Ruth Mcginity

Living Improvement 2: a case study of a secondary school in England

Schools in England are being urged to personalize the curriculum and make school experiences more responsive to all students. We report on an evaluation project which investigated innovation in teaching and learning in a successful secondary school in the north of England. Data were gathered from a sample of teaching staff, a questionnaire to all students, lesson and meeting observations, and meetings with the governing body and parents: the student-guided evaluation canvassed recent and planned changes to the structure and experience of teaching and learning. This article illuminates how one school is breaking the ‘traditional schooling rules’ that limit improvement and how in doing so it is developing new insights about the nature and process of improvement. We show how staff and students have been engaged in the change process, and focus in particular on analysing the interplay between improvement as a plan, a practice and a lived experience.

The Politics of the Academies Programme: Natality and Pluralism in Education Policy-Making.

Our investigations into the politics of the Academies Programme in England have generated thinking that draws on data about the conversion process from two projects. We engage with an early City Academy that replaced two ‘failing’ schools, and a recent Academy that replaced a ‘successful’ high school. We deploy Hannah Arendt’s political tools of natality and pluralism to illuminate the depoliticisation of educational reform in England. We identify that, while claims are made about innovation and new opportunities, there is little evidence of natality due to the Academies Programme as a conservative and neoliberal restoration project. Integral to this is the urgency of reform based on deferential common sense notions that elite groups know best. The denial of a plurality of options, debates and interest groups in the conversion process is delivered by co-opted educational professionals as reform managers.

?Introduction: ?embedded research? as an approach into academia for emerging researchers?

In July 2012 a doctoral seminar was held at the University of Manchester, School of Education, which debated the challenges and implications of ‘embedded research’ as an approach into academia for emerging researchers. At this seminar eight doctoral students presented reflexive accounts about their conceptualizations of embedded research and raised issues regarding the ways in which they developed and designed collaborative research agendas with their host organizations. They also critiqued the potential embedded research partnerships can offer for the development of policy and practice within educational organizations. The keynote speakers at the seminar reflect the multidisciplinary nature of the embedded research; in his critical analysis, Michael Apple (University of Wisconsin Madison) mapped out the landscape of societal power relations and raised important questions regarding the ethical implications of undertaking embedded research specifically in educational settings. Megan O’Neill (University of Salford) on the other hand drew from her experiences in criminal sociology to discuss the practicalities of conducting embedded research with other types of public sector groups and organizations. Although this special collection focuses upon the activities of embedded researchers from an educational perspective, we recognize that such arrangements arguably have roots within both anthropological and sociological traditions, and thus are not tied to either a specific methodological approach or to a singular discipline. This special edition is a collection of papers from three of the presenting doctoral students: James Duggan, Sam Baars and Harriet Rowley, along with contributions from Professor Helen Gunter, University of Manchester and Kevin Hollins, Principal of an Academy that has hosted an embedded researcher. The contributors were selected to reflect how the arrangement of embedded research is experienced from the researcher, supervisory and host institutional perspectives. Before introducing each of the papers within this special edition the following section of this introductory paper will firstly set out a working definition of embedded research and situate the approach within existing literatures. Secondly, it moves on to highlighting the challenges and implications embedded research has for policy, practice and educational research.

Exploring the complexities of researcher identity in a school based ethnography

In September 2010 I began an ESRC CASE Studentship in the School of Education, University of Manchester, and Kingswood High School, UK (anonymised name). This paper presents a reflexive analysis of the first year of the studentship, with a particular emphasis on working both inside and outside of the university and school. I worked with my supervisor and school personnel to design and implement a baseline data collection process, and using this data I reported to the school on key findings to support policy making and to begin negotiations on my PhD project. I will use my research diary to provide a thematic account of the first year, specifically I will examine both practical and philosophical issues regarding learning about my identity as a researcher who moves between similar and different institutions, professionals and organisational purposes. I will present a theorising of what it means to be simultaneously in and out, and between, and what this means for the development of a coherent project that meets the requirements of the school, university and the social sciences.

Innovation and autonomy at a time of rapid reform: an English case study

This paper sets out to report upon the findings of a case study of an ‘innovative’ school in England. Specifically, the research focusses upon the way in which the school has engaged with the neoliberal policy context in which increased autonomy and diversification of provision is promoted in England as a driver of standards. Using Bourdieus conceptualisation of symbolic capital, the findings suggest that within this autonomous system, ‘innovative’ localised policy-making can arguably misrecognise the role such ‘innovation’ plays in helping to maintain structures, which may contribute to ensuring the field, and its competitive nature, is protected rather than challenged.