but the threat they bring to artistic culture. From his opening mockery of the literary establishment’s tendency to theorize the world in terms of desire or gender to his disapproval of those who venerate art while denying its validity in the same breath, Jonathan Dollimore has created an easily understood, albeit at times too theoretical, synthesis of the literary and the experiential in Sex, Literature and Censorship. His arguments on critical theory do not necessarily reject the concept of theory; rather, he argues that critical theorists should strive to understand the contradictions within our lives and our literature and explore the daemonic power of the subjects that offend our sense of tradition.

Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication:

THE chorus of approval with which Mr. Mundella's report on the progress of elementary education was received on Monday cannot but be gratifying to all who have at heart the highest welfare of the country. With one or two unimportant exceptions—members whose vision is so bizarre as to discern communism in the education of the children of the working classes, and who connect the increase of weeds with the spread of education'what criticism there was referred to details of method. All the members whose opinions are of any weight agreed that vast good had resulted to the country by the working of the Code. As to the special subjects, among which science is included, the weight of opinion was decidedly in favour of their retention. The greatest friends of the Fourth Schedule will admit that there is still much room for improvement in the teaching of these subjects; it cannot be expected that so great a novelty in the system of elementary education in the country can all at once be taught to perfection. About the success of the compulsory system of education it may be said that the House was all but unanimous. The analogy between the treatment of paupers and the free education of the children of the working classes will not hold water. In the one case we are simply keeping from starvation people whose improvidence or misfortune have made them a dead burden on their fellows; in the other case we are feeding the minds of those who one day will have to bear the brunt of the work of the nation; The better these future workers are educated, the more intelligently and the more effectively are they likely to do their work, and the less likely are they to become inmates of our workhouses and prisons. As Serjeant Simon testified, even already is there a marked decrease of embryo criminals in our streets. The conclusion come to by Mr. Mimdella and those who,like him, have the interests of education at heart, is not that we have gone too far, but that we have not gone far enough; not that we have reached finality, but that we have only made a good beginning. The figures he adduced to prove the success of the existing Education Act were practically admitted to be irrefutable; and we only trust the progress in the next ten years will be at an equal ratio to that achieved during the past decade. “Many of us,” he truly said, “would pass away without seeing the full effect of the work we are doing.” As to the propriety of encouraging the retention of exceptionally clever boys in elementary schools beyond the regulation age, the figures showed that it would be cruel and unjust to forbid this. Until we have a State system of secondary education in England similar to that about to be sanctioned in Scotland, until air equally decisive step is taken with regard to educational endowments in the one country as in the other, the nation would be doing a gross injustice to force exceptionally clever boys to leave school just when their intellects were beginning to shoot into full vigour. Mr. Mundella showed by his figures that Scotland is still ahead of England in the matter of education; that extra or special subjects are more widely sought after and with greater success, and that a larger percentage of children in elementary schools proceed to secondary education. But it should be remembered that this is the result of many generations of universal education, and that in Scotland it has long been considered as great a disgrace to be uneducated as in England it is considered to be immoral. There among the great majority of the working classes compulsory education was scarcely needed, and this will no doubt be the case in England in the course of a century or so, when education will have become as great a necessity as decent clothing. Again during the debate was it shown by those who have the best means of knowing that where science is properly taught there the children are as a rule more intelligent and bright, and better up in the ordinary subjects than in schools where science is neglected. Sir John Lubbock gave a remarkable instance of the favour with which properly conducted science-teaching is received by the children themselves:—

The Education Debate

There is an ongoing tension within educational policy worldwide between countries that seek to reduce the opportunities for teachers to exert judgement and control over their own work, and those who seek to promote it. Some see teacher agency as a weakness within the operation of schools and seek to replace it with evidence-based and data-driven approaches, whereas others argue that because of the complexities of situated educational practices, teacher agency is an indispensable element of good and meaningful education. While the ideological debate about the shape and form of teacher professionalism is important, it is equally important to understand the dynamics of teacher agency and the factors that contribute to its promotion and enhancement. In this paper, we draw from a two-year study into teacher agency against the backdrop of large-scale educational reform – the implementation of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence – in order to explore these questions. We focus on teachers’ beliefs in order to ge...

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The Role of Beliefs in Teacher Agency.

