Carol Vincent

'I Heard It on the Grapevine': 'Hot' Knowledge and School Choice.

Abstract This paper is one of a number of related pieces which address the issue of parental choice through a careful Straussian analysis of interview data. The focus here is upon the structures and processes underlying the use of grapevine’ knowledge, which parents elicit and disseminate in choosing a school. It is argued that this immediate or ‘hot’ knowledge is of particular importance to many parents and is set over and against the ‘cold’ formal knowledge produced by schools themsebes or published as examination results or league tables. Grapevine knowledge is socially embedded in networks and localities and is distributed unevenly across and used differently by different social‐class groups. The paper concludes by suggesting that the stress and anxiety involved in choice for many parents is a product of unstable cultural values, and the slippery signs systems now surrounding ‘school’ at a time of increased economic uncertainty.

Home — School Relationships: ‘the swarming of disciplinary mechanisms'?

Abstract [1] In Discipline and Punish, Foucault gives a pertinent example of the ‘swarming of disciplinary mechanisms’: “The Christian school must not simply train docile children; it must also make it possible to supervise the parents, to gain information as to their way of life, their resources, their piety, their morals’ (1977, p. 211). This article examines a number of connecting themes concerning home‐school relations over the last 20 years. We argue that the position of parents in relation to the education system can be seen as an instructive case study for the broader trends and shifts in the relationship between citizens and public sector institutions. As such we conclude that the important developments, upon which future analysis should concentrate, are those where parents seek to define for themselves new understandings of what constitutes an ‘appropriate’ parental role, rather than being captured within a hegemonic discourse of ‘good’ parenting. The incursions of consumerism into public sector ...

This won't take long…: Interviewing, ethics and diversity

In this paper, the focus is on one particular research project, conducted in the UK, which studied the role of parent groups and organizations in relation to the mainstream education system. The authors seek to analyze and evaluate access to the different structures of feeling inhabited by the various respondents involved in the project. Using the project as a lens, a critical case, the relationships between respondents and researchers are problematized, highlighting a number of issues with broad applicability. These include negotiating access, securing informed consent, the debates around symmetry and asymmetry between researcher and respondent, the processes of interviewing, data analysis and dissemination. The authors also comment on the formation and development of relationships with respondents, trying to tease out the differences and similarities of age, race, social class, language, and gender, and to suggest how these disjunctions and connections affected the process of datacollection and analysis. Finally, the article concludes with a brief consideration of the implications for future research design and conduct of the arguments put forward.

Becoming a 'better' parent? Motherhood, education and transition

Abstract The focus of this paper is a parent education group, offering parents an accredited practical skills course, which aims to familiarise them with educational activities suitable for young children. Drawing on theories from Gramsci and set within a context informed by social policy analysis, this paper examines both the content of the course and the experiences of the female students. It looks in detail at the discourse of ‘sensitive mothering’ and considers the extent to which the course promotes adherence to such an approach. This paper also considers the relationships between teachers and taught, and how these are mediated by social class differences. The womens positive accounts are seen as vital in constructing an understanding of the course and its successes, possibilities and limitations.

Tolerating Intolerance? Parental Choice and Race Relations--The Cleveland Case.

In 1987, Cleveland Local Education Authority (LEA) allowed a child to transfer schools to one where the vast majority of children were white. Four years later, a High Court judge ruled that the LEA was correct to do so. His judgement made it clear that the 1976 Race Relations Act did not govern the 1980 provisions for parental choice of school. This paper looks at the implications of this case. After detailing the events leading up to and including the judicial review, it examines first, the legislative framework for parental choice of schools and its place in Conservative Party education policy, and second, it explores the history of school admissions in racial terms. Following this, three themes arising from the Cleveland case are highlighted: the increased levels of juridification affecting education, the deracializing of the debate on school organization and curriculum, and the roles of individual parents and the state in educating children. The paper concludes by focusing on the need for more partici...

Community and collectivism : the role of parents' organisations in the education system

Abstract This paper outlines the theoretical and empirical starting‐points for a research project addressing the role of parents’ organisations in the education system. It argues that a study of relationships conducted between homes, schools and parents’ groups and organisations has the potential to illuminate key concepts in education, considering as examples ‘citizenship’ and ‘community’. The paper is divided into three main sections. The first briefly describes the studys background, its scope and methodology. The second section considers the use of some of Antonio Gramscis work in providing a theoretical starting‐point with which to explore the construction and maintenance of hegemonic discourses surrounding parenting. The concluding section of the paper widens the discussion to consider two key concepts, community and citizenship. It is argued that the discursive positioning of these concepts, in other words, how they are understood and defined, influences the ways in which relationships between pa...

Whither democratic accountability in education? An investigation into headteachers’ perspectives on accountability in the 1990s with reference to their relationships with their LEAs and governors

Abstract Recent legislation has drastically curtailed the roles and influence of local education authorities (LEAs). Various powers and responsibilities previous held by LEAs have been dispersed to schools, central government and quangos. As a result the whole future of LEAs is now in doubt and local democratic accountability is being diminished and obscured. This paper draws on a research project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which explores the emergence of new forms of school/LEA relationships and of new organizational cultures and practices within LEAs through case studies of four LEAs. The focus of the paper is the headteachers’ perspectives, firstly on their relationship with their LEA and secondly their relationship with their governing bodies. With regard to LEAs, virtually all LEA headteachers (primary and secondary) did want to maintain a relationship of some kind with their LEA, stating quite clearly that the LEA should continue to exist. However, it is clear that all headteachers now...

Professionals Under Pressure: the administration of special education in a changing context

Abstract This paper explores the role of professionals employed in the special education section of local education authorities (LEAs). Its examination of the political, cultural and financial contexts in which decision‐making occurs is illustrated by data collected in interviews with LEA personnel in five local authorities. The first section of the paper examines the nature and effects of professional control in special education. Depoliticisation, individualisation and a concentration on technical solutions are seen as the main outcomes of professional control. The second section of the paper analyses the discourses which underpin professional notions of special education. The paper argues that it is the nature of these discourses which renders special education vulnerable to incursions by recent public sector reforms; namely managerialism and the concomitant shift towards rule‐based decision‐making. It concludes that the dominant discourses in special education are ill‐equipped to penetrate beyond proc...

A ‘different kind’ of professional? Case studies of the work of parent‐centred organizations

This paper considers the positions of three professionals working with parents in what we call parent‐centred organizations. Our aim is to explore the extent of the ‘space’ they have available to them to construct their own understandings of their role, and to implement their priorities and agendas. We consider how these individual versions to professionalism articulate with the context in which these three people work, and the implications for their relationships with their parent‐clients. Two main areas are examined: first, the changing contexts in which public sector professionals work and, in particular, the incursions of ‘performativity’ into their working lives; and secondly, we argue that the subjectivities of the three professionals provide them with personal agendas which they can, to some degree, insert into their work. We conclude by considering the extent of the autonomy available to each professional, and the ways in which they utilize this ‘space’. Identity, like other forms of meaning is mu...

Theorizing Social Class and Education

The edited collection presents a selection of writing on class analysis within sociology of education as it has evolved over the last decade, both in the Uk and internationally. The book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Sociology of Education.