Measuring privatisation in education: methodological challenges and possibilities

© 2018, © 2018 Educational Review. As the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) spreads, key questions that attempt to identify both the nature and the increasing scope and scale of this phenomenon become empirically significant. The concern of this article is to highlight some of the complexities of measuring one key element of the GERM: the privatisation of public education systems. Exploring indicators of privatisation through a set of methods for analysing Likert-style data, Mokken scale analysis and Rasch analysis, we generate a scale to measure an educational phenomenon so complex that it can appear to defy measurement. Our intention is to demonstrate that complex phenomena should not be oversimplified for the purpose of generating numeric data and that measurement is possible. The results, drawn from a European-wide survey, portray a nuanced pattern of privatisation at this regional level in which public funding and ownership remain important, but schools are commonly adopting a wide range of “private-like” practices

Occupational class differences in suicide: evidence of changes over time and during the global financial crisis in Australia

BACKGROUND: Previous research showed an increase in Australian suicide rates during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). There has been no research investigating whether suicide rates by occupational class changed during the GFC. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the GFC-associated increase in suicide rates in employed Australians may have masked changes by occupational class. METHODS: Negative binomial regression models were used to investigate Rate Ratios (RRs) in suicide by occupational class. Years of the GFC (2007, 2008, 2009) were compared to the baseline years 2001-2006. RESULTS: There were widening disparities between a number of the lower class occupations and the highest class occupations during the years 2007, 2008, and 2009 for males, but less evidence of differences for females. CONCLUSIONS: Occupational disparities in suicide rates widened over the GFC period. There is a need for programs to be responsive to economic downturns, and to prioritise the occupational groups most affected

Pedagogy, Performativity and Profit: The influence of privatized contexts on the professional identity of teachers.

Abstract Free schools have been a part of the Swedish educational landscape for over twenty years and now represent a quarter of all schools in Sweden. Despite their steady growth, there is no qualitative research examining how teachers’ professional identities are transformed as a result of these new privatized contexts. This study explores how seven teachers negotiate their professional identities in for-profit free schools in Sweden. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted via Skype and recorded digitally; interview transcripts were then analyzed interpretively. Four main themes were identified: identity negotiation, with subthemes of identifying a self through others, pedagogical identities, cultural similarities and differences, qualified and unqualified others, institutional identities, and public and private sector identities; agency, with subthemes of individual and collective agency; structure, with subthemes of the productive self, the model teacher, leadership, the moral agent, unstable contexts, temporary selves; and personal and professional change, with subthemes of performativity, stable selves and profit. The findings from the research indicate that each teacher’s experience of for-profit schools is unique and so therefore is the negotiation of a professional identity. Teachers’ substantive selves remain fairly intact despite the challenges of the environment in which they work; these teachers are student-centred, pedagogically-focused, and place high importance on moral professionalism. However, a culture of competition and comparison resulting from performativity within a vulnerable educational market means that teachers’ situated selves are less stable and opportunities for a collective professional identity are undermined. Much is dependent on a supportive, trusting leadership and a sense of belonging which relates to social recognition and teacher-work environment fit. When teachers are esteemed and individual and school values align, identities are more stable. When teachers do not feel acknowledged and there is tension between individual and school values, identities are less stable and compromises might be made for personal or professional reasons. Although limited in scale, the findings raise important issues for leadership at school, system and policy level; they reveal how the results-audit agenda can be misappropriated by companies to drive up performance and profit, how teachers’ professional identities can be determined at local rather than national level, and how the teaching community as a whole can be fragmented by entrepreneurialism. Arguably, further research is required to investigate the extent of these claims and compare the experiences of teachers across the non-profit free school and municipal school contexts

No alternative for Swedish teachers? The recontextualisation of discourses of teacher professionalism in Social Democrat-Green Party coalition policy

