Civilising the natives? Liberal studies in further education revisited

This paper uses Basil Bernstein’s work on pedagogic discourses to examine a largely neglected facet of the history of vocational education – the liberal studies movement in English further education (FE) colleges. Initially, the paper discusses some of the competing conceptions of education, work and society which underpinned the rise and fall of the liberal studies movement – if indeed it can be described as such. It then draws on data from interviews with former liberal and general studies (LS/GS) lecturers to focus on the ways in which different variants of liberal studies were, over time, implicated in inculcating certain forms of knowledge in vocational learners. Whilst it is acknowledged that LS/GS always represented contested territory and that it was highly variable both in terms of content and quality, the paper argues that, at least and under certain circumstances, liberal studies provided young working-class people with the opportunity to locate their experiences of vocational learning within a critical framework which is largely absent from FE today. This, it is argued, can be conceptualised as an engagement with what Bernstein described as ‘powerful knowledge’

A comparison of approaches to the teaching and learning of science in Chinese and Australian elementary classrooms: cultural and socioeconomic complexities

Set in the context of today’s globalized approaches to curriculum reform, the purpose of this study was to compare the teaching and learning of science in Chinese and Australian Grade 6 classrooms. A conceptual framework based on notions of culture and socioeconomic status informed the research design. Case study participants were three teachers of science and 140 students from three elementary schools of high, medium, and low socioeconomic status in Hunan Province, China; and three teachers and 105 students from paired schools in Western Australia. The formal curriculum, the curriculum-in-action, and the experiential curriculum in all case studies in each country were examined. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected with student questionnaires, lesson observations, teacher interviews, a school tour, and document collection. Findings indicated that participating Chinese students reported a greater proportion of their science lessons involved activities such as reading textbooks and memorizing facts, activities that are consistent with Confucian educational culture. In Australia, where there has been a longer historical influence from social-constructivist theorists such as Bruner and Vygotsky, students reported their lessons involved a greater proportion of activities such as designing and doing science experiments, and working in small groups. The findings also indicated that in both countries, socioeconomic status was an important factor impacting the implementation of the science curriculum with students in higher socioeconomic status schools participating more frequently in classroom activities consistent with reform curriculum documents. This phenomenon was more apparent in China possibly due to the Confucian educational tradition supporting culturally viable alternative approaches to the teaching and learning of science

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

Crossing the Rubicon: Strategic planning or neo-biopower? A critique of the language of New Zealand’s Early Childhood Strategic Plan

‘Strategy’ is a word that has had an increasing use in recent years. The discipline of organisational studies has adopted this concept to set out the primacy of good business practices, such as foretelling risk and opportunity. Government policy documents use the term where medium- and long-term goals are set out, for example, the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s Pathways to the Future. A Ten-Year Strategic Plan for Early Childhood Education. This article uses Michel Foucault’s methodology of genealogy to trace the emergence of the term ‘strategy’, its use in organisational studies, and its displacement to education, specifically early childhood education in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The study by Richard Whipp into the effectiveness of strategic planning supports the problematising of the term. The study deconstructs some naturalised truths about the image of people, of time, and of analysts’ reflexivity. It asks about the use of terms that originated in the military lexicon, such as ‘manoeuvres’, ‘strategy’, ‘target’, ‘plan’ and ‘risk’, but have slipped to that of business practices, retaining traces, however, of the original military intent. Foucault inverted the phrase that ‘politics is war by any other means’ as institutions centralised control, set up supervision of populations, and collected statistics to plot changed patterns. This article examines some of the tracery that remains in such use of governmental language, and asks if this is the most appropriate lexicon for education

Further education outside the jurisdiction of local authorities in post-war England

This paper revisits the three decades following the end of World War Two – a time when, following the 1944 Education Act, local education authorities (LEAs) were the key agencies responsible for running the education system across England. For the first time there was a statutory requirement for LEAs to secure adequate facilities for further education (FE), and the post-war era is generally remembered as a period when they dominated FE. Yet this is not the full story of further education in post-war England: it is often forgotten that a significant amount of FE existed outside the municipal framework. This paper returns to the post-war decades and begins to uncover the largely forgotten history of FE outside local authority control at that time. It highlights how voluntary and private organisations offered various forms of post-compulsory education outside the municipal framework, and how they contributed to the eclectic and diverse nature of FE across England. This, I argue, reflected not only the expedience, compromise and inertia that characterised further education in post-war England but was rooted in a capture of educational policy more generally by a privileged elite intent on maintaining a social order characterised by social, economic and cultural divisions