articulation of social justice as equity in schooling policy through national and global testing and data infrastructures. It focuses on the Australian National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We analyse the discursive reconstitution of social justice as equity in Australian and OECD policy, and analyse NAPLAN and PISA as technologies of governance that re-articulate equity as a measure of performance. These re-articulations are set against the extension of neo-social economistic rationalities to all domains of life and the topological production of new spaces of policy and power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we examine the factors contributing to gender inequality in secondary schooling in India by critically reviewing the government’s secondary education policy. Drawing on the findings of a study in rural Gujarat, we couple this analysis with an examination of the gendered dynamics that restrict girls’ ability to fully benefit from the education infrastructure and initiatives that do exist, using Connell’s Gender and Power framework. We propose that an extension of the government's current approach to educational reform, focused primarily on expanding infrastructure may aggravate the gender, class and caste asymmetries at secondary level. Fostering an environment that enables vulnerable adolescent girls to benefit from enhanced educational provisions is essential to realizing their rights and the achievement of an equitable system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The medicalisation of the behaviour of children is a phenomenon that is attracting growing attention, with particular concern about the increased likelihood of children living in disadvantaged contexts receiving a medical diagnosis, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and treatment. This paper reports on a study of professionals involved with children experiencing behavioural problems. The professionals interviewed in this study articulated their own reservations about the medicalisation of children’s behaviour and revealed a number of strategies for interrupting the process towards diagnosis. These interruptions, analysed using Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of deterriorialisation, took place along linguistic, visual and affective planes and were successful in encouraging teachers and head teachers to see alternatives to the medical route. The findings have implications for existing practice in the response to, and support for, behavioural problems and for teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the changing relationship between origins, education and destinations in mobility processes. The meritocracy thesis suggests the relationships between origins and education and between origins and destination will weaken while the relationship between education and destinations will strengthen. Comparing data from the 1991 British Household Panel Survey and the 2005 General Household Survey, we test these associations for men and women. We find that the relationship between origins and education and origins and destinations has weakened for both sexes. While these findings are supportive of the meritocracy thesis, they are not, however, evidence of a secular trend towards merit-based selection. Contrary to the thesis, we also find the association between education and destinations has weakened for men and women. The relationship between education and destinations is more complicated than is often assumed and the role of meritocratic and non-meritocratic factors in occupational success needs to be better understood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following the corporeal turn in social theory, this paper explores how the body is implicated in pedagogic practice and leaning. Focusing on the body has usually been recognised as part of the regulative rather than instructional discourse in schools. Work has begun to redress the mind–body imbalance through the ‘corporeal device’ developed from Bernstein’s ‘pedagogic device’, the fundamental relay through which social inequalities are reproduced in schools. To properly recognise the way bodies act as pedagogic relays requires a robust understanding of persons as multi-sensorial acting beings. Examples for choreographic pedagogy are used to illuminate the complex and multimodal features of instructional discourse and to suggest how the moving body could be enlisted to enhance students’ access to formal academic discourses and better understand why some young people fail to achieve in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using the case of Chinese schools in post-Second World War Hong Kong, this paper explores the unintended consequences of an incomplete hegemonic project. After World War II, anti-imperialist pressures and rising educational demands in the local setting propelled the colonial authorities to be more active in providing and funding Chinese schools. This development created a considerable number of vernacular institutions that were either directly state-run or generously government-financed. Nevertheless, this concession was circumscribed because the regime eschewed universal and compulsory education, and many Chinese schools remained private and unaided. Producing three different types of vernacular institutions, the state’s partial incorporation of these institutions unwittingly divided these schools and pre-empted them from forming a united, antagonistic identity. These findings urge us to examine carefully, when using Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, the extent of compromise the powerful have actually conceded. They also hint that hegemony should not be conceived only as a conscious, conspiratorial project, for state practices occasioned by conjunctural forces may produce unintended consequences that have profound repercussions on political power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In China, there is a growing group of ‘migrant children’, who reside in the city but do not have full rights to access education. Many have been granted a chance to study in public schools after the policy change, but they continue to have lower educational outcomes than the local students. To understand the inequality, this paper examines the educational goals of migrant families in Beijing. Based on the field interviews, it shows that even migrant children who aspire to attain higher education are nonetheless ‘blocked’ by discriminatory examination laws and limited resources. Their subjective outlook is derived from objective conditions and concrete experiences. Their family of origin determines the types of