Becoming A Teacher

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Third Edition
Third Edition
Becoming a Teacher
Issues in Secondary Teaching
Teachers touch the lives of thousands of young people during their

Third
Edition Becoming
careers, inspiring and motivating learners to reach their maximum
potential. In order to be able to do their jobs effectively, they need to
understand the context within which they work and be able to reflect a Teacher
Becoming a Teacher
critically on what they do and why. If you are embarking on a career in
teaching and the prospect of influencing the future through your work with
young people is both exciting and daunting, then this book has been
written for you.
The new edition is revised and updated throughout. It remains a unique
Issues in
and powerful combination of ideas, analysis, questions, answers and
wisdom, with the combined professional experience of the editors and Secondary
contributors providing a wealth of knowledge and opinion. Whilst the
books philosophy remains the same, the addition of three new chapters
on education for sustainability, school effectiveness and improvement,
Teaching
and education policy combined with eleven new contributors - provides
fresh perspectives, ideas and issues for discussion.
The book is divided into four main sections:

First thoughts
Policy, society and schooling
Teaching and learning
Across the curriculum
It provides a broader context in which education sits by addressing
fundamental areas such as classroom management, adolescence and
assessment for learning, alongside practical advice and key issues to
consider. Finally, the authors provide information about roles and
responsibilities in areas including personal, social and health education,
Dillon and Maguire

information technology, literacy and citizenship.
Becoming a Teacher is inspiring reading for prospective, trainee and new
teachers, tutors and mentors.
Justin Dillon is Senior Lecturer in Science and Environmental Education

at Kings College London.
Meg Maguire is Professor of Sociology of Education at Kings College London.
Edited by
Justin Dillon
Meg Maguire
9 780335 221448
Page 1
Becoming a teacher
Third edition
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Becoming a teacher
Issues in secondary teaching
Third edition
Edited by
Justin Dillon and Meg Maguire
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Open University Press

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To the memory of Rod Watson (19472007).

Our colleague and friend.
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Contents
Notes on contributors xi
Foreword to the third edition xvii

Margaret Brown
Introduction xix
Part 1 First thoughts 1
1 Developing as a beginning teacher 3

2 On being a teacher 12
Chris Winch
Part 2 Policy, society and schooling 27
3 Education policy and schooling 29

Meg Maguire and Justin Dillon
4 Ideology, evidence and the raising of standards 42

Paul Black
5 Values and schooling 55

Alan Cribb and Sharon Gewirtz
6 School effectiveness and improvement 69

Brenda Gay
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viii Contents
7 Reforming teachers and their work 85

8 Reflection, inspection and accountability 98

Justin Dillon
9 Social justice in schools: engaging with equality 112

Louise Archer
10 Education, schools and cities 127

11 Teachers and the law 139

Dylan Wiliam
Part 3 Teaching and learning 151
12 Adolescence 153
John Head
13 Learning in and outside of the classroom 163

Jill Hohenstein and Heather King
14 Classroom management 175

Jeremy Burke
15 Differentiation in theory and practice 187

Simon Coffey
16 Setting, streaming and mixed-ability teaching 201

Jeremy Hodgen
17 Making assessment work in the classroom 213

Christine Harrison
18 Aiming for inclusion: removing barriers and building bridges 224

Chris Abbott
19 English as an Additional Language: challenges of language and

identity in the multilingual and multi-ethnic classroom 237
Roxy Harris and Constant Leung
Part 4 Across the curriculum 253
20 Literacy 255
Bethan Marshall
21 Citizenship and citizenship education 267

Ann-Marie Brandom
22 Spiritual education 280

Ann-Marie Brandom, Mike Poole and Andrew Wright
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Contents ix
23 The importance of teachers and schools in health promotion 292

Peter Duncan
24 Education, the environment and sustainability 304
Justin Dillon
25 Information and communications technologies 318
Ian Stevenson
26 1419 education and the great divide 332
Alex Manning
27 Beyond the subject curriculum: the form tutors role 344
Jane Jones
28 Whats next? CPD and the whole school 357
Philip Adey
Index 367
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Notes on contributors
Chris Abbott taught in primary, secondary and special schools for 16 years
before joining Kings College London in 1994, and has taught on the
English and ICT PGCE as well as developing Masters modules on informa-
tion and communications technology (ICT), literacy and the Internet. His
recent publications include ICT: Changing Education (2000), Symbols Now
(2000), SEN and the Internet: Issues for Inclusive Education (2002) and Symbols,
Literacy and Social Justice (2006). His research interests focus on ICT, literacy
and inclusion, and he has led a series of projects on the use of symbols for
communication and literacy.
Philip Adey taught science in a school in Barbados for some years before
becoming involved in curriculum development and teacher education pro-
grammes in the Anglophone West Indies. This led to his questioning the
nature of difficulty in science concepts, and a PhD on cognitive develop-
ment in the Caribbean, which he pursued while working in the Concepts in
Secondary Mathematics and Science Concepts Project at Chelsea College.
After a spell with the British Council in Indonesia, he returned to Chelsea/
Kings College to work with Michael Shayer on CASE (Cognitive Acceler-
ation through Science Education). This eventually required significant
attention to the question of how teachers might effectively be helped to
develop their practice. Adey is now Emeritus (that is, retired) Professor of
Science, Cognition, and Education at Kings.
Louise Archer is a reader in education policy at Kings. Her research interests
include issues of identity and inequality in relation to race/ethnicity,
social class and gender. Her publications include Race, Masculinity and
Schooling (Open University Press, 2003), Higher Education and Social Class
(with Alistair Ross and Merryn Hutchings, Routledge, 2003) and Under-
standing Minority Ethnic Achievement (with Becky Francis, Routledge, 2006).
Paul Black is Professor Emeritus of Science Education at Kings. He was Chair
of the Governments Task Group on Assessment and Testing in 19871988
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xii Notes on contributors
and Deputy Chairman of the National Curriculum Council from 1989 to

1991. In the last few years, he has contributed to the work at Kings on
assessment for learning. This work has involved both research studies and
development work with schools. The published reports, notably Working
Inside the Black Box and Assessment for Learning; Putting it into Practice, have
been widely read and have influenced practice in many schools.
Margaret Brown is a professor of mathematics education at Kings. She has
directed more than 25 research studies in the learning, teaching and
assessment of mathematics, across all levels and ages. Before that she
was a teacher in primary and secondary schools, and involved in teacher
education. She has been a member of several government committees,
chair of the Joint Mathematical Council, President of BERA, and currently
chairs the education sub-panel for the 2008 RAE.
Ann-Marie Brandom taught religious education for ten years before joining
Kings in 1998. She is subject director for the RE PGCE course and teaches
on the Masters course. Her research interests include assessment for
learning. She was part of the Kings research team involved with the educa-
tion department in Jersey and has led a number of INSET courses on AfL.
She co-edited the book, Learning to Teach Religious Education in the Secondary
School (2000).
Jeremy Burke taught mathematics in London comprehensive schools for
17 years, including being a head of department and then a senior manager.
At Kings, he has had responsibilities for the PGCE in Mathematics, the
MA course in Policy and the Mathematics Curriculum and is currently
programme director of the PGCE. His research interests are in the sociology
of mathematics education, technology, pedagogy and pedagogic relations.
He has published on teaching mathematics and the use of technology in
education.
Simon Coffey taught languages for many years, both in the UK and abroad,
before joining Kings where he now teaches on the PGCE in modern foreign
languages and is programme director for the BA/BSc with Education
degrees. Simon is also involved in delivering the PGCE Professional Studies
programme and is particularly interested in issues relating to pastoral care
in schools. Other research interests include language learning and teaching
methodology, internationalism and inclusive pedagogies. He has recently
worked on projects researching citizenship education, primarysecondary
transition and learner identities. Simon is co-author (with Jane Jones) of
Modern Foreign Languages: A Guide for Teachers (2006).
Alan Cribb joined Kings in 1990 having previously worked for the Centre
for Social Ethics and Policy and the Department of Epidemiology and Social
Oncology, University of Manchester. His research interests include moral
and political philosophy and applied ethics. His most recent book is Health
and the Good Society: Setting Healthcare Ethics in Social Context (2005),
published by Oxford University Press.
Justin Dillon taught in London schools for ten years before joining Kings in
1989. Since then he has been deputy director of the PGCE and science co-
ordinator. He is currently subject director for chemistry and Professional
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Notes on contributors xiii
Studies co-ordinator. He has research interests in professional development

and learning inside and outside the classroom. He has co-authored a range
of edited collections including Learning to Teach Science (1995), Becoming a
Teacher (1995, 2001 and 2007) and The Re-emergence of Values in the Science
Curriculum (2007). He is an editor of the International Journal of Science Edu-
cation and Chair of the London Wildlife Trust.
Peter Duncan is programme director for the postgraduate programmes in
Health Promotion and Health and Society at Kings. His research interests
include health education and health promotion theory and practice, and
the ethics of public health policy and interventions. He is the author of
Critical Perspectives on Health (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and (with Alan
Cribb) Health Promotion and Professional Ethics (Blackwell, 2002).
Brenda Gay has taught in both the independent and maintained sectors.
She was headmistress of a girls independent school and has worked in
teacher education and educational research. She has recently retired as
senior lecturer in classics education at Kings where she was also subject
director for the PGCE in Classics and taught on undergraduate and Masters
programmes. Brenda has published in a wide range of areas, including
religion in the independent school, spirituality, accountability, the man-
agement of conflict in the classroom and classics teaching and learning as
part of global communication.
Sharon Gewirtz is a professor of education at Kings. Her books include
Markets, Choice and Equity in Education (with Stephen Ball and Richard
Bowe, Open University Press 1995), New Managerialism, New Welfare? (with
John Clarke and Eugene McLaughlin, 2000) and The Managerial School:
Post-welfarism and Social Justice in Education (2001).
Roxy Harris is a senior lecturer at Kings. He has worked extensively with
teachers on questions of language and education. He has a particular inter-
est in the relationships between language, power, ethnicity and culture,
and has researched and published on these issues, including My Personal
Language History (1988), Language and Power (1990) and New Ethnicities and
Language Use (2006).
Christine Harrison is a lecturer at Kings College London where she works on
the PGCE and Masters courses. Chris was co-director of the influential
Kings-Medway-Oxfordshire Formative Assessment-Project and has advised
government on the implementation of assessment for learning in England,
Scotland and Jersey. Chris continues to research in the area of assessment
and currently leads the Assessment for Learning research group with Paul
Black.
John Head is a former secondary schoolteacher who has worked in the UK
and the USA. His current research interests, as a visiting senior lecturer at
Kings, encompass psychology applied to issues of adolescence such as
identity development and gender differences.
Jeremy Hodgen taught mathematics in primary and secondary schools before
joining Kings where he teaches on the PGCE, MA and doctoral pro-
grammes. His research interests include assessment, learning and teaching
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xiv Notes on contributors
in mathematics education. He is co-author (with Dylan Wiliam) of

Mathematics Inside the Black Box (2006).
Jill Hohenstein is a lecturer in the psychology of education at Kings. Her
primary area of expertise is in childrens cognitive development in relation
to their language environments, particularly in informal contexts. She has
studied learning in the UK, the US and in Mexico, with speakers of English
and Spanish.
Jane Jones taught for many years in primary and secondary schools in
London and Kent. Her last school post was senior teacher responsible for
profiling and assessment in a large comprehensive school in Wandsworth.
Her research interests include school leadership and governance, counsel-
ling in schools, citizenship education and all aspects of language learning.
She is responsible for modern foreign languages teacher education at Kings
and is a member of the Assessment for Learning Group. She directs the UK
aspects of several EU-funded research projects.
Heather King joined Kings in 2002 having previously worked as an educa-
tion officer in a number of museums and international development
agencies for nine years. She directed a five-year research project which
examined learning in informal environments and the relationships
between informal science institutions and schools. She is now evaluating
the Permanent European Resource Centre for Informal Learning (PENCIL).
Constant Leung taught in schools and worked as advisory teacher and
manager in local education authorities for 15 years. His research interests
include curriculum development and language policy. He joined Kings in
1999 and is active in promoting continuous professional development for
teachers working with linguistically diverse students. He has published
extensively on language education issues both nationally and internation-
ally. His recent publications include Reconfiguring Europe The Contribution
of Applied Linguistics (co-edited with Jennifer Jenkins, 2006). He was
appointed Professor of Educational Linguistics in 2005.
Meg Maguire taught for many years in London schools, including a spell
as a headteacher. She has a long-standing interest in the life and work of
school-teachers, teacher education and with the challenges of inner-city
schooling. Her publications include, Choice, Pathways and Transitions Post-
16 (with Stephen Ball and Sheila Macrae, 2000) and The Urban Primary
School (with Tim Wooldridge and Simon Pratt-Adams, 2006).
Alex Manning taught science in inner London schools for six years. She
joined Kings in 2003, and now co-ordinates the physics PGCE, in addition
to being the deputy course director for the PGCE. Alexs research interests
are initial teacher education, urban science education and teacher career
trajectories.
Bethan Marshall taught English, media and drama for nine years in London
comprehensives before taking up her current post at Kings. She combined
this job for five years with that of English adviser working in both the
secondary and primary phases. She has written and commented extensively
on English teaching and its assessment in academic journals and the media
as well as in her book English Teachers The Unofficial Guide (2003). She is
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Notes on contributors xv
also a member of the Kings team working on formative assessment and was
a co-author of their book Assessment for Learning: Putting it into Practice (2003).
Mike Poole taught physics and religious education for 14 years at
Forest Hill School in London. He then spent three years preparing and
broadcasting radio programmes on science and religion, and teaching part-
time at Kings, before becoming a full-time lecturer in science education.
Currently Visiting Research Fellow in science and religion, he was presented
in 1998 with an international award from the Templeton Foundation for
quality and excellence in teaching science and religion. He has written a
number of books, as well as some 70 papers and articles, on issues of science
and religion, their relevance for science teachers, religious education spe-
cialists and for general readership.
Ian Stevenson taught mathematics and IT in London schools for ten years.
He joined Kings in 2004 after working at the London Institute of Education
and the University of Leeds. His research interests include the design
and evaluation of educational software, computer-based modelling, and
learning non-euclidean geometry. He directed a project for Becta on ICT
and Measures of Attainment, and co-directed the EU project Collaborative
and Network Distributed Learning Environments on sharing and reusing
courseware using the Internet. Currently, he teaches on the ICT and
mathematics PGCE courses at Kings.
Dylan Wiliam taught in inner London for seven years before joining
Chelsea College in 1984. The college later merged with Kings where
Dylan worked until 2003. During his time at Kings, he ran the mathematics
PGCE, spent four years as Head of School, and two years as Assistant
Principal. In 2003, he moved to the USA, to work as Senior Research
Director at the Educational Testing Service, and in 2006 he returned to the
UK to take up the post of Deputy Director of the Institute of Education. His
current main research interest is teacher professional development, with a
particular focus on the use of assessment for learning.
Chris Winch taught in primary schools in Yorkshire for 11 years. He is
currently Professor of Educational Philosophy and Policy at Kings. His
main research is in the areas of philosophy of education and vocational
education. One of his current interests is in the nature of teaching as a
profession. He is author of, among other books, Philosophy and Educational
Policy: a Critical Introduction (2004), with John Gingell.
Andrew Wright is a lecturer in religious and theological education and co-
ordinator of the Centre for Theology, Religions and Culture at Kings.
Before entering higher education, he was a secondary religious education
teacher. He has taught extensively on PGCE and MA programmes, and
now works mainly with doctoral students. He is the author of Spiritual
Pedagogy (1998), Spirituality and Education (2000), Religion, Education and
Post-modernism (2004), and co-editor, with Ann-Marie Brandom, of
Learning to Teach Religious Education in the Secondary School (2000). He has
just completed a book on truth in religious education. His research interests
focus on the development of religious literacy.
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Foreword to the third

edition
I am delighted to have been asked to write a foreword to the third edition of

this best-selling book.
How well we cope in life, either as individuals or as nations, depends
essentially on our knowledge, skills, creativity and attitudes. Teachers are
critical in helping us to develop each of these qualities. So, ultimately, our
future depends on the expertise and commitment of teachers.
This clearly puts a premium on producing the best possible teachers,
through the highest quality of education and training. We need to prepare
teachers not only to fit well into the way schools currently operate, but
also to have the ability to adjust to future change. Indeed, our aims
should encompass more than this: new teachers should be competent
initiators of change, able to critique current practice and to plan and under-
take innovation.
Even within the limitations of current practices, teaching is a skilled pro-
fession. It requires not just the expertise to respond to routine classroom
situations, but a deployment of a wide variety of skills in order to deal with
any specific problems that may arise. What is the best way of presenting this
material so that it will engage this class? Why does this student find it
difficult to learn this and what can I do about it? What would be a fair and
appropriate way to assess understanding of these ideas? Which of these on-
line resources is appropriate?
To be able to solve such problems, teachers need to develop their
knowledge on several fronts: first, of their subject areas; second, of how
students learn, or fail to learn, and why they develop specific attitudes
and behaviours; and, third, of the most effective ways of teaching, both at
the general level and at the level of the specific concept or skill, including
available teaching resources.
Teachers need to be able to deal not only with issues that arise in their
classrooms, but also those that confront departments, schools or colleges as
a whole. Decisions need to be made on what curriculum to offer, what
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xviii Foreword to the third edition
methods of assessment and recording of progress to use, how to group

pupils, how best to deploy resources of people and money, and a wide range
of other such issues.
In the past these decisions were often based on personal prejudices of
either teachers or those who advised them. As chair of the 2008 Research
Assessment Sub-Panel for Education, I am only too aware of the fact that
more and more research is becoming available to inform the decisions
that teachers make both individually and collaboratively. Some research
studies are small in scope. But when taken together with other national and
international research, reliable evidence can often be accumulated to
indicate which strategies are likely to be the most effective in which
circumstances.
It is therefore extremely important that new teachers and indeed more
experienced teachers too are acquainted with the most recent research
findings, just as it is important that doctors keep up with medical research
in their fields. In the same way as patients are entitled to the best-informed
medical practice, our students in schools and colleges are entitled to the
best-informed teachers and teaching that we can provide.
This book aims to introduce new teachers to issues they will encounter in
their professional lives, and to present summaries of research findings
in these fields. The contributors are my colleagues in the Department of
Education and Professional Studies at Kings College London. They are well
placed to report the issues, combining expertise as leading researchers,
continuing close contact with teachers and classrooms, and successful
experience in teacher education.
I commend the book to both intending and existing teachers. I am
sure that it will interest, stimulate and inform and thus be instrumental in
serving the aim we are all striving to achieve improving the quality of
education provided to all our students.
Margaret Brown
Professor of Mathematics Education
Kings College London
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Introduction
Justin Dillon and

Meg Maguire
If you are learning how to be a teacher, this book has been written for you.
It has been written by a group of people who have two things in
common. The first is that they have devoted most of their lives to education
teaching, researching or both. The second is that they have all worked in
the Department of Education at Kings College London. This unique and
powerful combination has resulted in what you hold in your hands
thoughts, ideas, words, questions, answers, wit and wisdom.
Some time ago, a visit from Her Majestys Inspectorate encouraged us to
look critically at the amount of reading that Kings students did during their
PGCE year. For many reasons, including accessibility of libraries, the cost of
books, and funding, the amount of reading that students did was much less
than we thought appropriate. Looking around we could not find a textbook
that addressed the issues that we knew concerned our students. So we wrote
one ourselves for internal consumption. It proved to be popular so, with
the help of Open University Press, we produced, in 1997, a more polished
version. The first edition proved to be popular too, and had to be reprinted.
However, education changes rapidly and books date even if many ideas
remain valid over decades. We decided that a second edition could and
should be written. The second edition was first published in 2001 and it has
been even more successful than the first edition. Now, six years on, it is time
for another edition.
This edition contains 28 chapters, two more than the second edition and
five more than the first edition. There are new chapters on education for
sustainability, school effectiveness and improvement, and education
policy. There are 11 new contributors and many new ideas and issues. How-
ever, the overall philosophy of the book remains unchanged. This is not
a tips for teachers book, although some chapters do focus on technical
issues. Each chapter is designed to give you some background in terms of,
say, the historical context and to illuminate the key issues that you will be
faced with every day. Some of the chapters should enable you to make sense
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xx Introduction
of what goes on in school and should help you to gain an overview of a

particular topic. The authors have tried to give you evidence to support
points of view there is too much unsubstantiated opinion in education,
which has affected teachers and children detrimentally for too many years.
This book will give you some evidence from the literature to back up, or
maybe to challenge, your own opinions and experience.
Much of teaching relies on confidence. You need to be confident in your
knowledge of your subject. Your students need to be confident in you as a
teacher. Confidence can develop through experience and through feedback
from other people. This book is designed to help you to become more
confident in your understanding of what learning to teach involves. There
will be much in this book that you have not thought of before things that
you disagree with or things that you feel are obvious. It is designed to be
dipped into rather than read from beginning to end and, we hope, will
point you in the direction of further reading.
How to use the book
Each chapter is designed to be read on its own although you will find
recurrent themes. If you are doing an essay on a topic such as learning or
special educational needs, or you feel that there are areas of education about
which you know very little, then you can use the chapters here as starting
points. Some of the chapters are linked in terms of content, so if you
are interested in learning, you will find that the chapters on adolescence,
differentiation and assessment for learning are interrelated. Indeed, the
complexity of education is what makes it such an interesting area to
work in.
The book is divided into four major sections. We have called Part 1, First
thoughts, because it sets the scene addressing some fundamental areas of
concern for a new teacher.
Part 2, Policy, society and schooling, provides a grounding in the broader
context in which education sits. As well as looking at the historical roots of
the problems facing teachers and learners, particularly in the inner city, this
part provides a vision of alternative and possible futures.
In the classroom, most of your concerns will be more immediate than
those outlined above and Part 3, Teaching and learning, is a collection
of interrelated articles addressing issues such as classroom management,
adolescence and assessment for learning. In each chapter you will find
practical advice based on sound theoretical understandings as well as some
key issues to consider.
Part 4, Across the curriculum, appears daunting. The responsibilities of
teachers beyond that of subject specialist have grown steadily over the years.
The authors of the chapters in this part provide information about roles and
information technology, literacy and citizenship. As well as looking at how
the form tutors role is changing in school, the section contains a chapter
that examines continuing professional development.
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Introduction xxi
Some thanks
As well as our fellow authors and the team at Open University Press, other
people have contributed to the production of this edition of Becoming a
Teacher. We would like to thank Ellen McCallie, Richard Maloney, Laurie
Smith and Blaine Stothard for their critical friendship, for reading and
commenting from their positions as experienced educators and colleagues.
Special thanks to Chris Winch for his mentoring of a less-experienced
colleague.
And nally
In putting together this book we have tried to emphasize the three Rs:
reading, reflection and research. Effective teachers are able to learn from
their experiences, reflecting on both positive and negative feedback. The
best teachers are often those who not only learn from their experience
but also learn from the experiences of others. Reading offers access to
the wisdom of others as well as providing tools to interpret your own
experiences. We have encouraged the authors contributing to this book to
provide evidence from research to justify the points that they make. We
encourage you to reflect on that evidence and on the related issues dis-
cussed in this book during the process of becoming a teacher. Over to you.
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Page 1
Part 1 First thoughts
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1 Developing as a beginning
teacher
Justin Dillon and

Meg Maguire
Anticipating teaching
If you are engaged in a course of teacher training you face what may be the
most challenging period of your life. But take heart the stimulation and
the enjoyment of working with learners can be immense. Looks on faces,
words of thanks, the physical excitement that young people are able to
generate come frequently enough to justify the effort.
Most of your own experience of education will probably have been spent
sitting down, facing the front being directed by an older person. Your
teacher training will involve a series of rapid dislocations; some of the time
you will be the teacher and some of the time you will be a learner. It is
not a dichotomous situation though you will be learning and teaching
simultaneously.
As a teacher you will develop in many obvious and subtle ways. Many of
these changes will be in response to other people or to external circum-
stances. If you are the same after you have read this book as you were when
you started then we have failed as authors and educators. Take change
out of education and there is not much left. You might find yourself getting
up much earlier than was previously the case or you might find, as we did,
that we became more patient. In the years to come, you will know more, be
more skilled than is the case now, and your values will be tried and tested.
You will indeed make mistakes, some minor and instantly forgettable and
possibly some ground-opening horrors that will come back to haunt you for
years on end. Through all this experience you will grow older, wiser, calmer
and so on. It is on this growth that this chapter focuses.
What sort of teacher are you going to be? At the moment your model may
be based on teachers that you have had or, possibly, based on the teachers
you wished that you had had. This is common in new teachers and, on
occasion, you might find yourself saying and doing things that your
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4 Justin Dillon and Meg Maguire
teachers said and did to you. Your first concern may well be with the
behaviour of your students and there will be times, usually just before a
lesson, when you look back at your decision to become a teacher and think,
Why did I do that? As you become more confident and more competent at
teaching your concern will shift from behaviour to learning (see Chapter 13
for a discussion of theories of learning). The two are intrinsically linked. It
is difficult for students to learn if they are not working in a well-managed
environment and if they feel they are learning something worthwhile
they are more likely to respond to being managed (see Chapter 14 for a
discussion of classroom management).
Learning to teach involves a range of practical skills and, as one of our
former colleagues has written, a subtle appreciation of when and how to
apply them (Claxton 1990: 16).
Whether you like it or not, how you teach and how you learn to teach
are bound up with your own personality, philosophy and values.
Somewhere inside there is a set of personal standards whether tacit
or articulated, ill-informed or carefully thought out that determine
what shocks you, interests you or angers you about schools, and that
serve as the benchmarks which you will use to guide and evaluate your
progress as a teacher.
(Claxton 1990: 18)
Training to become a teacher can therefore be a challenging as well as
a frustrating business. A lot of ground is covered in a short time and this
can result in feelings of stress and anxiety (Troman 2000, Bubb and Earley
2004). Your undergraduate learning experience may have focused on a
formalized acquisition of content. In seminars you may well have looked at
prepared papers or had content-driven academic debates. While these
forms of learning feature in current teacher training, and while there is a
necessary emphasis on classroom techniques and skills, learning to teach
is fundamentally a personal challenge where practical, personal and
emotional attributes are just as salient as intellectual capacities. The PGCE
provides a vocational training built around a demanding and challenging
induction into the teaching profession the whole progress is better con-
ceptualized as teacher development (See Chapter 8 for a discussion of the
processes of teacher development). As John Head, one of the authors of this
volume, once wrote: The PGCE is a complex and unique part of becoming a
teacher (Head et al. 1996: 83).
Many secondary trainee teachers (but not all) come into teaching as
mature students, with a rich and broad experience of working in a variety of
settings. Taylor, in a small-scale study of participants on teaching taster
courses found high levels of commitment among the potential trainees
(Taylor 2006). Ninety-seven per cent of her respondents rated their com-
mitment to teaching as high. Teachers, particularly aspiring teachers, can
be a hugely committed group. Some trainee teachers are parents and
have direct experience of their own childrens schooling. Sometimes in the
light of these experiences, teaching can seem to be a common-sense affair
all about conveying some useful and hopefully interesting aspects in a
lively manner which motivates young people to succeed. For people who
think this way, becoming a teacher can sometimes explode any simple
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Developing as a beginning teacher 5
model of teaching and learning. Teaching children who are less motivated
than ourselves or who do not seem like the children we know, can
present practical and personal difficulties where we may blame the
children instead of our own inexperience. However, it can also make for a
stimulating and rewarding work setting.
Teacher qualities
At the heart of this book is a concern with becoming a teacher. Teachers are
in an extremely privileged position; educating other peoples children is a
critical and influential task in any society. But this job is made more com-
plex in times of acute social, economic and political change. One way in
which to approach becoming a contemporary teacher is from the trainee
perspective hinted at above. Another way might be to ask what is involved
in teaching and what might we, as a society, want to prioritize at particular
moments in time? Do we want compliant pupils who can apply what they
have learned? Do we want problem solvers and flexible learners? Do
we want specialists or generalists? Are there any common strands that are
recognizable as key components of a good teacher? In what follows we
will consider four main themes through which we hope to raise questions
about the central qualities involved in being and becoming a teacher: class-
room management, the wider role of the teacher, professional and personal
qualities.
Classroom management
As Jeremy Burke discusses in Chapter 14, there are some well known key
aspects that are fundamental to good teaching. Good classroom manage-
ment and organization, the capability to teach effectively in a mixed
ability classroom (and are not all classrooms mixed ability, however they
are arranged?), good knowledge of subject and subject application, assess-
ment, record keeping and all the other criteria listed by the government are
important. But what is important to recognize is that all of these variables
depend on the degree to which a teacher can maintain a positive and open
climate in the classroom. The research into classroom life demonstrates that
teachers and school students are in constant negotiation over boundaries,
relationships, curriculum content, sequencing and pacing (Beynon 1985;
Delamont 1990; Mackay 2006). This finding means that there are not
simple codes or regimes which have a totality of application: it does not
mean that new teachers cannot be helped with these issues either, but these
are not just aspects of performance that are incrementally added to the
teaching repertoire. They require a different type of learning and a different
type of understanding.
We all know that the very best teaching depends on sensitive communi-
cation. We all know very well-qualified people who really understand their
subject but cannot help others into it in a user-friendly manner. It is not
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only important to be able to help our students understand by clear and

effective communication modes; it is important that teachers listen,
observe and become sensitive to the children and where they are at in
relation to their understanding. Teachers need to be able to listen to and
read their students. This ability takes time and practice to refine, and even
for the most experienced of teachers, it sometimes goes wrong. Dealing
with adolescent people is not always straightforward or predictable as John
Head discusses in Chapter 12. Sometimes it is the unrecognized forms of
communication non-verbal expressions or aspects of body language that
need consideration (Neill 1991; Wooton 1993; Robson 1997). At other
times there is the basic issue of respect for persons, sometimes ignored
when dealing with youngsters. Thus, every job that requires significant
interaction with other people (such as teaching) is an emotional practice
(Hargreaves 1999: 8).
Trainee teachers frequently worry about control and eagerly seek out
strategies to help them in their school experience settings. Experienced
teachers know only too well that controlling or creating a climate to
allow learning to happen is intimately bound up with a knowledge of the
children. Trainee teachers are placed in a novel situation of attempting to
manipulate the atmosphere in large grouped settings. This is an unusual
skill to develop and is not the same as managing adults in a workplace
setting. It takes time and personal investment in good relationships with
school students and it would be unrealistic for new teachers to achieve this
overnight. All this suggests that control is more related to relationships
than external strategies or mechanistic skills.
The wider role of the secondary school teacher
Teaching in contemporary schools involves building relationships with

many different students with a variety of backgrounds, needs, expectations,
motivations and aspirations. It is not possible to help children learn
effectively unless you have some knowledge and insight into their con-
cerns. The pastoral role of a teacher is related to the widest aims of teaching
(see Chapter 27 for a discussion of a teachers pastoral role). The National
Curriculum places a statutory responsibility upon schools to promote the
spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of the school
students. This means being interested in the children, getting to know
them, feeling comfortable about discussing issues related to their learning
and perhaps advising them in certain ways. The revised National Curric-
ulum, launched in 2000, introduced the theme of citizenship in order to
address important matters which had perhaps become marginal to the work
of schools (see Chapter 21 on citizenship). At particular times issues
related to health, sexuality, substance abuse, and so on, become salient in
the classroom, and society expects schools to address and educate around
these concerns. Teachers need to know what they can do, as well as what
they cannot, in this context (see Chapter 23 on The importance of teachers
and schools in health promotion).
From this pastoral role comes an obvious extension working with
parents. In the current policy setting, this aspect of the role of the teacher
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has significance for the maintenance of a healthy developing school

(Gewirtz et al. 1995; Crozier and Reay 2005; Rudney 2005). Communicating
clearly and professionally with parents is a core attribute for effective
teaching; it is recognized that parents and schools working together pro-
vides a continuity and coherence for the school student and is critical for
achievement (Vincent 1996; Reay 2001).
Professional qualities
It is often the case that new teachers need to be oriented to the fact that
becoming a teacher means entering into membership of a particular com-
munity (see Chapter 2 for a full discussion of what being a teacher might
mean). You will be a member of a school staff, involved in a profession that
needs to hold debates within itself and you will have to participate in these
debates. You need to keep up with your subject(s) and you should be
encouraged to join a relevant subject association or phase-specific group.
Essentially teachers need a feeling of responsibility and control over their
work. They need to participate in decision making and indeed hopefully
will develop over time to take a lead in this process. The General Teaching
Council (established in 2000) has a role to play in this development. Other
professional qualities which we believe are required are related to the struc-
tural elements of the job. Teachers need to be on the inside of professional
concerns and issues related to their salary, pay structure and conditions of
service as well as issues of professionalism (see Furlong et al. 2000).
Another important dimension to all this development is the capacity to
relate with colleagues and to work collaboratively. Teachers need the con-
fidence to challenge assumptions about their work and the way in which it
proceeds. They need to be in a position where not only can they work with
colleagues but they are able collectively as a staff, as well as individuals,
to ask fundamental questions about what they are doing (Adey et al. 2004).
Is it worthwhile? It is this capacity that is characteristic of a professional
teacher as opposed to a deliverer of a curriculum devised elsewhere.
Personal qualities
Typically, new teachers experienced their school days as well-behaved and

well-motivated students. Their role model of what it is to be a teacher may
well have been constructed from this experience. For intending teachers
who may have experienced selective schooling and may have been in top
sets, the challenges of working with different types of students may be
initially daunting. Children who have come to a recognition that school
has little to offer them, that school only confirms in them a sense of failure
and of being stupid are going to be harder to reach and harder to teach,
something that we have known about for many years (see, for example,
Hargreaves 1982). In some of our schools, beginning teachers may well
meet many different types of children from the sort of children that they
were restless, unable to concentrate, demotivated or perhaps with
some particular learning difficulty. They will also meet students who are
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assertive, who demand respect and who will not be passive recipients of
teachers knowledge. Students will challenge what they perceive to be
unfair or unjust in a way that might sometimes be constructed as
provocative.
Beginning teachers will discover that they need lots of different responses
different ways of being with children in the school setting. They will need
to experiment with different strategies. They will need to develop a flexible
and adaptive repertoire of teaching. They will need to see themselves as
learners throughout their lives and see this as a challenge and an oppor-
tunity, not a threat. At the heart of these personal qualities for teachers and
student teachers must be the capacity to see their professional life as one of
continual growth and development (Forde et al. 2006). For new teachers
what is required is a state of adaptability, an experimental attitude, a
capacity to recognize that they are going through a period of transitional
incompetence, perhaps learning to tolerate their own fallibility and accept-
ing that they can make mistakes as part of this process of becoming a
teacher.
Working with others
Throughout your teacher training you are going to be working closely

with more experienced, wiser people. You will be constructing new ways of
working with people and new identities for yourself (but see Atkinson 2004
for some caveats about reflection). Teachers can be seen as autonomous
beings working in a collegial environment. However, as Clement and
Vandenberghe (2000) point out, there are tensions between autonomy and
collegiality: Simply put: in order to collaborate adequately, teachers need
to work alone sometimes, and, vice versa, in order to work autonomously
adequately, teachers need to collaborate sometimes . . . (Clement and
Vandenberghe (2000: 85). The problem that you might face is that you will
be forced to work alone when sometimes you would like to be more col-
laborative and vice versa! Trying to manage others expectations of your
needs when you are not clear what your own needs are, is a complex and
challenging business.
In recent years, teachers have been encouraged to take a much greater
role in the development of beginning teachers than was the case in the past
(see Boyd (2002) for a critique of a schools involvement in initial teacher
education). You will normally be allocated a mentor in each school in
which you are placed. It has to be said that it is not easy being a mentor
and good mentors are not as common as we might like to think. We know
less about mentor development than we do about most other areas of
teacher development in the UK, but we do know some things. In the US,
Stanulis and Russell describe three themes that are key to effective men-
toring: trust and communication; jumping in as a tool for learning to teach
(that is rather than sitting at the back marking or taking notes all lesson);
and conversation (between mentors and university tutors) as a tool for
learning about mentoring (Stanulis and Russell, 2000: 69). Effective,
regular, planned and sympathetic communication between you and your
mentor are quintessential to your success as a beginning teacher and will
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go a long way to making you feel needed, valued and supported, oh, and
happy.
Researchers are beginning to try out a range of strategies designed to
improve the impact of mentors on teachers practices. For example,
Williams and Watson (2004) describe an initiative in which participants
on a university pre-service course in teaching English to speakers of other
languages were given feedback on their lessons about 20 hours after the
lesson ended rather than immediately. The quality of reflection of those
students was noticeably greater than that of trainees who were given
immediate feedback. Somewhat more disturbing is the finding of Edwards
and Protheroe that: Student teachers learning is heavily situated and that
students are not acquiring ways of interpreting learners that are easily
transferable, but they are learning about curriculum delivery (Edwards and
Protheroe 2003: 227).
The implication of this study is that what you might learn about pupils in
one school with one mentor and one set of colleagues might not be trans-
ferable to other situations. This finding is something to be aware of when
you are discussing your experiences with other colleagues.
Concluding comments
The teacher is the ultimate key to educational change and school improve-
ment. The restructuring of schools, the composition of national and pro-
vincial curricula, the development of benchmark assessments all these
things are of little value if they do not take the teacher into account.
Teachers do not merely deliver the curriculum. They develop, define it and
reinterpret it too. It is what teachers think, what teachers believe and what
teachers do at the level of the classroom that ultimately shapes the kind of
learning that young people experience.
For some reformers, improving teaching is mainly a matter of developing
better teaching methods or of improving instruction. For them, training
teachers in new classroom management skills, in active learning, per-
sonalized learning, one-to-one counselling and the like are the main
priorities. These things are important, but we are also increasingly coming
to understand that developing teachers and improving their teaching
involves more than giving them new tricks. Teachers need to be creative
and imaginative in their work; they need to be able to use intuitive,
rational and reflective thinking as well as having the confidence to take
risks in learning and a sense of cognitive self-efficacy in a range of learning
contexts (Eraut 2000: 267).
Teachers teach in the way they do not just because of the skills they have
or have not learned. The ways they teach are also grounded in their back-
grounds, their biographies, in the kind of teachers they have become. Their
careers their hopes and dreams, their opportunities and aspirations, or the
frustration of these things are also important for teachers commitment,
enthusiasm and morale. So too are relationships with their colleagues,
either in supportive communities, or as individuals working in isolation,
with the insecurities that this sometimes brings.
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As we are coming to understand these wider aspects of teaching and

teacher development we are also beginning to understand that much
more than pedagogy, instruction or teaching method is at stake.
Teacher development, teachers careers, teachers relations with their
colleagues, the conditions of status, reward and leadership under
which they work all these affect the quality of what they do in the
classroom.
(Hargreaves and Fullan 1992: ix)
For those of you who are reading this and who are in the process of
becoming a teacher there is one more fundamental issue which has to be
addressed. There is a distinction between being a good teacher and some-
one who helps school students become good learners: those whom Claxton
(1990) calls mentors. Claxton has set up a simple model to illustrate his
point. He talks about the traditional good teacher as someone who tells
things clearly, points out the key features, and maximizes the training
procedures through which pupils perform smoothly and successfully in
situations like most exams that ask them to apply familiar operations
to familiar content (Claxton 1990: 154). One consequence can be the
development of an unimaginative and inflexible learner:
Good pupils often perform well and look good but at the expense of
precisely those qualities that distinguish good learners: resourceful-
ness, persistence and creativity. And it is just this kind of quality that
mentors care about. Their main concern is to equip their pupils with
the ability to be intelligent in the face of change.
(Claxton 1990: 154)
Becoming a teacher is not just a matter of training in basic skills and
classroom procedures, essential as these all are as a starting place. It is also
a matter of choice and of various personal and professional decisions,
judgement and even intuitions (Atkinson and Claxton 2000). That is why
teaching is such a tantalizing, challenging and rewarding occupation.
References
Adey, P., Hewitt, G., Hewitt, J. and Landau, N. (2004) The Professional Development
of Teachers: Practice and Theory. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
Atkinson, D. (2004) Theorising how students teachers form their identities in initial
teacher education, British Educational Research Journal, 30(3): 37994.
Atkinson, T. and Claxton, G. (eds) (2000) The Intuitive Practitioner. On the Value of Not
Always Knowing What One is Doing. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Beynon, J. (1985) Initial Encounters in the Secondary School: Sussing, Typing and Coping.
London: Falmer Press.
Boyd, P. (2002) Rose-tinted reflection? The benefits for teachers of initial teacher
education in secondary schools, Journal of In-service Education, 28(2): 20317.
Bubb, S. and Earley, P. (2004) Managing Teacher Workload: Work-life Balance and Well-
being. London: Paul Chapman.
Claxton, G. (1990) Teaching to Learn. A Direction for Education. London: Cassell.
Clement, M. and Vandenberghe, R. (2000) Teachers professional development: a
solitary or collegial (ad)venture? Teaching and Teacher Education, 16: 81101.
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Crozier, G. and Reay, D. (eds) (2005) Activating Participation: Parents and Teachers
Working Towards Partnership. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.
Delamont, S. (1990) Interaction in the Classroom. London: Routledge.
Edwards, A. and Protheroe, L. (2003) Learning to see in classrooms: what are student
teachers learning about teaching and learning while learning to teach in schools?
British Educational Research Journal, 29(2): 22742.
Eraut, M. (2000) The intuitive practitioner: a critical overview, in T. Atkinson and
G. Claxton (eds) The Intuitive Practitioner. On the Value of Not Always Knowing What
One is Doing. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Forde, C., McMahon, M., McPhee, A.D. and Patrick, F. (2006) Professional Develop-
ment, Reflection and Enquiry. London: Paul Chapman.
Furlong, J., Barton, L., Miles, S. et al. (2000) Teacher Education in Transition. Reforming
Professionalism? Buckingham: Open University Press.
Gewirtz, S., Ball, S.J. and Bowe, R. (1995) Markets, Choice and Equity in Education.
Buckingham: Open University Press.
Hargreaves, A. (1999) Classrooms, colleagues, communities and change: the
sociology of teaching at the turn of the century. Keynote address given at 50th
Anniversary of the Japanese Society of Sociology of Education, Tokyo, August.
Hargreaves, A. and Fullan, M.G. (eds) (1992) Understanding Teacher Development.
London: Cassell.
Hargreaves, D.H. (1982) The Challenge for the Comprehensive School: Culture,
Curriculum and Community. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Head, J., Hill, F. and Maguire, M. (1996) Stress and the postgraduate secondary trainee
teacher: a British case study, Journal of Education for Teaching, 22(1): 7184.
Mackay, T. (2006) The West Dunbartonshire Literacy Initiative: The Design, Implementa-
tion and Evaluation of an Intervention Strategy to Raise Achievement and Eradicate
Illiteracy. Phase 1 Research Report. Dunbarton: West Dunbartonshire Council.
Neill, S. (1991) Classroom Nonverbal Communication. London: Routledge.
Reay, D. (2001) Parents and schooling, in J. Dillon and M. Maguire (eds) Becoming a
Teacher. Issues in Secondary Teaching (2nd edn). Buckingham: Open University Press.
Robson, P. (1997) Body Language. London: Franklin Watts.
Rudney, G. (2005) Every Teachers Guide to Working with Parents. Thousand Oaks:
Corwin Press.
Stanulis, R.N. and Russell, D. (2000) Jumping in: trust and communication in men-
toring student teachers, Teaching and Teacher Education, 16: 6580.
Taylor, A. (2006) Perceptions of prospective entrants to teacher education, Teaching
and Teacher Education, 22: 45164.
Troman, G. (2000) Teacher stress in the low-trust society. Conference paper, Annual
Meeting of the American Education Research Association, New Orleans, April.
Vincent, C. (1996) Parents and Teachers: Power and Participation. London: Falmer Press.
Williams, M. and Watson, A. (2004) Post-lesson debriefing: delayed or immediate? An
investigation of student teacher talk, Journal of Education for Teaching, 30(2): 8596.
Wootton, M.J. (1993) Not Using Your Voice: Non-Verbal Communication Skills in
Teaching. Upminster: Nightingale Teaching Consultancy.
Further reading
Bennett, H. (2006) The Trainee Teachers Survival Guide. London: Continuum.

Borich, G.D. (1995) Becoming a Teacher. An Inquiring Dialogue for the Beginning Teacher.
Hargreaves, A. (1999) The psychic rewards (and annoyances) of classroom teaching,
in M. Hammersley (ed.) Researching School Experience. Ethnographic Studies of
Teaching and Learning. London: Falmer Press.
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2 On being a teacher
Chris Winch
Introduction
This chapter will try to answer the question When you become a teacher,
what exactly is it that you become? The issue of occupational identity has
always worried teachers, as it is bound up with their standing with the
public, with other professions and with the state and politicians. It is a
question endlessly chewed over by academics who have come up with
various accounts of what it is to be a teacher. All of these accounts contain
some problems. In this chapter I will review the various possibilities and
then take a look at what the government thinks of the issue, sketching out
some possibilities for the future development of teachers occupational
identity.
A brief historical survey
In the period from the 1960s until 1988, teachers enjoyed a historically
unprecedented degree of autonomy within the educational system. This
was particularly true of primary teachers, as we shall shortly see. However,
this was not always the case; in particular, the Revised Code of Inspection
that existed from the 1860s until 1898 provided for the regular inspection
of teachers with a view to determining their pay scales according to the
results of a test conducted by one of Her Majestys Inspectors. The work
of teachers was, therefore, under scrutiny from headteachers and govern-
ment officials and there was little room for professional independence or
initiative. The Revised Code payment by results system testifies to the
lowly status and low trust accorded to teachers at this period and echoes
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On being a teacher 13
Adam Smiths views in his Wealth of Nations of 1776, where he argues that
there should be a discretionary element in the pay of state-funded teachers
otherwise the schoolmaster would soon learn to neglect his business
(Smith 1776, BkV, p.785).
By the 1960s great changes had occurred. The 1944 Education Act had
provided for curricular control by Local Education Authorities (LEAs),
which in practice few, if any, exercised with any degree of vigour. The
11-plus selection exam for the grammar schools imposed a de facto curric-
ulum on those classes that were specially prepared in order to pass this
exam. However, given the unwillingness or inability of headteachers to
exercise control of the curriculum within their schools, inevitably much of
the power to do this passed to the classroom teacher within the constraints
imposed by the 11-plus. The demise of the 11-plus led to a further weaken-
ing in curricular control and to a period, after the passing of the Plowden
Report of 1967, that explicitly sanctioned experimentation within the
classroom and even questioned the pre-eminence of the traditional aim of
primary education in terms of grounding in the basics (see Alexander 1984,
Ch.1). In this period teachers were allowed to experiment, not only with
curricula and pedagogy, but also with what they considered to be the aims
of primary education (see Mortimore et al. 1988 for evidence of this pro-
cess). The picture was somewhat different in secondary schools. Those 80
per cent of children who were not in grammar schools attended secondary
schools in which, by and large, they did not prepare for any public exami-
nations (Taylor 1963). Furthermore, the schools were given considerable
latitude within their non-academic brief to innovate, which many did. The
rise of the comprehensive school, and the advent of the CSE examination
altered the situation somewhat, but still gave schools considerable freedom
to innovate if they so wished.
This golden age of teacher autonomy came to an abrupt end in 1988.
A unitary exam for nearly all 16 year olds, the GCSE, came into being. But
much more important, the Education Reform Act of 1988 set in place a
universal statutory curriculum and scheme of summative assessment to
which all schools and teachers in England and Wales had to conform. At a
stroke, teachers de facto ability to set their aims, their curricula and their
assessment procedures, came to a halt. Primary and secondary teachers had,
henceforth, to work to guidelines as to what they should teach and they
also had to teach in such a way that children were adequately prepared to
take the Key Stage Assessments at age 7, 11, 14 and 16 on which schools
were, to a large extent, to be judged by the government and the public.
However, teachers and their representatives were able to affect the construc-
tion of the National Curriculum (see Cox (1991) for an account of what
happened to the English curriculum and Graham 1993, for a more general
account). There was a degree of scope for interpretation of the requirements
of the curriculum in terms of construction of schemes of work and lesson
plans, and teachers were free to teach in a way that conformed to their
professional judgement.
By 1992, however, further legislation ushered in mandatory regular
formal inspections of schools according to a comprehensive set of criteria
published in an inspection handbook. Individual teachers were to be
judged on their performance in the classroom and the results of inspections
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14 Chris Winch
for schools were to be published. In practice therefore, the formative

assessment and pedagogical methods of teachers were to be subject to
scrutiny and potential sanction. Finally, in 1997, the advent of the National
Literacy and National Numeracy Strategies brought state control of
pedagogical methods onto the agenda, through detailed prescription
of methods to be employed in English and Mathematics for one hour each
day, both in the primary and secondary school. In nine years, therefore,
teachers had apparently moved from a position of unparalleled autonomy
to one of unparalleled control by the state. Did this signify, as many have
argued, the demise of teachers as professionals and their emergence as low
level technicians, putting into effect recipes written by state agencies and
policed by agents of the state? The position is actually much more com-
plicated and interesting than this stark judgement suggests, but in order to
see this, it is first necessary to understand what could be meant by such a
claim that teachers were deprofessionalized, or even proletarianized, that is,
reduced to the status of unskilled workers.
What is a professional?
For many years it was common for teachers to be described as pro-

fessionals and for them to describe themselves as such. At first sight, such
a description suggests that they are of the same kind as doctors, lawyers
and clergymen. However, the standard account of a professional found
in the textbooks of sociologists of work casts some doubt on that claim.
Professionals are supposed to have access to specialized, abstract and
difficult-to-acquire knowledge, which they put into practice in the course of
their work. Their ability to put this esoteric knowledge into practice consti-
tutes, arguably, the core of their expertise and hence of their professional
status (Eraut 1994). It justifies the public trust reposed in them, their ability
to regulate their own affairs and their ability to control entry into the pro-
fession through the possession of a licence to practise guaranteed by the
state, usually through a legislative instrument. It is sometimes also argued
that the professions, unlike other occupations, are uniquely concerned
with human well-being through their attention to fundamental human
needs of health, justice, spiritual salvation, learning and moral develop-
ment. (This has been powerfully argued, for instance by David Carr see
Carr 1999 and 2000, for example.)
However, these accounts of what it is to be a professional pose difficulties
for anyone who wishes to call teachers a professional group in any straight-
forward sense. In the first place, it is not clear what teachers esoteric pro-
fessional knowledge actually is. One answer would be that it is subject
knowledge, the material that they teach. However, this attribute would not
normally serve to distinguish teachers from other individuals, who are
not teachers, who have also acquired such knowledge through pursuing a
university degree. Perhaps it lies in their ability to put this knowledge
into practice, in the way in which a surgeon puts knowledge of anatomy,
physiology and biochemistry into practice in diagnosis and in the
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operating theatre, or a lawyer who puts knowledge of the law into practical
effect in the courtroom. The surgeon requires, in addition to the ability
to make on the spot medical judgements, manipulative and managerial
abilities. The lawyer has to deploy forensic and rhetorical powers to
win cases. Such knowledge involves the practical interpretation of their
theoretical knowledge in context in such a way as to achieve the desired
result. In this sense, these professionals conform to the Aristotelian notion
of a technician, by employing reason to achieve a given end. In their case,
the reason involves interpreting a body of theoretical knowledge to meet
the needs of the particular patient or client in the particular operating
theatre or courtroom. Based on this analogy, teachers have to deploy their
subject knowledge in the same way, interpreting the subject matter in such
a way that children learn it effectively. If this story is true, then teachers are
a kind of high-level technician, like a surgeon or a lawyer. Just as lawyers and
doctors do not individually determine the aims of health care or justice
(although they may have a say in determining them), so teachers do not
determine the aims of education, nor what should be taught, but possess
expertise in the pedagogic methods of transforming subject knowledge
into a form suitable for pupils to acquire. It might be added that surgeons
and doctors do not determine their own curriculum either, in the sense
that the knowledge that they deploy is framed by scientists and legislators
rather than by doctors and lawyers themselves (although, again, they may
contribute). In some cases, even the pedagogy of doctors is prescribed
(certain surgical techniques and drugs rather than others are recom-
mended, and the effectiveness of the doctor or surgeon is to some extent
judged on whether or not they deploy such techniques). The puzzle about
teachers is this: if teachers insist on calling themselves professionals, then
why do they often complain when their work is brought into greater like-
ness with other occupations whose professional status is unquestioned, by
endowing them with a body of theory to inform their practice?
Part of the answer undoubtedly lies in the fact that teachers do not con-
trol their own affairs in the way that these other professions do. They do not
control a licence to practise and their power to influence the curriculum,
pedagogic methods, assessment procedures, as well as their power to dis-
cipline their own membership is very limited and, in the latter case, shared
with government within the General Teaching Council (GTC). Further-
more, there is a high level of turnover in teaching, many teachers leave
after a few years practice and teaching enjoys one of the highest levels of
casualization of any occupation (see Gallie et al. 1998). In terms of social
status, therefore, it is in a weak position compared to other professions.
But many would also maintain that the description of teachers pro-
fessional knowledge given above is seriously incomplete. Some maintain
that the ethical role of teachers as guardians of human well-being puts them
in a pre-eminent position regarding determination of the aims of educa-
tion, as well as curriculum and pedagogy, even though it is arguable that
other interests in society have some role in determining these things (see
Carr 1999 for a discussion that tends along these lines). But even if we were
to allow that to be unrealistic, a very powerful school of thought maintains
that teachers have, or should have, the knowledge of how children learn
and it is this knowledge, above all, that is the mark of their professional
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16 Chris Winch
expertise (see Wood 1988; Donaldson 1992 for the problematic nature of
this claim). At its most extreme this view is encapsulated in the old cri
de guerre of the progressive teacher: we teach children not subjects. This
view is extreme as it discounts the significance of subject knowledge as
something to be imparted to children and, by implication, discounts the
need for teachers to have it as well. However, there is a broad consensus
among teachers that they do have expertise on how children learn and
that this constitutes a significant part, if not the core, of their occupational
knowledge.
Before dealing with this issue, however, I want to question the claim that
the professions have a unique stake in determining human welfare. It is
undoubtedly true, as Carr maintains, that they deal in fundamental human
goods (although some varieties of cosmetic surgery and legal claim-chasing
may cast some doubt on certain cases), but it is also true that other occupa-
tions such as farming, plumbing, train driving and business activity are not
only concerned with enhancing life, but also with ensuring it. Some
occupations, such as nursing, are particularly concerned with caring, where
the occupational expertise seems to be a single-minded concern with the
physical welfare of a patient or client. But, significantly, such occupations
are not classified as professions, but rather, at the most, as semi-professions
(Etzioni 1969).
Professionals, craft workers and technicians
If teachers were professionals in the traditional sense, they would have at

