Showing papers in "Journal of Education Policy in 1993"

Marketing education in the postmodern age

Abstract: This paper demonstrates that Australian public education is taking up a series of market identities and raises a number of selected matters that caused us concern as we both surveyed the field and the available critical literature and considered the social justice issues which are raised by markets in education. These matters are, first, the inadequacy of current conceptual, frameworks for categorizing various developments and, second, the relative blindness of commentators to the connections between the growth of markets in education and certain wider cultural as opposed to economic shifts. It seems to us that some more recent forms of education markets raise social justice issues that the literature has either not engaged or has engaged in a rather restricted manner. We will identify some of these in the process of exploring the possibilities which theories about postmodernity provide both for explaining the rapid momentum and acceptance of the market lexicon in education in Australia and elsewhere and ...

Discourse of derision: the role of the mass media within the education policy process

Abstract: It is asserted that the mass media play a significant part in the education policy process, yet this contribution has received little attention in empirical and theoretical analyses. Convergence between theoretical work on education policy and media studies in linking social institutions with the economy in the perpetuation of social inequalities, while accepting their relative autonomy, provides a starting point for incorporation of the media role in conceptualization of the education policy process. Concepts which may assist the exploration of the media role within education policy are denned, including the anthropological notion of myths. These concepts are employed in analysing a policy issue wherein the British government and the mass media framed the relevant debate as a polarization between progressive and traditional education. The analysis draws on the experience of a primary school which was portrayed in a current affairs television programme as exemplifying progressive educational practices. To...

Primary Headship, State Policy and the Challenge of the 1990s: An Exceptional Story That Disproves Total Hegemonic Rule.

Abstract: This paper celebrates the life and work of one teacher over the past decade or so. As such, it reasserts a degree of indeterminacy, contestation and contradiction into analyses of schooling. It presents data obtained from ethnographic conversations with a headteacher of a working‐class, urban primary school. His intellectual and moral vision, his theories and his practices, are set in the context of recent state policy. The relationship between his manifest and latent identities is explored, which, it is argued, presents a powerful immunological response to the state's attempted policy ‘grafts’. In conclusion, the paper moves from the particular to an exploration of the usefulness of the head's responses as a model for the understanding of teachers’ experiences of the New Right project generally.

School characteristics, school academic indicators and student outcomes: implications for policies to improve schools

Abstract: This study investigated the relationship between school environmental characteristics (e.g., student background, school size, school level) and school academic indicators (e.g., attitudes toward knowledge and achievement, staff professional development) that are useful in explaining the types of outcomes that are produced. School academic indicators appear to be enabling or constraining factors that shape both in‐school processes and a variety of outcomes produced. Monitoring the school's context, therefore, may provide useful information to policy‐makers about why schools produce certain outcomes. The sample included all elementary, intermediate and high schools (n = 235) in one state in the western USA. A series of regression equations indicated that many observed differences among schools are due to background characteristics of students and the demographic variables of the schools that they attend. After controlling for many of these differences, however, the school's press for achievement through cur...

New Guiding Principles in Educational Policy: The Case of Germany.

Abstract: Pluralism, decentralization, deregulation, school autonomy, greater diversity and parent empowerment in education are among the new guiding principles in educational policy in numerous industrial countries. Whereas this paradigm shift reflects the advance of the market ideology into the education sector in other (particularly English-speaking) countries, the driving force behind this movement in Germany is rather the political system's loss of legitimation and the conflict-ridden state of educational policy. The first part of the article takes a retrospective view which links up to the analyses of Weiler. It shows that the former strategies for securing legitimation and regulating conflicts -involving science in the educational reform process, legalization and judicialization -have only been effective temporarily. Using the new Education Act of Hesse as example, the hypothesis is developed that the strategy of increasing parent empowerment and partially transferring regulatory powers and decision-making competence to individual schools will also not bring about the expected effects since this will not solve the structural problems of the German school system. In the second part of the article this thesis is elaborated within the framework of a differentiated analysis of the consequences of the structural problems as manifested in individual school types on local educational markets. (DIPF/Orig.) Pluralismus, Dezentralisierung, Deregulierung, Schulautonomie, grosere Differenzierung und Starkung der Eltern sind einige der neuen Leitprinzipien der Bildungspolitik in zahlreichen Industriestaaten. Wahrend aber dieser Paradigmenwechsel in anderen Landern das Eindringen der Marktideologie in den Bildungssektor widerspiegelt, ist in Deutschland die treibende Kraft hinter dieser Bewegung eher der Legitimationsverlust des politischen Systems und der konfliktbeladene Zustand der Bildungspolitik. Der erste Teil des Aufsatzes zeigt retrospektiv, dass die fruheren Strategien der Legitimitatssicherung und Konfliktregulierung - namlich die Wissenschaft in den Prozess der Bildungsreform einzubeziehen sowie die Verrechtlichung - nur zeitweise wirksam waren. Am Beispiel des neuen hessischen Schulgesetzes wird die Hypothese entwickelt, dass die Strategie der Starkung der Elternrechte und die Strategie, Regelungsbefugnisse und Entscheidungskompetenzen teilweise auf die einzelne Schule zu verlagern, ebenfalls nicht die erwarteten Wirkungen zeigen wird, weil dies nicht die strukturellen Probleme des deutschen Schulsystems losen wird. Im zweiten Teil des Aufsatzes wird diese These im Rahmen einer differenzierten Analyse der Folgen der Strukturprobleme ausgebreitet, wie sie sich in einzelnen Schularten auf den lokalen Bildungsmarkten manifestieren. (DIPF/Abstr. a. d. Engl. ubers.)

