Course Description In this course, we will explore the question of the actual and potential connections between democracy and education. Our focus of attention will be placed on a critical examination of democratic theory and its implications for the civic education roles and contributions of teachers, adult educators, community development practitioners, and community organizers. We will survey and deal critically with a range of competing conceptions of democracy, variously described as classical, republican, liberal, radical, marxist, neomarxist, pragmatist, feminist, populist, pluralist, postmodern, and/or participatory. Using narrative inquiry as a means for illuminating and interpreting contemporary practice, we will analyze the implications of different conceptions of democracy for the practical work of civic education.

Democracy and education.

How we Think

Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist

One dimensional man

Truth and method

The quest continues to standardise quality assurance systems throughout the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) under the auspices of the Bologna Process and led by the European Network for Quality Assurance (ENQA). Mirroring its member organisation in England, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), ENQA identifies, as one of its core aims, the development of quality assurance processes as instruments for both ‘accountability’ and ‘enhancement’. However, the recent history of QAA appears to indicate that the balance between these core aims has been lost and the discourse of accountability and efficiency prevails. This paper presents a case study of a Business Faculty (BF) in a post-1992 English university based on interviews with academics and documentary data. Findings suggest that the BF’s Quality Assurance Unit affirms the primacy of accountability and efficiency, resulting in, paradoxically, a distortion of academic professional practice. For example, undergraduate curriculum development is narrowly framed as an ‘administrative process’ from which most academics feel ‘dissociated’ and approaches to teaching appear to lack coherent organising principles beyond standardised learning outcomes expressed as ‘skills’. The paper concludes by briefly considering the implications of the case study findings for the future direction of ENQA Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1474904115617484

The standards paradox: How quality assurance regimes can subvert teaching and learning in higher education

Education policy-makers in the UK have repeatedly stated their central aim as transforming British education into a ‘world-class system’. Over the last 20 years, several large-scale education reforms have brought radical changes to the school curriculum, teacher professionalism and educational leadership. Explicit in these reforms, is the deployment of measurable standards of pupil attainment as a lever for achieving school improvement. However, despite this proliferation of policies, the claims to educational improvement made by policy-makers have been contested. Concerns about the unpredicted and damaging long-term effects of these policies can be linked to the limitations of systems thinking which underpins much of this education reform. A significant flaw of systems thinking is the level of simplification at which policy-makers operate on abstract categories such as standards, as if they were reality. Based on case study research conducted in two primary schools, this paper suggests that the systemic ...

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Transcending systems thinking in education reform: implications for policy-makers and school leaders

As part of a revival of interest in character education, English schools are required to teach the new ‘three Rs’: resilience; respect for ‘fundamental British values’; and responsibility for one’s own well-being. School inspectors evaluate children’s resilience, whilst the Department for Education has offered financial incentives to schools that ‘instil’ mental toughness and ‘grit’. However, this approach may prove counterproductive because it relies on teaching about desirable character traits and neglects the interpersonal relations within which ‘character’ develops. This paper argues for an alternative ‘fourth R’ of character education, based on Honneth’s theory of recognition. As an empathetic connection to others arising from their intrinsic worth, recognition precedes cognition and a detached, neutral stance. Recognition of others as a prerequisite for moral action provides a foundation for an approach to character education that takes account of intersubjective relationships in schools and the wider social context within which character is shaped.

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Character education and the ‘priority of recognition’

The year 1989 marked the official end of communist rule in Poland and the replacement of ‘Gosplan’ by new instruments for liberal-democratic governance. In terms of the economy this heralded a departure from Gosplan’s five-year planning cycles, performance targets and the ‘propaganda of success’. Paradoxically, however, 27 years later, the marketisation of higher education in Poland has been accompanied by a continuation of Gosplan thinking. This is manifested in a neoliberal vision of the modern, ‘corporate’ university as a largely utilitarian enterprise, but subject to a style of performance management strongly resonant of the Soviet era. This article analyses the thinking, ideas and ideologies that have shaped contemporary higher education in Poland. It is contended that the rise of the ‘corporate university’ signals the twilight of the Humboldtian tradition and raises questions about what the corporate ideal of ‘excellence’ may mean for the future of the university.

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Tackling knowledge ‘like a business’? Rethinking the modernisation of higher education in Poland

The imperative of continuous improvement has now become normative in education policy discourse, typically framed as setting ‘aspirational’ targets for pupil performance as a prerequisite for gaining competitive advantage in the global economy. In this context, teachers, leaders, teacher assistants and other practitioners working in schools across England have been under increasing pressure to raise standards. This article focuses on how values are deployed in reculturing and regulating practitioners to develop identities and work orientations which are congruent with the policymakers’ agendas. G.H. Mead’s concept of ‘cult’ values illuminates the process of fostering homogeneity with the dominant policy discourse through an inclusion/exclusion dynamic. Interview data collected in two primary schools revealed a significant convergence of practitioner discourse with policy objectives. Delivering improvement affects how practitioners talk about their work and see themselves as educators. The ‘cult’ of continuous improvement appears to inhibit a critical approach to the implementation of education policies by school practitioners in their everyday work.

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Reculturing schools in England: how ‘cult’ values in education policy discourse influence the construction of practitioner identities and work orientations

Agnieszka Bates

Papers

The standards paradox: How quality assurance regimes can subvert teaching and learning in higher education

Transcending systems thinking in education reform: implications for policy-makers and school leaders

Character education and the ‘priority of recognition’

Tackling knowledge ‘like a business’? Rethinking the modernisation of higher education in Poland

Reculturing schools in England: how ‘cult’ values in education policy discourse influence the construction of practitioner identities and work orientations