their disposal a body of applicable theoretical knowledge concerning
how students learn, which they could deploy in appropriate conditions.
Alternatively, and possibly in addition, they would possess a body of
normative theory (theory that recommends or directs) concerning what
should be taught, rather as lawyers and doctors have rules concerning how
they should proceed. Commentators on the nature of professionalism, such
as Freidson (1986), argue that the key quality of professionals is that they
are technicians; that is, those whose work involves applying theoretical
knowledge to practice. However, there has traditionally been considerable
resistance to the view that applicable theory constitutes the professional
knowledge of teachers. This is particularly evident with the case of the
National Curriculum. When it was introduced in 1988, many teachers
complained that they were reduced to technicians from their previous pro-
fessional status. However, according to the analysis in some of the literature
on professionalism, they were just gaining attributes of professionalism
that they previously lacked (Freidson 1986).
How can this reaction be explained? The post 11-plus period had brought
unparalleled autonomy to teachers. They were, in effect, responsible for
their own curricula and even their own aims of education (Mortimore et al.
1988). These responsibilities were removed in 1988, so it is understandable
that teachers thought that their professional autonomy had been radically
diminished. That does not, however, explain their rejection of the
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technician label, which, post 1988, seemed more applicable to them as pro-
fessionals than before. Indeed, by being given a body of normative theory
within which to work and within which to exercise their professional
judgement, it could be said that they were losing an indeterminate status,
exercising powers on behalf of society that they could not possibly exercise,
and gaining the position of other professionals, as trusted interpreters of
the aims and general direction of an important public service. Indeed, just
as doctors and lawyers are thought to have an important, although not
decisive, say in the nature and workings of the medical and legal systems, so
teachers would now have an important, although not decisive, say in the
nature and general direction of education. Their anomalous position would
be removed and their professional status confirmed.
Why was this not the reaction of the majority of spokespeople for
teachers? To understand this, we need to look at another influential
account of the nature of teachers knowledge. This account suggests that
teachers are not technicians (the archetype of the technician, in the public
mind, is the skilled industrial worker, who applies theory to practice,
such as an engineer or electrician), but that they are more akin to the
pre-industrial craft worker, such as the potter, the wheelwright or the agri-
cultural labourer. Craft knowledge is implicit, informal and non-codifiable
and it is manifested in practice rather than in any book of rules and
principles. Craft workers learn their trade through apprenticeship, in which
they acquire expertise through observation and gradually increasing their
participation in the craft activity. As they do this, they learn the aims,
ethos and ethics of the craft and can eventually pass them on to future
generations. Craft work does not involve the application of theory to
practice but the application of manual skills and situated judgement to the
materials at hand, oriented to the particular purposes of clients (Sturt 1976).
The craft workers knowledge is, above all, of local needs and conditions,
not about applying general principles to particular situations, nor about
applying theory to practice. Thus, teachers learn their trade through
practising it and they become masters of their craft through understanding
the needs of the children that they teach and the communities that they
serve. By understanding these needs they will devise aims and construct
curricula that serve those needs. The craft conception of the teacher then
includes the ability to devise aims and curricula, as well as pedagogies.
Seen in this light, it would not be surprising that a significant body of
teachers would resist the removal of their control over aims and curricula
and would see the role of the technician, albeit the professional techni-
cian, as a demeaning one (but see Silcock 2002 for a more complex view).
However, the craft conception of the work of teachers leads to a serious
difficulty. A craft worker does not, on the whole, set the aims and general
principles of the craft, these are handed down traditionally and only
gradually modified over generations. Therefore the analogy between the
teacher and the craft worker is a misleading one. And there is a further
difficulty, for the craft knowledge of the craft worker is essentially non-
academic and practical. If teachers are craft workers, their knowledge of
what curriculum to follow and the principles of pedagogy to adopt are
intuitive, rather than rational. But if this is the case, then in what sense can
teachers claim a similar status to doctors, lawyers and clergy? Much of their
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18 Chris Winch
professional knowledge is, as we have seen, applied theory and there seems
to be no room for theory in the knowledge of teachers. How could they
even be entitled to a professional training, let alone professional status, if
their knowledge is craft knowledge?
And there is worse to follow. Suppose a craft teachers knowledge is not
really knowledge at all, but prejudice picked up in the staffroom. Teachers
might claim to know that some kinds of children are less able than others,
that you cant teach reading using phonics, etc. Others again might deny
these very propositions. What is the basis for such knowledge claims? It
wont do to say intuition or experience because these are not justifica-
tions for action, but rather a claim to authority which is itself questionable.
If the much-prized professional knowledge of teachers turns out to be, on
inspection, prejudice, then it is a poor substitute for the technical know-
ledge of other professions. But if, on the other hand, there is no knowledge
for teachers that is analogous to the surgeons knowledge of biochemistry
or the lawyers of civil or criminal law, then how can they avoid being an
occupation whose much-vaunted professional expertise is a kind of folk
wisdom of dubious provenance? There is some evidence, unfortunately,
that teachers have, at least until the recent past, seen themselves as belong-
ing to such an occupation (see Alexander 1984, Chapter 2, for some of the
evidence). Hoyle (1974) suggested that a majority of teachers saw them-
selves as what he called restricted professionals or workers who have no
interest in theoretical knowledge and whose practice is based on experience
and intuition, rather like that of a traditional craft worker. But unlike a craft
worker, the supposed knowledge is not of the behaviour of wood, stone or
clay, but of the actions, beliefs and attitudes of people.
However, the knowledge of the traditional craft worker is, in a sense, self-
validating. A potter who does not intuitively understand the properties of
clay will not be able to successfully make pots and this will become rapidly
apparent. It is not so clear that one could easily detect the lack of knowledge
of the teacher. Children who do not learn what an observer thinks that they
should learn do not necessarily count against this. A teacher might plaus-
ibly say that their aims for education were the development of an integrated
personality, not someone able to read and write; as, for example, Rousseau
appears to have thought. A teacher might also say that one should not aim
too high in teaching some children, as high expectations are not appro-
priate for some kinds of children (see comments in Alexander 1984; Thrupp
1999). It is not a simple matter to distinguish the good from the bad teacher
merely on the basis of ones own view of what education should be, if
others do not share that view.
Some of these problems are solved by the existence of a national curric-
ulum, which works to a set of aims and indicates, in broad terms, what
should be taught. Teachers can then be judged against the extent to which
they meet those aims and successfully reach the aims of the relevant
sections of the national curriculum. However, this does not solve the
difficulty concerning the empirical part of a teachers knowledge, or the
knowledge of how children learn and the best way to teach them that is
supposed to constitute part of the core of a teachers knowledge. We cannot
depend on staffroom prejudices, but what if we have no reliable empirical
theory to go on either?
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Do we have research-based knowledge of teaching and learning?
At first sight, this seems a strange question to ask. After all, tens, if not
hundreds of millions of pounds must be spent every year on educational
research across the developed world. Surely that expenditure cannot be
in vain? The problem is, though, that we do not really know. Much work
that was, at one time, thought to be highly significant is now thought to
be compromised and may be of little or no value. In their day, theories such
as various forms of developmental stages, intelligence, verbal deficit and
psycholinguistic theory have all enjoyed periods of prestige and influence
and have then declined in the face of damaging counter-evidence. This is
not the only educational research of course, much work consists of smaller-
scale studies of specific aspects of teaching and learning or how particular
schools function. But this more context-specific research poses its own
problems, for how does one draw more general lessons from it? Research
in education is always under attack, on the one hand, from those who
denounce the general and overarching theories inferred from the small
empirical base on which some large theoretical claims are made, on the
other hand, from those who claim that small-scale, context-dependent
studies, whatever their virtues, cannot be generalized to larger subjects. This
seems to be such a problem that there is an influential body of thought that
doubts that empirical educational research does have, or even could have,
any practical value (see Barrow in Barrow and Foreman-Peck 2005, for
example).
The problem seems to be that, despite the huge amount of money and
effort spent on it, we do not really have a clear enough picture of what is
and is not reliable in educational research. Furthermore, very often inter-
pretations differ as to what the available evidence tells us, and it is all too
tempting for academics to discount research whose results they dont like
and to praise research whose results they do. We are still a long way from
getting a clear view of what we do know and what we dont, and hence are
still a long way from having a reliable knowledge of the theory underpin-
ning successful pedagogies that could form the basis for teacher education.
However, it also seems that we have little choice but to develop such a
knowledge base successfully, for the alternatives are not very appetising. If
teacher knowledge is a kind of craft knowledge, like that of a potter or a
wheelwright, then it should best be imparted within schools rather than in
academic settings, just as one should learn to be a potter in a potters work-
shop and a wheelwright in a wheelwrights shop. But if this knowledge is,
in reality, nothing more than prejudice or unjustified belief which may well
be false, then it cannot be a good idea to rely on schools alone to educate
future generations of teachers. Since it is not possible to rely on knowledge
claims that may often be little more than prejudice, one cannot dispense
with research, both conceptual and empirical. However, the amount and
quality of research currently available may not be sufficient to sustain the
professional education of teachers and, even if it does exist, may not be
universally accepted by all those involved in the education of teachers.
It does seem, therefore, that in the absence of credible empirical
knowledge about teaching and learning, the professional knowledge of
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20 Chris Winch
teachers might largely rest with their subject knowledge and their ability to
put that subject knowledge into practice in designing syllabuses, schemes of
work and lessons. This ability is sometimes known as professional curricular
knowledge and is, arguably, the core competence of teachers. In-depth
knowledge of the subject allows a teacher to make necessary and appro-
priate decisions concerning what to teach and how to teach it. Clearly, a
necessary condition of having this ability is good subject knowledge. How-
ever, it is also important to know how that knowledge is selected and
presented to students and, above all, what are the most effective ways of
teaching it. Professional curricular knowledge therefore seems to span both
the subject and the professional knowledge of teachers and to constitute
the core of their expertise, particularly in secondary education.1
At the secondary level, most teachers are involved in teaching subjects
and are expected to develop syllabuses and lessons that effectively enable
students to learn in those subjects. Teachers expertise in knowing how
students learn is, therefore, to a large extent bound up with their profes-
sional curricular knowledge. There are good reasons, however, for thinking
that such knowledge is simply a knack of applying subject knowledge,
which can be gained with some experience in the classroom. There is, for
example, a large amount of research within particular subjects that claims
to provide teachers with vital know-how concerning the best methods for
teaching particular subjects and even claiming authority on the sequencing
of subject matter. If this research is reliable, then the problem for secondary
teachers in particular is that of understanding and applying that relevant
research in their daily practice. But if it is not, then professional curricular
knowledge has to be acquired through experience and through working
with experienced teachers. One of the pressing problems for teachers con-
cerning professional curricular knowledge is that, especially in some subject
areas, it is highly contested. This is not merely because different researchers
disagree about findings, but also because they often start from different and
contested philosophical assumptions about the nature of the subject know-
ledge and its acquisition in their subject areas. See, for example, the debate
between Wally Suchting and Ernst von Glasersfeld about science education
(von Glasersfeld 1989; Suchting 1992). Nor is this problem confined to
secondary education. Consider the debates about, for example, the teach-
ing of writing and reading in primary education that have raged over the
years.
If this is true then it leaves teaching in a position unlike that of other
professions, in that knowledge of how to carry out relevant professional
tasks is, on the one hand, based on research and, in a lot of cases, hotly
contested, or on the other, not dependent on research or theory, but on
having mastered the informal rules of successful practice. One should dis-
tinguish between two claims here. One is that there could be no research-
based empirical theory concerning how one should teach, a position that
seems to be adopted by some influential commentators such as Carr and
1
In some respects the issues for primary educators are different. For example, the knowledge
of applied linguistics necessary to be an accomplished curriculum leader in English in the
primary school is imparted to pupils as skill and understanding in reading and writing rather
than as factual information. Which is not to say, of course, that subject knowledge is nothing
more than facts it also concerns methods of enquiry and verification (see Hirst 1974).
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Barrow. In this account, we should not wait upon good educational research
to guide the practice of teachers because, by its nature, educational know-
ledge is not of the kind that could be yielded in this way, any more than the
practice of a nineteenth-century wheelwright was dependent on theoretical
knowledge of botany, economics and psychology.
Another, more optimistic, view is that educational research has not suf-
ficiently developed to a point at which it can form the basis for teachers
practice. Even in those cases where knowledge obtained is reasonably
reliable, it has not always been incorporated into practice. A greater effort
needs to be made to evaluate extant research and to disseminate that which
has been validated according to rigorous procedures and which has been
replicated in a wide variety of practically relevant situations. It is, after all,
most unlikely that there could be no knowledge of how children best learn
and of how to teach them. One argument, found in Barrow (1984), is that
teachers should never act on generalizations since all findings are only valid
in the situations in which they have been obtained. Unfortunately, this
claim is self-refuting as it is the kind of generalization it is meant to deny.
If Barrow is right, then the generalization that one should not act on
generalizations means that there is at least one generalization that one
should act on, namely his own. And if that is so, why not on others?
Educational research sceptics hardly ever deny that there are educational
facts, just that there are general educational facts (for example, Barrow in
Barrow and Foreman-Peck 2005). They believe that some schools are more
effective than other schools and that some methods of teaching reading are
better than others, but claim that research cannot reveal these facts. How-
ever, they and others like them act as if they do know some particular
educational facts: they send their children to some schools rather than
others in the belief that such schools are more effective, they make judge-
ments about the quality of teachers, of certain kinds of lessons, about the
efficacy of methods of teaching reading and so on. How do they do it?
According to Barrow and Foreman-Peck (2005: 29):
More often than not educational truths, however, will be revealed

rather by a combination of reasoning, reflection and informal
experience. So, this is not a counsel of despair. It is an argument to the
effect that we need to emphasise other things in educational research
than empirical inquiry on the model of the natural sciences.
But we have seen that this really will not do. Common sense may be
nothing more than prejudice and different people may lay claim to dif-
ferent versions of common sense. For example it may be the case that the
choice is based on the social class composition of the children in the school
(Ball 2003). As Phillips (2005: 591) points out, what seems obvious may
only become so after research has confirmed it.
Consider the classic question of whether it promotes learning better

to distribute practice examples on a new mathematics skill over time,
or mass the practice following the teaching of the skill. After the
research has been done, it might seem intuitively obvious that massing
the practice until mastery is achieved is the more effective, but would
we have made this choice beforehand? (And be alert here, for I might
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22 Chris Winch
be playing a prank! Maybe the research shows that massed practice

is less effective!) My point is that intuitions are unreliable here, and
certainly do not substitute for careful research!2
It does rather look as if carrying out good, reliable educational research
is unavoidable if we wish to improve the work of teachers. In the past
we have, maybe, been too hasty in expecting quick results and broad
conclusions from small amounts of evidence. In the meantime, however,
we have to make do with what we have.
The governments views of teacher knowledge
Past and present governments appear to tackle this tricky subject non-
specifically. Generally speaking, standards for classroom teachers suggest
that there is knowledge about learning and that even Newly Qualified
Teachers (NQTs) should possess it. Thus, teachers should: understand
how the progress and well-being of learners are affected by a range of influ-
ences and use this knowledge to inform their own teaching (Training and
Development Agency for Schools 2006a: 8).
The fact that the standards are described in behavioural terms is slightly
confusing. The phrase this knowledge does not refer back to any
knowledge previously described in the document, but does imply that it
exists. However, this may not be the case and then there would not be
anything to draw on. But it is not clear upon whom teachers are supposed
to rely when obtaining this knowledge. Despite the fondness of govern-
ments over the last two decades for basing a lot of initial teacher education
in schools, they seem to realize that one could not reliably expect that
teachers possess that knowledge. The very fact that the 19972001 govern-
ment thought it necessary to introduce national literacy and numeracy
strategies, which subsequent governments have continued, suggests that
they do not believe that the knowledge of practising teachers is sufficient
for two central parts of the National Curriculum. The government at the
time of writing (like its last five predecessors) also regards university
departments of education with some suspicion, suspecting that they are
not really committed to evidence-informed practice. To some extent the
problem can be alleviated by the kind of evaluation of research under-
taken by organizations such as the EPPI (Evidence for Policy and Practice
Information and Co-ordinating Centre) centre for the evaluation of
educational research, which attempts to pull together and draw general
lessons from a review of all the relevant, good quality research on a
particular topic (see the comments of Hegarty 2000 on the knowledge base).
However, both the conduct and the interpretation of meta reviews, which
would form the basis for evidence-informed research, requires specialist
skills and must, therefore, be done by qualified specialists. Carrying out,
2
By massing the practice Phillips means to give the pupils a lot of practical examples to do,
immediately or shortly after explanation of, for example, a new mathematical operation.
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understanding and interpreting research is the key expertise of the profes-

sional, qualified researcher and is not something that teachers can be
expected to do as part of their normal professional duties. If such skills were
taught either as part of their initial academic education or their professional
education, then arguably at least some of the profession would be in a
position to take on such a role. But such expertise is not available through
initial teacher education, nor is it available to serving teachers except
through high-level and specialized qualifications such as the EdD, MPhil
and PhD.
If that is the case, then how will teachers obtain such knowledge in a
form useful to them in their professional practice? Research findings could
indeed be taught to them as part of their initial teacher education, if there
was a consensus on what research should underlie practice. But, as we have
seen, there is not. So should the government decide, in conjunction with
centres like EPPI, about what research is useable by teachers, rather in
the way that the National Institute for Clinical Excellence evaluates and
rules which drugs should be prescribed to patients in the NHS? In such a
case, the situation would be that those methods deemed to work will be put
onto the syllabus of BA Education and PGCE courses and then taught as
prescriptions for practice to intending teachers.
However, the equivocal way in which such knowledge is described in the
draft standards makes it unclear whether it is believed that there is such
knowledge. Standards are defined behaviourally. Teachers understandings
of factors influencing learning are manifested in the way that they use that
knowledge. There are no academic components to teachers qualifications
structures. Even though a teacher may have a qualification at NQF 7
(Masters level) as a newly qualified teacher, neither academic subject know-
ledge nor research-based curricular or pedagogic knowledge is required in
the qualification, provided competence specifications are met. Contrast the
qualification framework for secondary teachers in France, which is based
largely on subject knowledge and which has a higher tier qualification
(the Aggrgation) for those who have excellent subject knowledge. The
qualification for headship in England, NPQH, a qualification for the
most senior kind of teacher, is not accredited at level 7 and needs further
academic work by the student before it can be upgraded to a level 7 qualifi-
cation by a university. The provenance of the knowledge that teachers at all
levels are supposed to have is far from clear: is it staffroom common sense
or rigorously filtered research findings, critically interrogated academic
research or an amalgam of all these things? It does not look as if the last
feature is what the writers of the standards have in mind, since a specifically
academic component is missing from the specification of levels of expertise,
apart from that already present within initial qualifications. There is, for
example, no evidence from the standards document that Masters level
qualifications are needed to move up the promotional scales, even though
they are now the level at which many NQTs are qualified. Professional
standards for NQTs do not require the ability to put theoretical knowledge
into practice, as we have seen. Indeed, this would be difficult given
the importance that the government attaches to school-based routes to
qualified teacher status (QTS). Currently there are five distinct routes
to qualified teacher status that are work rather than college-based. One of
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24 Chris Winch
these, the Registered Teacher Programme, takes candidates with qualifica-

tions at NQF level 4 or above and works as follows:
Once on the programme your training will be tailored to your
own individual needs and lead to qualified teacher status (QTS). Your
training provider will also work with a local higher education institu-
tion to ensure that you receive suitable training to extend your subject
knowledge to degree level.
(TDA 2006)
It appears that in this programme, the professional knowledge and profes-
sional curricular knowledge will be developed entirely within the school,
while the higher education institution has the job of bringing academic
subject qualifications up to level 5 or 6 (honours degree level is not speci-
fied; this would be NQF level 6). All these considerations incline one to
think that the current government standards would not make teachers pro-
fessionals in the sense described above. They would tend, rather, to make
them a kind of technician, but not the kind who uses their knowledge
base to inform professional judgement, but one who uses recipes given by
someone else to carry out practice; in other words, a low-level technician
rather than a technician in the professional sense. With some routes, such
as the Registered Teacher Programme, the preferred model seems to be craft
knowledge developed in the workplace under the tutelage of experienced
practitioners. Of course, it might still be the case that applying ones subject
knowledge to the creation of syllabuses, schemes of work and lesson plans
within the framework of the National Curriculum would require pro-
fessional judgement based on subject knowledge. Here, perhaps, the
claim that teachers have been reduced to mere technicians, that is, recipe
followers in all areas of the curriculum, would be least convincing, despite
the frequent claims that this is what the National Curriculum has done (see
Silcock 2002 for teachers reactions). However, the overall picture is one of a
series of governments over the last 20 years that are not particularly inter-
ested in teachers building up a rigorous knowledge base in partnership with
academic and research institutions with which to inform their professional
practice, but are rather interested in craft knowledge and/or technical
recipes as the preferred model of professional knowledge.
Concluding comments
One can conclude, therefore, that the enhancement of teachers profes-

sional status does, to a considerable extent, rest on the development of such
a knowledge base. This is most likely to occur if two things happen. First, all
teachers undertake a programme that qualifies them to Masters level as
an initial qualification, which includes a critical training in understanding
and evaluating educational research and theory; second that teachers
themselves are stakeholders in the development of such theory, testing,
commenting on and participating in the generation of findings relevant to
classroom practice (Winch 2004).
Page 24
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Winch, C. (2004) What do teachers need to know about teaching? British Journal of
Educational Studies, 52(2): 18096.
Wood, D. (1988) How Children Think and Learn. Oxford: Blackwell.
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Part 2 Policy, society and

schooling
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3 Education policy and

schooling
Meg Maguire and

Justin Dillon
Introduction
All aspects of learning to teach and teaching are controlled, explicitly and
implicitly, by policy. Sometimes these policies appear to be driven by
coherent and interrelated strategies for reform; at other times, education
policy making seems to be chaotic; little more than a set of ad hoc
responses to social dilemmas and public concerns. Until the late 1980s, you
would have been hard-pressed to find many educationalists who thought
that their world extended much beyond that of the classroom or their
institutions (Bottery 2000: 1). Since the late 1980s, the educational policy
climate and its impact on schooling has reversed this situation. Education
policy making has been appropriated by the central state in its determin-
ation to control, manage and transform society and, in particular, reform
and drive education provision. The role of the school, and indeed the local
authority, is subordinated to and by national policy imperatives. Currently,
in the UK, as elsewhere, the role and work of schools and teachers are
heavily prescribed by central government. What is being demanded of
schools and their role in national prosperity and cultural cohesion is
encoded in a litany of policy statements, documents and legislation. In
consequence, schools and teachers have to be familiar with, and able to
implement, policies that are planned for them by others and they are held
accountable for this task.
In this chapter, we are taking policy to refer to the plans for education
developed by politicians and their advisers. However, with Jones (2003: 1),
we recognize that any policy agenda is informed by the wider social context
social and cultural, economic and political and this includes global
trends and pressures. Thus, macro factors will influence policy debates
and policy responses, as we shall see. In such a short piece of writing, it is
impossible to provide a detailed account of specific pieces of policy reform
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30 Meg Maguire and Justin Dillon
or pedagogical policies such as personalized learning or behaviour

management, important though these undoubtedly are. Rather, what we
want to do is provide an overview of educational reconstruction and reform
through exploring four key policy imperatives. These are: the insertion of
market forces as a lever for reform and change; the rise of managerialism in
education; the pursuit of raising standards; and the policies of privatization.
This approach represents an attempt to group and classify a wide range of
policies that are, in practice, interrelated and interwoven. There is a very
large literature in each individual policy arena, and so all we are able to do
here is provide an overview of the sorts of debates, ideas and policies that
currently shape education provision.
Before we attempt this, there are three key points that need to be
addressed. First, at the heart of all social policy is a tension between what
should be taken to be a public or a private responsibility and this conflict is
reflected in education provision as in other aspects of social welfare policy.
This tension continues to generate a process which is never settled and
always evolving (Drakeford 2000: 183). Thus, debates continue about what
the state can and should be providing in a time when there seems to be an
aversion to raising taxes. There are conflicts between freeing up individuals
to make their own decisions and make their own choices, set alongside calls
for the state to take further responsibility and control. There are highly
contested struggles over who is best placed to provide welfare services
such as education and health. New Labour has attempted to resolve this
conflict by calling for more partnerships and co-operation between public
and private providers in welfare provision (Cardini 2006). Its current
policy position is that what counts is what is provided. Who (and for what
reason) provides the service is just not important.
Second, in this chapter we are tracing what we see as the dominant
policy agenda that currently circumscribes the work of schools and
teachers. Thus, we do not intend to explore current legislative intentions
and specific outcomes such as trust schools, in any great depth. Our inten-
tion is to provide some indication of the fundamentals of policy intentions.
But, in saying this, it is important to appreciate that there are other
overlapping and sometimes conflicting policy agendas. For example, New
Labour has a stated commitment towards social inclusion and a desire to
reach out to constituencies that have historically been less well served by
education provision (Whitty 2002). However, these inclusive policies are
sometimes less influential than other more noisy interventions. In policy
terms, different policies co-exist and sometimes contradict one another.
Schools may have to make careful, and sometimes painful, decisions about
where their policy priorities lie. In the need to survive, they may sometimes
feel pressed into particular ways that do some violence to their integrity,
culture, ethos and social circumstances too.
Third, in this chapter we are going to speak in the main about English
policy making. The UK is made up of four educational departments that
share some common features as well as many points of difference. In terms
of educational policy making, however, England has been the most radical
in terms of its policy agenda (Jones 2003) and serves as a good example
of change forces with a vengeance (Fullan 2003). As Jones explains, there
are similarities such as class inequality and limited social mobility, similar
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Education policy and schooling 31
forms of qualifications and low levels of post-16 participation, but there

are differences too in the four settings. Relations between teachers, parents
and local governments vary and on such key themes of current policy as
selection and social inclusion there are strong differences of inflection, in
which much is at stake (Jones 2003: 3).
Markets choice, competition and diversity
In the UK, the state did not take on the responsibility for providing free
universal secondary schooling until relatively recently in 1944. What it
then provided was differentiated and related to selection based on
deterministic concepts of ability. It was argued that ability could be
measured and therefore used to justify different sorts of (unequal) provision
(Hattersley 2004). This notion has cast a long and pernicious shadow over
the education of less privileged groups throughout the twentieth century
(Tomlinson 2005: 16). What was being argued for in principle and policy,
however, was a collective responsibility for the education of all children,
organized and provided by the local educational state, regardless of capacity
to pay and free to children and their families at the point of use. Gradually,
in many areas, provision in secondary schools became comprehensivized.
Secondary schools educated a more diverse intake under the same roof,
if not always in the same classroom (see Chapter 16). The comprehensive
school was seen as more inclusive and capable of challenging the debilitat-
ing and wasteful outcomes of early selection that had, not surprisingly,
favoured children from more advantaged backgrounds. It was argued
that non-selection, mixed ability teaching and a more child-responsive
approach to pedagogy would produce a more equal society where the
talents of all could flourish. Almost as soon as the new comprehensive
policies were being put into practice, they were being challenged. It is not
possible here to do justice to the attack on policies of comprehensivization
(see Tomlinson 2005) but, essentially, they related to allegations about
reduced standards, calls for more selection, claims that clever children
were not being challenged and a demonization of so-called permissive
classroom teaching.
In terms of global pressures and influences for reforming state education,
all these debates took place in a period of international economic recession
and high unemployment and so it was relatively easy to argue that schools
were not meeting the needs of employers or the labour market. It was also
argued that in an ever-increasing global market place, typified by the free
flow of goods, services, knowledge and labour, the capacity of nation-states
to remain competitive and viable in the internationalized market place
depended on the capacity of their educational system to respond positively
to a globalizing economy (Olssen et al. 2004). Although aspects of the
globalization thesis have been critiqued as overly deterministic and the role
of the nation-state is seen as still wielding power, nevertheless the eco-
nomic and labour-market arguments for an education policy that recog-
nizes the global imperative are still very influential in the UK (Ball 1998).
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The major response to these perceived problems of falling standards and

a lack of labour market-responsiveness in education provision was to argue
for the insertion of market forces into social welfare policy and practice.
Social welfarism, it was alleged, was failing to deliver what was needed.
Uneconomic, inefficient and poorly controlled education provision was
not responsive to individual or societal needs. It was argued that a market-
led approach was the best way to solve problems and provide any social
welfare provision. The forces of the market will out, the good will survive,
the weak will go to the wall, and everyone will be better off than before
(Gewirtz et al. 1995: 1). The Conservatives were elected into power from
19791997 and during this extended period set up a whole paraphernalia
of a market system (Gewirtz et al. 1995:1). To some extent, there has always
been a market in education. Parents have always seen some schools as bet-
ter than others and some parents have done their best to ensure that their
children were able to access the more successful schools in their area. In
terms of education policy, however, the market solution represents a para-
digm shift in the economics of education policy and indeed of social policy
generally (Gewirtz et al. 1995: 2).
What was argued was that the market provided the best policy solution to
any social policy question. Although the state would still be responsible for
providing education, parents would be able to express a choice of school for
their child. This choice would drive provision. Schools would be funded in
terms of their student numbers. Popular schools (with high standards)
would grow and less popular (bad) schools would either reform themselves
or close. In terms of market forces, this process would mean that com-
petition would drive provision. And in order for competition to thrive, the
consumer (parent) would need to be able to make their selection based on
some knowledge of the success, or otherwise, of the schools under con-
sideration. Schools would need to provide an education that responded to
the needs of a globalizing market to ensure that the UK was economically
successful. Simultaneously, in a market economy, there would need to be a
diversity of provision choosing between identical goods is not a choice.
From the 1980s onwards, educational provision in the UK was
restructured to incorporate a neo-liberal approach towards policy and
practice. In education, a quasi-market form was inserted. As Gewirtz et al.
(1995: 2) explain:
The education market (like all markets) is intended to be driven by self-
interest: first, the self-interest of parents, as consumers, choosing
schools that will provide maximum advantage to their children;
second, the self-interest of schools or their senior managers, as pro-
ducers, in making policy decisions that are based upon ensuring that
their institutions thrive, or at least survive, in the marketplace . . . The
result is meant to be competition, emulation and rivalry: survival can
only be ensured by attracting consumers away from other schools.
The Education Reform Act (1988) introduced a national curriculum and
national testing. The publication of league tables reflecting each secondary
schools success at GCSE was to be a lever for consumer choice, as well as
a stick with which to berate failing schools. Different types of schools
were set up to promote diversity of choice in the education market place.
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Although it is important to state that this policy intervention was and still
is contested, nevertheless, in essence, marketization has continued to
influence education policy and provision right up to the current time
(Whitty 2002; Ball 2007). Through marketization, the public provision of
education has once more become an individualized good, and a private
responsibility, albeit still largely funded by the taxpayer. And although
many researchers have demonstrated the way in which market choice
privileges middle-class choosers (Ball 2003) and, rather than reducing
inequality, market forces actually drive up the gap between the poor and
the rich (Hill 2004), nevertheless, New Labour is still convinced of the
power of market forces in driving their policy agenda, albeit with some
differences (Fergusson 2000: 202).
Managerialism
One of these key differences lies in the way that New Labour has attempted
to reduce some of the damage caused by the rampant neo-liberalism of the
previous Conservative administrations. As Fergusson explains: In many
ways, New Labours education policies could be summarized as using
broadly similar means to the New Right to achieve ostensibly different
ends (Fergusson 2000: 202). Fergusson suggests that New Labours concern
to improve schooling for those who have historically gained the least, con-
nects with a more social democratic impulse. New Labour policy is now
based on a belief that national prosperity cannot be left to the unpre-
dictable forces of the international market place. Rather, the national state
has a central role to play in ensuring that, through its educational system, it
is producing the sorts of flexible, up-skilled workers that will be needed
in the technologically rich twenty-first century. One imperative of this
economistic intention is to ensure that everyone is included in this
national project. Another is to ensure that no one involved in delivering
this process is neglectful of their responsibilities.
The policy consequence of these imperatives is seen in managerialism.
Managerialism is a response to the perceived failings of earlier forms of
social welfare policy. At the heart of managerialism lies the desire to extract
the methods of the business environment and insert them into the public
services. In this way, it is claimed that provisions such as health and educa-
tion will become more efficient, effective and accountable. The focus in
managerialism is with what works to achieve ends that are determined at
the centre and not on the ground. To achieve these (frequently economy-
related) ends, there is an increasing need to educate and train more
managers and to set and achieve clear sets of targets in order to raise
standards, as well as ensuring that all individuals in the organization are
working towards the same goals. Managerialism is a form of organizational,
and individual, control. Those on the ground are charged with delivering
what others elsewhere have decided is best.
Managerialism is about asserting that particular problems exist which
have to be addressed in certain ways. For example, it is alleged that there is a
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massive literacy problem as only about 80 per cent of children achieve level
four at the end of Key Stage Two. This fact has led to claims that many
children cannot read rather than a discussion of what else could be the case
that some children are on the borderline; that some children develop a
little later than others; that some children are making less progress because
of the debilitating impact of childhood poverty, poor housing and other
complex social and contextual reasons. Regardless of these possible
explanations, or any others, all state schools are exhorted to adopt the
national literacy strategy and to introduce ability setting, if they have not
already done so, and this in spite of much contradictory evidence (see
Chapter 16). Schools have to deliver on national targets, they have to
deliver on national strategies for raising standards and they are regularly
assessed and inspected in order to assure that they are sticking to the
script. Technical problems in these new managerial times, such as
inefficient teachers or schools that are not successful enough (the stuck
school for instance) will be subjected to further scrutiny and regulation. (It
is not surprising that many of these sorts of schools are in less affluent
areas.) In terms of attempting to control the delivery side of education,
central government has taken upon itself the responsibility for determining
the curriculum and has set standards for teacher education courses.
(Imagine if central government were to determine, regulate and inspect the
curriculum and its delivery for the professional training of other profes-
sional groups!)
As Clarke and Newman (1997: xii) claim, the can do culture of
management has a strong preference for practical prescriptions over mere
academic analysis. Of course, with more analysis, some of the problems
to which managerialism is addressed, might be seen to be more related to
broader social-contextual factors, rather than inefficiency or ineffective
classroom teaching. Bottery has argued that a fundamental dilemma
with managerialism is that if education policy making is being driven by
economic imperatives (the need for international competitiveness or the
production of a particular type of workforce), alternative questions such as
where any emphasis should lie or issues to do with society as a whole can
get sidelined (Bottery 2000: 61). In a situation where policy makers take the
initiative based on assumptions of knowing best, there is a real danger of
erosion in democratic forms of accountability and a reduction in active
citizenship.
There are claims for the value of managerialism in terms of supporting
effective practices and reducing wasteful inefficiencies, as well as some
support for localized forms of managerialism that can potentially be more
responsive to local issues. Nevertheless, there are criticisms of managerial
assumptions and practices in education that are worth some consideration.
Bottery (2000) argues that managerial approaches to problems identified
elsewhere, which contain pre-packaged remedies that have to be complied
with (and compliance is a key word in these managerial times), may side-
line other alternatives for action. One example he offers is that in seeking
to hit short-term targets, the bigger aims might never be addressed. For
example, some secondary schools, seeking to do well in the national league
tables, ensured their success by producing new forms of assessment
(GNVQs) that were equivalent to five GCSEs. This curriculum package was
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then sold on to other schools who were also able to raise their performance.
Whether the students attainment had actually been raised in numeracy
and language, for instance, was not explored. The crucial league table target
of five GCSEs had been achieved. Targets, testing, performance manage-
ment techniques, inspection and reporting become a system for delivering
government policy, not for discussion of what the aims of education
might be; and when governmental policies are so clearly predicated upon
economistic ends, managerialism is doubly controlling (Bottery 2000: 79).
In the longer term, it is argued that technicist managerial approaches, on
their own, can generate feelings of lack of ownership and over-dependency
on pre-packaged policies and curriculum strategies, perceptions that can
negatively impact on school progression and effectiveness (Fullan 2003).
Standards
Our third key policy dimension is the concern about standards and the
drive to raise attainment in schools. This strand of the current policy
agenda is woven into and is a fundamental element of the marketization,
managerialism and privatization that constitute the current policy ensem-
blage (Ball 1997). There are some questions in terms of the raising standards
agenda that are sometimes less aired. For instance, is there a ceiling on what
it is possible to attain? Is it really the case that standards are far too low?
What do we really mean by standards anyway? What about the evidence
that suggests schools can only do so much to improve the situation; that
the social milieu is equally if not more powerful in shaping attainment
(Thrupp 2005). Be this as it may, the issue of standards is not going away
and it is a subject that has powerful implications for parents, educationalists
and policy makers. Policy making in the area of the raising standards
agenda is reflected in a massive industry of testing, measuring and assess-
ment that sometimes seems to dominate the contemporary educational
context. The outcome of this can sometimes mean that if an item cannot be
tested or measured (such as being a caring member of the classroom), then
it does not really count for much at all.
Nevertheless, for some time, our popular media (and some educational
research) have been suggesting that educational standards are too low.
No government can afford to ignore the potency of these claims. In
consequence, all governments of all political persuasions have to be seen
to pursue the raising standards agenda. No one can afford to be seen as
complacent in this key area of educational policy and practice. However,
what has happened is that for some time now, a popular but somewhat
pernicious discourse of failure and fault-finding has crept into the standards
debate. Even though research suggests that there has been a gradual
improvement in childrens attainments over time (DfES 2001), the popular
view does not reflect these incremental gains. Indeed, every summer in the
UK, we seem to face an impasse; if students results go up, then it is because
standards have fallen and the tests are too easy. If results go down, it is
because standards of teaching are too low. A veritable Catch-22 situation.
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In the face of this standards impasse, it is not surprising that national

governments seize on the key discourses of the day and weave them into
justifications for their own policies. It would be possible to find echoes of
this concern about standards across all the New Labour policy texts but,
here, examples from one must suffice:
A generation ago, Britain tolerated an education system with a long tail
of poor achievement because there was a plentiful supply of unskilled
and semi-skilled jobs . . . Every child, whatever their circumstances,
requires an education that equips them for work and enables them to
succeed in the wider economy and in society.
(DfES 2001: 5)
The White Paper, Schools: Achieving Success (DfES 2001) concentrates on
the need for secondary schools to improve. The paper claims that while
there are clear signs of progress, this has been neither rapid nor dramatic
(p. 5). All schools must deliver high minimum standards and constantly
push up the ceiling on aspiration, ambition and achievement (p. 16).
In a setting where the dominant discourse is of blame, fault-finding and a
constant barrage of exhortations to schools to raise standards (would
they really want to lower them?), it is not surprising that parents and the
media exhibit concerns about attainment. It is not surprising either that
secondary schools who are judged on their percentage of students who
achieve five GCSEs at C grade or above are encouraged to look for ways to
attain this target. For example, one tactic is to concentrate on students with
predicted grades at the C/D border, rather than any other group, as moving
students into a C from a D can significantly improve a schools league
table position. Moving from a B to an A has no statistical or league table
significance at all (Gillborn and Youdell 2000). Another tactic might be to
ensure that a secondary school recruited as many pro-school students as
possible. Thus, the standards agenda might work in a slightly skewed man-
ner and might, for example, disrupt alternative policies aimed at inclusion.
Policy initiatives do not always achieve what they set to accomplish. As
Ball (1997) has argued, policies have unintended outcomes. A culture of
blame and fault-finding might indeed be counterproductive. For example,
Black and Atkin (1996: 199) argue that people are motivated when their
accomplishments are recognised. As they say:
Building on existing strengths may serve to steal the wind of destruc-
tive reforms, those that follow one another at breakneck speed because
priorities cannot be allowed to stand or new shortcomings are per-
ceived every day. Such initiatives never recognise present merit and
assume that everything is in steep decline [. . .] where the direction of
policy is towards finding fault rather than finding virtue, it is difficult
to move to a more evolutionary view of educational change, one that
recognises that there is normally much of value in the existing system.
(Black and Atkin 1996: 199)
We are not arguing for the status quo and we are certainly not suggesting
that holding high aspirations for school students is unimportant or trivial.
What we are suggesting is that in the standards policy agenda, constant
fault-finding and a lack of sensitivity to the incremental gains that have
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occurred in childrens learning can have some unintended outcomes.

Children (and teachers) do not thrive in a setting where they are constantly
berated or tested and found wanting. Teachers leave (the job) and children
absent themselves from school.
So far, in this section, we have discussed student attainment as one
major part of the standards agenda. The other lever for raising standards
lies with improving and reforming the work of individual teachers and
schools. As part of managerialist policies that inflect the standards crusade
(DfES 2001: 3), teachers performance is measured through their target
attainments, their students examination results, their capacity to meet
centrally imposed standards and a whole range of performance indicators
and measurable outcomes (Ball 1999: 20). In teacher training courses, pre-
specified standards have to be met. In the first year of teaching, these
standards have to be consolidated. From then on, through devices such as
appraisal for individuals, performance assessments as part of promotion,
target setting for the whole school and other tactics of managerialism,
teachers are cajoled to conform to a battery of measures and performance
indicators (Mahony and Hextall 2000). One danger is that schools, needing
to respond positively to these centrally determined targets, will strive to
organize and present themselves in a way that is compliant, but which
involves a great deal of fabrication manipulating their performance to
tell a positive story (Ball 2001). As a corollary to this, other important policy
issues, inclusion for instance, may well be sidelined and sacrificed to the
more dominant policy agenda. In terms of curriculum and learning, in the
literacy strategy, students may be encouraged to explore small pieces of text
in order to consider grammatical construction but may rarely read a whole
book for pleasure. As Bernstein has warned: the steps taken to measure
and maintain performance, for the survival of the institution, is likely
to facilitate a state-promoted instrumentality. The intrinsic value of
knowledge may be eroded (Bernstein 1996: 75, cited in Ball 1999: 2021).
Privatization
Our final policy imperative, educational privatization, is also interwoven

into and between all the policy shifts we have already discussed. Green
(2005: 3) claims that using the private sector with the public sector in
collaborative mode is the successor to marketisation. We do not necessarily
see privatization as a successor policy policy making is not linear, nor is it
composed of single successor policies. Rather, educational policy making is
a process of bringing together products of multiple (but circumscribed)
influences and agendas and they are always both contested and changing
(Ball 1993: 12). However, it is clear that beliefs about the potency of market
forces to deliver the greatest good; the privileging of individualism through
choice mechanisms and a fundamental trust in the power of business
practices to best shape public sector provision contribute towards more
forms of privatization in education as in other forms of social welfare
provision.
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In education, for some time now there has been a form of creeping
privatisation (Green 2005). Through the outsourcing of provisions which
were historically managed by schools or local education authorities in a
not-for-profit capacity, aspects such as school meals, school cleaning and
perhaps more educationally significant matters such as inspection, staff
development and headship appraisal, for example, have in many parts of
the country have been taken over by private companies. Some of these
companies are multinational concerns with interests in other countries.
Other companies been formed by ex-public sector workers who have been
able to use their expertise (and their commitment to the public sector, in
some cases) to provide educational services such as supply teaching,
appraisal and the whole-scale management and organization of local
authorities (Ball 2007).
One concern is the degree to which these newly privatized services are
not-for-profit or for-profit concerns. For example, it could be argued that
CEA, which is a not-for-profit company, is only providing a service
that would have been provided by advisers and/or the local authority that it
has replaced. Through greater efficiencies and by concentrated attempts
at effective management and support, CEA would claim to have replaced
some failing local authority providers with better support systems (see Ball
2007 for more discussion of the providers). Thus, there may well be real
savings where money for education is not diverted from schooling to
shareholders, for example. Other cases, and other companies, are earnestly
profit-driven for that is their raison-dtre. Indeed, New Labour seems to
believe that market forces and publicprivate partnerships will produce new
money (not from direct taxes, which it wants to keep down) as well as
enhanced levels of measurable effectiveness and improvements. The belief
is that business acumen will be more effective, particularly in areas where
education historically has not done well. Interestingly, there seems to be a
refusal to recognize that businesses sometimes fail and are not always that
successful. There seems also to be a failure to acknowledge the ineptitude of
some business consultancy interventions into the public sector, for
example, the Child Support Agencys work (Craig and Brooks 2006).
Notwithstanding all this, New Labour has been, and continues to be, active
in promoting a range of private financial initiatives in health and in
education.
In order to get the rapid growth it wants in Private Financial Initiatives
(PFIs), the government openly dangled before the city the prospect of huge
sums of public money guaranteed in long-term contracts. The Chancellor,
Gordon Brown, made a direct appeal to financiers four years ago. These are
core services, he said, which the government is statutorily bound to pro-
vide and for which demand is virtually insatiable. Your revenue stream is
ultimately backed by the government. Where else can you get a long-term
business opportunity like that? (BBC File on 4, 4 July 2004, cited in Ball
2007: 162).
PFIs are based around companies borrowing money at much higher rates
than the government would obtain from the money markets, and then, for
example, building hospitals or schools with their loans. The company then
receives a mortgage payment from the state over an extended period.
These partnerships challenge the traditional welfare model where funding,
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regulation and provision of public services were in the hands of the central
state (Cardini 2006: 14). This approach takes as axiomatic that, while
public organisations were likely to fail, private firms delivered consistent
success (Crouch 2003: 38).
The public sector gets the infrastructure it needs to deliver its services
be those for school children, older students or young or long-term
unemployed jobseekers. The private sector gets the opportunity to
enter into long-term contracts which are defined in terms of outputs,
so maximising the scope for innovation, development and profit.
These opportunities should not be neglected.
(DfES 2006a)
The City Academy school movement is one high-profile and contentious
example of a move towards privatization in education provision. The
Academies Programme is designed to be independent of local government
control, and thus, local forms of accountability as well. These new schools
have private or voluntary (often from various Church groups) sponsors. The
sponsors donate 2m towards the Academy and, in return, have control of
staffing policies, the curriculum and the organization and management of
the school. Academies are located in areas of disadvantage [. . .] Academies
will break the cycle of underachievement in areas of social and economic
deprivation (DfES 2006b). Academies are funded at a much higher level
than other state-maintained schools. They are frequently housed in
purpose-built, state of the art accommodation. They are not bound by the
National Curriculum and are expected to adopt innovative approaches to
the content and delivery of the curriculum (DfES 2006b). Academies will be
free from unnecessary bureaucracy in order to maximise the freedoms and
flexibilities available to them (DfES 2006b).
The involvement of sponsors in running Academies maximizes the
benefits that can be derived from a partnership with business and
other non-government partners. The different perspective that
sponsors can bring to both the basic curriculum and curriculum exten-
sion and enrichment activities is key to the change in culture and
attitude required to break the cycle of underachievement. Sponsors
can give extra focus and sharpness to the management of Academies.
(DfES 2006b)
Critics of the academies argue that these schools are perhaps a precursor
of wider attempts at privatization (for example, trust schools) (Hatcher
2006). Academies weaken the capacity of local education authorities to plan
and organize strategically in their areas. In exchange for 2m, sponsors are
entrusted with a great many responsibilities, such as setting up the govern-
ing body and staff recruitment, without necessarily having an educational
background. (One survey has indicated that much of this money has not
actually been transferred into the system, Taylor and Evans 2006.) Flexibil-
ity in staffing might mean that unqualified people are employed to teach
classes or that teachers are discouraged from joining professional associ-
ations or unions. Above all, the evidence that the Academy schools are
successful in raising standards is slight. What evidence there is seems to
indicate that the Academies that are improving are perhaps changing
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their intake or are not even the most disadvantaged in the area (Gorard
2005: 376).
Concluding comments
In this chapter, we have tried to provide an overview of the key imperatives

that inform and constitute state-produced education policy. As we have
argued at the start of this chapter, there was a time when education policy
was perhaps more of a taken-for-granted but distant event that had little
real bearing on the daily life and work of the school and the teacher. Even if
this was ever so, this is no longer the case. While we have concentrated in
this chapter on providing a description of contemporary policy shifts,
two fundamental issues need to be repeated here. First, the tension between
what is an individual responsibility and what is best left to the state to
provide, in terms of meeting societal rather than individual needs, is a
recurring debate. Second, while education policy and practice is being
driven by the state, education policies are the focus of considerable contro-
versy and overt public contestation (Olssen et al. 2004: 2). Teachers and all
those interested and involved in education provision need to have an
awareness of current policy trends; the challenge is to shape these trends
towards socially inclusive and progressive ends.
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4 Ideology, evidence and the

raising of standards
Paul Black
Introduction
A teachers classroom work is constrained by a framework of rules and

beliefs about curriculum and assessment. In England and Wales that
framework underwent a revolution when a national curriculum and
assessment system was put in place, for the first time, by the Education
Reform Act of 1988. This chapter is about that revolution, about its con-
sequences, and about the broader lessons that can be learnt from it. The first
section discusses the background the ideas and beliefs that helped drive
the development of the new policies. Subsequent sections will discuss the
developments, first of the National Curriculum, and then of the assessment
system (Chapter 17 deals with the more technical aspects of assessment).
Whilst some of what is described is now history, this is offered both to
inform understanding of present systems in the light of their origins, and
to aid reflection on obstacles to reform in the future. Many of the problems
arise from the myriad pressures that bear on policy makers pressures
which will not go away. It is important, therefore, to understand these, but
also to look beyond them. Thus a final section addresses fundamental
purposes by returning to the themes of the first section, looking at beliefs
and assumptions that stand in the way of a more coherent and effective
approach to education policy.
Nostalgia, fear and myth
The world of politics is driven by a mixture of rationality, myth and

expediency. In education, three powerful myths have driven political
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Ideology, evidence and the raising of standards 43
thinking and public opinion. This section examines those myths in

turn.
The first is that standards have fallen. This myth, which has been a
feature of public debate for well over a century, is not confirmed by any
thorough review of evidence: policy is often driven by selective evidence
and hearsay.
Between 19701971 and 19911992, the percentage of pupils obtaining
no graded examination results as school leavers fell from 44 per cent to
6.2 per cent (due in part to the raising of the school leaving age from 15
to 16 so that all pupils were in school to take the age 16 examinations). The
percentage of those leaving school before the age of 17 who gained five or
more higher grades at GCSE (or the earlier equivalents) was about 7 per cent
(DfE 1994) in 1970, whereas in the last few years it has been just over 50 per
cent (DfES 2006). Despite year on year fluctuations, the trend for over 30
years has been of steady increase, which points to the enormous success of
teachers in our comprehensive schools.
A second myth is that this fall in standards has been due to the adoption
of progressive methods of teaching. Again this flies in the face of the
evidence of Eric Bolton, former head of the national inspectorate, based on
his experience of thousands of hours of observation by his staff:
The evidence of inspection is that poor standards of learning are more
commonly associated with over-direction by teachers, rather than
with teachers opting out and allowing pupils to set the pace and style
of learning.
Far from having an education service full of trendy teachers led,
willy-nilly, this way and that by experts and gurus (the Educational
Mafia), we have a teaching profession that is essentially cautious and
conservative: a profession that is highly suspicious of claims from
within or without its ranks that there is a particularly fool-proof way of
doing things. Teachers are too close to the actual, day-to-day com-
plexity of classrooms, and to the variability of people and pupils, to be
anything else but pragmatic and commonsensical in their thinking
and actions.
(Bolton 1992: 1619)
The third myth is that learning would be improved by a return to
traditional methods. Here again the evidence contradicts the myth.
Numerous research studies have shown the debilitating consequences of
rule-bound traditional learning. The study of Nuthall and Alton-Lee (1995)
on the methods pupils use to answer tests showed that long-term retention
depends on the capacity to understand and so reconstruct procedures,
and the work of Boaler (1997) showed that more open methods produce
better attitudes and performance in mathematics than traditional methods
(see also Chapter 16). There is also evidence which suggests that children
learn more effectively if they are listened to and helped to understand by
themselves (Weare 2005). An extensive survey of teaching methods in
Chicago public schools showed that teachers who teach for understanding
achieved higher results on the states standardized tests than those who
just teach to the tests (Newmann et al. 2001). The results of such studies
are entirely consistent with contemporary research on the ways that
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44 Paul Black
children learn (Pellegrino et al. 1999). Consider the following from a review
of such work:
Even comprehension of simple texts requires a process of inferring
and thinking about what the text means. Children who are drilled in
number facts, algorithms, decoding skills or vocabulary lists without
developing a basic conceptual model or seeing the meaning of what
they are doing have a very difficult time retaining information
(because all the bits are disconnected) and are unable to apply what
they have memorised (because it makes no sense).
(Shepard 1992: 303)
This dominance of mythology is linked to neglect of research, or to
selective use of research results, and a distrust of change. The following
quotations help to explain this neglect (the first is about a former
Conservative Minister Sir Keith Joseph):
Here Joseph shared a view common to all conservative educationists:
that education had seen an unholy alliance of socialists, bureaucrats,
planners and Directors of Education acting against the true interests
and wishes of the nations children and parents by their imposition on
the schools of an ideology (equality of condition) based on utopian
dreams of universal co-operation and brotherhood.
(Knight 1990: 155)
Tories really did seem to believe in the existence of left-wing,
education establishment conspiracies.
(Lawton 1994: 145)
Such suspicion is shared by many in the other parties. Thus one can under-
stand why research evidence is untrustworthy those responsible for this
evidence are part of the conspiracy.
After 1997, the Labour Government was only a little less suspicious of
educational research, and its record of taking research findings seriously is
a very uneven one. Indeed, there has hardly been any change since 1997
in another relevant policy, namely the application of the ideology of the
marketplace to education. The application of a market model to education
has been criticized by many, notably in the reports of the NCE (1995), in
the analysis offered by Stephen Ball (Ball 1994: Chapter 7), and in a review
of the effect of over a decade of parental choice of schools in Scotland:
Parental choice has led to an inefficient use of resources, widening
disparities between schools, increased social segregation and threats to
equality of educational opportunity (Adler 1993: 183).
A market implies consumer choice between expensive products of high
quality and cheaper products of poorer quality, while demand is linked to
willingness and ability to pay, not to need. The right-wing Hillgate Group
has commented that Consumer sovereignty does not necessarily guarantee
that values will be preserved (McKenzie 1993). Keith Joseph believed in the
blind, unplanned, uncoordinated wisdom of the market (1976: 57), but it
is clear that markets favour those who have the knowledge and the power
to choose effectively the children of the less well informed will suffer (Ball
2003).
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There are other myths which are prevalent amongst politicians, some
teachers and many of the general public. One is that selective education
systems produce better pupil learning overall than comprehensive systems.
The House of Commons Select Committee on Education and Skills con-
ducted an investigation into this issue in 20032004. Their conclusion
was: We have found no evidence that selection by ability or aptitude
contributes to the overall improvement of educational standards (Select
Committee (2004) report (8) para. 258).
Another myth is that it is better, notably in mathematics, to use setting or
streaming of classes rather than mixed ability classes. Reviews of research
investigations in which the results of the two approaches are compared do
not support this belief (Harlen and Malcolm, 1999 and, for mathematics,
Burris et al. 2006).
Thus it seems that many changes, or refusals to change, in our education
policy have been and still are based on a combination of nostalgia, folk
wisdom, and fear of change, driven in some areas by an inappropriate
market model for education. Such views are protected by a neglect of evi-
dence, so that we do not learn from experience (Whitty 2002). Taken
together, they constitute an eclectic ideology, one which seems to have
remained powerful despite changes in the governing party.
The curriculum pragmatic, traditional, unprincipled
The Education Reform Act 1988 devoted about three lines to the principles
on which the curriculum should be based it was to promote the spiritual,
moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils. It then moved
to list the ten subjects, which were thereby established as if they were self-
evident goods. Then, as the separate formulations for these subjects were
developed, and have since been revised, there has been no attempt to check
that they serve these principles either separately or in a mutually coherent
way. Furthermore, these subjects, with the notable exception of design and
technology, were the subjects which constituted my own grammar school
education in the 1940s and 1950s. It is easy to expose the intellectual pov-
erty of this way of specifying a national curriculum and its consequences
(White 1990), but the specification survived the 1997 change in govern-
ment and is enshrined without debate, as did much of the rest of the Con-
servative policy (see Tonlinson 2005, Chapter 5; Whitty 2002, Chapter 8).
Some other countries have policies in education that contrast sharply
with Englands (Scotland has always been different, and Wales and
Northern Ireland having changed significantly since their regional powers
gave them control over education) and do not share these weaknesses.
In Finland, for example, a policy document on the framework for the
curriculum (National Board 1994) discussed changes in social needs and
values, and went on to emphasize that our new understanding of learning
showed the need to emphasize the active role of the student as the
organiser of his [sic] own structure of knowledge and the need for
organizing teaching into inter-curricular issues and subjects.
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46 Paul Black
The Norwegian Ministry document on the Core Curriculum (Royal

Ministry 1994) was in chapters with titles as follows:
The spiritual human being
The creative human being
The working human being
The liberally educated human being
The social human being
The environmentally aware human being
The integrated human being
Here we have governments who, in sharp contrast to our own approach
since 1988, present to their country a deeply argued rationale for the aims
of their curriculum.
Education policy has to confront concerns about the changing world of
the child and the adolescent (see also Chapter 12 for a discussion of the
pressures of adolescence). Changes in family stability and in the stability
of employment, and the increasing power of the media, have meant
that young people face an environment that is rich in information and
vicarious experience, poor in first-hand experience, weaker than it ever
was in emotional security and support, and overshadowed by the threat of
unemployment (Beck 1992). Where the world of the child has been
impoverished, the task of the school is both more complex and more vital.
Yet it has to be carried out in a society where the authority of teachers, as
with other professionals, is not taken for granted.
A nostalgia-driven return to traditional policies ignores such problems,
and cannot provide for the contemporary needs of young people and of
society. In 1995 a group of European industrialists stressed the importance
of literacy, numeracy and of science and technology, but added to these
critical thinking, decision making, the need to be able to learn new
skills, the ability to work in groups, a willingness to take risks and exercise
initiative, curiosity, and a sense of service to the community (ERT 1995).
British employers see the same needs (Ball 1990: 103). More recent debates
in the UK that have expressed similar concerns, some to do with basic
literacy and numeracy skills, some with broader issues such as citizen-
ship, and spiritual and moral education, are all evidence of the inadequacy
of the 1988 formulations, which subsequent revisions have failed to redress.
National assessment the rise and fall of the TGAT
In 1987 the Cabinet Minister then responsible for education, Kenneth

Baker, invited me to chair the Task Group on Assessment and Testing
(TGAT) to advise on assessment policy for the new National Curriculum.
I accepted because my experience made me optimistic that valid, and there-
fore helpful, external national tests could be set up. I was also optimistic
because government statements seemed to recognize the importance of
teachers own assessments in any national scheme (DES 1987: para. 29;
1988a: Appendix B). The task group members represented a wide range
of interests and relevant experience. Five had been members of public
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examination boards one as chairman, two had directed different subject

areas of the governments Assessment of Performance Unit, one was
director of the National Foundation for Educational Research, another the
director of one of the leading agencies for post-16 vocational examinations,
while two others were distinguished researchers in examining. The
group also included the Chief Education Officer of one of the largest local
authorities, a senior Her Majestys Inspector (HMI) (the national inspec-
torate) and two headteachers, one secondary, one primary.
The TGAT proposals (DES 1988a, 1988b) emphasized the centrality of
teachers own assessments in promoting the day-to-day learning of pupils.
They went on to recommend that national assessments should be based
upon a combination of teachers own assessments and the results of
external tests, on the grounds that external tests helped establish common
standards and criteria, but were of limited reliability and limited in the
range of learning aims that they could validly test.
These proposals were at first accepted as government policy, and then
abandoned one by one in the next few years (Black 1993, 1997). It was
clear at an early stage that Bakers acceptance of the TGAT report might not
have wholehearted support from his Prime Minister:
The fact that it was then welcomed by the Labour Party, the National
Union of Teachers and the Times Educational Supplement was enough to
confirm for me that its approach was suspect. It proposed an elaborate
and complex system of assessment teacher dominated and uncosted.
It adopted the diagnostic view of tests, placed the emphasis on
teachers doing their own assessment and was written in an impene-
trable educationalist jargon.
(Thatcher 1993: 5945)
A more explicit rejection was delivered later by Thatchers new Education
Minister, Kenneth Clarke:
The British pedagogues hostility to written examinations of any kind
can be taken to ludicrous extremes . . . This remarkable national
obsession lies behind the more vehement opposition to the recent
introduction of 7-year-old testing. They were made a little too compli-
cated and we have said we will simplify them . . . The complications
themselves were largely designed in the first place in an attempt to
pacify opponents who feared above all else paper and pencil tests.
(Clarke 1991)
The TGAT argument, that priority should be given to supporting assess-
ment by teachers, was accepted by Baker. However, the agencies responsible
for developing the national assessment policy devoted hardly any of their
time or resources to teachers assessments they concentrated on external
testing (Daugherty 1995; Black 1997). This should not have been a surprise
in view of earlier reversals. Consider for example Bakers statement in 1989:
The balance characteristic of most GCSE courses between course-
work and an externally set and marked terminal examination has
worked well. I accept the Councils judgement that assessment by
means of coursework is one of the examinations strengths.
(Quoted in Daugherty 1995: 131)
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48 Paul Black
In 1991 the Prime Minister, John Major, reversed this conclusion:

It is clear that there is now far too much coursework, project work and
teacher assessment in GCSE. The remedy surely lies in getting GCSE
back to being an externally assessed exam which is predominantly
written.
(Quoted in Daugherty 1995: 137)
Government directives then, without either consultation or consideration
of evidence, reduced the coursework component of GCSE. At the time of
writing, the present (2006) government is proposing further reductions.
Underlying this flux of debate is a basic question how can policy and
practice in testing and assessment raise the standards of pupil work in
schools? Many politicians have a simple answer to this question set tests
and make schools accountable for them and improvements will follow
automatically. There is hardly any evidence to support this belief. Indeed,
such policies lead to a system where short, written, external tests dominate
the curriculum, tests which cannot reflect some of the important aims of
education. Yet the pressure on schools to do well in them means that they
distort and damage learning (Fairbrother et al. 1995; Gipps et al. 1995);
there is also evidence that while above average pupils have improved on
tests, the absolute standards of those well below the average have fallen
(Bell 1995), and that testing pressures have adverse effects on the anxiety
and motivation of many pupils (ARG, 2002). Furthermore, as schools con-
centrate on drilling pupils to do well in sets of short test items, they can
improve their scores on these particular tests, but do so by giving less atten-
tion to developing in pupils the skills needed to apply their learning to
complex and realistic tasks. Further distortion arises in two ways. One is
that some schools bend admission, or exclusion, practices to cherry-pick
pupils whose results will may do them credit in the future (Gillborn and
Youdell 2000). The other is that some schools have been tempted to play
the system by focusing attention on pupils close to the critical C/D border-
line, to enhance the reported number who have attained above this, to
the neglect of any who are well below it.
To make matters worse, it is also clear that the results of short external
tests are bound to be of limited reliability. The evidence available (Gardner
and Cowan, 2005, Black and Wiliam 2006) indicates that if we had sound
data for the short national tests, or for GCSE, or for A levels, these would
all turn out to involve rather large margins of error. However, while these
tests are the basis on which teachers are to be judged and pupils life
chances determined, such data are not available. Other countries have
accepted the limitations of external testing. In Sweden, national tests
calibrate schools but the results for individual pupils are left to teachers to
determine (Eckstein and Noah 1993). In the Australian state of Queensland,
external testing for pupils certification was abandoned in 1982 and to date
there is no sign that they will ever be reintroduced (Cumming and Maxwell
2004).
Research evidence clearly indicates a quite different answer to the basic
question. Dramatic improvement in pupils achievement can be made by
changes in the way that teachers use assessment to give feedback to guide
pupils learning. The key to raising standards lies in supporting the work of
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teachers in the classroom, not in attempting to control and harass them

from the outside (Black and Wiliam 1998a, 1998b).
Other countries have realized this. In France, national testing has been
deployed, not to blame teachers at the end of a teaching year, but to help
them by providing diagnostic information about their new classes of pupils
at the start of a school year (Black and Atkin 1996). The National Board of
Education in Finland has written (1994: 29) that:
The task of evaluation is to encourage all students in a positive way
to set their own aims, to plan their work and to make independent
choices. For this to take place, all students gradually need to learn to
analyze their own studies and those of others through the use of self-
evaluation and group evaluation. The ability to do that in the future
means the ability to survive in a situation where there is more and
more uncertainty and where the individual is subjected to all kinds of
choices and sudden changes. Practical ideas about how to achieve such
reform have been developed with teachers.
(Black et al. 2002, 2003)
Can we nd new directions?
My aim here is to discuss six issues that need to be confronted in any

attempt to formulate a coherent policy for the improvement of education.
The first is concerned with the process of change. An OECD review of 23
case studies, spread over 13 countries, which examined the progress of
different educational innovations, revealed striking differences between the
models of change that were adopted (Black and Atkin 1996). At one extreme
there were top-down models in which central authority tells everyone what
to do. Where this was done, either very little happened at classroom level,
or teachers, being disoriented, delivered an impoverished interpretation of
the intentions.
The opposite approach, which was to leave as much as possible in the
hands of schools and of teachers, also had difficulties, for the process
was slow and such delegation implied that only a very general framework
could be prescribed. However, there are powerful arguments, of principle
and from empirical evidence, that this is the most effective and acceptable
strategy (Fullan 1991; Posch 1994). Where matters are interlinked in
complex ways and where one has to be sensitive to the local context
in which this complexity is situated, then only those who have freedom of
manoeuvre can turn a good idea into a really effective innovation. This
approach has been adopted in business and industry (Peters and Waterman
1982), where the response has been to move from long hierarchical chains
to so-called flat management structures. If new aims for education are to
be achieved, we have to give teachers freedom to work out the best ways for
their school:
While the existence of central national and regional (local govern-
ment) institutions is necessary to guarantee social equity in education
and to supply guidelines and expertise, it is essential that educational
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50 Paul Black
institutions at every level should have autonomy to implement the

changes they see as necessary.
(ERT 1995: 18)
The OECD study also concluded that worthwhile educational reform can-
not happen quickly it takes several years for the majority of teachers to
turn innovation plans into practice through changes in their classroom
work. This time scale is long compared with the interval between elections.
More alarmingly, it may be too long in relation to the pace at which our
society, and therefore at which its demands on education, are changing.
Teachers are the focus of my second issue. Where teachers have low
status, they become targets for blame, and are treated with remarkable
insensitivity:
We are struck by the extent to which German and French education
systems place responsibility on the shoulders of professional teachers.
It contrasts sharply with the mood of distrust of professionals which
has grown in this country in recent years, not without government
encouragement. This mood has been carried too far and must be
reversed.
(NCE 1993: 340)
Such treatment is not only unjust, it is also counter-productive, for in any
but the most narrow mechanical view of teaching, it must be recognized
that teachers are the sole and essential means to educational improvement.
If they do not share the aims of an innovation, it cannot happen effectively.
Furthermore, to define teachers as mere providers of the market goods
that the parent customers require is to misconstrue their fundamental role.
A former chair of the Headmasters Conference, Father Dominic Milroy,
wrote:
They [parents] know that, for the child, the encounter with the teacher
is the first major step into outside society, the beginning of a long
journey towards adulthood, in which the role of the teacher is going
to be decisive . . . all education is an exercise in collaborative parenting,
in which the profession of teaching is seen as a complement to the
vocation of parenthood . . . Teachers are, therefore, not in the first
instance agents either of the National Curriculum Council (or what-
ever follows it) or of the state. They are bridges between individual
children and the culture to which they belong . . . This culture consists
partly of a heritage, which links them to the past, and partly of a range
of skills and opportunities, which links them to the future. The role of
the teachers is, in this respect, irreplaceable.
(Milroy 1992: 579)
This perspective replaces the notion of teachers as paid agents with a
concept of partnership in which the role of teachers is to take authority for
developing young adults. Indeed, parents give this authority to the school
and the teachers because they want their children to learn the many ideas
and skills that they cannot themselves give them, and society reinforces
this when it sets up a curriculum within which parents are not free to pick
and choose if their children go to schools funded by their taxes. The teacher
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is a pivotal agent of change, sharing authority with parents for the

development of children, and representing society as the agent to achieve
nationally agreed aims for education.
A third issue is the need to clarify what society wants teachers to achieve,
which is to say that we need a fresh consensus about the educational aims
that society wants schools to pursue. This is lacking because of rapid social
change, because our society is divided about its fundamental beliefs and
values and because society has weakened in many ways the support given to
the developing child outside school.
A national curriculum which stresses details of subjects, flimsily related to
a few very broad aims, leaves schools in a very difficult position. It might
make sense to give schools no direction at all. It might be better to set out
for them the broad framework of aims that society wants them to achieve
and leave them to find the detailed ways to achieve such aims. It surely
makes no sense at all to specify the detailed ways but to leave them to
decide the overall aims.
My fourth issue has already been discussed above. We need a new policy
for assessment, one which will support the assessment aspect of teachers
work, which will have helpful rather than damaging effects on good
teaching by assessing those aspects of learning that young people need
to be effective in a changing society, and which will give information,
to individuals and to the public, that is both relevant and trustworthy.
This issue has been fully explored in a thorough review by the Assessment
Reform Group (ARG, 2006).
The fifth issue is that we need to have a proper respect for evidence,
which means that we have to be willing to review existing evidence, to
monitor the progress of our educational changes and to research in depth
some of the most important problems that this raises. This implies that the
level of investment in research in education should be very sharply
increased.
If we are to be able to work effectively at these five issues, I believe we
shall need to take up a sixth, which is that we need to build up a much
better public understanding of the complexities of teaching and learning.
The public ought to be far better informed about educational issues than at
present. Myths about our schools are too powerful and policy thinking
about our education is too weak. There ought to be a sustained effort to help
the public, and especially politicians and their policy advisers, to achieve a
more realistic, and therefore more complex, understanding of the realities
of schools, of classrooms, of testing and of educational change.
However, a list such as this does not do justice to the complexity of
the relationship between educational policy and effective change. Such
problems as striking the right balance between over-prescription and policy
stagnation, and the need to achieve sustainable change that is relevant to
the inevitable, increasingly rapid pace of social change, all call for a more
subtle and comprehensive analysis, such as that attempted by Fullan
(2003).
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52 Paul Black
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5 Values and schooling
Alan Cribb and

Sharon Gewirtz
Introduction
In this chapter we explore some of the ways in which fundamental

questions about values and schooling are currently asked and answered.
We will argue that, in many respects, these questions are marginalized, or
even buried, and that there is a widespread and understandable scepticism
about them. We will also argue, however, that this scepticism is an impor-
tant feature of what might be called the prevailing values climate a
climate that has a neutral and common-sense face but that is by no means
neutral.
Most of the chapter will be given over to sketching out some of the
features of this value climate. The first part of this sketch covers features of
the general philosophical and ethical context, particularly the role of value
scepticism and value neutrality. The second part of the sketch focuses in on
aspects of the current social and political context of English schooling, and
the value shifts inherent in the reforms set in train by the Education Act of
1988 and built on by successive governments since then.
Parallel reforms to those made in England in 1988 were introduced in
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland but in this chapter we are only refer-
ring to the situation in England. Such broad coverage as we provide here
makes it impossible to cover issues in much depth, or to trace through all
the themes or possible links between the features discussed. However, we
hope that there are also advantages in working on a broad canvas. In par-
ticular, we hope to draw attention to a powerful compound of factors which
serve to undermine the critical function of value debate.
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56 Alan Cribb and Sharon Gewirtz
What are schools for?
Virtually all questions about schooling are value questions but some of
these are fundamental in the sense that the answers we give to them deter-
mine our answers to the others. What are schools for? is an example of one
of the most fundamental value questions that needs to be asked. The issues
raised by this question are the most far-reaching and arguably the most
practical matters facing a prospective teacher. The way in which schools are
organized, priority setting and the allocation of resources, the attitudes
towards (and attention given to) different sorts of tasks, the general modes
of behaviour, and the nature and quality of relationships will all be shaped
by beliefs about the purpose of schooling. Mike Bottery makes this point
nicely in his book, The Ethics of Educational Management (1992). He identi-
fies a number of different philosophical perspectives on the ultimate
purposes of education and argues that these produce very different relation-
ships and approaches to management within schools. For example, the
cultural transmission perspective:
values knowledge which is perceived as part of a countrys cultural
heritage. It sees the child as essentially a passive imbiber . . . Teachers,
therefore, are seen as guardians, transmitters of appropriate values, and
as headteachers will be transmitters, and supervisors of those below
them who are also transmitting, the situation will be an essentially
hierarchical one.
(Bottery 1992: 12)
The child-centred perspective, on the other hand:
sees the curriculum as based on each individual childs experiences
and interests, each of them being active, involved, unique constructors
of their own reality . . . The teacher, in this situation, becomes a facili-
tator, a constructor of beneficial situations for the child, but in no way
a transmitter . . . Hierarchy makes little sense, and one moves increas-
ingly towards a model of democracy.
(Bottery 1992: 1314)
These are just examples. Others include what Bottery calls the social
reconstruction perspective, which sees schools as essentially concerned
with pressing social issues which need to be resolved, and the gross
national product perspective, which values knowledge which is conducive
to the furtherance of national economic well-being (Bottery 1992: 12).
Such approaches are not necessarily all mutually exclusive and can be
interpreted and combined in various ways. This is exemplified in the
Australian sociologist, R.W. Connells seminal 1985 ethnographic study,
Teachers Work. Connells teachers hold a range of views on the funda-
mental purposes of education, which is reflected in their different
approaches to teaching.
Our purpose here has not been to answer the question What are schools
for? but merely to underline its fundamental nature for anyone pursuing
a career in teaching. Although there is no doubt some wisdom, as well as a
legal and moral obligation, in taking a lead from the policies and ethos
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Values and schooling 57
generated by ones employing institution and ones colleagues, anyone

who wants to make a contribution to the policy-making process operates,
implicitly or explicitly, with a view of schooling. Even if a teacher were to
retreat to a position of mere employee, virtually every practical decision
they made, every conversation they had in the classroom or the corridor,
would betray a personal conception of what schools are for.
Thus the challenge could be issued to everyone embarking on a career as a
teacher How will you affect the balance of the debate? What are your
conceptions of the aims of education, and of schooling? What do you see as
the role of schools in society? Perhaps it would be foolish to start a career
with a set of confident and dogmatic answers. Yet not to have any answers
might be deemed professionally negligent.
It is not as simple as this, however. There is a whole array of factors that
militate against individuals forming such a personal vision of the role of
education. In fact, when it comes to answering questions about values
and schooling there is a loosely related range of licensed avoidance tactics.
In answer to the question What are schools for? you could say, in short,
There are no right answers; and/or There are different answers and
you have to be neutral between them and/or You need to use a neutral
mechanism to determine what people want from schools. These avoidance
tactics will be explored further in the sections that follow, but they all have
the effect of marginalizing both value debate and teachers own personal
value positions.
Scepticism
It is easy to stress the practical importance of questions about values

and schooling, but it is much more difficult to answer them. What is an
individual teacher to do? What is the appropriate stance towards ethical
and political issues? This is where scepticism enters the picture.
At base, scepticism is the view that knowledge of something in this case
ethical or political matters is impossible, that there is no procedure for
arriving at, or demonstrating, the truth or falsity, rightness or wrongness,
of value claims. This is not the place to discuss the nature of scepticism in
any depth, but perhaps it is worth mentioning that it is very difficult to
argue convincingly against scepticism in any area of knowledge. However,
for a number of reasons scepticism about value judgements is peculiarly
pervasive in everyday culture. Indeed, the phrase Its a value judgement
is often treated as synonymous with expressions like Its just a personal
opinion or Who can say?
The growth of value scepticism has been a long and complex process
(MacIntyre 1985), but to a large extent it is the product of the modern
fixation with certain models of knowledge, in particular models of rational-
ity, observability and testability associated with the natural sciences which
seek to separate out the hard public realm from the soft realm of personal
beliefs and feelings, the objective from the subjective, facts from values.
In the twentieth century a number of philosophical theories were advanced
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to the effect that ethical judgements are nothing more than expressions of
emotions, attitudes, or preferences. At one extreme these would entail that
no ethical position is better grounded, or more warranted, than any other.
Something very like this has also become a major current in common-sense
thinking. If this were treated as the whole story, however, the implications
would be drastic. There would be no basis on which to criticize any ethical
or political position. Teachers would be on an equally strong footing
whether they pulled their value judgements out of a hat or whether they
deliberated carefully about them. Asking about the aims of schooling would
be asking a question for which there were no right answers.
Although value scepticism is prevalent in theoretical and popular dis-
course, it is only part of the picture. Other aspects of everyday culture tell
a different story. First, there are, of course, people who are comfortable
maintaining that they do have good grounds, and justified beliefs, regard-
ing their moral and political judgements, the most clear-cut, and most
visible, being religious fundamentalists of one kind or another. Second,
even people who dismiss the idea that they operate with defensible moral
convictions tend to change their minds in practice if certain lines are
crossed (for example, if their flatmate turns out to be a cannibal). Third,
very many people take overt moral and political stances, and show con-
viction and commitment in the pursuit of these stances, and may simply
leave the question of the epistemological status of these stances on one
side (although, once again, in practice they will typically offer reasons
and arguments in the defence of these stances). The powerful convictions
surrounding conflicts around racism or animal welfare testify to the limits
of scepticism in practice.
These two facts about current values talk the widespread currency
of scepticism and the vigorousness of moral challenge and argument
appear to be contradictory. However, they are probably better seen as two
complementary facets of a new orthodoxy.
Neutrality
Whether or not ethical systems are rationally defensible, ethics does not
require a rational foundation. All that is required is a shared tradition and
framework of beliefs, feelings and habits. Within such a tradition there can
be scope for rational debate and disagreement about principles and ideals,
and how they should be interpreted and applied. The difficulty is to know
what to do if the reality, or even the idea, of a shared tradition breaks down
and is replaced by a situation of moral or value pluralism. In many respects
value scepticism is a response to value pluralism. Ours is a society that
is suspicious of the controlling use of ethical traditions and systems, one
that contains people with different world views, that encompasses different
cultures and traditions, and in which there is increasingly less consensus
about the right starting point for debate.
In the context of pluralism, the combination of scepticism and convic-
tion mentioned above appears more coherent, although this combination
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is perhaps better understood as a consequence of the privatization of

morality and as a weak version of moral relativism, which allows scope for
value divergence between individuals and groups within society but which
draws the line at stronger versions of relativism. (Stronger versions would
accord equal status to outlooks which sought to destroy this equilibrium.)
This combination is characteristic of what might be called a liberal ethic,
which is arguably the dominant outlook in the contemporary values
climate and the orthodoxy of value pluralism! A liberal ethic allows for
alternative beliefs about what is good to operate at the private level, or
within relatively self-contained groups, while preserving a thin framework
of public morality. The latter is necessary to protect the private sphere and
to ensure that people rub along together satisfactorily (Mulhall and Swift
1993). The primary value in a liberal ethic is autonomy, and respect for
autonomy. According to liberal political philosophy the role of the state
is to be, as far as possible, neutral between competing conceptions of the
good. Individual conceptions of the good are to be autonomously deter-
mined and pursued. We can have our personal value convictions providing
we do not use the public realm to impose them on anyone else.
From this standpoint, developing and promoting the autonomy of young
people becomes the central aim of education. The role of schools as public
institutions is to introduce young people to the different perspectives that
make up the pluralist culture and to support them in finding their own path
through it and arriving at their own convictions. This approach is largely
incompatible with the advocacy of any particular value position, and some
might feel it should entail playing down the overt ethical and political
dimensions of education.
The problem for this sort of liberalism is that, not only do public institu-
tions tend not to be neutral in practice, but it is far from clear that neutrality
is a possibility even in principle. This is particularly evident in the case of
schools. In practice, a liberal ethos is overlaid with some favoured value
system. The role of Christianity or particular attitudes towards sexuality will
serve as examples. But how could a school be organized in such a way as not
to favour certain world views? This may be a useful ideal for some purposes
(up to a point it would serve to support a tolerant, respectful and inclusive
ethos) but it is surely not a realizable one. One reason it is unrealizable
is that a liberal ethos can conflict with some of the standpoints it might seek
to embrace for example, how could a school be neutral between sexual
equality on the one hand and anti-homosexual beliefs on the other?
Scepticism and neutrality provide avoidance tactics for teachers who are
asked to make value judgements about the purpose, content and organiza-
tion of schooling. Indeed, there are good reasons for teachers to be cautious.
It would seem arrogant to set oneself up as an authoritative arbiter of
political and ethical matters. Surely it is necessary to recognize that there
are very different beliefs about these matters, and there is a need to recog-
nize this diversity, and to treat different views with respect? Perhaps those
people who determine the organization and ethos of schools should try to
steer a middle course, and to avoid extremes? Up to a point this attitude is
plausible but it is also highly prone to exploitation. Forms of scepticism and
neutrality serve as very fertile conditions for the spread of dominant norms
and ideologies. Teachers who retreat behind them as a way of avoiding
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engagement with challenging value questions may be in an unwitting

conspiracy with some strongly non-neutral stances.
Effectiveness and efciency
In the practical contexts of politics and policy making there is not very
much talk about neutrality; the idea is rarely advocated explicitly, but it is
an important implicit dimension of real world politics. Some very sophisti-
cated mechanisms exist to present value-laden positions as if they were
value neutral. In fact, one aspect of the politics of policy making is
to neutralize, and thereby help to legitimize, certain value judgements to
render ideology into common sense. A good example of this manoeuvre in
recent UK politics has been the championing of the goals of effectiveness
and efficiency in the reformed public sector.
It would be perverse not to be in favour of effective schools, or to favour
wasteful schools. Here is a language that everyone can share, which at
least on the face of things is outside of ethical and political ideology.
However, in reality the use of these ideas within education policy has been
part and parcel of the deliberate imposition of a specific ideological frame-
work on schooling and the reinforcement and creation of specific value
environments for schools. We will look at some features of this process in
more detail below, but first we will briefly review the two main neutralizing
mechanisms of efficiency: utilitarianism and markets.
Utilitarianism
Faced with the task of evaluating social institutions, and given the diversity
and contestability of possible criteria, there is a tendency to identify or
stipulate some lowest common denominator to serve as the arbiter of
success or effectiveness, and as the means of comparing performance over
time or between institutions. These measures of output or performance
indicators will need to be publicly observable and easily measurable. An
efficient institution will be one that achieves the highest score of success at
lowest cost. Of course this approach has the effect of replacing all of the
complexity and value debate (about, for example, what schools are for)
with whatever measure happens to be identified or stipulated. There will
always be pressure to introduce more sophisticated and multidimensional
criteria of success but equally inevitably there will always be countervailing
pressures to simplify complex measures in order to provide definitive and
decisive scores and comparisons. Throughout the remainder of this chapter
we use utilitarianism as shorthand for this concern with maximizing
productivity according to some relatively simple measures of success.
It is this current of utilitarianism which, we argue, is built into specific
educational policies. There are, of course, other conceptions of utilitarian-
ism and other currents within the utilitarian tradition.
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Markets
Resorting to markets of one kind or another represents the other main

mechanism for smoothing out value diversity and conflict. The market can
be represented as a neutral mechanism for efficiently aggregating and
responding to the variety of consumer preferences for providing what
it is people actually want. The market, it is claimed, merely reflects
preferences rather than imposing some external standard on institutions,
which would also mean deliberately imposing a contestable value position
on people who do not share it. It does not follow from the fact, however,
that a market mechanism may be an effective way of circumventing
open-ended value debate, that its effects are more defensible or acceptable,
or that its consequences, because they are unplanned, amount any less to
an imposition. War is another mechanism that serves to circumvent debate
but it is common to resist the accompanying idea that might is right.
Although they are only two threads of a complicated picture, utilitarian
and market thinking are undoubtedly important currents in recent public
and education policy. In some varieties they are in strong tension with one
another, because utilitarianism tends towards simple specified yardsticks,
whereas market ideology emphasizes process and diversity. They can be
combined in various ways, however, and they are linked by a preoccupation
with efficiency and the attempt to cut through the contestability of
values. It is this combination that makes them along with the language
of standards and effectiveness suitable vehicles to import a specific
value climate under the guise of neutrality.
Reform in England since 1988
We now want to turn to more concrete matters and, in particular, to sketch

the specific form in which utilitarian and market principles have been
combined in the restructuring of the English education system since
1988. We will then look at some of the particular ways in which this
restructuring has begun to generate a shift in the values climate of the
English school system. In doing so, our aim is to use the concrete example
of school reform in England to illustrate the general point that utilitarian-
ism and markets represent key policy mechanisms for imposing, under the
guise of neutrality, a particular set of values on schooling. We should say at
once that the following account is only one interpretation of this specific
values shift; our main intention is to draw attention to the process that is
taking place. This is an important task, because in order for practising
teachers to be reflexive about their own values they need to be aware of
the ways in which these values, and the opportunities to act on them, are
shaped and constrained by the values embedded within the structures of
the school and the education system as a whole.
Those currently working within schools do not only suffer from living
within a general philosophical climate that marginalizes value debate. They
are also being bombarded with a particular genre of new managerialist
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literature designed to help them improve and be more efficient and

effective (Thrupp and Willmott 2003). Most of this literature tends to
neglect the social and value context of schooling, except in so far as it
relates to the image of the school in the education marketplace. Some of
it goes further and seeks positively to discourage school managers and
teachers from concerning themselves with such things that are deemed to
be beyond their control and an unnecessary distraction from the core tasks
of being efficient and effective. However, the New Labour government first
elected in 1997, unlike its Conservative predecessor, has at least explicitly
addressed the fundamental issue of what values it wishes to promote in
education. These were set out in the Revised National Curriculum for England
(QCA/DfEE 1999) as follows:
Foremost is a belief in education, at home and at school, as a route to
the spiritual, moral, social, cultural, physical and mental development,
and thus the well-being, of the individual. Education is also a route
to equality of opportunity for all, a healthy and just democracy, a
productive economy, and sustainable development. Education should
reflect the enduring values that contribute to these ends. These include
valuing ourselves, our families and other relationships, the wider
groups to which we belong, the diversity in our society and the
environment in which we live. Education should also reaffirm our
commitment to the virtues of truth, justice, honesty, trust and a sense
of duty.
(QCA/DfEE 1999)
Thus for New Labour, education has a range of purposes, reflecting what
Bottery (1992) has called the gross national product perspective, alongside
an environmentalist perspective and concerns more traditionally associ-
ated with liberal humanism, including equality of opportunity, democracy
and valuing diversity. This liberal humanist perspective was also reflected in
the decision to include citizenship as part of the statutory curriculum from
2002. The importance of collaboration between schools and between
schools and other agencies concerned with the welfare of children and the
importance of the inclusion of families deemed to be socially excluded
are other values emphasized in New Labour policies for example, the Sure
Start, Excellence in Cities and Every Child Matters initiatives.
New Labour education policies can, therefore, be differentiated in specific
respects from the policies of the preceding Conservative governments.
There are also some important continuities, however. There has, for
example, been no increased level of public debate about what schools are
for under New Labour, and the list of value outputs in the revised National
Curriculum has not been accompanied by any discussion of value issues
relating to the processes or contexts of schooling. Moreover, New Labour
has inherited, and in some respects reinforced, the four key mechanisms
that the Conservatives had introduced to create a market in schooling.
These mechanisms choice, diversity, per capita funding and devolved
management were first introduced by the 1988 Education Reform Act
(ERA).
In the rhetoric justifying the 1988 legislation, choice and freedom were
presented both as good things in themselves and as mechanisms for raising
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standards. Standards would improve, it was suggested, because, within the

market, good/strong schools would thrive, while poor/weak ones would
go to the wall or have to improve. In this survival-of-the-fittest approach to
educational provision, good schools and colleges are defined as those that
are popular with consumers (parents and/or students), and poor schools as
those that are unpopular. It is appropriate to note here that in the debate
about choice in education at school level, it is the parents who are more
often than not described as the consumers, not their children.
The market introduced by the Conservatives and retained by New Labour
cannot be characterized as a free market, nor as a neutral mechanism of
resource allocation, but is more accurately described as a form of what
Hayek (1980) has termed ordered competition. This is because in addition
to the market mechanisms of choice, per capita funding and devolved
management, mentioned above, the Conservatives also introduced under
the 1988 Act a set of specific performance indicators based on a centrally
prescribed National Curriculum and a system of national testing at four Key
Stages. These components incorporate utilitarian aspects into the reforms.
The system of information established by the 1988 Act is constituted
by published league tables of national test results based on the National
Curriculum, as well as Ofsted inspection reports. This information is meant
to enable consumers to compare the performance of schools and assist
them in making their choices. The 1988 legislation was therefore designed
to encourage schools to respond to consumer wishes, but at the same time
the Government was trying to send very clear messages about what con-
sumers should be looking for in a school. Under New Labour, these
messages have arguably been articulated even more forcibly and exten-
sively. For example, the Government has set up a website for parents
which both promotes and provides information on school choice and
includes links to the schools results tables and Ofsted reports (http://
www.parentscentre.gov.uk/). In addition to an intensification of con-
sumerist rhetoric, there has arguably also been an intensification of
utilitarian currents through an increased emphasis on target setting and
performance monitoring and there are indications that, particularly with
the introduction of performance-related pay in 2000, utilitarian discourses
of efficiency and effectiveness have penetrated some teachers professional
identities, whilst prompting others to leave the profession (Mahony et al.
2004).
The ostensibly neutral formal arrangements identified in the preceding
paragraphs markets, national testing, the publication of test results and
Ofsted inspection reports, and performance management inevitably carry
a set of beliefs about what schools are for and about how those involved
in managing them should behave. For example, although on the surface the
market reforms value freedom of choice, that value is compromised by
an alternative set of values embedded within legislation. First, the intro-
duction of markets means that the concept of neighbourhood schooling is
devalued through the effective abolition of catchment areas. Neighbour-
hood schooling is based on the idea that children should go to their local
school with other local children. Within the marketized system, however, it
is assumed that consumers (or responsible ones at any rate) will only choose
the local school if it performs well in the league tables. If sufficient parents
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in a neighbourhood choose not to send their children to a local school,

then there is, in effect, no longer a neighbourhood school for other parents
in that area to choose. This means that freedom of choice espoused by
supporters of marketization does not necessarily include the choice of a
neighbourhood school.
Second and relatedly, the emphasis within both the 1988 legislation and
New Labours reforms appear to us to be focused mainly upon the instru-
mental goals of education. More specifically, legislation is geared towards
the improvement of standards that are narrowly defined in terms of out-
put: for example, test results, attendance levels and school-leaver destin-
ations. The implication is that good schools are those that perform well in
league tables either on the basis of their raw scores or their rates of
improvement. The information required to be published is limited, and
despite more recent adjustments to make the measures more representative
of schools added value, some important characteristics are ignored. For
example, there is no requirement for schools to publish information on:
the expressive, co-operative and community aspects of schooling, on levels
of enjoyment, happiness, stimulation and challenge for teachers and
students, on degrees of innovation and creativity in school approaches to
teaching and learning, on the quality of special needs provision, on the
pastoral, social and extra-curricular dimensions of schooling, nor on
collaborative relationships within and between schools. Good attendance
might be a reflection of these things, but then again it may well be a
reflection of other factors, such as the kind of students who attend the
institution.
Values drift
It can be argued that the overall effect of these arrangements for the control
and management of schools is a process of values drift. This argument (set
out in much greater length as part of research reported in Ball 1994, Gewirtz
et al. 1995 and Gewirtz 2001) suggests that, in practice, the market con-
stitutes an incentive structure that rewards schools for particular kinds
of behaviour and values and penalizes them for others. The argued drift
consists of a diminishing concern with need, equity, community and
co-operation and an increasing concern with image, discipline, output
measures, academic differentiation and competition. (Talk of a drift is a
simplification, and reflects a general tendency the effects of which are
partial and patchy not a universal before-and-after switch!)
It is argued that values drift occurs in large measure because school
managers perceive that their schools will be judged on the basis of their
exam league-table performance. This leads them to implement policies that
they feel will make their schools more attractive to children with a high
measured ability. Such students are likely to enhance the schools league
table performances at lowest cost. At the same time, many schools seem to
be concerned not to attract too many students deemed to have learning,
emotional or behavioural difficulties. Such students demand a high level
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of investment while producing little return in terms of exam league-table

performance (Audit Commission 2002).
According to this interpretation, it appears that prospective students are
effectively being divided into two categories by schools those students
whom they desire to attract and those whom they do not. The former
category consists of children of a high measured ability, those who are
perceived to be committed to education and those with supportive parents.
A particularly desirable category of children are girls, who are perceived as
behaviourally more amenable than boys and academically more highly
achieving. The second category of consumers, the undesirables, consists of
the less able, children with emotional problems or who are behaviourally
disruptive, working-class children whose parents are viewed as not valuing
education, who just send their children to the school because it is local,
and children with learning difficulties and other special needs (although
there are some exceptions) who are expensive to educate and who threaten
balanced intakes. Schools with strong special needs departments need to
be concerned about the image conveyed by strength in this area as well as
by the financial consequences of having large numbers of children with
learning difficulties (MacBeath et al. 2006). In addition, national statistics
on exclusions suggest that Black Caribbean boys are at least covertly being
assigned to the undesirables category (Parsons et al. 2004).
Within some schools, resources appear to have shifted from students with
special needs to students defined as being more able. In secondary schools,
learning support departments have contracted and, given recent Govern-
ment policies to remodel the school workforce, there is a risk that the
specialist expertise of special needs teachers will be displaced by a reliance
on less qualified teaching assistants (MacBeath et al. 2006). At the same
time, through the Excellence in Cities programme, New Labour has intro-
duced additional funding specifically targeted at students deemed to be
gifted and talented. These shifts in the balance of targeting affect all
children and not just those deemed to be special for one reason or another.
Increasingly, schools have invested energy and resources on students
judged to be at the threshold of achieving more than five A*Cs or at least
one A*G at GCSE (the key indicators used to compile the exam league
tables) (Gillborn and Youdell 1999).
Developments noted by other researchers lend support to the argument
that values drift is a reality in English schools. For example, Woods (1993)
in his study of 11 secondary schools in three LEAs pointed to indications
. . . of senior staff in the case study schools giving emphasis to middle-class
parental perspectives, by making changes which it is assumed will be
attractive to them. Among the changes the author noted were more
attention to discipline, uniform, homework and examination policies.
Two of his case study schools systematically identify the primary schools
whose pupils go on to achieve the best GCSE results in order to target their
promotional activity. Fitz et al. (1993) noted what they refer to as a
reinvigorated traditionalism in a number of the schools they studied:
several had strengthened their dress codes and reinforced school

uniform codes; others were giving increased emphasis to customary
standards of pupil behaviour, including ways of approaching and
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addressing teachers; while at least one had banned the use of biros in
favour of fountain pens.
(Fitz et al. 1993: 73)
Once again it is plausible that the reinvigorated traditionalism that
Fitz et al. describe represents efforts to make schools more attractive to
middle-class students with good GCSE potential who will help to raise the
league table position of the schools.
At the heart of the values drift thesis is a concern that the fundamental
value axis of English schooling is changing; that there is a gradual erosion
of the principle that the education of all students is intrinsically of equal
value (Daunt 1975) which underpinned much educational thinking (if
not always practice) in the pre-1988 comprehensive era. In opposition to
this principle, it is argued, forms of marketization and utilitarianism work
to promote the values of competitive individualism within the English
school system.
It is important to note that the evidence upon which the values drift
thesis was originally based was assembled before New Labours coming
to power in 1997. It still remains to be seen what the overall effects of
New Labours more complex policy mix will be, with its concurrent
emphasis on markets and utilitarianism, on the one hand, and collabor-
ation, inclusion and respect for democracy and diversity, on the other.
Having acknowledged this uncertainty, however, there are a number of
powerful indications which suggest that the balances in this policy mix will
not substantially alter the relevance and validity of the values drift thesis
(Gewirtz 2001; Wilson et al. 2006).
Concluding comments
Whether or not credence is given to the idea that the value climate of
English schooling is fundamentally changing moving away from an equal
commitment to all and whether or not the explanation set out in the
values drift thesis is a sufficient one, significant changes have clearly taken
place since 1988. Changes in the social and political context of schooling
and in the control and management of schools have implications for con-
ceptions of schooling: for what is possible, for what is deemed desirable,
for whose voices are influential and so on. The way in which the question
What are schools for? is answered in practice inevitably changes over time,
and the reforms that have been introduced since 1988 are only one albeit
significant example of this process. Within individual schools the balance
that is struck between different educational and schooling perspectives
evolves through conflict and adjustment. In some settings aspects of child-
centredness and social reconstruction may well be losing out to a new
emphasis on economic instrumentalism. In others, schools may be able to
harness the more humanistic strands of New Labours reforms to resist the
pressures towards utilitarianism and competitive individualism. It is within
the framework of these kinds of value conflicts that an individual teacher
has to orient herself or himself both theoretically and practically.
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We would argue that, faced with these fundamental questions about

values and schooling, the role of professionals individually and collec-
tively is not only to take up stances but also to enter into explicit value
debate with one another and with the wider community. This debate about
the purposes of schooling, and the respective merits of equality, freedom,
and other basic principles, is both intellectually and emotionally
challenging. There is an understandable temptation to take refuge in forms
of scepticism and neutrality. But, as we hope to have illustrated, teachers
contribute to changes in their values climate either self-consciously or by
default.
References
Audit Commission (2002) Special Educational Needs: a Mainstream Issue. London:

Audit Commission.
Ball, S.J. (1994) Education Reform: A Critical and Post-Structural Approach. Buckingham:
Bottery, M. (1992) The Ethics of Educational Management. London: Cassell.
Bourne, J., Bridges, L. and Searle, C. (1994) Outcast England: How Schools Exclude Black
Children. London: Institute of Race Relations.
Connell, R.W. (1985) Teachers Work. Sydney: George Allen & Unwin.
Daunt, P. (1975) Comprehensive Values. London: Heinemann.
Fitz, J., Halpin, D. and Power, S. (1993) Education in the Market Place. London: Kogan
Page.
Gewirtz, S. (1996) Market discipline versus comprehensive education: a case study of
a London comprehensive school struggling to survive in the education market
place, in J. Ahier, B. Cosin and M. Hales (eds) Diversity and Change: Education, Policy
and Selection. London: Routledge.
Gewirtz, S. (2001) The Managerial School: Postwelfarism and Social Justice in Education.
London: Routledge.
Gewirtz, S., Ball, S.J. and Bowe, R. (1995) Markets, Choice and Equity in Education.
Gillborn, D. and Gipps, C. (1996) Recent Research on the Achievements of Ethnic Minority
Pupils. London: HMSO.
Gillborn D., and Mirza H.S. (2000) Educational Inequality: Mapping Race, Class
and Gender: A Synthesis of Research Evidence. HMI 232, Of, available at:
www.ofsted.gov.uk.
Gillborn, D. and Youdell, D. (1999) Rationing Education: Policy, Practice, Reform and
Equity. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Hayek, F. (1980) Individualism and Economic Order. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
MacBeath, J., Galton, M., Steward, S., MacBeath, A. and Page, C. (2006) The
Costs of Inclusion: a Report Commissioned by the NUT Concerning Inclusion in Schools.
Cambridge: University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education.
MacIntyre, M. (1985) After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. London: Duckworth.
Mahony P., Menter I. and Hextall I. (2004) The emotional impact of threshold
assessment on teachers in England, British Education Research Journal, 30(3):
44364.
Mulhall, S. and Swift, A. (1993) Liberals and Communitarians. Oxford: Blackwell.
Parsons, C., Godfrey, R., Annan, G., Cornwall, J., Dussart, M., Hepburn, S., Howlett, K.
and Wennerstrom, V. (2004) Minority Ethnic Exclusions and the Race Relations
(Amendment) Act 2000. Research Report RR616. London: HMSO.
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QCA/DfEE (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority/Department for Education and

Employment) (1999) The Revised National Curriculum. London: QCA.
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Beyond the Textual Apologists. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Wilson, D., Croxson, B. and Atkinson, A. (2006) What gets measured gets done:
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ment system, Policy Studies, 27(2): 15371.
Woods, P. (1993) Responding to the consumer: parental choice and school effective-
ness, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 4(3): 20529.
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6 School effectiveness
and improvement
Brenda Gay
Introduction
This chapter looks at research undertaken on school effectiveness and

improvement and examines both the policies of successive governments
and the initiatives taken by schools to further school improvement. Some
policies have had far-reaching consequences for the ways schools are
organized and managed, whilst others have focused on improving teacher
effectiveness. In looking at school effectiveness and improvement, it is
important to consider the values and assumptions behind both the research
and the policies.
Changing perspectives on pupil achievement
The desire to see standards of education and pupil performance improving

is driven by several concerns, such as individual fulfilment and social
justice. For example, the role of education in serving the economy has been
an issue for governments over the past two centuries. In the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, pupil success, or lack of it, was the basis upon
which grants were awarded to schools from which teachers were paid
hence what became known as the notorious payment by results system.
Different causal factors for student underachievement have been
emphasized at various times. The dominant model in this country and the
USA in the 1940s and 1950s focused on psychological determinants. Cyril
Burt, among others, suggested that intelligence was an innate and relatively
fixed quality and that tests could be devised to determine an individuals
intelligence score. Under the tripartite system of secondary schooling
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70 Brenda Gay
introduced by the 1944 Education Act in this country (see Chapter 26), IQ
tests formed the basis upon which pupils were allocated to either grammar,
technical high or secondary modern schools (see Gay 2001: 89).
Research in the late 1950s put the emphasis on sociological determinants.
The lack of confidence in schools abilities to make a difference was high-
lighted in the USA by the Coleman Report (1966) which suggested that
school differences only counted for a small percentage of difference in pupil
attainment. The work of Christopher Jencks and his colleagues (1970) also
suggested that the most important determinant of educational success was
family background (Jencks, cited by Silver 1994: 79). A plethora of studies
in this country identified both material and non-material factors in the
home which produced differential achievement and were largely linked
to social class (Floud et al. 1957; Crowther 1959; Jackson and Marsden
1962; Robbins 1963; Plowden 1967; Bernstein 1970). Hargreaves (1967)
and Lacey (1970) found differences between the quality of provision
in grammar schools and secondary modern schools in terms of teacher
qualifications, facilities and other resources, and that these differences were
widest in schools serving less-advantaged communities.
In response to concerns raised by these studies and to questions about the
validity of the 11-plus examination, the comprehensive system was intro-
duced in this country in an attempt to provide greater equality of oppor-
tunity (see Chapter 26). At the same time, the Plowden Report (1967) drew
attention to the impact of social disadvantage on educational opportunity
and recommended that a new administrative principle, positive discrimi-
nation, should be exercised through the educational system to counteract
the effect of a poor environment. As a result, areas of extreme deprivation
were identified as educational priority areas; extra resources were allocated
to them, including incentive payments to teachers. Whilst government
policy was directed at the major reorganization of secondary education at
a structural level, and the allocation of differential resources where need
was greatest, attention was diverted from processes within schools to the
inadequacy of the home or society that could lead to differential patterns of
achievement.
School effectiveness research
In the late 1960s, the emphasis began to switch to factors within schools,
as research emerged which indicated that processes within schools and
teacherpupil interactions could and did affect pupil performance. In the
USA, Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) drew attention to what they termed
a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby teachers expectations of their pupils
ability consciously or sub-consciously influenced their interactions, so that
pupils performed in line with the teachers expectations rather than with
their measured ability levels. In this country Dale and Griffiths (1965),
Lacey (1974) and Hargreaves et al. (1975), among others, drew attention to
the part played by streaming in both establishing pupils sense of identity
and contributing to teachers expectations and the subsequent effects on
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School effectiveness and improvement 71
performance (see Chapter 16, Setting, streaming and mixed ability

teaching). Michael Power (1967) found significant differences in the
delinquency rates in secondary schools in Tower Hamlets that could not
be explained by pupils social class background but which, Power suggested,
might be to do with factors within the schools themselves.
The seminal study by Michael Rutter and his colleagues Fifteen Thousand
Hours (Rutter et al. 1979) in 12 South London inner-city secondary schools
with similar, predominantly working-class intakes, showed that the schools
had different success rates when measured against a set of four outcomes
attendance, behaviour, examination success and delinquency. The research
identified a number of school features and processes which accounted for
the differences, including the degree of academic emphasis; teacher actions
in lessons; the availability of rewards; and the extent to which pupils were
able to take responsibility. The cumulative effect of these various social
factors, school ethos, was considerably greater than the effect of any of the
individual factors (Rutter et al. 1979: 179). At the same time, in the USA
studies focused on schools which were known to be effective, specially
effective or exemplary and identified some of their characteristics (see
Silver 1994: 81 for details). The underlying question addressed by those
interested in the idea of effective schools found increasing expression in the
1970s and had to do with differences between schools (Silver 1994: 80).
Thus the school effectiveness research movement gathered pace in the
1980s and 1990s, in this country and abroad, as a result of a change in
perspective that recognized:
that schools affect children, that there are observable regularities in the
schools that add value and that the task of educational policies is
to improve all schools in general, and the more ineffective schools in
particular, by the transmission of this knowledge to educational
practitioners.
(Reynolds et al. 2000: 3)
What makes an effective school?
In the late 1980s and 1990s, Peter Mortimore and his colleagues at the
University of London Institute of Education undertook a considerable
amount of work into school effectiveness. From their 1988 study of primary
schools in London, which focused on pupil intakes, school environment
and educational outcomes, they concluded that an effective school raised
the performance of all pupils. They classified the contributory factors into
four categories: at the school level, given factors such as buildings,
resources, intake; at the policy level, style of leadership, organization,
staff, curriculum, relationships with parents; at the classroom level, given
factors such as class and pupil characteristics and policy (teachers aims
and strategies). They suggested that when each of these makes a positive
contribution the result can be an increase in the schools effectiveness
(Mortimore et al. 1988, cited in Silver 1994: 93).
Sammons et al. (1997) pointed out that an issue raised by school
effectiveness research in the 1990s was the use of raw data about pupils
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72 Brenda Gay
academic achievements as a means of answering questions about a schools

performance. They suggest a more meaningful measure for stimulating
school self-evaluation and school improvement was the value-added
component, which they defined as an indication of the extent to which
any given school has fostered the progress of all students in a range of
subjects during a particular time period (Sammons et al. 1997: 24). This
ties in with Mortimers definition of an effective school as one in which
students progress further than might be expected from consideration of
the schools intake (Mortimore 1991, cited by Sammons et al. 1997: 189).
Sammons et al. suggested that to measure value added, accurate informa-
tion is needed about prior attainment as well as information on pupils
backgrounds such as age, gender and entitlement to free school meals. They
showed that league tables which used raw data may have led schools in
educationally advantaged communities to become complacent, whilst
schools in disadvantaged areas may have been adding greater value.
In 1994, the Head of Quality assurance at Ofsted commissioned the
International School Effectiveness and Improvement Centre to conduct a
review of school effectiveness research with particular regard to the key
determinants of school effectiveness. Sammons, a member of the team,
pointed out that, Although our primary focus is on the school effectiveness
tradition, we have examined research in the related field of teacher
effectiveness (Sammons 1999: 186). Whilst she urged caution in interpret-
ing findings concerning school effectiveness from studies in the early
research that were based on small numbers of schools and interpreting
correlations as causes, she concluded that the review made it possible to
analyse key factors likely to be of relevance to practitioners and policy-
makers concerned with school improvement and enhancing quality in
education (Sammons 1999: 187). Table 6.1 lists Sammons Eleven key
factors for effective schools.
Leadership and school effectiveness
The quality of leadership emerged as a crucial factor in a schools success.

Various studies have been made of the relative effectiveness of different
leadership styles (Stoll and Fink 1996; Sergiovanni 2001; Harris and
Lambert 2003; Harris et al. 2003). Summarizing research on leadership
styles, Stoll and Fink compared several models. The structural functional
or traditional rational model focuses on roles, role differentiation and
hierarchical structure. The instructional model, according to Mortimore
and his colleagues (1988), occurred when the headteacher was actively
involved in the schools work and knowledgeable about what was going on
in the classrooms, without exerting total control over the rest of the staff.
Transactional leadership, the model dominant in the 1980s, contains
an implicit leaderfollower dichotomy in which leaders are superior to
followers and followers depend on leaders. Transformational leadership, by
contrast, focuses on the cultural context and requires an approach that
transforms the feelings, attitudes and beliefs of followers. From their work
with a hundred headteachers, Stoll and Fink (1996) derived a model of
invitational leadership which is built on four premises optimism, respect,
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Table 6.1 Eleven key factors for effective schools (Sammons 1999: 195)
1. Professional leadership Firm and purposeful

A participative approach
The leading professional
2. Shared vision and goals Unity of purpose
Consistency of purpose
Collegiality and collaboration
3. A learning environment An orderly atmosphere
An attractive working environment
4. Concentration on teaching and Maximization of learning time
learning Academic emphasis
Focus on achievement
5. Purposeful teaching Efcient organization
Clarity of purpose
Structured lessons
Adaptive practice
6. High expectations High expectations all round
Communicating expectations
Providing intellectual challenge
7. Positive reinforcement Clear and fair discipline
Feedback
8. Monitoring progress Monitoring pupil performance
Evaluating pupil performance
9. Pupils rights and responsibilities Raising pupil self-esteem
Positions of authority
Control of work
10. Homeschool partnership Parental involvement in their childrens
learning
11. A learning organization School-based staff development
trust, and integrity. This model synthesizes leadership models with the
result that:
through staff development activities, evolutionary planning and con-
stant monitoring of the schools context, the invitational leader helps
the school reinvent itself continually.
(Stoll and Fink 1996: 116)
School improvement
It is against this research background that the policy initiatives of successive

Labour and Conservative governments to improve schools will be
examined.
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74 Brenda Gay
From the Ruskin Speech to the 1988 Education Reform Act
By the 1970s there was a concern that the school system was not providing
value for money. The country was experiencing a period of economic
stagnation; employers complaints about the lack of basic numeracy skills
among school leavers were reinforced by an Institute of Mathematics
survey (Ollerenshaw 1978); standards of literacy were seen to be at best
static if not actually falling (Bullock 1977); the freedom over the curriculum
enjoyed by local education authorities (LEAs) and schools meant that a
childs educational experience could vary considerably from one LEA to
another, and from one school to another. In his speech at Ruskin College,
Oxford, the Prime Minister at the time, James Callaghan, warned that
schools and teachers were failing to deliver value for money and
that education was not fulfilling its role as the producer of a workforce that
would enable the country to compete on the international stage.
We spend six billion pounds a year on education so there will be dis-

cussion [. . .] To the teachers I would say that you must satisfy parents
and industry that what you are doing meets their requirements and
the needs of their children.
(Callaghan 1976)
Thus, school and teacher accountability came to the fore. Rather than it
being centrally directed, the onus was on LEAs to develop mechanisms for
making schools and individual teachers accountable. Some, for example,
the Inner London Education Authorities and Oxfordshire, drew up com-
prehensive schemes that involved teachers and schools self-auditing and
drawing up action plans (see Gay 1981 for details). However, because of the
patchy response, by the time a Conservative government came to power
in 1979, more radical action seemed needed. Thus began a move for more
central government control over schools, including what had hitherto been
regarded as the secret garden the curriculum, coupled with an emphasis
on school effectiveness and improvement.
The Education Reform Act of 1988
An era of rapid education change was ushered in by the Education Reform

Act of 1988. Among its provisions were the devolution of responsibilities to
headteachers and governors that had hitherto belonged to LEAs; the intro-
duction of a National Curriculum; the monitoring of performance and the
annual publication of league tables based on pupils results in the National
Curriculum tests and public examinations; greater parental choice of
school; and the provision of a greater variety of schools with different
financial arrangements. Thus, at the same time as giving schools greater
autonomy in some respects, in others the government took greater control
and opened up the way for schools to become more publicly accountable.
The pressure for greater accountability arising from the 1988 Education
Act led to demands for a more rigorous system of inspections. A system of
inspection, Her Majestys Inspectorate, had been in place since 1839 when
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the government first intervened in education with the award of govern-

ment grants to the National Society and the British and Foreign Society.
HMIs remit widened following the introduction of universal elementary
education in 1870 and the development of secondary schools under the
Education Act of 1902. During the period following the 1944 Education
Act, HMI largely relinquished its inquisitorial role in favour of a more
advisory one (Wilcox and Gray 1996: 26), although it continued to inspect
and publish reports on individual schools.
In 1990, the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) was set up as a
non-ministerial government department, separate from the Department of
Education and Employment, to monitor and report on schools, measuring
them against a set of benchmarks. Its remit is to to improve standards
of achievement and quality of education through regular, independent
inspection, public reporting and informed independent advice
(www.ofsted.gov.uk). Initially a four-year cycle for inspecting every school
in the country was introduced, but this has now been reduced to every six
years for schools that are deemed to be doing well. Ofsted inspections began
to be seen as punitive, particularly as their reports were used a basis for
identifying failing schools and for putting them into special measures,
which will be discussed later (see also Chapter 8).
City Technology Colleges
A major policy shift in the 1980s was the encouragement of publicprivate

partnerships to fund and manage public services. This process took several
forms, such as contracting out of hitherto internally-managed services, the
injection of money for capital projects or shifting the entire responsibility
for providing and running a service for which the government paid.
In 1987, the City Technology Colleges Trust was established as a public
private partnership, under whose aegis City Technology Colleges were
set up. Behind this scheme lay the aims of creating more diversity in
secondary education, producing a more technologically skilled work
force and developing links with local industry. City Technology Colleges
were intended to offer pupils of all abilities in urban areas the opportunity
to study a curriculum geared to the world of work, with a focus on a par-
ticular specialist subject. The colleges enjoyed greater freedom compared
with other schools in terms of management, pay structures and their
curriculum. Private sector sponsors paid one-fifth of the initial and sub-
sequent capital costs, the underlying assumption being that business
involvement could do what the education service was failing to do, that is,
ratchet up standards.
Policy initiatives of the Conservative government 19931997
Interest in the possible contribution that school effectiveness research

could make to school improvement continued to grow in the 1990s.
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76 Brenda Gay
Specialist Schools
Following on from the work of the City Technology Colleges Trust, the
Specialist Schools Trust was set up in 1994. Whilst the City Technology
Colleges were an attempt to raise standards in urban areas, Specialist
Schools were to serve all parts of the country and existing schools were able
to apply for specialist status in one of four curriculum areas technology,
arts, sports or languages. Whilst they had to teach the full National
Curriculum, they were also to give special attention to their chosen subject
area. The intention was for Specialist Schools to become local flagship
schools, which would be better funded, with a distinctive character and
better examination results. They were able to select up to 10 per cent of
pupils on the basis of their aptitude in their specialism. Under this public
private partnership, the school was responsible for raising 50,000 from
private sponsorship in order to qualify for the 100,000 government
start-up grant.
Naming and shaming and special measures
The commitment to raising standards in all schools resulted in one of

the cruellest and most pointless policies developed in the wake of the
Education Act 1993 that of attacking so-called failing schools
(Tomlinson 2005: 79).
The 1993 Act allowed for special measures to be taken when a school
was identified by an Ofsted inspection as failing against a set of criteria
including poor standards of achievement, poor quality of education,
demoralization of staff, high turnover and disruptive behaviour, truancy
and high levels of racial tension.
Blame for a schools failings was laid firmly upon the head and teachers
and overlooked the fact that many of these schools were serving disadvan-
taged communities and had a disproportionate number of disadvantaged
pupils. The problems were, in some cases, compounded by the effects
of greater parental choice which led successful schools to become over-
subscribed and schools which were already facing challenging circum-
stances to take a greater number of underachieving pupils, pupils from
difficult backgrounds or pupils for whom English was an additional
language. Furthermore, the demoralizing effects of being put into special
measures on staff, pupils and parents, which in turn led to falling rolls, were
ignored.
Policy initiatives of the Labour governments: 19972006
Interest in the possible contribution of school effectiveness research to

school improvement emerged as a particularly strong feature of govern-
ment education policy since the 1997 election of a Labour administration
(Sammons 1999: 183). The New Labour government rapidly set out to fulfil
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its election promise that education was to be a high priority with a raft of
policies that, in many ways, were a continuation or development of the
policies of the previous Conservative governments. Two main reasons lay
behind the importance attached to education; firstly, the over-riding
imperative of Labours political project is competitiveness in the global
economy (Hatcher 1998: 486) and secondly, the need to ensure equality of
outcome:
what is now needed is for educators in Britain to continue the creation
of a technology of educational policy and practice that is so strong,
so relentless and so powerful that it outweighs the effects of outside
school influences and helps bring all schools to high standards
of achievement, independently of their different backgrounds and
starting points.
(Reynolds 1997, cited by Hatcher 1998: 492)
Education Action Zones
The continued influence of private investment in education was seen in the

creation, in 1998, of Education Action Zones (EAZs), whose aims were to
raise standards in underperforming schools in areas with high levels of
social disadvantage. EAZs were intended as test-beds for a new approach to
improving education in socially disadvantaged areas which could then be
generalised throughout the school system (Hatcher 1998: 495). The zones
comprised two or three secondary schools and their feeder primary schools.
They were governed by action forums, composed of representatives from
schools, parents, business interests and the LEA, and direct appointees of
the Secretary of State. Government funding of 75,000 was allocated to
each EAZ which, in turn, had to raise funding from the private sector.
Because EAZs, by their very nature, were serving communities which had
little experience of running their own affairs, they often failed to raise the
necessary money from the private sector.
Fresh Start schools
The policy of naming and shaming failing schools was initially continued
but was abandoned in 1998 when the Fresh Start programme was intro-
duced. An underlying premise of this programme was that failing schools
have often lost their capacity to turn themselves around and therefore it
was necessary to bring in external agencies. Failing schools were closed and
subsequently reopened with a new name but on the same site, with new
management and, often, new staff. The programme was extended in March
2000 when the then Education Secretary, David Blunkett, introduced a zero
tolerance approach by threatening the closure of nearly 70 secondary
schools with the lowest GCSE results in England unless at least 15 per cent
of pupils achieved at least five good GCSE passes for three successive
years. These schools would then be reopened under the fresh start scheme,
costing around 1.5 million per school. The plan included appointing ten
superheads on salaries of 100,000.
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Again, the blame for underachievement was placed on schools and

teachers, and the characteristics of the schools intakes were ignored. Not all
Fresh Start schools were successful and during the week that the extension
of the programme was announced, the headteachers in three of the ten
existing Fresh Start schools resigned (see Tomlinson 2005 for a fuller dis-
cussion). Whilst the injection of funding and the initiatives undertaken
by the superheads initially led to a dramatic improvement, this was not
always sustainable when the support was removed. The Fresh Start scheme
was abandoned in 2003.
The Excellence in Cities initiative
The policies of investment into areas of greatest urban need and public
private partnership were continued with the Excellence in Cities (EiC) pro-
gramme which was launched in 1999, and extended during the following
two years. Its aims were to raise standards in urban schools and to offer
diversity of provision in order to meet the needs of all pupils within a
framework of co-operation and partnership between schools. The DfES
claims that the policy has been successful:
[. . .] performance tables for the last four years show that on average,
results in terms of five good GCSEs or equivalent rose faster in EiC
schools than elsewhere. In 2002 and 2003 EiC Schools improved at
twice the rate of non-EiC schools and in 2004 EiC schools improved by
about four times the rate of non-EiC schools.
(DfES 2006 standards site)
However, Her Majestys Chief Inspector, David Bell (2003) argued that
the EiC initiative had not raised standards noticeably but had provided a
confidence boost for schools.
The expansion of the Specialist Schools initiative
The government expanded the number of Specialist Schools in a bid to

provide greater choice and diversity. By 2005, the number of specialisms a
school could offer had increased to ten arts, business and enterprise,
engineering, humanities, languages, mathematics and computing, music,
science, sports and technology; and the number of these schools to two
thousand. The intention is that by 2010, all schools will be Specialist
Schools. The question arises as to how far the Specialist Schools have
improved relative to other schools. Results from research undertaken by
Jesson (2004) showed that whilst Specialist Schools ranked well in their
specialism, they showed improvement across most disciplines, with
improvement being most marked for pupils with average Key Stage 2 scores.
As many specialist schools were in low socio-economic areas the better
results were not the result of better intake. However, as Jesson pointed out,
not all Specialist Schools showed improvement.
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City Academies
In what was seen as a further admission by the Secretary of State for Educa-
tion and Employment, David Blunkett, that the comprehensive system had
failed to deliver what its advocates hoped for, never mind what we require
for the 21st century (The Times 2000), the City Academy policy was
announced as a radical new approach to promote greater diversity and
break the cycle of failing schools in inner cities (The Times 2000) Again, the
scheme implied distrust of the educational professionals as it aimed to
involve private sector sponsors, such as businesses, individuals, churches
and other faith groups or charities, which were required to contribute 2
million to the start-up costs, with a further 25 million provided from the
DfEE. City Academies were to be located in areas of disadvantage, either to
replace one or more existing schools that had already failed, or to be estab-
lished where there was a need for additional school places. The Academies
are able to select their intakes. Initially 17 Academies were set up, with
proposals in 2005 to expand the number to 200. However, the desirability
of extending the scheme was questioned by a Commons Select Committee
on Education on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of their
success. Reporting this, The Times (2005) went on to list the failure of two
Academies to improve. Using evidence of the drop in the numbers of chil-
dren on free school meals attending Academies, the Guardian on 31 October
suggested there was evidence that the Academies were skewing their intakes
to improve results.
Teacher effectiveness
As well as policies to drive up standards, the government has also intro-

