This article explores the experiences of those who lead undergraduate education-related programmes in further education (FE) colleges in England. Questionnaire and interview fieldwork with 14 further education-based programme leaders were supplemented by a comparison survey of equivalent professionals from higher education institutions (HEIs).…

Unprecedented reform to teacher education in England, through the Initial Teacher Training Market Review, led to the threat of removal of the right for established providers to offer programmes of initial teacher education beyond 2024 without reaccreditation. Such policy reform has been constructed in relation to a perceived gap in research about…

In this article, we examine education policymaking in England during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the period from 2020 to 2022. We argue that the pandemic, while obviously damaging materially, economically and psychologically, seemed to have provided a rare opportunity for a step change, a chance to recalibrate and reconsider values assumed…

I have had a close and long-standing relationship with the IOE (Institute of Education), UCL's Faculty of Education and Society (University College London, UK). In order to understand why and how for many years the IOE became my 'second home', I infuse this article with a combination of critical academic and political points and a detailed sense…

This article recalls the key concept of due regard in the Equality Act 2010 and outlines how it was increasingly ignored by the Department for Education (DfE) in England in the following decade. Further, it speculates that if the concept of due regard had been observed more rigorously across all government departments, the COVID-19 pandemic would…

This article makes the case for repositioning values and ethics as central to understanding how curriculum knowledge can be educationally powerful. Disciplinary knowledge can help individuals make sense of the present, explore alternative futures and participate in society, making ethical choices about how to live. This, however, depends on…

Across major anglophone college systems, institutions in various jurisdictions have gained the authority to award the bachelor's degree. That prospect has come late to further education colleges in England. With its long history of teaching for the bachelor's degree, the English road to awarding powers has features in common with and different…

Recent debate has highlighted the Important significance of social partnership in further education for developing new approaches to English vocational education and training (VET). There is international evidence of the contribution that well-established social partnerships between employers, unions and government can make to deliver VET…

This article critically analyses national and institutional forms of policy and different conceptions of widening participation in higher education in England by contrasting representations of 'it' as a 'problem' to be managed, compared with complex and recurring dilemmas in practice. Building on Bacchi's (2012a) strategy, the article asks,…

Our world has been transformed by technologies incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) within mass communication, employment, entertainment and many other aspects of our daily lives. However, within the domain of education, it seems that our ways of working and, particularly, assessing have hardly changed at all. We continue to prize…

Lesson study is increasingly prevalent as a collaborative activity in which teachers take part to explore their practice. There are many variations in how lesson study manifests itself, even in Japan, where it originated. However, in Japan, fundamental to lesson study is a focus on collaboration in researching teachers' professional practice. In…

Much research into structural reform in education has reported on the success or failure of individual projects. Less attention has been paid to how the discourses associated with reform are normalized in teachers' and head teachers' thinking, and realized in their actions. In this article, we engage with resistance at the interface of legal…

This article examines two scenarios for the future of education over the coming decades, mainly in England but also in comparable countries. It does so against the background of six large-scale historical processes now in progress: increasing longevity, the expansion of the internet, changes in work patterns, climate change, the rise in inequality…

This article discusses John White's recent critique of the notion of 'powerful knowledge'. It is argued that White raises some salient points but overlooks the genesis of powerful knowledge as an idea and its debt to Durkheim and Bernstein. It is suggested that the work of Michael Young and others on powerful knowledge can be understood as both an…

This article focuses on the transformative academies policy in England. Based on an analysis of documentary evidence, we argue that the policy has resulted in the fragmentation of the state-funded school system and stark variation between academies, with those within multi-academy trusts (MATs) having no legal identity. We examine the variation…