__Modernising School Governance__ examines the impact of recent market-based reforms on the role of governors in the English state education system. A focus of the book concerns how government and non-government demands for ‘strong governance’ have been translated to mean improved performance management of senior school leaders and greater monitoring and disciplining of governors. This book addresses fundamental questions about the neoliberal logic underpinning these reforms and how governors are being trained and responsibilised in new ways to (...) enhance the integrity of these developments. Drawing on large-scale research conducted over three years, the book examines the impact of these reforms on the day to day practices of governors and the diminished role of democracy in these contexts. Wilkins also captures the economic and political rationalities shaping the conduct of governors at this time and traces these expressions to wider structural developments linked to depoliticisation, decentralisation and disintermediation. This book addresses timely and original issues concerning the role of corporate planning and expert handling to state education at a time of increased school autonomy, shrinking local government support/oversight, and tight, centralised accountability. It will appeal to researchers and postgraduate students in disciplines of education, sociology, political science, public policy and management. It will also be of interest to researchers and policy makers from countries with similar or emerging quasi-market education systems. (shrink)

This article examines two issues related to essentialist beliefs, autonomy and education. The first issue concerns the conceptualization of the role of essentialist beliefs about selfhood in the development of a continually transformative relationship with oneself. We argue that Carol Dweck’s understanding of the regular causality of implicit beliefs about selfhood is too narrow, and that these beliefs are better understood as taking part in a complex relationship of belief. The second issue concerns the way that certain governmental aspects of (...) educational institutions might affect schools’ capacity to help students develop a healthy belief relationship with regard to identity essentialism. Our hypothesis is that further investment in teachers’ professional authority and attentional autonomy, which involves the creation of normative gaps, among other conditions, constitutes a key lever for creating schools in which non-essentialist beliefs are embodied, rather than explained or inculcated. (shrink)

Matthew Lipman claims that the community of inquiry is an exemplar of democracy in action. To many proponents the community of inquiry is considered invaluable for achieving desirable social and political ends through education for democracy. But what sort of democracy should we be educating for? In this paper I outline three models of democracy: the liberal model, which emphasises rights and duties, and draws upon pre-political assumptions about freedom; communitarianism, which focuses on identity and participation in the creation of (...) political ends; and deliberative self-governance, whereby citizens deliberatively shape their collective lives in public forums—at various levels of government and in different political and social arenas. I argue that some kind of deliberative democracy is defensible as a preliminary justification for how citizens might shape their lives, and therefore compatible with other forms of democracy, insofar as they can result from democratic deliberations. Acceptance of such a view raises further questions about the purpose or aims of education consistent with this conception of democracy. I contend that it requires an educational model that is committed to aligning curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and school governance to produce a transformational environment that will inform our structures—a commitment to democratic education and not merely education for democracy. Lipman goes part of the way to achieving these ends, but learning how to be proficient at democratic decision-making is like all tasks children and adolescents learn to perform. It involves action, understanding, and awareness of what counts as doing the task adequately. (shrink)

_In _Challenging the One Best System_, a team of leading education scholars offers a rich comparative analysis of the set of urban education governance reforms collectively known as the “portfolio management model.”_ They investigate the degree to which this model—a system of schools operating under different types of governance and with different degrees of autonomy—challenges the standard structure of district governance famously characterized by David Tyack as “the one best system.” The authors examine the design and enactment (...) of the portfolio management model in three major cities: New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Denver. They identify the five interlocking mechanisms at the core of the model—planning and oversight, choice, autonomy, human capital, and school supports—and show how these are implemented differently in each city. Using rich qualitative data from extensive interviews, the authors trace the internal tensions and tradeoffs that characterize these systems and highlight the influence of historical and contextual factors as well. Most importantly, they question whether the portfolio management model represents a fundamental restructuring of education governance or more incremental change, and whether it points in the direction of meaningful improvement in school practices. Drawing on a rigorous, multimethod study, _Challenging the One Best System_ represents a significant contribution to our understanding of system-level change in education. (shrink)

In post-apartheid South Africa, a foregrounding of democratic citizenship education through broadened and inclusive participation is especially evident in a decentralised school-based leadership, management, and governance system. Policy-wise, the involvement of parents in School Governing Body (SGB) structures is seen as an enactment of representative and collective consultation, key to the democratisation of schooling and education. In practice, however, the wide-sweeping authority of SGBs, has allowed several schools to continue a historical narrative of exclusion and inequality, effectively (...) widening the gaps between historically advantaged and disadvantaged schools, and putting into effect renewed tensions of inequality and inequity. Key questions arise: has the state erred in its trust of SGBs to enact democratisation? Or are there limits to what democratisation can achieve? In considering these questions, the article explores re-considerations of governance so that interpretations of democratisation of schools are not used in the subversion of education as a public good. (shrink)

. A review of community participation in school governance: An emerging culture in Australian education. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 134-149.

