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This article explores Ford Madox Brown’s contribution to art education in Britain. Brown adapted his own student experience of continental academies (Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp) to inform his practical tuition of artists in his studio at home and at independent artisanal schools, while responding to contemporary intellectual fashions to draft his Cambridge Slade Professorship application and public lectures. His misgivings about both the Royal Academy Schools and Government Schools of Design manifested itself in his desire to cultivate taste in all classes of Britons, and balance the commercial requirements of manufacturing industry with the learning needs of individuals in society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores issues of school autonomy within the context of the performative demands of the audit culture. The focus is on a case study of Clementine Academy, a large and highly diverse English secondary school. Specific situated, professional, material and external factors at the school were significant in shaping Clementine's response to and take-up of the policy of academisation (a key reform within broader government mandates to create an increasingly autonomised education system). Factors such as the school's intake and history, its ethos and values, its access to human and economic resources and its status and power as an outstanding school supported its confident and ‘morally’ focused take-up of this policy. Clementine's privileged position in relation to these factors enabled the school to mediate and challenge some of the negative effects of the audit culture. This paper highlights the significance of considering these contextual factors in understanding the different ways in which schools are currently engaging their autonomy to cope with the demands of the audit culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses one of Furlong’s major areas of work, the theory and practice of teacher education. Taking up where our joint publicationTeacher Education in Transition: Re-Forming Professionalism?(Open University Press 2000) left off, it examines how accelerated moves towards school-based teacher education, as well as increased school autonomy, are impacting upon notions of teacher professionalism and professional formation in England. It looks at how in this context a ‘core’ professionalism mandated by central government through its teaching standards is being supplemented or even replaced by a series of ‘local’ professionalisms and the ‘branded’ professionalisms of Teach First and Academy chains. The paper then considers the implications of these developments for the future of Education as a subject of study in universities and, in particular, for the vision set out in Furlong’s recent bookEducation: an anatomy of the discipline(Routledge 2013). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Academies (and free schools) in England and independent grant-aided schools,fristående skolor(orfriskolor), in Sweden have been the subject of much academic debate, but there is a paucity of comparative research relating to policy development or outcomes. This paper adopts a comparative perspective, outlining the historical context, then comparing the policy goals and development of the two programmes from their inception. It is argued that the policy goals of the two programmes are underpinned by similar ideologies, but the policy outcomes have differed in terms of the extent and type of ‘privatisation’. Two broad themes related to equality of opportunity are then explored: access to schools, and school composition and segregation. It is argued that the extent to which differential school access and segregation can be attributed to the introduction of independent schools in Sweden and academies in England, is far from clear; it would be wrong to assume that there is a single, simple explanation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In England, Free Schools were announced as a dramatic way in which government policy has changed such that it is now possible for groups of parents, organisations or charities to start their own schools. They are seen as an attempt to stimulate to ‘supply side’ of the quasi-market of schools, but they are not the first such initiatives. In the long period of Conservative Government from 1979 to 1987, there were two specific attempts to encourage new schools through City Technology Colleges and sponsored grant-maintained schools. Both of these initiatives stalled at just 15 schools, but it is argued that their significance was far greater than their numerical strength would indicate and that they can be seen as for-runners of the Academies and Free Schools. All of these schools can be seen as examples of increased privatisation and selection, and they thus exhibit their own embedded forms of social (in)justice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper summarises the key findings of a research project into the identity, position and ethos of jointly sponsored church academies. The research sought to investigate how joint church academies are situated within the field, how they relate to existing academies and the maintained church school sector and how they articulate their vision and ethos. Using a case study approach and drawing on open interviews, documentary analysis and non-participant observation the researcher had the unique opportunity to document the process of opening two joint church academies and to compare this with data from a more established joint church academy. The research questions were: how do jointly sponsored academies articulate their objectives and Christian ethos, and what is the relationship between school structures and the ethos of the academy? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers the pupil intakes to Academies in England, and their attainment, based on a re-analysis of figures from the Annual Schools Census 1989–2012, the Department for Education School Performance Tables 2004–2012 and the National Pupil Database. It looks at the national picture, and the situation for Local Education Authorities, and also examines in more detail the trajectories of the three original Academies. It confirms earlier studies in finding no convincing evidence that Academies are any more (or less) effective than the schools they replaced or are in competition with. The prevalence of Academies in any area is strongly associated with local levels of SES segregation, and this is especially true of the more recent Converter Academies. Converter Academies, on average, take far less than their fair share of disadvantaged pupils. Sponsor-led Academies, on the other hand, tend to take more than their fair share. Their profiles are so different that they must no longer be lumped together for analysis as simply ‘Academies’. Academies are not shown to be the cause of local SES segregation. Instead, they are merely more likely to appear in areas that already have inequitable school mixes. This means, of course, that Academies are not helping reduce segregation (as was one of their original purposes) or increase social justice in education, and the paper concludes that homogeneous Maintained schools should be preferred for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the first of two public lectures on Michelangelo delivered by Benedetto Varchi at the Accademia Fiorentina in 1547. The lecture played an unprecedented role in disseminating Michelangelo’s poetry to a broad audience both orally and in print, and the article contends that Varchi was able to do so after receiving a manuscript of poems from an associate of Michelangelo in Rome. Varchi’s broadcast of the poems has significant implications in relation to Michelangelo’s rapport with Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, who is named in the lecture as a recipient of Michelangelo’s poetry. By upholding Michelangelo’s enactment of Socratic love, Varchi grounds this Neoplatonic virtue in lived experience. Drawing on evidence including epistolary correspondence, archival sources, and Varchi’s own poetry, the article shows why the Accademia would have been a uniquely receptive setting for the ideals espoused in Varchi’s commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of an analysis of the admissions criteria used by the first two waves of secondary Free Schools in England. The type of criteria and their ranked order is explored and their potential impact on the school composition is considered. The findings demonstrate the diversity of criteria being used by this new type of school and give some insight in to how Free Schools appear to be prioritising access. As Free Schools operate outside Local Authority control with regards to admissions procedures they are able to choose their own feeder schools, set their own catchment areas, prioritise particular postcode districts, guarantee places for children of the school’s founders or opt to use banding systems. Whilst the admissions policies of the majority of secondary Free Schools appear to be adhering to the 2012 Admissions Code legislation, this study highlights the influence that such criteria may have in creating intakes which are less balanced in terms of socioeconomic status, ethnicity or religious affiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The structure of the English school system has been the subject of almost continuous change since the late-1980s. The most recent was commenced by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government, which was elected in May 2010. This policy set in train, very quickly, processes through which all schools have been encouraged, and in some cases required, to become independent of local authorities (LAs) and funded directly by central government, the government’s vision being to create a complete system of publicly funded ‘independent’ schools. This article considers some of the implications of these aspirations and the ways in which they have been translated into policy and implemented. It begins by setting the policies of the Coalition government within a context of trends in education policy since 1988, showing how these can be related to three dominant themes: school autonomy, central control and diversity of provision. It then proceeds to consider how these developments can be theorized, suggesting that diversity of governance, legitimacy and agency provide a suitable framework for analysing the emerging English experience. These ideas are then used to examine this experience and draw conclusions about key issues for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although the number and size of academy chains in England is still increasing, the implications of these arrangements at a local level remain under-researched. This article reports findings from a comparative case study focusing on governance arrangements and sponsor involvement in two chains of academies. The findings suggest that the policy and practice of these multi-academy sponsors define the autonomy of the individual academies within the chains, so that the level of autonomy individual academies experience varies significantly between, as well as within, chains. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The legal basis of free schools, provided for in the Academies Act 2010, allows the Secretary of State for Education ‘to enter into Academy arrangements with any person’. A range of debate has ensued over who will govern free schools. This article develops an analysis of the individuals and organizations that have had free school proposals accepted by government. The article progresses, first, by locating free schools in the existing policy trajectories towards privatization and self-governing schools. Second, it draws on a mapping exercise and interviews with a sample of 58 free school proposers, sponsors and suppliers to explore the processes through which free schools are established. The main categories of free school proposers are identified as: local civil society groups; sponsoring organizations; existing educational institutions. Third, the article considers the wider implications for school governance. It is argued free school policy allows governance to become an additional and direct lever through which those with the capacity to do so are able to mould state education in their own interests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the oration Che la Corte è vera scuola non solamente delta prudenza, ma delle virtù morali (1624), delivered at the Accademia degli Umoristi by Agostino Mascardi, a courtier, professor of rhetoric, and renowned member of academies. Mascardi's oration has traditionally been read as a commendation of the court, and as proof of intellectuals' willing submission to political powers in the seventeenth century. This article aims to challenge such a reading by proposing a reinterpretation of the text that suggests the oration is, in fact, paradoxical. This article also considers Che la Corte è vera scuola in relation to Mascardi's other writings on courts, and investigates them in the larger context of the accademie of early seventeenth-century Rome in an attempt to shed light on the role that academies played for early modern Italian intellectuals in trying to define their relationship to political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government elected in 2010 has argued contemporary reform will increase the autonomy