Jo Warin

Parental Involvement in Raising the Achievement of Primary School Pupils: Why Bother?.

Reasons for investing in parental involvement activities aimed at improving the performance of primary school children in either numeracy or literacy are analysed. Data are then discussed in relation firstly to sociocultural understandings of how teachers support childrens learning and secondly to conceptions of identity and self-esteem apparently held by participating teachers. We suggest that primary schools are currently being obliged to use parents as assistants in the delivery of an over-loaded curriculum in ways which do not draw on understandings of what parents do have to offer.

Intimate talk between parents and their teenage children: Democratic openness or covert control?

In so far as modern families subscribe to an ideal of democracy, then adolescence is a time in which the democratic ideal in the family becomes an object of explicit focus as parents and teenagers strive towards a renegotiation of their relative positions. Teenagers need to develop their adult identities and a sense of agency, while at the same time, parents who have invested both personally and financially in their children must reconsider this relationship and come to terms with the reality of the returns from that investment. Intimate relations imply both democracy and equality: in what Giddens (1992) calls the ‘pure relationship’, individuals continuously reevaluate the relationship in terms of the satisfactions which it delivers in their ‘project of the self’. This paper argues that the twin ideals of democracy and intimacy necessarily clash in parent-teenager relationships, resulting in a further complication of the negotiation processes already identified in previous research (Brannen, 1999; Brannen et al., 1994; Hofer et al., 1999).While both parents and their teenage children subscribe to the discourse of openness and honesty as the route to both intimacy and democracy, there are tensions within the concept of openness because both parties have opposing goals in the trading of information. For parents, information gain means the retention of power and control, while for teenagers, with-holding information from their parents ensures their privacy, power and identity.

Heavy‐metal Humpty Dumpty: dissonant masculinities within the context of the nursery

To operationalize a feminist poststructuralist approach necessitates research of a close‐up nature in order to track shifting subject positions through a range of social contexts and to explore the interpersonal and intrapersonal power relations that operate within them. Adopting this theoretical perspective, together with Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, this paper explores the practices and beliefs of one male nursery teacher, Ian, as he attempts to carry out a Government‐funded initiative aimed at increasing the involvement of fathers and male carers in his nursery. Data are drawn from a sequence of interviews with Ian, his colleagues, and the participating fathers and male carers. The analysis shows how Ian experiences identity dissonance which can be interpreted as a struggle with competing aspects of masculinity as he slips in and out of forms of hegemonic masculinity, sometimes complicit and sometimes struggling to resist. This interpretation problematizes the essentialist nature of the concept of hegemonic masculinity.

Validity in Image-based Research: an elaborated illustration of the issues

This article is concerned with the trustworthiness of products of research which are derived from image-based data. Fundamentally it asks whether validity represents an appropriate measure of the quality of research which uses such data. Two examples of image-based research are taken from recent work undertaken by the authors. A comparison of these examples provides a well-grounded illustration of the issues confronted by the researchers in their attempt to consider the validity of their findings. The resulting discussion develops the argument that the concept of validity is particularly problematic in its application to image-based research. We present a tentative strategy for ensuring trustworthiness that is based on five key criteria: completeness, adequacy of interpretation, transparency, self-reflection and the aggregation of conflicting interpretations.

Swapping Stories: Comparing Plots: Triangulating Individual Narratives within Families

Issues relating to the trustworthiness of research narratives are particularly relevant for those family researchers who attempt to interpret, legitimate and represent comparative accounts of family life collected from different family members within the same family unit. We discuss these issues with reference to research we have carried out with 57 family groups. In confronting the analysis that emerges from a process of comparison and combining differing perspectives we ask: whose story are we telling? This question raises deeper epistemological problems regarding the ‘crisis of representation’ in social research. We argue for a resolution of the crisis by the adoption of a post‐positivist position in which we are clear that the emerging interpretation and representation of our disparate and complex data set is our story. Furthermore, we argue that we need to incorporate ourselves within our emerging narrative, bringing a ‘strong objectivity’ (Harding, 1993) to bear on our interpretation.

The salience of gender during the transition to higher education: male students' accounts of performed and authentic identities

This article looks at the transition to higher education made by a group of male undergraduates. The data were collected though one‐to‐one interviews with 24 students, who were asked questions designed to elicit data about their positioning in relation to hegemonic masculinities. The evidence presented here supports the view that gender operates as a salient and accessible means of identifying an in‐group of peers and that ‘laddish’ practices are enacted as a function of the initial stages of peer group formation. However, such practices are described by many respondents as a ‘front’ or performance. In distancing themselves from such practices, these students did not succeed in articulating ‘alternative masculinities’, but many articulated a strong underlying value for an authentic self, providing an important insight into the experiencing of identity.