This article examines shifts in educational and social governance taking place in Queensland, Australia, through Education Queensland's Industry School Engagement Strategy and Gateway Schools program. This significant educational initiative is set within the context of Queensland's social investment agenda first articulated in its education policy framework, Queensland State Education‐2010. The article traces the historic extension of this overarching governmental strategy through establishment of the Gateway Schools concept, brokering state‐wide industry‐school partnerships with key global players in the Queensland (...) economy. Industry sectors that have formed partnerships in Gateway projects include Minerals and Energy, Aerospace, Wine Tourism, Agribusiness, Manufacturing and Engineering, Building and Construction and ICT, with more industries and schools forecast to join the program. It is argued that this ‘post‐bureaucratic’ model of schooling represents a new social settlement of neoliberal governance, which seeks to align educational outcomes with economic objectives, thereby framing the conditions for community self‐governance in Queensland. (shrink)

This article analyses ‘performance government’ as an emergent form of rule in advanced liberal democracies. It discloses how teachers and school leaders in Australia are being governed by the practices of performance government which centre on the recently established Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) and are given direction by two major strategies implicit within the exercise of this form of power: activation and regulation. Through an ‘analytics of government’ of these practices, the article unravels the (...) new configurations of corporatized expert and academic knowledge—and their attendant methods of application—by which the self-governing capacities of teachers and school leaders are being activated and regulated in ways that seek to optimize the performance of these professionals. The article concludes by outlining some of the dangers of performance government for the professional freedom of educators and school leaders. (shrink)

This article examines shifts in educational and social governance taking place in Queensland, Australia, through Education Queensland's Industry School Engagement Strategy and Gateway Schools program. This significant educational initiative is set within the context of Queensland's social investment agenda first articulated in its education policy framework, Queensland State Education-2010. The article traces the historic extension of this overarching governmental strategy through establishment of the Gateway Schools concept, brokering state-wide industry-school partnerships with key global players in the Queensland (...) economy. Industry sectors that have formed partnerships in Gateway projects include Minerals and Energy, Aerospace, Wine Tourism, Agribusiness, Manufacturing and Engineering, Building and Construction and ICT, with more industries and schools forecast to join the program. It is argued that this ‘post-bureaucratic’ model of schooling represents a new social settlement of neoliberal governance, which seeks to align educational outcomes with economic objectives, thereby framing the conditions for community self-governance in Queensland. (shrink)

This paper presents conceptual arguments to suggest that trust within organizations and trustworthiness of organizations are built through ethical governance mechanisms. We ground our analysis of trust, trustworthiness, and stewardship in the business literature and provide the context of business school governance as the focus of our paper. We present a framework that highlights the importance of knowledge, resources, performance focus, transparency, authentic caring, social capital and citizenship expectations in creating a basis for the ethical governance (...) of organizations. (shrink)

This article examines shifts in educational and social governance taking place in Queensland, Australia, through Education Queensland's Industry School Engagement Strategy and Gateway Schools program. This significant educational initiative is set within the context of Queensland's social investment agenda first articulated in its education policy framework, Queensland State Education‐2010. The article traces the historic extension of this overarching governmental strategy through establishment of the Gateway Schools concept, brokering state‐wide industry‐school partnerships with key global players in the Queensland (...) economy. Industry sectors that have formed partnerships in Gateway projects include Minerals and Energy, Aerospace, Wine Tourism, Agribusiness, Manufacturing and Engineering, Building and Construction and ICT, with more industries and schools forecast to join the program. It is argued that this ‘post‐bureaucratic’ model of schooling represents a new social settlement of neoliberal governance, which seeks to align educational outcomes with economic objectives, thereby framing the conditions for community self‐governance in Queensland. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

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 parent‐school relations have been defined in England through government and quasi‐government interventions over the last forty‐five years, tracing these through an awakening interest in the (...) relation between social class and unequal school success in the 1960s, passing through the discourse of accountability in the 1970s, marketization in the 1980s and 1990s, performativity extending from this period into the first decade of the twenty‐first century, and, most recently, more direct interventions into parenting itself and the regulation of school relations with parents in the interests of safeguarding children. These have not, however, been entirely discrete policy themes, and the positive and pragmatic employment of the discourse of partnership has run throughout this period, albeit with different points of emphasis on the precise terms of such partnership. (shrink)

