The 'Great Refusal'? A Marcusian response to the Bright Blue vision of education in the 'Big Society'

The modernisation of education and other public services remains a major political objective of the current Coalition government in the UK. This paper focuses on Tory Modernisation 2.0, a blueprint for the second stage of the public sector reform produced by the Conservative pressure group, Bright Blue. From the critical theory perspective expounded by Herbert Marcuse, the Conservative vision of the ‘Big Society’ is a one-dimensional conceptualisation of social relations. In the guise of pragmatic, sensible prescriptions for how the institutions of society should be reformed, Tory Modernisation 2.0 advocates an acceleration of marketisation, which is both potentially destructive and irreversible. Against the backdrop of a bleak, one-dimensional society promoted by the Conservative Party, education has become a site of struggle between what Marcuse terms the dialectic of domination and the ‘Great Refusal’

Readiness for School, Time and Ethics in Educational Practice

‘Taking time seriously’ is an enduring human concern and questions about the nature of time bear heavily on the meaning of childhood. In the context of the continuing debates on readiness for school, ‘taking time seriously’ has contributed to policies on ‘early interventions’ which claim to support children in reaching their full potential but limit this potential when enacted in practice. Much of current policymaking takes the meaning of time for granted within a ‘quantitative’ view of time as a neutral, standardised parameter. In everyday educational practice, this view of time may lead to an excessive preoccupation with assessing standardised characteristics of ‘school ready’ children, who are expected to follow a uniform path of development predetermined by their biological clock. However, the quantitative view of time has been challenged both in philosophical and scientific thought by an understanding of time as complex, irreversible and emergent in the present. George Herbert Mead’s ‘philosophy of the present’ and Ilya Prigogine’s ‘arrow of time’ point to important implications of a ‘complex’ view of time for readiness for school as an event rather than a fixed set of characteristics that children should possess upon entry to primary school. Engaging in educational practice as it unfolds in the present also calls for ethics that are not focused on adhering to fixed moral universals but on our actions ‘here and now’ and attending to the ethical meaning that arises in children’s responses to our actions

Tackling knowledge ‘like a business’? Rethinking the modernisation of higher education in Poland

The year 1989 marked the official end of communist rule in Poland and the replacement of 'Gosplan' by new instruments for liberal democratic governance. In terms of the economy this heralded a departure from Gosplan’s five-year planning cycles, performance targets and the ‘propaganda of success’. Paradoxically, however, twenty-seven years later, the marketisation of higher education in Poland has been accompanied by a continuation of Gosplan thinking. This is manifested in a neoliberal vision of the modern, ‘corporate’ university as a largely utilitarian enterprise, but subject to a style of performance management strongly resonant of the Soviet era. This article analyses the thinking, ideas and ideologies that have shaped contemporary higher education in Poland. It is contended that the rise of the ‘corporate university’ signals the twilight of the Humboldtian tradition and raises questions about what the corporate ideal of ‘excellence’ may mean for the future of the university

(Mis)Understanding Strategy as a 'Spectacular Intervention': A Phenomenological Reflection on the Strategy Orientations Underpinning Education Reform in England

The introduction of the ‘National Strategies’ for primary education in 1998, positioned ‘strategy’ as a powerful instrument for mobilising the school ‘workforce’ in England in the cause of continuous improvement. Government approaches to strategy formulation and enactment appear to reflect an instrumentalist orientation found in many mainstream strategic management publications. This paper reflects on how the strategic pursuit of quick, ‘spectacular’ gains may lead to the loss of ethics of care. Phenomenological insights into modes of being-in-the-world are drawn upon to suggest that a preoccupation with strategy and its accompanying ‘toolkit’ of targets, standards and inspections diminishes a deeper engagement with the meaning and purpose of education. Based on Heidegger’s premise that understanding is at the core of being human, it is posited that the concern with ‘spectacular’ outputs is both superficial and potentially de-humanising. At the root of strategic thinking and the resulting forgetfulness of being is the Cartesian dogma and its dualistic (mis)understandings

Transformation, trust and the 'importance of teaching': continuities and discontinuities in the Coalition government's discourse of education reform

The imperative of transforming education continues to permeate the discourse of UK education reform. Although the Coalition government's publications herald a 'new school system', they reveal the same neo-liberal thinking as their New Labour predecessors. The context of the national budget deficit is now being brought to bear to promote greater effectiveness of the education system. Inherent in the Coalition strategy is a diminution of the vital role of teachers in bringing about profound change. This paper examines the notion of transformative change through the lens of George Herbert Mead's philosophy of evolution. Within this framework, transformation is a complex, emergent and unpredictable process that resists centralised control. Consequently, profound social change needs to be predicated on trust, conceptualised as a reciprocal relationship rooted in the acceptance of phenomena beyond our control

Transcending systems thinking in education reform: implications for policy-makers and school leaders

