The Education (Scotland) Act 1872

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The development of Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence: Amnesia and Déjà Vu

Scotland’s new Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) has been widely acknowledged as the most significant educational development in a generation, with the potential to transform learning and teaching in Scottish schools. In common with recent developments elsewhere, CfE seeks to re-engage teachers with processes of curriculum development, to place learning at the heart of the curriculum and to change engrained practices of schooling. This article draws upon well-established curriculum theory (notably the work of both Lawrence Stenhouse and A.V. Kelly) to analyse the new curriculum. We argue that by neglecting to take account of such theory, the curricular offering proposed by CfE is subject to a number of significant structural contradictions which may affect the impact that it ultimately exerts on learning and teaching; in effect, by ignoring the lessons of the past, CfE runs the risk of undermining the potential for real change

What is a land grab? Exploring green grabs, conservation, and private protected areas in southern Chile

Discussions of land grabs for various purposes, including environmental ends, have expanded in recent years, yet land grabbing remains inconsistently defined and poorly understood. Our ability to assess the extent to which land grabs are occurring, and to identify the mixture of factors driving land and resource acquisition, is limited. This paper assesses whether a land grab for conservation is happening in southern Chile, and identifies the various driving forces that combine to drive land acquisitions in the region, based on a detailed exploration of the recent massive growth in privately owned protected areas in the region. This paper finds that the various dominant definitions of land grabs each apply only partially to southern Chile, that land grabs for conservation need to be understood as the latest stage in a longer process by which the region's natural resources are incorporated into the Chilean and the global economy, and that green grabs interact in various ways with broader resource grabs, particularly for forestry and hydroelectricity. This case study demonstrates the limitations of some definitions of land grabs, particularly their focus on capitalist accumulation within land grabs, their international nature and their emphasis on legal processes

The same but different? Post-devolution regulation and control in education in Scotland and England

When 'New Labour' came to power in the United Kingdom in 1997, one of their first major initiatives was to establish new devolved political institutions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Drawing upon developments in education in Scotland and England, this article explores some aspects of 'regulation', 'autonomy' and 'control' in the post-devolution context. The purpose of the article is to assess the ways in which New Public Management have influenced education policy in the two countries. Aspects of the governance of education are examined in the two national contexts. The 'modernisation' of the teaching profession is examined as a particular case, as well as more general aspects of governance. A number of similarities and differences in the two countries are identified. The themes that best demonstrate these similarities and differences are privatisation, performativity and the policy process. The conclusion seeks to identify the extent to which developments in either or both countries can be attributed to the global neo-liberal agenda

Introducing ICT in secondary schools: a context for reflection on management and professional norms

Within the Scottish educational system there have recently been significant moves towards devolution of decision taking and the expressed intention that schools must be more responsive to changing community requirements and expectations. We focus on two aspects of those organizations considered successful within changing external contexts: their processes for the effective acquisition, generation and flow of novel information; and their internal mechanisms for informed decision taking and complex communal problem solving. We use data from two studies on the introduction of ICT as the vehicle for exploring the characteristics of the professional activities and organizational features within secondary schools that appear to be barriers to the effective operation of devolved management and empowered professionalism. We interpret the data on the identified nodes of decision taking - the central and local government, the different levels of the secondary school management, and the individual teacher - in terms of aspects of the cultural norms within secondary schools and indicate the multi-level action taken by the Scottish government which may ultimately 'reculture' the schools