This paper traces long-standing philosophical, sociological and political tensions that have been at the core of narratives about state-funded teacher education, since its inception in England. These tensions are still visible today in debates around the professional knowledge of teachers, such as those described in Furlong (2013).…

The close study of classroom talk has been an active field of research since the 1970s, when John Furlong made his significant contribution. Focusing particularly on research into teacher-student interactions, we will review the development of this field from the 1970s until the present, considering what has been learned and the educational…

This paper discusses one of Furlong's major areas of work, the theory and practice of teacher education. Taking up where our joint publication "Teacher Education in Transition: Re-Forming Professionalism?" (Open University Press 2000) left off, it examines how accelerated moves towards school-based teacher education, as well as…

Like many senior teacher-educators and educational researchers, John Furlong has faced in several directions throughout his career, sometimes simultaneously. He has clearly not lost his enthusiasm for what happens in the classroom: he strongly appreciates those magical moments which can happen at any time, and which keep teachers going. He loves…

From the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, schools micro-computing in the UK developed from being a niche "hobbyist" activity to a prominent, officially mandated element of the national education system. Drawing on in-depth interviews with key actors of the time, this paper outlines the initial varied interpretations of schools…

Focusing on data and policies from England, trends in educational disadvantage by area are traced from the late 1960s when the first pilot projects were established in the UK, to the present. The origins of these developments and the subsequent rises and falls of such area-based policies in England are reviewed. Specially collected data for the…

Since its inception in 1992 Ofsted (The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) has inspected schools under Section 9 of the Education (Schools) Act 1992; Section 10 of the School Inspections Act 1996; and Section 5 of the Education Act 2005. Pressure on England to improve its system of education has not only…

My aim in this paper is to raise the question of educational authority in terms of a philosophical and historical understanding in the context of a democratic polity. In particular, I wish to advance the view that educational authority in England is not well-founded since it resides increasingly with the Secretary of State for Education. This…

This paper explores the complex relationship between social justice and education in the public and private spheres. The politics of education is often presented as a battle between left and right, the state and the market. In this representation, the public and the private spheres are neatly aligned on either side of the line of battle, and…

This article looks at the impact of Philippe Aries's classic "L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien regime", published in 1960. His well-known idea of the emergence of "Le sentiment de l'enfance" caused a lively debate among historians and social scientists resulting in fundamental contributions to our knowledge about the early phase of the…

This paper is concerned with the ethics of relationships in doctoral supervision. We give an overview of four paradigms of doctoral supervision that have endured over the past 25 years and elucidate some of their strengths and limitations, contextualise them historically and consider their implications for doctoral supervision in the contemporary…

John Macmurray was a public intellectual and an early proponent of popular education through the new medium of radio. National broadcasting of the time was finding its role in the competing cultures of education and entertainment, and significantly one of Macmurray's first radio projects in 1931-1932 concerned the issue of "Learning to Live". Here…

Newly accessible data from the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 are used to investigate the legacy in the 1950s of reforms to Scottish secondary schooling in the first four decades of the 20th century. These reforms had sought to extend opportunity for post-primary education beyond the children of the professional middle class who had formed the…

A pressing question about the expansion of higher education is whether it tends to be inclusive, in the sense of bringing in larger proportions of persons from disadvantaged backgrounds, or diversifying, in that higher education tends to differentiate as it expands, or both, by bringing more persons into an increasingly stratified system of higher…

Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft are linked by intellectual and political bonds; for both, education is a philosophical and political preoccupation in its own right, and also interacts with philosophical questions of morality, social power, theology, truth and human action. Macaulay's philosophical and political engagements with Hobbes,…