resources available to them, and thus plays an important role in the formation and justification of their educational goals. A realistic assessment of their chances of achieving their aspirations leads them to have lower expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on qualitative data that focus on the educational strategies of middle-class parents of Black Caribbean heritage. Drawing on Bourdieu’s key concepts of habitus, capital and field, our focus is an investigation of the differences that are apparent between respondent parents in their levels of involvement with regard to schools. We conclude that, within a broadly similar paradigm of active involvement with and monitoring of schools, nuanced differences in parental strategising reflect whether academic achievement is given absolute priority within the home. This, in turn, reflects differential family habitus, and differential possession and activation of capitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asserts that the religious assumptions of Christian academies need to be fully examined in relation to any analysis of their cultural practices, impact or policy implications. It proposes that Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, cultural capital and symbolic power can be broadened out from their traditional use in accounting for social positioning in order to explore the interaction of religious faith and institutional culture. The emergent analytical framework outlined relies on series of theoretical tools drawn from Bourdieu whose social theory and concepts are already employed extensively in sociology of education research and studies of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the re-establishment of independent Estonian statehood in 1991, Russian lost its privileges as the dominant and official language in Estonia, and Estonian continued as the only official language. This paper attempts to map the position of a Russian-speaking teacher within the sociological categories of power and language, based on the analysis of legislative acts and strategic documents within the domain of language policy and language legitimization practices in historical retrospective. The main focus of the study stresses an attempt to elaborate on to what extent the low self-efficacy of Russian-speaking teachers as the agents of legitimization of the Estonian language in Russian-speaking schools, and their low position in power relations within the Estonian education system, can be explained in the categories of power and language, as conceptualized on the basis of the social theory of Bourdieu. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The way in which private schools use rhetoric in their communications offers important insights into how these organizational sites persuade audiences and leverage marketplace advantage in the context of contemporary educational platforms. Through systemic analysis of rhetorical strategies employed in 65 ‘elite’ school prospectuses in Australia, this paper contributes to understandings of the ways schools’ communications draw on broader cultural politics in order to shape meanings and interactions among organizational actors. We identify six strategies consistently used by schools to this end: identification, juxtapositioning, bolstering or self-promotion, partial reporting, self-expansion, and reframing or reversal. We argue that, in the context of marketization and privatization discourses in twenty-first-century western education, these strategies attempt to subvert potentially threatening discourses, in the process actively reproducing broader economic and social privilege and inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a research study into the existence and use of different forms of capital – including social, cultural and physical capital – in three independent schools in Scotland. We were interested in understanding how these forms of capital work to produce and reproduce advantage and privilege. Analysis is framed by a multiple capitals approach drawing on and developing the work of Putnam and especially Bourdieu. We suggest that sport plays a role with important effects for strong bonding and for the production of symbolic capital in the form of branding by each school. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The South Asian diaspora and its impact on the lives of dispersed communities is a complex phenomenon finding expression in a range of issues and debates. However, the nature and scale of the challenges and issues vary in each case and context, and even over generations. These issues become more sensitive and poignant when underpinned by cultural and belief systems. This paper debates the impact of dominant discourses and values on schooling choices and the related concerns to explore issues linked to girls’ education among Pakistani diaspora in England, drawing on relevant literature and the evidence from a recent study of single-sex schooling. It argues that multiple emotional, social, cultural, historical, political, economic and other affiliations influence the patterns of behaviour and the terms of civic engagement in the adopted country leading to a struggle over meanings and competing positions over values and practices that are fluid and dynamic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses Critical Theory, a model of theorizing in the field of the political sociology of education. We argue for a reimagined Critical Theory to herald an empowering, liberatory education that fosters curiosity and critical thinking, and a means for successful bottom-up, top-down political engagement. We present arguments at a theoretical and meta-theoretical level, leaving empirical analysis to a future writing. We hold it impossible: to fully dissociate normative from the analytical in constructing scientific thought, thus showing the importance of the notion of a good society to guide varied intellectual explorations; to deny the political role of education; and to detach from historicity of thought and policy prescriptions emerging from such theorizing, as not all social constructions are equal in terms of logical configuration, methodological rigor, or solid empirical proof. What follows are snapshots of how we can reimagine the historical present, and how Critical Theory can impact the new theorizing of sociology of education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the changes that took place in school mathematics knowledge for pupils aged six and seven (first grade of Greek elementary school) and its pedagogical approach, which took shape following the reforms of the mathematics curricula in 1982 and 2003. Our