duced measures to improve the quality of teachers from trainees through to
heads.
Building leadership capacity for school improvement
All the research confirmed by HMI, and more recently Ofsted, suggests that
leadership is the key factor in improvement and success in improvement
and success (Brighouse and Woods 1999: 45). In 2000, in recognition of the
importance of the role of leadership in driving forward school improve-
ment, the government established the National College for School Leader-
ship to provide professional support for teachers and other senior staff.
The college emphasized the need for a clear national benchmark for entry
to headship and clear national quality assurance (DfEE 2000). A set of
National Standards for headteachers was drawn up in 1999 and revised in
2004.
There is no denying that preparation and training for headteachers was
much needed. However, the approach of the school leadership project is
open to question. As with all attempts to measure the quality of teachers,
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80 Brenda Gay
the standards for headteachers fall back on a narrow technicist rather than
an holistic approach. Smith (2002) argues that the project is ethically
flawed. Firstly, it fails to address the question of how far changes in an
organization can be attributed to the actions of leaders or to other
factors. Secondly, it conceives of education in reductionist terms of setting
measurable targets for school improvement (Smith 2002: 22).
Initial teacher education and professional development
The government has sought to improve teacher effectiveness in a number

of ways. A major focus has been on initial training and ongoing pro-
fessional development, and a significant responsibility for this was given
to the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) (now the Training and Development
Agency for Schools (TDA)), which was set up in 1994. The agencys remit
includes accrediting initial teacher training; allocating student numbers to
providers; and improving the quality of initial teacher training courses. The
TDA sets the standards which all trainees must meet in order to be awarded
Qualified Teacher Status (QTS). The standards have been revised several
times but, like the standards for headteachers, potentially reduce teaching
to a set of competencies. The prescriptive nature of the standards and
the requirements laid down for providers, means that control over the con-
tent and structure of initial teacher education has largely passed from
institutions of higher education to a government agency.
The TTA emphasized the importance of ongoing professional develop-
ment. In 1998 it introduced the Career Entry Profile which students gradu-
ating from PGCE courses are required to complete in order to identify
strengths and priorities for future professional development during their
first year of teaching. The following year, provision was made for a manda-
tory induction year. The latest revision of the standards, which will come
into effect in 2007, lays out a set of standards for QTS, induction year
teachers, classroom teachers, Advanced Skilled Teachers and Excellent
Teachers. This is a further attempt to ensure continuous professional
development (see Chapter 28). However, these standards are again based on
a competency model rather than looking more broadly at the qualities that
make a good teacher.
School-based initiatives for improvement
At the same time as responding to government initiatives and incor-

porating the National Curriculum and the National Strategy into their
planning and teaching, schools themselves have developed a variety of
strategies for self-improvement. Whilst it is not possible within the con-
fines of this chapter to give a comprehensive account of the vast range of
activities that are going on in individual schools, we can give some
examples. As part of continuous professional development, teachers are
undertaking peer observation of each others lessons. Appraisal schemes
linked to the schools development plan enable the appraisee to set targets
which are then reviewed the following year. Joint departmental planning of
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schemes of work and lesson plans has become part of good practice in
schools. This has a number of advantages including reducing disparity
among teachers in lesson content; enabling the sharing of ideas and
resources; and acting as a means of professional development.
Schools have been keen to provide additional support for pupils in a
variety of ways in an attempt to drive up standards. In many schools,
homework clubs are now a feature and provide a conducive atmosphere for
pupils to do their homework, as well as enabling them to make use of
school facilities, such as the library and ICT. Attention has been focused on
ways of stretching the gifted and talented, including providing out-of-
classroom activities, enrichment activities within lessons and accelerated
classes in particular subjects. For example, one specialist science school
in Hampshire selected pupils at the end of Year 7 to start a three-year GCSE
course in double science in September 2006. They will take the GSCE
examination at the end of Year 10 and the AS level in environmental
science at the end of Year 11. Recognizing the link between nutrition and
educational performance, some schools are encouraging healthy eating
and provide drinking water coolers. Some schools, usually those serving
less-advantaged communities, have set up breakfast clubs.
Critiques of research into school effectiveness and school improvement
Both school effectiveness research and policies directed towards school

improvement have been criticized. Some critics see a tendency for school
effectiveness research to be yoked into the service of conservative education
policies (Campbell et al. 2004). There is also a concern that school
effectiveness research has tended to ignore social and economic factors.
Using his research in New Zealand into the effects of the socio-economic
status of schools on pupil outcomes, Thrupp (1999) argued that while the
problem-solving approach in school improvement has a common-sense
appeal it is full of holes. Why should we expect schools to hold all the
answers to wider societal problems? (Thrupp 1999: 57).
School effectiveness research can lead to an instrumental attitude
towards education by reducing teaching and learning to a set of observable
techniques. Campbell et al. (2004), critiquing research into teacher
effectiveness, argue that:
Teacher effectiveness research has tended to neglect the analysis of
values in two senses: the general values associated with the processes
of education and the more specific values underlying effective
teaching.
(Campbell et al. 2004: 452)
These values, they argue, include respect for pupils; the importance of
establishing a good rapport; encouraging pupils to develop their own inde-
pendent learning strategies; challenging accepted wisdom; and establishing
a climate for inclusiveness.
Another criticism is that school improvement policies have not reduced
inequality but have widened the gap between social classes. Ball (2000)
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82 Brenda Gay
argues that many of the school effectiveness initiatives indicate a willing-

ness to make policies which reinforce and indeed enhance, the educational
advantages of the middle-class (Ball 2000: 7). He cites the reassertion of
setting, which disadvantages working class and ethnic minority pupils
and the creation of specialist schools, which recruit a smaller proportion of
students entitled to free school meals. Ball adds:
even more cynically it could be argued that the displacement of equity
by standards as a presentational device, is itself a way of reassuring the
middle classes that their privileges are safe in what is an increasing
competitive and uncertain labour market.
(Ball 2000: 7)
Likewise, the greater diversity of schools and various criteria for selection
of pupils favours the middles classes who are more likely to be what Gewirtz
(1995) has called skilled choosers. Tomlinson points out that the result of
New Labours education strategy was that:
a number of covert and overt selective policies, designed to ensure
privileges for the middle and aspirant classes ensured that familial self-
interest and scramble for good schools continues. School education
continued to be a divisive rather than a cohesive force.
(Tomlinson 2005: 114)
Concluding comments
Research into school effectiveness has shown that schools can and do make
a difference. Recognizing this, successive governments, from 1976 onwards,
have put into place policies directed at school improvement. However,
there are several questions that we must ask. Are the criteria against which
success is measured the right ones? Is an effective school necessarily a good
school? Is there a danger that the creation of different schools with different
levels of funding will lead to an inequitable system? To what extent can
schools really compensate for society?
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7 Reforming teachers and

their work
Meg Maguire and

Justin Dillon
Introduction
Ever since the state took over the responsibility for supplying teachers for
schools in the nineteenth century, teachers and their work have been almost
constantly subjected to criticism and reforms. Some of these criticisms
have been driven by questions related to the curriculum or how to best
educate intending teachers and prepare them for their demanding role in
schools. Other critiques and reforms have been driven by pragmatism and
expediency; here the almost constant dilemma of the supply of and
demand for teachers has shaped the various ways that teachers have been
trained/educated over time. Other concerns, such as the needs of the
economy and the needs of society for high quality teachers to raise
standards in schools, have also been reflected in various reforms of teachers
and their work. Perhaps one of the most infamous reforms was the pay-
ment by results policy of the nineteenth century, where teachers were paid
in proportion to their students capacity to respond to the oral questions of
the annual inspection.
One of the dilemmas in all this teacher and teacher education reform
activity is that, frequently, aspects of different attempts at change and
improvement come into conflict with one another. Another dilemma is
that sometimes, in fixing our view on the technicalities of the reform such
as how to do it better or faster, we sideline and marginalize wider ethical
questions such as what should be, or what ought to be, the role of the
teacher in our society. For example, is teaching just a directed profession
(Bottery and Wright 2000) led by the demands of various governments
where teachers are trained and prepared in the technicalities and delivery
of what has been nationally mandated? Should teachers become agents
of change (Johnson and Hallgarten 2002) who take control of their
professional destinies and influence policy in their area of expertise?
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What we want to do in this chapter is to reflect on some of the current

attempts to reform and restructure the role of teachers and the work that
they do. In what follows, we want to explore some of the long-standing
dilemmas that characterize the preparation, supply and work demands of
teachers. In this short chapter, we will not be able to cover all the issues and
complexities in these long-standing struggles and debates. However,
through our focus on issues of teacher supply, retention and diversity in
pre-service routes, we intend to unpick some of the central and enduring
questions to do with what is entailed in being a teacher. For those of you
who are in the process of becoming a teacher, this will be a fundamental,
if sometimes unrecognized, question as you proceed in your professional
development. Your responses to this question will shape your practice
throughout your lives as teachers. However, before we start this discussion,
we want to preface our chapter with a brief consideration of reforms and
processes of reform in teacher education and the role of the teacher.
Reform and processes of reform
The work of teachers has always been subjected to criticism. If there are
concerns about the attitudes and behaviours of young people, then teachers
and teacher education have to respond to these concerns in some way. If
there are societal needs for greater literacy and numeracy skills in the
workforce, then teachers and teacher education have to be reformed to
respond to this call for change. If the economy demands a different kind of
workforce, then again education, and by implication, teacher education,
has to be changed to meet this requirement. If teacher professionalism is
seen to be in short supply, either that teachers are in some ways failing in
their work, or that they are not accountable enough to various stakeholders
in society, then additional changes and reforms are called for.
People are always wanting teachers to change. Rarely has this been
more true than in recent years. These times of global competitiveness,
like all moments of economic crisis, are producing immense moral
panics about how we are preparing the generations of the future in our
respective nations.
(Hargreaves 1994: 5 cited in Furlong et al. 2000:1)
No one would challenge the desire and intention to improve school-
ing. Indeed, in many respects, the liberal history of state-maintained
educational provision has been one of increased supply, enhanced access to
higher education, albeit class-based, and all round increases in levels of
literacy and numeracy (see Chapter 4 and also Chapter 20). Thus, there has
always been a school reform movement of some description. More recently,
since the late 1980s or so, a formalized movement of school improvement
and effectiveness has grown up, concerned to identify processes that
facilitate and inhibit educational change (for discussion of this, see Thrupp
2001). Common sense tells us that there will always be a sound case for
improving educational provision.
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Reforming teachers and their work 87
Education influences and reflects the values of society, and the kind of
society we want to be (DfEE/QCA 2000: 100). However, society has
changed since the late 1980s. For example, technological changes and
globalizing economies have resulted in changes in work and in leisure.
It is axiomatic that education needs to be proactive in responding to the
challenges these sorts of changes represent. Reforming education is an
international phenomenon, and, as elsewhere, the impulse for change in
the UK has been driven by a desire to overcome some of the key social,
cultural and economic dilemmas that have faced the state. These are: the
need to reduce public spending, make schooling more responsive to the
needs of industry and restore public confidence in state schooling.
The attempts to manage these problems have been seen in the almost con-
stant stream of initiatives that have flowed from Conservative and Labour
governments alike.
There are some points of tension in any demands for reform. First, it
depends on where the call for reform originates. Calls for reform will come
from a number of different sources and exert different requirements for
compliance. Some demands may come from within the profession itself,
for example, for better work-life balance. These sorts of demands may not
always be fully responded to because of lack of resources. Other reforms
may come from within individual schools and classrooms. Earlier reform-
ing attempts to work in a more student-centred manner, for example, are
evidence of this order of reform. Reforms may come from the local or
national state and may be mandated. Indeed, at certain points in time, the
reforms that are imposed by governments or their agencies may be the only
reforms that are recognized as legitimate (Bates 2004). In a complex and
demanding occupation such as teaching, the only time that is available
may have to be spent concentrating on these mandated reforms. As we have
already said, reforms may also be enacted in response to perceptions held in
the wider society, for example, moral panics about standards or behaviour.
Many attempts at reforming teachers and their work will be enacted
simultaneously, for example remodelling the workforce and the raising
standards agenda in England. There may be conflicts and contradictions
between different aspects of policy reform. Simply providing a policy
response towards a problem, such as teacher shortages for instance, might
not always have the desired effect, as we shall see later on in this chapter.
What will almost certainly emerge will be another policy problem. It is also
important to remember that teachers will always have some capacity to
question and criticize reform attempts (Sachs 2003). There may be a tension
between what they think is in the best interests of their students set against
what is mandated by national legislation (Arrowsmith 2006: 1).
Teacher supply
Any attempt to improve, refine and reform the work of the classroom
teacher is usually a two-stepped process. While some aspects of policy
reforms concentrate on the classroom in an attempt to change the practices
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of in-service teachers, other initiatives will focus on the pre-service teacher,

the teacher in training. If changes are to be effective, then it is axiomatic
that change at the source has to occur. In many ways, change at the source
(teacher education) is much easier to manage and control through manipu-
lating the education, training and competencies (or standards) required of
beginning teachers. However, in the real world context, the capacity to
reform at pre-service or in-service may be hampered by the need to recruit
and retain enough teachers. Thus, policies of reforming and restructuring
teachers and teacher education are enacted alongside other policies that
attempt to recruit and retain. This competing tension can produce
unexpected consequences.
In England, and elsewhere, many of the recent reforms in teacher
education have been designed, it has been argued, by concerns to bring
teacher education under tighter control of state elites and by desires to
prepare teachers differently so that schools will function more effectively in
preparing more productive workers (Ginsberg and Lindsay 1995: 6). Bates
(2004) believes that the rhetoric of many governments in this policy area
is laced with references to competition, best practice, and quality
assurance, compliance and the new economies. Reform and improve-
ment is set within this dominant agenda.
The need to raise standards of education for all young people is almost
universally recognised. This is partly a matter of economics. The
British economy, and indeed the wider European economy, would
appear to depend on having a well-educated, adaptable, continuously
learning work-force which is able to generate and implement
innovation.
(Barber 1995: 189)
However, any attempt to control and manage teachers and their work has
to accommodate itself to tensions around the issue of supply and demand.
For instance, if controls became so great, that professional autonomy were
to be completely eroded, then the sorts of people coming forward to teach
might not be the critical, reflexive, inspirational and ethical people that
some of us would want to have in our classrooms working with our children
(Campbell 2003). Put more bluntly, many talented people would poten-
tially not regard teaching as an occupation that was challenging, if there
were no scope for their interpretation and inventions and creativity. But
there is another set of tensions; if teaching is such a demanding, intensive,
complex job that requires extremely long hours with extra work under-
taken at home over the weekends, many individuals would simply not be
capable of this and many would not want to stay in such an occupation for
very long. So, any reforms of teaching have to bear these facts in mind.
Additionally, a period of changing demographics exerts complex pressures
in terms of more or less need for teachers and supply and demand tension is
sometimes difficult to predict and control.
It is not possible here to do justice to the enduring dilemmas in teacher
supply and demand (but see Menter et al. 2002). Suffice it to say that there
have always been problems in managing this process. However, when
New Labour came into government in 1997, they faced a complex set of
problems in terms of teaching and teacher education and supply and
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demand. One dimension of the problem they faced was that they inherited
a public discourse where education had been systematically positioned as
below par for many years previously (Tomlinson 2005). No new govern-
ment could afford to disregard the fears and concerns of voters, many of
whom were parents. Even though many schools were doing well, the
annual event of league tables and the media hunt for the worse school
in Britain coupled with media-orchestrated events around GCSE results
publication (in August, when news is generally in short supply), meant that
the UK had become accustomed to the annual conundrum. This was (and
is) that if more students were successful, then the tests were getting easier
and standards were falling. If scores went down, then teachers would be
failing in their work. In this complex and overheated policy setting, there
was no space for slowing the pace of reform. For the New Labour adminis-
tration, allowing the reforms of the previous government time to bed in was
not ever going to be possible. New Labour had to be seen to be strong in
the campaign to raise standards, even if they were not actually dropping
(see Chapter 4). Simultaneously, there was another pressure for reform.
Teachers were leaving the profession in droves.
New Labours response was to publish a Green Paper (DfEE 1998b) fairly
soon into its first administration, Teachers: meeting the challenge of change.
This report contained some startling statistics that indicated:
Of every 100 students (who start secondary teacher training in 1999)
we estimate that only 58 will start teaching in maintained secondary
schools that year and a further six a year later.
(DfEE 1998b para. 18)
New Labour argued that many graduates no longer aspired to teaching as a
career. The graduate labour market had expanded rapidly and many careers
were and are on offer to graduates. New Labour recognized what they called
an image problem that teachers were working long hours and that their
salaries had not held up in comparison with other post-graduate careers.
What they didnt directly acknowledge was the impact of relentless change
and an almost unremitting stream of mandated reforms and the impact
of this on teacher burnout and stress (Smithers and Robinson 2003). In
response to the need to recruit more teachers, the Teacher Development
Agency (then the Teacher Training Agency) was charged with recruiting
more people into teaching. It was argued that there were many people who
would want to become teachers if there were more flexible routes into the
profession. It was also argued that additional money needed to be offered
in shortage subjects to encourage graduates in some disciplines to think of
becoming teachers, even if only for a few years. (This policy has had some
success, but indirectly signals that perhaps some curriculum areas are of less
value than others.) New Labour accepted that teachers were not necessarily
going to stay for a lifetime in teaching but would be more likely to want to
develop flexible employment portfolios and move in and out of various
careers.
Flexibility towards recruitment and diversity in pre-service preparation
might be seen as an opportunity (Westcott and Harris 2004). It might
also be seen as a sign of pragmatism. The reform outcomes have been
that there are now many ways to train to become a teacher. There are the
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well-established higher education-based routes (such as the Batchelor of

Education, mainly taken by intending primary school teachers) and the
post-graduate courses (PGCEs) (based in schools for 24 out of the 36 weeks
for secondary teachers). There are other ways in to teaching such as school-
centred training (SCITTs) a route that is popular with the government but
one that has received less than effusive praise from Ofsted. There are
employment-based routes such as the Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP)
and the Registered Teacher Programme (RTP) that allow individuals to
stay in their work while undertaking their teacher education. For example,
the RTP provides a blend of work-based teacher training and academic
study, allowing non-graduates with some experience of higher education
to complete their degree and qualify as a teacher at the same time
(www.tda.gov.uk). For overseas-qualified teachers there is the Overseas
Trained Teacher programme (OTTP) that helps experienced teachers who
have gained their qualifications overseas to obtain Qualified Teacher Status
(QTS) in England and Wales. There is also the Teach First programme that
only recruits outstanding graduates. It is for high flying graduates who
may not otherwise have considered teaching or arent sure of it as a long-
term career and it also provides the potential to develop a commercially
oriented career (www.teachfirst.org.uk). This programme is run by an
independent organization. It recruits graduates with a 2.1 degree or better,
offers a short focused training and then places these individuals in inner
city schools facing recruitment problems. There are also new opportunities
in schools for people who do not have QTS, but who will take on some of
the more traditional responsibilities of the teacher (see Chapter 27).
Of course, this flexibility towards issues of supply may well mean that
more people will be drawn to teaching and that flexibility in training routes
will enable more people to enter the profession who have always wanted to
teach, but could not commit to a full-time, one-year course in an institution
of higher education. On the other hand, it may lead to an internally
differentiated occupational setting. Flexibility may well enhance recruit-
ment to teaching in some quarters. At the same time, it may inhibit
recruitment from other cohorts. If becoming a teacher is something that
anyone can do, it might become something that very few will actively seek
to do. From the governments perspective, some routes are significantly
cheaper than others. But recruitment is only one side of the coin. Recruiting
teachers who only stay for two years may not be the best way to meet the
educational needs of children in schools. A rapid staff turnover might not
be the best way to promote systemic reforms such as the raising standards
agenda. Issues of teacher supply have to be considered alongside issues of
retention.
Teacher retention
Two main policies have been set up to promote retention in teaching. One
is related to rewarding teachers financially. The other relates to reforming
the workloads of teachers through what is known as the remodelling
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strategy. The smart aspect to these two reforming tactics is that they com-
plement the dominant policy the raising standards agenda that lies at
the heart of New Labours educational work. In terms of rewarding teachers
financially and encouraging them to stay in the profession, New Labour did
appreciate that something needed to be done. However, in line with its core
values of something for something and a hand-up not a hand-out (Blair
1996; Whitty 2002), the Green Paper stated that there was now a need to
provide rewards for success and incentives for excellence. While the Paper
made many proposals, it was the move towards performance management
and performance related pay (PRP) that attracted the most attention.
The idea was a straightforward and seductive one; good teachers would be
motivated to improve their performance if their individual efforts were
rewarded. It is unfair that less successful teachers should be paid the same as
their more successful colleagues. Richardson has argued that performance
related pay makes a lot of sense in many contexts. It succeeds in motivating
people as diverse as taxi drivers, garment assemblers, fund managers and
sportsmen (Richardson 1999: 29). However, Richardson went on to state
what must seem obvious to many teachers; public sector occupations (like
teaching) are complex and not easily reducible to clear and measurable
work objectives. Even if student achievement were one measure, there
would have to be some way to demonstrate that an individual teachers
contribution to pupil performance can be established with confidence
(Richardson 1999: 29). It could be that a student did well in a certain aspect
of their work say mathematics at GCSE because of successful pastoral
support or good teaching at an earlier stage. Teaching is a collaborative
venture. Richardson pointed out that there must be a suspicion that per-
formance related pay was not merely concerned with recruiting, retaining
and rewarding good teachers. He suggested that it was potentially a strategy
to attract and reward a minority while doing rather little for the large
numbers of average performers (Richardson 1999: 30). In addition, as
Mahony and Hextall (2000) have argued, while PRP may motivate some
teachers, it may also have the opposite effect and prove to be counter-
productive. However, various forms of performance related pay have been
inserted into the teaching profession, notably the performance thresholds
(for more details, see Mahony et al. 2004).
In terms of reforming teachers conditions of work (a key factor cited to
explain high levels of teacher turnover), a number of changes were imple-
mented in the light of the Workforce Reform Agenda (HM Government
2002). The intentions were to reduce the level of bureaucracy that teachers
had to deal with in order to free them up so that they could concentrate on
their teaching (www.tda/gov.uk/remodelling). Time limits of 1265 hours
per year were set in order to promote a work-life balance. From September
2004, more changes came into effect limiting the amount of classroom
cover (for absent colleagues) that individual teachers were supposed to pro-
vide. In 2005, every school was required to provide at least 10 per cent of
teachers time as non-contact time for planning, preparation and assess-
ment (PPA time). Even though the Workforce Reform and Remodelling
agenda has attempted to reduce the workload and ensure that teaching
is an attractive career proposition, the evidence would suggest that
the workload of teachers is still excessive (Nixon 2005: 151). However, the
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remodelling agenda has other potentially far-reaching consequences for

teachers work in schools.
Diversity
If teachers are supposed to be released from their work in the classroom, in

order to have sufficient PPA time, the most obvious question is what
happens to the students while their teachers are engaged in this necessary
work. One outcome is that all state-maintained schools have had to
carefully examine the workloads of their teachers and the tasks they are
charged with fulfilling. Another outcome is that schools have had to think
strategically in terms of who is available and able to provide release, and
perhaps supply additional expertise. Westcott and Harris (2004: 33) point
out that: the current climate is one where the idea of teaching and who
teaches is evolving and changing, with a particular emphasis on the role of
adults other than teachers within schools. This diversity is in some ways
a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the employment of adults with
complementary expertise (linguistic, counselling, career advisers) and
adults who offer additional support (teaching assistants, librarians,
mentors) will add to the capacity of the school to meet the all round needs
of their students. On the other hand, however, if the boundaries between
who is/is not a teacher become even more blurred, there could be tension
and conflict. Teachers have every right to feel that their professional status
is hard won (Westcott and Harris 2004: 35), although they may well be
comfortable that others are concentrating on aspects of their work that
are secondary to their role as teachers. The issue is where this line is to be
drawn. Should classroom teachers have pastoral responsibilities, and if so,
to what extent? Should they be responsible for sexual and relationship
education, for example, and are they all capable of this (see Chapters 23 and
27 for discussion of these matters).
Obviously there are economic factors that may also come into play. It will
almost certainly be cheaper, in terms of staff costs, to employ unqualified
staff instead of teachers. Diversity and flexibility in the workforce (and
perhaps in entry routes) may add to the capacity of the school to help its
students achieve their potential; conversely, they may reduce the status of
teaching and inhibit some forms of recruitment. In terms of social justice
issues too, it may be the schools facing challenging circumstances that are
forced into diverse forms of employment in order to secure acceptable
staffing levels. As an aside, it is interesting to conjecture as to what the
responses of some parents might be towards unqualified teachers working
with their children. However, active and reflexive teams of differently
skilled adults, working together, can only enhance the learning and
teaching situation. It just takes time, thought, sensitivity and commitment
to make these effective and democratic teams. However, diversity and
flexibility in terms of the school workforce has another implication. It
forces us to ask precise questions about what we understand as a teacher
and as teachers work.
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What is a teacher? What is a professional teacher?
In terms of reforming and restructuring the teacher, the central issues turn
on the role of the teacher in our society and how that role is currently being
shaped by policy interventions (see Chapter 2). In terms of pre-service
teacher education (currently called training), Furlong (2005: 130) claims
that:
Individual professional formation is seen as far less critical than it was,
especially at the level of initial training. In the lives of young teachers,
the state now provides far greater guidance than ever before in the
definition of effective teaching, learning and assessment.
Mahony and Hextall (2000: 20) claim that the teacher is now being
reconfigured as someone who is both being addressed as a professional
but whose responsibilities, powers and rights are designated as lying well
outside realms of policy reflection and deliberation. To an extent, the
teacher is now positioned as a competent, multi-skilled worker, who
delivers and assesses a regulated curriculum. Teachers capacity to influence
what they teach, how they assess learning, and even how they organize
aspects of their pedagogy, such as student grouping and lesson planning,
have been prescribed by government interventions into these areas of the
work of teaching.
Teacher education, and what it means to be a teacher, is an important
matter for any nation-state. After all, what can be more important than how
a nations young people are educated? Therefore, it is not surprising that
teacher education and consequently teaching itself have been subjected
to many changes over time. In the past, much of the struggle, within the
profession at least, was focused on becoming an all-graduate occupation,
thus enhancing the status of teaching. At the same time, issues of supply
and demand (pragmatic necessity) have also intervened. There are long-
standing tensions between the need for theoretical knowledge (what and
how much) and practical experience (how many schools and for how long),
as well as the overall length and quality of various routes (Hobson et al.
2005). There have always been tensions between professional judgements
(of teachers and teacher educators) set against market forces and cost-
effectiveness; the needs of individual children and students set against the
labour market needs of society.
For the past two decades, however, there have been some discernable
patterns in the policy reforms in this area in England, and elsewhere to
different degrees (Bates 2004). Perhaps the most persistent theme has been
the sidelining of some aspects of theory and the privileging of practical
experience. Increasingly, schools have been charged with the professional
preparation of teachers a learning on the job approach, for either part
or all of the training period. Clearly, this approach has some potential for
effective teacher training. However, this responsibility has not been
straightforwardly either devolved to schools, or left to higher education
institutions, problematic though either of these extremes would be in our
view. For some time now, teacher education has been shaped by the need
for compliance with prescribed competencies (standards) that have to be
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met before qualified teacher status can be attained (Whitty 1997). These
standards (DfEE 1998a) refer to levels of competency which have to be met
in relation to: knowledge and understanding of subject matter; planning,
teaching and classroom management; monitoring, assessment recording,
reporting and accountability as well as other professional requirements. Of
course these are all good platform attributes for effective teachers, however,
in the rush to specify, quantify and assess myriads of standards there are a
number of unresolved dilemmas.
First, what are we to make of the paradox that allows the Government to
blame poor schools for poor performances yet at the same time may well
seek to train teachers in these very institutions? Whitty et al. (1998: 77)
conclude that:
School-based initial teacher education, combined with an official list

of prescribed competencies, seems likely over time to produce greater
consistency of preparation for a narrow set of basic teaching skills
alongside increased variation and fragmentation in student experience
in other areas.
Bridges (1996: 251) has argued that there are limits of experience in
school-based training. He raises important questions about taking a
pragmatic approach towards the supply of teachers, although here we are
just going to explore one of his arguments. He believes that personal
observation and experience cannot provide the range, diversity or
elaboration of thought available in literature. And yet, he adds, reading
seems to be a form of learning which has been rendered almost obsolete
in the education of teachers (Bridges 1996: 254). This is a powerful point
that needs more consideration than we are able to offer here. Never-
theless, if the focus is with meeting practical standards, important those
these are, what are the potential losses, if teaching is reduced to a
non-theoretical occupation? In many ways, your answer to this question
will depend on how you have constructed the role of the teacher in
our society.
Teaching is a complex, challenging occupation. Indeed Hargreaves and
Goodson (2003: ix) call it the core profession, the key agent of change in
todays knowledge society. Teachers are the midwives of that knowledge
society. Teachers possess a particular expertise and have an ethical
responsibility for their students well-being. It is these factors, in com-
bination, that will lead them to make claims for some degree of autonomy
and control in their professional decision making. In this, we are not
arguing for teachers views to dominate. Rather, with Sachs (2003: 17) we
share a belief that the concept of teacher professionalism is not static.
Its meaning changes over time, in different contexts. It is struggled over.
Currently, it might seem that many governments are trying to close down
any debates round what a teacher is or should be. But, the extended pro-
fessional (Hoyle and John 1995) or McLaughlins (1997) new professional
is someone who engages with professional debates beyond their own
classrooms, with parents, students and the wider society.
As Bottery and Wright (2000) would argue, much depends on being and
trying to become truly professional:
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Processes have occurred and are still occurring that have led to a
teaching force that may be very competent in teaching academic sub-
jects and in caring at an individual level with pupils problems, but
which generally fails to transcend the problems of the classroom.
Being truly professional precisely involves the belief that teaching
transcends the classroom, and requires of teachers that they take
an active interest and have a duty in participating in issues that
affect educational national and global policies . . . In other words,
ultimately the profession of teaching needs to see itself as a profession
for citizen education, a citizen education that reaches beyond the
nation state.
(Bottery and Wright 2000: 160)
As this chapter was being written, the Education Guardian (Arrowsmith
2006: 1) published an article written by Richard Arrowsmith, a secondary
school headteacher who was taking early retirement, aged 57, as he
was just too fed up with too many things. He wrote of the excessive
bureaucracy, ridiculous deadlines and unconvincing consultations . . . and,
more seriously, the ongoing conflicts between educational ideals and
political ideals (that) show no sign of abating. Heads are asked to do far too
much where the interest of the child is not the primary motive. He con-
tinued, it became a political imperative to meet targets set for specific age
groups at specific times, thus dividing children into those who did and
those who didnt make the grade. In these words, it is possible to identify
the voice of an extended, professional teacher.
Concluding comments
Finally, we would like you to reconsider some of the key questions that we
raised at the start of this chapter. To what degree do you think that teaching
is a directed profession (Bottery and Wright 2000) led by the demands
of various governments where teachers are trained and prepared in the
technicalities and delivery of what has been nationally mandated? To what
extent is this a good thing in a democratic society? What purposes does this
degree of accountability serve? What else should we be considering in any
future reforms of teaching and teacher education (Bates 2005)? Can and
should teachers become agents of change (Johnson and Hallgarten 2002),
who take control of their professional destinies and influence policy in their
area of expertise? What do you think?
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2006, pp. 12.
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8 Reection, inspection
and accountability
Justin Dillon
Introduction
From now until you decide that it is time to leave teaching, you are going to
be watched by a lot of people: pupils, mentors, tutors and inspectors. They
will be, in all senses of the word, inspecting you watching to see what you
do, noticing if you can see what they are up to, assessing if you are teaching
well and judging what you are wearing. Theres something about being
watched that can be uncomfortable and, sometimes, unnerving. One of the
best pieces of advice that I was given as a PGCE student was never wear
clothes where the sweat shows. However, this chapter is not just about
being watched, it is also about watching yourself, reflecting during and after
teaching, with an aim to be more effective for all your pupils. Reflection
is important because, not only are you accountable to others, you are
accountable to yourself to maintain your own standards and to keep faith
with your own values. However, if day-to-day reflection is the norm for
todays professional teacher, at least in terms of frequency, inspection is at
the other end of the spectrum. Inspection, at its best, can offer a
rare opportunity for independent insights into your teaching abilities and
can catalyse your own reflections. This chapter draws together research into
teacher development and related research into school inspection, and, in
particular, the impact of the Office for Standards in Education, commonly
referred to as Ofsted.
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Reection, inspection and accountability 99
On reection
Teacher development can be thought of as a mechanism for driving change

in education systems, or it can be seen as a strategy for empowering indi-
viduals and teams to improve their professional knowledge and pedagogy
(Day and Sachs 2004). The literature on teacher development is substantial
though it is not, as we will see, unproblematic, and as Munby and Russell
also point out, there is a related issue in that:
the interaction between teachers and those who study and write about
teachers and teaching has long been problematic, often sliding too
easily into the familiar mode of one person telling another how to
improve practice.
(Munby and Russell 1992: 8)
That is not to say that telling someone how to improve their practice does
not work indeed during the early parts of your career, it is something that
you will experience frequently. There are other problems with the research
into teacher development, such as a lack of evidence of real changes in
classroom practices; that is, theres not much evidence that some types of
training make you, in any sense, a better teacher (see Chapter 28 for more
on this issue).
Although much of the teacher development literature focuses on discrete
phases of training, such as pre-service (Reid et al. 1994; Boyd 2002; Edwards
and Protheroe 2003), or on the induction of Newly Qualified Teachers (for
example, Harrison 2002), a growing body of writing has addressed the
generic development of teachers (see, for example, Elliott 1993). Claxton
et al. (1996), for example, examined how teachers views of themselves as
learners impacted on the ways in which they behaved (they found that
teachers tended to reproduce their implicit models of learning in the ways
in which they treated other learners). Much of the literature on teacher
development provides useful insights for beginners even if it focuses on
more experienced teachers, so you would be well advised to read widely.
What most researchers and writers in the area of teacher development
have in common, is a concern to illuminate the espoused wish of many
teacher educators to develop the reflective practitioner (Schn 1983,
1987). Reflection is seen as a strategy that can be used to develop teachers
knowledge, skills and attitudes. The next section examines the idea of the
reflective practitioner and looks at key discourses relating to reflection.
The reflective practitioner and the discourse of reflection
The concept of the reflective practitioner has been almost a sine qua none of
writing about teacher development since the 1960s: it is the dominant dis-
course. Views about the nature of reflection vary, although many writers
advocate the process as an essential aspect of teacher development and a
key characteristic of effective teaching. The notion of reflection (thinking
critically about your own performance, with or without the help of others)
holds currency in the UK and elsewhere. It is worth noting here, though,
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100 Justin Dillon
that there are also discourses of the reflexive practitioner (one who reflects
on the institutional context as well as on the self) and the critical
practitioner (one who reflects on power and authority in relation to ones
situation) (see Atkinson 2004 for an interesting discussion of these ideas).
Reflection implies prior experience. It also implies that teachers build
knowledge (the exact nature of which is also contested) from their reflec-
tion. What is not clear is when the reflection should take place, who should
manage it and how is knowledge built from the reflection? Atkinson (2004)
points out that many of the assumptions underpinning discourses of
reflective practice are often overlooked. Advocates of reflective practice,
Atkinson argues, assume that people are able to step outside of their
thoughts and feelings and reflect in an almost transcendent way which is
both unrealistic and unachievable.
So what does reflecting on your teaching involve? Barnes pointed to the
relationship between teaching and reflection when he wrote that: teaching
depends necessarily upon intuitive judgement, but the intuitions can
be reflected upon, sharpened, and related more precisely to long-term goals
and values (Barnes 1992: 10). In effect, Barnes is arguing that teachers
intuition can be developed systematically, through reflection. Better teach-
ing, according to Baird, involves the teacher knowing more, being more
aware and making better decisions all in all, being more metacognitive,
that is, reflecting on their own thinking. Improving teaching involves
fundamental change in ones attitudes, perceptions, conceptions, beliefs,
abilities and behaviors (Baird 1992: 33). What has to be borne in mind,
though, is that we can never reflect in a neutral, abstract manner: system-
atic, maybe independently, never. And even people who might hope to
give us independent advice can never be wholly objective.
Although there is some measure of agreement in the literature on teacher
development that changes come about through reflection, there is less
agreement about the nature of that reflection. Some see reflection as some-
thing that is done after the event (following a lesson), whereas others see it
as something that happens during the act of teaching. So, what is reflection?
In the 1930s, John Dewey wrote that:
Reflective thinking, in distinction from other operations to which we

apply the name of thought, involves (1) a state of doubt, hesitation,
perplexity, mental difficulty, in which thinking originates, and (2) an
act of searching, hunting, inquiring, to find material that will resolve
the doubt, settle and dispose of the perplexity.
(Dewey 1933: 12)
So, the good news is that doubt, hesitation, perplexity and mental difficulty
might actually be useful to self-improvement, rather than signs of incompe-
tence. Implicit in Deweys statement is the notion that reflection happens
during teaching. Many times I have faced doubt, hesitation [and] per-
plexity when dealing with challenging questions, difficult behaviour or
experiments going wrong. Working in classrooms provides situations that
necessitate some element of reflection, whether it be a fleeting thought
about the nature of students ideas about density or someone asking Why
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are we doing this? Deweys focus on the act of searching implies the need
for an active engagement in reflection in order to develop. Part of the
motivation for reflection is a desire to do your best for other people: another
reason might be because you are being assessed by others.
Reflection, knowledge and action
Reflective action, as opposed to routine action, guided by tradition,

external authority and circumstance (Furlong and Maynard 1995: 39),
involves the active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or
supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support
it (Dewey 1910: 6). However, reflective thinking on its own does not
necessarily lead to teacher development. In this section, the reflexive links
between knowing and acting are examined in more detail.
For Schn (1987), knowledge resides in performance. Knowledge-in-
action is built up in two ways: reflection-on-action (systematic and
deliberate thinking back over ones actions or feedback) and reflection-in-
action, a process with non-logical features, a process that is prompted by
experience and over which we have limited control or backtalk (Munby
and Russell 1992: 3). These descriptions begin to go beyond theoretical
descriptions and move into strategies that sound achievable or replicable in
school and elsewhere. For Loughran (1996), reflection can happen both
during and after lessons. Loughran and others advocate using reflection
to think of possible alternative approaches and to plan teaching in the
light of knowing what happened and why. This approach is posited as an
alternative to carrying on with business as usual.
Grimmett (1988: 1112), putting Schns ideas in perspective, identifies
three categories of conceptions of reflection:
thoughtfulness that leads to conscious, deliberate moves, usually taken
to apply research findings or educational theory in order to direct or
control practice
deliberation and choice among competing versions of good teaching
reconstructing experience, the end of which is the identification of a new
possibility for action.
A significant proportion of the literature on teacher development focuses
on reflection-on-action (see, for example, Baird et al. 1991). Russell and
Munby (1991: 1645) refer to reflection-in-action as hearing or seeing
differently, a process that Schn calls reframing. Thus, beginning teachers
are encouraged to engage in systematic reflection (sometimes couched
in terms of evaluate your lesson), as well as being given opportunities to
practice teaching skills, such as identifying problems that children have
and then adapting teaching strategies during lessons.
Russell and Munby argue that reflection-on-action involves careful
consideration of familiar data whereas reflection-in-action presents the
data [. . .] in a novel frame (1991: 1645). I am not convinced by this
dichotomy, nor by the assertion, mentioned previously, that we have
limited control over reflection-on-action. One aim of teacher education
could be to assist teachers to reflect-on-action during their teaching rather
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than after it that is, to become more systematic about collecting data,
patterning it and adapting activities during lessons rather than after them.
For Oberg and Artz, reflection is not acquired behaviours or skills; rather
[it is] an attitude (1992: 140). However, Valli, in a study of initial teacher
training courses in the USA, reports that reflective attitudes were, in
general, tacit rather than explicit goals possibly because of the amorphous
nature of attitudes and the difficulty of developing or changing them
(1993: 1819). The job of those tasked with facilitating teacher develop-
ment, such as mentors and tutors, then, might be to make the tacit more
explicit if this is possible.
The discourse of the reflective practitioner is not without its critics.
Indeed, so concerned was Chris Woodhead, the then Chief Inspector
of Schools, about the concept, that he attacked it through a talk on The
Rise and Fall of the Reflective Practitioner in February 1999. Woodhead
concluded that instead of focusing on reflective practice:
the way forward must be to continue to identify our most effective
schools and to find ways to open up the practical knowledge and
understanding that they possess to others so the gap between the good
and the weak can be narrowed.
(Woodhead 1999)
Woodheads statement implies a limited, common-sense view of the
nature of reflection and of teaching itself. This contrast of knowledge
developed through reflection and practical knowledge points to the con-
tinued debate over what counts as teacher knowledge. It is appropriate that
Woodhead was writing from his position as Chief Inspector, because one of
the key drivers of teacher development, it might be argued, has been school
inspection, a topic which is considered in the next section.
Inspection
Few people would argue that inspection is a neutral process. Woodhead

referred to it as disciplined subjectivity (1999: 5). The chances that you
will be observed by an inspector during your teaching practice or in the first
few terms of your career are not high. English state-funded schools are
inspected, on average, every three years. However, you will almost certainly
be unable to escape the influence that inspection, and in particular the
Office of Her Majestys Chief Inspector of Schools in England (Ofsted), has
on schooling.
Inspectors have been around for some time. They were first appointed, by
the government, in 1839 in response to disquiet about the way in which
public funds were being spent by some individuals and by some religious
societies (for a history of inspection in England, see Grubb 2000). The remit
of Her Majestys Inspectors included reporting on teaching methods,
attainment, organization and discipline, and on the moral training of
children, but their powers of intervention were limited. With the introduc-
tion of the system of payment by results in 1862, and a national system of
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free public elementary education under the Education Acts of 1870

onwards, their numbers and their influence increased. The gradual develop-
ment of secondary schools, under the 1902 Education Act, led to a system
of full inspections for secondary schools and subsequently for elementary
schools.
During the 1970s, disquiet about educational standards and concerns
about a lack of public accountability became a major concern. It found
expression in Prime Minister James Callaghans Ruskin College speech in
1976 (Callaghan 1976) (see, also, Chapter 6, for a discussion of subsequent
events). At that time, local education authorities encouraged schools to
evaluate themselves (a type of reflective practice in itself), with the help of
their advisers, rather than undergo external inspection. By the beginning of
the 1990s, political pressure was building for a different sort of inspectorate.
HMI was criticized for its lack of published criteria on which judgements
were based. The inspectors independence and objectivity were questioned.
They were alleged to be pursuing a pedagogical line through published
work, inspection reports and advice to politicians and were subject to
severe strictures from the new right as the major proponents of pro-
gressivism (Fitz and Lee 1996: 18). They were described as representing the
interests of the provider rather than the consumer, whose rights were set
out in the Citizens Charter (Cabinet Office 1991). Inspection criteria were
now to be made explicit; accountability to the public was expected; more
precise statistical information was required; lay members were to be
recruited to keep a check on the excesses of the professionals.
The Education (Schools) Act, 1992 established a new organization, the
Office for Standards in Education, headed by Her Majestys Chief Inspector
(HMCI). Ofsted was officially set up as a non-ministerial government
department, independent from what was then the Department for
Education and Employment (DfEE). Its motto is Improvement through
inspection and its remit is to improve standards of achievement and
quality of education through regular independent inspection, public
reporting and informed independent advice (Ofsted 2000).
In the beginning, full-scale (that is, week-long) inspections were to be
carried out every four years; now there is a three-year cycle of shorter
inspections. The number of HMIs was reduced and inspection teams con-
sisted of independent inspectors not employed directly by Ofsted but
trained under its auspices, and operating in a competitive market. A range
of private firms and LEAs competed for contracts for the inspections. Ofsted
set the framework for these inspections, which are now carried out by the
Lead Inspector and a team of up to five inspectors, depending on the size of
the school to be inspected.
During the early years of Ofsted inspections, schools could be given
as much as four terms notice or as little as a few weeks. Both of these
situations led to considerable stress. In the former, the preparations
dominated school life for months, anxiety was often raised to an unreason-
able level and an inordinate amount of time was spent by some schools on
preparing documentation. In the latter situation, documentation was
rushed, and many schools felt that they had not had time to show them-
selves at their best (Millett and Johnson 1998). A reduction in the notice
period to about six weeks was one of the changes made by Ofsted in
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response to complaints from schools. This period of notice was shortened

even further, in 2005, to two days.
Heads and teachers views of inspection as being judgemental or
developmental affected the way in which inspection was approached. Some
schools took a hostile and unco-operative approach, based on critical
views of the Ofsted system and the way in which it had been introduced.
Some schools saw their inspection as free consultancy while others worked
extremely hard to conceal any weakness they aimed for the perfect
week (Ouston and Davies 1998: 14). Some schools employed the services
of their local authority in a consultant capacity to help them to prepare
for inspection (Dimmer and Metiuk 1998); some went through what
amounted to a mock inspection.
Although, in some cases, claims were made by schools that inspection
had slowed down ongoing development, in others, the preparation phase
was felt to be useful (Ouston and Davies 1998). It was found that individual
classroom teachers were more likely than senior staff to admit to anxieties
about the forthcoming inspection (Wilcox and Gray 1996). With changes
in Ofsted practice (Ofsted 1997) that initiated the reporting to the
headteacher of individual teachers grades using three bands (depending
on the quality of their teaching), pressure on individual performance grew.
The issue here is that how teachers view inspection affected how they per-
formed and how they interpreted the oral feedback they received and the
reports that were written.
The response to inspection
Responses to the process of inspection vary widely and they can be grouped
into two main categories emotional and social, and methodological.
Inspection can have a major effect on the professional and personal lives of
teachers, leading to feelings of professional uncertainty, loss of self-esteem
and change of commitment (Jeffrey and Woods 1998). Although some
teachers are very positive about their inspection experiences, there are
reports of stress-related illness and even suicide following an Ofsted inspec-
tion. Some schools have reported a lowering of morale even after positive
inspection results:
During inspection week fear represses the teachers ability to act and
think they lose their picture of self-worth. They become irritable at
home and can suffer from sleeplessness. Before inspection, people feel
screwed down, not able to relax. After inspection a huge sense of relief
is followed by deflation.
(A headteacher, quoted in Williams 1999: 12)
It is certainly the case that many schools did report positive experiences,
but these did not necessarily receive the same publicity as negative ones
(Fidler and Davies 1998). The quality of the inspection team would seem
to be a critical factor here. Ofsteds own monitoring (Ofsted et al. 1995)
reported a picture of broad satisfaction with the inspection process. Issues
that provoked less favourable responses were the match between inspection
team members backgrounds and experience, and the profile of the school;
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the contributions of the lay inspector; a lack of professional dialogue with

teachers; and the quality of subject judgements.
In early inspections, feedback to individual classroom teachers was
non-existent or extremely limited, a fact regretted by inspectors as well as
teachers (Jeffrey and Woods 1998). Feedback after lesson observation was
incorporated into Ofsted guidance (Ofsted 1997), and although sometimes
regarded as inadequate, it was generally welcomed by teachers, who saw
it as an improvement. Teachers appreciated guidance on how to handle
feedback. They needed to know what form it would take; usually three
strengths of the lesson and three weaknesses were given. In terms of feed-
back at school level, Maychell and Pathak (1997) reported that 94 per cent
of secondary headteachers found the oral feedback they had from Ofsted
inspectors useful for planning purposes; oral feedback to subject specialists
in secondary schools was also popular.
In terms of responses relating to methodology, many writers have
questioned the reliability and validity of inspectors judgements (for
example Sandbrook 1996; Wilcox and Gray 1996; Fidler et al. 1998):
[The] specification of criteria alone does not guarantee validity.
Moreover, criteria can never be so tightly defined as to expel the act of
judgement completely.
(Wilcox and Gray 1996: 73)
Fitz-Gibbon (1997: 19) considers that:
the aspect of inspection which is the most expensive in inspectors
time, the most costly to schools in staff stress, and the least validated,
is the practice of having inspectors sit in classrooms making amateur-
ish attempts at classroom observation and drawing unchallengeable
conclusions about effectiveness.
Ofsteds own research claiming a high level of correlation between the
judgements of pairs of inspectors (Matthews et al. 1998) is not viewed
as compelling evidence by many critics (Education and Employment
Committee, House of Commons 1999).
Opinions clearly differ about the process of inspection. The Market and
Opinion Research International (MORI) survey of primary schools, con-
ducted for Ofsted, found overall satisfaction with the process of inspection
(MORI 1999). About three-quarters of schools agreed that they were satis-
fied with the professional knowledge and competence of the inspection
team. In cases of disagreement, some schools have felt able to negotiate
with inspectors over issues of judgement as well as fact (Fidler and Davies
1998). Schools are now able to pursue complaints about their inspection
through an extended complaints procedure, with an external adjudicator,
introduced in 1998 (Ofsted 1998).
Inspection is wrapped up in issues of social control and accountability.
Attempts to understand inspection from theoretical perspectives have
been few and far between. Wilcox and Gray (1996) undertook a three-year
study of school inspections and examined four theoretical perspecti-
ves: inspection as evaluation; inspection as auditing; inspection as a dis-
ciplinary power; inspection as a form of social action. There is not space
here to examine these ideas in any detail but the point is that the issues
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106 Justin Dillon
surrounding inspection can be examined from a range of perspectives

which may be helpful in finding useful questions to ask of the whole
process.
Inspection and development
So, what is the link between inspection and teacher development? Some
studies have shown that there would appear to be none:
Despite the evident intensity of the Ofsted experience, teachers in
our study uniformly indicate that, 1 year after inspection, it has had
no lasting impact on what they do in the classroom. If Ofsted has
questionable direct influence on teaching practice outside nominal
compliance with its formal procedures in the run-up to and during the
inspection visit, we are left to question what purpose it actually serves.
Our conclusion is that, just as teachers stage manage a performance
for the visiting inspectorate, the whole Ofsted apparatus itself is little
more than a grand political cipher created and maintained to satisfy
the imagined scrutinising gaze of a wider public. In short, Ofsted is
stage-managed public accountability.
(Case et al. 2000: 605)
However, inspection, as with much else in education, cannot easily be
evaluated. Some researchers have attempted to gauge schools and teachers
opinions about the inspection process. Others have looked at the evidence
of a direct impact of inspection on student achievement. Some studies have
asked whether inspection provides value for money.
Kogan and Maden (1999) evaluated Ofsted inspections using question-
naires to schools; case studies conducted mainly through interviews; inter-
views with relevant organizations including unions and associations for
inspectors, parents and governors; and financial analyses. They reported
that stakeholders identified the main benefits of the Ofsted system as
including:
the process of self-examination which leads up to the inspection week
(now the inspection team is in school for a maximum of two days)
the value of external perspectives on the work and running of schools
the increase in mutual support among staff generated by external
inspection and a related recognition of improvements in self-esteem
that flow from public affirmation of the work of staff, schools and
pupils within schools.
Stakeholders identified some weaknesses, too:
the system is seen as punitive and fault-finding and generates a climate of
fear, which leads to stress and anxiety among staff
the summative, judgemental outcomes are not effective in promoting
reflective professional development within schools
the system is intolerant of alternative approaches to school improvement
and effectiveness.
(Kogan and Maden 1999: 201)
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Kogan and Maden (1999: 25), in a study that the former Chief Inspector,
Chris Woodhead, described as a reasonably balanced account (Woodhead
1999: 5) concluded that it is hazardous to assume any connection between
Ofsted inspection and improved performance.
Cullingford and Daniels used a predominantly quantitative study in their
research. They looked at the impact of the timing of Ofsted inspections
on the GCSE examination performance of a representative sample of
pupils throughout England. They reported that the time of inspections
is significant and that the nearer to the exam period that inspections
take place the worse the results (Cullingford and Daniels 1999: 66). They
summarize their findings by arguing that Ofsted inspections have the
opposite effect to that intended. Year on year they lower standards
(Cullingford and Daniels 1999: 66). Woodhead (1999: 5) quoted an
unnamed Ofsted statistician as dismissing the research as deeply flawed;
ineptly executed and poorly argued.
Fitz-Gibbon and Stephenson-Forster (1999: 115), reporting on a ques-
tionnaire study of 159 headteachers, found that Ofsted had failed to win
the confidence of headteachers and had caused schools considerable
expense. In response to a question asking How much information of use
to you in improving schooling did you gain from the inspection? four
heads (of the 85 who had recently been inspected) reported having learned
nothing; 14 reported not much; 34 reported some learning; 28 reported
quite a lot; and five reported a large amount. These findings point to a
wide variation in headteachers perceptions of the utility of Ofsted.
Surveys conducted by MORI (1999) and by the National Union of
Teachers (NUT 1998), focusing on the long-term effect of Ofsted inspection
(rather than on the process and judgements made), came to reasonably
similar conclusions. In the MORI survey, just 27 per cent of primary schools
responding saw inspection as a way to raise standards, and 15 per cent said
it helped to improve teaching. In the NUT survey:
Probably the most significant finding arose from the penultimate ques-
tion in the survey. Overwhelmingly, head and deputy headteacher
members rejected the statement that Ofsted inspections led directly
to schools improving. Two-thirds of respondents did not believe
that inspections helped school improvement, whereas only 17 per
cent agreed with this statement.
(NUT 1998: 3)
Thomas 1997 survey of the impact of inspection on 80 Welsh secondary
schools concluded that the weight of evidence indicates that inspection
does lead to some improvement in schools; it does not, however, show that
inspection brings about large or even medium improvements in many
areas (Thomas 1999: 145). Thomas comments that there must be some
doubt as to whether [inspection] is a cost-effective method for raising
standards (1999: 146). Gray and Gardner (1999), in a study of 70 Northern
Ireland primary and secondary-level schools, commented that there were
clear reservations about the extent of anxiety induced by the process, the
amount of time necessary to prepare for the inspection and the inclusion of
lay persons in the inspection team (p. 455). Lee and Fitz (1998), who inter-
viewed 18 registered inspectors, found that their respondents identified a
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108 Justin Dillon
lacuna in the system in that there [was] no easily available source of advice
and guidance to help schools meet the Key Issues thrown up by inspection
(p. 239).
So, on balance, it would seem that inspection offers some schools and
some teachers a valuable opportunity to reflect on what they are doing.
In recent years, Ofsted has appeared to be less of a threat to schools and
successive chief inspectors have been keen not to be demonized in the way
that Chris Woodhead was. However, two-day inspections every three years
by a team of five people does not seem to be the best way to help schools
and teachers to improve their own teaching standards given all that we
know about teacher development (see Chapter 28 for more details).
Systematic reflection, appraisal, peer teaching and mentoring would seem
to be more likely than Ofsted inspections to facilitate teacher development,
especially if those processes take place in an overall framework of school
self-evaluation.
Concluding comments
Although beginning teachers sometimes complain about the amount of

time that they are required to spend reflecting, reflection is one of the most
powerful tools that we have to improve performance. Reflecting on lessons
and other aspects of being a teacher will help you to understand who you
are and should lead to you planning more effective lessons. Used well,
reflection is a form of formative assessment, helping you to assess your own
performance. Used badly, reflection can turn into a process of denial and
blame.
Inspection, in theory, should provide few surprises to the reflective
teacher and the reflective school. Inspection, in an ideal world, should act
as a quality assurance tool, making sure that children and teachers across
the country are getting a fair deal. However, it is not an ideal world and
inspection is still seen as a somewhat daunting and threatening process by
many people. Accountability is seen by some as a dirty word a surrogate
for unnecessary state intervention in public education. By imposing
accountability systems on teachers and schools, their professional capacity
for self-improvement, it is argued, is diminished. Maybe it is time for
teachers to have greater control over their own practices as long as they
possess the ability to learn, aided by others, from their own reflections and
the resources to effect necessary changes.
Note
Parts of this chapter draw heavily on Inspection, Chapter 7 in the second

edition of Becoming a Teacher. I would like to acknowledge the contributions
of Alison Millett and the late Jenny Adey, both of whom co-authored that
chapter.
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London: Falmer Press, pp. 1122.
Wilcox, B. and Gray, J. (1996) Inspecting Schools: Holding Schools to Account and Helping
Schools to Improve. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Williams, E. (1999) Sleeplessness? Irritability? Low self-esteem? You must have
Ofsteditis, Times Educational Supplement (Mind and Body Supplement), 26 March.
Woodhead, C. (1999) An inspector responds, Guardian Education, 5 October.
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9 Social justice in schools:

engaging with equality
Louise Archer
Introduction
In this chapter I suggest that an understanding of social justice can be a

useful tool for teachers who want to work in equitable ways and who wish
to foster a classroom environment that is experienced as fair and respectful
by pupils from diverse backgrounds. Indeed, teachers are also required to
have due regard for equality issues in line with the National Curriculum
inclusion statement. In this chapter, I illustrate how the concept of social
justice can help us to analyse and address unequal power relations within
schools and classrooms and can help professionals to become more attuned
to hidden inequalities.
What do we mean by social justice?
The term social justice is increasingly being used by academics as a means

for engaging with issues of inequality although it has perhaps been less
commonly employed within policy and practitioner circles. In one sense,
the notion of social justice is just another way of talking about and
engaging with issues of equality and fairness. Indeed, we could ask why it
is even necessary, given the proliferation of terminology within this area in
recent years (for example, social exclusion/inclusion; social equity; equal
opportunities; equality and diversity; equality of outcomes). However, as
I argue below, the strength of social justice is that it provides a robust and
comprehensive toolkit for engaging with inequalities due primarily to the
ways in which it has been meticulously theorized.
So how might we conceptualize social justice? In her book, Action for
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Social justice in schools: engaging with equality 113
Social Justice in Education, Morwenna Griffiths postulates that social justice

is a verb (Griffiths 2003: 55). In other words, it is a dynamic project never
complete, finished or achieved once and for all, it is always subject to
revision. Drawing on the work of Young (1990) and Fraser (1997), we might
usefully identify three key forms of social justice (see also Power and
Gewirtz 2001 and Gewirtz 2002 for an example of this framework in
practice):
Relational justice: this is about ensuring cultural recognition and
respect. It refers to fair and just relationships within society.
Distributive justice: this concerns the allocation and distribution of
material and discursive goods and resources within society. It is about
making sure that economic, cultural and other resources are shared out
equitably.
Associational justice: this refers to peoples ability to have a say and
participate in decisions that affect their own lives. It is about ensuring
that people are enabled to be active and equitable participants in society.
This tripartite conceptualization of social justice offers a complex and
holistic approach to identifying and understanding different forms of
inequality. Yet as Gewirtz (1998) argues, the three aspects of social justice
are not simple, discrete categories. Rather, they overlap, inter-relate and can
contradict one another. This alerts us to how the task of promoting social
justice within schools will never be simple or straightforward there is
no single, one-size-fits-all approach. However, the three components do
provide a useful model for helping to identify the different sorts of equity
issues that might be at stake within any given context.
So how might this concept of social justice help us to engage with issues
of equality and diversity within schools? The following sections outline
and discuss some key features of contemporary debates pertaining to three
core axes of social difference within UK society and schools, namely gender,
race/ethnicity and social class. Due to constraints of space, I have chosen
to concentrate on gender, race/ethnicity and social class there are
other important axes, such as sexuality, dis/ability and so on. Gender,
race/ethnicity and social class have been organized here as separate
sections purely for ease of presentation and comprehension. This approach
should not be interpreted as indicating that I treat them as separate,
free-standing social categories. Rather, I would argue that they are all
inextricably interlinked (see Archer 2005 regarding my re/theorization of
difference).
Each section starts by outlining the theoretical and policy context and
then moves on to illustrate social justice issues for teachers and schools
through a discussion of recent research evidence. It should be noted, how-
ever, that the chapter provides merely a brief snapshot and introduction to
issues and research in each area it cannot fully represent the depth and
complexity of issues and work within the field.
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114 Louise Archer
Gender
Theoretical and policy context
Since the mid1990s, one of the most high profile educational issues has
been the boys underachievement debate. Newspapers regularly contain
headlines expressing concerns about a crisis in relation to boys under-
achievement and governments around the world have instigated a
plethora of initiatives designed to increase boys attainment at school.
Many of these interventions have been substantially funded, for example
the $4million lighthouse schools programme in Australia and the $1.2
million study in the USA into whether single-sex teaching can raise boys
achievement (see Francis and Skelton 2005 for a full discussion and
overview). In the UK too, there has been a proliferation of research and
initiatives, such as the Playing for Success national programme (a football-
themed initiative to encourage after-school homework).
Despite the overwhelming media and policy concern with boys under-
achievement, the evidence pertaining to the existence, or the size, of any
gender gap in achievement is rather less clear-cut. Indeed, whilst the popu-
lar headlines scream out each summer that girls are outperforming boys at
GCSE and A level, these overall aggregate figures hide important underlying
trends. For instance, girls do not outperform boys at all subjects: female out
performance of boys is strongly connected to their overwhelmingly higher
achievement at language and literacy subjects, which somewhat skews the
achievement figures overall (Francis and Skelton 2005: 3).
An international study of achievement across 43 countries (the OECD
2003 PISA study) also found that boys do slightly better than girls in
mathematics in almost all countries and that achievement in science is
roughly equal (although in some cases boys outperform girls). However,
girls were found to perform significantly better in combined reading scales
(see Francis and Skelton 2005, for analysis and discussion).
Indeed, it has been argued that the scale of concern with boys under-
achievement in the UK is entirely disproportionate to the issue:
although there are grave concerns among British policy-makers

and journalists about boys underachievement, Britain is actually one
of the five countries where the OECD PISA study (2003) identifies the
gender gap as narrowest.
(Francis and Skelton 2005: 3)
Serious questions have also been raised about the use of broad-brush
statistics within the boys underachievement debate. For instance, the
seminal book by Epstein et al. (1998) argues that it is not true to say that all
boys are underachieving and all girls are achieving. Rather, they point to
complex racialized, classed and gendered patterns of achievement posing
the question as to which boys and which girls are under/achieving?
Attention has also been drawn to statistics that demonstrate how boys
achievement is actually rising year on year. Furthermore, data on post-16
employment and earnings indicate that boys tend to be more advantaged
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than girls in the labour market. Hence feminist academics have argued
that the boys underachievement debate is not only misleading, but is also
potentially harmful because it hides the issues and problems experienced
by many girls, directs resources towards boys at the expense of girls and
deflects attention from more significant achievement gaps in relation to
race and social class.
Research evidence: social justice issues for teachers
There is a considerable and wide-ranging body of feminist (and pro-

feminist) research pertaining to gender equality in schooling. The journal
Gender and Education is also an excellent source for current research and
thinking. Below, however, are a couple of selected themes together with
some illustrations from research, which raise some pertinent issues for
teachers wanting to address gender equity within schools.
The popular focus on addressing boys underachievement within
schools has entailed a range of negative implications for girls, whose needs
have slipped off the policy agenda. As a study by Osler and Vincent (2003)
details, this situation is playing a key role in generating girls hidden
exclusion. For instance, the types of social exclusion often experienced by
girls (such as verbal/psychological bullying, truancy, self-exclusion and
leaving school due to pregnancy) are often overlooked and inadequately
resourced because policy makers and practitioners are working with a
notion of exclusion that is based on the most common features of boys
exclusion. Hence, Osler and Vincent argue, girls exclusion has become
more difficult for professionals to recognize and address.
Particular attention has also been given to the crucial role played by
teachers gendered expectations and stereotypes in reproducing gender
inequalities within schools. Teachers (unwitting) gendered expectations
of pupils can impact on their interactions with pupils in class and can
play a role in shaping pupils aspirations and expectations (for instance,
steering them towards particular gender-stereotypical aspirations and
career expectations see, for example, Osgood et al. 2006). Indeed, there is a
wealth of research evidence documenting how teachers are more likely
to describe boys as being naturally intelligent and girls as plodding
achievers, irrespective of the childs actual attainment (see, for example,
Walkerdine 1990). Indeed, it has been argued that many professionals work
with an implicit (unwitting) model of the ideal pupil that is constructed in
masculine terms. Against this, girls may be relegated to a helpful, sensible
servicing role (see Francis and Skelton 2005); for example, being expected
to help facilitate boys learning and deferring to boys dominance in the
classroom. Numerous studies have also documented how boys continue to
take up proportionally more space in schools and playgrounds, dominating
these spaces both physically and discursively (see, for example, Connolly
1998; Skelton 2001; Connolly 2003).
Another important area of concern relates to pupils constructions of gender
identity particularly the ways in which the coolest and most popular
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116 Louise Archer
forms of masculinity and femininity are configured. Research has been

particularly instructive in developing our understandings of how gender
identities are constructed within matrices of power, and how the
dominance of particular hegemonic forms of masculinity and femininity
can impact negatively on the lives and experiences of other pupils.
Studies, such as those conducted in Australia by Martino and Palotta-
Chiarolli (2005), highlight the pain and misery endured by those pupils
with marginalized masculinities and femininities, who experience ridicule
and relentless pressure to conform to a very narrow dominant form of
popular masculinity/femininity. For instance, Martino and Palotta-
Chiarolli (2005) detail boys and girls accounts of sexualized bullying that
is tolerated in schools because the perpetrators are interpreted as just being
cool or normal.
The value of schools working to help pupils to deconstruct gender stereo-
types and to develop broader, more inclusive gender identity constructions
is not merely a social justice issue. Large-scale national research under-
taken by Warrington and Younger (2002) demonstrates that boys tend to
record higher levels of achievement in schools where gender constructions
are less extreme and polarized. It has thus been argued that:
teachers need to develop ways of getting their pupils to reflect and
critique taken-for-granted but gendered assumptions of classroom/
media texts, ways of being organised, managed and assessed, engaging
with learning, and so forth.
(Francis and Skelton 2005: 149)
To this end, practical assistance and ideas for professional development
activities can be found in the following: Mills (2001) for tackling dominant
forms of masculinity and cultures of violence in schools; Martino and
Palotta-Chiarolli (2005) for challenging gender stereotypes among pupils
and staff and reformulating student-welfare policies; Rowan et al. (2002)
for addressing gender and literacy; and Francis (2000) in relation to
deconstructing gender stereotyping within secondary schools.
Race and ethnicity
Whilst issues of race and ethnicity tend to occupy the centre-stage of

