263 research outputs found

    The impact of multi-academy trust (MAT) governance and accountability systems on the people involved in the organization: Implications for professional autonomy and agency, local representation, and claims to legitimacy

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    Since its inception in the early 2000s, the Academies Programme in England has developed apace, with the Academies Act of 2010 encouraging schools to move out of local authority control, and a more recent policy intention for all schools in England to be part of a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) by 2030 (DfE, 2022). This has provoked growing concern over the structures of governance and accountability within compulsory education, and the facility for public scrutiny. With major decision-making increasingly at MAT-level, there are implications for the autonomy of school leaders and local governors. This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of individuals in MATs, and the implications for professional autonomy and agency of the centralization of governance and accountability. In so doing, it also examined what made the MAT legitimate. Using qualitative methods, this longitudinal study was framed within a phenomenological-interpretivist approach, conducting interviews over a period of four years with individuals (CEOs, trustees, local governors, academy leaders and staff and parents) across four MATs in England. Additionally, policy enactment theory was used to frame participants’ experiences within both the national and local policy context. The findings highlighted the fragility of a system over-reliant on the reputation and expertise of the founding CEO, whilst appointing trustees who often lacked education knowledge and understanding of local issues and priorities. A lack of plurality and representation on the trust board, together with limited agency for academy leads, the reduction in local governor autonomous decision-making powers and parental reluctance to be involved in the new system, all pointed to a diminishment of space for the local voice. Future policy formation on MATs needs to address the following issues. First, the development of a more participative system of governance and downward and lateral systems of accountability, which would address the value of including the local voice and recognise the importance of restoring local professional agency and autonomy. Second, improving representation and appropriate expertise on trust boards to be a truer reflection of the academy communities they serve, to prevent the charge of MATs appointing ‘people like us’, and to ensure they can provide effective, intellectual scrutiny and challenge to the CEO and their staff

    Universalité mineure : Penser l’humanité après l’universalisme occidental

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    The circulation and entanglements of human beings, data, and goods have not necessarily and by themselves generated a universalising consciousness. The "global" and the "universal", in other words, are not the same. The idea of a world-society remains highly contested. Our times are marked by the fragmentation of a double relativistic character: the inevitable critique of Western universalism on the one hand, and resurgent identitarian and neo-nationalistic claims to identity on the other. Sources of an argumentation for a strong universalism brought forward by Western traditions such as Christianity, Marxism, and Liberalism have largely lost their legitimation. All the while, manifold and situated narratives of a common world that re-address the universal are under way of being produced and gain significance. This volume tracks the development and relevance of such cultural and social practices that posit forms of what we call minor universality. It asks: Where and how do contemporary practices open up concrete settings so as to create experiences, reflections and agencies of a shared humanity?European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Gran

    New Directions in Private Law Theory

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    New Directions in Private Law Theory brings together some of the best new work on private law theory, reflecting the breadth of this increasingly important field. The contributions interrogate a wide range of topics including aspects of private law doctrine, its development, ordering and application. The authors adopt a variety of different approaches and contribute to ongoing and important debates about the moral foundations of private law, the individuation of areas of private law and the connections between private law and everyday moral experience. Questions addressed include: Does the diversity identified amongst claims in unjust enrichment mean that the category is incoherent? Are claims in tort law always about compensating for wrongs? How should we understand parties’ agreement in contract? The contributions shed new light on these and other topics, and the ways in which they intersect and open up new lines of scholarly enquiry. The book will be of interest to researchers working in private law and legal theory, but it will also appeal to those outside of law, most notably researchers with an interest in moral and political philosophy, economics and history

    The Tragedy of the Self:Lectures on Global Hermeneutics

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    Why do human beings interpret their overall experience in terms of selfhood? How was the notion and sense of self shaped at different times and in different cultures? What sort of problems or paradoxes did these constructions face? These lectures address these and related questions by sketching a roadmap of possible theoretical avenues for conceiving of the self, bringing to the foreground its soteriological implications, while also testing this theoretical outlook against insights offered by various disciplines. Exploring the crosscultural spectrum of possible ways of conceiving of the self invites the more existential question of whether any of these possibilities might offer resources for dealing with the tragedies of today’s world, or maybe even saving it from some of them