analysis is based on Bernstein's theoretical framework on pedagogic discourse and Dowling's theoretical framework on textual domains. The results showed that there are differences between the 1982 and 2003 reforms, in terms both of the content of mathematics knowledge, as well as of the forms of pedagogic interaction between the teacher and the pupil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the prospective transition of immigrant and native students in France from lower to upper secondary school. Because they are more likely to be tracked to less prestigious (vocational) tracks, immigrant and immigrant-origin students are significantly disadvantaged at this key academic stage in comparison with the children of native families. Primary and secondary sources of educational disadvantage are explored to explain this phenomenon. Primary effects appear to account for the entire initial disadvantage, while secondary effects could have a positive impact for immigrant-origin students. Nonetheless, immigrant families appear to be more conservative than native families and may need stronger evidence that their children will succeed in upper secondary school. [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]

Current educational practice tends to ascribe a limiting vision of the good student as one who is well behaved, performs well in assessments and demonstrates values in keeping with dominant expectations. This paper argues that this vision of the good student is antithetical to the lived experience of students as they negotiate their positionality within complex power games in secondary schools. Student voices in focus group research nominate six rationales of the good student that inform their 'performances' of the good student. Understanding the multiplicity and dynamism of the good student is an educational imperative as schools seek to meet the changing needs of society in the new millennium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Netherlands, educational attainment is the result of a sequence of separate educational transitions. Because of the tracked nature of the Dutch educational system, students do not make binary stay-or-leave-decisions at each transition. After having entered one track of secondary education, students can change tracks during the entire secondary course. The initial track and the secondary school outcome therefore are incongruent for a significant proportion of the Dutch students. As social background partly predicts initial track placement, track changes and successful termination of the course, we suggest distinguishing conditional and unconditional effects of family background in the transition to secondary school outcome. This paper complements findings of previous research by taking into account the tracked structure of the Dutch educational system and the entire sequence of transitions in secondary education. For the empirical analysis, repeated cross-sections from the Family Survey Dutch Population (1992, 1998, 2000 and 2003) are used. Multinomial logistic regressions reveal that inequality in the outcome of secondary education is partly explained by the fact that initial track placement is socially selective and because this initial inequality is even enhanced by track changes during secondary education. The remaining 'conditional' effect of parental education, however, indicates that parental education works on top of this selection to prevent drop out. Inequality in secondary school outcome thus is a cumulative result of social background effects in a sequence of educational transitions throughout secondary education. Decreasing inequality over time is entirely explained by decreasing inequality in the transition from primary to secondary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss two weaknesses in Bourdieu's work on cultural capital, both of which are related to his integration of the multidimensional nature of social space in different domains of life: social mobility, lifestyle differentiation, and political orientation. First, there is an anomaly between the work on social mobility and on lifestyles. Multiple dimensions of social origin (cultural and economic capital) are related to uni-dimensional outcomes (e.g. schooling levels), whereas it would be more appropriate to study multidimensional schooling outcomes too. Secondly, although Bourdieu sees a close resemblance in the type of resources affecting lifestyle preferences and political orientations, I argue that these outcomes are affected by two different types of resources: cultural and communicative resources. Proposals for progress, including a review of the empirical results supporting these, are given. [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 examines issues of selection, merging an analysis of policy with data from a qualitative case study. It focuses on the 'modernisation of the comprehensive principle' proposed by New Labour, in which selection within schools (through setting 'by ability') is increasingly encouraged. Data collected at an inner-city, multi-ethnic comprehensive school are used to illustrate how discourses on selection are being reworked locally. The school was largely supportive of setting, despite some teachers acknowledging that the practice prioritised high-achieving pupils with perceived 'good attitudes'. In the form under study, setting involved disadvantaged pupils from ethnic-minority backgrounds, particularly those who received support in English as an Additional Language. It is concluded that setting did not contribute to an inclusive agenda for education, in spite of government claims of increased 'standards for all'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformational leadership is widely recognised as being central to the implementation of educational reform. In this paper I draw on selected educational speeches made by New Labour politicians in order to locate shifting discourses of leadership within the broader accountability framework through which the terms of the relationship between central government and head teachers have been re/configured in the United Kingdom. The gendered politics of transformation are examined, highlighting new and renewed forms of masculinity embedded within new leadership ideals. It is suggested that a gendered critique of transformational leadership offers an important contribution to critical analyses of the neo-liberal and managerialist educational project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the ways in which inner-city, ethnically diverse, working-class girls' constructions of hetero-femininities mediate and shape their dis/engagement with