Search

This paper analyses emergent issues from four conceptualisers of FEResearchmeet. FEResearchmeet claims to be a free and democratic model for building and supporting engagement with research, led by practitioners. The narratives presented seek to document and analyse FEResearchmeet as a movement across the first three years since its inception (2017-2020). After setting out the context and methodology of the work, narrative one explores how a reaction against New Public Management (NPM) sparked an event and how this grew into a movement of collaborating individuals seeking to reposition their voices and knowledge. The second narrative looked at how an early 'meet' was used to challenge norms and barriers to research by creating safe spaces for the development of expertise. Narrative three journeys through the early months of COVID-19 to explore how capacity building through collaboration allows sector workers to value their voices. These narratives lead to a critique of the epistemological changes these experiences have developed and have the potential to develop in the future. The paper concludes by arguing that FEResearchmeet was a reaction against NPM by agentic practitioners who used collaboration and capacity building as tools to create new pools of knowledge in an attempt to change this position.

Recent debate has highlighted the Important significance of social partnership in further education for developing new approaches to English vocational education and training (VET). There is international evidence of the contribution that well-established social partnerships between employers, unions and government can make to deliver VET effectively. It is argued that in England VET can benefit from adopting and embedding social partnership models, especially ones in which further education (FE) colleges have a local and regional anchoring role. However, to date, England has persistently failed to implement any kind of significant social partnership for various reasons -- a crucial one being government reliance on an employer-led approach to VET. A prerequisite for developing social partnership in further education is to identify and garner support for promising governance and cooperation structures. Such identification foregrounds a conception of a rich civil society and economy, with local and regional partnerships being essential enablers. An examination of FE colleges as part of a VET system reviews the benefits of establishing a coordinated skills system providing coherent local, regional and national pathways for vocational, technical and skilled work. Such a national VET system would integrate universities, employer training, the school curriculum and careers.

Online grooming of young people for sexual exploitation and for radicalisation is a global issue. The importance of quality education that equips young people to develop their digital resilience and critical thinking skills is essential as a way to prepare them to use online technology safely and appropriately. In this article, we look at two innovative and creative social media simulations that were developed by the Centre of Child Protection for the training of professionals in child protection issues. Using social constructivist perspectives on learning the simulations focus on the role of social media to facilitate understanding and critical analysis of online environments. The simulations respond to the contemporary landscape of social media and the complexities of grooming, child sexual exploitation, extremism and radicalisation, issues that are often addressed in schools through pastoral care. We look at the relationship between creative engagement via the online social media simulations and their use in teaching these complex topics, and take an empirical view to evaluate this creative approach as a scaffold tool for teachers to help children and young people to think critically and respond positively to the navigation of complex lifeworlds. We surveyed trained professionals who had all undertaken CPD training with the Centre of Child Protection in either of the two simulations from March 2015-April 2017. Out of 308 responses, 146 identified themselves as educators, and it is their feedback that we discuss in this article.

This paper addresses a particular gap in the further education (FE) literature offering an analysis of Incorporation within a theory of social change developed by Fligstein and McAdam, in their work "A Theory of Fields". The authors argue that FE was subjected to the introduction of a quasi-market in advance of wider neoliberal reforms in the English public sector. The paper analyses the development of Incorporation arguing the marketisation of the sector developed a logic of its own which the authors term the "logic of Incorporation". This logic overdeveloped areas of "market" interest while neglecting other crucial areas such as teaching and learning, professionalism and the curriculum. These neglected areas are explained using the concept of "unorganised social space" (taken from an undeveloped concept in Fligstein and McAdam's work) which remain unstable and unresolved because the very logic of Incorporation blocks the discussion of other logics, discourses or alternatives. The paper concludes that the logic of Incorporation leaves many important areas underdeveloped including the strategic place or purpose of FE itself. It proposes that FE has yet to find the stability of a "strategic action field" needed to maintain itself and should be returned to some form of local or regional government ownership and control.

Existing research that attempts to understand aggressive behavior often focuses on adults and/or individual traits. The present study used a Grounded Theory approach to develop a theoretical framework of how younger adolescents constructed an understanding of their own aggressive behavior within the social context of their lives. The participants were 11 adolescents (aged 12-16) who had previously been involved in incidents of aggression at a school for children with emotional and behavioral difficulties. The identified theoretical framework outlined that aggressive behavior was fundamental to an identity of toughness that participants sought to portray to others. This identity emerged in a hostile peer environment to prevent victimization and establish friendships. The findings are discussed in relation to their clinical implications, limitations, and possibilities for further research. (Contains 2 tables, 1 figure, and 1 note.)

Purpose: This paper aims to serve as an introduction to and overview of this special issue of the "Journal of Educational Administration" entitled "Building organisational capacity in school education". The co-editors have solicited contributions from authors in Wales, Australia, Canada, the USA, England, Hong Kong and New Zealand. Design/methodology/approach: The paper reviews past and contemporary approaches to the issue of capacity building in education and in particular, sustainable capacity building. As well as reviewing key researchers and writers in this field, including their own work, the authors foreshadow and synthesise the other seven papers that make up this special issue. Findings: The paper contends that building capacity in schools and schooling, while no means easy, can be both understood and accomplished. However, caution needs to be exercised because hard-fought gains in capacity building and sustainability can be quickly eroded under the influence of poor leadership or extraneous changes. Practical implications: The paper serves as a framework both for the seven papers that follow and more generally for understanding and conceptualising sustainable school capacity building. Originality/value: The paper performs the function of framing current debates and pressures around sustainable school capacity-building in an international theoretical and practical context. (Contains 4 notes and 1 table.)

Essays discussing the influence of change upon the lives of English and Papua-New Guinean adolescents were analyzed. Younger adolescents saw change in relation to their own lives as immediate, direct, and brief. As age increased, so did the ability to view change comprehensively and to understand the change-stability cycle. (Author/SK)

A British adult education center successfully offered foreign language instruction to children and adults together. Lessons learned from the experience include limiting attendance to 1 child per adult, targeting children aged 9-10, and extending the course to 20-25 weeks. (SK)