Michael Young's work is central to debates about knowledge and the school curriculum. In recent years he has renounced his early argument that school subjects represent the "knowledge of the powerful", arguing instead that access and equality for all students are dependent on ensuring that all get access to "powerful…

This paper uses Basil Bernstein's work on pedagogic discourses to examine a largely neglected facet of the history of vocational education--the liberal studies movement in English further education colleges. Initially, the paper discusses some of the competing conceptions of education, work and society which underpinned the rise and fall of…

R. Freeman Butts was an American historian and philosopher of education who died in March 2010. This paper will investigate Butts' various roles and writings and ask the question: why is Butts important to the contemporary generation of teacher educators and teachers? This paper will argue that the breadth of Butts' work builds…

Recent reflection on the professional knowledge of teachers has been marked by a shift away from more reductive competence and skill-focused models of teaching towards a view of teacher expertise as involving complex context-sensitive deliberation and judgement. Much of this shift has been inspired by an Aristotelian conception of practical wisdom…

This paper critically examines shifts in emphasis in Australian education from expectations and belief that teachers not only make a difference to student achievement, but they are the difference. In moving from social class relations accounts to self-managing school accounts, latest shifts (teacher effectiveness accounts) over-emphasize teacher…

This paper uses Bernsteinian concepts to identify how forms of power and control within teacher professional formation are exercised. Drawing on previous comparative work into collaborative models of teacher education and contemporary examples from school-based programmes, it is argued that current developments in England raise substantive…

This paper focuses on teacher education in the English further education sector, where the teaching of disciplinary and pedagogic knowledge is an issue. Using research findings, the paper advocates an approach based on collaboration and informed research to emphasize and integrate knowledge(s) in situated teaching contexts despite working in a…

The UK Coalition Government has recently introduced a number of education policies that aim to reform initial teacher development in England. It has argued that the training of new teachers will be improved by giving greater priority to the development of "key teaching skills". This narrowly practical and overly managerial approach to…

It is increasingly maintained that cost-benefit analysis (CBA) should play a greater role in educational policy-making. This article critically examines the rationale guiding CBA and its compatibility to educational settings. Drawing on philosophical discussions, it argues that the rationale guiding CBA has some fundamental limitations that render…

This paper argues that the evolution of further education colleges in England is marked by both continuities and change, and provides evidence to show that they retain many of the characteristics and the underlying rationale present at the turn of the twentieth century. A defining characteristic remains the colleges' need to respond to…

In this paper, we consider the relationship between the existence of private schools and public attitudes towards questions about educational provision. Data from the 2010 British Social Attitudes survey suggest that parents who choose to send children to private schools may become more entrenched in their support for more extensive forms of…

This paper examines the continuity and changes in Clarke's ideas about the State and community in education, especially in relation to a rapidly changing political situation in England in the 1930s and 1940s. His ideas evolved in the intellectual context of British idealism. Moreover, in response to the threat to democracy arising from…

Launched in 1995, the GoodWork Project is a long-term, multi-site effort to understand the nature of good work across the professional landscape and to promote its achievement by relevant groups of students and professionals. In this essay, the authors review the goals and methods of the initial research project and its most salient findings. They…

"How helpful and how necessary is it for at least some of us to see ourselves as professional educational researchers?" asked Donald McIntyre in his 1996 presidential address to the British Educational Research Association. Still pertinent to consideration of the direction in which the British educational research community ought to…

This paper begins with an analysis of global problems shaping education, particularly as they impact upon learning and life chances. In addressing these problems a range of philosophical positions and controversies are considered, including: traditional romantic and institutional views of schooling; and more recent maximalist, neo-liberal,…