Paul Warmington

Re‐engaging disaffected youth through physical activity programmes

It is a cherished belief within physical education and sport communities that participation in sport/physical activity has the potential to offer young people a range of physical, psychological and social benefits. More recently in the UK, this belief has become prominent in government policies that, among other things, are seeking to re-engage disaffected young people in order to increase their life chances and minimise the impact of anti-social behaviours upon others. Yet, the link between physical activity interventions and developing pro-social behaviours is not straightforward, and there is a lack of credible research evidence to support many of the claims made for physical activity to or to inform decisions about effective intervention design. This paper reviews key literature, focusing particularly on disaffected young people and physical activity interventions in the school context, and identifies six key issues that, we would argue, warrant consideration when planning physical activity programmes to re-engage disaffected young people. In particular, it is argued that the unprecedented levels of public and private funding available for physical activity related programmes in the UK, and the high expectations placed upon them to deliver specific measurable outcomes, mean that the need for credible monitoring and evaluation is pressing.

Learning in and for Multi-Agency Working.

This study addresses the challenges faced by organisations and individual professionals, as new practices are developed and learned in multi‐agency work settings. The practices examined in the paper involve working responsively across professional boundaries with at‐risk young people. The paper draws on evidence from the Learning in and for Interagency Working Project, a four year ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme study of inter‐professional learning which has examined the challenges involved in what Victor and Boynton (1998) term co‐configuration work. In the context of professional collaboration for social inclusion, co‐configuration involves on‐going partnerships between professionals and service users to support young people’s pathways out of social exclusion. This work demands a capacity to recognise and access expertise distributed across local systems and to negotiate the boundaries of responsible professional action with other professionals and with clients. The paper outlines the activity theory derived theoretical platform adopted by the project and describes the intervention methodology that is being developed, as we study the learning challenges identified by children’s services practitioners in UK local authorities.

Analysing third generation activity systems : labour‐power, subject position and personal transformation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe how Engestroms “third generation” activity theory, with its emphasis on developing conceptual tools to understand dialogues, multiple perspectives and networks of interacting activity systems, has informed research into professional learning in multiagency service settings in England.Design/methodology/approach – Researchers worked intensively with multi‐professional teams in five English local authorities. Through the use of developmental research work (DWR) methodologies, they sought to understand and facilitate the expansive learning that takes place in and for multiagency work.Findings – Provisional analysis of data has emphasised the need to understand activity systems in terms of contradictions, which may be developed through reference to the notion of labour‐power; subject positioning and identity within activities; emotional experiencing in processes of personal transformation. The general working hypothesis of learning itself requires expansion ...

Could do better? Media depictions of UK educational assessment results

The publication of A‐level examination results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland has become one of the major diary items in the news media’s calendar. This paper is based, in part, upon the findings of an inter‐disciplinary study funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It explores two key questions about the relationship between the education sector and news media in the UK. Firstly, it asks why educationalists appear to have become pessimistic about the possibilities for raising the quality of media debate about education. Secondly, it takes the example of the annual coverage of A‐level results, in order to discuss why education news coverage tends to adhere to templates that many educationalists criticize as producing ritualistic and polarized coverage. The paper concludes by exploring some suggestions for those who are seeking ways to influence the quality of education news coverage.

Taking race out of scare quotes: race‐conscious social analysis in an ostensibly post‐racial world

Academics and activists concerned with race and racism have rightly coalesced around the sociological project to refute biologistic conceptions of race. By and large, our default position as teachers, writers and researchers is that race is a social construct. However, the deconstruction of race and its claims to theoretical intelligibility has also left us buckling under the weight of scare quotes, prefixes, suffixes, qualifiers and euphemisms. Why has race been singled out in this way? In this ostensibly ‘post‐racial’ context, how can race‐conscious scholars (to use Leonardos term) speak not just of racism or racialization but of race itself in the work that we do? These are pedagogic questions because pedagogy is not simply a synonym for teaching and learning styles; it is also the study of connections between teaching and learning and wider social structures, cultural shifts and intellectual conditions. This paper draws upon the work of Gilroy, Winant, Leonardo and Pollock to argue the value of representing race as a central social practice ordered by shifting boundaries, tools and categories. The paper takes issue with post‐racial positions and suggests that, while races false dimensions need to be understood, race is not simply something to be overcome. A racial analysis that incorporates imaginative and material lenses is the required tool for beginning to dismantle real and damaging racial practices. We are post‐racial in having moved beyond pseudo‐genetic notions of race; however, we are not ‘post‐racial’ per se. Therefore we must make creative use of the paradox of race‐conscious scholarship: working both with and against conceptual tools that have yet to be effectively replaced.

Professional Learning within Multi-Agency Children's Services: Researching into Practice.