American education policy discourse, they have not achieved such a high-
profile status in the UK. This is not to say that questions of race/ethnicity
do not feature within UK education debates, but rather that racialized
inequalities within schooling have not been positioned as a social justice
imperative to quite the same extent. Indeed, it has been argued that there
has been a distinct dearth of mainstream discussion and interventions
focussing on race, ethnicity and achievement in the UK (Gillborn 2001,
2005).
In contemporary education policy, issues around race/ethnicity are
predominantly configured in relation to the differential achievement of
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pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds. Concerns have primarily been

expressed about the underachievement (and low rates of progression
into post-16 education) of African Caribbean pupils (especially African
Caribbean boys) and, to a slightly lesser extent, Pakistani and Bangla-
deshi pupils (see DfES 2006a/b). Calls have been made, however, to use
such statistics with caution not least because the broad-brush categories
employed often lump together groups with very different levels of
achievement. For instance, the use of White as a category within official
statistics can comprise both White British, Irish and Gypsy/Roma children
(all of whom record quite different levels of achievement), and the term
Asian can encompass higher-achieving Indian pupils and lower-achieving
Bangladeshi pupils (DfES 2005).
Criticisms have also been made of the ways in which much contem-
porary education policy engages with issues of race/ethnicity. For
instance, attention has been drawn to the subtle yet sustained erasure of the
language of race and ethnicity from New Labour policies (Lewis 2000).
Reviewing statistical evidence and recent policy initiatives, Archer and
Francis (2007) argue that issues of race/ethnicity have been subject to a
pernicious turn in recent policy discourse. In particular, we have argued
that current education policy explanations of (and proposed strategies for
engaging with) underachievement among minority ethnic pupils tend to
deny or ignore racism as a factor. Instead, emphasis tends to be placed on
cultural, personal and family factors (for example, the notion of a poverty
of aspirations within families). This approach can pathologize minority
ethnic pupils and their families and shift the locus of blame/attention away
from social structures and institutions and on to minority ethnic families
who are positioned as the primary site of both the problem and any
solutions. Furthermore, we have argued that such policy approaches
tend to naturalize differences in achievement between ethnic groups and
effectively remove the means for engaging with inequalities.
Of course the pathologization of minority ethnic pupils and families
within education policy is not a recent or new phenomenon. In the 1960s,
minority ethnic pupils were treated as explicit educational problems, who
were bussed out to different schools in order to spread the burden of
educating them. As Mullard (1985) discusses, a compensatory approach
dominated, in which minority ethnic pupils were perceived in terms of
lack hence the primary issue was seen to be how to address and com-
pensate for these pupils deficits of skills, intelligence, language and so
forth. Minority ethnic pupils were framed as problems that need solving
with interventions being designed to speed up pupils assimilation into
the mainstream (for example, encouraging them to give up their alien
ways).
There have been various discursive shifts over the years in terms of how
education policy has approached the schooling of minority ethnic pupils
although, as critics point out, these have often been built upon problematic
conceptualizations of race and ethnicity. For instance, the advent of
multiculturalism sought to celebrate diversity yet it attracted criticism for
reproducing simplistic, stereotypical views of minority ethnic groups.
In particular, the focus upon celebrating aspects of culture has been cri-
tiqued for reifying and homogenizing ethnic differences and propagating
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118 Louise Archer
stereotypical representations of ethnic groups (the saris, samosas, steel

bands syndrome). At the same time, this approach also ignored structural
inequalities such as racism and could not account for more complex
patterns of (under) achievement (see Rattansi 1992 for a discussion).
Anti-racism developed as an alternative to multiculturalism, emphasizing
(as the name suggests) the role of racism within minority ethnic pupils
experiences of schooling. Yet this movement also attracted criticism for its
homogenization of all minority ethnic groups under a single banner and for
its rather simplistic understanding of racism. Indeed, the MacDonald
Report (1989) set up in response to the murder of pupil Ahmed Iqbal Ullah
by a white pupil in the playground of his school delivered a condemning
analysis of the ineffectiveness of the anti-racist policies of the school in
question at the time.
More recently, the MacPherson Report (1999) released after the murder
of black London teenager Stephen Lawrence instigated a new policy
awareness regarding the role of institutional racism. The report heralded in
new legislation, in the form of the Race Relations Amendment Act (2000),
which places a duty on public institutions to tackle racism and promote
good race relations. And yet, it has been argued that, in general, the New
Labour administration has tended to maintain the colour-blind stance
adopted by preceding Conservative Governments (Gillborn 2001; Majors
2001). Furthermore, it has been noted that the Government seems not
to attach the same importance (and does not devote the same resources) to
addressing racial and ethnic differences in achievement as compared, for
example, to gender. This, Gillborn (2005) argues, indicates an implicit
acceptance of racial inequity within British education policy and reflects
tacit intentionality on the part of the Government that is, an intention
to maintain power structures that privilege Whites. Certainly, it might be
noted that whilst national policy makers acknowledge issues such as the
disproportionate exclusion of black boys (DfES, 2003) and the findings of
the MacPherson Report (1999), the Government has still been unwilling to
set targets for improvement in relation to any of the statistics outlined.
Despite the erasure of race and ethnicity from the policy context, a con-
siderable amount of research has been conducted to illuminate the social
justice issues within schools. The journal Race, Ethnicity and Education also
provides a useful reference point for reading further about current research
and theory in this area. Detailed below are some core themes that may be of
particular interest to teachers wishing to grapple with the issues.
A key issue facing minority ethnic pupils is that of racist stereotyping. This
not only relates to the tendency for some teachers and schools to hold
lower expectations of Black and minority ethnic pupils, but also to more
subtle, complex, specifically racialized stereotypical discourses. In other
words, popular discursive constructions of particular groups of pupils can
result in an array of differential implications for the pupils concerned.
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For instance, a number of studies have drawn attention to the disjuncture

between teachers expectations for Black girls, and the views and aspirations
of the girls and their parents. As I argue elsewhere, there is dominant popu-
lar perception that average achievement is good enough for Black girls and
boys whereas Black pupils and their families often talk about wanting
more (Archer 2006). Consequently, aspirational Black pupils may be forced
to negotiate circuitous, strategic, back-door routes to achieve educational
success (Mirza 1992). For example, Loretta, an 18-year-old Black African
student from one study, described her experience of being dissuaded from
applying to university:
I was told not to apply because, you know, I just wouldnt get the grade
and whatever . . . and the teacher turned round and said to me well
I think 14.50 [the application fee] is a lot of money. And I said, do
you know what? When I go to university, whatever I make, Im sure it
will cover that 14.50, so Ill just spend it ahead. Im really cheeky
when I want to be.
(Archer et al. 2003: 103)
Loretta did in fact receive three offers of a university place and had achieved
the requisite grades at the time of her mock examinations. Lorettas story is,
unfortunately, borne out time and again within other research studies. For
instance, 16-year-old Analisa described being laughed at by a teacher for her
aspirations to go to LSE (Archer et al., forthcoming) and Marilyn, a young
Black woman from yet another study (Archer et al. 2004), recounted:
I said to Mr W before like, because you know when we had to go
down to the library and do all the Connexions? He goes Oh Marilyn,
so what do you want to do when you grow up? And I said I wanted to
be a lawyer and he just laughed and he goes You! and I went Yes and
he goes I dont think so.
Attention has also been drawn to how dominant stereotypes about Black
masculinity operate as pernicious racist discourses. For instance, Sewell
(1997) discusses how the identities and behaviours of Black boys in school
are often interpreted as being aggressive, problematic and challenging.
These images are also underpinned by popular associations of Black mascu-
linity as hyper-heterosexual and macho a construction that has its root
in historical racist representations of blackness (hooks 1992; Mama 1995).
Asian and Chinese pupils have also long been subject to particular forms
of stereotyping although these have often taken more positive guises,
representing such pupils as clever, quiet, behavers and achievers
(Gillborn 1990; Archer and Francis 2005a). However, even these seemingly
positive stereotypes have been shown to be experienced as negative and
homogenizing by the young people concerned. More recently, there has
been a discursive split within representations of Asian pupils whereby
achievers (Indian, predominantly Sikh and Hindu pupils) have been repre-
sentationally differentiated from believers namely Muslim pupils from
Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds. The impact of Islamaphobia on
representations of Muslims (but particularly boys) as problematic pupils is
documented elsewhere (Archer 2003). A sustained critique has also been
mounted regarding racist popular constructions of Asian/Muslim girls as
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120 Louise Archer
passive and oppressed hapless dependants whose families are more con-
cerned with getting them married off than pursuing an education (for
example, Brah 1996; Basit 1997; Ahmad 2001; Shain 2003).
In addition to the issue of stereotyping, minority ethnic pupils continue
to experience verbal and physical violence within schools. For instance,
Muslim young people in a town in the northwest of England recounted
their near-daily experiences of being spat at, insulted and attacked (Archer
2003). They also, however, described more subtle manifestations of racism
from their peers for instance, explaining their confusion about how their
White peers would be friendly in school but would ignore us in public at
the weekends. A study by Becky Francis and myself also records how British-
Chinese pupils regularly experience name-calling and how British Chinese
boys complain that they are regularly taunted (as Bruce Lee) and are forced
to fight by their male peers (Archer and Francis 2005b, 2006). As pupils from
across minority ethnic backgrounds point out, there is still a challenge
for schools in how to resolve incidents of violence. The issue seems par-
ticularly acute in the case of those boys who choose to use violence back in
retaliation with many complaining that an even-handed punishment
of both sides is unfair not least when the original abuse may remain
unaddressed (and hence is perceived to be sanctioned by the school). This
illustrates the complexity of enacting social justice in schools although it
does also indicate how addressing racism may also entail a complementary
focus on challenging hegemonic forms of masculinity.
Attention has also been drawn to the importance of ensuring an
equitable school ethos and organization, in which parents and pupils various
needs and values are valued and respected. Within educational policy, this
is often discussed in terms of the provision of special resources (for example,
halal food, prayer rooms) and the adoption of practices and rules that can
accommodate cultural and religious differences (for example, flexible rules
around uniform, permitting the wearing of hijab, etc). However, critics
have argued that such measures can only go so far, and that additional
efforts may be required with respect to ensuring, for instance, that the
curriculum represents the histories, interests and identities of diverse
ethnic, cultural and religious groups. Debates also continue around the
imbalances that exist in terms of state funding of faith schools with pro-
portionally far more White faith/denominational schools being supported
as compared, for instance, to Muslim faith schools (see, for example, Parker-
Jenkins et al. 2004). Important concerns have also been raised that the
voices of Black and minority ethnic parents remain absent from many
schools at both formal and informal levels (see Crozier and Reay 2005).
Social class
Within current education policy, issues pertaining to social class tend to be

framed in terms of working-class pupils (under)achievement and low rates
of progression into post-16 education. Statistics indicate that young people
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from poorer socio-economic backgrounds (and those on free school meals)

achieve lower academic results than their more affluent peers (DfES 2005).
Students from working-class backgrounds also remain severely and per-
sistently under-represented at university level (NCIHE 1997; Archer et al.
2003). Consequently, initiatives such as Connexions, Learning Mentors,
Aim Higher and the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) have been
introduced in an effort to support achievement and to encourage more
working-class young people to stay on in further and higher education.
It is interesting to note, however, that despite the continued policy
interest in raising working-class young peoples achievement and post16
progression, there has been an erasure of the actual language of social class
within education policy. Thus, rather than talking about working-
class pupils, official publications are more likely to use the euphemistic
terminology of socially excluded, disadvantaged and/or deprived indi-
viduals and communities (see Lewis 2000). As various critics argue, these
terms need to be treated with care because they are conceptually loaded and
contain a range of normative (and often pathologizing) assumptions.
Whilst it is widely agreed that the achievement and progression of
working-class young people is an issue that requires policy attention, there
are also quite stark differences of opinion regarding the potential causes
of, and solutions to, the issue. For instance, current policies have been
criticized for adopting a deficit approach to working-class young people and
their families because they assume that lower rates of achievement and
post16 progression are the result of pupils faulty cognitions and/or
lack of information/knowledge (see, for example, Thomas 2001). These
assumptions are evidenced within prevalent policy references to pupils
low aspirations and family cultures that do not value education. In con-
trast, critics have argued that the generation of patterns of working-class
achievement and post-16 progression is far more complex, being produced
through an interplay of structural and institutional inequalities together
with social, cultural, emotional and identity factors (as illustrated further
below).
Alongside these policy debates, social class also remains a hotly contested
concept within sociological and academic circles. Opinion is divided as
to how best to define, understand and theorize social class, and debates rage
as to whether the concept of social class is even still relevant and useful.
Within these debates it is noticeable that a culturalist approach to
theorizing social class is proving attractive (see, for example, Savage 2000;
Skeggs 2004), particularly amongst educationalists concerned with pro-
moting social justice (see, for example, Reay 1997, 2002). This approach
treats class as a fuzzy concept that is as much to do with peoples feelings
about their identities and lived experiences as it is to do with their
objective position in occupational and economic terms (see also Skeggs
1997; Lawler 1999).
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122 Louise Archer
So what can research tell us about the social justice issues facing schools
with respect to working-class pupils? The work of Diane Reay (see, for
example, 1997, 2002) provides a particularly useful starting point for
reading further about social class inequalities and schooling. The following
provides a thumbnail sketch/brief overview of some key themes emerging
from recent studies conducted with young people in UK secondary schools.
Attention has been drawn to the social justice implications of the school
as a classed institution. For instance, various studies record how working-
class young people report feeling excluded by the middle class, posh
language, ethos and curriculum of schools. For instance, interviews con-
ducted with working-class girls in two separate London studies (Archer et al.
2004; Archer et al. 2005) revealed how the girls felt alienated by their
schools middle-class institutional habitus. They described feeling
estranged from the high brow speech of some of their teachers and com-
plained that there was a gulf of understanding between their common
selves and posh teachers who, they felt, were not on their level. This
finding has also been noted in relation to working-class students in higher
education (see, for example, Read et al. 2003). A number of working-class
pupils also experienced aspects of the curriculum as irrelevant to their own
lives. For instance, a pupil in one study (Archer 2006) was adamant that
learning Spanish is irrelevant because its unlikely for me to go out to
Spain. She continued, I cant speak enough language anyway, even
English, Im common and thats that revealing the psychic damage
inflicted on those who are already judged to be lacking and of lesser value
within dominant systems.
Various studies have also flagged up how classed relations between teachers,
pupils and parents are implicated within the reproduction of inequalities. For
instance, many working-class young people report experiencing a gulf of
understanding and (an albeit sometimes unintentional) lack of respect
from teachers/schools due to the disjuncture between the classed back-
grounds, identities and assumptions of home and school. For instance,
some pupils report feeling misunderstood by teachers and studies have
highlighted how young peoples attempts to generate a sense of value and
worth in their lives (for example, through particular styles of ways of
being) may be interpreted as inappropriate or anti-education by middle-
class professionals (see Archer et al. 2007). Furthermore, pupils have com-
plained that interactions with their families at parents evenings can be
disrespectful. As one girl put it:
Some of the things they say . . . its making them look at my mum
stupidly, and Im like dont talk to my mum like that, shes right there,
she understands what youre saying, shes not dumb.
(Cited in Archer et al. 2004)
Working-class parents also describe feeling looked down on by schools
and are subsequently wary about further contact (Reay 1997). This may, in
turn, be interpreted by schools as evidence that these parents do not care
sufficiently about their childrens education so feeding into a cycle of bad
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feeling and/or miscommunication. For similar reasons (and exacerbated by

tighter constraints on time and resources), working-class parents also tend
to be less fully or less frequently involved in consultations regarding how
their childrens schools are organized and run (Crozier and Reay 2005).
Class differences between home and school can entail a lack of under-
standing from both sides regarding the identities, motivations and contexts
of the other. There is also, of course, evidence of instances of more overt
class prejudice for instance, in one study a teachers description of
working-class families as a bolshie and obnoxious, underclass of just
bloody useless parents (Archer 2006). All of these examples illustrate
the symbolic violence that may be experienced as the result of living in
positions of inequality and subordination and how knowing that you are
looked down on within society constitutes what Sennett and Cobb (1993)
have termed the hidden injuries of class.
A further important consideration concerns the ways in which material
inequalities can impact on the lives and education of working-class pupils.
Less affluent families obviously have fewer economic (financial) resources
with which to support their childrens learning whereas middle-class
families benefit from having the money to pay for more (or more exotic)
school trips, home computers/Internet, reference materials, extra tutoring
and a whole host of extra-curricula enrichment activities (see Vincent and
Ball 2006). Financial resources are not the only type of resource, however,
and working-class families may experience tighter constraints on resources
such as time and physical space. For instance, some working-class pupils
may find it more difficult to do their homework due to a lack of space at
home and/or because they provide important caring responsibilities for
parents or siblings. Where families experience different levels of material
and cultural wealth, this can also generate symbolic violences; for example,
where pupils feel looked down on because they cannot afford to purchase
particular uniforms or go on school trips. Disparities in wealth also strongly
shape the types of school that pupils attend an issue exacerbated by
current school choice policies (Gewirtz 2002). Indeed, working-class
pupils are disproportionately represented in sink and demonized schools
with poorer physical environments and resources (Reay and Lucey 2003).
They are also less likely to see higher education (particularly the more
prestigious institutions) as either open or affordable (Archer et al. 2003).
Concluding comments
This chapter has discussed how the concept of social justice can be a useful
tool for education professionals. However, this is not to imply that teachers
are responsible for either causing or indeed solving all societal problems
and injustices! As Gewirtz (2002) discusses, there are no purely egalitarian
policies or practices, and the extent to which particular actions are
equitable will be mediated by the context and according to the different
parties involved. Indeed, it would be unrealistic to expect teachers to be
able to change national government policies and of course we must be
mindful that teachers must work within particular sets of requirements,
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124 Louise Archer
responsibilities and constraints, all of which demand attention, time and

resources. However, it is suggested that by developing an understanding of
the complexity of enacting social justice in practice and by fostering an
awareness of the various types of issues that might be encountered, teachers
may be able to create small (but significant) changes in their classrooms
and schools. To this end, I have outlined a model for understanding social
justice and have tried to draw attention to a few equity issues (in relation
to gender, race/ethnicity and social class) which may not otherwise be
necessarily apparent as they often arise as (unintended) implications from
wider policies or common sense ways of thinking. This mode of reflection
might be particularly valuable for teachers who come from dominant (for
example, White or middle-class) backgrounds, because we are rarely obliged
to reflect on our privilege and the taken-for-granted assumptions that it
can bring. At times this can be a difficult, even painful, process but it also
carries the potential to be incredibly important and fruitful. In sum, the
chapter has tried to open up ways of thinking about equality in all its
complexity as part of a collective project of creating an education system
that can be experienced as fair and socially just by all pupils, teachers and
parents.
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10 Education, schools
and cities
Meg Maguire and

Justin Dillon
Introduction
Successive governments have failed to resolve the educational

problems of the major cities. Standards have been too low for far too
long. Raising standards in order to lift opportunities for our children
is the key priority for the Government. It is clear that schools in our
inner cities demand urgent attention.
(Tony Blair and David Blunkett, foreword, DfEE 1999a: 1)
In this chapter, we focus on the sorts of schools that are currently described
as facing challenging circumstances (DfES 2006). These are schools whose
intake reflects the higher levels of social deprivation and disadvantage that
are usually, but not only, found in large urban areas (DETR 2000). What we
want to do is to provide a brief historical background to these schools in
order to contextualize them. Then we want to review some earlier policy
approaches towards these schools. The chapter then considers some con-
temporary policies in the area for, as Tomlinson (2005: 108) has put it, the
long association of inner city schools with disadvantaged, disaffected and
disruptive pupils (has) continued to be regarded as a major public policy
challenge by New Labour (Tomlinson 2005: 108).
Schools facing challenging circumstances (SFCCs) often experience
higher than average teacher turnover (Menter et al. 2002). This means that
many beginning teachers will be doing their training and then taking up
posts in these predominantly city-based schools as this is where vacancies
will tend to occur. Teachers choose to teach in SFCCs for a wide variety of
reasons; sometimes because they have done their teacher education in
these schools; because they want to enjoy the cultural richness of the city
where many of these schools are located; or because they come from the
city themselves (Menter et al. 2002). Recent research has also shown that
some teachers elect to work and stay working in SFCCs because they have a
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strong desire to make a contribution towards society through making a

difference (Riddell 2003; Maguire et al. 2006).
In the main, less advantaged and less privileged students attend SFCCs.
The urban poor, however they are constituted in ethnic, gender or class
terms in various societies, and wherever they are located, are a challenge to
established institutions (Grace 1994: 45). This challenge is not always
easy for teachers to manage. If trainee teachers and beginning teachers
are trying to cope and survive in difficult circumstances, without much
more than a cursory understanding of broader structural and material
explanations for SFCCs, they may end up blaming their school students
for the difficulties they face in their teaching. (This sort of response could
indirectly contribute towards reduced expectations and lower achieve-
ment.) This chapter is an attempt to help you to theorize and understand
the urban context and SFFCs in terms of social as well as pedagogical
theories.
Brief historical context
Inner city schools have always served a distinct section of society; the
working-class urban poor. Their schools in and around the inner city
stand as beacons and landmarks of working class education (Hall
1977: 11).
It is important to appreciate that there have always been problems with
the working-class urban poor and with their schooling. This is not a new
phenomenon. If we go back to the nineteenth century, a period of intense
industrialization when state schools were first set up, it is possible to
see some continuities with contemporary educational provision (at least in
England) (Jones 2003). The nineteenth century was characterized by a
move from the land to the town. The new industrializing cities were unable
to respond quickly enough to the influx of population and, in consequence,
there was a crisis in housing. Poverty, lack of adequate sanitation and poor
health provision led to a series of panics on the part of the emerging
middle classes. They feared the risk of contamination by the urban work-
ing classes (Stedman-Jones 1971). One consequence of this fear and a need
for separation was reflected in the growth of the suburbs an early form of
housing-zoning that promoted class segregation. There were other fears: for
the middle classes, politicians and the gentry, the fear of a revolutionary
urban mass was ever present (Fishman 1988).
In 1870, the state reluctantly agreed to provide a form of elementary
education to be paid for through taxation. The elementary schools of the
nineteenth-century cities were aimed at controlling and disciplining an
ignorant and dangerous urban working class. Schools were expected to
gentle and school this unruly mob and render them up as good and docile
workers for an industrializing nation. Their curriculum was designed partly
with this aim in mind and their teachers were trained to this task. Even at
their inception, urban schools were seen as difficult places that catered for
unruly children. They were not seen as suitable for children from more
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Education, schools and cities 129
economically privileged families who needed a different sort of provision

and who needed more than an elementary schooling. In terms of class
differentiation and segregation, nothing could be starker than the form that
state provision of education took in the late nineteenth century. Never-
theless, while the mass provision of elementary schooling might have
attempted to control and mould young minds and hearts, this has never
been a straightforward task. Schools also produce forms of covert and overt
resistance. For example, one of the most famous educational strikes
occurred in the early 1900s when elementary school children walked out
of their schools all across the UK in protest at being caned by their teachers
(Newell 1989).
During the early twentieth century, class segregation continued in
schools. Some scholarships were available for clever working-class
children who could then go to the local fee-paying secondary schools
mainly attended by their middle-class peers. In many cases, this offer could
not be taken up. Working-class children often needed to obtain employ-
ment to help support their families. In addition, the scholarships did not
include money for uniforms and books. So, the meritocratic promise of
education as a force for social mobility was not on offer to every working-
class child who worked hard. There were no policies of widening partici-
pation other than the limited number of scholarships on offer.
Provision of state elementary schooling was extended in the twentieth
century and finally became universal by the 1930s. Free compulsory
secondary schooling for all was made a legal obligation by the Education
Act of 1944. The newly emerging middle-class professionals who were
paying increased taxes for state schooling now started to move their
children into the local primary schools where they lived. Where there
were many other middle-class children (in suburban schools, for example),
they moved into the state secondary system. Particularly after the 1944
Education Act when many of the old high-status grammar schools were
incorporated into the state sector, middle-class families started to become
comfortable with using (some parts of) the state sector for their children.
Gradually, state schooling (although largely class-segregated according
to location and catchment area) became the norm for the vast majority of
children in the UK.
There have always been concerns about good schools and bad schools.
From the 1944 Act onwards, secondary schooling was divided into grammar
schools (and their high-status, traditional, academic curriculum), mainly
attended by middle-class children, and secondary moderns (lower status,
more vocationally orientated), attended by the rest. As research in the
period put it, the dominating class in Britain still underrates the colossal
waste of talent in working-class children (Jackson and Marsden 1966: 16).
Gradually, the conviction spread that educating different classes of children
together would overcome some of the divisive shortcomings of the past.
But, then as now, location played a central part in assuring that while some
comprehensive schools had a diverse and comprehensive intake, others did
not. Some served communities that had high numbers of unemployed
people or were located in deprived housing estates. Not surprisingly,
some comprehensive schools became oversubscribed while others were
demonized as bad schools.
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The history of SFCC is a classed history of segregation, exclusion, poorer

resources and greater social need. In 1977 Hall wrote that, there has never
been, in England, anything remotely approaching a common or com-
prehensive school experience for all classes of children. Each kind of
school has been absorbed into its socio-geographic segment, and taken on
something of that imprint (Hall 1977: 11). This claim is still supported by
contemporary research (Ball 2003). Research studies conducted by Gorard
and Taylor (2003) and Taylor (2002) suggest that segregation has declined
in some schools, but they conclude that in the most popular and least
popular schools (the SFCCs), social class polarization is acute. In the con-
temporary de-industrializing city of the twenty-first century, the gentrifi-
cation of some of the more desirable neighbourhoods has involved
a displacement of some parts of the older working-class community
(Byrne 2001). In these gentrified areas, secondary schools have a more
socially mixed intake. In the poorer areas, blighted by higher than average
levels of unemployment, higher levels of poor health and higher levels
of crime (DETR 2000; Power et al. 2002), local schools are, somewhat
inevitably, faced with challenging circumstances. What we are suggesting
is that SFCC have to do their best in socially (not educationally) constituted
circumstances of disadvantage. These schools work hard to support their
students in school, but all the research evidence suggests that attainment is
highly correlated with socio-economic status (see Mortimore and Whitty
1997 for an excellent review). One question that has to be asked relates to
the extent to which contemporary society has the political will to tackle
poverty and disadvantage.
Galbraith (1992) has argued that a powerful constituency, what he calls
the contented electoral majority, actively resists the burden of redistri-
butive taxation. Individuals have the right to hold onto as much of their
money as possible, it is argued, while ensuring that they maximize their
families capacity to access state provisions health, welfare and education
(Jordan et al. 1994). In the educational context, this can be done through
moving house to access a good state school, paying for home tutoring to
enhance the likelihood of entrance to a selective state school, or having the
capacity (money and transport) to travel further to access a good school
(Ball 2003). All these individual measures are less available to inner city
working-class families. As Grace (1994: 46) says, the constituency of con-
tentment contains within itself a relative unwillingness to look at longer
term social, economic, or environmental planning, if these threaten pres-
ent contentment. In this way, the problem of poverty and disadvantage
becomes individualized and marginalized.
What has been tried in the past?
So far, we have traced some of the historical patterns of segregation,

exclusion and also (briefly) the resistance that has characterized the
school experiences of many working-class children. In this section, we will
examine the forms that policies took in the 1960s and 1970s when there
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was a serious attempt to reduce the differences in school achievement

between middle-class and inner city working-class school children. These
approaches have been summarized by an America researcher, Cicirelli
(1972), and still have some salience today.
Cicirelli suggested that one major set of public policy approaches drew on
notions of deficit based on assumptions that inner city children lacked
the ingredients for educational success. For example, living in inadequate
housing or experiencing less support within the family could, it was argued,
lead to underachievement in education. A strong interpretation of this
policy approach would indicate the need to eradicate structural disadvan-
tages through redistribution policies, perhaps through taxation reforms or
additional state welfare. A weaker and cheaper approach that located the
deficit in the culture/community would be more likely to result in policies
based on compensating children for these so-called lacks.
A second key approach concentrated on school disparity. Some successful
schools that allegedly shared similar intakes to less successful schools were
helping their children to achieve more in education. This approach could
be seen as indirectly blaming the less successful inner city school. It could
also mean that any national attempts at redistribution might be less likely
to be advocated. If some schools were doing well without any additional
financial support, then all schools should be able to cope. This is not to say
that there is nothing to learn from schools that seem to be succeeding
against the odds, only that this success might be fragile and hard to sustain
over time. In terms of SFCC, while categorizing schools in this way might
be useful in some respects, it might also reduce awareness of significant
differences within these schools.
Cicirelli identified a third major policy approach that was predicated on a
need to help inner city children develop their self-esteem in order to fulfil
their potential. The emphasis was on helping students to overcome dis-
advantage through generating positive views about themselves and their
capacity to do well in school. However, it could also be suggested that this
approach indirectly blamed the individual students and their families
for their lack of educational success. It could also be suggested that this
policy approach also disregarded the wider social context and the impact of
poverty, poor health and poor housing on learning attainment (Power et al.
2002).
One of the best-known compensatory-interventionist strategies in the
US in the 1960s was the Head Start programme. This involved early inter-
ventions for young children such as breakfast clubs and extra pre-school
support for learning. Another successful intervention was the Reading
Recovery programme developed by Marie Clay in New Zealand (Clay 1982).
This was set up in many other countries, including the UK (Rowe 1995).
Supporting and developing literacy skills have always been a central issue
in raising the achievement of less advantaged children. In the UK, the
Educational Priority Area (EPA) schemes, set up in the mid-1960s, aimed to
put more money into schools that served deprived areas to compensate
for a less advantaged start to life (Halsey 1972). The real difficulty was
that the actual sums of money involved were very small indeed so it
was very hard to make much difference. As Tomlinson (2005: 18) has
argued, the EPA intervention was undertaken without any debate about the
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macro-economic conditions that create poverty or the political failures

over redistributive social justice and thus the fundamental issues were
simply not addressed.
Even this short-lived and under-resourced egalitarian moment was not
to last for long. During the mid to late 1970s, concerns about poverty and
inequality in education were gradually replaced (in policy terms at least) by
a market discourse which focused on choice, competition and standards;
a thin cover for the old stratification of schools and curricula (Bernstein
1990: 87). In this policy setting, the focus shifted towards individual com-
petition and testing rather than any considerations of social justice. Schools
that were seen to be failing in this new high-stakes testing regime were
frequently subjected to public derision (Brace 1994). Not surprisingly, the
schools that were named and shamed were the sorts of schools now
designated as SFCC. In the UK, only 17 per cent of schools were recognized
as having disadvantaged students, although 70 per cent of the so-called
failing schools taught children categorized in this way (Tomlinson 2005:
80). Ofsted (1993:45, cited in Tomlinson 2005: 78) put it like this:
Schools in disadvantaged areas do not have the capacity for sustain-
able renewal . . . beyond the school gates are underlying social issues
such as poverty, unemployment, poor housing, inadequate health care
and the frequent break up of families.
These contextual factors were discounted and disregarded until the New
Labour Government came into power in 1997.
What is being tried today?
In this section, we want to provide an overview of the key policies that have
been set up by New Labour in order to tackle long-standing issues of child
poverty and disadvantage in society and underachievement in schools.
Breaking the link between social class and achievement is at the heart of
government policy (Literacy Trust 2006). While New Labour have con-
tinued the Conservative agenda of market-driven growth (Jones 2003:
144), they have taken some steps to reduce the inequalities and massive
growth in poverty that accompanied the Conservative periods in power
(19791997).
Immediately after the 1997 election, New Labour established the Social
Exclusion Unit in order to start to repair the social damage of the previous
two decades (Jones 2003: 145). They set up a complex (and sometimes
bewildering) set of measures that attempted to alleviate poverty that
could perhaps be seen as a form of redistribution by stealth. Measures such
as the minimum wage, working family tax credits and increased pensioner
credits are evidence of this. They also set up the Child Support Agency in an
attempt to get more absent parents to financially support their families
(and although this agency has had a chequered career, the attempt to
achieve this is laudable as many sole-parents live in relative poverty). They
have also supported policies of repairing and upgrading social housing that
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have made a difference to the quality of peoples lives (Toynbee 2006). But
perhaps their biggest achievement (and biggest gamble) has been the
campaign to abolish child poverty in the UK by 2020. Some commentators
have said that initial targets have been (almost) met because those closest
to the line have just been moved across the poverty divide. In contrast,
Toynbee (2006) claims that whereas in 1997 the UK was the worse in the
EU for childhood poverty, we are now at the EU average and improving
fastest.
New Labour has also enacted policies intended to support educational
success more directly. The Sure Start Programme (DfEE 1999b) has been an
important lever for change as it initially targeted the key years (03) before
children start school. Sure Start offers support for families in disadvantaged
areas from pregnancy through to when the child is 14. It has increased the
availability of childcare and its aims include improving health and emo-
tional development for young children and supporting parents as parents
and in their aspirations towards employment (www.surestart.gov.uk). Sure
Start includes a focus on early literacy skills. Alongside Sure Start, a number
of Childrens Centres and Early Excellence Centres have been set up as one-
stop shops to offer advice and support in the areas of education, health and
welfare. The Children Act (2004) complements this work by facilitating
Children Trusts that will help achieve the key strands of Every Child
Matters (2003) (see Chapter 18). There are sets of interrelated comple-
mentary policies such as the Childrens Fund and On Track, a scheme to
reduce anti-social behaviour. These sorts of policies are very similar to the
US headstart interventions and although it might be argued that they are
perhaps based on a concept of deficit, the intention is to support and
sustain through working alongside families rather than correcting or
blaming.
There have also been swathes of policies that have been set up to tackle
disadvantage and underachievement within the compulsory school setting.
For example, the National Literacy Strategy (DfEE 1997a), which started in
primary schools, has been extended into the Key Stage 3 setting. Reading
Challenge helps schools provide catch-up provision for students per-
forming at around two years behind the average for their peer group.
Extended Schools, offering out of school support (www.everychild-
matters.gov.uk) will be provided mainly in areas of disadvantage and
the Government has set a target of 1000 primary schools to provide
wrap-around childcare from 8am to 6pm. New Labour has put into place
some foundational policies designed to combat disadvantage and support
schools in challenging circumstances. Many of these policies are about
educationally related aspects such as behaviour management or truancy
reduction.
Specifically in relation to inner cities, two projects have been designed to
tackle disadvantage and spur on social inclusion. These are the Education
Action Zone projects and the Excellence in Cities initiative. Education
Action Zones (EAZs) were set up in 1997 (DfEE 1997b) in order to raise
standards in areas of high disadvantage through drawing on the expertise
and funding of local businesses in partnerships with schools. The Govern-
ment invited interested groups to bid for matched funding in order to
support their proposals. Concerns were expressed that education was
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drifting away from being a welfare provision, towards becoming a profit-

making concern for the business partners (Hatcher 1998). Other concerns
were expressed: those who made successful bids might not have been in
the most needy areas they might simply have been the best consortia
at preparing and writing the bids (Tomlinson 2005). EAZs set up and
supported a range of different activities in schools such as breakfast clubs
and classes where newly arrived parents could learn English. In many ways,
the strategies set up under the EAZ umbrella were similar to the earlier EPAs
set up in the UK in the 1960s. Overall, and not surprisingly, there were no
significant gains in national test scores in the EAZ schools (Reid and Brain
2003; West et al. 2003) and they were incorporated into the Excellence in
Cities (EiC) project.
Excellence in Cities (DfEE 1999a) was far more focused and specific in its
intentions. The strategy initially specified six large conurbations; London,
Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield, where a wide
range of tactics were to be deployed. These included some new and smaller
EAZs as well as a commitment to provide a learning mentor for every
young person who needs one, as a single point of contact to tackle barriers
to pupils learning (DfEE 1999a: 3). There was an emphasis on literacy
and numeracy skills, a network of learning centres to be set up and a
strengthening of school leadership. Whitty (2002) has argued that one of
the potential strengths in Excellence in Cities (EiC) was that it attempted to
include all children in its remit. Thus, tactics such as streaming and extend-
ing opportunities for gifted and talented children could potentially work
to keep (the supposedly more supportive and pro-school) middle-class
families and their children in city schools. In 2003, the chief inspector of
schools reported that although EiC had boosted student confidence,
educational gains in terms of test scores were less evident (Bell 2003). EAZs
and EiC have made significant contributions in schools through funding
additional provisions such as breakfast clubs, parent groups and learning
mentors in SFCC. It might be unrealistic to expect short-term, low-cost
interventions to achieve much more than this.
New Labour has continued in its attempts to tackle social and educational
disadvantage. In its cornerstone policies such as EiC and the Academy
schools (see Chapter 3) it has concentrated on raising attainment and tack-
ling underachievement. It has focused on SFCC and set up the London
Challenge (DfES 2003). It has also developed strategies such as the
Leadership Incentive Grant (LIG) (DfES 2002). This scheme is intended to
accelerate the improvement in standards though improving leadership
capacity, peer review, reshaping the timetable and a range of other tactics
such as establishing reliable and high quality school policies and systems
which raise expectations of staff and pupils through effective data analysis,
target-setting and monitoring for individuals and groups pupils and staff
(DfES, LIG 2002). So far, the evidence is that provision of increased
resources for SFCC, coupled with attempts to engender some local owner-
ship of policy and innovation that have been part of the LIG, have started
to produce promising results, where national centre-driven policies have
been less effective (Ainscow and West 2006).
In 2004, New Labour set out its Five year strategy for Children and
Learners (DfES 2004). This radical policy set out a range of proposals to
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tackle disadvantage and underachievement at every stage, from under-5

provision through to the world of work. In terms of secondary schools,
the strategy included a commitment towards greater personalization of
learning and choice. Service provision was to be opened up to new and
different providers:
We will build on the achievements of the last seven years, to increase
freedoms and independence; to accelerate the pace of reform in
teaching and learning; and to extend choice and flexibility in the
curriculum [. . .] At the heart of our reforms is the development of
independent specialist schools in place of the traditional comprehen-
sive [. . .] We will provide for 200 independently managed academies
to be open or in the pipeline by 2010 in areas with inadequate existing
secondary schools. Some will replace under-performing schools; others
will be entirely new, particularly in London where there is a demand
for new school places. We expect there to be around 60 new academies
in London by 2010.
(DfES 2004)
One key issue that will need to be carefully documented relates to the
sorts of intakes that these (and other new forms of schools) attract. If these
schools do indeed become successful, will they become colonized by certain
constituencies? Will they need to attract more pro-school students and
families to ratchet up their attainment in order to demonstrate their suc-
cess? What about other policy interventions such as the new specialized
diplomas for 1419-year-olds that will suit different learning preferences
and motivate all young people to participate and achieve (DfES 2005)? Will
these respect and value differences in learning and lead to outcomes that
are equal in status to the more established forms of certification (Hodgson
and Spours 2006)?
Concluding comments
In this chapter, we have provided a historical background to schools in

challenging circumstances. We have also provided a brief review of the
policy approaches that have targeted and continue to target SFCC. In this
concluding section, we want to highlight the fact that the stark differences
in the lives of pupils with different family backgrounds have not gone
away, nor has the problem of knowing how to deal with them (Mortimore
and Whitty 1997: 1). Too often government policy making in this area has
been expressed in deficit terms that disregard the influences of the wider
social setting. There has sometimes been a tendency to blame individual
children, their parents, their schools and their teachers for any failure in
achievement. Although all teachers face pressures such as the need to meet
targets and raise standards, what is distinctive in the inner city context
is the catastrophe of poverty that shapes many of the schools in these
areas. Rather than an education policy that simply exhorts SFCC to emulate
their more privileged neighbours, there is a need to recognize the broader
socio-economic contradictions that impact on these schools.
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In a competitive environment, the more privileged in society are better

placed to gain an edge for their families. When less privileged families
are trapped in low wages, poor housing and have limited access to social
welfare, it is not surprising that their children fare less well in school. Even
where schools have succeeded against the odds, a fundamental contra-
diction needs to be recognized (Harris and Ranson 2005). This is that:
Inevitably, however, any school improvement that takes place is likely
to benefit those from advantaged families those better able to make
use of the new opportunities more than those from families which
are facing difficulties . . . Thus, though overall national standards may
rise, the difference between the most and the least advantaged will
probably also increase.
(Mortimore 1995: 17)
While this may well be the case, the fact that more children from the least
advantaged backgrounds will have gained more from their educational
experience is certainly a goal worth pursuing.
Urban policy making, urban pedagogy and teacher education need
to directly acknowledge the impact of the urban crisis of poverty and
exclusion. As Jones (2003: 172) claims, focusing on raising standards with-
out recognizing contextualized factors may well give rise to misdirected
pressures, demanding too much of schools, and planning too little for
wider sorts of social change. Equally, there is a need for a politics of educa-
tion reform that will recognize and respect difference, offer all children the
life chances that come with educational success, and promote inclusion
and the common good rather than private advantage. School teachers still
have some capacity to challenge socially divisive policies through their
organizations and at a local level. In their classrooms and schools, they still
play a part in mediating education policy and in struggling to enact socially
just decisions.
In a period where the need to give consideration to the fate of others has
been lessened (Ball 2003: 179), the ethical integrity of those who work and
stay working in challenging circumstances needs more recognition. These
educators could go to easier schools but they stay where they believe
they can make most impact. They stay where they know they are needed.
All those who work in schools face tensions between their professional
and personal ethics and policies that they do not always recognize as
pedagogically appropriate. In SFCC, these tensions make even greater
demands on the professional repertoires of all those working to educate
young people in settings of higher than average levels of social and
economic disadvantage.
Donnelly (2003: 14) believes that the greatest challenges in life bring
the greatest rewards. Working with children who sometimes make it a
triumph of will over adversity that they get to school in the first place
(Brighouse, in Riddell 2003: x) is emotionally costly, but professionally
rewarding. Rather than seeing urban schools and children who attend them
as deficient, the best urban schools are able to realize and celebrate their
childrens experiences as powerful resources for teaching and learning. The
dilemma for the school teacher in SFCC is to be able to recognize the impact
of the wider social context and draw on its cultural resources without losing
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their belief in the power of education to promote and sustain social

transformation.
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11 Teachers and the law
Dylan Wiliam
Introduction
The purpose of the chapter is not to provide a definitive account of the law
relating to education even if such an account could be created, this would
take several volumes rather than a single chapter. Rather it is to provide
a minimal survival guide to the law for the beginning teacher. For
this reason, it does not cover the legal requirements on schools; these
affect individual teachers through school policies and, as such, they
become part of the teachers duties as part of their contract of employment.
It also does not deal with the specific requirements for out-of-school
activities, since it would be most unwise for a beginning teacher to take
responsibility for such trips. Instead, the focus is on how the law of England
and Wales impacts the regular day-to-day activities of the ordinary class-
room teacher.
Sources of law
There are two main sources of law in England and Wales: statute law and
common law. Statute law is created by Parliament when it passes Acts like
the 1988 Education Reform Act. Common law, on the other hand, has been
built up over the centuries from tradition. A teachers responsibility for
children (and by extension that of a student teacher) derives largely from
common law, not statute law. The crucial part of this responsibility is the
notion of a duty of care.
Everyone has a duty of care to everyone else. If a person runs down a busy
street and knocks someone over causing injury, that person might well be
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140 Dylan Wiliam
held liable in a court of law for the injury caused. However, this general
duty of care extends only to what one does, rather than what one does not
do. If someone has been knocked over in the street, a passer-by has no
obligation to help the injured person.
However, the role of teachers (and student teachers) in school is different,
because they have taken on what is called a special relationship in respect
of the children in the school. If a child is hurt in the school playground,
teachers have a duty to help the child because of the special relationship.
Being in a special relationship with someone else places a duty of care that
includes what one does not do (acts of omission) as well as what one does
(acts of commission).
Whether a special relationship exists or not depends on what a person
professes to be, rather than what they are. So, for example, if someone says
Let me through, Im a doctor in a crowd of people surrounding a person
injured in a road traffic accident, that person assumes a special relationship
with the injured person, whether they are, in fact, a doctor or not, and is
responsible for what they do not do as well as what they do.
A student teacher taking a class is also responsible for acts of omission as
well as commission because the student is implicitly assuming a special
relationship with the individuals in that class. Qualified teachers from
another school who happened to be visiting, however, would only be
responsible for what they did, because they have no such special relation-
ship (that is to say, they are not there as a teacher).
The interpretation of particular laws, whether derived from common law,
or brought about by statute, is built up over time by referring to what has
been determined in similar cases in the past. This is case law. The ground
rules of case law are that if a higher court decides a case in a particular way,
then a lower court must follow that ruling and any court at the same level
should have regard to it, but a higher court does not have to. So, for
example, the High Court would have to follow a ruling decided by the
Court of Appeal, but the House of Lords does not. A selection of the most
important cases relating to the teachers role is included at the end of this
chapter.
There is a third kind of law called delegated legislation. This is a means
by which an Act of Parliament does not specify the details of the legislation,
but instead grants powers to some other person or organization to specify
the details of the law; for example, through the creation of statutory
instruments.
The good news for beginning teachers is that there is no need to keep up
with educational legislation, since almost all recent educational legislation
has been at a management or a policy level. The task of the ordinary teacher
is to carry out any reasonable instruction from the headteacher (this is a
part of teachers standard conditions of service in state schools; in
independent schools, conditions are laid down by the governors or equiva-
lent, but invariably include such a requirement) and to discharge a duty of
care to the pupils in the school.
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Teachers and the law 141
Duty of care
The earliest definition of what a duty of care might mean in the context of
schools and teaching was established in Williams v Eady: The duty of a
schoolmaster is to take such care of his boys as a careful father would take
of his son. This creates the clear impression that there were neither girls
nor female schoolteachers around in these days, but then it is a very old
judgment (1893). That was the earliest definition of what exactly that duty
of care amounted to in the educational setting a careful father. Over the
intervening years and certainly over the past 50 years the duty of care
has been interpreted more precisely. That is the strength of common law
established through case law: as public perceptions change, interpretations
of the law can shift, without changing the letter of the law.
In September 1993, for example, a schoolteacher was suspended for
sticking masking tape over a pupils mouth. Now, that in itself is not sur-
prising because local authorities have the power to suspend people for a
range of disciplinary offences, very few of which relate to the law. What was
unusual in this case is that the police were involved. The involvement of
the police was unusual because in the past they have been rather unwilling
to act unless the level of harm to the child was relatively serious. Such
action would certainly not have been regarded as a matter for the police (or
probably even the education authority) in 1893.
In 1938 the notion of a careful parent was reaffirmed in a judgment that
held that the courts [would] not put on the headmaster [sic] any higher
standard of care than that of a reasonably careful parent. However, two
decades later the requirement had shifted somewhat. Because of the way
that case law is built up (as described above), the central notion of a reason-
able, prudent or careful parent cannot be overturned, but more recent
judgments have provided a gloss on the original judgment. By 1962, the
common law duty of a schoolmaster [sic] is held to be that
of a prudent parent bound to take notice of boys [sic] and their
tendency to do mischievous acts, not in the context of home but in
the circumstances of school life, and extends not only to how pupils
conduct themselves but also to the state and condition of the school
premises.
There is an implication here that there are more risks at school than at
home and therefore a teacher needs to be aware, and take account, of this.
In 1968, it was held that
it is a headmasters duty, bearing in mind the propensities of boys and
girls [at last!] between the ages of 11 and 18 to take all reasonable and
proper steps to prevent any of the pupils under his care from suffering
injury from inanimate objects, from actions of their fellow pupils or
from a combination of both.
So while the standard of care required is the same for teachers and for par-
ents, teachers are expected to take account of the special circumstances
pertaining in school in discharging this duty.
The same standard of duty of care applies to student teachers, but the law
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142 Dylan Wiliam
does recognize that by virtue of their lack of training and experience, they
are less able than their colleagues to anticipate events and to take appro-
priate action. If while a student is teaching a class, something goes wrong
and their inexperience leads to a pupil being injured, it could well be the
case that the student would not be found negligent whereas an experienced
teacher acting in exactly the same way could be. While teachers are in
training the law does not expect as much as it does when they are qualified,
provided, of course, that they do exercise an appropriate level of
responsibility.
Negligence
In practice, most court cases relating to duty of care come under the general
heading of negligence. To prove negligence one has to establish that there
was a duty of care, that it was breached, that there was damage, that the
breach caused the damage, and that the damage was reasonably foreseeable.
The latter has been very important in the past. In 1984, a pupil brought an
action against a teacher who had tackled the boy around the neck in a staff
versus students rugby game, causing the boy severe injuries. The teacher
was found to have been negligent because the court held that it was reason-
ably foreseeable that a 14-stone teacher tackling an eight-stone pupil
around the neck would cause injury. As a result, the boy was awarded sub-
stantial damages. These were paid by the local education authority (LEA)
because although it was the teacher and the school who were actually being
taken to court, all local authorities are exposed to what is known
as vicarious liability as regards the negligence of their employees. Even if a
teacher has acted against local authority guidance, the authority can still
be liable. And since they tend to have more money than most teachers,
most actions are brought against the LEA in addition to the school or an
individual teacher.
However, as can be seen from the dates of the important cases relating to
negligence (pp 1489), actions against schools and teachers are rare. Very
few actions actually reach the courts. In this sense, teaching is not a
high-risk activity (unlike medicine where malpractice suits are much more
common). It is important to remember that most teachers never find
themselves accused of anything in their whole teaching career. However, it
is also important to know what ones professional duties are.
Of the responses that a teacher can make to claims of negligence, the two
most important are a) that there was no breach of duty, or b) that what
happened would have happened anyway. For example, if one pupil suffers
injury as the result of an assault from another pupil during morning break,
would the school be held to be negligent? If the attack was unpredictable
or completely unexpected, then it is likely that an action for negligence
would not succeed the courts have always held that something that would
not have been prevented had there been supervision is not negligence.
However, if the attacker was known by the school to be a bully and given to
random and unprovoked attacks, then an action for negligence could well
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succeed, especially if teachers who should have been on duty at break time
were not at their allotted posts.
Another response to an action for negligence is illustrated by the follow-
ing case. A primary school teacher was going to take two young girls out,
and had them dressed ready to go when another child came along with a
cut hand. The teacher attended to the child with the cut hand during which
time one of the two other little children ran out of the school gates and into
the road. The driver of a passing car swerved to avoid the child and was
killed. The family of the driver sued the teacher and the LEA for negligence.
In this case, the teacher was found not to be negligent, because the court
held that the teacher had behaved reasonably in dealing with the injury to
the other child first. The fact that a teacher is distracted by a more serious
or urgent incident is a defence. Although the law places a higher burden on
the teacher than on the proverbial person on the Clapham omnibus, it still
only requires that the teacher behaves reasonably in the circumstances. But
even in this judgment, the court was careful to point out that the ruling
depended on the fact that it was an infant child with a cut hand. A 15-year-
old with the same small cut would probably not be grounds for leaving
younger children alone, and an action against whoever left the school gates
open so that the child could run out into the road might still succeed. The
important message here is that the law only requires you to act reasonably
provided you do so, you wont be held liable.
The criterion of reasonableness also governs whether student teachers
can teach classes without a qualified teacher present. It would probably not
be held to be reasonable to leave a student on her or his own with a class
during the first week of teaching practice. A court might also hold that it
was unreasonable to leave a teacher on her or his own with a class known to
be particularly difficult even towards the end of teaching practice. However,
it is widely accepted that there are times when student teachers have to
be left alone in the classroom to establish that they can manage a class
effectively. The courts have generally followed the principle that the test of
what is reasonable in ordinary, everyday affairs may well be answered by
experience arising from practice adopted generally and followed success-
fully for many years (Wright v Cheshire County Council [1952] All ER 789).
Sanctions
Another important aspect of educational law is that of sanctions: discipline,

