This paper presents a study of dominant educational discourses through textual critique and argues that such an approach enables education studies to preserve an important distinction from teacher training. The texts deconstructed here are specific to English education, but the discourses at work have international relevance as the rhetorics of…

Drawing on the Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS), this paper documents the assessment practices of about 250 Queensland primary and secondary classrooms and the extent to which they align with those pedagogical practices described as "productive pedagogies" in the research. In considering the extent of this alignment, the paper…

The paper examines parental views regarding the implementation of Educational Legislation 113(I)/99 in Cyprus regarding the integration of children with special needs in the mainstream school. It is based on parental interviews which were taken in the course of a large research project regarding the implementation of the new legislation in primary…

This paper is concerned with the longstanding question of policy for those referred to nearly half a century ago by the Crowther Report as the "bottom half"; those mainly working class children who, in a sense, are "selected for failure". The issue of selection is a matter of concern in countries around the world and has been at the centre of…

For several decades, the Maltese educational system was almost entirely reliant on English examination boards for certification in secondary and post-secondary education. In the 1990s, Maltese policy-makers decided to establish an affordable local examination system aimed at a wide range of students. This paper focuses on the review of the…

This paper is organized around a single interview with an academic colleague who was asked to reflect on his changing experience of Ph.D. supervision. Material from the interview is used to raise some questions about the nature of responsible supervision in the humanities and social sciences, and the ways in which the possibilities for responsible…

This article explores the experiences of widening access students at two prestigious universities in Scotland. It is based on interview data collected from a small sample of young and mature students who had all attended a widening access course prior to coming to university. The analysis centres on the students' construction of themselves as "day…

This article reports on a study of teachers in New South Wales (Australia) and their practices surrounding outcomes assessment and reporting, which took place in 2003 and 2004 as a follow-up to a major study in 1995. The study explored whether the main focus of a teacher's work involves planning, teaching, assessing, rewarding and sharing in their…

Much of the research in the area of ethnicity and schooling is conducted in countries with a long tradition of immigration. The rapidity of social change in Ireland at a time of unprecedented economic growth is such that many schools, while still "mainly white", are grappling with the particular challenges that are posed by new patterns of…

Under neo-liberal modes of governance, new forms of partnership are emerging. This article begins by looking at the notion of partnership and the dominant model of partnership operating under New Labour in the United Kingdom, through a discussion of two cases of partnership working. I argue that the dominant model of partnership is primarily…

This article takes a broad, and somewhat personal, sweep across the last 30 years or so of educational history in the United Kingdom (UK)and highlights some of the challenges concerning research, policy and practice on teaching and learning which developed over the period. Issues associated with academic agency are considered and a narrative of…

The British Labour Party has continued to make progress on education, following two broad policy paths and adopting a pragmatic approach that does not attempt to force these to cross or converge. One path is that of the quasi market inherited from the previous Conservative administration; the other is characterised as "intervention" to support…

Despite burgeoning interests in "the body" as a topic of sociological interest and analysis in recent decades, with few notable exceptions, the sociology of education has not taken as seriously as it might how "embodied subjectivities" both shape and are framed by contexts of teaching and learning. There are processes of formal education that may…

In this article I argue that qualitative research that focuses attention on how change is being understood and experienced on the ground can contribute to broader theoretical insights. In recent research I have been exploring how lecturers apply their understandings of learning outcomes and personal development planning. At one level, these…

This article reports on Australian research that developed the concept of "productive pedagogies", a model that is deemed to be socially just and appropriate for the contemporary post-modern globalised world. The model extends the modernist one of "authentic pedagogy" developed in the USA and sits as a counter to the inauthentic post-modernist…