Education policy-makers in the UK have repeatedly stated their central aim as transforming British education into a ‘world-class system’. Over the last 20 years, several large-scale education reforms have brought radical changes to the school curriculum, teacher professionalism and educational leadership. Explicit in these reforms, is the deployment of measurable standards of pupil attainment as a lever for achieving school improvement. However, despite this proliferation of policies, the claims to educational improvement made by policy-makers have been contested. Concerns about the unpredicted and damaging long-term effects of these policies can be linked to the limitations of systems thinking which underpins much of this education reform. A significant flaw of systems thinking is the level of simplification at which policy-makers operate on abstract categories such as standards, as if they were reality. Based on case study research conducted in two primary schools, this paper suggests that the systemic approach adopted by policy-makers may be contributing to an erosion of educational quality and placing potentially damaging expectations on children

Reflections from a tarnished mirror: an application of Alvesson and Sköldberg's 'reflexive interpretation' to a study of curriculum design in higher education

It is now widely understood that reflexivity constitutes a vital element of good qualitative research. However, reflexive accounts often draw on a single theoretical framework, thus privileging and legitimizing a particular interpretation of empirical data. This paper focuses on Alvesson and Sköldberg's ‘reflexive interpretation’, which arises from the interplay between the perspectives of grounded theory, hermeneutics, critical theory and postmodernism. The positioning of the researcher in such a multi-paradigmatic relationship to the empirical data offers the potential for deeper meaning. By applying Alvesson and Sköldberg's approach to a case study of curriculum design, I explore issues of teaching reflection to postgraduate students. Problematizing the case study data at the level of hermeneutics provides insights into the temporality, complexity and symbolic meaning disclosed through the interpretive act. Whilst critical theory locates the findings within the political-ideological context, the postmodern perspective questions my power and authority as a teacher-researcher of reflection

The impact of marketisation on undergraduate curriculum in an English university: A Bernsteinian analysis

Kontext tohoto příspěvku tvoří marketizace terciárního vzdělávání v Anglii, která probíhá od devadesátých let dvacátého století a podle které je hlavní funkcí univerzity funkce ekonomická. Několik po sobě jdoucích vládních strategií zaštiťovalo tento přístup voláním po vytváření „užitečných“ poznatků a po zásobě šikovných absolventů, které potřebují firmy, aby mohly uspět v „globálních ekonomických závodech“. Terciární vzdělávání ve Spojeném království je nyní poháněno takovou dynamikou, ve které jsou univerzity nuceny soutěžit o studenty na kvazi-trhu, pro který je charakteristická rostoucí stratifikace a snížené financování státem. Tento příspěvek zkoumá dopad těchto změn v rámci případové studie kurikula bakalářského studia na ekonomické fakultě jedné z univerzit (a university Business School). Sběr dat probíhal pomocí polostrukturovaných rozhovorů s vyučujícími v bakalářských 918 Norman Brady, Agnieszka Bates programech. Dále byla uskutečněna analýza dokumentů (např. specifikace studijních modulů, oficiální hodnocení a revize studijních programů, strategie fakulty apod.). K interpretaci výsledků byla využita bernsteinovská pedagogická teorie, především pak koncept rekontextualizace. Analýzy naznačují, že diskurzu na Business School dominují požadavky trhu vztahující se k maximalizaci generovaného příjmu. Výsledkem je rekontextualizace pedagogických vztahů jako formy řízení produktu, kterou doprovází řada nezamýšlených důsledků.The context for this paper is the marketisation of higher education in England since the 1990s which has established the core mission of the university as primarily economic. Successive government policies have framed this mission as the generation of ‘useful’ knowledge and the supply of skilled graduates required by companies to compete in the ‘global economic race’. Higher education in the UK is now driven by a dynamic in which universities are required to compete for students in a quasimarket characterised by growing stratification and reduced state funding. This paper examines the impact of these changes in a case study of undergraduate curriculum in a university Business School. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with academics who taught on undergraduate programmes together with a documentary analysis of texts such as module specifications, programme review documents and Business School strategy. Bernstein’s pedagogic theory and in particular his concept of recontextualisation was utilised to interpret the findings. It was found that market imperatives relating to the maximisation of income generation dominate the discourse in the Business School. As a result, pedagogical relations have become recontextualised as a form of product management accompanied by a range of unintended consequences

A role for glycolipid biosynthesis in severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus entry

A novel bunyavirus was recently found to cause severe febrile illness with high mortality in agricultural regions of China, Japan, and South Korea. This virus, named severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV), represents a new group within the Phlebovirus genus of the Bunyaviridae. Little is known about the viral entry requirements beyond showing dependence on dynamin and endosomal acidification. A haploid forward genetic screen was performed to identify host cell requirements for SFTSV entry. The screen identified dependence on glucosylceramide synthase (ugcg), the enzyme responsible for initiating de novo glycosphingolipid biosynthesis. Genetic and pharmacological approaches confirmed that UGCG expression and enzymatic activity were required for efficient SFTSV entry. Furthermore, inhibition of UGCG affected a post-internalization stage of SFTSV entry, leading to the accumulation of virus particles in enlarged cytoplasmic structures, suggesting impaired trafficking and/or fusion of viral and host membranes. These findings specify a role for glucosylceramide in SFTSV entry and provide a novel target for antiviral therapies