confiscation, punishments and so on. Can a teacher confiscate cigarettes
from a pupil? The important thing about confiscation is that one must not
permanently deprive someone of something that is theft. So confiscating
cigarettes from a pupil may be quite reasonable, but smoking them oneself
later is not.
The duty of care also plays a part here, however. If, for example, one
discovered that a student had a flick-knife, which was subsequently used
to injure another pupil, it is quite possible that one would be found
negligent if one had not tried to confiscate it, or at least reported the matter
to someone else (because of the responsibility for omission as well as
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144 Dylan Wiliam
commission in a special relationship, and ones duty of care to all the pupils
at a school).
Most schools have a procedure laid down for what to do with confiscated
items. MP3 players might be kept in the headteachers office until the end
of the day and then returned, cigarettes might be returned only to parents,
and flick-knives would probably be handed over to the police. The impor-
tant thing here is to find out what your schools policy is and follow that.
The same applies to detention. Section 550A of the 1996 Education Act
clarified the existing case law that a school may detain pupils after school
whether the parents approve of this or not, provided 24 hours notice has
been given. Since this period of 24 hours starts when the parents receive the
notice, this means, in effect, that a detention notified on Monday cannot
take place until Wednesday. However, the important point is that all
teachers at a school must follow the schools policy on detention. Find out
what it is, and stick to it.
Use of physical force
The use of physical force is again covered by common law, but because the
common law was not well understood, the legal situation was clarified in
Section 550A of the 1996 Education Act. The Act allows teachers, and others
authorized by the headteacher of a school to have control of pupils, to use
reasonable physical force in restraining a pupil when a pupil is:
committing a criminal offence (including behaving in a way that would
be an offence if the pupil were not under the age of criminal
responsibility)
behaving in a way that is likely to injure themselves or others
causing damage to property (including the pupils own property)
engaging in any behaviour prejudicial to maintaining good order and
discipline at the school or among any of its pupils, whether that
behaviour occurs in a classroom during a teaching session or elsewhere.
The first three of these derive from common law, but the fourth is a specific
power available to teachers, and whoever in a school the headteacher
authorizes to be in control of students. Whether these additional powers
apply to student teachers in a school depends on whether the headteacher
has included student teachers in the list of those authorized to be in control
of pupils. As with all these issues, it is essential to find out what the schools
policy is.
It is also important to remember that the definition of reasonable in this
context is that it is the minimum force necessary to achieve what is
required. Even for an experienced teacher, a good rule of thumb is never to
touch a pupil in anger. Corporal punishment, banned in state schools in
1986, and in all others in 1996, remains illegal. If physical force is used, it
should be as a last resort; teachers should always try to resolve the situation
in other ways first. The force must be the minimum necessary, and teachers
should seek to avoid doing anything that might reasonably be expected
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to cause injury. Furthermore, teachers should seek to avoid touching or

holding a pupil in a way that could be considered indecent. Where the need
to restrain students physically can be reasonably foreseen (for example, in
the case of some students with emotional and behavioural difficulties) there
should be a school policy on the treatment of such students, and teachers
should be trained in the use of safe techniques.
Defamation
Most people are familiar with the distinction between slander and libel.
Defamatory speech is slander but if it is in any kind of permanent form
(writing, audiotape etc) it is libel. Interestingly enough, if someone writes
something defamatory on a blackboard, even though it is easily removed,
that technically is probably libel rather than slander. The distinction
between slander and libel is important, because in order to succeed with an
action for slander one generally has to prove some financial loss as a result
of the untrue remark, whereas in libel it is necessary to prove only that ones
standing in other peoples eyes would be lowered. Although actions for
defamation are very rare, the safest course is to avoid saying anything that
would be calculated or likely to reduce somebodys standing in the eyes of
their peers, and it is worth remembering that pupils have exactly the same
rights under this law as teachers.
Copyright
The area in which teachers are most likely to break the law or run into
trouble is copyright. A new agency set up as a result of the 1988 Copyright
Designs and Patents Act insists that its poster is displayed by all photo-
copiers in schools that have signed an agreement permitting limited
copying of copyright documents. The poster specifies exactly what one can
and cannot copy. One can, for example, make class sets of certain materials
for use in teaching provided both the school or the LA and the author
of the work are signatories to the agreement. Certain kinds of publications
are designed to be photocopied, in which case the copyright agreement
might, for example, allow unlimited photocopying within the purchasing
institution.
The traditional length of copyright has been 50 years from the death of
the author. So, for example, the work of Alfred Lord Tennyson came out
of copyright 50 years after the end of the calendar year in which he died.
However, published editions have a copyright of 25 years irrespective of
the date of the authors death so if one photocopied a page of a book of
Tennysons poems one would not be infringing the authors copyright, but
one could be infringing the publishers copyright. This aspect of copyright is
particularly important in areas such as music publishing because of the
expense of typesetting pieces of music. In January 1996, new legislation was
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introduced to harmonize copyright legislation across the European Union,

which extended the duration of copyright in literary, dramatic, musical and
artistic works to 70 years after the death of the author, although the copy-
right term for broadcasts, sound recordings, films and computer-generated
artistic works remained at 50 years. The result of this legislation was that a
book written by an author who died in 1940, and which had been out of
copyright in the UK since 1990 (50 years after the authors death) would
become copyright again until 2010 (70 years after the authors death).
However, since the effect of this law is retrospective, it is not clear whether
the courts would enforce the revival of copyright in such cases. Neverthe-
less, the implications for teachers are clear, and similar to the advice on
other topics in this chapter: find out what the local circumstances are in
your institution.
The area in which schools break copyright laws most frequently would
appear to be that of electronic media such as recordings of radio and TV
programmes and computer software, not least because of the ease of
duplication. As noted above, copyright in TV broadcasts lasts for 50 years
from the making of the broadcast, and so, unless it is a programme that
is specifically intended for schools to record and use, any playing of a
recording of a broadcast would be a breach of copyright. It is also important
to note that the conditions under which video-cassettes and DVDs are sold
or made available for hire often specifically exclude their use in schools, so
permission would be required from the copyright holder before it could be
used with a class.
Most computer software is not copy protected and so a single copy of
such software can be used on more than one machine quite easily. Schools
often reason like this: Why should I spend 5,000 buying multiple copies
of a desktop publishing package when its only going to be used by one class
for two weeks in the whole year? Nevertheless, what they are doing is
illegal and some LEAs have been raided and, where they have been found
to be using software illegally, they have been fined. As far as the new teacher
is concerned, the only safe course of action is to ask the member of staff at
the school responsible for ICT (information and communications tech-
nology) before using any software, and certainly you should not install any
software on a school computer without asking the network manager first.
Health and safety at work
Another important piece of legislation is the Health and Safety at Work Act
of 1974. This Act makes provision concerning the health, safety and welfare
of employees and the health and safety of visitors to any work premises.
Strangely, for the purposes of law, pupils count as visitors, rather than
workers in educational institutions. This law is important in that it gives the
duty of care some criminal teeth. If, for example, there was a nail sticking
out of a table, which the teacher knew about, and one day a pupil walked
past it cutting his leg, the teacher could well be in breach of the duty of
care and there would be a possibility of successful civil action against the
teacher and the school or LA. However, the Health and Safety at Work
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Act would also allow the Health and Safety Executive to bring a criminal
prosecution against the school and the individual teacher for having
dangerous premises.
This is exactly what happened in 1986, when a science teacher was fined
500 in a magistrates court for failing to provide for the safety of the pupils
in the laboratory when a flask exploded, showering the pupils with
sulphuric acid and glass. Fifteen of the students were taken to hospital,
and one was detained overnight. An important factor in the magistrates
decision to convict was that although plastic screens and safety spectacles
were available, they were not used. The magistrates were careful to say that
they did not wish to curtail the use of practical demonstrations in science
lessons, but rather that all reasonable precautions should be taken.
There is sometimes a reluctance to report health and safety issues because
they can be disruptive. For example, if a classroom has window catches that
do not work properly, the teacher might be unwilling to make too much of
a fuss, because the response of the senior management at the school is likely
to be to move the teacher to another classroom. Nevertheless, one does
have to provide for the health and safety of pupils in ones classes and if one
knows about anything that is likely to cause a risk, then one must do some-
thing about it. Inconvenience is no excuse, and it is certainly no defence in
law.
Inappropriate relationships
One final area of law that teachers need to know about is that of
inappropriate relationships. Conducting a sexual relationship with a pupil
at the school at which you are working has always been regarded as
unprofessional, and could be grounds for dismissal. However, as a result of
the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000, it is now illegal. The Act makes
it a criminal offence for anyone over the age of 18 in a position of trust with
respect to a person under 18 to engage in any sexual activity with that
person. The important point about the Act is that anyone who looks after
any pupils under 18 at a school or college is in a position of trust in relation
to all pupils at that institution, whether they teach them or not. The only
defences to a charge under this Act are:
that the person charged did not know, and could not be expected to
know that the pupil was under 18
that the person charged did not know, and could not be expected
to know that they were in a position of trust in relation to the pupil
that the person charged was lawfully married to the pupil.
Concluding comments
Inevitably, this chapter has focused on the pathology of school teaching.

As a teacher you will have important responsibilities, but it is important to
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keep things in perspective. As long as you take care to think through the
consequences of your actions and as long as you act reasonably, then you
will be OK. No one will sue you or take you to court, and it is extremely
unlikely that you will be assaulted in any way. And you will, like most
teachers, enjoy the job.
Relevant case law
The extracts from legal judgments given below are taken from Legal Cases
for Teachers by G. R. Barrell (London: Methuen, 1970).
Negligence
The duty of a schoolmaster is to take such care of his boys as a careful

father would take of his son (Williams v Eady [1893] 10 TLR 41).
The courts will not put on a headmaster any higher standard of care than
that of a reasonably careful parent (Hudson v Rotherham Grammar School
and Johnson [1938] Yorkshire Post, 24 March 1938, 25 March 1938).
The common law duty of a schoolmaster is that of a prudent parent
bound to take notice of boys and their tendency to do mischievous acts,
not in the context of the home but in the circumstances of school life,
and extends not only to how the pupils conduct themselves, but also to
the state and condition of the school premises (Lyes v Middlesex County
Council [1962] 61 LGR 443).
It is a headmasters duty, bearing in mind the propensities of boys and
girls between the ages of 11 and 18, to take all reasonable and proper
steps to prevent any of the pupils under his care from suffering injury
from inanimate objects, from actions of their fellow pupils, or from a
combination of both (Beaumont v Surrey County Council [1968] 66 LGR
580).
A defendant who through training or experience, may have grounds to
visualize more clearly the results of his acts in a particular sphere
than would be expected of the proverbial man in the street owes a higher
duty of care (Baxter v Barker and others [1903] The Times, 24 April 1903,
13 November 1903).
School authorities must strike some balance between the meticulous
supervision of children at every moment when they are under their care,
and the very desirable objects of encouraging the sturdy independence
of children as they grow up; such encouragement must start at quite an
early age (Jeffery v London County Council [1954] 52 LGR 521).
The mere fact of the fall of a blackboard is not evidence of negligence
(Crisp v Thomas [1890] 63 LT756).
It is negligence for a teacher to order a child to undertake a dangerous
operation (Foster v London County Council [1928] The Times 2 March
1928).
It is, I think, impossible to avoid the conclusion that it was a most
unfortunate, unforeseeable and quite unpredictable thing which
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occasioned the accident on this day . . . It appears that this was the first
time such a thing had happened. In those circumstances, I find it is
impossible to say on the facts than any negligence was shown on the part
of the defendant (Wright v Cheshire County Council [1952] 2 All ER 789).
The test of what is reasonable in ordinary everyday affairs may well
be answered by experience arising from practices adopted generally and
followed successfully for many years (Wright v Cheshire County Council
[1952] All ER 789).
Where a course of action follows general and approved practice an action
of negligence will not lie (Conrad v Inner London Education Authority
[1967] The Times, 26 May 1967).
An action for negligence cannot succeed if it is founded on an event
which is simply an accident (Webb v Essex County Council [1954] Times
Educational Supplement, 12 November 1954).
A schoolmaster is not liable for a sudden act which could not have
been prevented by supervision (Gow v Glasgow Education Authority [1922]
SC 260).
Where there is no evidence of lack of supervision or that, assuming there
was supervision, it would not have prevented an accident, there is no
liability (Langham v Wellingborough School Governors and Fryer [1932]
101 LJKB 513).
It is not incumbent upon a local education authority to have a teacher
continuously present in a playground during a break (Ricketts v Erith
Borough Council and Browne [1943] 2 All ER 629).
The duty of a schoolmaster does not extend to the constant supervision
of all the boys in his care all the time; only reasonable supervision is
required (Clarke v Monmouth County Council [1954] 52 LGR 246).
Even if there is failure of supervision, the question arises whether the best
supervision could have prevented the accident (Price v Caernarvonshire
County Council [1960] The Times, 11 February 1960).
When a class of nine or ten are using pointed scissors, it is not necessary
to wait until after a lesson, or to make sure that the rest of the class put
their scissors down before giving individual attention to one child (Butt v
Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely Council [1969] The Times, 27 November
1969).
Further reading
Ford, J., Hughes, M. and Ruebain, D. (2005) Education Law and Practice (2nd edn).
Bristol: Jordan Publishing Limited.
Fulbrook, J. (2005). Outdoor Activities, Negligence and the Law. Aldershot: Ashgate
Publishing.
University of Bristol (2005) Teachers Legal Liabilities and Responsibilities: The Bristol
Guide. Bristol: University of Bristol Graduate School of Education.
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Part 3 Teaching and learning
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12 Adolescence
John Head
Introduction
The common dictionary definition of adolescence, as the phase of life

between childhood and adulthood, gives little hint of the concerns and
controversy which surround it. There is little doubt that adolescents often
receive a bad press, with lurid tales of blackboard jungles in school, and car
theft, drug use and sexual promiscuity, outside school. For reasons such as
these, adolescence has been described as a time of storm and stress, but is
this reputation justified?
There are two limitations in the reports about adolescence in the popular
press. They focus on the more sensational news and tend to ignore that
which is routine or mundane. Secondly, they tend to offer simplistic
explanations. For example, awkward adolescents are dismissed as being
hormonal. Of course biological factors are part of the story, but they do
not directly and inevitably lead to a particular behaviour. Social factors, the
influence of adults and peers, are also involved and sometimes these
reinforce the biological factors and at other times they conflict. However,
adolescents have minds and can take responsibility for their actions. They
do not have to do what others tell them and they are not totally a slave to
their biology.
Therefore, we have to unpick each issue in order to understand the under-
lying causes. A recent concern has been with binge drinking and a yob
culture. Presumably adults have to accept some of the responsibility, but
precisely how much depends on whether you believe in Original Sin or
Original Virtue. The former belief, located in the Bible, in many traditional
cultures and vividly described in Goldings Lord of the Flies, suggests that
children are naturally selfish and aggressive. In this event, adults have to
socialize youngsters into more civilized values and the anti-social behaviour
reflects a failure by adults to assert appropriate authority. If, however, you
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154 John Head
subscribe to the concept of Original Virtue, as proposed by Rousseau and

taken up by twentieth-century educationalists, such as A.S. Neil, then you
will argue that contemporary youth have been corrupted by adults. Maybe
the biggest contribution has been a change in policy of sectors of the drink
industry. Traditionally bars and pubs catered principally for a more mature
clientele but it was then realized that it would be profitable to attract
younger people hence the rise of alcopops and happy hours.
To take another example, we might ask why teenagers are increasingly
having sexual intercourse at a younger age than in previous generations
(Sharpe and Thomson 2005; Aggleton et al. 2006). In this instance, there are
both biological and social influences. The former is due to the fact that the
age of puberty, for both boys and girls, fell by about three years in the last
century. The social factor was increasingly permissive attitudes to sexual
behaviour. One way of demonstrating this point is to look at magazines
aimed at girls in their mid-teens. A decade or so ago they tended to urge
caution, suggesting that girls should not rush into having sex. Nowadays
the advice is often about how to have enjoyable sex and the implicit mes-
sage is that is what they should do. Incidentally, there is no corresponding
genre of magazines for boys. Boys either read about things such as sport,
cars and computers or go for the Lad Mags which are aimed at an older
population (Millard 1997).
There is little new in many of the criticisms made of adolescents. Even in
Classical Greece there were complaints about unruly youths failing to show
proper respect to their elders. Much later, in The Winters Tale, Shakespeare
wrote, I wish there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty . . . For
there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging
the ancientry, stealing, fighting . . . That sentiment certainly sounds
familiar!
What is the contemporary evidence? It is mixed: on many criteria, such
as physical health, adolescents are a favoured group (Heaven 1996) but
there are problems. Among boys the high crime rate for those in their
late teens is worrying, with over 8 per cent of the 18-year-old cohort
being convicted or cautioned for an indictable offence (that is an offence
sufficiently serious to possibly attract a prison sentence). The crime rate for
girls is lower and peaks at a younger age, around 15. Among girls, eating
disorders are common, but it is difficult to give a precise estimate of the
extent of the problem as only the most severe cases are notified to the
authorities (Whelan 2002). Recently there has been evidence that a smaller
but increasing number of boys suffer from eating disorders (Langley 2005).
In their case, they are motivated by the wish to appear athletic and be free
of any surplus fat.
Each stage of life presents certain characteristic challenges and problems,
and adolescence is not unique, it just presents a particular set of such
challenges (Coleman and Hendry 1999). We can attempt to sort out
what these issues might be by considering four major ideas related to
adolescence: physical development, the age between, cognitive and
emotional growth, and gaining a personal identity.
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Physical development
Adolescence is usually taken to start with puberty. This phase of life not
only involves development of the genitalia but several other associated
physical changes. Prior to puberty, boys and girls grow at about the same
rate about 5 cm per annum. Girls usually experience puberty first and
enter a time when they grow at about 8.5 cm each year. Boys experience
puberty about a year to 18 months later, but their growth spurt is more
dramatic (height increasing at 9.5 cm per annum) and it lasts longer.
Consequently, during Year 8, girls tend to be bigger than their male
contemporaries but later on the boys overtake them.
These body changes can produce short-term side effects such as reduced
co-ordination and fatigue as skeletal and muscular growth occurs before
a corresponding growth of the heart and lungs. The increase in the sex
hormones can produce some problems. Boys complain about suffering
from acne and about having to shave but the girls suffer most. In a
large-scale survey I conducted of teenagers it emerged that the commonest
problems reported by girls at 14 involved menstruation. The majority of
girls reported considerable distress from menstruation (Prendergast 1992).
This sex difference in experiencing puberty tends to temporarily weaken
friendships between boys and girls and reinforce same-sex friendships.
Alongside the purely physical effects of puberty are the related psycho-
logical effects. Adolescents can now be sexually active, which can be
exciting, but also raises a new set of issues, relating to sexual performance,
pregnancy, the risk of sexually-transmitted diseases and their sexual
orientation. Prior to puberty, children enjoy a latency period, during
which they largely overcome the problems of childhood and are able to
cope effectively with their everyday living. Then puberty upsets that
equilibrium. One of the causes of anorexia among girls is the wish to reverse
the effects of puberty in order to escape from menstruation.
The age between
The second idea comes from sociology. It is argued that with both children
and adults we have a clear idea about appropriate roles and functions,
but with adolescents the position is confused. They receive conflicting
messages, firstly telling them to grow up and then reminding them that
they are not yet adult. This confusion can make adolescentadult com-
munication and relationships tricky.
Adolescents tend to envy adults for their perceived freedoms to drive
a car, drink alcohol, or stay out late and they will tend to pester adults
to be allowed as much freedom for themselves. Part of the problem is that
they do not recognize the constraints placed on adults. If people did just
what they liked, their selfishness would alienate others and lose them
friends. Successful living involves negotiation and compromise within the
home, workplace and social life. In failing to recognize these constraints,
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156 John Head
adolescents may carry the battle for independence too far; for example,
taking the rule that they can do what they like in their own rooms, they
play music at full blast regardless of anyone else in the house. When asked
to moderate the volume, they will argue that this request interferes with
their freedom.
Probably the wisest course for parents and teachers is to negotiate a pro-
gressive position, one in which the adolescent gains increasing freedoms
year by year. Certainly a school ought to treat Year 12 or 13 students very
differently from those in Year 7.
To compensate for this distancing of themselves from adults, adolescents
tend to value their peer group more. To be accepted by a group they have to
conform in matters such as dress and leisure interests, including which
football team they support (Montemayor et al. 1994; Cotterell 1996). In
many respects membership of a group is a positive experience, leading to
the formation of life-long friendships, but there can be a negative side.
Teenage groups can develop an ethos which demands that members
demonstrate that they are cool by taking risks, including some which may
involve criminal behaviour. Those who do not conform with the group
ethos may be bullied or marginalized. We know that young male car drivers
are a high-risk group who have to pay considerable insurance premiums.
The risks do not come from physical defects but from showing off their
macho driving to their peers.
The youth culture is such that adolescents cannot be seen by their peers
to be too submissive to adult authority. In the classroom they may seem
hostile but in reality they may be listening and responding to what you are
saying. The difficult student in class may be very different in a one-to-one
discussion. Traditionally there has been a balance between the influence of
adults and the influence of peers, but more recently there has been a
strengthening of the latter, leading to what one authority has described as
a sibling society (Bly 1996). There are several causal factors. Over 20 per
cent of families with children are headed nowadays by a single parent. At
the same time, there has been a collapse in provision provided by youth
clubs, scouts and guides, hence another site for meeting adults has gone.
The reduction in contact with adults occurs at a time when mobile
telephones and computers allow youngsters to maintain contact with their
peers, creating a virtual community, even when they are at home (Abbott
2000; Abbott et al. 2006).
Cognitive and emotional growth
One of the rewarding aspects of teaching in secondary schools is witnessing

students who suddenly take off. Students who recently did the very
minimum of work necessary to avoid trouble develop a new interest and
enthusiasm for ideas and ideals. They may wish to challenge your beliefs,
to ask searching questions, and express commitment to various causes.
It might be noted that the commonest age for religious conversion is 16.
This discussion can be a stimulating learning experience, one which
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compares well with the student passively taking notes on what the teacher
is saying.
One model of thinking, that of Jean Piaget (Inhelder and Piaget 1958),
suggests that there is a qualitative change in thinking during adolescence.
Children tend to be concerned with the real immediate world. In ado-
lescence an interest in abstract notions develops. A child may feel unhappy
about something tangible pain, loneliness or hunger. Teenagers may feel
unhappy in listening to music or seeing a beautiful sunset. This apparently
inexplicable response can worry them. They are likely to be experiencing an
emotional flux, falling in love, feeling inexplicable sadness, melancholia,
and bursts of enthusiasm and hope.
Children tend to live in their own world and are not too concerned about
others. As adolescents decentre (to use the jargon term) they may do so
in a lopsided way (Elkind 1967). They may fear that they believe that every-
one else is observing and judging them. A more adult stance would be to
recognize that other people have their own agenda of interests and con-
cerns and we probably only feature in a very minor way in most of them.
Their self-absorption may come across in the classroom as moodiness or
even hostility.
Gaining a personal identity
The fourth major idea is that of the need to gain a sense of identity (Erikson
1968; Kroger 2004). It is difficult to define the concept of personal identity,
but I have described it as being a life-script (Head 1997 and 1999). Indi-
viduals are both the authors of their scripts, which reflect their self-image,
and are also like actors, using the script to decide what to say and do.
Identity development occurs at all stages of life, but is important in
adolescence. A childs situation, and hence sense of self, is largely deter-
mined by others. Their social class is that of their parents. Where they live
and go to school and how they spend their leisure time is determined by
others. In becoming adults they have to carve out their own lifestyle,
to decide on their own careers and develop their own social and sexual
relationships (Moore and Rosenthal 1993). The main areas of identity
include career plans, personal relationships and having some beliefs which
give a sense of purpose and worthwhileness to life.
Successful identity acquisition comes from matching a realistic sense
of self, what one is like and is good at, with a sound sense of the world,
recognizing what opportunities exist. It is necessary to have some
ambitions but they need to be realistic. In essence, there are two processes
involved in gaining a sense of identity. The first is to think about issues,
trying to match oneself against the possibilities available in life. The second
is to make the decisions necessary for planning the way forward.
Within a class you may have adolescents in very different positions in
relation to these two processes. Some will, in this respect, still be children,
having not thought about the future nor gained a realistic degree of self-
knowledge. Others may be more mature and, without much drama, have
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158 John Head
thought through the issues and decided on where they are heading. A third
group may be experiencing what is known as a moratorium, who will be
excited by considering all the options open to them but fail to make any
lasting decisions. These adolescents will be very changeable, switching
from idealism to cynicism, from doubt to a new sense of certainty and then
back again. Usually the moratorium phase does not last long as it can be
uncomfortable both to self and ones friends. A fourth possibility is fore-
closure, the complete opposite to experiencing moratorium. In foreclosure
the teenager will attempt to reach maturity by seizing on decisions without
giving any thought to the issues. Career choice, leisure interests, beliefs and
values will be copied from others, within their friends and family. If they
are lucky, these choices prove to be satisfying. Unfortunately many will
regret these hasty decisions. People may realize later in life that they have
chosen the wrong career, opted for a lifestyle to which they are unsuited or
failed to recognize the nature of their sexuality
Occasionally you may encounter teenagers who have acquired a negative
identity, one in which they have adopted a life-script of the rebel or a loner,
to a degree which damages their relationships with both adults and peers.
The most common explanation for adopting this stance is that it is
employed as a shield, saving themselves from too close contact with others.
There may be underlying anger and depression, perhaps from unhappy
experiences in childhood. If it proves to be more than a short-term phase
then counselling will be needed (Herbert 2005).
What are the implications for the teacher? The first point is to recognize
the diversity within a group and seek to be sensitive to their differing con-
cerns. Identity acquisition is a personal task but we can help in two ways.
First of all, we can provide information, or at least direct attention to
sources of information, so they can work with this knowledge. Secondly, we
can foster a group ethos in which it is acceptable to talk though the issues,
accepting different viewpoints and respecting each other (Matthews 2006;
Pellitteri et al. 2006).
Gender differences
Consideration of gender differences is important in itself and also because it

reminds us that adolescents are not a uniform homogeneous group. There
will be both individual diversity and social diversity, defined by race, social
class and gender.
It is in adolescence that gender differences become most marked. In part
this situation is due to the earlier maturation of girls. In addition, boys and
girls tend to have very different experiences at puberty. For most boys it
does not present serious problems, but is seen to add to lifes pleasures. As
previously noted, for girls, it introduces considerable physical discomfort.
The main problem for boys is in not experiencing puberty. The late
developer tends to have a low status among peers as he cannot compete
effectively in sports or defend himself well in a fight. Many such boys go
through a depressing time but some develop the social skills to make
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Adolescence 159
themselves popular, for example, by being cheeky to teachers and funny

within the peer group.
Boys and girls tend to approach sexual relationships with different
agendas (Sharpe and Thomson 2005). For boys, sexual activity is often
solely a selfish activity, undertaken for physical pleasure and as a right-of-
passage to gain the respect of his male peers. Not to enter into sexual
activity can lead to a boy being dismissed as a wimp or gay (Holland et al.
1993). Boys report that when they have their first experience of sexual
intercourse they are often thinking more about their male friends than their
sexual partner. This is not indicative of homosexual desire but a wish to
boast to their friends of a success which will enhance their status among
their peers. Girls tend to be more ambivalent as the issues are more com-
plex. They are subject to similar peer group pressure to get involved but
are aware of the possibility of pregnancy, a prospect that produces mixed
feelings, something that is both desired and feared.
These differences in maturity and attitudes towards sexual experience
tend to bring short-term separation or even hostility between the sexes.
Girls complain of sexual harassment and feel they are in a no-win situation.
If they consent to sex they may be labelled a slag and if they do not
consent then they are accused of being frigid. Later on in adolescence
individuals tend to break away from same-sex groups and the seeing of the
other gender in terms of stereotypes in order to form stable one-to-one
relationships.
Perhaps the most significant change in respect to gender in recent years
has been with academic achievement. The relative success of girls in
secondary schools was first evident in the early 1990s and in the interven-
ing years girls have moved further ahead in the language and humanities
areas, which have been their long-established strength, and have largely
overtaken boys in science and mathematics. In 2004, overall 81 per cent of
girls gained AC grades at GCSE, while only 72 per cent of boys did so
(Social Trends 2006). With A levels, 44 per cent of girls gained two or more
such grades, compared with 35 per cent of boys. Recruitment into higher
education has also been affected. Women made up 42 per cent of under-
graduates in 1980, 48 per cent in 1990 and 56 per cent in 2005. In part, the
increasing success of girls has come from teachers trying to make the work
more girl-friendly, but probably the main cause has been a change in
expectation and confidence among girls. In the past, many were shunted
into poor-paying work, for example, in catering and hair dressing, despite
having academic potential. School inspectors have reported evidence that
boys tend to be less well organized and less conscientious, particularly in
dealing with coursework (EOC/OFSTED 1996).
Additionally, there have been changes in the labour market. Traditionally
boys have had access to well-paid work in mining, manufacturing and
engineering. Fewer people are employed in these fields in this country
nowadays. More jobs have been created in the leisure and service industries
where girls can readily compete. Girls have been quicker to move into these
new areas of employment while many boys seem to have lost the incentive
to succeed.
In the light of this situation attention has been given in more recent years
to the recognition of the problems boys commonly face in school (Salisbury
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160 John Head
and Jackson 1996; Head 1999). Looking at the bigger picture, the academic
success for girls holds out the hope that we should be able to devise tactics
for enhancing the performance of other low-attaining populations, by
demonstrating the relevance of the schoolwork and trying to enhance the
expectations and confidence of the students.
What worries adolescents?
I have encountered, through surveys, four main areas of concern with

about a third of the respondents reporting a considerable degree of
unhappiness with one or more of the four issues (Head 1997 and 1999). The
first is with the family, sometimes about a split home, more commonly
about arguments relating to money or staying out late at night. The second
is with the school. Complaints are mainly about disciplinary procedures,
but complaints about the workload are common, too. The third worry is
feeling a lack of purpose in their life, and as was already noted, these
are indicative of the continuing search for their sense of identity. Finally,
there is concern about social and sexual relationships with peers. There
may be conflict in recognizing and asserting ones own individuality
and being popular with others. There are worries about sexual success and
competence and sexual orientation.
Sometimes teenagers find it too difficult to talk about these matters with
their parents and may prefer to speak with a teacher. Remembering their
self-consciousness it is essential to respect confidence and not do or say
anything to embarrass the individual. Ultimately choices have to be made
by individuals about their own lives. Our role is to listen to provide factual
information, if appropriate, and help the students think through them-
selves what it is they really believe in and want to do.
Sometimes their problems will be beyond your competence (Herbert
2005). You should be able to call on the school pastoral and PSE (personal
and social education) staff to help you provided the student is willing for
you to do so. There are various agencies which deal with specific issues, such
as bullying, drug abuse and pregnancy, and it would be sensible to know
the names and contact telephone numbers or email addresses of these
agencies.
Working with adolescents
What do all the points in this chapter add up to for the inexperienced
teacher? Some things are clear. The students respect competence. They
accept the need for some discipline. As one boy said to me, My job is to
muck around. The teachers job is to stop me. Asking what makes a
good teacher seems to be a boringly self-evident question, so with both
trainee teachers and secondary school pupils I have asked them to draw up
a recommendation of how one can become a poor teacher. Once they
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Adolescence 161
have overcome the initial shock they enter the exercise with gusto. The
interesting point is that both groups come up with much the same list:
arriving late and being disorganized, mumbling or talking in a monotone
while facing the board, avoiding eye contact, failing to return work
collected for marking, and so forth.
Some further issues emerge. The students expect a teacher to be fair and
consistent. By being fair they mean that all the students are treated equally,
there is no favouritism. By consistent they want the teacher to exercise
similar procedures and discipline from one lesson to the next. In essence,
they need to know the procedures and boundaries used by the teacher.
Students can live with both strict and more relaxed classes provided
they know what to expect. Also at this age they are open to reason and
explanation. A certain amount of running around and jostling each other
is only a minor issue in most areas of the school but within a science
laboratory it can be a major hazard. The science teacher, therefore, has to
insist on appropriate behaviour and once the rationale has been explained
to the class they will normally accept the ruling.
A further point is that they both want you to take an in interest in them
but also fear being asked intrusive questions in front of the class, about their
family, sex life, use of drugs and so on. When these topics are discussed in
class you should not permit references to specific people in the school,
whether they are teachers or pupils. Similarly, you should not answer direct
questions about yourself, such as Have you ever taken drugs, Miss? or
Have you got a girlfriend, Sir? Essentially, they are trap questions. Taking
the second example, confirming having a girlfriend will lead to further
questions containing considerable sexual innuendo. A negative response
will lead to comments like Oh, so youre gay, Sir, which again will lead on
to a mock debate between those telling you they are tolerant and those
expressing their disgust. The rule about not referring to specific persons
protects everyone.
Working with adolescents can be challenging but it can also be satisfying
when you see how they are responding to you. Recalling your own
adolescence and that of your friends provides insights for dealing with
students. The references given in this chapter have been to specific topics
but there a number of general overviews of adolescence (for example,
Santrock 2001), while Coleman and Schofield (2005) provide a review of
the factual background.
References
Abbott, C. (2000) ICT: Changing Education. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

Abbott, C., Detheridge, T. and Detheridge, C. (2006) Symbols, Literacy and Social
Justice. Leamington: Widgit.
Aggleton, P., Hall, A. and Mane, P. (2006) Sex, Drugs and Young People: International
Perspectives. London: Routledge.
Bly, R. (1996) The Sibling Society. London: Penguin.
Coleman, J. and Hendry, L. (1999) The Nature of Adolescence. London: Routledge.
Coleman, J. and Schofield, J. (2005) Key Data on Adolescence. Brighton: Trust for the
Study of Adolescence.
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162 John Head
Cotterell, J. (1996) Social Networks and Social Influences in Adolescence. London:

Routledge.
Elkind, D. (1967) Egocentrism in adolescence, Child Development, 38: 102534.
EOC/OFSTED (1996) The Gender Divide: Performance Differences Between Boys and Girls
at School. London: HMSO.
Erikson, E.H. (1968) Identity, Youth and Crisis. New York, NY: Norton.
Head, J. (1997) Working with Adolescents: Constructing Identity. London: Falmer Press.
Head, J. (1999) Understanding the Boys: Issues of Behaviour and Achievement. London:
Falmer Press.
Heaven, P.C.L. (1996) Adolescent Health. London: Routledge.
Herbert, M. (2005) Developmental Problems of Childhood and Adolescence: Prevention,
Treatment and Training. Oxford: BPS Blackwell.
Holland, J., Ramazanoglu, C. and Sharpe, S. (1993) Wimp or Warrior: Contradictions in
Acquiring Masculine Identity. London: Tufnell Press.
Inhelder, B. and Piaget, J. (1958) The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to
Adolescence: An Essay on the Construction of Formal Operational Structures. London:
RKP
Kroger, J. (2004) Identity in Adolescence. London: Routledge.
Langley, J. (2005) Boys Get Anorexia Too: Coping with Male Eating Disorders in the
Family. London: Paul Chapman.
Matthews, B. (2006) Engaging Education: Developing Emotional Literacy, Equity and
Coeducation. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Millard, E. (1997) Differently Literate: Boys, Girls and the Schooling of Literacy. London:
Falmer Press.
Montemayor, R., Adams, G.R. and Gullotta, T.P. (1994) Personal Relationships During
Adolescence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Moore, S. and Rosenthal, D. (1993) Sexuality in Adolescence. London: Routledge.
Pellitteri J., Stern, R., Shelton, C. and Muller-Ackerman, B. (eds) (2006) Emotionally
Intelligent School Counselling. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Prendergast, S. (1992) This is the Time to Grow Up: Experience of Menstruation in School.
Cambridge: Health Promotion Trust.
Salisbury, J. and Jackson, D. (1996) Challenging Macho Values: Practical Ways of
Working with Adolescent Boys. London: Falmer Press.
Santrock, J.W. (2001) Adolescence. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Sharpe, S. and Thomson, R. (2005) All You Need is Love: The Morality of Sexual
Relations. London: National Childrens Bureau.
Social Trends (2006) Social Trends Number 36. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Whelan, J. (2002) Eating Disorders. London: Hodder Wayland.
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13 Learning in and outside of

the classroom
Jill Hohenstein and

Heather King
Introduction
Learning can be defined as a relatively permanent change in thought or in

behaviour that results from experience. In this chapter, we narrow the focus
of such a broad topic to present a brief overview of theories of learning and
the status of current thinking about learning. We then move on to explore
some of the ways in which teachers can support learning both in and
outside of the classroom.
Theories of learning
Over the last three centuries, interest in the nature of learning has led to the
development of a number of theories which attempt to explain the process
by which we learn. In turn, these theories have shaped our approaches to
teaching and the mechanisms by which we help learners to learn.
Most theories of learning fall into one of two categories: Behaviourist or
Cognitivist (some span both). Behaviourism is based on the view that we
should focus on externally observable inputs and outputs to determine
what governs learning. This idea is related to the philosophy of Hobbes
(1651), who suggested that humans are simply material systems, operating
by way of inputs and outputs, and thus constructs such as mind and free
will do not affect the way people function.
Extreme Behaviourism claims that infants enter the world as blank slates
and learn about the world through various forms of association, including
conditioning, both classical (Pavlov 1927) and operant (Skinner 1974).
Classical conditioning can be thought of as the training of behaviour on the
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164 Jill Hohenstein and Heather King
basis of stimulus and response. For example, a dog has innate responses
(salivation) to a stimulus (food), which gradually becomes associated
(through repeated pairing) with a new stimulus (a bell). The learned
behaviour is then salivating in response to the sound of a bell. Operant
conditioning may be defined as shaping behaviour through incentives and
punishments. A monkey may learn to press a lever to dispense food by at
first giving it food when it approaches the part of the cage where the lever
is positioned. Then, as time progresses, food is given only when the monkey
touches the lever. Finally, the monkey must actually press the lever to
receive food. These principles of conditioning are thought by many to be
true of humans in addition to non-human animals.
More modern approaches, such as Connectionism (Rummelhart and
McClelland 1986; Elman et al. 1996), would suggest there are structural
mechanisms in the brain that assist or constrain learning in various ways
but that we should still view learning as a series of inputs and outputs
operating in much the same way as a computer programme does. These
inputs and outputs are connected via networks which link the concepts
that a person has acquired. Building on the analogy between the brain and
computers, some researchers have designed computer programmes that
are able to learn a language (Seidenberg and Elman 1999); although,
admittedly, these programmes have much further to go before they can
replicate the powerful learning demonstrated by the human brain.
Furthermore, whereas the Connectionist view of learning acknowledges
some activity in the brain, these computer models may be more accurately
described as Associationist in that they rely primarily on activity in the
environment (the inputs) to structure learning.
In contrast to the Behaviourist theories, most contemporary approaches
to learning place value on the internal workings of the mind. Some of
these Cognitivist theories use forms of introspection to study learning. One
such set of theories stipulates that a learner progresses through a series of
stages, each affording a greater degree of intellectual ability. Piaget (1952) is
perhaps the most well known of the stage theorists. His ideas suggest that
when babies are born, and for the first two years of life, a primary objective
is to explore the world around them through their developing sensorimotor
skills. From age two until age seven, children are said to pass through a
period known as the pre-operational stage, in which they tend to be
egocentric in their thoughts and not be able to complete operations that
older children can do. Once children have entered the concrete operations
stage (age 712), they are able to operate on the things around them. For
example, they can begin to conserve volume, number and mass. A classic
Piagetian task involves pouring equal amounts of liquid into two glasses of
the same shape and size. After the child has agreed that the glasses contain
the same amount of liquid, the liquid from one glass is then poured into
a different-sized glass (either taller and thinner or shorter and squatter).
Children who can conserve volume will be able to say that there is still the
same amount of liquid, supposedly because they can mentally reverse the
operation of pouring the liquid from the first glass to the second of differing
size. After the age of 12, children pass into the formal operations (or
adult) stage of cognitive development. This stage is characterized by the
ability to think abstractly about many different concepts and to use logical
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Learning in and outside of the classroom 165
reasoning. Over the years, many people have challenged the idea that
children pass through a set of stages, particularly at the ages Piaget pro-
posed. However, stage theory remains a foundation of developmental
psychology today.
Piaget believed that children were able to pass through these stages
because their developing brains were more mature at a greater age than at
an earlier age. As a mechanism for moving from one stage to another, Piaget
and his followers proposed the idea of a cognitive conflict an encounter
with a new construct or experience which would prompt the reorganiza-
tion, or accommodation, of the new concepts into a mental framework
leading to a new stage of mind. In this way, Piaget recognized that children
construct their own understandings.
This notion of children constructing their own understanding has been
expanded upon by a number of researchers in the field of education and is
now known as Constructivism (Phillips 1997). Constructivists believe that a
childs learning depends on the way in which they construct new mental
schema based on previous knowledge (and/or stage of development) and
that their learning is directly correlated with their motivation to learn.
Some have interpreted this view of learning as meaning that children need
to discover concepts for themselves in order that they can construct their
own understanding. However, this idea has been shown to be inaccurate in
many situations (Klahr and Nigam 2004). Others have taken the premise
of Constructivism to mean that since individuals construct their own
understandings about the world, there can be no such thing as one right
answer, or absolute fact for each of us is free create our own explanations.
This interpretation has been criticized on the grounds that knowledge,
particularly scientific knowledge, is based upon repeated empirical obser-
vations of phenomena resulting in objective facts (Osborne 1996). That a
learner needs to make sense of these facts is not disputed, instead, the
argument is with the notion that learners should be left to construct
their own reality rather than be taught the widely accepted scientific
explanations.
A variant of Constructivist theory is sometimes called Social-
constructivism. This theory holds that children create their own learning
through interaction with their environment, often guided by more know-
ledgeable people around them. Social-constructivism has been linked to the
work of Vygotsky (1978), Bruner (1966) and others. This theory suggests
that ideas are first encountered by learners in the social environment,
mostly in the form of language. After some experience with these ideas,
they become incorporated into childrens habitual knowledge and become
second nature. Knowledgeable others in the environment can guide learn-
ing experiences by supporting childrens experiences through questions
and stimulating commentary. Such support has been termed scaffolding
(Wood et al. 1976).
Another of Vygotskys (1978) contributions to ideas of learning is the
concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD defines an
individuals potential level of understanding or skill in a more dynamic
way than do many forms of assessment. The ZPD may be thought of as the
area between what people can accomplish on their own and that which
they could achieve with the help of someone more experienced. Take, for
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example, a child working on problems of multiplication. This child may be

able to work through problems that involve single-digit numbers by herself.
However, this same child can potentially solve problems involving the
multiplication of two-digit numbers with the aid of a teacher or parent. This
childs ZPD with respect to multiplication lies between multiplying single-
digit numbers and two-digit numbers. The implications for teaching using
the ZPD are clear. A teacher will be most effective in helping a child to
acquire new understandings when challenging the child to learn concepts
at the upper limits of their ZPD, not below or above.
Recently, researchers have begun to expand upon Vygotskys ideas of
development to propose ways that people develop through their socio-
cultural experiences (see for example Rogoff 2003). These theories suggest
that it is important to take into consideration a persons cultural experi-
ences when determining the elements necessary for learning. For instance,
a person in a small village in Guatemala may learn a great deal about weav-
ing, a practice regarded as very important in her society, through watching
others work and being physically guided while learning herself. On the
other hand, a child in a science classroom in England may learn about the
processes of schooling and, we hope, some principles of physics while
attending to a teacher and watching an experiment. Sociocultural theory
argues that what these two learning experiences share is the intent partici-
pation of the learner. In each case, the more engaged the learners are with
the material, the more they will advance their skills in the discipline. This
notion of engagement or motivation is important, for ultimately learning is
dependent upon a learners response or attitude to new material (Pintrich
et al. 1993). We now turn to examine a few ideas about motivation as
this will become important in our later discussion regarding learning in
different contexts.
Learning and motivation
Motivation towards studying a particular domain or topic is related to the

affective appeal of that topic. In other words, the more people like a topic,
the more they will want to pursue learning in that area. Thus, many
teachers would like, and feel the need, to make everything they do with
their class inherently interesting (Nisan 1992).
Many theories of motivation can also be labelled Behaviourist or
Cognitivist in nature. Behaviourist theories tend to claim that providing
positive or negative reinforcement in response to learning behaviours will
provide incentive for future learning behaviours. For instance, giving
someone praise after getting the answer to a question correct would be seen
as motivation to answer other questions correctly. This form of acting in
order to receive (or not receive) reinforcement has been called extrinsic
motivation. That is, people carry out tasks so that they will receive a reward,
not because they choose to do so. Many researchers have criticized this
approach for motivating students because it is predicated on the continued
presence of rewards. More worryingly, external rewards have even been
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seen to decrease interest in otherwise motivating tasks. For example,

Deci and Ryan (1985) found that when preschoolers were offered a prize for
drawing, an activity which they previously enjoyed, they stopped wanting
to draw when there was no longer any reward offered.
On the other hand, Cognitivist theories of motivation centre on the
stimulation of intrinsic motivation, or the will to learn for learnings sake.
One such theory focuses on facilitating peoples mastery-orientation as
opposed to their performance-orientation (Dweck and Leggett 1988).
Mastery-orientation occurs when people pay attention because they want
to understand the material at hand. Performance-orientation is related
more to extrinsic motivation and is exemplified by the desire to achieve a
particular score or grade. Research suggests that students who are mastery-
orientated rise to challenges in difficult situations, attribute success to
internal causes, and use effective strategies for solving problems, such as in-
depth questioning (Alexander et al. 1998). Performance-orientation is more
complicated, given that most mastery-oriented learners also have some
desire to perform well. However, it appears that being performance-
oriented without being mastery-oriented may be damaging to learning.
Two pieces of evidence can be used to support the idea that mastery-
orientation has advantages over performance-orientation. Firstly, per-
formance goals are often out of a persons direct control. For instance, if
two people have the goal of getting the highest score on an exam, unless
they both achieve perfect scores, one of them will be disappointed.
Secondly, when encountering failure, people who have adopted a mastery-
orientation approach tend to continue to attempt to learn and see the
experience as valuable, whereas people only concerned with performance-
orientation are more likely to be anxious and avoid situations where they
will possibly fail in the future (Midgley et al. 2001).
Learning environments
We argue in this chapter that no matter which theory one believes best
captures the nature of learning, learning is learning, in whatever setting it
occurs. That is, peoples (children and adults) learning does not depend
upon the location or situation in which they find themselves. However,
because an individuals goals and motivations may differ in different
settings, the learning outcomes will also be different. For example, Hatano
and Inagaki (1993) examined the understanding of concepts relating to
animal welfare in a two groups of six-year-old students. The first group
learned about animal welfare as they took care of classroom animals as part of
their school routine. The second group had pets at home and thus were
intimately involved in their care. The second group was found to have a
more sophisticated understanding of animals due, the researchers claimed,
to their personal motivation to care for their pets.
In addition to the home context, museums and other out-of-school
settings offer a set of environments which may stimulate an individuals
interest and personal motivation to learn. In the formal school system,
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gaining good grades constitutes an omnipresent extrinsic motivation. But,

in the absence of externally imposed pressures of examinations and assess-
ments, learners are free to engage with content as and when they wish. Such
learning has been defined as informal, or free choice (Falk and Dierking
(1992) and described as voluntary and self-directed. Wellington (1990)
offers the following characterizations of in-school and out-of-school
learning:
In-school or formal learning Out-of-school or informal learning
Compulsory Voluntary
Structured Unstructured
Sequenced Unsequenced
Assessed Non-assessed
Evaluated Unevaluated
Close-ended Open-ended
Teacher-led Learner led
Teacher-centred Learner centred
Curriculum-based Non-curriculum based
Fewer unintended outcomes Many unintended learning outcomes
Empirically measured outcomes Less directly measurable outcomes
Solitary work Social intercourse
Teacher-directed Non-directed or learner directed
However, it should be noted that these lists are merely generalizations.

Whilst many in-school experiences are sequenced, teacher-centred and
involve solitary work, this is not the case for all in-school learning. In
contrast, not all out-of-school learning is as open-ended, non-assessed and
voluntary as is implied by Wellingtons characterization. In fact, developing
such lists may lead to the establishment of a false dichotomy between what
constitutes learning in and out of school.
To illustrate, the lack of a formal assessed curriculum does not automatic-
ally mean that a learner will choose to engage with the content on offer in
the museum or out-of-school context. Learners still need to be motivated to
learn, and their learning will be enhanced if it is supported or mediated
in some way. Perry (1992), for example, argued that an exhibit or museum
experience will only be intrinsically motivating to visitors if it inspires
curiosity, confidence and feelings of competence, a challenge or something
to work toward, control and a sense of self-determination, play and enjoy-
ment, and communication by engaging in meaningful social interaction.
Such a list of factors can also apply to experiences in the school context
and indeed many teachers seek to intrigue and challenge their students,
whilst aiming to develop their confidence and competence in a particular
area. Thus, rather than contrast the nature of learning in-school with
out-of-school settings, we argue that it makes more sense to build on
the opportunities provided by each to enhance and extend learning in the
other.
One of the advantages of out-of-school learning experiences, such as
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visits to museums or field centres, is that the environment offers a different

set of learning objectives. Indeed, most non-school environments will not
have been designed with explicit content objectives in mind. Instead, the
primary goal of most museums is to provide an affective experience in
which a learner is inspired, enthused, sensorially intrigued and ultimately
entertained. Museums also acknowledge their role in enabling visitors
access to the cultural capital of the wider society and providing opportun-
ities for individuals to acquire skills associated with inter-generational,
cross-community social interaction (Schauble et al. 1997). Yet the edu-
cational value of an entertaining experience should not be underestimated.
Studies have shown that attitudes towards a topic can be enhanced if that
topic is approached in a manner which affords practical investigation in
real-life settings. For example, attitudes toward ecology and agricultural
science have been shown to be enhanced following field trips to farms and
outdoor centres (Dillon et al. 2006). Unfortunately, enhanced attitudes
have not been found to consistently correlate with higher test scores. None-
theless, positive attitudes play an important role in prompting intrinsically
motivated, mastery-orientated learning.
Out-of-school learning environments may have the potential to enhance
attitudes by virtue of the novel experience, but to maximize the learning
opportunities, learners still need support and the experience needs to be
mediated. In the museum context, exhibitions are designed to help visitors
compare objects and appreciate patterns and trends. Museum educators,
meanwhile, encourage students to examine objects and question their
selection for display. In this way, a visitors experience is scaffolded as they
learn how to make sense of the museums content.
The novel experience provided by unfamiliar contexts may ignite a
learners curiosity and motivation to learn, but too much novelty can be
a distraction or impairment to learning. For example, Falk, Martin and
Balling (1978) found that exposure to a novel learning environment, in
this instance a field centre, without preparation of what to expect, reduced
childrens conceptual recall of the various activities. The children were so
preoccupied in learning about their new environment the physical space,
its amenities that they were not able to concentrate on the specific con-
tent objectives. The authors concluded that learners would benefit from
preparation or advanced organisers (Ausubel 1968) about what to expect in
order to decrease the novelty affect.
Whilst the value of out-of-school environments for enhancing attitudes
is important, the potential for conceptual learning should not be ignored.
Even when ostensibly just having fun, individuals can be observed to
exhibit learning-type behaviours. Such behaviour largely refers to a per-
sons actions and talk that support the making of connections between
concepts or objects. In museums, this meaning-making has been observed
in incidences of systematic and purposeful looking back and forth between
exhibits (vom Lehn et al. 2001), and by explicit or implied content of visitor
talk. For example, in her analysis of visitor talk, Allen (2002) was able to
characterize conversations that were conceptual and connective in nature
(they remind me of the frogs we saw on holiday), in addition to contribu-
tions that were simply perceptual and affective (wow, look at that). How-
ever, due to the ephemeral nature of most visits to museums, field centres or
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other out-of-school learning environments, it is clear that there is limited

opportunity for learners to gain substantial amounts of new knowledge in
situ. But the value of the out-of-school context may still be realized if
connections continue to be made back in the classroom. In this way, the
attitudes cultivated in the out-of-school context may be harnessed in
schools, and the experiences of the different setting may be consolidated
and connected to the curriculum by a teacher in the classroom. In the next
section, we discuss the ways in which teachers can support the connection
of learning experiences.
Connecting learning experiences
Forming connections between different concepts and learning experiences

is arguably one of the most important factors in learning (Vosniadou and
Ortony 1989). Regardless of which learning theory one aspires to, the idea
that one should build new learning into existing knowledge structures
makes sense. Therefore, it becomes imperative for teachers and other
people involved with education to make explicit the relevance of different
principles and concepts that are encountered in different learning
experiences.
Incorporating new knowledge into a persons existing knowledge (or
making a persons misconceptions salient) can be seen as integral to
developing a persons understanding of any given topic (Ausubel 1968). As
Alison King (1994: 339) notes:
During the process of reformulating information or constructing
knowledge, new associations are formed and old ones altered within
the individuals knowledge networks or structure. These links connect
the new ideas together and integrate them into that individuals
existing cognitive representations of the world. Adding more and
better links results in a more elaborated and richly integrated cognitive
structure that facilitates memory and recall.
That is, by relating what is being learned with previously learned know-
ledge, learners have greater opportunities for both understanding and
remembering the material.
A number of strategies for integrating new and old knowledge have been
proposed. For instance, a common process in learning that directly relates
old understandings with new ones is analogy. Learning through analogy
involves comparing a familiar (or source) concept with a new (or target)
concept, where the two are related in some form. Analogy can be especially
powerful as a learning tool when the two concepts are similar in structural,
rather than superficial, ways. To illustrate, noticing the superficial similar-
ities in the colour of a deer and an antelope may be less helpful to learning
about the functional attributes of these animals than noticing that a snake
and a shrimp both shed their outer layers. Analogy has been studied as a
natural occurrence in the work atmospheres of scientists (Dunbar 1995).
But it has also been shown to be effective in teaching students at varying
levels (Bulgren et al. 2000; Gentner et al. 2003).
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Another set of strategies for connecting knowledge from one situation

to another includes the use of guiding questions and explanations. In a
study by A. King (1994), one group of students engaged in a process of peer
questioning whereby classmates encouraged each other to apply concepts
to a new situation, relate new materials to known materials, provide justifi-
cations for concepts and draw personal conclusions. In contrast, a second
group were not encouraged or supported to interrogate the subject matter
learned. In analyses of test results, the first group scored more highly in
understanding, applying and retaining the information that they were
learning than did the second.
Many learners find establishing connections between content across
topics or subject matter to be difficult, and it is the particular skill of a
teacher to remind students about past content, or the application of con-
tent to different disciplines. Connecting content encountered in informal
environments also requires support. Unfortunately, researchers have found
that out-of-school learning experiences are rarely supported by pre-visit
preparation or post-visit follow-up work. For example, Griffin and Syming-
ton (1997), in their study of 12 Australian schools planning museum
visits, found that few students knew of the purpose of the visit, had any
expectations of learning or experienced any follow-up teaching after
the visit. To support and consolidate the experiences of out-of-school
learning opportunities, and to minimize the effect of novel environments,
Griffin and Symington offer the following advice: orient students to the
setting before the visit, plan pre-visit activities aligned with curriculum
goals, provide students with the opportunity to plan aspects of the visit
themselves, allow time for self-exploration and discovery during the visit,
and conduct post-visit classroom activities to reinforce the experience.
Finally, in supporting the construction of connections, across environ-
ments, topics or lessons throughout the year, teachers can employ a variety
of verbal strategies. They can repeat a students statement to emphasize its
contribution to the discussion and its role in connecting ideas. Teachers can
also rephrase or reformulate a students contribution so that the idea is
more explicitly aligned to a particular position. To ensure that students are
making sense of content, teachers can also employ a framework known as
reciprocal teaching (Palinscar and Brown 1994). This involves the teacher
provoking a discussion about a piece of material as a way of identifying and
then clarifying problems in understanding. In the context of reading,
students are then encouraged to predict what will follow based on their
understanding of what has gone before. In this way, the students response
or answer shapes the subsequent communication and exchange of ideas
and ensures that the teacher can keep track of the way in which the learner
is making connections in content. Alexander (2005) defines this type of
teaching as dialogic teaching and, in addition to the sharing of ideas and
the collective rather than isolationist completion of tasks, notes that this
structure allows for ideas to be cumulative and to be linked into coherent
lines of thinking.
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Concluding comments
As we have discussed here, there are many different theories to describe the
manner and process by which people learn. These theories suggest a range
of ways in which learning can be enhanced and/or mediated by a teacher or
more expert individual. What most of these theories share, however, is the
premise that learning involves making connections between content and
experience. Recall is then supported by virtue of the many links connecting
a variety of stimuli to particular piece of content. It follows that learning
can be facilitated by providing learners with as many opportunities as
possible to build new connections between existing concepts, and to
establish connections between new content and prior experience. In
addition to connecting content and topics in school, learners can also
benefit from new, content-rich experiences in out-of-school settings. Such
experiences are also valuable in that their novelty can ignite learner
curiosity, whilst the different format such as the sensory stimulation
offered by the outdoor environment, or the object-rich environment of a
museum can enhance attitudes towards particular content areas. In turn,
the learner may become personally motivated to learn more about a
particular subject.
In this chapter we have argued that learning is learning wherever it
occurs. More importantly, we have argued that the learning which takes
place in one environment has the potential to complement the learning
which takes place in another. In this way, out-of-school learning plays an
active part in supporting learning that goes on in the classroom and vice
versa. The integration of different learning environments should there-
fore be supported as much as possible in order to maximize a students
education.
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14 Classroom management
Jeremy Burke
Introduction
As she enters the classroom for the first time, music blaring, students
are sitting on desks, talking and rapping, oblivious to her entry.
Ellsmore (2005: 75)
In her book on teachers in film Susan Ellsmore describes the entry of

Lou-Anne Johnson into her English class in Dangerous Minds (1995). Here
the US Marine turned English teacher faces perhaps the toughest challenge
of her life: to teach these kids. Now the emphasis on the tough element of
this challenge is actually to teach the students. Gaining their attention
might not be all that hard, although clearly a necessary precursor to any
teaching. Keeping students attention, sometimes proves more difficult.
The title of this chapter is classroom management and that is because the
problem of gaining and retaining attention from an audience can be
planned and managed. This is just as well, since the tricky part of teaching
is actually teaching.
When people start teaching they bring a number of preconceptions
with them from various sources. Films and media are interesting in their
portrayal of teacher/student relations. Classrooms are often presented as
riotous and dangerous places, with streetwise kids and the threat of aggres-
sive and potentially violent incidents. The myth of school chaos is com-
pounded with press articles such as the Mail on Sundays Is this the worst
school in Britain? (Brace 1994) and reports of schools being out of control
(Education Guardian 2005). A recent Teachers TV presentation. The Great
Behaviour Debate (Coleman 2005) looks again at whether school students
can be controlled in schools. This focus on behaviour constructs an ideal
of a school student as quiet, acquiescent and studious, a restatement of
being seen but not heard. On the other hand, the recent Training and
Development Agency for Schools advertisements to attract people into
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176 Jeremy Burke
teaching show pupils as lively, excited and, albeit under specific conditions,
noisy. There is a potential balance to be struck between the targets of
discipline which aims to control behaviour, and discipline which aims to
promote study.
In this chapter I am presenting an analysis which gives a description of
the way institutions, and in particular secondary schools, subject people
within them to what are deemed to be normal modes of doing and saying.
This chapter does not seek to give a list of witty remarks and put-downs
when engaging with students, but rather to look at the way that a strategic
engagement might work.
I want to consider classroom management as a strategy to encourage
pupils to study and consequently, I want to differentiate between the two
targets of discipline.
Two discourses
I think it is productive to consider classroom management from the

point of view of issues of comportment and issues of the subject of study.
Bernstein (1990: 183; 2000: 32) distinguishes these two approaches as
the regulative discourse (RD), which is concerned with the establishing of
order, relations, identity that is, the rules which mark out students
behaviours, comportment, style of dress, manner of address and so on; and
the instructional discourse (ID), which addresses the specialized skills and
competences, that is, the school subjects being taught and learnt.
The term discourse has become subject to much discussion over recent
years and I want to define it in terms of Paul Dowlings Activity which is
to be understood as the contextualizing basis of social practice (Dowling
1998: 131); in other words, to outline what is do-able and what is say-able
in particular social contexts.
Bernstein, himself, says that the ID is embedded in the RD, producing
only one discourse. However, for our purposes maintaining the separation
is a productive distinction to make in terms of classroom management.
A teacher will always be able to call on aspects of the RD if school rule
flouting is adopted as an oppositional strategy in a lesson.
Foucault and discipline
Michel Foucault (1977) in his book Discipline and Punish looks at an analysis
of power, which he argues occurs only in social interaction and has no
materiality. It is descriptive of hierarchies in social relations and, for our
purposes, the strategies used in social institutions. Foucault introduces a
number of analyses of social strategy adopted in a variety of institutions
including the army, prisons, hospitals and schools which, in their own
ways, are concerned with discipline. The aim of disciplinary action is to
bring about an acceptance of the regulations laid down by the institution
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Classroom management 177
on the part of its subjects. Subjectivity is realigned and recast through the
process of disciplinary strategy. This might sound grim, but education is
concerned with transformation. A student should be different, in some
respects, at the end of a course.
The strategies which Foucault outlines are prevalent in schools. This does
not mean that there has to be utter oppression, but schools are concerned
with redirecting students understanding of the do-able and the say-able.
Foucault describes how technologies of the social are used to achieve this
through:
1 the systematic use of the layout and arrangement of space;
2 systems of punishment and privilege to state and restate the expected
normal behaviours and actions of conscripts, inmates, patients and
students;
3 the hierarchical gaze which leads people to feel under constant
surveillance;
4 the production of evidence to produce case notes which describe and
position individuals and all go towards constructing a network of
regulation.
We can look at how these aspects of the systematic organization of
a disciplinary institution apply in schools, although this is a very brief
outline of Foucaults work.
The organization of space
School are organized into spaces for learning: classrooms, laboratories, art
rooms, drama theatres, sports grounds and so on, and each of these spaces
will have its own organization. In a classroom there are many possible
seating arrangements from rows, to groups, to a horseshoe and each of
these arrangements will facilitate different types of engagement between
the student and teacher and student and student. Moreover, individual
students might be assigned particular seats and, consequently, who they sit
next to and might interact with during a lesson. Student teachers are often
recommended to make a seating plan in order to place each student and
possibly to help learn their names. Foucault observes that the organizing
of educational spaces moved from the traditional model of the master
working with an apprentice whilst others simply looked on, to a learning
machine, but also as a machine for supervising, hierarchizing and reward-
ing (Foucault 1977: 147). The organization of the classroom becomes a
resource for the teacher to establish authority, and also to manage students
engagement with the activities set.
Normalizing judgement
Disciplinary power is used to induce people into following certain

actions, within the institution, through a system of small punishments
and privileges. The punishments that are used should reinforce the desired
action if a student fails to produce a piece of written work, then the
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178 Jeremy Burke
punishment is to write. The punishment reinforces the desired action.

