New Labour, partnerships and physical education policy

New Labour’s move towards joined up thinking has meant that physical education and school sport was no longer on the receiving end of educational policy but mainstream sports policy. Moreover, ideological assumptions about physical education and school sport has led to it being seen as a ‘vehicle’ for a wide range of broader policy objectives (Houlihan & Green, 2006). These objectives include elite sporting success, lifelong participation, health and well-being, community regeneration and educational achievement. These very different objectives are indicative of the complex nature of policy making within school sport and physical education. The main mechanisms for meeting these objectives in physical education are school sports partnerships and specialist sports colleges as introduced through the PE, School Sport and Club Links strategy (DCMS & DfES, 2004). This New Labour partnership approach means that physical education teachers are having to work with partners from a wide range of sectors, including county sports partnerships, private sector sports providers and voluntary sector clubs. Indeed, the specialist sports college and school sports partnership were introduced into what could already be described as a crowded policy space (Houlihan, 2000). The aim of this paper is to explore how New Labour’s approach to education and sport have shaped physical education since 1997 and to specifically understand the complex, crowded policy space that physical education occupies

Understanding Teacher Morale

This study emerged from discussions within the Policy and Planning Council of the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium (MERC), a research alliance between Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Education and seven surrounding school divisions. The project has two goals. The first goal is to develop an understanding of the factors that impact teachers’ experience of their work in the current PK12 public school context. Although this topic could be, and has been, investigated through a number of lenses (e.g., burnout, trust, motivation), this project focuses on the idea of teacher morale, a choice that will be discussed in detail in the next section of the report. The study addresses the following three questions: 1. How do teachers experience job satisfaction and morale? 2. What are the dynamics between a teacher’s job related ideal and the professional culture of the school that support or hinder the experience of job satisfaction and morale? 3. How do differences between schools related to policy context and social context affect the dynamics of job satisfaction and morale? To answer these questions MERC assembled a research team comprised of a university researcher, graduate students, and a team of school personnel from the MERC school divisions. Over the course of two years, the team developed a conceptual framework for understanding teacher morale, designed a research study that involved observing and interviewing teachers (n=44) across three purposefully selected middle schools in the Richmond region, and then collected and analyzed the data. This report shares both the process and the findings of this collaborative research effort. The second goal of this research project is to support action by local policy makers, school division leaders, central office personnel, principals, and teachers. The study was commissioned by local school leaders not just to document and reflect on teacher morale, but more importantly to do something about it. As argued above, teachers and the conditions of teachers’ work matters for our students, our schools, and the well being of our communities and society. In this regard, this report is only one piece of this project’s action and impact plan. While the report does contain a series of recommendations based on findings and how they can be used, the release of the report is tied to additional dissemination and professional development efforts designed to effect change

Task Persistence: A Potential Mediator of the Income-Achievement Gap

Background: The pervasive gap in achievement among impoverished children has been investigated primarily in terms of parental investments, specifically parent to child speech and other forms of cognitive stimulation (e.g., toys, print materials). This research extends that literature by considering the role of a non-cognitive factor, namely task persistence, in the income-achievement gap. Using task persistence as the hypothesized mediator, duration of childhood in poverty is used to predict two educational variables - perceived academic competence and educational attainment. Although bivariate relationships between each of the variables have been demonstrated in past research, a full model linking task persistence with the income-achievement gap has not been investigated thus far. Methods: Using multiple waves of longitudinal data, duration of childhood poverty (ages 0-9) is used to predict both perceived academic competence (age 17) and educational attainment (age 23) with task persistence (average of ages 9, 13, 17) as a mediator. Results: With task persistence included in each model, the relationships between duration of childhood in poverty and both perceived academic competence and educational attainment are significantly reduced, confirming a mediational influence of task persistence. Conclusions: As hypothesized, task persistence statistically mediates the relationship between duration of childhood in poverty and educational outcomes. The implications of these findings on school success and intergenerational poverty are addressed, as well as suggestions for future research

Small cities for a small country: Sustaining the cultural renaissance?