Gender, teaching and care: a comparative global conversation

Our purpose in planning and editing this special issue was to draw together discussions about the intersection of care and teaching practices within educational contexts and to recognise how gender influences the complex relationship between these two aspects of pedagogy. We intended to promote a debate on this knotty intersection through a specific focus on the concept of care. Care is an elastic concept, its meanings dependent on the specific context in which it is used but the values wrapped up in it frequently implicate assumptions and expectations about gender. We wanted to encourage contributions that engage in a re-conceptualisation of care as a starting point in loosening the ties between care, femininity and women’s work and that simultaneously examined concepts of care in relation to masculinity and male teachers. Historically, care has often been essentialised as ‘natural’ to women and consequently informs understandings of the professional roles that women are best suited to perform (Cameron, Moss, and Owen 1999; Cameron 2001). Women have been seen to be particularly suited to teaching young children through a symbolical representation of the teacher as the loving mother (Burman 1994; Peeters 2008). Due to the gender order in Western society, the historical link between care and women’s work simultaneously devalues the nature of care and decreases the possibility of care work to be viewed as professional labour. Because women’s caring work is often not counted or financially rewarded it remains as an invisible and downgraded contribution to society (Acker 1995). The other side of this coin is that men are able to assume a ‘privileged irresponsibility’ towards caring duties because it is not seen to be their ‘natural’ work (Tronto 2002; Zembylas, Bozalek, and Shefer 2014). Consequently, some forms of care, when performed by men, are not recognised as such (King 1998; Hjalmarsson and Lofdahl 2014). The downgrading of care has excluded it, to a great extent, as a legitimate subject of academic study and research. For example, Lynch, Baker, and Lyons (2009) claim that ‘love and care have not been regarded as subjects of sufficient political importance to be mainstreamed in theory or empirical investigations’ (2). Yet there has been a growing literature, especially from feminist authors, that recognises the gendered nature of carebased work within formal and domestic education contexts (Hooks 1984; Noddings

The Attainment of Self-Consistency through Gender in Young Children.

This paper explores young childrens motivation for gender-stereotypical preferences by comparing two theories, both based on Kohlbergs stages of cognitive understanding within the cognitive developmental tradition. The first, elaborated by Kohlberg, suggests that gender-stereotypical preferences are the result of the childs cognitive understanding of the constancy of their gender. The second theory suggests that it is precisely the lack of certainty of gender constancy that influences gender-stereotypical behavior. Data from a cross-sectional study of 100 children sampled during their first year of school, and longitudinal case studies of 10 children during the transition to school, are brought to bear on these two theories. The sample was drawn from a range of working class and middle class home backgrounds. The children were mainly White, with 6% Asian-Indian in the cross-sectional sample, and 1 Asian-Indian child in the longitudinal group. The study finds an association between gender-stereotypical behavior and the attainment of gender constancy, suggesting support for the first theory.

The status of care: linking gender and ‘educare’

The connections between debates about male absence in primary and preschool teaching, and wider debates about the status of the caring professions are explored here. It is suggested that neo-liberal concepts of educational purposes are deeply entwined with hegemonic masculinity, resulting in the current patterns of male employment that we see as a global phenomenon in educational work with young children. The argument draws on three sources: a body of case studies of the individual experiences of male teachers/carers; comparative conversations within a network of Swedish/English gender and education researchers who recognize that government educational reforms in both countries have side-lined the caring purposes of education; and feminist study of an ethic of care that emphasizes relational and egalitarian dimensions of caring. The debate about ‘missing men’ is reframed in the primary stages of education to ask how society would be different if care ethics were taken seriously in terms of educational policy and practice. The concept of ‘educare’, derived from Swedish pedagogy, has the potential to portray holistic educational purposes and the power to transform professional gender roles within education.

Identity capital: an application from a longitudinal ethnographic study of self-construction during the years of school

This article contributes to ongoing discussion of the Bourdieusian concept of cultural capital and current attempts to elaborate this concept and its derivatives. The paper identifies ‘identity capital’, the capacity to create a narrative of social and self-awareness by constructing a flexible sense of self. This concept explains findings from a longitudinal ethnography with nine children and young people over a 13-year period from pre-school to the age of 17. Analysis of the data shows that this particular capacity is developed through certain kinds of privileged discourses and the opportunities provided within socially advantaged schools and families. Two case studies are selected to reveal how identity capital interacts with other identifiable forms of capital that compound and entrench each other. The paper concludes by arguing that deficiencies in identity capital could be addressed within schooling in order to support the creation of this important resource.