Similarly, privileges may be given which recognize conformance with the
desired actions, and withdrawn if a student fails to continue to carry them
out.
One example of this might be the use of quiet work and silent work. A
class is asked to get on with their activity in a focused and quiet way. If the
noise level rises the teacher will comment, The noise level is too high.
Will you get on with work more quietly please? This lets students know
the limit of classroom noise. If students continue to be too noisy, a period
of silent work is implemented. Here students work in silence for an
announced period of time say two minutes but any transgression of the
silent work is met with serious punishment for example, a telling off, a
detention, a letter home or the withdrawal of some privilege. Thereafter
a period of quiet work is permitted where students may once again talk to
each other, but without raising their voices. The repeated implementation
of this kind of strategy inducts students into the required level of noise
permitted in that classroom.
Schools will frequently be concerned to institutionalize certain com-
portments, which teachers will be expected to check on (surveillance) and
promote. Some typical examples will include:
dress specified school uniform, hair styles, permitted jewellery,
exclusion of trainers, etc.
comportment sitting up straight in lessons, silence, lining up,
walking on the left in corridors, etc.
styles of address calling teachers Sir, or Maam or Miss, not using
derogatory names for classmates, etc.
time and location the school timetable requires students to be in
particular places at particular times of the day, detentions demand a time
and place attendance, etc.
Here we can note that these things are more like the RD than the ID. For
the purposes of students learning a subject, then the classroom discourse
has to focus on learning action. This might be directed through forms of
engagement with the topic, the use of particular equipment, the kind of
response to questions, problems or situations presented. Students are also
inducted into a way of working in particular subjects.
The gaze
Here Foucault draws on the metaphor of the Panopticon, a prison designed

by Jeremy Bentham which, built in the round, has cells on the perimeter
of the building and a watch tower in the centre. Light enters the building
from windows in the cells, but the central watch tower remains in relative
darkness. The prisoners are exposed, backlit, to the gaze of the guards in the
watch tower. Now, because the prisoners cannot see the watch tower, they
do not know whether they are being observed, or not, and consequently
learn to act as though they were under constant surveillance. The Gatso
Speed Camera has much the same effect on motorists. The analogy to this
in a classroom is the notion that teachers have eyes in the back of their
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heads. Even if the teacher is not obviously looking at a student, the student
must still feel subject to their gaze. School teachers learn very early on
to scan their classes. Their eyes will move to look at every student in
the room even if they are actually talking to only one. This gives the
opportunity to check on anyone acting in any way which is significantly off
task and, according to this theory, leads students to feel as though off-task
action will not go unnoticed. The gaze is an important concept, as it is part
of an almost unseen mechanism through which people adjust, modify and
internalize their actions.
The examination
In schools various forms of assessments are used all the time. Pupils are
measured, commented on, given targets and a whole panoply of data are
produced and recorded. This is potentially strong stuff. The examination
might be a formal subject test, or it might be marking homework, or
commenting on a students progress during a lesson. The recording of
observations; exam, exercise and homework marks; targets; and attitude
make each individual student a case.
Foucault describes the theatre of the examination and the widespread
acceptance that it generates a truth about the student. It becomes an
effective tool in classifying students according to criteria which typically
include ability and effort. Foucault argues that disciplinary power is
invisible and the techniques of normalization and surveillance lead to the
internalization of the required comportments, behaviour and utterances
by the subjects. The examination in school creates a case, much as a
medical examination creates a case. The examinee is invited to accept the
individualizing judgement of the examination as a representation of
themselves, and the process objectifies and subjugates them (Foucault
1977: 191).
Frequently, the most effective action a teacher can take when dealing
with a recalcitrant student is simply to write a report. This, alongside the
other data held about the student, makes it possible to call the student to
account at a chosen time. It constructs a case-to-answer. Foucault points out
the economy of the examination is in uniting the gaze and normalizing
judgement. Students, in school, are presented with an image of them-
selves measured alongside a scale of normal action, and effectively invited
to conform to the norm. We can now turn to look at how all this theory
might inform classroom management in practice.
Establishing a classroom discourse
If the teacher wants to establish what might count as the classroom dis-
course, the do-able and say-able, authority has to be established by the
teacher. Although schools as institutions are designed to promote
the authority of teachers, this is not necessarily totally uncontested by
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180 Jeremy Burke
students, and authority has to be claimed and maintained. In fact, each

time teachers take on a new class, whether they are new or experienced
teachers, their authority has to be reasserted. However, care needs to be
taken when drawing on the established norms of the school, in terms of
comportment, dress and so on, that authority is not merely focused on
teacher as enforcer.
We might take the ID as also marking out the classroom space, from other
subject classrooms, or the corridor or dining hall, and this also has to be
established. Discussion about coats and trainers is a distraction from the
topic in hand. Prolonged struggles over outdoor coats, trainers and so on
will effectively prevent the shift from RD to ID. An effective strategy might
be to deal with these issues quickly at the outset of a lesson. In terms of the
classroom discourse, the do-able and say-able might be restricted to the
subject of the lesson. So in science, talk about science, in maths, talk about
maths and in Spanish talk about (or in) Spanish. This way non-subject talk
becomes un-sayable.
Having determined that the only talk and discussion can be about the
subject of study it would seem reasonable to ensure that students were not
barred from engaging in study. By this, I mean that differentiation practices
should lead to pupils being able to gain entry to the subject of study, and
not have it simplified to the point of becoming infantile. If students are
effectively barred from engaging in the full range of subject study, then it
might not be surprising if they become disenchanted and oppositional.
Managing a lesson
I shall take a lesson as having four parts, or stages, in terms of managing

students learning. These are: starting the lesson; introducing the topic/
activity; maintaining student engagement; and managing the end of the
lesson.
I want to exemplify the progress of a lesson from the approaches of two
teachers drawn loosely from the documentary The Lions Den (Morse 1992),
which looks at how a new teacher, a teacher of eight years experience and
a teacher of 22 years experience work with the same group of Year 10
pupils in a typical mixed, multicultural, multi-ethnic inner city London
comprehensive school. I am interested in marking out the differences in
approach between the new teacher, trying to establish himself with the
class, and the very experienced teacher who seems to gain positive engage-
ment from the same class that the new teacher has difficulty with. For the
new teacher this is his form and he takes them for PSHE. The experienced
teacher is their head of year and their English teacher.
Starting the lesson
Typically lessons begin with the teacher announcing his or her authority.
This is simply to say, following Dowling (2001), that any pedagogic relation
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requires an author and audience, where the authority resides with the
author. In our terms, the teacher has both the authorial voice and authority
over the practice.
The way that teachers may address their classes and gain attention will
vary considerably. Rogers (1997) suggests using an analogy, or Cowley
(2003) suggests writing something on the board, and there are other self-
help books which give lists of strategies that have worked for their authors.
However, it is important to consider that any strategy is contingent on the
place, time and participants, so teachers have to be prepared to adjust what
they do and say in the light of responses from their classes. Strategies can be
planned, tried and amended over a number of lessons.
It is at the opening of the lesson that it is most profitable to recruit wider
school rules so some restatement about expected comportments might be
made, including such standards as taking off outside coats, having books,
pens and so on out and being ready to begin work. The experienced teacher
might include these rules as part of her general commentary, and in our
example school, the experienced teacher enters the classroom and simply
says that she expects pupils to be getting on with their (preset) work rather
than making a lot of noise. In saying this at the outset she announces her
presence, her authority and the desired practice in her classroom. The
statement expresses what is held to be the norm in that classroom. Punish-
ment or privilege might follow a failure or concordance with the norm.
Over a period of time, students are inducted into the classroom discourse.
They know what is expected and respond to the slightest prod in its direc-
tion. What is important then, is for the teacher to be as clear as possible
about what the classroom discourse should be. This can be difficult when
one first sets out as a teacher, but can be thought through and planned for,
nevertheless.
In our example school the new teacher calls for the class to be quiet.
However, he says Im getting sick of this now. Can you stop chattering on?
This has the effect of both focusing on himself, he is the one that is troubled
because he needs to be the centre of attention, and diminishing his
students by using chattering on in a derogatory way. This is a negative
approach which positions the students as engaging in an oppositional prac-
tice, making him sick. Instead the teacher could have been more inclusive
with a phrase along the lines, Will everyone please stop what they are
doing and pay attention. This means that the teacher can focus on the
stopping as a precursor to giving the message. This will often entail calling
individuals to account, such as, Karl, will you pay attention, please?, and
always waiting for complete quiet before starting to give your message.
The kind of language that a teacher uses requires thought and reflection.
As the ID is established students will need to see a place for themselves and
understand the rules of engagement. The experienced teacher has set up
such a regulation. The new teacher needs to do so.
Surprisingly, calling for people to be quiet and listen, in all sorts of
circumstances, might be quite easily achieved. However, if the message is
dull or if the audience does not recognize its value, then keeping peoples
attention can become quite difficult. It is to this that we now turn.
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182 Jeremy Burke
Introducing the activity
In our example school the new teacher takes his form for PSHE and has
to teach a lesson on drugs and alcohol. PSHE is not his main subject and it
is likely that he has not encountered drugs and alcohol as a topic in which
to engage Year 10 pupils. This highlights what is referred to as a subject
knowledge issue.
I want to refer again to Dowlings (2001) Social Activity theory, which
describes a pedagogic relation as one where the author has access to a
privileged domain of knowledge and the audience is yet to be inducted into
that knowledge domain. In other words, the teacher will have access to
the knowledge which, through pedagogic action, will be made available
to students. If teachers do not have the knowledge, then they really do not
have much to say and nothing to teach. The only thing they can do is to
resort to RD action.
Moreover, in pedagogic relations, it is teachers who are able to judge
whether something which is produced within the subject is good enough
that is, to judge whether their own explanation or a students production
meet the requirements of the subject. The logical converse of this is when
the principles of evaluation of the performance reside with the audience.
This is quite important, because at the outset of teaching a class, the group
might not be quite prepared to accept or run with what is being offered to
them. If a new teacher approaches things in a different way to the classs last
teacher the students might well say, This is not the way things are done.
Alternatively, students will often ask, What are we learning this for? As a
teacher presents a topic which is new to the class, so there is an element of
marketing involved, as the new knowledge is shown to be of interest,
benefit or worthwhile in some way. Our new teacher facing a new class and
teaching them about drugs did not really attempt to sell the topic, but
simply asked the students to discuss it. The students respond by saying that
they do not know anything about drugs, which is probably a sensible thing
to say under the circumstances. They very well might not want to discuss
whatever they do know about drugs. The point here is that the teacher
has to look for a way in with the students. This is a difficult issue, which
according to a recent Ofsted report is still not handled sufficiently well in
schools (Ofsted 2006). The teaching challenge is to clarify the main message
and to consider what will get students to a point where they can receive it.
An opener might well be to find out what students actually do know already.
So, the teacher needs to consider lesson starters, small activities, open
questions or other activities to enable the class to engage in some meaning-
ful way with the topic. It would be unsurprising if students were not willing
to take on something which makes little sense to them. In turn this might
lead to them adopting oppositional strategies. It is important for a teacher
to find an understanding with the groups that they teach. Indeed, as
Bernstein has argued: If the culture of the teacher is to become part of the
consciousness of the child, then the culture of the child must first be in
the consciousness of the teacher Bernstein (1974: 199). Teaching might be
considered as a dialogue, in which case both author and audience need to
understand each other. Classroom management, if it is to achieve the move
to an ID, needs to be focused on developing a dialogue.
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As students start to get on with their tasks there will need to be some
consideration about working methods with whom students can work,
what they can talk about, where they can move to and how much noise
they can make. These methods will differ from lesson to lesson and between
subjects depending on what is being taught and the type of activity
selected. These rules need to be set out clearly in the explanation of the
activity.
Maintaining engagement
Once students have been set off to work on an activity, then it becomes
important to make sure that they are able to sustain this. Some may not
have fully understood what it is they are being asked to do. Some might not
understand the principle which ostensibly has just been explained. Some
might be thinking about some other aspect of their lives, hanging on for
their next text message about the play of events amongst their friends
and so on. It is at this point that focus needs to be on the ID, where the
classroom discourse is about study and not about other aspects of
behaviour. We might analyse this part of the lesson in terms of Foucaults
gaze and normalizing judgement. Lets look at some typical actions by
pupils and consider possible counter strategies.
Firstly, the rules for the activity need to be adhered to for effectiveness or
for health and safety issues. This means that the teacher has to be aware of
what is going on, and this is achieved simply by looking. Teachers have
to scan the class frequently, perhaps nearly all the time, to see that students
are engaged and not off task. This does not mean that every pause, sigh,
glance out of the window needs to be addressed, but that there has to
be some sensitivity about whether students are able to engage with the
activity.
If scanning reveals a student is doing something other than their work,
then this might invite a comment. However, some consideration should be
given to the effect the utterance is likely to have. Teachers comments such
as, Dont be silly or Im fed up with your lack of effort or Why cant you
do as you are told?, all offer the possibility of replies which lead away from
the subject of study. Students can stand on their dignity about being called
silly. If a teacher says that they are fed up this can elicit the student
response, Am I bothered, though? A strategy then might be to focus
comments on the desired norm for the lesson. So a teacher could say to a
student, Do you need some help with your work?, or more encouragingly,
Ask me a question which will help you to get on. This focuses attention on
what is aimed for, and not on what is deemed as deviant.
Perhaps a more significant concern is when students disengage from their
task and become what is called disruptive. This is perhaps the media-
fuelled populist image of schools. Here, rather than drift off, as it were,
students might engage in oppositional action to that which is being offered.
Calling out, being disagreeable, throwing paper planes, pens or equipment
all serve to disrupt the planned flow of the lesson. Initially this can be a
real difficulty with some classes, and a planned and managed approach is
what is required. Where there is a significant number of students who are
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184 Jeremy Burke
being difficult then seeking support and advice from more experienced
colleagues is a sensible strategy. However, the outcome has to be that
the class teacher deals with all the members of the class, and authority
ultimately has to be claimed by the class teacher. Sending students out of
the room, or sending them to someone else, such as a head of department
or head of year, means that authority has not been able to be established
yet. Strategies for (re)establishing authority will have to be planned.
Dealing with students who are being disruptive can also be achieved
through action which focuses on their work. Instead of complaining about
a paper aeroplane, for example, the student might be asked to explain how
throwing it helped them get on with their work. Perhaps less confronta-
tional would be to ask the student to come and show their work to the
teacher. This then positions the teacher as the holder of the principles of
evaluation is this students work good enough? The action restates the
teachers authority in terms of the ID.
Ultimately, students and teachers have to form an alliance, that is to be
speaking the same language, travelling the same path. Telling students off,
unthoughtful put downs, sarcasm and so on, all have the effect of casting
the student as Other to the ideal presented by the teacher. It places them in
an oppositional position. The effective teacher has to form an alliance. This
means that it is a sensible strategy to assume that the students are able to
learn what it is that is going to be taught. If they are not learning, then the
teacher has to make an adjustment to what they do it is a planning and re-
planning issue.
At this point we can make a link with formative assessment and dialogic
teaching. Black and Wiliam (2001) show that learning is enhanced through
the use of formative assessment and we might consider this as opening
and maintaining a dialogue with students. The discussion will be about
students work and progress and the teacher will gradually form some
understandings about the students and vice versa. As the teacher gets to
know the students work better, so it becomes an easier task to refer to some
item of their learning. This keeps the conversation focus firmly on the class-
room discourse, the subject and students progress. Although teachers will
inevitably develop a set of put downs as students try to amend lesson
trajectories, keeping these focused on the trajectory is doubly effective.
Managing the end of a lesson
Teachers classrooms are, in some ways, an indicator of their authority in

terms of their organization and being in control of their presentation.
Goffman (1990: 32) uses the term front and this can apply to a classroom.
In order to maintain the front the room needs to give the desired impres-
sion. Usually this will be a place which is neat and orderly, which means as
well as having books and equipment ready for the beginning of a lesson,
everything needs to be cleared away at the end. This includes leaving table
tops and the floor as spotless as possible, because this provides the final
impression for students leaving the room and, in turn, provides the initial
impression for the next class entering
Part of planning for a lesson should include planning how the lesson will
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end. Enough time needs to be allowed for packing away and tidying up. Too
much time will eat into the lesson, so plan and organize for this to be fairly
quick. A teacher will need to know what was handed out and what should
be collected in a list could help. Making use of students to help collect in
books, paper and equipment and asking someone to take the bin round so
that all bits of paper and other debris can be picked up and thrown away
can help speed things up. As the teacher now directs clearing-up operations
so the discourse shifts from ID to RD, and it is RD authority which is now
claimed. As we have seen this is an easier claim than for ID authority, but
the leaving message is one of the teacher being in charge. This is good as
the private sphere of the classroom becomes public when the door opens.
If the view is of an orderly classroom with students standing behind their
chairs waiting to be dismissed, a small group at a time, then it looks like
the teacher is in control. This might be a positive thing to enjoy, at least at
the end of every lesson.
Concluding comments
We have observed that we can consider the strategies used in a classroom

for managing the audience and the engagement with the subject of study.
Schools are disciplinary institutions which are concerned about students
comportments, actions and utterances. However, students can take
oppositional action to the rules and oppositional action to a subject being
offered in a subject lesson. Here it is suggested that the focus of disciplinary
strategy should be on the subject being taught. This has the effect of fore-
grounding the instructional discourse which, in turn, might be considered
as passing a normalizing judgement which promotes engagement in the
lesson activity. However, the lesson activity is then crucial to the process
which, in turn, suggests that lesson planning is the key to classroom
management.
References
Bernstein, B. (1974) Class, Codes and Control, Volume I: Theoretical Studies Towards a
Sociology of Language (2nd edn). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Bernstein, B. (1990) The structuring of Pedagogic Discourse, Vol IV: Class, Codes and
Control. London: Routledge.
Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research and
Critique. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield.
Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (2001) Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards through Class-
room Assessment. Kings College London http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/education/
publications/Blackper cent20Box.pdf last accessed July 2006.
Brace, A. (1994) Is this the worst school in Britain? Mail on Sunday, 20 March.
Coleman, D. (2005) The Big Behaviour Debate. http://www.teachers.tv/oneOff
Programme.do?transmissionProgrammeId=187789 last accessed July 2006.
Cowley, S. (2003) Getting the Buggers to Behave 2. London: Continuum.
Dowling, P.C. (1998) The Sociology of Mathematics Education: Mathematical Myths/
Pedagogic Texts. London: Falmer.
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186 Jeremy Burke
Dowling, P.C. (2001) Social Activity Theory. http://www.ioe.ac.uk/ccs/dowling/

sat2001.htm last accessed July 2006.
Education Guardian (2005) Out of Control. educationguardian.co.uk http://education.
guardian.co.uk/classroomviolence/story/0,,1446969,00.html accessed 22 July 2006.
Ellsmore, S. (2005) Carry on Teachers! Representations of the Teaching Profession in Screen
Culture. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.
Foucault, M. (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin
Books.
Goffman, E. (1990) The Presentation of Self. London: Penguin.
Morse, O. (1992) The Lions Den, Windfall Films.
Ofsted (2006) Healthy Schools, Healthy Children? The Contribution of Education to Pupils
Health and Well-being, London: Office for Standards in Education.
Rogers, B. (1997) Cracking the Hard Class: Strategies for Managing the Harder than
Average Class. London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Further reading
Rogers, B. (1997) Cracking the Hard Class: Strategies for Managing the Harder than
Average Class, London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Steer, A. (2005) Learning behaviour: The Report of The Practitioners Group on
School Behaviour and Discipline. http://publications.teachernet.gov.uk/eOrdering
Download/STEER-FINAL.pdf last accessed July 2006.
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15 Differentiation in theory
and practice
Simon Coffey
Introduction
Differentiation is a philosophy of education which recognizes that

pupils learn differently. This chapter addresses the what, why and how
questions which face teachers across the curriculum as they seek to embed
differentiated teaching into their practice. The need to ensure that each
pupil experiences meaningful and successful learning often seems a daunt-
ing challenge given material and time constraints, but differentiation is
manageable when viewed as flexibility in planning, teaching and assessing.
The range of strategies which constitute differentiation also underpin
recent conceptual innovations in education such as personalised learning
(DfES 2004) and assessment for learning (Black et al. 2003), sharing the
aims of empowering pupils through developing the learning skills which
work best for them. There is no great mystery to differentiation, yet it often
appears to be an elusive concept. I asked 50 training teachers nearing
the end of their PGCE year to report on their experiences of differentiation
and most had not heard of the term before starting the course, unless
they had encountered it in pre-course reading. Almost all agreed with the
principles of differentiation but still felt that they were unsure how to
implement these in their lessons. Similarly, subject mentors often report
that training teachers do not adequately consider individual learners
needs. Yet, differentiation is not an extra dimension to teaching, rather,
it represents a set of principles and practices which are teaching in the
modern classroom.
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188 Simon Coffey
What is differentiation?
To differentiate means, according to my dictionary, to perceive, show or

make a difference (in or between); to discriminate. This definition serves us
well in the classroom context where teachers perceive difference in styles
of learning, in aptitude, in interests and in a range of other motivational
criteria. Teachers show sensitivity to this difference through the range of
activities that they plan, in how these are structured, both incrementally
and by type, and through the variety of ways pupil participation is facili-
tated in order to offer challenge and optimal learning. The learning process
therefore makes differentiated learning feasible, allowing all pupils to
engage to the best of their ability. Most schools now include differen-
tiation explicitly or implicitly in their stated learning goals, acknowledging
that teaching needs to reflect the highly individual needs of learners.
Consider, for example, these two aims extracted from school mission
statements:
We believe that every pupil can succeed and we challenge pupils to
achieve their full potential by building differentiated targets into our
teaching.
We will develop pupils individual talents and encourage them to work
positively on improving identified areas for development.
These statements reflect the remit of education in the twenty-first cen-
tury: to prepare pupils for a lifetime of flexible learnability. Skills and
knowledge are no longer, if indeed they ever were, viewed as finite entities
or attributes, things that some people can do or know and which will
continue to serve them in their professional life. We cannot know which
skills will be in demand in the future or which personal qualities will be
privileged in the workplace and so the emphasis is now on developing
flexible skills and approaches to learning. Differentiation offering
the appropriate level of challenge allows pupils to understand their
own learning styles and to negotiate their own targets. In other words, it
encourages positive involvement and increased autonomy.
Why differentiate?
Differences in aptitude and learning styles have long been recognized. In

the past such differences were understood as being immutable charac-
teristics inherent within pupils and it was believed that pupils of different
aptitudes would benefit from structural segregation by 11-plus filtering or
by streaming, banding and setting by ability groups within a school. Of
course, even where groups are set by ability there is a range of varying
aptitude within the group, as well as different learning styles and
motivations, so even the most rigorous selection process will never produce
a truly homogenous group of learners. It is for this reason that the term
mixed ability can be somewhat misleading. However, the remit of this
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Differentiation in theory and practice 189
chapter is not to discuss the arguments for or against ability group setting
(for this, see Wiliam and Bartholomew (2004) or Chapter 16 in this book),
but I am making a distinction between differentiation through systemic
separation and flexible, differentiated teaching. It is the latter which is
referred to throughout this chapter, that is, teaching which allows pupils
to discover for themselves their own capacities for getting involved in
learning. The move away from setting toward completely mixed ability,
that is, unset groups seemed a natural extension of the egalitarian ethos of
comprehensivism and required teachers to rethink issues of organizing and
planning for pupils different learning needs. The ethos which underpins
explicit differentiation as it is now interpreted in the UK1 is therefore closely
tied to a belief in mixed ability teaching, not least of all the importance of
the social dimension.2
As the term differentiation became established in educational discourse
in the 1990s, it denoted an attitude to pupils and a repertoire of practices
which many experienced teachers already recognized as good, child-
centred teaching. As the focus on differentiated teaching and learning
became more explicit, through in-service training and initial teacher educa-
tion, many experienced teachers welcomed the acknowledgement of what
had long been their experience in the classroom:
Defining the word and operationalising it was something new,
although the actual practices were old, something which was part of
experienced teachers professional expertise and craft knowledge.
(Kersher and Miles 1996: 19)
At last, the open discussion about difference and how to support different
pupils meant that ideas could be cross-fertilized and new strategies
developed to cater for different needs. Differentiation no longer needed
to be dependent on anecdote and conventional wisdom but could take
its place as a major cornerstone in the way lessons were planned and
taught. Similarly, teachers new to the profession welcomed the range of
differentiating strategies to support their management of the sometimes
overwhelming diversity of any pupil cohort.
In summary, then, many teachers have always implicitly had different
expectations from different students, especially as their personal knowledge
of pupils grew, and these expectations often affected choices made about
which pupils to ask what, which pupils to pair off together for an activity
and so forth. Now, however, differentiation enjoys full recognition as it
has become increasingly understood and codified, although of course any
1
It is worth remembering that the differentiation ethos and strategies described here are the
product of specific cultural beliefs about the aims of education and these are not universal. For
example, a review of research looking at differentiation reported: the literature revealed that
differentiation is interpreted quite differently (both in the UK and the US) (NFER 2003). In the
UK the focus is on differentiating the curriculum to cater for mixed ability classrooms whereas in
the USA the emphasis is on streamed classes for gifted children. Furthermore, in France, where
equality is seen as a cornerstone of republican democracy and is enshrined institutionally in
national education, the idea of giving pupils different work to do seems inequitable to many
teachers (Raveaud 2005).
2
Although some schools have recently reintroduced setting for pupils in specific subjects,
notably maths and modern foreign languages (NFER 2003).
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190 Simon Coffey
codified practices which assist learning are only valid inasmuch as they
constitute and support good practice.
Differentiated learning
The different ways in which pupils learn result from complex cognitive,
genetic and social differences, which we are still only beginning to under-
stand (see Chapter 13). It is important to emphasize that differentiation
in teaching is only as important as differentiation in learning. A traditional
view of school learning was that, metaphorically speaking, pupils were
receptacles and the job of the teacher was to fill them with knowledge.
The process was conceived as linear, that is, incremental, so good pupils
retained more knowledge. In such a case, it was often seen that this type of
pupil had a good memory, was motivated and paid attention, while bad
pupils did not retain knowledge, lacked motivation to learn and were easily
distracted. Unsurprisingly, co-operation and docility therefore became
conflated with notions of intelligence.
We now recognize that learning is a much more complex process than the
retention of information and that the traditional classroom privileged
certain, culturally-shaped ways of learning, interacting and seeing the
world. There is still some dispute over terminology to describe difference;
for example, less able, SEN, different needs, gifted and talented see
Cigman (2006) for a defence of the concept of the gifted child. How-
ever, modern educationalists, faced with increasing diversity, unite in
acknowledging that the one-size-fits-all model of learning is no longer
credible and so we are left with no alternative which can claim to be just
and equitable other than to integrate into our teaching a flexibility that
allows all pupils the opportunity to succeed.
How to differentiate
Providing optimal challenge
As teachers differentiate between classes according to a broad set of

variables (for example, age, set, previous learning, maybe gender ratio, even
the time of day), so, within a class, teachers know that there are a range of
pupil learning styles, levels, competences and so forth. Whether the class
has been set or not, all classes require sensitivity to differentiated needs,
although, of course, where there is broad mix of ability this breadth needs
to be reflected in the scope of the teachers differentiation strategies.
Differentiation does not mean teaching individually tailored lessons to
30 individuals; no teacher is expected to provide private tuition on this
scale! Even if this were feasible logistically, such exclusively individualized
learning would undermine the richness of the group dynamic which
characterizes in-school learning. The social aspect of learning in a group
with pupils offering different types of help to each other through
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modelling, explaining, collaborating (peer coaching, scaffolded learning) is

a dimension which is to be capitalized on by teachers.
Indeed, as exemplified at the end of this chapter, peer collaboration
and modelling offer important mechanisms for providing differentiated
support, and research has shown that such scaffolding does lead to
improved competence (Tudge 1992). Clearly, social cohesion and a belief in
pupilteacher shared goals are important elements in ensuring a feeling of
belonging and a positive attitude to the subject and, indeed, to school
(Ireson and Hallam 2005). Differentiation strategies therefore always need
to be underpinned by an environment of warmth and security in which
pupils work together.
Differentiation means offering pupils optimal challenge, so that each
child can experience success. The role of the teacher is to sustain appro-
priate levels of interest and engagement. During the thousands of lessons
I have both taught and observed I have concluded that the single most
striking yardstick for measuring sustained pupil engagement (for which
read successful learning) is sensitivity to the appropriate level, pace and type
of learning to ensure optimal challenge. To unpack this statement let us
consider each of the three components.
Level of learning
Clearly, pupils need to be set activities which are within their reach but
which are not too easy. Both work that is too difficult and that which is too
easy are likely to lead to distraction and, in the long term, to disaffection.
If work is perceived to be too difficult, pupils will feel that they are not up
to the task. This may be because the task does not build on the frame of
knowledge and skills that has previously been developed, or it may be that
the task has not been scaffolded adequately with support material, further
explanation or other sources of support, such as group work. Pupils often
feel that the task is intrinsically too difficult for them rather than thinking
that they need to enlist support. Indeed, they may not know what type
of support is available or how to gain access to it. Provision of adequate
support, or clear signposting toward it, is incumbent upon the teacher.
Pupils in this case, faced with a task which they perceive as too hard, are
likely to switch off. They may then display some form of bravado to parade
an indifference to learning (this is stupid I dont care about this) or will
simply remain quiet and internalize their confusion. In either case, the
effects on personal self-esteem as well as on class morale are decidedly
negative.
At the other extreme, if pupils are repeatedly set work which is too easy
they will soon realize that they are not being stretched and will also become
bored. Here the danger is that teachers set work toward the middle of the
ability band without allowing pupils with more aptitude in the subject the
scope for challenge at the upper level. It is a common mistake for beginning
teachers to set work that is too easy in the hope that it will please pupils
and keep them occupied. In fact, the opposite happens. I firmly believe that
pupils enjoy the level of challenge that allows them, with effort, to succeed.
This has a confidence-boosting effect on the individual and is good for
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192 Simon Coffey
class morale; differentiation is therefore tightly linked to the goal of pupil

motivation (Miller 1998).
So, how do we know where to pitch the level? Borrowing a metaphor
from linguist Stephen Krashen (1984), input should be i + 1, which means
slightly above the existing level. Of course, this is never going to be an exact
science, so Krashen allows that content input will be roughly-tuned. In
order to be able to provide the appropriate level of input teachers need
to know what pupils have done before, that is, new input needs to build on
previous learning. Some National Curriculum attainment target levels sug-
gest that pupils knowledge/skill-base is developed in a linear, hierarchical
fashion; however, the building process is not purely incremental. Rather,
previous learning is constantly revisited, checked and integrated into new
learning to provide a qualitatively expanded and highly individualized
experience of the subject. Short-term and long-term plans (lesson plans,
schemes of work, whole school curricula) need to take a broad perspective
of learning aims to ensure that key overarching themes dovetail over time.
Ollerton and Watson describe this type of planning as a three dimensional
activity that (takes) account of the students passage through school and
advocate a spiral curriculum which sees pupils revisiting ideas from
different perspectives, different directions at different times (Ollerton and
Watson 2001: 55).
The ways in which new knowledge is integrated into existing cognitive
schemata are personal yet shaped by cultural frames as well as neuro-
biological patterns. The Vygotskian ZPD (zone of proximal development)
metaphor emphasizes individualized appropriation of new concepts
through joint participation in an activity. Differentiation strategies support
this view of learning as a process of social engagement, that pupils learn
not through being told but through problem solving under adult guidance
or in collaboration with capable peers (Vygotsky 1978: 86, cited in Daniels
2001: 57).
Pace of learning
Pace refers to the speed at which new items are presented sequentially
and the time allowed for their assimilation. Different pupils need different
time frames and different levels of support to digest new information but,
again, this is not only about speed but also about the level of conceptual
sophistication. If more able pupils are expected to work too slowly, they will
soon become bored and if less able pupils are not given adequate time to
understand and assimilate a concept, they will become frustrated as they
are less likely to grasp the follow up. Teachers will use different levels of
explanation and different levels of support to modify the input that pupils
receive. All pupils, of course, require clear exposition of concepts and clear
modelling and guidelines for tasks that they are asked to complete. No
matter how able pupils may be it is important not to obscure content by
presenting the mechanics of the task in a confusing or ambiguous way.
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Type of learning
The type of learning that is taking place needs to be clear in the teachers
mind if varied learning styles are to be addressed. Classifying different
learning styles and teaching inclusively to bring in pupils who may not
excel in traditionally valued school learning patterns now constitute a far-
reaching, though not uncontested, discourse affecting educational theory
and practice. Stemming largely from Howard Gardners (1993) highly con-
tested theory of multiple intelligences, recognition of different learning
styles has now become widely entrenched in educational planning,3 for
example Lazear (1997), Larsen-Freeman (2000). While I do not believe it is
necessary to cater explicitly for all intelligence types and learning styles in
every lesson, it soon becomes clear to any new teacher that different pupils
can develop their own effective strategies for learning when given adequate
scope to do so, and this is why engendering autonomy and self-awareness
through teaching learning skills is so important. Differentiation is all about
equity of opportunity and so planning a range of different types of activity
values personal styles of learning and preferred modes of participation. For
example, combining speaking and writing activities (public and personal
acts) into a lesson, or allowing pupils preparing for a presentation to work
in allocated roles which play to the personal strengths of each group
member.
A convenient way to build these differentiated elements into our
teaching is by the now classic dyad: differentiation by task/differentiation by
outcome and it is to these that we now turn. However, it is vital to remember
that differentiation is not simply a top and tail reflection which concerns
only the planning phase and the outcome of a task or lesson. Rather, it
affects everything about the task while it is underway, that is, in terms of the
support provided through ongoing help and variation in pace and level
of explicitness. Essentially, differentiation by task means that pupils in
the same class are given different tasks to do, whereas differentiation by
outcome means that all pupils are given the same task but that this task has
been designed to allow for a range of variable outcomes to offer different
levels of challenge. Many other types of differentiation are often described,
for instance differentiation by support or by resource; however, teacher
choices facilitating differentiated learning can be adequately discussed
under the two types: by task and by outcome.
Differentiation by task
Differentiating by the setting of different tasks can mean planning com-

pletely different activities for pupils so that they are almost following
parallel curricula and, clearly, this is necessary where pupils have specific
needs such as bilingual or near-bilingual children in a modern languages
3
Gardners categories of intelligence have been repeatedly adapted, including by Gardner
himself, and remain contested conceptually (for example see Richards and Rodgers 2001).
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194 Simon Coffey
class (McLachlan 2002), or if isolated pupils within a class are being

fast-tracked to take an exam early. However, this extreme version of indi-
vidualized task setting is unusual because of practical limitations. Task
differentiation usually means modifying resources in some way to provide
more or less support (scaffolding) to groups within a class. In written work
this could take the form of graded exercises, moving from maximum guided
support to freer pupil production. Some pupils may not need to do pre-
liminary exercises, which are worked through by average or less able
pupils, and so can move directly to a higher level of challenge to match
their aptitude in the subject. In other cases, the teacher might set core
then optional activities, which serve as an extension for early finishers or
more able pupils. It is important to give due thought to the nature of
extension tasks: these should not simply be more of the same but
should be qualitatively stretching. Being given an increased quantity of
unchallenging tasks just to stay occupied can demotivate even the most
enthusiastic pupil.
However, differentiation by task is not limited to graded worksheets and
individual activities. One preparation-intensive but extremely enriching
alternative to traditional teaching is the carousel approach (Cajkler and
Addelman 2000) which enables individuals, pairs or groups to work around
the room at different work stations structured to both challenge different
skills sets and to facilitate different levels of challenge. In this case, the
teacher and other staff present have very much a facilitating, supportive
role. Pupils of all levels generally respond well to this type of learning,
enjoying the high degree of autonomy that is afforded.
The learning how to learn agenda see, for example, Black et al. (2006)
and Pedder (2006) plays a key role in developing pupil autonomy and can
be furthered by open discussion of learning styles (what works for me
is . . .). It is a good idea to allow pupils the time and space to share their
own approaches to work and study as well as to benefit from the teachers
guidance. When giving revision work, for instance, it is useful to discuss a
range of strategies that pupils might employ, for example, mind maps,
redrafting, testing each other aloud, pictorial prompts and so forth.
Unsurprisingly, research has shown that pupils feel best supported in doing
self-regulated or semi-autonomous tasks where there is an explicit focus
on the learning how to learn (van Grinsven and Tillema 2006).
Differentiation by outcome
Tailoring learning outcomes
The most time-efficient and practical way of differentiating is to set pupils a

common task which is open-ended and flexible so that the expected out-
comes are staggered. This strategy also has the enormous benefit of keeping
learning across the class on track. Differentiated outcomes are now built
into teachers planning, as reflected in the QCAs recommended format for
lesson plans and schemes of work, that is:
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All pupils will be able to . . .

Most pupils will be able to . . .
Some pupils will be able to . . .
The key here is to make expected outcomes explicit, often negotiated by
pupils themselves with guidance from the teacher. It is very clear when,
in an English lesson for example, two peers produce markedly different
creative compositions from the same assigned title that pupils inter-
pretation of the task is extremely divergent. When faced with such an
open-ended task, therefore, pupils need help in understanding what is
expected, so minimal outcomes must be clearly stated and understood; in
the English lesson this might be a writing frame or a prescribed set of
elements which must be included in the text. This use of frames and models
provides all pupils with a sense of security but does not restrain more able
pupils from going beyond the minimum requirements.
Interacting with pupils
Given that much class time is spent speaking, the nature of this spoken
interaction also represents a valuable opportunity for differentiation. The
way new concepts are introduced, building on previous learning, and the
way in which pupils are encouraged to revise previously covered items
usually rely on teachers asking questions to the class. In a traditional setting
questions are asked, an answer is then given by a pupil and the teacher then
provides feedback (usually saying if the answer is right or wrong). The
restrictive nature of this traditional interaction routine (input-response-
evaluation) has been recognized for some time see Black et al. (2003) on
formative assessment and Wragg and Brown (2001) on explanation
strategies. Some creative forethought into the way questions might be asked
in class to stimulate thinking at different levels ensures that all pupils can
make a contribution corresponding to their current level and their preferred
mode of participation. For example, questions can be directed to particular
pupils or can be addressed to the whole class; questions can be open or
closed to varying degrees see Revell (1995) for a full discussion of effective
questioning strategies for differentiated learning. Open questions clearly
offer pupils more opportunities for creative expression, enabling them to
structure their own responses. Open questions might also be particularly
appropriate where there is a range of possible solutions. This type of
questioning also provides the teacher with useful formative feedback. How-
ever, more closed answers can bring specific elements (key words and key
themes) into focus and can reaffirm existing knowledge, allowing a larger
number of pupils to experience success, especially where pupils chose from
a range of given answers. Consider these question types:
Who were the Luddites? (to class)
Who can tell me something about the Luddites? (to class)
Lucy, can you tell us something about the Luddites? (to one pupil)
Maia, if you described somebody as a Luddite, would you mean that that
person is conservative or that they embrace change? (to one pupil) . . .
Yes, I agree. Well done. Can you say where the word comes from?
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196 Simon Coffey
I would like each of you to think of at least one fact about the Luddites
more if you can and note it down. You have one minute from now. (to
class)
In pairs, write one sentence using the words Luddites and
mechanization.
Alternative questioning strategies include re-framing questions by giving
an answer for pupils to think of an appropriate question or, for longer
answers, asking pupils to present questions or use role play to present dif-
ferent points of view. This might work well, for example, in understanding
the motivations of different historical characters such as the Luddites versus
the factory owners or the mill hands.
There is also some research evidence (Myhill 2006) that reference-
framing strategies in teacherpupil interactions have a determining effect
on pupil participation. For instance, pupils respond more positively when
invited to draw on their own experience rather than with reference to
an abstracted reality. This is true of all pupils but has been shown to be
especially effective in increasing participation of disaffected, low-achieving
boys (Myhills research showed that this group was three times more likely
to refer to personal, out-of-school experiences).
Let us now turn to an example of differentiation in practice. The lesson
described here posits models of good practice for differentiation with
reference to a particular subject French although the principles which
underlie the differentiation strategies described are general and can clearly
be applied across the curriculum.
Differentiation with a Year 9 mixed ability group: a French lesson
This lesson was taught by Lis to a Year 9 mixed ability group. The topic is
within the scheme of work unit on illnesses, parts of the body, remedies and
the primary language objective is jai mal au/ la . . ., with the imperative
tense being a secondary objective. Pupils had previously learnt parts of
the body, although many make mistakes with the gendered article and
some struggle with pronunciation. The whole lesson lasted one hour. Lis
identified the following objectives for the lesson:
all pupils will revise parts of the body with gendered article and combine
parts of the body with jai mal au/ la . . . to express some basic ailments:
Ive got a headache, Ive got a sore throat, my leg hurts etc.
some pupils will understand and say some basic remedies: stay in bed,
take these tablets, drink plenty of water, get plenty of rest.
some pupils will be able to extend the minimal dialogues with conjunc-
tions, present perfect phrases and extra turns using si a continue.
some pupils will be able to say affected body parts but may not be able to
use au/ la correctly and may only remember key vocabulary items from
the chunk-learnt phrases.
After greeting the class, Lis discussed the objectives, written on the board,
with pupils. She then presented the new language to the whole class by
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holding up pictures showing people suffering from affected body parts and
repeating clearly key phrases: jai mal la jambe, jai mal au dos and so forth.
Once the expressions had all been modelled by Lis, she used pupils with
more confidence in French to model for others, jai mal au __, each pupil
finishing the phrase according to the picture being held up. This led pupils
to incorporate previously learnt vocabulary into new phrases. Lis chose
different pupils to answer in quick-fire succession, moving from more to
less confident pupils. This differentiated routine was then repeated but with
a different prompt from Lis (Quest-ce que tu as?) which required pupils to
respond using a whole phrase beginning jai mal au/ la. It is a common
strategy to instigate peer modelling by starting off routines with more con-
fident pupils in this way, however, it is important not to overuse particular
pupils when deploying this strategy as this can be perceived as favouritism.
Such a risk can be avoided by using alternating strategies such as starting
some activities with simpler, more closed questions and targeting less con-
fident pupils to answer.
Next, pupils listened to a series of short, recorded dialogues of different
people being asked and answering questions about what is wrong with
them. Pupils were given one of three different worksheets to complete
during the listening activity, each offering different levels of challenge. For
example, one sheet required pupils to write a sequence number next to a
picture while others required pupils to fill in a gap as well. This activity
exemplifies how the same resource, in this case recorded dialogues, can be
exploited differently.
Lis then led a whole-class review. She went through the answers from the
listening activity and as pupils answered some kept textbooks closed (Look
if you need to), while others looked up the vocabulary item or its gender.
There was a focus on pronunciation as pupils gave answers. Then all new
expressions were reviewed through miming ailments, starting teacher to
pupil (Quest-ce quil y a?), then pupils to each other in pairs. Pupils were able
to look at a simple, gapped dialogue on a PowerPoint slide if necessary,
although most did not need this support. As she circulated in the room,
Lis encouraged many pupils to go beyond the modelled dialogue. This
teacher-focused part of the lesson allowed Lis both to assess pupils progress
and to reinforce the key objectives of the lesson.
The next activity aimed at developing reading skills. Each pupil was given
a handout consisting of a series of patientdoctor dialogues, each more
complex than the last.
Referring to the first three dialogues, pupils were invited to respond,
at speed, to some true/false (vrai/faux) questions using mini-whiteboards;
for example, Sandrines leg hurts vrai ou faux? The doctor advises M Viret
to stay in bed vrai ou faux? Mini-whiteboards allow all pupils to offer an
answer without the risk to self-esteem of getting it wrong. This maximizes
pupil participation and allows the teacher to check comprehension
instantly. Next, some reading comprehension questions were given on
PowerPoint for pupils to work through on their own, graded to become
gradually harder ranging from vrai/faux to eliciting full responses. Lis asked
the class to do as many as you can. A time limit was set for the whole class.
Early finishers were given the following extension: write your own dialogue
using the picture prompts at the bottom of the handout. The questions and
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198 Simon Coffey
the written texts were prepared to be progressively more challenging, some

pupils would only do a few and others would finish. When Lis went over
the answers with the class, she expected pupils who are more able in French
to give fuller answers. She again did a quick assessment of how far pupils
were progressing (Hands up if youve answered 5/6/7 questions correctly).
All pupils were praised for their effort.
The match-up game which followed was to give pupils the opportunity
for speaking practice. Pupils worked in groups, some with light and dark
blue cards and some with light and dark yellow sets. Blue cards showed a
picture of an ailment to be matched to its written phrase. Yellow cards also
showed a picture of an ailment to be matched up to a phrase but the picture
card also had a suitable remedy picture which pupils were asked to express
in words to win the pair, for example Reposez-vous! Prenez deux aspirines! The
children had played this type of match-up activity with Lis before and so
were familiar with the routine and always enjoyed the game. Lis, a learning
support assistant and a foreign language assistant all circulated among
pupils during the card game activity to monitor and support. Some pupils
were encouraged to go beyond the minimum turns from the cards, that is,
to add an extra, unscripted turn such as Quest-ce que sest pass? Jai eu un
accident or to add et si a continue? The activity was timed and lasted for ten
minutes.
The final activity was a writing task which was started off in class to be
finished for homework. Pupils were asked to write a postcard to a French
pen pal describing a holiday where a lot of things have gone wrong. Pupils
were asked to choose between two writing frames, one with gapped out
phrases and picture prompts or one that only had picture prompts. Pupils
using only picture prompts were also asked to add their own unprompted
sentences.
At the end of the lesson, after pupils had packed their bags and were
waiting to be dismissed, Lis asked differentiated questions using a combin-
ation of flashcard pictures, mime and requests for remedies. She revisited
the key objective of the lesson, asking different pupils to give examples
using jai mal au/ la . . . This was the fundamental goal of the lesson (the
base or minimal outcome) and so it was important for Lis to reinforce
this expression with body parts vocabulary, so that all pupils would leave
the room with this key phrase in mind, having a clear idea of the lessons
aims and feeling that they had achieved these. However, Lis also built into
the plenary review opportunities to reinforce elements of the extended
dialogues that some pupils had covered in the lesson.
Concluding comments
In this chapter we have seen how differentiation (in the UK) emerged as a
result of decreasing structural setting by ability both of schools and within
schools which led to increasing mixed ability teaching. Faced with a broad
range of different pupil needs and ability levels teachers needed to develop
new strategies as well as to formalize existing craft knowledge (Kersher and
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Miles 1996) in order to create optimal learning opportunities for different

pupils within a single lesson. We have explored the conceptual principles
underlying the notion of optimal learning within the learning level-pace-
type trichotomy, which enables us to modify lesson content and to plan
activities to suit a range of learning styles. While differentiation may often
require more detailed and lengthy planning, I have tried to emphasize in
this chapter that differentiation is about building in flexibility and this
does not always entail extra planning and materials but rather a broader
and more creative vision of learning outcomes and how these can be
achieved. In schools which prepare pupils effectively for greater per-
sonalized learning, differentiation strategies are shared within and across
departments not only informally but as an integral part of professional
development. Similarly, differentiation in lesson planning will dovetail
with differentiated goals built into schemes of work and these, in turn,
reflect a whole school ethos which acknowledges diversity and opportunity
for all.
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16 Setting, streaming and

mixed-ability teaching
Jeremy Hodgen
Introduction
How should pupils be grouped for teaching? Should they be grouped

according to some notion of general ability or should children be taught in
mixed ability groups? Should pupils of different ability be offered different
curricular opportunities? What are the effects of different forms of ability
grouping on teaching and learning? Are some sorts of pupil grouping more
appropriate to particular school subjects?
In this chapter, I review the research that has been conducted on ability
grouping in the UK and elsewhere. I look at the impact of different forms
of ability grouping on pupils learning, achievement and attitudes. Finally,
I examine alternative approaches to grouping and teaching pupils at
different levels of attainment.
Ability and ability grouping in the UK
The ideology of ability is particularly powerful in UK educational policy

and practice. There is a widespread belief both within and outside the
education profession that individuals have a fixed ability with a strong
genetic component (Sukhnandan and Lee 1998). According to this belief,
ability can be measured accurately and is a significant determining factor in
educational achievement. (See White 2005 for an interesting philosophical
discussion as to why the ideology of ability is so powerful in the UK.) This
focus on ability is in marked contrast to many of the countries that out-
perform the UK nations in international comparative studies of educational
performance (Stigler and Hiebert 1999). In China, for example, a much
greater emphasis is placed on the notion of effort.
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202 Jeremy Hodgen
A discourse of ability underpins the common forms of classroom organ-

ization in the UK:
streaming, where pupils are differentiated according to general ability

and taught in the same ability classes for all subjects
setting, where pupils are allocated to ability groups within particular
subjects
mixed ability, where classes include the range of ability and attain-
ment in a particular year group. Pupils may be placed in ability groups
within classes.
Until the late 1960s, the UK secondary education system was predomin-
antly selective. Pupils were allocated to grammar and secondary modern
schools according to their performance on the 11-plus examination. In
addition, almost all secondary schools and many large primary schools
operated an internal system of streaming. In a study conducted in the early
1960s, for example, Jackson (1964) found that 74 per cent of schools had
placed pupils in different classes on the basis of inferred ability by the age of
seven.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the move towards comprehensive schooling was
accompanied by an increasing use of mixed-ability grouping in secondary
schools, although setting was commonplace in GCSE classes and subjects
such as mathematics and modern foreign languages. Latterly, there has
been an increasing use of setting in both secondary and primary schools.
A number of factors have contributed to this change, including teachers
perceptions of the requirements of the National Curriculum and pressure
from middle-class parents (Gewirtz et al. 1993; Reay 1998). At the same
time, there has been an increased emphasis on targets and comparing
schools on the basis of league tables, whilst the school inspection regime
has encouraged the use of more ability grouping (Ofsted 1998).
Currently, there is a consensus amongst the main political parties on the
need for more ability grouping in schools (Guardian 2006). The Education
White Paper, Higher Standards, Better Schools for all, More Choice for Parents
and Pupils, states that:
Grouping students can help to build motivation, social skills and

independence; and most importantly can raise standards because
pupils are better engaged in their own learning. We have encouraged
schools to use setting since 1997.
(DfES 2005: 58)
Ability grouping is a very hot topic in education.1 Indeed, there have been
no fewer than four substantial research reviews published in the UK during
the past decade (Sukhnandan and Lee 1998; Harlen and Malcolm 1999;
Hallam 2002; Kutnick et al. 2005). So what are the arguments for grouping
by ability and what are the arguments against it?
1
As I write this chapter, the Thought for Today on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme
(6 July 2006) by Dr Jeevan Singh Deol, an academic at the School of Oriental and African
Studies, is a polemic in praise of ability grouping in schools in order to stretch the most able
students.
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Setting, streaming and mixed-ability teaching 203
The arguments for and against ability grouping
The main arguments for ability grouping are that groups of homogenous
ability enable teachers to tailor their teaching more closely to all the
pupils needs. This enables more whole-class teaching making more
efficient and effective use of teachers time. There is a widespread belief that
mixed ability grouping has caused underachievement (Sukhnandan and
Lee 1998). Many believe that high attainers, in particular, are held back
in mixed-ability classes and that setting (or streaming) stretches these
pupils. (See Loveless 1999 for a forthright statement of this position from a
US perspective.) The opponents of ability grouping point to setting and
streaming as one of the principal causes of underachievement (Gillborn
and Youdell 2000). They believe that grouping by ability creates and main-
tains inequality, arguing that low achievers, in particular, receive a poorer
educational experience. They contend that heterogeneous grouping pro-
vides a richer learning environment for the majority of pupils. Slavin
(1990: 473) summarized the debate as follows:
In essence, the argument in favour of ability grouping is that it will

allow teachers to adapt instruction to the needs of a diverse student
body and give them an opportunity to provide more difficult material
to high achievers and more support to low achievers. The challenge
and stimulation of other high achievers are believed to be beneficial
to high achievers. Arguments opposed to ability grouping focus
primarily on the perceived damage to low achievers, who receive a
slower pace and lower quality of instruction, have teachers who are
less experienced or able and who do not want to teach low-track
classes, face low expectations for performance and have fewer positive
behavioural models.
It seems that the more a subject is viewed as a fixed and structured

body of knowledge, the more likely teachers of the subject and others in
the field are to perceive ability grouping as necessary (Harlen and Malcolm
1999). For example, a survey by the National Foundation for Educational
Research (NFER) in the UK found that 47 per cent of mathematics teachers
believed mixed ability teaching to be inappropriate compared to 16 per cent
of science teachers and only 3 per cent of English teachers (Reid et al. 1981,
cited in Ruthven 1987).
The debate over ability grouping has important consequences for
individuals and groups of pupils in terms of learning, achievement and
attitudes. If the proponents of setting and streaming are correct, then
mixed ability grouping will reduce educational attainment, particularly for
the highest attaining pupils. But is this at the expense of the low attainers?
What is ability and can it be measured? What does research have to say
about these issues? Is there evidence to support the notions that setting
creates inequality or that setting diminishes or enhances attainment for
certain students?
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204 Jeremy Hodgen
Measuring ability
The notion of a general fixed ability, as measured by IQ tests, has come

