In an effort to intentionally create the level of deep learning necessary for practitioners to make meaningful changes in their classrooms, professional networks are increasingly being promoted as mechanisms for knowledge creation that can lever the kinds of changes that make a difference for students. This paper explores the way networks function…

Discourse between pupils represents a core element of citizenship education in England. However, as it is currently presented within the curriculum, discourse adopts the form of the rather broad terms of "discussion" and "debate". These terms are diffuse, and in themselves offer little pedagogical guidance for teachers…

This paper examines the way students reflect upon discipline in a City Technology College which has a Bible-based Christian ethos. This ethos is formally operationalised within college pastoral care and academic structures through a set of seven Core Values. Using ethnographic data and theoretical perspectives derived from Bourdieu this paper…

Practice is not created and developed by individual teachers but is subject to what Kemmis and Grootenboer called "extra-individual conditions" and cultural histories. The "expectations" around teaching do much to create stereotypes and conformity around how to teach and how to act in schools. This paper explores a teacher's…

This article explores the social construction of cultural diversity in education, with a view to social justice. It examines how educational systems organize ethno-cultural difference and how this process contributes to inequalities. Theoretical resources are drawn from social philosophy as well as from recent developments in social organisation…

Partnerships between schools and universities in England use course handbooks to guide student teacher learning during long field experiences. Using data from a yearlong ethnographic study of a postgraduate certificate of education programme in one English university, the function of course handbooks in mediating learning in two high school…

This paper is concerned with the way we understand and investigate the relationship between human functioning and social setting. The central argument draws on the work of Bernstein and Vygotsky. A novel approach to the study of the mutual shaping of human action and institutional settings is developed and an empirical example of its application…

The article examines data collected from six primary schools in the ESRC Project: Primary Teacher Identity, Commitment and Career in Performative Cultures, and compares it to classic analyses of teacher commitment made by Dan Lortie and Jennifer Nias in order to assess continuity and change. The "mission" to teach is still there, as is…

Normalization and social role valorization continue to play a central role in shaping debates and practice relating to learning difficulties. In the context of recent arguments this paper draws on the work of Foucault to deconstruct these theories. Foucault's work alerts us to a conceptual confusion at their heart which reproduces a common but…

Citizenship and its education is again gaining importance in many countries. This paper uses England as its primary example to develop a Habermasian perspective on this issue. The statutory requirements for citizenship education in England imply that significant attention be given to the moral and social development of the learner over time, to…

Behaviourist and cognitive theories of learning view learning as a process of individual internalisation. Social theorists view learning as a process that is socially constructed and developed in social contexts. Wenger suggests that professional practice is a social process that is constructed in communities. Mentoring in Initial Teacher…

In this essay David Bridges argues that since most families choose to realize their responsibility for the major part of their children's education through state schools, then the way in which the state constructs parents' relation with these schools is one of its primary levers on parenting itself. Bridges then examines the way in which…

Teachers might be working significantly more with one another, but principals are not. Superintendents might bring principals together for district meetings or even to expose their performance results to colleagues in public, but principal collaboration is too often trumped by district control. Even worse, more and more schools and their…

This article begins with a brief summary of the findings of a recent research project that surveyed the content of the art curriculum in a selection of English secondary schools. The research findings suggest a particular construction of pedagogised subjects and objects rooted in ideas of technical ability and skill underpinned by a transmission…

Organizational learning or epistemology has emerged in order to manage the creation of knowledge and innovation within contemporary capitalism. Its insights are being applied also to the public sector. Much of the research in organizational learning has drawn upon the discipline of psychology, particularly constructivist theory. Two approaches in…