Although the impact of job demands and work–family conflict on burnout has been extensively discussed and analysed in the past literature, the role of WFC as a generative mechanism has been neglected. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the mediating effects of WFC between job demands and burnout. The studied sample consisted of 713 Indian primary school government teachers who completed a self-report questionnaire assessing job demands, WFC and burnout. The results confirmed that WFC partially mediates (...) the adverse association of job demands with burnout. Primary schools should, therefore, be encouraged to provide effective practices to manage work–family interfaces. (shrink)

Successive UK governments have adopted failure as a strategy in the reform of public education in England: first, to construct crises in order to blame professionals/parents/children for a failing system; and second, to provide rescue solutions that are designed to fail in order to sustain the change imperative. We describe this as policy mortality, or the integration of systemic and organisational ‘death’ within reform design. Our research demonstrates the interplay between the blame for the ‘wrong’ type of school, leader, (...) teacher, pupil, parent, and the claimed ‘solutions’ in the form of new schools (e.g., between 70 and 90 different types in England), organisations (e.g., MATs), professionals (e.g., CEOs), pupils (e.g., branded access to a school place), and parents (e.g., consumer choice). Our research contribution is conceptual through the development of new thinking about policy mortality, whereby the claim is for ‘success’ but the reality is that some professionals, schools, children and parents are required to fail. (shrink)

Wallace, Max This paper poses a paradox: the post-Gonski situation appears uncertain for mainly low socio-economic status government schools as the apparent government- in-waiting, the Coalition, have made a number of ominous statements as to whether they will follow through on the Gillard government's embrace of the Gonski funding reform.

This paper takes as its starting point the special provision made for grant maintained schools through the 1998 School Standards and Framework Act and suggests that the compromise it represented may be considered as an example of New Labour's Third Way in politics. The latter is discussed in terms of general and educational policies with specific regard to the characteristics of self-governing schools.

In this paper I attempt to trace an entanglement of an event documented in my PhD research which contests dominant modes of enquiry. It is experimental research which resists the human subject as the most important aspect of research, the only one with agency or intentionality. In particular, I analyse the process of the making of the circle, and how integral it is in contributing to building the Community of Enquiry, the pedagogy of Philosophy with Children. I offer a critical (...) posthuman analysis which engages with the material-discursive entanglements of the making of the circle. I move beyond the linguistic turn by paying attention to the intra-actions in between human and more-than-human, place, the circle and the chairs. I show how the mainly authoritarian adult-child relationships prevalent in most South African schools, can be disrupted through this pedagogical approach. This research takes place with a group of Grade 2 learners in a government school in South Africa. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to trace some entanglements of an event documented in my PhD research, which contests dominant modes of enquiry. This research takes place with a group of Grade 2 learners in a government school in Cape Town, South Africa. It is experimental research which resists the human subject as the most important aspect of research, the only one with agency or intentionality. In particular, the analysis focuses on the process of the making of the circle, (...) and how integral it is in contributing to building the Community of Enquiry, the pedagogy of Philosophy with Children. A critical posthuman analysis is offered which engages with the material-discursive entanglements of the making of the circle. Also, how this making of a circle can be a democratising practice, by including in the concept of democracy, the more-than-human. The analysis also focuses on the placing of the chairs by the children, as a deliberate pedagogical practice, and how this works to disrupt the adult /child binary. There is a move beyond the linguistic turn by paying attention to not only the discursive in the transcriptions but also the intra-actions in between human and more-than-human, the circle, the chairs and the materiality of place. (shrink)

Political liberals are primarily concerned with the roles played by the government and public schools in civic education. In policies related to religious schools, political liberals often use a strategy of regulation that aims to restrict religious schools. I argue that, although this strategy is effective in eliminating bad religious schools, it alone is unable to ensure that all (or most) reasonable citizens achieve full justification, which is a necessary condition for the stability of a just society. I, therefore, suggest (...) that this strategy should be supplemented with a strategy of promotion. This strategy implies that a government should use policies, such as tax exemption, subsidy, national prize, and advertisement, to encourage good religious schools that teach students to reconcile religious beliefs and political ideas. While the government remains neutral and offers a citizenship curriculum that teaches political ideas, religious schools teach theological beliefs that provide students with comprehensive reasons to affirm political ideas. This division of labor facilitates students from different religious backgrounds to attain full justification. Religious schools have often been regarded as posing a threat to cultural balkanization. It is, however, an overlooked grain of truth that religious schools could be essential cornerstones of a stable liberal democracy. (shrink)

