Educationalfutures December 2008

Educationalfutures Volume 1(2) front cover.

Educationalfutures Volume 1 Issue 2 Editorial

This paper, an expanded version of a keynote presentation at the conference, highlights the
links between centrally controlled and restrictive curriculum and teaching methods and neoliberal
politics. It challenges the dominant model of ‘School Improvement’ in the context of
social inequality, and introduces some alternative pedagogies which have the potential foster
a more creative, critical and socially engaged learning community.

Key words: neo-liberal, school improvement, pedagogy, alternatives, policy

The connection between Education Studies and UK Initial Teacher Training is difficult to
avoid, particularly given their histories. For many working in the field this is also desirable as
it offers an opportunity to reclaim cherished principles of teacher education free from the
shackles of regulation and surveillance. In this paper the authors question a retrospective
framing of Education Studies and, while sympathetic to the liberal-humanist traditions often
embodied in these ambitions, argue instead for a reappraisal of what it means to educate
through Education. Drawing on experiences of Education Studies and ITT programmes, and
in conjunction with contemporary thinking around teacher professionality, the authors call for
a re-imaging of the educational professional. The paper argues for Education Studies as a
preparation for educational practice where moral, ethical and value conflicts are properly
accounted for in evolving educational identities. The paper concludes that Education Studies
has an obligation to widen the spectrum of educational practices with which it has
traditionally been concerned, reaching beyond simplistic conceptions of reflection to a
practice of informed educational judgement.

Key words: person-centredness, critical pedagogy, critical consciousness, teacher
education

The paper argues that a focus on learning styles has obscured the complex nature of
student experience and need. Drawing on broadly postmodern conceptualisations, the
paper contends that contemporary identities are essentially fluid, fractured and plural. In
attempting to make sense of learning experiences, therefore, an understanding of student
identities as multiple, contested and situated is required. Learning identities derive in part
from the dispositions of learners, but also are constructed and reconstructed within
discourses of what it means to be a student. Six characters of studentship were identified
during eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in a further education college. While some
of these ‘characters’ are empowering, and can result in enriched shared learning
experiences, others are inhibiting, leading to restrictive classroom encounters. The paper
concludes by considering strategies for enabling more positive characters of studentship to
be cultivated.

Key words: post compulsory education, learning identities, learning styles

Outdoor learning opportunities for school pupils are likely to increase following the
publication of the Government’s Manifesto for Outdoor Learning (DfES, 2005). However, the
formalisation of outdoor education to meet local authority demands, and national policies
and initiatives, presents the danger of outdoor education centres becoming increasingly
similar to schools. This paper reports on interim findings from a doctoral research project
investigating children’s learning experiences at a residential outdoor education centre. It
suggests that the power of outdoor learning may lie in the informality and deeply contextual
learning activities on these programmes. It argues for outdoor learning as an alternative
vision of education that should be seen as essentially different from traditional schooling
rather than an extension of schools. It argues for the freeing of outdoor education centres
from the structural boundaries imposed by the national curriculum and government
curriculum enhancement projects, whilst reducing or removing the demands for centres to
continually investigate the impact of their work.

Keywords: outdoor experiential learning

In 1989, the introduction of a National Curriculum of subjects to all maintained schools in
England and Wales brought compulsory science education into the primary sector for the
first time. As a result of its elevated profile and an immense amount of hard work and effort
by teachers and other professionals responding to requirements, science education
provision benefited enormously. Despite this, successive overhauls and radical revisions of
primary science have brought about many changes, each impacting on the primary
profession as a whole. Regional findings from a national ‘preparation to teach science’
survey underway in England are presented here for the first time. Nearly 20 years on from
when the National Curriculum and its primary science component were first introduced,
attention is drawn to the continued progress being made and to those factors potentially
inhibiting science delivery within the primary classroom.

Key words: primary science, National Curriculum, teaching

In this paper the author examines changes in the primary curriculum in this country since the
time of the Plowden Report of 1967. Since that time there have been several changes of
emphasis from teaching through subjects to teaching through contexts. The author
considers some of the reasons for this oscillation and suggests some principles which a
renewed primary curriculum might be constructed upon. The author also suggests that a
renewed curriculum should place much greater emphasis upon the use of spoken language
in the classroom and that much more consideration needs to be given to the challenges
which change curriculum change poses for practitioners. For a number of reasons, it is
suggested that the term ‘pragmatic’ might be a good label for the curriculum of the future.

Key words: primary, curriculum, subject-teaching, topic-teaching

This paper reports on a study visit for undergraduate education studies students from Bath
Spa University to Mufulira, Zambia, established in 2005. They were self-funding and
participating in a second year undergraduate module entitled ‘Education in Africa’ which
examines generic educational and development issues through case studies in different
African countries. The visit builds on a link with Mufulira College of Education and affords
students the opportunity to work within different primary school contexts for a period of three
weeks. The paper argues that this visit represents an exercise in first-hand comparative
education study, since their assignments reveal that students have reflected in some depth
on the cultural contexts within which their classroom observations have been made. The
discussion reflects upon the impacts of the visit and issues raised by it.

Key words: international education, comparative education, Africa
Introduction

In the Introduction to this paper, following French Marxist Louis Althusser, I briefly examine
the roles of the Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs), and the Ideological State
Apparatuses (ISAs) in forging consensus to capitalist norms and values. The paper is
divided into three parts. In the first part, I discuss the role of what I have described as the
Governmental/Political RSA/ISA in the UK in promoting neo-liberal global capitalism and
imperialism and forestalling social revolutionary change. In the first part I also make a few
observations on the special role of the UK Monarchy. Next I consider to what extent the
Educational ISA is the dominant ISA. In the final section of Part 1, I address Althusser’s
concept of the interpellation of subjects. In the second part of the paper, as a contrast to the
political and economic ‘consensus’ which has been engineered in the UK, I look at current
developments in Venezuela - at social democracy in action, and socialism in embryo. I also
pose the question: is there a need to amend Althusser’s RSA/ISA thesis in the light of these
developments. In the third part of the paper, I make some suggestions as to how three
important strands in the UK National Curriculum might be used to break ‘the last taboo’, how
they might facilitate the creation of spaces for discussions in schools of the alternative to
global neo-liberal capitalism – world socialism.

Keywords: socialism, Marxism, Venezuela, globalisation