Background This article is concerned with professional learning within multi-agency settings. Since the publication of the government document Every child matters in 2003, professionals involved in working with children and young people have been moving into newly organized services that are required to deliver improved services for vulnerable children and their families. Although new ways of professional working are described in the plethora of government guidance that has followed Every child matters, there has been little examination of how this is being achieved in different teams around the country. Purpose This paper describes a current national research project, ‘Learning in and for Inter-agency Working’, which is investigating new ways of learning that develop, while teams of professionals work together around children and young people who are at risk of social exclusion. Programme description The research project is theoretically based and draws upon sociocultural and activity theory research to understand the practices that develop within the different agencies involved. The paper describes the derivation of the theory and the particular aspects of activity theory that are central to the project. In particular, the use of developmental work research (DWR), as the method of intervention with a number of local education authorities, is described and explained. Sample Some of the early work undertaken within phases 3 and 4 of a five-stage project which began in 2004 and ends in 2007 is described. Five different inter-agency teams of professionals working as part of Childrens Services, from different geographical locations in England are the participants in the study. Design and methods The research uses activity theory to structure a series of DWR workshops with members of the multi-agency teams. Ethnographic data, including observations and interviews, are collected and form the subject-matter of the workshops. Results The data gathered are used to facilitate workshops where participants discuss their developing working practices and plan changes. The reporting phase of the project, where the findings across all sites will be analysed and summarized is not until mid-2007. However, early themes emerging from the research are included in the paper. These themes include: issues around co-location and co-working, evolving of professional identities, discussion of divisions of labour and professional expertise. These are described and illustrated using data from the research project. Conclusions As this is still ‘work in progress’ no firm conclusions can be drawn. However, it has become clear that new ways of thinking about professional working with children and families is necessary as old ways of working do not necessarily provide better outcomes for children.

‘A tradition in ceaseless motion’: critical race theory and black British intellectual spaces

In the USA, where Critical Race Theory (CRT) first emerged, black public intellectuals are a longstanding, if embattled, feature of national life. However, while often marginalized in public debate, the UK has its own robust tradition of black intellectual creation. The field of education, both as a site of intellectual production and as the site of political struggle for black communities, is one of the significant fields in which black British intellectual positions have been defined and differentiated. This article argues that the transfer of CRT to the UK context should be understood within this broader context of black British intellectual production. Through a critical examination of race conscious scholarship and the diverse literature produced in the UK since the 1960s, this article identifies some of the dimensions of education that have been scrutinized by black British intellectuals. In doing so, it directs attention to questions being generated by the transfer of CRT to the UK and to the local materials on which those using CRT might draw, in order to build a historically grounded base for the development of CRT in the UK.

Studenthood as surrogate occupation: access to higher education students' discursive production of commitment, discursive production of commitment, maturity and peer support

Abstract This article suggests that, despite the current preoccupation with learner-centredness, there are good reasons for maintaining a research interest in the practice of ‘studenthood’ as a means by which students enact coherence between their own personal requirements and those of the educational site. The article comprises a critical ethnography, depicting the ways in which a group of mature returners on an Access to HE programme constructed studenthood as an instrumental, transferable and discursive technique, employed to make themselves viable actors in further and higher education. Within this quasi-vocational setting studenthood is conceptualised as a surrogate occupation, which formed the prerequisite for completion of Access, progression to HE and, ultimately, entry into desired forms of graduate employment. The groups development of a student ethic centres upon fluid intra-group networking and a discourse of commitment, maturity and reciprocation.

Divisions of labour: activity theory, multi‐professional working and intervention research

This article draws upon, but also critiques, activity theory by combining analysis of how an activity theory derived research intervention attempted to address both everyday work practices and organisational power relationships among childrens services professionals. It offers two case studies of developmental work research (DWR) interventions in UK local authorities, wherein multi‐professional teams were attempting, at operational level, to develop and stabilise new work practices. Data are derived from the series of interviews and DWR workshops conducted in each research site. The data analysis draws attention to the ways in which multi‐professional innovations and professional development were sometimes constrained by managerial structures that were still embedded in ‘traditional’ professional silos. The paper also offers conceptual discussion of activity theorys potential shortcomings in addressing ‘vertical’ divisions of labour and the contradictions embedded in relationships between operational staff and their senior managers.

'Read All about It!' UK News Media Coverage of A-level Results

News coverage of public examination results in the United Kingdom has escalated in recent years. The years 2002 and 2003, in particular, witnessed a bitter media debate over A-level results. Yet, while educationalists often deride the quality of the annual examination debate, there has been minimal research into the specific ways in which exam news issues are constructed by news media. This article discusses the critical findings of an interdisciplinary study, conducted by education and media specialists, of print and broadcast news coverage of the publication of A-level results in August 2002 and 2003. The article focuses upon three particular elements: the distribution of different headline categories and themes; the structural, narrative and presentation templates in which A-level news items were embedded, and the discursive features that have characterised the dominant template for A-level news coverage: the claim that examination standards are ‘falling’. The article concludes by briefly considering some of the broader questions about the relationship between the education sector and news media in the United Kingdom, reflecting upon the ritualistic and polarised nature of coverage, the subtext of anxieties over the ‘massification’ of post-compulsory education and the readiness (or not) of educationalists to engage in a debate being played out for increasingly high stakes.