of schools in England. Given the complexities that exist, however, in the balance between autonomy and control, we explore how school leaders view autonomy as it exists within the wider policy framework. The article develops, first, a historical and analytical perspective on school autonomy. Second, it analyses a survey of almost 2000 school leaders, as well as case study data, to explore their views on autonomy, accountability, external support and managing change. Third, it considers the implications. Drawing on Simkins’s concepts of operational and criteria power, school leaders are shown to commonly anticipate greater power over aspects of school management but not over the aims and purposes of schooling. A significant variation is also found between school leaders in their perceived capacity and freedom to act. This leads to a proposed typology of confident, cautious, concerned and constrained schools. A key implication, we conclude, is that increasing operational power for schools, declining Local Authority support and differentiated school autonomy have a very real potential to exacerbate existing local hierarchies between schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Revista Brasileira de Nutrição e Esportiva is the property of Instituto Brasileiro de Pesquisa e Ensino em Fisiologia do Exercicio and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent reforms in England include the aim of converting every school into an “independent state funded school,” an academy, and giving the strongest schools more responsibility for initial teacher education, offering professional development programs, and supporting the improvement of less successful schools. School leaders are attempting to understand the new emerging landscape, interpreting meanings, and considering how to respond. This article provides an overview of recent developments in policy and practice in England and a synthesis of a program of research that has been tracking development for the past 7 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secondary school system in England has undergone a radical transformation since 2010 with the rapid expansion of independent academies run by private companies (‘academy trusts’) and funded directly by central government. This paper examines the development of academies and their predecessors, city technology colleges, and explores the extent and nature of continuity and change. It is argued that processes of layering and policy revision, together with austerity measures arising from economic recession, have resulted in a system-wide change with private, non-profit-making companies, funded by central government, rapidly replacing local authorities as the main providers of secondary school education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Resonancias is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article discusses the social and literary networks in Granada, Spain, during the mid-17th century. The author comments on the relationship between literature and power in Spanish society during this time period and examines the importance of poetry and poetry writing. He also describes the impact of Spanish poetry on social events in the region. The popularity of literature, particularly poetry, in Granada at the time, including its readership and the dedications provided in the texts, is also explored.

Critical reassessment of academic traditions in architectural education shows necessity of individuation as new method of self-education and development of reflective approach to design process. Availability of knowledge resources makes nowadays more actual strategic individual approach to educational programs where students take responsibility for the methods of professional growth.

In December 1631, after more than 300 years of inactivity, Vesuvius erupted causing widespread damage. These were the first eruptions of Vesuvius in early modern times, and they coincided with the birth of modern scientific enquiry. They were also the first eruptions to occur after the upheavals of the Reformation and the reassertion of traditional Catholic doctrine and piety following the Council of Trent. The eruptions provoked a considerable number of publications ranging from theoretical treatises to philosophical dialogues, journals giving eyewitness accounts, and poems in both Latin and Italian. Many of these publications emanated from the numerous academies of Naples and were dedicated to leading figures in the politics and culture of the Regno. There is some sound scientific discussion in these publications, but they also testify in different ways and with varying emphases to the persistence of both orthodox Catholic belief and popular superstition. In this article I consider the relative emphases in a select number of these publications between serious science, the persistence of orthodox religious belief and the continuing humanist debt to classical literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational systems around the world are experimenting with new forms of schooling. One example is the emergence of independent state-funded schools (ISFSs). In the USA these have taken the form of Charter Schools. In Sweden chains of Free Schools have been established and in England Academies and most recently Free Schools have been placed at the centre of government reforms. This article offers clarity of definition relating to ISFSs and chains of ISFSs and charts some of the features of these recent developments, highlighting a shift in emphasis of improvement efforts from individual schools to collaborative chains and federations. In conclusion this article argues that ISFSs are supporting a shift from Individualised school improvement to a collaborative form of Federal improvement, but within the current arrangements they are unlikely to be able to support broader systemic improvement efforts unless attention is paid to both structural and cultural change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘achievement gap’ – the term typically used to refer to differences in pupil attainment associated with social class, ethnicity and gender – remains an enduring obstacle to government goals of creating a socially just society. This article explores the nature of the achievement gap and some of the mechanisms that serve to perpetuate disadvantage in education systems providing a context in which to consider the appropriateness of government policies aimed at addressing the gap. Accessing predominantly English research but also consulting studies conducted in other education systems including the US and elsewhere in the UK, we argue that in contrast to its noble rhetoric, government approaches to addressing the achievement gap are preoccupied with standardised assessment and accountability (such as the latest attempt at raising pupil standards in England, the introduction of Academies) while paying little more than lip service to the persistent, underlying roots of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Revista Brasileira de Ciencias Sociais is the property of Revista Brasileira de Ciencias Sociais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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]