    Central and Eastern European Literary Theory and the West

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    The twentieth century saw intensive intellectual exchange between Eastern and Central Europe and the West. Yet political and linguistic obstacles meant that many important trends in East and Central European thought and knowledge hardly registered in Western Europe and the US. This book uncovers the hidden westward movements of Eastern European literary theory and its influence on Western scholarship

    From transformational grammar to constraint-based approaches

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    Synopsis: This book introduces formal grammar theories that play a role in current linguistic theorizing (Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar/Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-​Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, Tree Adjoining Grammar). The key assumptions are explained and it is shown how the respective theory treats arguments and adjuncts, the active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and fronting of constituents over long distances. The analyses are explained with German as the object language. The second part of the book compares these approaches with respect to their predictions regarding language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. The nativism hypothesis, which assumes that humans posses genetically determined innate language-specific knowledge, is critically examined and alternative models of language acquisition are discussed. The second part then addresses controversial issues of current theory building such as the question of flat or binary branching structures being more appropriate, the question whether constructions should be treated on the phrasal or the lexical level, and the question whether abstract, non-visible entities should play a role in syntactic analyses. It is shown that the analyses suggested in the respective frameworks are often translatable into each other. The book closes with a chapter showing how properties common to all languages or to certain classes of languages can be captured.This book is a new edition of http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/25, http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/195, http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/255 , and http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/287.Fifth revised and extended editio

    Minimal Theologies

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    Originally published in in 2004. What, at this historical moment "after Auschwitz," still remains of the questions traditionally asked by theology? What now is theology's minimal degree? This magisterial study, the first extended comparison of the writings of Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas, explores remnants and echoes of religious forms in these thinkers' critiques of secular reason, finding in the work of both a "theology in pianissimo" constituted by the trace of a transcendent other. The author analyzes, systematizes, and formalizes this idea of an other of reason. In addition, he frames these thinkers' innovative projects within the arguments of such intellectual heirs as Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, defending their work against later accusations of "performative contradiction" (by Habermas) or "empiricism" (by Derrida) and in the process casting important new light on those later writers as well. Attentive to rhetorical and rational features of Adorno's and Levinas's texts, his investigations of the concepts of history, subjectivity, and language in their writings provide a radical interpretation of their paradoxical modes of thought and reveal remarkable and hitherto unsuspected parallels between their philosophical methods, parallels that amount to a plausible way of overcoming certain impasses in contemporary philosophical thinking. In Adorno, this takes the form of a dialectical critique of dialectics; in Levinas, that of a phenomenological critique of phenomenology, each of which sheds new light on ancient and modern questions of metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. For the English-language publication, the author has extensively revised and updated the prize-winning German version

    Feminist Care Ethics Confronts Mainstream Philosophy

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    This Special Issue of Philosophies is devoted to dialogue between feminist care ethics and mainstream philosophical figures and concepts. As care ethics has evolved from its origins in the 1980s, it is clear that it does not always fit neatly within traditional philosophical categories. Yet, the philosophical implications of the ethics of care are robust and extend beyond ethics as such, with care theorists positing ontological, epistemological, and political significance to its approach. Despite these implications, and the growing acceptance of care ethics in a variety of academic literatures, it remains a somewhat marginalized philosophical framework. The original contributions to this volume juxtapose care theory with established philosophers and philosophical thought. The goal is to catalyze further intellectual interest and attention in how care enriches philosophy across a variety of subjects. In attending to both the intersections and interstices between care ethics and established philosophical theories and approaches, the contributions in this Special Issue provide a unique intellectual space for dialogue between significant philosophical figures and care ethics, with the aim of enriching both philosophical traditions. Accordingly, this Special Issue will appeal to scholars and practitioners from mainstream philosophy traditions, as well as those engaged with feminist philosophy, care theory, and the ethics of care
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