Local management of schools as an organizational form: theory and application

Abstract: This paper sets out to understand local management of schools (LMS) in terms of the theory of organizational form. It is argued that the 1988 Education Reform Act was designed to change the LEA from a unitary form of organizational strucure to a multidivisional (M‐form), though the regulatory role of the LEA required in an M‐form organization was left underdeveloped. Without a quality assurance function for a regulatory body decentralized management structures approximate more closely to a holding company or H‐form organization. This interpretation of LMS is then applied to a case‐study LEA. The theory of organizational form provides an analytical framework for understanding the restructuring the education sector is undergoing, while the case study yields data for assessing the applicability to current organizational changes in education of the multidivisional form model and its claimed efficiency advantages. The M‐form model is offered as a resolution of the apparent paradox in the Education Reform Act b...

Professional and institutional perspectives on interagency collaboration

Abstract: (1993). Professional and institutional perspectives on interagency collaboration. Journal of Education Policy: Vol. 8, No. 5, pp. 75-91.

Youth Transitions in Britain on the Threshold of a 'New Europe'.

Abstract: This paper considers the social construction of the youth phase and discusses the fact that, on the whole, transitions to adulthood in Britain are completed biographically sooner than in comparable continental European countries. Education and training arrangements and participation rates are important distinguishing features. Central aspects of the timing and shaping of youth transitions in Britain are placed in European Community contrast; young Britons’ prospects in ‘Maastricht‐Europe’ are considered and education policy implications are drawn.

Learners of the future: preparing a policy for the third age

Abstract: This paper deals with educational policy for older adults. Social and demographic trends have led to the setting up of the Carnegie Inquiry into the Third Age, a large‐scale piece of policy research. This is generating substantial policy interest in the lives of those aged 50, and the authors have been responsible for one of the Inquiry's major studies, on learning. The study covers formal and informal education and training. The paper gives a brief overview of the current situation in respect of the education of older adults; provides a framework for further policy analysis, and concludes with a list of policy options. In particular the authors argue for the development of a ‘social economy of the third age’, which would account for and value the skills of older adults.

Examining practice to address policy problems in teacher education

Abstract: This article puts forward a case for addressing policy problems in the rigorous pursuit of new practices in faculties of education. Recent policy developments in pre‐service teacher education at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia are discussed in terms of a programmatic rift between study in foundational disciplines, on the one hand, as component bodies of knowledge included in a Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) degree, and, on the other hand, the practical experiences provided in a 1‐year Professional Development Program. This article includes a discussion of underlying assumptions about the nature of learning to teach that inform a framework for a B.Ed. programme that attempts to strike a better balance and more meaningful integration of academic study and the practice of teaching. The concept of schools of practice is discussed in the context of some of the author's experiences in the Professional Development Program. Excerpts from ‘the Summerfest letters’ ‐ taken from a summer school in science ...

Support for beginning teachers in Ontario: the ebb and flow of practice and policy

Abstract: Over the past few years, Ontario educators have looked for ways to ease new teachers’ transition into teaching and to facilitate professional growth. As an influx of new teachers moved into Ontario schools, and as calls for educational reform became part of the government rhetoric, new teacher induction became a topic which received considerable attention. In this article we provide an overview of current induction practices in Ontario, and consider the relationship between programmes at the school system level and broad‐scale government policy. Using a policy analysis framework we consider the level of interest and activity relating to induction from 1988 through 1991, culminating in the study on which this article is based, and discuss this in relation to the 1993 policy context.

In the Classroom, in the Corridors, and in the Boardroom--The Professional Place of Canada's Teachers in Future Policy Making.

