Diana Leonard

To prove myself at the highest level: The benefits of doctoral study

It is a major commitment to undertake doctoral study but relatively little is known about what motivates students to enrol or what they subsequently see as the benefits they have gained and they costs accrued. This report on a study of alumni who completed theses in Education in 1992, 1997 and 2002 in the UK argues that although the doctorate plays a key role in continuing professional development in this field, the benefits of the doctorate are perceived post facto as equally, and for some more, in terms of intrinsic interest and personal development. This runs counter to the rational/effectiveness thrust of current policy directives and could result in students being less eager to meet the costs of their studies in future.

Single-Sex Schooling and Academic Attainment at School and Through the Lifecourse:

This article examines the impact of single-sex schooling on a range of academic outcomes for a sample of British people born in 1958. In terms of the overall level of qualifications achieved, single-sex schooling is positive for girls at age 16 but neutral for boys, while at later ages, single-sex schooling is neutral for both sexes. However, single-sex schooling is linked to the attainment of qualifications in gender-atypical subject areas for both sexes, not just during the school years, but also later in life.

Quality and equality in British PhD assessment

This paper asks whether doctoral assessment has escaped the regulation of quality assurance procedures. Raising questions about the affective and micropolitical dimensions of an oral examination conducted in private, it explores how current concerns about quality assurance, standards, benchmarks and performance indicators in higher education apply to the assessment of doctoral/research degrees in Britain, and in particular to the viva voce examination. Successful PhD completion is a key performance indicator for universities and an important basis for the accreditation of their staff. Despite the rise of new managerialism, a general preoccupation with calculable standards and outcomes and an emphasis on student entitlements, transparency of decision making and information for “consumers”, there still seems to be considerable variation, and some mystification, in how doctoral assessment is conducted and experienced. The massification of doctoral studies and the doubling in number of institutions awarding their own doctorates, post‐1992, are both likely to increase product variety still further.

School Violence, School Differences and School Discourses

This article highlights one strand of a study which investigated the concept of the violence-resilient school. In six inner-city secondary schools, data on violent incidents in school and violent crime in the neighbourhood were gathered, and compared with school practices to minimise violence, accessed through interviews. Some degree of association between the patterns of behaviour and school practices was found: schools with a wider range of well-connected practices seemed to have less difficult behaviour. Interviews also showed that the different schools had different organisational discourses for construing school violence, its possible causes and the possible solutions. Differences in practices are best understood in connection with differences in these discourses. Some of the features of school discourses are outlined, including their range, their core metaphor and their silences. The authors suggest that organisational discourse is an important concept in explaining school effects and school differences, and that improvement attempts could have clearer regard to this concept.

Single‐sex schooling and labour market outcomes

One quarter of the 1958 British Birth cohort attended single‐sex secondary schools. This paper asks whether sex‐segregated schooling had any impact on the experience of gender differences in the labour market in mid‐life. We examine outcomes at age 42, allowing for socio‐economic origins and abilities measured in childhood. We find no net impact of single‐sex schooling on the chances of being employed in 2000, nor on the horizontal or social class segregation of mid‐life occupations. But we do find a positive premium (5%) on the wages of women (but not men), of having attended a single‐sex school. This was accounted for by the relatively good performance of girls‐only school students in post‐16 qualifications, not by the wider range of subjects studied by both girls and boys at single‐sex schools. Men’s labour market attainments were more closely related to attending private schools and to parental class, suggesting that the intergenerational transmission of advantage, while not related to coeducation, is related to gender.

Issues of Equity in Special Needs Education from a Gender Perspective

This article is concerned with gender issues in resource allocation for special needs in mainstream schools. The ways in which categories operate in academic life and professional practice in schools raise dilemmas for the development of the concept and practice of equality of opportunity. Data are drawn from a recent ESRC study (R000237346) and used to illustrate some of the ways in which significant problems for the management of special needs services are revealed from the perspective of gender.

Differences, difficulty and equity: gender, race and SEN

Marjorie Smith and Valerie Hey are Research Officers at the London Institute of Education. For many years we have been told that ’schools make a difference’. But too rarely do we talk about the ways in which schools do make differences and also try to find out rather more about the kinds of differences that schools make. Reynolds and Cuttance (1992) refer to the need to examine data for gender differences in quantitative effectiveness research literature: ’Gender differentials should be examined in determining whether a given school or group of schools is effective or becoming more effective’ (p. 29)

Moving on up: South Asian women and higher education, by Yasmin Hussain and Paul Bagguley

once and the evidence to support claims such as ethnic minority students were ‘stronger and more assertive’ (p. 121) would have been more demonstrable with observational data. George concludes that race and class did not determine how friendship groups were constituted or sustained due to the fact that networks shifted based upon the more open structures of secondary schools. The unique way that social class was de-operationalised in this peer group demanded more attention and how, perhaps, this phenomenon related to individual school cultures. Data from this study highlights the significance of friendship and girls’ emotional investment towards maintaining equilibrium within these social networks. One clear implication is that adults in schools should pay more attention to dominant gender discourses informing interactions and patterns of friendships given the consuming nature of social relationships. Given the fact that racial and social class structures appeared suppressed within the school context and certain peer groups functioned in a flat rather than a hierarchical manner, one question for future research is how does school type and school culture affect peer networks and social hierarchies?

Unfinished agendas: new and continuing gender challenges in higher education, edited by Judith Glazer‐Raymo

emphasises the importance of understanding how classic aspects of psychology are produced as part of social practices. ‘New Media, New Childhoods?’ by David Buckingham concludes this section with an examination of the competing discourses of digital technology that position children either as passive victims of the electronic invasion or as technologically literate ‘cyberkids’. Buckingham calls for academic interest to move beyond a determinist view of the effects of media technology on children to one that analyses the ways in which media use is embedded within children’s daily lives. ‘Promoting Better Childhoods’, by Wendy Stainton Rogers, introduces the reader to Part 3 with a perceptive analysis of the social construction of child concern. Drawing successfully from a range of literature and illustrating points eloquently with the situation of 14-year-old Zadie, Stainton Rogers proposes that both needs and rights discourses are ethnocentric concerns. The ‘quality of life’ discourse is presented as an advance on the former as it acknowledges that children’s welfare is always contextual. New to this edition, ‘Children’s Rights in Early Childhood’, by Glenda MacNaughton and Kylie Smith, explores the theme of children’s rights further by focusing on an Australian curriculum policy consultation: ‘Including Young Children’s Voices’. Drawing extensively on interview data from the project, the authors demonstrate the ways in which educators develop gender strategies that are in stark contrast to children’s lived experiences and argue that it is essential to conduct research ‘with’ rather than ‘about’ children. ‘Childhood and the Law’ by Daniel Monk concludes the section by challenging the myth of ‘neutral law’. Employing historical changes and cases, Monk illustrates that childhood requires us to think of law as a continually shifting cultural and social text. The editor’s new concluding chapter, ‘The Future of Childhood’, traces the anatomy of crisis in childhood and looks ahead to the future of childhood studies and the future of childhood itself. The aim of this book was to bring together key themes and issues in the area of childhood studies to provide an introduction to students and practitioners working in this field. I feel that these aims have been met as An Introduction to Childhood Studies provides a comprehensive and accessible grounding in the field, which it sets out to cover. The recommendations for further reading after each section make this second edition an ideal addition to the reading list of any introductory course that explores children and childhood.