Showing papers on "White paper published in 1986"

Towards a Systemic Approach to Research in Teaching: the place of investigative pedagogy

Abstract: In a comment to the Conference of the National Foundation for Educational Research in October 1982, the Minister of Education remarked that educational research on classroom teaching is patchy and urged researchers to make good use of their findings by helping teachers employ them in the classroom (TES, 1982). This was followed by the White Paper Teaching Quality (HMSO, 1983) and about a year later by advertisements for research in teacher education by the ESRC. I suggest that the White Paper and the ESRC guidelines are recipes for exactly the kind of research that the Minister was bemoaning. The message that is coming from the Department of Education and Science and associated bodies is that research on teaching and teacher education will be subject or age group specific. There will also be a strong emphasis on selection and on assessment of teaching competence. Taken with the fact that over 50% of all government educational research funding is for work on testing and examinations, one gets a flavour of type of problems being addressed (Nisbet & Nisbet, 1985). There is no mention of work related to the improvement of teaching. There is no evidence of any thought that there might be generic teaching skills, that is, skills that are common to all learning situations. Insofar as it is possible to detect any conception of pedagogy, it seems to adhere to the traditional apprenticeship view, a view that is supported by the heavy emphasis on the virtues of practical experience. The confused nature of these views is apparent when one considers their implications. If teaching skills are subject specific, what, or who is the arbiter of the level of specificity to which they relate? And if they are specific, is there an implication that pedagogy is a fragmented and incohate study with no hope of general utility? 167

Poverty and unemployment traps and trappings

Abstract: The existence of the poverty and unemployment traps within the United Kingdom's overall tax and benefit structure has been a cause of concern for several years, and has been thoroughly documented.1 The concern is registered across the political spectrum from those who are worried about the effect on the individual welfare of those who are forced to forego all or most of any extra earnings they produce to those interested in the macroeconomic effect nationally of such disincentives. The way in which any reforms of either the systems of personal taxation or of social security operate on these traps is therefore important. This article examines how the traps operate in the case of a family under the present systems of social security and personal taxation, as compared with the new forms of social security proposed in the recent White Paper, Reform of Social Security–Programme for Action.2

A Profile of Army Families in USAREUR: Results of the 1983 Families in Europe Survey

Abstract: : Family wellness, partnership with the Army, and sense of community were identified as important Army family issues in the White Paper, 'The Army Family' issued by the Chief of Staff in August 1983. This report presents the views and perceptions of over 1,000 Army families in USAREUR, both military members and spouses, with respect to family life in the Army and more specifically, family experiences associated with an overseas assignment. The data have been organized to serve as a reference source for Army planners and decision makers in their formulation and assessment of programs and policies that impact on Army families.

Research Communities, The White Paper Chase and a New Research Ecumenism

Abstract: The period when the British Educational Research Association (BERA) was founded was one in which there was an increasing recognition amongst the research community that a wind of change had stirred up the settled traditions of educational research It was a time which celebrated the promise of alternative paradigms for research Ten or so years on we are entering another era where the emphasis is not on the reconceptualisation of what research is but on how it is organised I think one can discern at least two factors, not wholly separate from each other, that will increasingly influence how a substantial part of research will be organised These two factors are the changes which have taken place in the composition of the research community and the direction of current Government policy concerning the school system I aim to show how these are leading to a fruitful form of collaborative research at local level which should be encouraged and supported —not least by BERA

A standard for justice : a critical commentary on the proposed Bill of Rights for New Zealand

Abstract: The question whether New Zealand should have a Bill of Rights has been debated for many years. The publication in 1985 of a White Paper on this subject was a landmark in the campaign. The arguments in support of a Bill of Rights are presented in the first chapter of this book. The second chapter discusses the Draft Bill article by article, examining its strengths and weaknessses and, in particular, whether it adequately fulfills New Zealand's international legal obligations. The authors' own Alternative Draft Bill of Rights is presented in the third chapter.

Cutting the cake: government spending plans for 1986-9.