One way in which the practice of inclusion can be actualised in classrooms is through the use of consistent, appropriate differentiated instruction. What remains elusive, however, is insight into what teachers in different contexts think and believe about differentiation, how consistently they differentiate instruction and what challenges they experience in doing so. In the study reported on here high school classrooms in a private and a government school in Lesotho were compared in order to determine teachers’ thoughts and (...) beliefs about differentiation, the frequency of differentiated instruction, and the challenges faced by teachers who implement this inclusive practice. Sampled teachers offered their views on what they understood differentiated instruction to be, the frequency of differentiated instruction, and identified challenges via an administered questionnaire. Data analysis was based on frequency counts and bar charts for comparative purposes. Findings indicate that private school teachers have a higher frequency of differentiated teaching practice, with time constraints indicated as the main challenge. Government school teachers had a lower frequency of differentiation, and identified a lack of resources, and the learner-teacher ratio as challenges, among others. In the study we highlighted the critical role that private schools can play in the national call for the implementation of inclusive teaching in Lesotho, in terms of active collaboration with surrounding government schools. Private schools, with their resources and access to professional development opportunities, can become catalysts in the implementation of inclusive teaching practices. (shrink)

School-based education in England has undergone significant changes since 2010, with a huge expansion of academies, schools outside local authority control, funded directly by central government. Academies and local authority (LA) maintained schools are subject to different legislative and regulatory frameworks. This paper focuses on the governance of LA maintained schools, single academy trusts (SATs) and schools that are part of multi-academy trusts (MATs). The research involved analysing legislative provision, policy documents, and documents addressing the governance arrangements (...) of a sample of 23 secondary schools. Our findings reveal a fragmented state-funded secondary school system as regards overall governance, school admissions, the curriculum, and the use of funding. Significantly schools in MATs, which are governed by the trust board, lack the autonomy of either SATs or maintained schools and are instead under the ultimate control of the trust board. The paper argues that there is a need for greater consistency regarding the governance of state-funded schools. (shrink)

The development of a set of religiously integrated schools in Northern Ireland since 1981 is often portrayed in wholly positive terms. However, the continued growth of the movement has generated serious tensions at a number of levels which have wider implications for any analysis of the implications of parental choice.

The development of a set of religiously integrated schools in Northern Ireland since 1981 is often portrayed in wholly positive terms. However, the continued growth of the movement has generated serious tensions at a number of levels which have wider implications for any analysis of the implications of parental choice.

This study examines the Programme for International Student Assessment, one of the most influential tools of global education reform discourses in the 21st century. The study focuses on the governing role of statistical data in the discourse constructed by the international comparative assessment, referring to the global educational governance of the OECD. Disturbingly, the systematic collection and distribution of data does not merely quantify student achievement. Rather, students and participating countries are also qualified and classified. Here, OECD’s PISA statistics (...) act as a governing technology enabling the comparisons; through PISA’s statistics, the OECD has largely fostered the test-driven education reform trends worldwide. In this study, statistical data are examined as political instruments visualizing intangible concepts, constructing definitions of good practice and improvement, and fabricating the individuals whose knowledge and skills are normalized. In conclusion, it is necessary to rethink the new sociopolitical instrument – PISA’s statistics – not as a master rationale to reform the educational system of each country, but as a mere reference point based on the system’s distinctiveness. (shrink)

This paper examines the impact of education reforms on school admissions policies and practices. It discusses the changes that are needed to improve the current system, especially in areas where the market is highly developed. It is concluded that the new legislation to be enacted by the current Labour Government should be beneficial, but that more far-reaching changes are needed for the admissions process to be equitable, transparent and accountable.

