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Deconstructing 'Standards' in Education
This thesis explores how a disadvantaged context impacts on secondary school organisation and processes, and how this affects quality, as measured by OFSTED inspection. OFSTED data indicates a school quality problem in disadvantaged areas. This is often interpreted as arising from factors internal to the school. Policy interventions have concentrated on generic school improvement measures. However, it may be argued that if poor quality arises from context as well as from internal factors, policy responses should also be contextualised. Earlier work (Gewirtz 1998; Thrupp 1999) has begun to reveal process effects of disadvantaged contexts. This thesis builds on that work by exploring differences between disadvantaged areas, making an explicit link to quality measures, and using wider literatures from the fields of neighbourhood studies and organisation theory to develop an understanding of schools as contextualised organisations. The thesis begins with a quantitative analysis of context/quality relationships, but is principally based on four qualitative case studies. These consider context objectively, analysing socio-economic, market and institutional factors, and also explore staff’s subjective interpretations. Process implications for schools are examined, as are the schools’ responses, in terms of the design and delivery of schooling. These findings are discussed in relation to OFSTED quality measures. The research reveals that the quality problem in poor areas is partly an artefact of the inspection system but also reflects contextual effects. It also finds that there are significant differences between the contexts of schools in disadvantaged areas, and that these are not captured by typical context measures. The study concludes that changes are needed in school funding and inspection to recognise contextual effects, and that specific practices need to be developed to enable school improvement in poor areas. Relying on schools to apply generic ‘good practice’ within existing constraints will not be sufficient to eliminate the quality problem.
Quality assurance procedures and evaluation processes have become dominant mainstream trends within the Irish education sectors over the last decade. Regulatory requirements relating to quality assurance and evaluation have being incrementally embedded into policy at, 'macro' European level, 'meso' national level and 'micro' institute/school level. This paper sets out to contextualise the rise of contemporary quality assurance and evaluation as evident in European Union policy documents, Irish national policy, and the academic literature. The mode of inquiry is grounded in interpretativism and strongly influenced by Guba and Lincoln's constructivist epistemology whereby the authors seek to construct 'Verstenehen' understanding from the 'life world'. The methodological approach is qualitative based on subjective assumptions gained from social action as actors in the 'field' and critical engagement with the discourse narrative. The inquiry method utilised comprises of document analysis, literature review, reflections on both, a case study of a quality review of a higher education institute and a case study of a school evaluation at second level. The quality review of the HE institute is utilised to amplify 'claims, concerns and issues'. The two authors worked in a collaborative fashion. By combining our experiences from the separate case studies and by analysis of relevant documentation we endeavour to forge a 'triangulation' of multi-dimensional perceived evidence into a framework which we suggest gives credibility and rigor to our inquiry and the conclusions outlined. Our intention is to develop a useful check list in other to give the reader a practical set of tools to utilise, either as they are presented or customised to suit their own needs. Final conclusions will be based constructed from the authors' 'praxis' theory and practice in action or theoretical knowledge gained from dialogue with peers and engagement with the literature and the dynamic social processes we actively participated in and the social phenomenon witnessed. This paper should be viewed as emergent work, aimed at prompting and facilitating dialogue during the conference, a more in-depth paper is pending. Analysis of data and drafting of the case study relating to the school evaluation is on going.
This book is about differences in intellectual capacity among people and groups and what those differences mean for America's future.(preface) The major purpose of this book] is to reveal the dramatic transformation that is currently in process in American society---a process that has created a new kind of class structure led by a "cognitive elite," itself a result of concentration and self-selection in those social pools well endowed with cognitive abilities. Herrnstein and Murray explore] the ways that low intelligence, independent of social, economic, or ethnic background, lies at the root of many of our social problems. The authors also demonstrate the truth of another taboo fact: that intelligence levels differ among ethnic groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)(jacket)
An essential aspect of school effectiveness theory is the shift from the social to the organisational context, from the macro- to the micro-culture. The school is represented largely as a bounded institution, set apart, but also in a precarious relationship with the broader social context. It is ironic that at a time when social disadvantage appears to be increasing in Britain and elsewhere, school effectiveness theory places less emphasis on poverty, deprivation and social exclusion. Instead, it places more emphasis on organisational factors such as professional leadership, home/school partnerships, the monitoring of academic progress, shared vision and goals. In this article, the authors evaluate the extent to which notions of effectiveness have displaced concerns about equity in theories of educational change. They explore the extent to which the social structures of gender, ethnicity, sexualities, special needs, social class, poverty and other historical forms of inequality have been incorporated into or distorted and excluded from effectiveness thinking.
Exclusion as Discursive Practice and the Politics of Identity Rights to language: equity, power and education
- M Hussain
HUSSAIN, M. (2000) Exclusion as Discursive Practice and the Politics of Identity, in: R. PHILLIPSON (Ed.) Rights to language: equity, power and education, pp. 144–148 (