education and schooling. Drawing on data from a study conducted with 89 urban, working-class young people in London, attention is drawn to three main ways through which young women used heterosexual femininities to construct capital and generate identity value and worth; namely, investment in appearance through 'glamorous' hetero-femininities, heterosexual relationships with boyfriends, and the 'ladettte' discourse. We discuss how and why young women's investments in particular forms of heterosexual working-class femininity can play into their disengagement from education and schooling, drawing particular attention to the paradoxes that arise when these constructions play into other oppressive power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most previous research on parental involvement in children's homework has focused on the pedagogical advantages or disadvantages of school assignments while neglecting the practice in its social context, family life. By studying parent-child homework negotiations in Swedish families, this paper examines how family members position themselves and each other in relation to Swedish discourses on homework and parental involvement. The study shows that parents want their children to do homework independently. It is hard for the parents to take up another subject position than that of a 'responsible parent' who helps the child with homework or controls that it is done. Thereby, the child is simultaneously positioned as 'irresponsible' whether that is the case or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in participation and achievement patterns mark a turning point for girls in schooling and place female empowerment squarely in the public domain. Using data from a longitudinal study of girls, this paper looks at female empowerment by exploring the relationship between the production of female subjectivity and the processes operating in social spaces. Findings relating to aspirations for girls’ future careers are placed within a context of decile school ratings, and from those findings insights are offered about how the rhetoric of ‘girl power’ is lived and spoken into existence in relation to categories of social class. By examining how schooling, family and classed processes weave through hopes and dreams, the intent is to contribute towards a line of discussion about the shaping of female subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can an explanation of the origins of social disparities in educational achievement be assisted by a critical examination of Bernstein’s sociology? This central question is approached by a consideration of the status of Bernstein’s socio‐linguistic thesis. The focus is on the nature of the explanations provided. The paper asks: What is the explanatory force of Bernstein’s structuralism? What is the relationship between Bernstein’s sociological explanations and Vygotskian psychological explanations? What are the effects for pedagogy of cognitive socialization mediated by language‐use consistent with Bernstein’s theory? The answers to these questions may pose a challenge for sociologists of education engaged with Bernstein’s sociology. [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]

This paper considers the way social partnerships tend to be represented as either horizontal localised networks or neo-liberal policy instruments. Building on two empirical studies of partnerships, we argue that partnerships cannot be understood in either/or ways but are negotiated at the interface between central agencies and local networks. They are mediated by networks operating through the partnership and through government and community, and by the different organisational logics of agencies. These complexities challenge our ways of analysing and representing partnerships, and justify further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the social meaning of subject choice in the post-16 context through a case study of Media Studies in a selective school. Students' accounts are discussed in terms of both their enjoyment of the subject and their negotiation of its ‘legitimacy’. The analysis of their comments in interviews stresses the subject's precarious position in a school where a relatively traditional hierarchy of subjects still prevails. It also considers the strength of family ‘projects’ in framing children's educational ‘choices’. Media Studies is discussed as a negotiable option primarily facilitating projections into a new middle-class sense of self-hood. [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]

Distributed leadership has come to prominence in school management discourse as a means to achieve the participation and empowerment of teachers and to create democratic schools. In this paper I explore the contradictions between these claims and both the hierarchical power structure of schools and the use of distributed leadership to secure the commitment of teachers to government education agendas. I examine how the relationship between distributed leadership and managerial power is addressed in the discourse of education management theorists and the practice of headteachers. Examples of authentically democratic schools based on collective self-management provide the basis for questioning the hegemonic hierarchical model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1990s, a decade of democratic advances and consumption euphoria in South Korea, heralded a new wind called 'neoliberal education'. It is within this historical juncture that I conducted an ethnographic research on low-income youths who had dropped out of mainstream high schools. While I investigated these youths' educational and career aspirations, I examined how discourses in neoliberal freedom and free marketization shape (and are shaping) these youths' self-fashioning. Central to my analysis is how this process of identity construction is intersected with class marginality. A predominate number of youths in my research express their preference in service sector and/or entertainment industries. The paper addresses how neoliberal discourses and consumerism ;rhetoric are negotiated and transformed in youth's narratives on aspirations. The analysis speaks to the ideological pitfall of neoliberalism, echoing critical scholars' thesis that neoliberalistic education with free market principles perpetuated and broadened existing inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I address the question: How is it that people come to choose mathematics and in what ways is this process gendered? I draw on the findings of a qualitative research study involving interviews with 43 young people all studying mathematics