Sweden is faced with a teacher recruitment and retention crisis. In an attempt to attract more to the profession, the newly elected Social Democrat-Green Party coalition claims to promote an alternative discourse of teacher professionalism to that of its centre-right predecessor. Yet, government policy is formulated within the wider context of cultural and economic globalization and, as a minority government, the red-green coalition must gain the consent of the opposition to implement policy, and both teachers and the wider electorate to attain political legitimacy. Given the immediacy of events, there is no qualitative research which examines this alleged discursive shift at policy level and its link to power relations. This critical, interpretive study explores the continuities, changes and contradictions within discourses of teacher professionalism in Sweden, and how they might be used to further social, economic and political interests. A Faircloughian (2010) Critical Discourse Analysis was conducted on a sample of seven documents; six written policy manifestos from the Social Democrats and the Green Party, and one audio-visual speech by the current Minister for Education, Gustav Fridolin. Analysis was conducted at text, discourse practice and social practice level with the use of linguistic and political theory to examine the interdiscursivity of texts. Beyond the recontextualisation of discourses of managerial professionalism and its resultant bureaucratization of teachers’ work, this study reveals that neoliberal ideologies continue to permeate discourses through government attempts to define teacher subjectivities. Even so, within the discourse, there is space for teachers to reject these interpretations. Although limited in scale, the findings raise important issues for teachers, trade unions and policymakers; they reveal how occupational control and change is implicit within discourses of teacher professionalism, yet problematic without the consent of the most important social actors. Arguably, in a decentralized education system, further research is required to compare national policy discourses with those construed by municipalities and free schools, to investigate how these multiple discourses are interpreted and inculcated by teachers, and examine which counter-hegemonic discourses are available to the profession

Investigating determinants of compliance with wildlife protection laws: bird persecution in Portugal

Conservation interventions are generally underpinned by formal rules. These rules often suffer from high rates of non-compliance which is difficult to investigate due to its clandestine nature. Here we apply socio-psychological approaches to investigate the prevalence and determinants of three illegal bird-threatening behaviours---shooting raptors, trapping passerines for consumption, and poison use---by surveying 146 respondents in Portugal. We apply the theory of planned behaviour to understand behavioural determinants, and an indirect questioning method, the unmatched count technique (UCT), to estimate behaviour prevalence. The UCT estimated a high prevalence of trapping for consumption (47 {\%} SE 15) and shooting raptors (14 {\%} SE 11); both estimates being higher than from direct questioning. Poisoning had a lower prevalence according to direct questioning (7 {\%}), while the UCT generated a negative estimate suggesting that poisoning is a particularly sensitive behaviour. Different demographic groups were associated with different behaviours and determinants; men with greater rule knowledge were more likely to trap birds, while locally born people were less likely to approve themselves, or to think others approved of, trapping. Those with more positive attitudes to poisoning were more likely to admit to it, and these positive attitudes were found more in older non-hunters. Rule knowledge was better in younger male hunters. These findings suggest that NGOs aiming to reduce poisoning could enlist the support of hunters, while locally born people may be more receptive than others to working with NGOs to reduce trapping. These groups may be powerful allies in reducing illegal behaviours in their communities

Workplace psychosocial stressors experienced by migrant workers in Australia: A cross-sectional study

Objective: To explore work-related psychosocial stressors among people of Chinese, Vietnamese and Arabic-speaking backgrounds currently working in Australia. Methods: In 2015, a telephone survey of 585 Vietnamese, Chinese and Arabic-speaking workers asked about workplace bullying, ethnic discrimination, job complexity, degree of control, security and fairness of payment along with demographic and employment information. Estimates of job-related psychosocial stressors were derived and regression analyses used to identify significant associations. Results: At least one workplace stressor was reported by 83% of the workers in the study. Education was significantly associated with experiencing any psychosocial stressor and also with the total number of stressors. Workers aged 45 years and older were more likely to be bullied or experience racial discrimination compared with younger workers of any ethnicity. There was a greater likelihood of reporting low control over a job when the interview was conducted in a language other than English and the workers were either Chinese or Arabic. Workers on a fixed-term contract, independent of ethnicity were more likely to report a job with low security. Overall psychosocial job quality decreased with education and was associated with occupation type which interacted with ethnicity and gender. Conclusions: The results suggest that job-related psychosocial stressors are widespread but not uniform across ethnic groups. Further research into what drives differences in work experience for migrant groups would provide information to guide both employers and migrants in ways to reduce workplace psychosocial stressors

Evaluating the successful implementation of evidence into practice using the PARiHS framework : theoretical and practical challenges