Abstract: In today's context of increasing demands and diminishing resources, many teachers in Canada successfully manage the interrelated challenges in the classroom (attending to student interests, responding to student variability, maintaining productive working relationships with students, evaluating to support student learning) and in the corridors (learning on the job, cooperating with many stakeholders, building an enabling workplace, justifying ongoing decisions and actions). As signposts of their increasing professionalism they remain client‐centred and knowledge‐based in their ongoing efforts to improve classroom and school practices. Yet teachers do not have a major voice in decisions which affect their work and development. Without a senior partnership in the boardroom teachers neither achieve the professional position within their reach nor make a significant contribution to the improvement of the educational system. This article rejects the current preference for bureaucratic strategies which strive f...

Why compare? A response to Stephen Lawton

Abstract: This paper aims to stimulate interest in comparative education policy analysis through a critique of a paper written by Stephen Lawton (Journal of Education Policy, 7(2), 1992) We argue that such comparative analysis is an important element in understanding neo‐liberal education reforms However, more work needs to be done in providing adequate categories for analysis We do not believe that Lawton's meet the criteria for such analysis In the first part of the paper we discuss Lawton's categories, showing how, in our view, they fall short The second part provides an initial, and very brief, discussion of what might constitute adequate categories for analysis We end with a plea for more work in this field, and invite others to work with us!

Planning and implementing education policy in a developing country: a study of the shift system in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract: Charged with responsibility for their own planning and developmental activities, developing nations have amassed a record of education undertakings which they have not been able to honour. In this category is Trinidad and Tobago's policy for ‘de‐shifting’ its ‘bi‐sessional’ schools. Several attempts have been made to end the practice of bi‐sessionalism, but without much success. The present article draws on insights from the planning and implementation of educational policy in a context outside Trinidad and Tobago, to focus attention on some factors which local policy makers and planners might consider in their difficult position of trying to implement the above de‐shifting policy. Among the insights borrowed are observations about the cycle of project implementation activities, recent concerns believed to be essential in the implementation process, and characteristics likely to facilitate implementability. Focus on de‐shifting is important in view of plans now afoot in Trinidad and Tobago to review those...

Routes to adulthood in a changing society: the Portuguese experience

Abstract: In Portugal, the modalities of youth transitions are primarily regulated by the economic changes occasioned by modernization, but the specific ways in which young people enter employment are equally linked to traditional cultural values which promote starting work early in life. Poverty and illiteracy are still widespread, inequalities of social and educational opportunities remain marked. In effect, modernization can exacerbate marginalization and exclusion for those young people who are not formally educationally successful by blocking alternative possibilities for social mobility. Future educational policies must be elastic, in order to respond to a rapidly changing landscape and to adapt to an integrated European market, which is the most important challenge for the coming decade.

Principles of legitimation in educational discourses in Iceland and the production of progress

Abstract: On the one hand this paper is an exploration of how suitable the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault are to explain educational reform. At another level, the paper tells a story of educational reform in Iceland in the last 25 years ‐ through the Bourdieuean and Foucauldian lenses. The paper identifies legitimating principles in the discourse on educational reform in Iceland and focuses on the tensions over what counts as capital in teacher education. In short, pedagogy, curriculum theory, educational psychology and other educational sciences signify a discursive pole that is gaining currency at the cost of the capital of the traditional academic disciplines, such as Icelandic, history and biology, which signify the other pole in this spectrum. The paper argues that an epistemology of progress underlying reform often prevents reformers from taking a reflective stance on the historical foundations of their beliefs in educational science; they take for granted that progress and evolution are poss...

Teacher research and British Columbia's curricular instructional experiment: implications for educational policy

Abstract: Teacher research serves as an innovative redirection of the tradition of framing the education of teachers around curriculum policies. It recognizes and encourages teachers as agents of knowing and constructors of knowledge. It is inquiry‐based, frequently collaborative, and invariably generative of teachers’ craft knowledge. British Columbia is currently in the middle of a most ambitious revision of its education system. This system‐wide attempt at innovation has provided an enabling context within which teachers in the province could engage in classroom‐based research as they attempt to build a learner‐focused curriculum. This article describes the teacher research efforts that have been taking place in the province, and attempts to derive important implications for educational policy. Teacher research permitted teachers to honour the educative agenda of schools, suggesting that more, rather than less, structures like teacher research groups be provided for in the implementation of complex educational i...

Young people and schooling in France at the close of the 20th century: reproduction and social change 1

Abstract: The contemporary history of schooling might be described as one of rising levels of educational participation but, equally and more fundamentally, as one of reproduction of class and gender inequalities. This paper explores some dimensions of the relationships between reproduction and social change in these terms and then moves on to consider the character of contemporary French youth and selected aspects of youth culture as these illustrate change and continuity in class and gender divisions. 1Translation from French: Lynne Chisholm.

The integrated services specialist: an interdisciplinary preservice training model

Abstract: (1993). The integrated services specialist: an interdisciplinary preservice training model. Journal of Education Policy: Vol. 8, No. 5, pp. 161-163.