This paper examines the role of professionalism in teachers' change in practice related to dialogue and argumentation. Data were collected from 14 pre-primary and primary school teachers who participated in a professional development programme with an emphasis on promoting values such as tolerance, empathy, inclusion and social responsibility…

This article offers a response to some recent critiques of character education in a UK context, in general, and the approach promoted by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, in particular. The article argues that critiques of current UK character education betray an inadequate grasp of significant factions within its group of advocates,…

For some time now, the idea of secularism has been the subject of renewed scrutiny. Statistical portraits, representing a simple, if relentless, narrative have been increasingly disparaged by scholars as unhelpful. Statistical secularism, as we may call it, tells a story of decline and little else. It is incapable of telling the real story which…

Nathanael Davies explains his radical rethink of how to teach transatlantic slavery. He explains how he came to question his earlier approach of focusing on the causation of 'abolition' and 'emancipation' and, instead, allowed scholarship, sources and his own students' meaning-making to guide him to a different, and much more profound, analytic…

This article develops an emerging analytical approach, "child as method" (Burman 2018a, 2018b), to attend to the role played by "the child" and, by extension, children within the production of false beliefs and commitments. Specifically, "child as method" is applied to contemporary political discourse around…

As neo-Aristotelian character education approaches have become more popular, the list of objections has increased too. This paper focuses on the objection that while character education proponents claim to be 'progressive' and 'reformative' they seem to maintain the educational status quo. This paper examines what happens to neo-Aristotelian…

This article explores the positioning of a sample of Arabic complementary language schools in the context of the UK government's discourse and promotion of so-called Fundamental British Values. While there is considerable social and political debate about radicalisation in Arab communities, teachers in the sample are deeply committed to a form of…

Oscar Wilde is one of the most hilarious playwrights in the history of English literature. And 'The Importance of Being Earnest' is his masterpiece. With Wilde's humorous and witty language as the starting point and aided by the concordancing software WORDSMITH TOOLS, a detailed analysis was carried out on this comedy from lexical level and…

From 2006 to 2008 UK-based primary school teachers in the "No Outsiders" project explored possibilities for addressing sexualities equality in their classrooms. What all teachers had in common was a resource pack that included 27 children's books exploring themes of gender and sexuality diversity either directly or indirectly (i.e. by…

Over the last two decades drama pedagogy has helped to lay the foundations for a new teaching and learning culture, one that accentuates physicality and centres on performative experience. Signs of this 'performative turn' in education are especially strong in the field of foreign/second language teaching. This volume introduces scholars, language…

It has become a truism that Britain is a multi-cultural society yet, as Mohamud and Whitburn argue, there is still a great deal of thinking to be done by history teachers in accounting for this diversity in the classroom. Mohamud and Whitburn consider approaches to both curriculum and pedagogy when it comes to teaching about the Somali community…

The strengths and limitations of approaches to participatory and democratic practice rooted in voice have been discussed in relation to education and also "youth voice". The paper seeks to make critical connection between the two debates, especially in relation to the persistence of practices of exclusion and marginalisation. Drawing on…

Research concerning children is often presented with only a brief comment on the research methods adopted. This paper takes a "behind the scenes" view and I discuss my adoption of a non-hierarchical "least adult role" adapted from Mandell's work in 1991 to undertake qualitative research in the sensitive area of children's…

This paper concerns the response to the sex education film "Growing Up", made in 1971 by Dr Martin Cole, which used a combination of animation and live action to offer a frank and uncompromising account of sexual reproduction. As part of this, both male and female masturbation and an unsimulated act of male-female coitus featured in the…

This article provides a critical account of a selection of approaches that were used in the 26-month No Outsiders participatory action research project in education settings. The paper questions what challenges are presented to educators in critically exploring and challenging heteronormative sex-gender discourses. We revisit some of the tensions…