Abstract: This year's public expenditure White Paper is larger, more detailed, and more expensive than any previously.1 Volume 1 is a slim overview of government spending; volume 2 gives each department's spending in more detail, as well as some information on the services provided. The White Paper is thus the equivalent of a company annual report, with all the nation as shareholders. How do the prospects look? The spring budget is the endpoint of a series of close negotiations between the Treasury and government departments during the previous 12 months. An autumn statement (in November) gives the broad results of the annual review of public spending, and the expenditure White Paper (nowadays issued in January) defines the plans for the forthcoming financial year and projections for the future. Revisions of spending and indications of revenue from taxation and borrowing are finally incorporated in the budget.

Planners and the Australian Labour Market 1945-1949

Abstract: Broadly speaking, recent research on Reconstruction after World War II has concentrated on two main areas: analysis of the economic and political thought and discussion underpinning the production of the 1945 White Paper on Full Employment1 and discussion of specific aspects of government policy such as immigration and housing.2 This paper concerns itself with the labour market and the outlook and motivation underlying the policies pursued there by federal government planners. With post-World War I events in mind, the major aim of both politicians and their public service advisers in the 1940s was to restrain the inflationary forces in the labour market while the Australian economy endeavoured to switch back to civilian production. Fear of inflation underlay the retention of price control, itself clearly seen to rest on the maintenance for as long as possible of the wartime wage freeze which pegged rates at their 1941 levels. The grass roots campaign by the workforce for improvement in wages, hours and other conditions of work was clearly foreseen. The line pursued by the government was to delay and deflect industrial labour's array of demands in every conceivable way. In this the foresight, prestige and tactical know-how of Prime Minister J. B. Chifley was the trump card. We will not concern ourselves here with the detail of industrial bargaining, manoeuvre and confrontation or with the union movement's surprising inability to comprehend the central importance of the wage cost freeze to the government's entire economic strategy.3 Suffice it to say that the reality of the industrially turbulent months of peace is at considerable variance with the commonly accepted version of events popularised by Chifley's biographer.4 The Prime Minister's masterful rearguard action meant that, despite the manifest, aggressive determination of all sectors of the workforce backed by unprecedented bargaining strength and by apparently binding assurances offered by the ALP wartime government, the unions made no major breakthroughs on the wages hours front for virtually the first two years of peace. Instead of an immediate 'autonomous' increase in the quarterly indexed Basic (minimum adult male)

Justifying departmental expenditure programmes

Abstract: The Government are urging health and local authorities to publish measures of their performance. How does the Government's own annual Public Expenditure White Paper justify the programmes they are asking Parliament to finance?

Bargaining for Reconstruction

Abstract: Reconstruction did not follow a natural progression leading easily and directly to the post-war haven of welfare state and full employment. At times, especially in 1941–42, it seemed as if the planners were still trying to solve 1930s problems. Their inter-war experience continued to infuse discussion on the inner government committees so that the main product, the 1944 White Paper on employment policy, became a palimpsest whose original ink and pigments occasionally showed through. No simple lifting of old constraints occurred, allowing pre-war ‘middle opinion’ to dominate the agenda — indeed whatever new ideas or principles emerged, traditional governing practice was very largely restored. The picture given in most accounts written after the war, with Whiggish overtones of evolutionary improvement based on an assumed alliance between Ministers of both parties, bureaucrats and outsiders, drew its colour from ideas about the role of government which at the time participants did not share. Instead, they competed to write the future’s agenda in all areas where their substantive interests were concerned. Striving for advantage, each department or institution tried to influence the plans, thus ensuring, first, that what emerged was not what had originally been imagined, and second that the many different plans for reform, ranging from policies on trade to budgetary balance, monopolies to the labour market, would finally be amalgamated into a single scheme, as the best if not the only way to win general agreement.

Men and Issues

Abstract: During the first five years of Conservative government, the parties and institutions drifted out of sympathy with the political ethos of the immediate post-war consensus in response to changing external conditions and their members’ increasing discontents. Those who staffed industry’s and unions’ central organisations, however, and even more the Civil Service mandarins, still took for granted the existence of a common interest in the 1944 White Paper’s blend of mutual advantage and reciprocal obligation — if the leaders of the institutions could only be made to accept them. But the mandarins had first to contend with a novel impediment: the Churchill government’s suspicious attempts to rearrange or downgrade their functions.