in post-compulsory education in England. Working within a post-structuralist framework, I argue that gender is a project and one that is achieved in interaction with others. Through a detailed reading of Toni and Claudia's stories I explore the tensions for young women who are engaging in mathematics, something that is discursively inscribed as masculine, while (understandably) being invested in producing themselves as female. I conclude by arguing that seeing 'doing mathematics' as 'doing masculinity' is a productive way of understanding why mathematics is so male dominated and by looking at the implications of this understanding for gender and mathematics reform work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a qualitative study about pedagogic practices in the family. The pedagogic code underlying family practices is characterized and related to specific social groups. Students' achievement is discussed in relation to family and school pedagogic practices. The analysis of family pedagogic practice was based on a model derived from Bernstein's theory. The model considers two main dimensions, the coding orientation and its specific realizations in both the instructional and regulative contexts. It provided indicators of the family discursive context and the form in which knowledges and values are transmitted. The model developed allowed a deep and delicate analysis of the family socializing context. The study showed that families differ in their coding orientation and pedagogic practices, and suggested that there are factors other than social groups to determine family's pedagogic practice. It also suggested that specific familial practices may explain children's differential achievement at school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the more relevant questions in educational research is how the governments and policy-makers in transition countries address the high educational inequality inherited from the past and what policies they develop in order to reduce the strong effects of the background family and the type of school on students' achievements, their aspirations and their chances of succeeding in the most important educational transitions. This paper addresses one of the most topical issues in this area, namely the social selectivity of Czech basic and secondary education. Special attention is paid to the role of 'multi-year' gymnasia. The results of analyses carried out on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2000 study corroborate the initial hypothesis according to which multi-year gymnasia, introduced into the Czech educational system after 1989, represent one of the main sources of the variation in students' achievements at the end of compulsory education. However, this variation can be almost entirely accounted for by the specific socio-economic background of the students. The same holds true for their future aspirations. The results of the analysis support the conclusions of the OECD Review of National Policies for Education from 1996. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recognition of the need to involve parents in the life of the school grows in public policy, anxiety continues at the intervention of 'the angry parent'. This paper seeks to develop understanding of this communicative action and apply it to a study of parental voice in schools that identified a number of expressions of 'storming'. The paper argues that these occasions were reactions to events in school and the underlying 'performative attitude' of parents in their communications was to seek mutual understanding. The disposition of the school, however, while enabling communicative understanding on some concerns (such as welfare) was less amenable to negotiating agreement on issues it regarded as core professional practice (such as control of the learning and teaching process). Parental cultural capital, nevertheless, could exercise a space of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines notions of 'educational time' with particular reference to the work of Basil Bernstein. It focuses closely on the 1967 Plowden report as a particularly appropriate policy case study to demonstrate how different constructions of time can exist within the same document. It then develops educational models originally mapped out by Bernstein, arguing that a full understanding of the areas of consensus and conflict among these models is vital if we are to understand how teaching professionals think about the future. The paper addresses the following questions: How does time affects education? What influence does this have on educational outcomes? How does this relate to public policy initiatives? Assuming a tacit, collective understanding of time and the future can undermine the very policy intentions a government might be seeking to promulgate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-industrial societies saturated with the multimodal texts of consumer culture--film, computer games, interactive toys, SMS, email, the internet, television, DVDs--young people are developing literacy skills and knowledge in and for a world significantly changed from that of their parents and educators. Given this context, this paper seeks to demonstrate the necessity of rethinking and extending traditional notions of text and literacy, and consider the social and cultural implications of such a shift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that growing inequalities make it imperative that schools reinvent themselves around the issue of social justice. Through a case study of an Australian primary school, teacher-based forms of social capital are explored revealing progressive pedagogies to be an important precursor to the 'socially just school'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most pervasive educational issues confronting Australia, and other countries, at the moment is the declining completion rates in high schools. While a period of success was experienced after the Second World War, there is now a pressing need to reform high schools in the ways they connect with young lives. In this paper, we present a 'sociology of the high school' as a way of encapsulating the high school as an institution that: is still largely stuck in a 'continuity of practice' (Elmore, 1987); has an 'attachment to familiar pedagogical routines' (Eisner, 1992); fails to listen to students; is hierarchically structured; treats students in immature ways; is hung up with passing on content; and seems more concerned with insulating itself from, rather connecting with or appropriating, young lives into the curriculum. As an alternative, we examine the notion of middle