In the wake of new forms of curricular policy in many parts of the world, teachers are increasingly required to act as agents of change And yet, teacher agency is under‐theorised and often misconstrued in the educational change literature, wherein agency and change are seen as synonymous and positive This article addresses the issue of teacher agency in the context of an empirical study of curriculum making in schooling Drawing upon the existing literature, we outline an ecological view of agency These insights frame the analysis of a set of empirical data, derived from a research project about curriculum making in a school and further education college in Scotland Based upon the evidence, we argue that the extent to which teachers are able to achieve agency varies from context to context based upon certain environmental conditions of possibility and constraint, and that an important factor in this lies in the beliefs, values and attributes that teachers mobilise in relation to particular sit

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Teacher Agency in Curriculum Making: Agents of Change and Spaces for Manoeuvre

The Invisibility of Departments Historical Background - From Realm to Realms The Departmental Plan The New Organisation of the High School Subject Divisions Specialist Divisions The Study Context and Design of the Study The Schools Oak Valley High School Rancho High School Highlander High School Boundaries and Barriers Boundary Strengths Breaking Barriers at Rancho Drawing Boundaries - Communication Cliques Social Worlds Looking for Community The Individuals Involved Departments as Social Worlds Different Kinds of Community Power and Politics Norms of Silence and Political Language Privileged Position of Academic Subjects Relative Privilege Among Academic Subejcts Micro-politics Inside Departments How the Subject Matters Subject Cultures Subject Differences Social Studies English Math Science Underlining Differences Departmental Differences implications for Policy.

In Defense of the Realm: The Departmentalization of School Knowledge@@@Realms of Knowledge: Academic Departments in Secondary Schools

Part 1: What Are The Issues? 1. Literacies as a resource for learning in college Part 2: What Does The Research Tell Us? 2. What students do with reading and writing in their everyday lives 3. Ways of understanding literacy practices 4. Literacies across the college curriculum 5. Comparisons across contexts: The textual mediation of learning on Childcare courses Part 3: What Are The Implications? 6. Making a difference: The conception, implementation and analysis of changes in practice 7. Recontextualizing the research: Bilingual literacies for learning in Wales 8. Conceptualizing the interface between everyday and curriculum literacy practices 9. Implications for learning in college and beyond

Improving Learning in College: Rethinking Literacies Across the Curriculum

This article discusses the issue of the sustainability of educational change in the light of findings from research undertaken in tandem with a development project initiated by a Scottish Education Authority, The Highland Council. The paper reviews some of the key themes that have emerged from recent literature on educational change, before drawing on the project data to address two key issues: the factors that have helped to promote and sustain changes within the schools; and the barriers to innovation experienced in these schools. We conclude the article by identifying a range of considerations that should be taken into account by those seeking to innovate and we suggest that, while the Highland model for change has enjoyed a degree of success in inculcating change, more needs to be done to address systemic issues, such as the pervasive influence of a narrow attainment agenda in shaping classroom practice.

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Teacher learning communities and educational change in Scotland: the Highland experience

The article explores the conceptualization of learning and context from a number of perspectives and some of the theoretical and methodological issues raised when context is no longer considered as a container, but as a relational effect. It provides an introduction for the articles that follow, insofar as they take up lines of flight from the issues raised. Central to the article are the questions of what makes something specifically a learning context; and what different ways of conceiving the relationship between learning and context might be, and with what implications.

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Putting the context into learning

Retention, attainment and progression have become key issues in post‐compulsory education in the UK, as the policy agenda of increasing and widening participation has taken hold. Keeping students in the system, enabling them to gain qualifications and thereby progress to higher level courses is a key educational goal. Yet alongside increasing progression and attainment have emerged discussion of the nature and extent of academic drift within vocational education. This paper seeks to explore these issues in the context of the vocational curriculum in further education colleges in Scotland. Using the lens of literacy practices, the authors explore the ways in which the expectations upon students of the reading and writing associated with learning their subjects can illuminate the nature and extent of academic drift. Evidence is indicated to suggest that there is increasing emphasis given to educational rather than occupational relevance in the vocational curriculum.

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Kate Miller

Papers

Teacher Agency in Curriculum Making: Agents of Change and Spaces for Manoeuvre

Improving Learning in College: Rethinking Literacies Across the Curriculum

Teacher learning communities and educational change in Scotland: the Highland experience

Putting the context into learning

Academic drift in vocational qualifications? Explorations through the lens of literacy