Since public schooling was introduced in the nineteenth century, teachers in many western countries have endeavoured to achieve professional recognition. For a short period in the latter part of the twentieth century, professionalism was seen as a discourse of resistance or the ‘enemy’ of economic rationalism and performativity. However, more recently, governments have responded by ‘colonizing’ professionalism and imposing ‘standards’ whereby the concept is redefined. In this study, we analyse transcripts of interviews with 20 Queensland teachers and conclude that teachers’ (...) notions of professionalism in this second decade of the twenty-first century are effectively reiterations of nineteenth century disciplinary technologies (as proposed by Michel Foucault) yet are enacted in new ways. (shrink)

This paper examines what can be learnt from analysing attempts to give lay people more involvement in the administration of state schools. Although devolving more responsibility to schools and lay governors has been an important feature of school reform in several countries, it is not immediately apparent if this shift is the product of globally similar social and political forces or nationally specific cultural, ideological and economic factors. In considering this issue, the paper describes recent changes in school (...) governance in England, New Zealand, USA, Scotland and Catalunya, Spain. It is argued that some of these changes can best be characterised as attempts to increase the democratic participation of citizens in the running of schools. Other changes, however, seem rather to represent on attempt to bring the culture of business to schools and reduce the power of professional educators over education. (shrink)

In arguing for government withdrawal from funding and regulating schooling, James Tooley claims that equality of opportunity in education implies only that all deserve an adequate minimum education. However, he concedes the 'abstract egalitarian thesis' that all should be treated with equal concern and respect. I show that this thesis indeed implies educational equality, and that Tooley's arguments against educational equality rest on a misunderstanding of the foundations of egalitarianism.

Over the past decade higher education policy in England has gradually switched from a stance of 'government as purchaser' to 'government as informer'. During 2012 this policy stance has been intensified through new requirements for the advice provided by schools and the introduction of 'Key Information Sets' which are intended to 'drive up quality' through informed choice. This paper documents this policy shift and subjects it to critical scrutiny.

In many countries school inspection is a major way in which schools are held accountable. This article sets out some of the limitations of inspection. The aims of inspection, the language of inspection and the inspection of standards, teaching and learning are examined critically. It is argued that school inspection does have its uses as an instrument of accountability but these are far more limited than governments or inspectorates themselves acknowledge.

Within the context of fierce global economic competition, school diversification and specialist schools have been seen by governments as cornerstones of education policy to engineer school improvement in both England and Singapore for more than a decade. In both systems, the policy has manifested in different school types, school names and sometimes buildings-in England, specialist status schools, academies and most recently free schools; and in Singapore, specialist schools and niche schools. Diversification is promoted by each (...) class='Hi'>school emphasising distinctiveness in its curriculum-often with implications for its funding and degree of autonomy-which differentiate it from others. There is normally the intention to scale-up curricular innovations school-wide. The paper addresses three aims in respect to both countries: first, it profiles the evolution of specialist schools' policies in both states in relation to school improvement and secondly, social justice; thirdly, it undertakes a comparative policy analysis in order to draw conclusions as to how the relationship between central government and schools has re-configured in both countries-arguing that the policy in England is radical, that in Singapore, conservative. (shrink)

In many countries school inspection is a major way in which schools are held accountable. This article sets out some of the limitations of inspection. The aims of inspection, the language of inspection and the inspection of standards, teaching and learning are examined critically. It is argued that school inspection does have its uses as an instrument of accountability but these are far more limited than governments or inspectorates themselves acknowledge.

This paper seeks to reconstruct the role of schooling in a moment of accelerated social, political, economic, geo-political, climatic, indeed planetary crisis. It identifies the school as a potentially prefigurative institution, an evolutionary social frontier, capable of nurturing the democratic social character, a form of sensibility apart from which authentic political democracy is not possible. As theorized by Herbert Marcuse and Richard Hart and Antonio Negri, the “new sensibility” or “multitude” is characterized by greater psychological freedom, individuality, social creativity (...) and self-rule, comprising a “whole of singularities” that “acts in common”. It suggests a human subject with a vital, biological drive for liberation, with a consciousness capable of breaking through the material as well as ideological veil of a society based on hierarchy and domination, and is associated politically with democracy and social-anarchism, or what Murray Bookchin called “communalism”. This paper identifies three main characteristics of an institution informed by this form of modal subjectivity, all of them based on student-teacher dialogue: an emergent, project-based curriculum, whole-school direct democratic governance on all levels of the community, and the regular practice of communal philosophical inquiry, through which we problematize the concepts we live by, in the interest of their ongoing reconstruction. (shrink)

In the 1970s, two events in particular, the William Tyndale School and James Callaghan's Ruskin speech, generated extensive media coverage and political activity and became 'watersheds' along the path to political and educational reform. This has shaped the system of school and governments in the 1990s. This book revisits Tyndale and Ruskin and examines their legacy. Drawing on contemporary accounts of a number of key individuals who were involved in those watershed events, it recasts their stories in the (...) light of current changes in education. The book explores the extent to which both these events shifted assumptions about education and provided the rationale for policy changes. It argues that fundamental questions need to be asked about the nature of the reform agenda and in particular, the balance of power. It also places the reform agenda within an international context. (shrink)