Within the context of fierce global economic competition, school diversification and specialist schools have been seen by governments as cornerstones of education policy to engineer school improvement in both England and Singapore for more than a decade. In both systems, the policy has manifested in different school types, school names and sometimes buildings – in England, specialist status schools, academies and most recently free schools; and in Singapore, specialist schools and niche schools. Diversification is promoted by each school emphasising distinctiveness in its curriculum – often with implications for its funding and degree of autonomy – which differentiate it from others. There is normally the intention to scale-up curricular innovations school-wide. The paper addresses three aims in respect to both countries: first, it profiles the evolution of specialist schools' policies in both states in relation to school improvement and secondly, social justice; thirdly, it undertakes a comparative policy analysis in order to draw conclusions as to how the relationship between central government and schools has re-configured in both countries – arguing that the policy in England is radical, that in Singapore, conservative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay examines the still relatively unexplored phenomenon of learned drama produced in manuscript form in Italy after such texts became popular in print from around the mid-sixteenth century. The coexistence of play-texts in print and in manuscript may be connected with their complex status, mediating between the immediacy and fluidity of performance and the literary text, each with multiple potential uses for different audiences. However, various reasons are also seen to determine why some play-texts were not printed in the later sixteenth century. These relate to the changing socioeconomic status of courtly writers and professional actors over the period, their dramaturgical and aesthetic aims, and the social contexts in which they worked. In particular, it is suggested that literary academies provided an important locus for the production of drama and associated critical works in manuscript and that there is a still almost invisible tradition of women favouring this medium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The founding of academies was a strategy that enabled some Chinese elite families to retain their status through the Song-Yuan transition and beyond. Family academies provided both educational and professional opportunities. The Yuan government rewarded support of education by appointing a family member as academy headmaster, an unranked post that often led to local or regional educational offices. After the restoration of the examination system in 1315, the descendants of the academy founders benefited from family academy education in the competition for examination degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Academy schools programme was launched in England in 2000, promoted as a school reform policy to raise aspirations, broaden opportunities and improve standards in disadvantaged communities. In this study, discourse analysis is used to demonstrate the ways in which these Discourses1 have been constructed, contested and strategically reworked at a national and local level, highlighting the connections between these different spatial scales. Therefore, the paper provides an empirical example of how geographers can use discourse analysis to conduct policy relevant research and encourages education geographers to undertake multi-scalar analyses which engage with geographical literature on the politics of scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article brings attention to the rarefied world of elite boarding schools. Despite their reputation for excellence, these unique educational institutions remain largely outside the gaze of educational researchers and the scope of public debates about education. One reason for this absence is a lack of knowledge about what exactly defines an elite boarding school and the characteristics that stand them apart from other schools in significant ways. Drawing on a review of the relevant literature, the article outlines five criteria by which elite boarding schools can be identified: typologically elite, scholastically elite, historically elite, geographically elite, and demographically elite. Although the "elite" status of any given school in any of these criteria may be open to debate, it is the particular combination of these five dimensions that defines an elite boarding school. After a discussion of these five characteristics, the article outlines some implications for future research that considers elite boarding schools as an integral part of the educational system in the United States and presents some of the challenges facing the study of privilege. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neo-Confucians often used private academies as platforms to propogate their teachings. This is especially true when they were dissatisfied with the state apparatus of examination and education, comprised mainly of the civil service examinations and the nationwide system of government schools. In the early Ming, Neo-Confucians from southern China were still practicing their age old tradition of building, renovating, and teaching in private academies, thus effectively positioning themselves as an alternative, if not a challenge, to the state system. However, Xue Xuan..., the leading Neo-Confucian from northern China believed and acted differently. Not only did he refuse to institutionalize his private educational activities in an academy, he strongly advocated that the state's objectives of training and recruiting talent should converge with the Neo-Confucians' educational vision. In his mind, not only should the state's education and examination system be based on the Cheng-Zhu tradition ..., it should also include his philosophical teachings on "restoring nature." Thus, on top of reevaluating the relation between Neo-Confucians, academies, government schools, and the civil service examinations, we should also ponder the difference between the ideas of northern and southern Neo-Confucians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]