Copyright @ 2006 RoutledgeThis chapter explores the implications for smaller cities of adopting culture-led regeneration strategies. It is suggested that there is a divergence between cultural planning for long term sustainable urban cultural renaissance and culture-led makeovers which rely on externally orientated projects devised to draw in new visitors, residents and enterprises. Drawing on evidence from Sheffield, an industrial city in South Yorkshire, northern England, it is suggested that small cities by thinking big, have been seduced into entering a culture-led city competition in which the stakes are high and the prospects of success limited

Models for schools of public health: A scoping review and synthesis of existing evidence

The final report on 'Models for schools of public health: A scoping review and synthesis of existing evidence' produced by Steven, Lombardo and Goodall and commissioned by Public Health Gateshead is now available. To date, existing evidence regarding models (organisational, structural, managerial, administrational) for Schools of Public Health (SsPH) has not been systematically collected or synthesised. This study aims to begin to fill that gap by using a combination of rapid review and scoping review techniques to retrieve and assess existing literature to identify potential and existing models, themes and issues and where possible highlight strengths and weaknesses

What Have We Learned from Policy Transfer Research? Dolowitz and Marsh Revisited

Over the last decade, policy transfer has emerged as an important concept within public policy analysis, guiding both theoretical and empirical research spanning many venues and issue areas. Using Dolowitz and Marsh's 1996 stocktake as its starting point, this article reviews what has been learned by whom and for what purpose. It finds that the literature has evolved from its rather narrow, state-centred roots to cover many more actors and venues. While policy transfer still represents a niche topic for some researchers, an increasing number have successfully assimilated it into wider debates on topics such as globalisation, Europeanisation and policy innovation. This article assesses the concept's position in the overall ‘tool-kit’ of policy analysis, examines some possible future directions and reflects on their associated risks and opportunities

Capitalist Reproduction in Schooling: The social control of marginalized students through zero tolerance policies

Due to increasing media focus, there has been growing concern that U.S. students and the school environment are increasingly violent, leading the public to believe that school discipline should become more strict and punitive (Giroux 2003; Schept, Wall, & Brisman 2014). However, scholars argue that there is little evidence that current practices of school discipline have made the school environment safer, but instead have criminalized the school and are disproportionately targeting students of color and disabled students (Beger 2002; Civil Rights Project 2000; Gregory, Skiba, & Noguera 2010; Hirschfield 2008; McNeal & Dunbar 2010; U.S. Government Office of Accountability 2018). The expansion of zero-tolerance policies and the surveillance culture in schools have played a large role in the creation of the school-to-prison pipeline, in which students are increasingly being suspended and expelled from school and coming in contact with the juvenile justice system. This research explores the relation that zero tolerance policies function as the neoliberal social control mechanism to control students who are seen to have “no market value and [are] identified as flawed consumers because of their associations with crime and poverty, redundancy and expendability” (Sellers & Arrigo 2018, p. 66). Zero-tolerance policies function as the latest manifestation of capitalist reconstitution of educational institutions, through curricula, student conduct codes, disciplinary procedures, and the hidden curriculum, constructed of the language of capitalism, disproportionately targeting students of color (Bowles & Gintis 2011). A series of OLS regression analyses were conducted to analyze how community partners and school resource officer involvement impact the rate of suspension, expulsion, and combined school disciplinary measures using the School Survey on Crime and Safety Survey 2005-06 data. It was found that community partners and school resource officers have a positive and negative relationship with disciplinary rates. This research further substantiates that racial and ethnic minority students receive disproportionate rates of discipline

Energy Solutions for a Livable Community

A briefing co-sponsored by the House Livable Communities Task Force, the House Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus, and Smart Growth America examined how improved land use and building design could protect our nation's energy supplies and enhance community livability

Physical education and health promotion: A qualitative study of teachers' perceptions

This is a PDF version of an article published in Health education© 2002. The definitive version is available at www.emeraldinsight.comThis article discusses the extent to which health promotion is central to physical education (PE) teachers' philosophies and practices. 35 PE teachers in secondary schools in north-west England were interviewed.This article was submitted to the RAE2008 for the University of Chester - Allied Health Professions and Studies

Contextualising, Embedding and Mapping (CEM): A model and framework for rethinking the design and delivery of an in-sessional academic literacy programme support

The paper documents the background, research and preliminary findings relating to a key area emerging in Higher Education institutions in the UK: providing academic language and study skills to support international students running concurrently with their degree programmes. The paper presents research carried out by an academic literacy specialist and a Programme Director in the postgraduate area of Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University. The paper documents a critique of past practice and research leading to identification of key issues influencing the attendance and participation of overseas students on an in-sessional academic literacy programme. To address these issues, a model was developed model which identified Contextualisation, Embedding and Mapping (CEM) as the foundation for improving academic literacy programme provision. The findings show that application of the CEM model is already demonstrating added value in the key areas of student attendance, understanding of the relevance of the academic literacy programme and integration within degree programme learning objectives and outcomes. To address the issue of sustaining the benefits of the CEM model the work concludes with the development of a framework which establishes the integration of an academic literacy programme within postgraduate programmes both at the strategic level through teaching and learning policies and at operational level through programme and module development