Philosophy and schools, children and dynamite, elephants and postage stamps: each has a place, but not necessarily in any natural combination with the other. Whether schools and philosophy belong together depends largely on what we mean by both. To the extent that schools are instruments of government regulation and a mechanism for production of economic subjectivity, philosophy might be welcome as an ancillary technique for enhancing problem-solving skills or helping students to think more logically. If, on the other hand, teachers (...) are concerned to promote education as the development of independent thought beyond the realm of instrumental utility, then philosophy is a vital, and potentially critical, engagement with power, with the way schools function, and more generally with society and its government. With reference to some recent policy moves in education, this article argues that the focus on the economic productivity of education is intensifying, and that as educational institutions become more heavily regulated and monitored, there is little provision for, or toleration of, any form of structural criticism, philosophical or otherwise. The conclusion is that philosophy may have an explicit place within the existing school programmes, but that any philosophy which provides a basis for fundamental change in our patterns and expectations of schooling is likely to be undermined. Commitment to critical philosophy becomes, then, a surreptitious activity on the part of individual teachers, operating outside the official curriculum and frustrated by increasing surveillance and demands for accountability. (shrink)

This paper considers the conception of leadership and management found in the UK government’s school leadership initiative. It contrasts earlier ‘scientific’ theory with the more recent ‘humanistic’ theory on which the initiative appears to be based, and finds that they share significant features and flaws. Moreover, despite the moral tone of the new initiative, it finds on examination that it is based on an emotivist theory of ethics that in practice may require the headteacher to be manipulative in her (...) leadership and management of the school. Finally, it outlines an alternative conception of leadership. (shrink)

Focusing on the barriers between social work intervention in education and government funded programs that impact African American students, this book approaches these issues from a child-centered perspective. Interviews with ten African American students were conducted to discuss their perspectives on education, family life, and social work intervention.

_"School Sector and Student Outcomes_ is an important work for policy makers and social scientists alike. This research is critically important for anyone concerned with educational policy and the academic future of our children." —Teresa A. Sullivan, Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, The University of Michigan "Providing original contributions to our understanding of school sectors, this volume will be of great interest to sociologists of education and scholars and students in education, history, and political science." (...) —George Farkas, Pennsylvania State University Variations in students' performance across different school sectors—specifically, public, private religious, and private nonreligious schools—has long been an important topic in the sociology of education. In recent years, debate over the merits of each sector has increased between advocates and critics of school choice, as exemplified by current struggles over educational vouchers and their ramifications for public policy and politics. What has been lacking in this debate, however, has been a theoretically grounded empirical analysis of the factors that affect student success across sectors. _School Sector and Student Outcomes_ offers such an assessment. By presenting a set of methodologically rigorous empirical studies, the volume provides a viable basis for comparisons across sectors on such issues as school organization, governance, curriculum, and pedagogy in U.S. elementary and secondary schools. Carefully reasoned conceptual analyses identify the source of sector differences, trace the evolution of the dual school system in the U.S., and describe the mechanisms that link school sector to school processes. The volume amply documents how sector differences operate and what the consequences are for student learning and behavior. (shrink)

_Elite Schools in Globalizing Circumstances_ foregrounds the richly theoretical and empirically-based work of an international cast of scholars seeking to break out of the confines of the methodological nationalism that now governs so much of contemporary scholarship on schooling. Based on a 5-year extended global ethnography of elite schools in nine different countries—countries defined by colonial pasts linked to England—the contributors make a powerful case for the rethinking of elite schools and elite class formation theory in light of contemporary processes (...) of globalization and transnational change. Prestigious, high-status schools have long been seen as critical institutional vehicles directly contributing to the societal processes of elite selection and reproduction. This book asserts that much has changed and that these schools can no longer rest on their past laurels and accomplishments. Instead they must re-cast their heritages and tradition in order to navigate the new globally competitive educational field enabling them to succeed in a world in which the globalization of educational markets, the global ambitions and imaginations of school youth, and the emergence of new powerful players peddling entrepreneurial models of curriculum and education, have placed contemporary schooling under tremendous pressure. This insightful and though-provoking volume provides a well-researched perspective on the nature of contemporary schooling in the globalizing era. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Globalisation, Societies and Education. _. (shrink)