schooling that requires a version of whole school reform that engages with structures, cultures and changing pedagogy in ways more resonant with, and respectful of, young lives. We examine the tensions and dilemmas experienced at Investigator [1] High School in Australia, and conclude that the centerpiece has to be breaking the mold of the 'scripted' teacher and its replacement by the 'teacher-as-improviser'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Pierre Bourdieu's multi-faceted understanding of the higher education process by considering the evolution of this domain since the end of the 1970s both in France and England. Following a brief review of Bourdieu's main interpretations of higher education, several theoretical shifts in his thought and practice over time are identified that have sought to accommodate the rapid changes that have occurred in the higher education sector in recent years. This theoretical repositioning is used to reflect on ideas of homological reasoning advanced by Bourdieu and others, and their limitations in the cross-national comparative exercise. Using the findings of her own comparative study of the evolution of the French and English higher education sectors, the author tests some of the conceptual tools developed by Bourdieu mainly during the 1960s and 1970s, and discusses claims for their universal validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to offer further empirical evidence in support of Bernstein's concept of code from the social semiotic perspective of systemic functional linguistics. When the concept of code was first introduced in the 1960s, it was severely criticised by many famous socio-linguists. It will be argued that these socio-linguists failed to understand the significance of language as a meaning potential, and so they also failed to appreciate the inherent relation between meaning and mental development (Halliday, 1975; Vygotsky, 1978). The concept of code is important in any viable theory of mental development which does not hide behind a mythical homogeneity. Human beings develop different forms of consciousness, and code theory offers a detailed and coherent account of both the social origin and the nature of this variation. In fact, the panoramic scope of Bernstein's sociological theory clarifies the relations of social positioning, coding orientation, communication, and consciousness to learning in official pedagogic sites. In presenting some of the results of my investigation in variant forms of communication between mothers and their young children, I will show that: (a) the variation is systematic, (b) the nature of the variation needs Bernstein's code theory for its interpretation, and (c) the fact of variation can only be accounted for by its relation to social positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Basil Bernstein's insights into education and social class, and in particular the relevance of his work for understanding the British middle class. Bernstein is one of the few sociologists of education to recognise and explore differences and tensions within the middle class. We begin by exploring some of the influences of Bernstein's theorisation of social class in general, and outline his main ideas on the relationship between the middle class and education in particular. We then examine the relevance of his work for research on education and middle-class differentiation through drawing on data from our 'Destined for Success' project. This project traced the educational biographies of 300 young men and women from the beginning of their promising educational secondary school career to their mid-twenties. We argue that the distinctive dispositions and orientations of the 'new' and 'old' middle class proposed by Bernstein are evident within parental preferences for types of school, processes of student engagement and, ultimately, differentiated middle-class identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, we argue that neo-liberal governance regimes are deeply contradictory and that these contradictions are increasingly evident within the education sector. Drawing on a case study of the consequences of restructuring in education in New Zealand, arguably a paradigm case of neo-liberal governance, we suggest the state is faced with a dilemma about how best to manage these tensions and contradictions within the framework of the political rationality itself. One strategy is to isolate and localise these problems in order to contain and manage the risks associated with them. We identify five variants we argue can broadly be viewed as local states of emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the methods of personal reflection and auto/biography to consider the ways in which global social and political transformations have influenced a key generation of feminist sociologists entering the academy and attempting to introduce feminist knowledge and pedagogy into academic curricula. Three critical events on or around 22 November are used to highlight key political moments, the associated development of changing themes in forms of analysis of social transformations, and the part played by feminism and sociology within higher education. They are the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963, the Israeli–Arab war in 1973 and the resignation of Margaret Thatcher in 1990. The argument is that there has been a clear relation between changing social and political contexts and methodological understandings, which have drawn on developing feminist perspectives and reflexive sociological analysis, especially as embraced within the sociology of education. In particular, the shift from a political and professional perspective on social change and family life towards one that engages with personal issues is noteworthy. It is one of the hallmarks of both feminist notions associated with reflexivity and developing sociological methodologies and policy sociology. Thus, the personal and the political are now central methodological forms of feminist and sociological analysis within education and, especially, the sociology of education, influencing pedagogy within higher education, especially associated with developments in professional postgraduate education. I weave my personal reflections on my professional developments through an analysis of the key moments related to specific policy regimes and changing forms of understandings within the fields of policy sociology and sociology of education. I conclude with current concerns about the balances between the personal and professional within educational research and policy sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]