Background The PARiHS framework (Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services) has proved to be a useful practical and conceptual heuristic for many researchers and practitioners in framing their research or knowledge translation endeavours. However, as a conceptual framework it still remains untested and therefore its contribution to the overall development and testing of theory in the field of implementation science is largely unquantified. Discussion This being the case, the paper provides an integrated summary of our conceptual and theoretical thinking so far and introduces a typology (derived from social policy analysis) used to distinguish between the terms conceptual framework, theory and model – important definitional and conceptual issues in trying to refine theoretical and methodological approaches to knowledge translation. Secondly, the paper describes the next phase of our work, in particular concentrating on the conceptual thinking and mapping that has led to the generation of the hypothesis that the PARiHS framework is best utilised as a two-stage process: as a preliminary (diagnostic and evaluative) measure of the elements and sub-elements of evidence (E) and context (C), and then using the aggregated data from these measures to determine the most appropriate facilitation method. The exact nature of the intervention is thus determined by the specific actors in the specific context at a specific time and place. In the process of refining this next phase of our work, we have had to consider the wider issues around the use of theories to inform and shape our research activity; the ongoing challenges of developing robust and sensitive measures; facilitation as an intervention for getting research into practice; and finally to note how the current debates around evidence into practice are adopting wider notions that fit innovations more generally. Summary The paper concludes by suggesting that the future direction of the work on the PARiHS framework is to develop a two-stage diagnostic and evaluative approach, where the intervention is shaped and moulded by the information gathered about the specific situation and from participating stakeholders. In order to expedite the generation of new evidence and testing of emerging theories, we suggest the formation of an international research implementation science collaborative that can systematically collect and analyse experiences of using and testing the PARiHS framework and similar conceptual and theoretical approaches. We also recommend further refinement of the definitions around conceptual framework, theory, and model, suggesting a wider discussion that embraces multiple epistemological and ontological perspectives

Loss of the interleukin-6 receptor causes immunodeficiency, atopy, and abnormal inflammatory responses

Abstract: IL-6 excess is central to the pathogenesis of multiple inflammatory conditions and this is targeted in clinical practice by immunotherapy that blocks the IL-6 receptor encoded by IL6R. We describe two patients with homozygous mutations in IL6R who presented with recurrent infections, abnormal acute phase responses, elevated IgE, eczema, and eosinophilia. This study identifies a novel primary immunodeficiency, clarifying the contribution of IL-6 to the phenotype of patients with mutations in IL6ST, STAT3 and ZNF341, genes encoding different components of the IL-6 signalling pathway, and alerts us to the potential toxicity of drugs targeting the IL-6R.J.E.D.T. is supported by the MRC (RG95376 and MR/L006197/1). KB is supported by the European Research Council (ERC StG 310857) and the Austrian Science Fund (P29951-B30). This work is supported, in part, by the intramural research program of the NIAID, NIH. A.J.T. is supported by the Wellcome Trust (104807/Z/14/Z) and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust and University College London. KGCS is supported by the Medical Research Council (program grant MR/L019027) and is a Wellcome Investigator. M.G. and S.T. are supported in part by Cancer Research UK. RCA and MT are supported by a DOC fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This research was made possible through access to the data and findings generated by two pilot studies for the 100,000 Genomes Project. The enrolment for one pilot study was coordinated by the NIHR BioResource (preprint from doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/507244) and the other by Genomics England Limited (GEL), a wholly owned company of the Department of Health in the UK. Over 90% of participants in the pilot studies have been enrolled in the NIHR BioResource. These pilot studies were mainly funded by grants from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) in England to the University of Cambridge and GEL, respectively. Additional funding was provided by the BHF, MRC, NHS England, the Wellcome Trust, amongst many other funders. The pilot studies use data provided by patients and their close relatives and collected by the NHS and other healthcare providers as part of their care and support. We thank all volunteers for their participation, and also gratefully acknowledge NIHR Biomedical Research Centres, NIHR BioResource Centres, NHS Trust Hospitals, NHS Blood and Transplant and staff for their contribution. ST is on the scientific advisory board for Ipsen, and is a consultant for Kallyope Inc. The authors declare no competing financial interests