John Coldron

Active location in teachers' construction of their professional identities

Identity as a teacher is partly given and partly achieved by active location in social space. Social space is an array of possible relations that one person can have to others. Some of these relations are conferred by inherited social structures and categorizations and some are chosen or created by the individual. Sets of practices (traditions) convey possibilities within social space. The development of a teachers professional identity is largely dependent on the quality and availability of these varied factors. This paper identifies the craft, scientific, moral and artistic traditions as significant in educational practice. Although current trends emphasize a narrow aspect of the craft tradition and the technology of teaching, the multi-dimensional nature of teaching is recognized. Teachers need to be aware of many potential positions they might assume. Policies that impose greater degrees of uniformity and conformity threaten to impoverish the notion of active location.

The effect of changes in published secondary school admissions on pupil composition

Data from three school admissions surveys and the National Pupil Database are combined to investigate whether changes to the School Admissions Code appear to have altered the published admissions policies and the social composition of particular schools. We show that the 2003 and 2007 School Admissions Codes appear to have been at least in part responsible for changes in the social composition of pupils at schools with criteria and arrangements that were subsequently deemed inadmissible. Although the average impact is relatively small, the direction of the impact is consistent with the observation that school segregation across England has declined a little at the same time that regulations were tightening. Our regression analysis of changes in individual school compositions is able to show this relationship holds even when changes in neighbourhood composition are accounted for. These measured associations that we identify suggest that, if the differentiation of school intakes is a concern, then regulating admission arrangements does appear to have an impact.

’Happiness’ as a criterion of parents’ choice of school

Abstract This paper takes as its starting point the results of a number of projects that investigated the criteria parents use when choosing schools. In those studies it was found that the happiness of the child was a crucial consideration and that academic criteria were significantly minimized. One of the projects, that conducted at Sheffield, set out to try to clarify what parents might mean by the vague criterion of ‘happiness’. The results of this investigation show a complex set of reasons cited by parents for their decisions. A possible explanation for the relative importance of the criteria is proposed. The conclusion is drawn that schools and those concerned with the presentation of their practice to parents should not be exclusively preoccupied with the single criterion of academic standards. It is hoped that these conclusions offer some evidence to justify existing good practice in schools.

Why are English secondary schools socially segregated

This paper seeks an explanation for the persistent social phenomenon of segregated schooling in England whereby children from families with broadly the same characteristics of wealth, education and social networks are more likely to be educated together and therefore separate from children from more socially distant groups. The paper outlines the historical legacy and the current level of segregation in English schools. It considers explanations that focus on the effect of marketisation of education and finds these explanations limited. A deeper explanation in terms of the practices of more affluent and more highly educated parents is found to be more adequate but in need of amendment in its characterisation of collective action. The complementary practices of poorer parents with less education are highlighted. The way in which these class mechanisms operate in England at the present time is illustrated by considering the different ways in which segregation is generated in selective, faith and community schools.

The restructuring of schooling in England: The responses of well-positioned headteachers

Research to date about the English government’s policy to make schools independent of local authorities (LAs) has looked at the ‘macro’ level of national policy and at the ‘micro’ level of the institution. The study of which this article is a part, explores changes at the ‘meso’ level – the locality. The article analyses interviews in three LAs with 15 headteachers whose schools were well positioned locally. We sought to understand how and why they responded to the changing policy environment. We applied Bourdieu’s concepts of forms of capital to model the relationships between schools and to ground explanations of their responses as positioning themselves in the local field. The article develops this general approach by identifying the varieties of capital available and actually possessed. The most important was categorization as a result of the inspection process. Many of the headteachers felt impelled to lead their schools into various associations with other schools. Some individuals were becoming notably more powerful in their competition arenas. The power of these elite schools to further accumulate advantage and the withdrawal of the LA role as an arbiter of conflict between schools in the interests of the whole community are discussed.

What do Parents Mean when they Talk About 'Discipline' in Relation to their Children's Schools?

Abstract We interviewed 28 parents who had at least one child who had just finished compulsory schooling in the state sector. We asked them about their choice of school and their experience of compulsory schooling for their child. Discipline was a key element in their responses. We analysed the data to elucidate the different ways in which ‘discipline’ was of significance for these parents. We examined why they talked about discipline in this way. These included reference to employability, a concern for the ‘moral order’ and the maintenance of adult authority. We attempted to understand what was being said by seeing it as embedded in their way of life. Power relations between adult/child and resulting from social location were relevant to this understanding.

SELECTION BY ATTAINMENT AND APTITUDE IN ENGLISH SECONDARY SCHOOLS

ABSTRACT:  This paper presents the findings from a study of the admission arrangements for all secondary schools in England. We sketch the history of selection, answer questions about the scale and extent of selection by attainment or aptitude including an account of partially selective schools, consider the similarity and differences between selection by aptitude and by attainment and analyse some of the issues associated with both kinds of selection.

Does the Rhetoric Work? Parental Responses to New Right Policy Assumptions

Abstract This paper examines the extent to which parents have absorbed New Right ideas about education and acted accordingly. What emerges is that their commitment to the rhetoric of school choice is strong. However, concepts such as the market and competition are viewed less favourably. An important theme here is the avoidance by parents of any collective agenda in discussing education policy, a factor that may thwart those who attempt to predict their responses to government policy for schools.

Emerging local schooling landscapes: the role of the local authority

The school system in England is undergoing rapid change, with the government creating more than 4000 ‘independent publicly funded schools’, known as academies, since 2010. The potential for fragmentation is considerable with diversity of governance emerging as a key feature of the new schooling landscape. Consequently, a major and widely recognised issue to which these reforms give rise concerns the future of the ‘middle tier’ –that layer between individual schools or groups of schools and central government. There are competing visions of how a future middle tier might evolve: one focuses entirely on a middle tier of individual schools and chains as a ‘self-improving system’; others conceive a continuing but revised role for the local authority (LA). The aim of this paper is to begin to explore the latter position, and in particular the potential role of the LA as a ‘broker’ of new patterns of school organisation. Drawing on interview data from three very different LA areas, the findings show that LAs differ in how they conceive their role and, consequently, on the strategies that they pursue.

A case study of a patent's educational practice

This article presents an analysis of one, middle class parents educational practice. Her name is Sarah. The studys aim was to attend to the texture and close grain of what Sarah said in relation to her two young childrens education. The analysis reveals the ways in which her practice is gendered, how her educational practice began before the birth of her children and the various strands of her complex conception of education and schooling. The article describes how Sarah manages decision making in a context of uncertainty and trace the sources of a pervasive anxiety. The author considers how emotions are integral and constitutive of her educational practice and that of the networks to which she belongs. The way in which meanings and emotions are generated within Sarahs fields of choice is described.