Based on over twenty years of empirical and intellectual work about knowledge production in the field of educational administration, I examine the origins and development of the canon, methodologies and knowledge workers in England. I focus on the field as being primarily concerned with professional activity and how and why this was established…

This paper examines Michael Young's 1958 dystopia, "The Rise of the Meritocracy". In this book, the word "meritocracy" was coined and used in a pejorative sense. Today, however, meritocracy represents a positive ideal against which we measure the justice of our institutions. This paper argues that, when read in the twenty-first century, Young's…

In the contemporary literature of educational philosophy and theory, it is almost routinely assumed or claimed that "education" is a "contested" concept: that is, it is held that education is invested--as it were, "all the way down"--with socially constructed interests and values that are liable to diverge in different contexts to the point of…

Discussions about freedom of speech and academic freedom today are about the limits to those freedoms. However, these discussions take place mostly in the higher education trade press and do not receive any serious attention from academics and educationalists. In this paper several key arguments for limiting academic freedom are identified,…

This paper examines the compliance of universities in the European Union with the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel, which deals primarily with protection for academic freedom. The paper briefly surveys the European genesis of the modern research university and academic freedom, before evaluating…

Academic freedom does not refer to freedom to engage in any speech act, but to freedom to hold any belief and espouse it in an appropriately academic manner. This freedom belongs to certain institutions, rather than to individuals, because of their academic nature. Academic freedom should be absolute, regardless of any offence it may on occasion…

The classical conception of academic freedom associated with Wilhelm von Humboldt and the rise of the modern university has a quite specific cultural foundation that centres on the controversial mental faculty of "judgement". This article traces the roots of "judgement" back to the Protestant Reformation, through its heyday as the signature…

This paper draws on the work of Basil Bernstein to offer a (re-) conceptualisation of creativity for the English further education (FE) sector. It begins by locating creativity within the political economy of FE and argues that teaching and learning is constrained by an instrumental remit for the sector, which prioritises perceived economic needs…

This paper draws on recent work by John Clarke and Janet Newman and their colleagues to analyse a relatively coherent governmental project, spanning the decades of Conservative and New Labour government in England since 1979, that has sought to render teachers increasingly subservient to the state and agencies of the state. Under New Labour this…

This paper traces the origins of the concept of personalisation in public sector services, and applies it to school education. The original conceptualisation stressed the need for "deep" rather than shallow, personalisation, if radical transformation of services were to be achieved. It is argued that as the concept has been disseminated and…

This paper considers a distinction between two types of politics developed by Michael Oakeshott in his book "The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Scepticism" (1996) and argues that the theoretical framework proposed supplies an illuminating and productive perspective for examining the notion of political extremism. These positions are linked…

This paper attempted to piece together the constituent elements of J. F. Herbart's educational theory, not to attempt a comprehensive re-assessment. (Author/RK)

Aporti is credited with starting Italian infant education, opening his first school in 1827 in Lombardy, which was then ruled by Austria. This paper discusses Aporti's educational views, his career, the spread of Italian infant schools and, particularly, reactions of the government and the church to Aporti and his movement. (SJL)

This article assaults the definition of the characteristics of a theory of education; the discussion covers the place of morals within such a theory, the Hirst-O'Connor controversy, and other views of theories of education. (KC)

With particular attention to the work of Percy Nunn, the author examines individuality as an aim of education and discusses some of the "exaggerations" of the core idea of self-determination: child-centered education, creativity, eccentricity, and elitism. He looks at some curricular issues relevant to implementing self-creative education.…