in for a great deal of criticism in recent years for cultural, class and racial
bias. Sternberg (1998) argues that IQ tests measure current attainment
and expertise rather than a general ability. Moreover, such tests can
predict future attainment to a degree, but this predictive validity is
limited.2 Typically, measures of a childs general ability at the age of, say,
11 account for less than half of the variability in students achievements
at age 16. Social and economic status appears to be at least as impor-
tant a factor as measured ability in predicting future performance
(Nash 2006).
The evidence suggests that teachers place a high degree of trust in the
mechanisms for measuring pupils abilities within subjects (Hallam 2002).
In a substantial review of the literature, however, Sukhnandan and Lee
(1998) found that the allocation of pupils to ability groups is frequently
made on a subjective and inconsistent basis and there is considerable
evidence of a high degree of group misplacement, where pupils are
allocated to the wrong sets (Neave 1975; Winn and Wilson 1983). Indeed,
some studies have found the practice of ability grouping did not reduce the
range of ability in groups to any significant extent (see, for example, Oakes
1995). In a study of within class grouping in primary schools in the UK,
Macintyre and Ireson (2002) found that the overlap in attainment between
the lowest and highest ability groups was very considerable, with some
in the lowest groups outperforming some in the highest.
But even the most carefully constructed tests have limitations. Any sys-
tem of measurement by its very nature involves inaccuracy and error. On a
theoretical exercise, assuming a selection test with a predictive validity of
0.7 and a reliability of 0.9, Black and Wiliam (2006) calculate that 50 per
cent of students would be placed in the wrong set.3 In a similar exercise
based on the GCE A-level examination, Please (1971) estimated that 46
per cent of candidates were likely to have been wrongly graded. It is
worth emphasizing that these errors are not due to the quality of the tests
but reflect fundamental limitations in examinations per se. Thus, even the
best constructed tests are likely to result in a relatively large proportion
of pupils being allocated to the wrong ability group. Yet, the evidence
suggests that the movement between groups is very limited. (See, for
example, Devine 1993.) In Macintyre and Iresons (2002) study, although
the majority of teachers said that they believed individual pupils ability to
be changeable, the researchers found that the actual movement between
groups was very small. This is particularly surprising given that MacIntyre
and Iresons study focused on within-class grouping where movement
2
Predictive validity indicates the degree to which a test predicts future performance.
3
Reliability broadly indicates the extent to which individual scores on one occasion would be
exactly the same on another occasion. Individuals performance may vary from day-to-day or
according to the particular questions asked or because markers allocate marks differently. Black
and Wiliams (2006) calculation is rather conservative, since the figures of 0.7 for predictive
validity and 0.9 for reliability are at the limits of what can currently be achieved on most tests.
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between groups would be relatively free from organizational and insti-

tutional constraints.
The effects of setting and streaming
Effects on attainment
One of the most important and widely reported reviews of research was
conducted by Slavin (1990). Slavin reviewed a total of 29 studies and found
the effects of ability grouping on achievement to be zero for pupils of all
levels and all subjects.4 In a more recent research project, Linchevski and
Kutscher (1998) compared the attainment of pupils in 12 setted schools
with their expected attainment, based upon entry scores. This research
showed that ability grouping had no effect on attainment in ten of the
schools and a small negative effect in the other two.
The weight of evidence indicates, as Terwel (2005) argues, that ability
grouping has no meaningful effect on the overall mean performance of
pupils. Although Slavins review found negligible differences between the
attainment of high and low ability pupils, other studies do suggest some
differential impact. In an earlier review, Kulik and Kulik (1982) found a
slight advantage for initial high achievers who studied in mixed ability
groups. Linchevski and Kutscher (1998) compared the achievements of
two groups of pupils at the same school assigned either to setted or mixed-
ability groups. This study showed that the average scores of the most able
pupils placed in setted groups were slightly, but not significantly, higher
than the most able pupils placed in mixed ability groups. However, the
scores of pupils in the two lower setted groups were significantly lower than
similar ability pupils in the mixed ability classes.
Linchevski and Kuscher also examined the thinking and performance of
pupils of similar attainment who were assigned to different groups. While
the initial differences in attainment between the highest-scoring pupils in
the lower band and the lowest-scoring pupils in the upper band were very
small, the subsequent attainment differed greatly, with the pupils assigned
to the higher groups attaining significantly more than pupils of a similar
ability assigned to lower groups. Linchevski concluded from this that the
achievements of these pupils were largely dependent on their arbitrary
assignment to either the lower or higher group.
In a UK study involving 955 pupils in six schools, Wiliam and Bartholo-
mew (2004) examined the effect of pupils of the same initial attainment
being placed in different ability sets. They found that pupils placed in top
sets averaged nearly half a GCSE grade higher than those in the other upper
4
Slavin (1990) examined the effect sizes of the 29 studies and found that the median effect size
was +0.01 for high achievers, 0.08 for average achievers and 0.02 for low achievers, none of
which are significantly different from zero. The effect size is the difference between group means,
divided by the standard deviation, resulting in a measure of effect in standard deviations. Effect
sizes are commonly used to evaluate the impact of educational initiatives and interventions.
Effect sizes of less than 0.2 are generally regarded as small or negligible.
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206 Jeremy Hodgen
sets, who in turn averaged a third of a grade higher than those in lower sets,
who in turn averaged around a third of a grade higher than those pupils
placed in bottom sets. In a study of seven US high schools, White et al.
(1996) found that average achievers chances of successfully completing
high school (secondary education) varied enormously according to the
group in which they were placed: from 2 per cent if placed in the course
designed for low achievers and 23 per cent if placed in the course for aver-
age achievers, up to 91 per cent if placed in the course designed for high
achievers.
Other studies that have found differences in achievement between
homogeneous and heterogeneous groupings have tended to replicate the
finding of a widening differential between low and high attainers (Hallam
and Ireson 2005). Studies show some small, statistically insignificant
increases for pupils in high ability groups together with large, statistically
significant losses for pupils in low ability groups (Dar and Resh 1994). In
short, grouping by ability widens the attainment gap and low attaining
pupils lose more than high attaining pupils gain. Moreover, simply being
placed in a lower set appears to reduce pupils achievement, whatever
their initial ability.
Nevertheless, the belief that high attainers are significantly disadvan-
taged in mixed-ability groups is very persistent. Burris et al. (2006) set out to
investigate this issue. In a longitudinal study involving 985 pupils, they
examined the effects of providing an accelerated mathematics curriculum
in heterogeneously mixed classes in a diverse US school district.5 They
compared pupil progress both before and after the introduction of the
accelerated curriculum and found that the proportion of pupils successfully
completing mathematics courses increased significantly and markedly for
pupils at all attainment levels. In particular, there was no statistical dif-
ference in the performance of initially high-achieving pupils in hetero-
geneous and homogenous ability groups. They concluded that the higher
performance associated with high-ability groups resulted from better
teaching and higher expectations rather than from the sorting of pupils.
Effects on teaching
There is considerable evidence that higher ability sets get the best qualified
and most experienced teachers (Sukhnandan and Lee 1998). There is also
evidence to suggest that the practice of ability grouping alters the ways
in which teachers interact with their pupils. In a survey of 1500 teachers in
the UK, Hallam and Ireson (2005) found considerable differences in the
teaching of high and low ability groups. In contrast to both mixed ability
classes and high ability sets, lower ability sets were offered a curriculum
with more rehearsal and repetition, more practical work, less discussion,
less detailed feedback, less homework, less access to the curriculum and
easier work at a slower pace. There is considerable research evidence to
support the claim that different ability groups receive a different curriculum
5
The notion of accelerated curriculum has a long history in the US. Broadly, the term refers to
a curriculum designed to stretch the most able pupils.
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delivered in a different mode (Harlen and Malcolm 1999). A more sur-

prising result in Hallam and Iresons study was that these differences were
found to be apparent even amongst groups taught by the same teacher.
They conclude that grouping practices are a very powerful influence on
teaching practices. It would seem that low ability sets tend to be offered a
remedial curriculum, whatever the individual skills and beliefs of their
teacher. This may be partly because teachers assume that the pupils are
homogeneous and all learn at the same pace. As a result, they teach to
what Dallf (1971) calls a reference group. It may also be partly due
to differences in teachers expectations. Repeated studies in a variety of
educational contexts have shown strong correlations between teachers
expectations and pupils academic progression (Rosenthal and Jacobson
1992).
Effects on attitudes
One of the arguments against grouping pupils by ability is that being placed
in lower ability groups has a negative effect on pupils attitudes to learning.
Three seminal studies of schooling in the 1960s and 1970s provide support
for this view. Hargreaves (1967), Lacey (1970) and Ball (1981) all found that
placing pupils into high and low streams also created a polarization of
pupils into pro- and anti-school factions. Abraham (1995) investigated
whether the polarization of pupils according to their social class occurred as
a result of setting as well as streaming. He studied a comprehensive school
that made extensive use of setting, and found that, just as in the studies of
streaming, pupils were polarized into pro- and anti-school factions in
response to the groups in which they were placed.
On the other hand, in a meta-analysis of 13 studies, Kulik and Kulik
(1992) found that ability grouping tended to raise the self-esteem of low
attainers, whilst lowering the self-esteem of high attainers.6 Boalers (1998,
2002) work suggests that high attaining pupils may react in very different
ways to ability grouping. She conducted an in-depth study in the UK of
pupils over three years that focused upon the pupils attainment and
attitudes. She studied two cohorts of pupils, matched in terms of ability and
socio-economic status. One of the cohorts was taught mathematics in
mixed ability groups using an investigative teaching approach, the other
in ability sets with traditional teaching. The study showed that top set
pupils responded in different ways to ability grouping. Some students
benefited from the setting arrangements. But, a significant number of
pupils, particularly some of the able girls, appeared to be disadvantaged,
developing negative attitudes and underachieving in GCSE examinations.
The pupils related their negative responses to the pressure and fast pace of
lessons in the top set.
In a UK study involving 3000 pupils, Ireson et al. (2002) found that pupils
in schools with moderate levels of setting had more positive self-concepts
than those in either schools with high levels of setting or mixed-ability
6
Meta-analysis is a statistical technique that combines the effects of a number of related
studies.
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208 Jeremy Hodgen
schools. In addition, they found that setting in English tended to raise the
self-concept of low attainers and lower the self-concept of high attainers,
although they found no similar effects in mathematics and science. In a
qualitative study of ability grouping in mathematics involving 96 pupils
in Australia, Zevenbergen (2005: 317) found a considerable difference
between pupils in high and low sets typified by the following quotations:
I am so glad to be in these classes. We get the best teachers and you

know that they tell us we are clever. They bring out the best in us, and
I know that I will be able to do the hard maths in Year 11 and 12
because they bring out the best in us.
(Pupil in high ability group)
I dont like being in this class [because] it is the only one I feel dumb in.
I mean English or workshop, I am doing OK, but in maths, I feel like a
retard. The teacher treats us as if we know nothing.
(Pupil in low ability group)
The contrast between these two pupils responses to ability grouping is

stark. However, they do suggest that these pupils attitudes may be affected
by a range of secondary factors interacting with the practices of ability
grouping: the quality of teaching, the breadth of the curriculum and the
level of teacher expectations.
Effects on equity
In an extensive review of the research relating to educational inequality,

Gillborn and Mirza (2000) conclude that there is considerable evidence that
setting and streaming tend to disadvantage black and working-class pupils.
A range of factors other than ability affect the placement of pupils in sets
or streams:
Although ability is supposedly the major criterion for placement in

subject and examination levels, ability is an ambiguous concept and
school conceptions of ability can be affected by perceptions that pupils
are members of particular social or ethnic groups and by the behaviour
of individual pupils. Factors related to class, gender, ethnicity, and
behaviour can be shown to affect the placement of pupils at option
time, even those of similar ability.
Pupils of similar ability are frequently placed in different sets or streams

according to their social class, their gender or their ethnic origin, thus
creating and perpetuating a cycle of social and educational disadvantage.
Nash (2006) found that this educational disadvantage is reinforced at every
stage of the educational system. In a study focused on two secondary
schools, Gillborn and Youdell (2000) found that the schools focused most
of their available teaching resources on those pupils judged likely with help
to achieve five AC grades at GCSE, leaving those judged unlikely to achieve
this level with only limited help, thus further widening the attainment
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gap. This latter group contained a disproportionate number of black and

working-class pupils.
Concluding comments
To sum up, although the current political consensus is in favour of more

setting and ability grouping in schools in order to raise standards of
educational achievement, there is little research evidence to support this
view. In fact, the evidence strongly suggests that grouping by ability is
unlikely to raise attainment overall. Setting and streaming create and
exaggerate differences in attainment between pupils. Small academic
benefits for high attainers are achieved at the expense of large disadvantage
for low attainers. There is conclusive evidence that setting and streaming
create and perpetuate social inequalities amongst pupils. The research con-
cerning the effects of ability grouping on pupils attitudes is more equivocal
although there is some evidence to suggest that some of the teaching
associated with lower sets lower expectations coupled with a more limited
and poorly delivered curriculum have a negative impact on pupils
attitudes.
The research evidence reviewed here suggests that a high quality curric-
ulum coupled with high expectations delivered within heterogeneous
mixed ability groups has the potential to produce educational benefits for
pupils at all levels of attainment. Nevertheless, as Hallam and Ireson (2005)
argue, mixed ability teaching is far from straightforward. Responding to the
needs of pupils at different attainment levels requires a considerable degree
of skill on the part of a teacher in terms of differentiating the curriculum
whilst providing a high quality curriculum for all. Several studies suggest
that key to doing this is the adoption of a more fluid attitude to pupils
abilities. (See, for example, Hart et al. 2004.) For example, in a study
of primary numeracy, Askew et al. (1997) found that one characteristic of
effective teachers (as measured by gains in pupils attainment) was a belief
that all pupils have the potential to learn mathematics.
The evidence supporting the benefits of collaborative group work and
discussion between different pupils is considerable (Slavin 1988; Mercer
et al. 2004). In a study of Key Stages 1 to 3, Blatchford et al. (2005) found
that working in groups produced significant gains in pupil attainment.
However, they argue that, in order for these gains to occur, pupils need to be
taught the necessary social and emotional skills to collaborate with others.
Pupils often learn more from other pupils explanations than from teacher
instruction (Adey and Shayer 1994). But, in groups with a narrow range of
attainment, pupils appear to be discouraged from asking for or giving
explanations. Hence, groups function best when they are mixed ability:
low ability pupils ask questions, high attaining students help the group to
function whilst benefiting from giving explanations to others (Hallam
2002). In a review of the literature relating to mathematics education,
Askew and Wiliam (1995) argue that in groups with a wide attainment
range, pupils of middle attainment lose out, because they neither ask for
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210 Jeremy Hodgen
nor give help. They suggest that the most appropriate form of grouping
is near mixed ability grouping, where high attainers are grouped with
middle attainers and middle attainers with low attainers. This form of
grouping maximizes the opportunities for all pupils to be involved in giving
and receiving explanations.
The research on pupils learning suggests that pupils do not learn in a
neat, orderly and sequential manner (see, for example, Denvir and Brown
1986). By listening to, and engaging in, dialogue with pupils, teachers can
tailor the teaching to all pupils learning needs. Evidence from the research
on formative assessment suggests that by listening to pupils, teachers can
help to produce significant gains in attainment (Black et al. 2003; see also
Chapter 17 on assessment for learning). Indeed, there is evidence to suggest
that this kind of dialogic teaching not only increases pupils learning but
also increases their capacity for future learning (Mercer et al. 2004). This
would indicate that we need to be exploring dialogic teaching approaches
rather than continuing with a policy of ability grouping that seems to have
little to offer in terms of raising standards or promoting effective learning
for all.
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17 Making assessment work in

the classroom
Christine Harrison
Introduction
Assessment is intricately bound up in the teachinglearning cycle. When

people begin to train as teachers, their personal focus is usually on their
performance as a teacher, while their tutors and mentors try to refocus their
attention onto the students learning that is taking place in the classroom.
As a result, assessment tends to be neglected in the early stages of teacher
development and, when it suddenly looms, rather than being embedded in
the developing practice, assessment is tacked on. It is not surprising,
therefore, that in a recent Ofsted report on initial teacher training at
secondary level, one of the main findings was that, Trainees standards in
professional values and practice and subject knowledge are generally
good, but their assessment of pupils is usually weaker (Ofsted 2004: 77).
The report went on to outline, in more detail, trainees strengths and
weaknesses:
Most trainees structure their lessons carefully and manage classes
confidently. Trainees plan particularly well in history, ICT and RE. In
a number of subjects, including geography, design and technology,
science and English, the effectiveness of their teaching is sometimes
reduced by a rigid adherence to the three-part lesson structure at the
expense of the flexibility that could result in lessons being more varied
and stimulating. The assessment of pupils work continues to be a
relative weakness across subjects. Pupils work is marked regularly but
some trainees have limited skills in assessing work at examination
levels, including that associated with post-16 examinations.
(Ofsted 2004: 77)
So, its not just a matter of knowing about assessment, you need to
unravel the complexities of how assessment works in order to inform
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214 Christine Harrison
teaching and learning. First, we need to consider the various uses to which
assessment is put in classrooms and in schools and to understand how
these purposes interact and, at times, clash with one another. Then we need
to look at the range of tools that teachers can use to carry out assessments.
Finally, we need to outline some of the consequences of assessment, and
begin to suggest ways of using assessment practices to foster effective
learning environments.
Purposes of assessment
There are three main purposes of assessment:

assessment for learning
assessment for reporting attainment
assessment for accountability.
Teachers, at various times, need to assess for each of these reasons, but it is
essential that, before they start, they ask themselves, assessment for what
purpose? While the assessment tools a teacher might use for these three
purposes could be the same, the ways in which a teacher would use them
would differ depending on the purpose. The issue is not the type of assess-
ment tool, nor the procedure that is selected, but rather the way in which
the assessment data are collected and used.
In assessment for learning, teachers need to use a variety of tools to find
where students are in their learning. From these data, they can make judge-
ments that can help the student to decide on the next step in learning, and
so guide them towards improvement. This process is known as formative
assessment and at its heart is effective feedback. It involves the teacher and
the learners in pinpointing the leading edge of learning and deciding what
the next learning steps should be. This process requires a rich source of
data for judgements to be made. It also requires students being open to
advice about what they should do next, and being motivated to develop
their understanding.
In assessment for reporting on attainment, the need is different. This type
of assessment is used to check on whether individuals have reached a
certain point in their learning or to compare the performance of one
student against another. It is generally carried out at the end of a learning
period or at a key point within the learning. The process is called summa-
tive assessment or assessment of learning, since its purpose is to measure
what learning has taken place. This type of assessment might be needed
for mapping a students progress in order to report to parents or for the
purposes of aiding transfer to another class or school. It is also needed to
award certificates and qualifications such as the General Certificate of
Education (GCSE) at age 16.
The final category, assessment for accountability, has taken greater
prominence since the introduction of the National Curriculum. This form
of assessment is used to check that schools are providing adequate
educational provision for their students. In recent years, the government
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Making assessment work in the classroom 215
has chosen to do this by comparing school examination results in the

form of league tables. The current system provides comparative measures
of success and progress. While it is not unreasonable for schools to
demonstrate to the public, who fund them, that they are providing good
educational standards, the practice in England of publishing school
examination results has had a detrimental effect on the other two types
of assessment. Accountability pushes teachers into teaching to the test
rather than teaching for understanding, which, in turn, creates a perform-
ance environment rather than a learning environment. At its extreme, the
system might lead teachers to advise children to rote learn. In a recent
project that investigated the assessment of science learning for the 1619
phase, one teacher reported that he frequently found himself advising stu-
dents: Dont worry if you dont understand. If this comes up in the exam
then just write . . . (Black et al. 2004: 13). More worryingly, a review by
Harlen and Deakin-Crick (2002), on testing in schools, indicated the nega-
tive effect that current high stakes testing regimes had on student motiv-
ation, which, in turn, had significant consequences for future learning. In
particular, the review showed that one impact of tests was to reduce the self-
esteem of those students who did not achieve well. The review also revealed
that the effect of high stakes tests on teachers was to lead them to adopt
teaching styles that emphasized knowledge transmission rather than more
active and creative pedagogies. In Wales, league tables have never been used
to compare school examination results, despite their external measures for
assessment of learning (that is, their examinations) being similar to those
used in England. While the government still use assessment for account-
ability purposes, it is unlikely to affect the other purposes of assessment to
the same degree that it does in England, where league tables dominate the
assessment scene.
The assessment repertoire
Formative assessment
Once teachers have established what the main purpose of their assessment
will be, they can then select from the tools available. For the majority of the
time in classrooms, the main purpose will centre on assessment for learn-
ing. Here the main challenge will be selecting a tool and a way of using it to
obtain rich data on which to make judgements for future guidance. The
goal is to find what students know, what they partly know and what they do
not know (Black and Harrison 2004). The idea is to try to locate student
understanding, teachers need to explore whats happening in students
heads. This process requires activities that encourage students to talk about
their learning, and to apply whatever knowledge they have, from which
teachers can gauge their level of understanding.
Many studies have mapped the type of talk that happens in classrooms
(Barnes and Todd 1995; Mercer 2000; Alexander 2004). If we look first at
who does the most talking, it seems that in most British classrooms, the
teacher is responsible for most of what is said. In the Kings Medway
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Oxfordshire Formative Assessment Project (KMOFAP), which ran from

19992001 with science, mathematics and English secondary school
teachers, teachers often began lessons with question and answer sessions
intended to link the lesson with previous learning experiences. At the start
of the project, teachers dominated talk in most of the lesson starters by
a factor of 10:1. When teachers did try to engage learners, by asking
questions, the answers tended to be limited to one-word or one-sentence
responses and the focus was on recall; such questions are not useful in
tapping understanding. This approach restricted learners opportunities
to express their ideas and created difficulties for teachers in collecting
evidence of strengths and weaknesses in student understanding.
With support from the research team, teachers began to address this
imbalance in classroom talk. By the end of the project, most of the teachers
had introduced techniques that reduced this dominance of teacher talk.
This result was achieved by helping students to find a voice (Black et al.
2002, 2003) through working on strategies to help students raise ideas.
This process began by improving wait time (Rowe 1974) the time a
teacher takes between asking a question and accepting an answer. It was
also enhanced by many teachers allowing students to rehearse and con-
struct answers in groups, prior to the whole-class discussion, and working
on techniques that encouraged the continuation of themes and ideas
within the talk. This strategy involved teachers planning scenarios and
situations that the class could talk about, instead of using classroom talk as
a series of questions to check whether some students knew the answers or
not.
A helpful way of understanding the dynamic of the classroom, and the
constraints and affordances it offers for dialogue and feedback, is through
Perrenouds (1998) concept of the regulation of learning. He describes
two different types of classrooms the traditional and the discursive
or negotiated classroom. In traditional classrooms, lessons are highly
regulated with activities tightly defined and, consequently, learning is
prescribed. The outcomes tend to be content driven and predetermined,
with little opportunity for the students to play an active role in their own
learning. From these types of lessons, teachers can only glean what students
cannot do, according to the narrowly defined terms of reference (Marshall
and Wiliam 2006).
In a discursive, or negotiated, classroom, the tasks are more open-ended.
The scope for students to be active in their learning, and to govern their
own thinking, is greater. Teachers can gauge understanding and provide
meaningful feedback for learners. Learners co-construct knowledge
through such learning experiences, and the teachers role is both insti-
gatory and facilitatory. A starting point in this process is formulating
questions that make students think and which motivate them to want to
discuss ideas. For example, questions such as, Is it always true that green
organisms photosynthesize? are better at generating talk than, Which
types of organisms photosynthesize? Questions that require students to
predict or consider alternatives are better than those leading to a set answer.
For example, What might the wolf have done if the grandmother had been
out? is a far better question for active discussion and thought than, What
happened to the wolf in the Red Riding Hood story? Sometimes playing
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on the ambiguities that puzzle learners can be a good starting point. For
example:
Which one of these statements is true?
a) 0.33 is bigger than 1/3
b) 0.33 is smaller than 1/3
c) 0.33 is equal to 1/3
d) You need more information to be sure
(Hodgen and Wiliam 2006: 6)
This question would be unacceptable in a summative test, because there
are several possible answers that depend on the way the question is
approached. The question is not designed to check on a specific under-
standing, but rather to generate talk to explore a number of different
understandings. Learning can benefit greatly from the talk that is generated
from good questions, and teachers need to put planning time aside to
generate questions and to share effective questions with colleagues
(Harrison 2006).
It is also possible to use test questions and papers that were initially
designed for summative purposes, in a formative way. One science teacher
on the KMOFAP project gave his class an end-of-topic test in the first lesson
of the unit. The students task was to browse quickly through the test and to
indicate their confidence with the questions using a traffic light system.
Students indicated their confidence levels by putting a green, amber or red
dot by each of the questions. Green meant that they felt confident about
answering the question, amber meant that they knew something about the
answer, but were not too sure they were fully correct, and red meant that
they had never come across that bit of learning previously. For a good
proportion of the questions, there was some consensus on whether the
children were green, amber or red. The teacher used this information to
plan the lessons for the topic. He knew that he could omit, or quickly cover,
parts of the topic that had been judged green and that he could then spend
more of the time on the amber areas and on introducing the red areas. His
planning was informed by assessment data from the students. Other
teachers on the KMOFAP project used similar techniques to help students
effectively plan revision for summative tests.
Sadler (1989) conceptualizes formative assessment as the way in which
judgements about student performance can be used to hone and improve
their competence by short-circuiting the randomness and inefficiency of
trial-and-error learning. This approach enables teachers to make pro-
grammatic decisions with respect to readiness, diagnosis and remediation
(p. 120). Teachers, therefore, are able to feed back information from assess-
ments into the teaching process and take decisions about the next step in
the learning for individual students (Gipps 1995). This is a two-fold process
in that teachers have to make a judgement about the next learning step
for the student and about the appropriateness of the next task, so that an
effective match can be achieved. Implicit in the choice of task is an under-
standing of the progression within the subject domain, which enables
decisions to be made about the learning goal that the teacher considers is
attainable by each student.
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Summative assessment
As the name suggests, summative assessment comes at the end of the

learning period, or at key points in the learning. Its purpose is to provide a
snapshot of where the learning is, at that specific time. The form that the
data for summative assessment need to take will depend on their exact
purpose. If the assessment is needed for providing information about
learners when they transfer from one teacher to another, then relatively
detailed data are needed across a range of content and skills. However,
when learners transfer to very different environments, such as from school
to higher education, detailed information of their learning will not be that
useful as the style of learning and focus of the work is very different to that
in school. Therefore, less detailed data are needed for summative assess-
ment. However, whether grades are sufficient data for this process is not
clear and there is some debate about selection procedures for university
places based on predicted grades.
The emphasis on psychometrics (the theory and techniques of psycho-
logical measurement) throughout the history of summative assessment, has
affected the way that teachers, schools and the government look at data.
The emphasis on relative ranking, rather than actual accomplishment
(Gipps 1995), on individual performance rather than on the success of
collaborative group tasks, and the misplaced belief that objectivity conveys
with it accuracy of measurement of a students capabilities, distract teachers
from investigating what summative assessments have to offer. Assessment
is not an exact science (Gipps 1995), and the best that we can do is make
ourselves aware of the confidence levels of the assessment tools that we
use and knowledgeable about how we can make assessments as accurate as
possible within the confines of the time, tools and school contexts.
Confidence in a specific assessment can be divided into two aspects
reliability and validity. Reliability focuses on the subjunctive approach:
What if the paper was taken on a different day?
What if different questions were selected?
What if different markers assessed it?
What if different grade boundaries were set?
Each of these factors, in different ways, may affect the final score that a
student achieves. The students will have the same capabilities whatever the
test paper, but the score that they achieve will be determined to a large
intent by the particular test that they take; this includes all the conditions
of when and where the test took place, and by whom, or how, the test paper
is marked.
Validity is a measure of how close the assessment is to measuring the
capabilities it hopes to assess. If a modern foreign language qualification
was only given for writing and reading, and there was no assessment of
speaking French, despite it being part of the curriculum, then the validity
would be lowered because only part of the taught curriculum was being
assessed. Similarly, if all of the questions on the test paper used sport and
food as the main context for questions, then only part of the curriculum is
tested and this again would reduce the validity.
Sometimes, in attempting to improve reliability, the validity is lowered.
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For example, a test consisting of 30 multiple-choice questions is likely to

have greater reliability than three essay questions but if these are set in
religious education, where some of the aims are to develop argument,
elaborate nuanced explanations and compare and contrast ideas, then
essays provide a more valid way of assessing these skills. It is important to
consider carefully what and a test is assessing and how this is done.
Whereas formative assessment drives the learning, the final, summative
assessment should serve the learning and not predetermine it. If teachers
allow themselves to be seduced into teaching to the test, then they change
the classroom ethos from a learning orientation to a performance orienta-
tion. The consequence of this change is that students will not make any
effort in their learning unless they can see clearly that it will help them
achieve a higher test score. More damaging than this consequence is that
they may refuse to attempt challenging activities because they see any
struggle as failure rather than an opportunity for learning (MacBeath and
Mortimore 2001).
Teachers rarely evaluate their test papers or the test papers that other
agencies provide. Sometimes it is possible to spot rogue questions that are
ambiguous or are strange ways of asking a student to do something straight-
forward, and these questions can be omitted, adapted or replaced. It is also
simple to pre-test questions on students in other classes to check that the
questions are doing what the test constructor hoped they would do. So you
might want to select questions from a Year 8 test as a class activity for your
Year 9 class, to check on the questions and, at the same time, provide you
with formative data to decide where to take the Year 9 students next. These
methods will improve the confidence levels of your test papers.
To improve the reliability of the paper, you will need to get a class to
do the paper and then look at the results of all candidates question by
question. If you work on the premise that stronger candidates will do well
on most questions and weaker candidates will tend to perform badly on
most questions, then you need to consider whether this pattern occurs
for specific questions. If it does, then the question can be described as
discriminatory. Let us exemplify this by looking at the results of a class of 12
students taking a seven question test, with each question having ten
possible marks. First, you need to rank the class results and then look at the
spread of marks on the individual questions.
Student Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7 TOTAL
AH 9 9 4 7 9 10 10 58
VB 9 8 4 6 8 9 10 54
JJ 8 9 5 5 9 7 10 53
CH 9 7 4 6 7 8 10 51
DR 8 8 5 5 5 5 10 46
OL 8 8 5 6 5 4 10 46
WS 7 7 4 6 6 3 10 43
PY 7 9 3 5 5 4 9 42
MJ 8 5 7 5 4 4 9 42
WW 8 3 8 3 2 4 9 37
MT 7 1 7 4 2 3 9 33
TB 9 6 6 4 3 2 0 30
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To help focus, look at the range of marks per question, but focus on the first
four students, AH, VB, JJ and CH, who well call high attainers and MJ,
WW, MT and TB, who well call low attainers.
All students do reasonably well on question 1; high attainers get 8 or
9 marks while low attainers get 7 or 8. While this question is not very
discriminatory, it is common practice to have a question that most students
can do as the first question. Question 7 is similar, but it may be that you
would ask yourself whether it is useful having the last question on the paper
as one where most students score full marks. Student TB scored zero for
question 7 which could be because TB has no understanding of the learning
that question 7 demands. Equally, it could be the case that TB worked
slowly through the first six questions and failed to reach question 7 or even,
that TB did not turn the final page and realize that there was a seventh
question to answer. It might, therefore, be safer not to have a high scoring
question as the last question on the paper next time and so question 7 could
be omitted or moved earlier in the paper.
Question 2 has the high attainers scoring between 7 and 9 marks, while
the lower attainers manage 1 to 6 marks. This question is discriminatory.
Question 3 proves to be a strange question in that high attainers do
worse than low attainers. This can happen sometimes when more capable
learners feel that the answer is so obvious that they may start to look for an
alternative explanation and end up failing to answer part of the question.
This is therefore a rogue question and should be considered for omission,
adaptation or replacement the next time this test is given.
Questions 4 to 6 are also discriminatory. Question 6 covers a wide
range of marks, while question 4 uses the range 2 to 7. You would want
some questions to be widely discriminatory, while with others you may
want most students to score at least 4 of the marks and only part of
the question to discriminate. Only careful scrutiny of the results and the
details of the question will allow you to decide on this. However, unless
teachers actually set time aside to evaluate examination papers in this
way, to check how well they have fulfilled the purpose of assessing the
capabilities of students, then the assessment data that are produced will
lack reliability.
Another form of reliability that needs attention, particularly if the data
and judgements from the summative test are to be used for important
decisions, is inter-marker reliability. The reliability here can be improved if
teachers construct mark schemes together, enter into professional dialogue
at some during the marking process, and instigate some sampling
techniques to pair-mark some papers and come to an agreement about the
intricacies of the marking and the judgements made.
Summative assessments need not be tests. Sometimes a product is
generated at the end of the learning in subjects such as in technology, art,
music, drama, media, English and humanities. The general issues with
regards to validity and reliability apply to these just as they do to tests, but
with these alternative forms of assessment, other confidence issues
arise. How can the assessors judge how much of the work is the students
and how much of the product results from someone who helped the
student? This point is of particular concern with coursework for GCSE and
A-level qualifications. Does feedback from a teacher or a relative on the first
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draft of an essay constitute cheating? Is allowing a music student three

attempts, rather than one, at recording their prepared piece, and then
selecting the best performance fair? Should a drama assessor judge each
player individually, or award the same mark to everyone in the per-
formance, no matter how large or complicated their part? Is using the
Internet something we should reward a student for because it is a skill we
hope they will acquire, or should we ban all Internet use because we are
frightened that it will encourage youngsters to plagiarize work?
Such questions need to be openly debated and this process has begun in
the current Assessment Reform Group project, Assessment Systems for the
Future. This group believes that the systemic weaknesses in our assessment
system could be tackled by changing the balance between external and
school-based summative assessments and through dependable quality in
teachers summative assessments. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales
already give more weight to teachers summative assessments than is the
case in England. However, research shows that whilst some innovations
have improved teachers summative assessments, others have clearly failed.
Several attempts both to improve the ways in which teachers collect and
interpret evidence from their students and to secure alignment between
standards and practices between schools, show a patchwork of success and
failure. However, they do indicate ways that have potential for success. An
example of the possibilities is the established teacher assessment practices
in Queensland, Australia (Cumming and Maxwell 2004), where there are
no external examinations. Teachers carry out their own summative assess-
ments; quality issues are assured through a state-wide moderation system,
where teachers meet in groups and agree the quality of samples from each
others schools.
Assessment consequences
Assessment practices are a product of our historical context (Black 1995)

and they are driven by social and professional change. Assessment pervades
all aspects of the work that teachers do, and we need to be clear that the
assessment practices in the classroom today are not established because of
educational needs from a former era. While the media might wish to focus
on the gold standards (Baird et al. 2000) of yesteryear, teachers need to
focus on current assessment practices and how these relate to successful
teaching and effective learning.
Formative assessment is part of teachers day-to-day work; it supports
them in dealing with the individual successes and needs of their students.
Summative assessment provides a means for reporting on progress, for pro-
viding information for transfer purposes and for awarding certification at
the end of a learning period. These two purposes could work side-by-side
quite well, if it were not for the overriding effect of accountability. As Gipps
(1995: 4) writes:
the task assessment specialists must address is how best to design
accountability assessment which will provide good quality
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information about pupils performance without distorting good

teaching (and learning) practice.
In our current, high-stakes testing regime, it is difficult for schools and
teachers to escape the tyranny of assessment for accountability. Whereas
the focus of schools should be on assessment for learning, many schools
feel forced to focus on assessment for accountability and invest con-
siderable time and money in continuously collecting masses of per-
formance data, in the hope that taking account of this evidence will result
in success. Such an approach needs to be cautioned against, since a strong
drive for accountability can undermine effective formative and summative
assessment practices. While successful resolution might be difficult for
schools to find, they need, at least, to enter into debate with teachers,
students, parents and governors about the assessment model they hope to
set up, maintain and sustain within their school. A model that allows for
the flexibility and individuality of formative assessment, while preparing
for summative assessment and providing for accountability. Teachers are
key to making such a system function and assessment practices will only
improve if the central role of teachers in assessment is recognized and their
expertise is trusted.
References
Alexander, R. (2004) Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk. Cambridge:

Dialogos.
Assessment Systems for the Future (ASF) (2004) ASF Working Papers and Interim reports.
Available from the ARG website http://arg.educ.cam.ac.uk/ASF.html.
Baird, J., Cresswell, M.J. and Newton, P. (2000) Would the real gold standard please
step forward? Research Papers in Education, 15(2): 21329.
Barnes, D. and Todd, F. (1995) Communication and Learning Revisited. London:
Heinemann.
Black, P. (1998) Testing: Friend or Foe? The Theory and Practice of Assessment and Testing.
London: Falmer.
Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B. and Wiliam, D. (2002) Working Inside the
Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom. London: NFERNelson.
Learning: Putting it into Practice. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Black, P. and Harrison, C. (2004) Science Inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in
the Science Classroom. London: NFERNelson.
Black, P., Harrison, C., Osborne, J. and Duschl, R. (2004) Assessment of Science 1416: a
Report Prepared for the Royal Society. London: Royal Society.
Cumming, J. and Maxwell, G. (2004) Review of assessment practices in Queensland,
Assessment in Education, 11(1): 89108.
Gipps, C. (1995) Beyond Testing: Towards a Theory of Educational Assessment. London:
Falmer.
Harlen, W. (2004a) A systematic review of the evidence of reliability and validity of
assessment by teachers used for summative purposes (EPPI-Centre Review), in
Research Evidence in Education Library. Issue 3. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science
Research Unit, Institute of Education.
Harlen, W. (2004b) A systematic review of the evidence of the impact on students,
teachers and the curriculum of the process of using assessment by teachers for
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summative purposes (EPPI-Centre Review), in Research Evidence in Education

Library. Issue 4. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of
Education.
Harlen, W. and Deakin-Crick, R. (2002) A systematic review of the impact of sum-
mative assessment and tests on students motivation for learning (EPPI-Centre
Review), Research Evidence in Education Library. Issue I. London: EPPI-Centre, Social
Science Research Unit, Institute of Education.
Harrison, C. (2006) Banishing the quiet classroom, Education Review 19(2): 6777.
Hodgen, J. and Wiliam, D. (2006) Mathematics Inside the Black Box: Assessment for
Learning in the Mathematics Classroom. London: nferNelson.
MacBeath, J. and Mortimore, P. (2001) Improving School Effectiveness. Buckingham,
Marshall, B. and Wiliam, D. (2006) English Inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning
in the English Classroom. London: nferNelson.
Mercer, N. (2000) Words and Minds. London: Routledge.
Office for Standards in Education (2004) Standards and Quality 2002/03. The Annual
Report of Her Majestys Chief Inspector of Schools. London: The Stationery Office.
Perrenoud, P. (1988) From formative evaluation to a controlled regulation of learning
processes: towards a wider conceptual field, Assessment in Education: Principles,
Policy and Practice, 5(1): 85102.
Rowe, M.B. (1974) Wait-time and rewards as instructional variables, their influence
on language, logic, and fate control: part one wait-time, Journal of Research in
Science Teaching, 11(2): 8194.
Sadler, R. (1989) Formative assessment and the design of instructional systems.
Instructional Science, 18(2): 11944.
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18 Aiming for inclusion:

removing barriers and
building bridges
Chris Abbott
All children, wherever they are educated, need to be able to learn, play
and develop alongside each other within their local community of
schools.
(DfES 2004: 3)
Introduction
The most recent government policy document on special educational needs

(DfES 2004) is titled Removing Barriers to Achievement. It is the latest in a
line of developments in this area which have themselves traced an arc of
understanding across a wide vista of educational change. Like all recent
educational policy statements, current SEN policy is linked to the strategies
for intervention and for integration of services in Every Child Matters
(DfES 2003). This document outlines the key rights of all children, and
these also underpin all support for those who are faced with barriers to
learning.
The rights outlined in Every Child Matters are that children should:
be healthy
stay safe
enjoy and achieve
make a positive contribution
achieve economic well-being
(DfES 2003: 67)
This chapter examines the recent history of the response of the edu-
cational system to learners who have often been characterized as having
special educational needs (SEN). The use of the term SEN is itself contested
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Aiming for inclusion: removing barriers and building bridges 225
since it raises issues related to labelling and low expectations (Billington

2000). Within the UK, for example, Scotland no longer uses the term and
prefers to talk about ASN: Additional Support Needs. It should be noted, of
course, that the term ASN in Scotland is intended to cover a much wider
range of issues than has traditionally been covered by SEN. In the absence
of a fully acceptable terminology, this chapter will reflect common usage
among teachers by using the term SEN, albeit with an enhanced awareness
of the contestability it carries with it. The chapter considers a range of
responses from teachers, policy makers and other relevant groups. All
teachers need to be aware of SEN issues, and they have particular duties laid
out in the SEN Code of Practice. The code is discussed in order that you can
consider its implications for your teaching.
This chapter is not, however, a practical guide to supporting learning
needs in your classroom. Many such guides are available, and these go into
much more detail than is possible in one short chapter. Such guides are
often aimed at the SENCO the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator in
the school (Cowne 2003) but much of use to the subject teacher will also
be found in such publications. The needs of trainee teachers and NQTs are
considered by a more recent publication (Spooner 2006), which contains
detailed practical guidance for beginning teachers on this complex and
evolving area.
The current SEN Code of Practice (DfES 2001) and its predecessor fol-
lowed the influential Warnock Report (DES 1978), and the 1981 Education
Act (DES 1981), both of which came down firmly in favour of inclusive
education. At the time of publication of the Fish Report (Committee to
Review Special Educational Provision 1985) on the future of SEN provision
in London, the arguments for inclusive education seemed compelling and
any opposition to them risked being labelled as divisive and inequitable.
The authors of the report were unequivocal:
[I]ntegration in society is a process not a state. It is not simply a
question of placement in the same groups and institutions as others. It
is a process which requires continued and planned interaction with
contemporaries and freedom to associate in different groups. The
potentially adverse effects of isolation and segregation, in whatever
context, including comprehensive institutions, are now well known,
including the risks to social competence and to the development of a
positive self-identity.
(Committee to Review Special Educational Provision 1985: 5)
Many special needs teachers, particularly those in inner London (the
focus of the Fish Report) expected that within a few years most special
schools would be closed, almost all children would be educated together
and segregated schooling would become an historical anomaly. That
almost none of this has yet happened is explained by several factors, but
is particularly related to the arrival of the National Curriculum and, sub-
sequently, league tables of schools. As league table results and positioning
become ever more crucial to the perceived success of a school, so has
inclusion become a much less urgent target.
The integration debate of the 1980s became the inclusion debate
of the latter years of the twentieth century, as it became clear that only
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226 Chris Abbott
inclusion offered an equitable and socially just aim. Integration too

often implies that the person concerned should change in some way in
order to become integrated. Others (Clough 1998; Allan 1999; Daniels and
Garner 1999; Lunt and Norwich 1999; Slee 1999; Thomas and Vaughan
2004) have considered inclusion in far greater depth than is possible in
this chapter.
Prior to the publication of the Fish Report, the 1981 Education Act had
led to increasing numbers of young people being considered as having
special educational needs at some point during their school career. A figure
of 20 per cent of all children, quoted in the Warnock Report (DES 1978), was
highly influential in changing attitudes, freeing resources and ensuring that
serious attention was paid to the issue. At the time, special schools were
educating approximately 2 per cent of the school population; the current
figure is 1.1% (DfES 2004: 34). The 20 per cent figure has disappeared from
current government policy documents, to be replaced by the more general
(although decreased) nearly one in six (DfES 2004: 5).
The mid-1980s was a time of great expectations for those involved in
special needs education. The old barriers were to be swept away, young
people were to be educated together and mainstream schools would have to
become more inclusive. Inclusion, however, was overtaken by events, more
particularly by one event: the publication of the 1988 Education Reform
Act and all that followed from it. Suddenly, schools and local education
authorities were faced with fundamental changes, changes that carried
the force of law and the insistent voice of a timetable of implementation,
neither of which were true of the 1981 Act.
The early years of this century have seen a further level of attention
given to legal frameworks, with the Special Educational Needs and Dis-
ability Act (UK 2001) building upon and adding duties to the earlier
Disability Discrimination Act (UK 1995). This has led to a resurgence of
interest in this area of education, with the issue of the future of special
schools, in particular, much discussed during the 2005 General Election.
Withdrawal or in-class support?
Prior to the events of the mid-1980s, the fundamental controversy regard-

ing special needs provision in mainstream schools had been the one that
has since reappeared: is it more desirable to educate young people seen as
having special needs by withdrawing them from the lessons where they are
experiencing difficulty and educating them elsewhere, or should support
teachers be provided to enable such young people to learn alongside their
more able peers in ordinary schools? The support system approach has
much more in common with the aims and beliefs of the 1981 Act than does
the practice, formerly widespread, of withdrawing children and educating
them in small groups with specialized resources in the care of a teacher
whose only role is to work with those children. Implicit in the latter
approach is an assumption that children can be categorized. Although the
rapid rise in the number of learning support assistants in schools can be
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welcomed as an indication of a further strengthening of in-class support,

the pressure to withdraw is always present, especially in schools where test
results are giving cause for concern. The misleadingly-named opportunity
classes and special classes of the 1980s may be being recreated in some of
the Pupil Referral Units and Exclusion Units of the present day. Although
the number of special schools continues to decline, the numbers of pupils
placed in them is dropping only slowly. At the same time, influential voices
within political circles and elsewhere are beginning to question the validity
of inclusion for all, including most surprisingly one of the main advocates
for inclusion in the 1980s (Warnock 2005).
Categories of need
Teachers entering the profession in the 1970s would have met terms such
as mentally handicapped, maladjusted and physically handicapped.
These terms, stark though they may seem, replaced others that were even
more uncompromising. The British education and health systems have a
long history of placing people in categories and, until the turn of the
last century, the categories in general use were terms that would today be
entirely inappropriate:
Idiots [P]ersons so deeply defective in mind from birth . . . [as to be]
unable to guard themselves against common human dangers . . .
Imbeciles [M]ental defectiveness not amounting to idiocy . . .
incapable of managing themselves or their affairs . . .
Feeble-minded . . . require care, supervision and control for their own
protection . . . permanently incapable of receiving proper benefit from
the instruction in ordinary schools . . .
Moral imbeciles . . . some permanent defect coupled with strong
vicious or criminal propensities on which punishment has had little or
no effect . . .
Acute lunacy . . . has been excluded from the definitions.
(adapted from Great Britain 1886)
The categories now in use are based on a belief that special educational
need is a product of context rather than an innate state situated within
the child. Teachers still talk about categories of need, however, and it may
be useful to consider these before discussing the influence of context. The
categories of need referred to in the first version of the SEN Code of Practice
(DfE 1994), and still widely used by teachers, are:
learning difficulties
specific learning difficulties
emotional and behavioural difficulties
physical disabilities
sensory impairment: hearing difficulties
sensory impairment: visual difficulties
speech and language difficulties.
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228 Chris Abbott
The tendency to adopt the labelling of children as a strategy for meeting

need has been described by Feiler and Gibson (1999) as one of the four main
threats to the inclusive movement (the others being lack of precision in
definitions of inclusion, the lack of research evidence and the tendency for
some children to be excluded even if they are within the school environ-
ment). The 2001 Code takes the process of generalizing and grouping
rather further and does not assume that there are hard and fast categories
of special educational need (DfES 2001: 85). This echoes the point made
above, that an understanding of special educational needs should be
focused on the context in which a child is educated rather than on a sup-
posed innate deficit within that child.
Children will have needs and requirements which may fall into at least
one of four areas, although many children will have inter-related needs
which encompass more than one of these. The impact of these com-
binations of need on the childs ability to function, learn and succeed
should be taken into account. The areas of need identified in the current
Code of Practice are:
communication and interaction
cognition and learning
behaviour, emotional and social development
sensory and/or physical.
(DfES 2001: 85)
The next sections examine each of these four areas in more detail.
Communication and interaction needs
It has become increasingly clear that difficulties with speech and language,
if noted early enough in a childs school career, need not be lifelong in
duration. Language units have been set up, often in schools, to provide
early intervention during a childs first years at school and these have often
been remarkably successful. It is unlikely that many secondary teachers will
have to deal with this range of needs.
In recent years there has been a large increase in the number of children
described as suffering from attention deficit disorder (ADD), sometimes
linked to hyperactivity (ADHD). This is an area of controversy in the USA,
where many young students have been prescribed drugs to control the
behaviour linked to the disorder. Drug therapy has been seen as a last resort
in Britain but is now on the increase. The terms ADD and ADHD seem to
be gaining acceptance among professionals and many teachers will have
children so identified in their classrooms. Criticism of the use of terms such
as ADHD tends to be similar to that of dyslexia as a catch-all description, in
that the term signifies a model of special educational need as a medical
condition for which a cure, or at any rate relief, can be prescribed. Others
(Place et al. 1999) have argued that ADHD may be a root cause of some of
the behaviour difficulties observed in schools.
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Cognition and learning needs
By far the largest group of children described as having special educational

needs are those with learning difficulties. These difficulties may be minimal,
moderate or severe, depending upon the context in which the young per-
son is being taught and the task involved. All teachers will have students
with learning difficulties in their classrooms, although it is unlikely that
these difficulties will be of a severity that causes the young person involved
to be unable to speak or communicate. Children with such needs are still
most likely to be found in special schools.
Some children display a range of difficulties with learning that seem at
odds with what also appears to be a high level of understanding in other
contexts. They are able to learn in other ways very quickly, but reading,
writing and spelling in particular appear to give them great difficulty.
Many people have regarded this collection of difficulties as a specific trait
and have termed it dyslexia; others resist the notion of one kind of
difficulty and prefer to use the general term specific learning difficulties.
Whatever the personal perspective on this argument, it is true that some
young people do appear to have particular difficulties with language,
especially in its non-verbal forms, and teachers need to be adept at dealing
with this. It is unfortunate that the many different agencies seeking to
support people with dyslexia are not able to agree on the most appropriate
action for teachers to take, or even an accepted definition of the term.
Behaviour, emotional and social development needs
Perhaps above all other categories of need, this is the one that is most
affected by context. It is also probably the area of need which classroom
teachers feel is more difficult to meet within the mainstream classroom
than any other. Children can appear to be extremely disruptive,
unmotivated or withdrawn, and a whole range of behaviours can be seen as
falling within this area. At the present time, many young people whose
needs relate to this area are educated separately, often within a school
that operates a behavioural management ethos. Government initiatives,
particularly Excellence in Cities (DfEE 1999; see also Chapter 10), are
seeking to address this issue and to find ways of enabling mainstream
schools to meet this range of needs.
Sensory and/or physical needs
The assumption too easily made about physical disability is that children
can be included in mainstream provision provided that structural alter-
ations are made to the building. This is too simplistic and fails to take
account of the psychological and sociological hurdles that are involved in
the successful inclusion of such young people into mainstream schools.
It is often those young people who have hearing difficulties or who
are deaf who have the greatest struggle to be included in mainstream
education. Where children have developed a confident grasp of signing
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230 Chris Abbott
they are likely to feel much more comfortable talking to others who are
similarly bilingual. Talking to a hearing person may involve learning to
lip-read and this can be very difficult for some young people. Technology is
beginning to offer support in this area and it is likely that speech-to-text
hand-held devices, for example, will become available in time.
Some children with visual difficulties have been successfully included in
mainstream schools for many years. This may have been achieved through
the sensible use of computers and other specially adapted aids, but in many
cases a willing teaching force and a well-prepared group of students are
the most important factors. Children with colour vision difficulties may not
be able to cope with certain colour combinations when reading; with many
computer programs this can be amended, but printed materials present
insuperable problems. Teachers need to be sensitive to the particular needs
of the children in their class and should be given clear advice on this by
medical authorities involved with the child.
Children and their needs in context
The issue of context-related need was mentioned earlier and it is this

issue that has dominated thinking about SEN in recent years. To reiterate:
it is generally accepted that special educational needs arise often from the
contexts in which we place children, rather than from the child itself.
A child who exhibits signs of emotional and behavioural disturbance in a
mainstream school may be entirely calm and at ease in another setting
such as a small special school or an off-site unit. A student who is disrup-
tive in science may be a model of good behaviour in English, solely
because the teacher involved offers a different context for learning.
Factors such as the size of a school, the pressure of being one of such a large
student body or a bewildering variety of tasks and directives when joining
a new school, can cause special educational needs to become noticed,
or cause them to become so important that they cannot be ignored. It
follows from this argument that an essential requirement for schools is to
produce contexts that do not aggravate or create special educational
needs among the student body. This is a task not only for the senior
management of the school but also for all staff (teaching and support)
and students.
Differentiation strategies for support
Tasks given to learners should always be capable of differentiation to meet

the different needs and capabilities of those students. Chapter 15 of this
book covers differentiation in depth but it is appropriate here to pick out
the key points as they apply to the topic of special educational needs. In too
many cases teachers use the strategy of differentiation by outcome; at its
simplest level this means that one task is given to all students so that some
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of them produce a range of responses while others struggle to produce any-

thing at all.
A more appropriate strategy involves differentiation by task; a careful
teacher will allow for a range of tasks to be offered. There are many ways
in which this can be done, and the use of a variety of strategies is likely to
be more effective than an over-reliance on the same methodology. Some
teachers prepare alternative versions of a task, particularly where an activity
is based around the use of worksheets. Others may prepare different tasks
for different groups in the classroom, although this has the built-in danger
of leading to permanent setting within the classroom, which is unlikely to
be appropriate (see Chapter 16). Students who find difficulties with one task
will not necessarily react in the same way to another; as with special needs
in general, the difficulty will be related to the context in this case, the
learning activity rather than to the learner. It is unrealistic to expect that
teachers will always be able to provide a differentiated range of activities,
but it should be the aim of a good teacher to do so whenever possible and as
often as possible.
The SEN Code of Practice
Following a wide-ranging consultation exercise, a Special Educational

Needs Code of Practice (DfE 1994) was introduced and followed by all
schools and teachers. It was then updated and superseded in late 2001 by a
revised version, in which the importance of context-created need was
underlined through a change in the sections of the Code. It is useful to
consider here the fundamental principles quoted in the Code of Practice as
these underpin the proposals it contains:
a child with special educational needs should have their needs met
the special educational needs of children will normally be met in main-
stream schools or settings
the views of the child should be sought and taken into account
parents have a vital role to play in supporting their childrens education
children with special educational needs should be offered full access
to a broad, balanced and relevant education, including an appropriate
Curriculum for the Foundation stage and the National Curriculum.
(DfES 2001: 7)
The Code of Practice recommends a two-stage process of identification
of special educational needs by schools and teachers, a reduction from
the previous five stages in the 1994 Code. The proposed reduction was
suggested in the hope that it would streamline the process of needs identifi-
cation and avoid some of the delays inherent in the previous system.
Subject teachers have a particular role in the first of these stages, as the
code indicates that one of the triggers for School Action, the first phase, could
be concern expressed by a teacher that a student is not making progress
(DfES 2001: 689). This suggests that not only should subject teachers be
sensitive to such situations as they arise, but that they should share their
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232 Chris Abbott
concerns with others and be ready to make the necessary evidence available
that will demonstrate the nature of the difficulty.
If a particular student seems to be experiencing difficulties and is not
known to have special educational needs, it is the responsibility of that
childs subject teachers to spot the difficulty, contact the special edu-
cational needs co-ordinator (SENCO) and attempt to describe the nature
of the needs that have been noted. Following their consultations with the
SENCO, subject teachers then need to take the action agreed, and this may
form part of the written IEP (individual education plan) for that student. It
may be that a change as simple as a move to a different part of the classroom
has been suggested, or that the teacher should speak more clearly and
face the child concerned. This can lead to a dramatic improvement in
communication where a child with a hearing difficulty is concerned. The
SENCO may wish to attend a lesson in order to make an informal assess-
ment of the situation prior to any formal process that the school may have
developed.
A particular focus during the school action phase of identifying special
needs is the collection of information and evidence. This process will be
extremely valuable if it is necessary to progress to the second phase, School
Action Plus. Here, the main responsibility for action lies with the SENCO,
although it is essential that the subject teacher gives enthusiastic support
and co-operation, without which there is little hope of improving the
situation. The school may decide to provide support in the form of tech-
nology, a support teacher or an assistant, if these are available. The job of
the learning support assistant is made much easier when subject teachers
keep them fully informed about the work in hand and offer to assist them
in devising suitable activities. It may be that, following this process of
gathering information, the school decides to seek outside assistance and to
consider the need for a statement of special educational needs, but this will
not always be the case.
SEN statements were an outcome of the 1994 Code of Practice and have
become widely used, although there has been criticism of the number of
statements written, the length of time taken to prepare them and the dif-
fering patterns of statementing in various local education authorities
(LEAs). The revised code contains clear expectations that statements in
future will be much fewer in number and will be in place for shorter periods
of time, although only limited progress has been made in this area to date.
Information and communication technology and SEN
The 1994 Code of Practice highlighted the ways in which information

technology could assist schools and students in the meeting of special
educational needs. IT in this case usually meant computers and the various
pieces of hardware that could be attached to them. The 2001 Code of
Practice is much less specific in this area but includes a number of general
statements implying the use of information and communications technol-
ogy (ICT), as it is now generally described, and there is a growing literature
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in this area (Blamires 1999; McKeown 2000; Abbott 2002; Florian and
Hegarty 2004).
Children with learning difficulties, for example, can use overlay key-
boards or onscreen keyboards to access an activity that for other students
involves the use of a standard keyboard. An overlay keyboard is a device on
which paper sheets containing words or pictures are placed. Pressing on the
words or pictures sends commands to the computer, since the overlay has
an associated file containing the instructions devised by the teacher. Many
teachers also use overlay keyboards to speed up the writing process for
learners whose writing is slowly and laboriously produced. In a science
lesson, for example, some teachers might use overlays that create the
phrases and concepts frequently included when writing up an experiment.
Pressing on the area concerned will cause these to be written to the screen,
and the student can then concentrate on the novel parts of the activity.
There has been a rapid increase in recent years in the use of graphical
symbols by people with learning disabilities (Abbott 2000; Detheridge and
Detheridge 2002). Initially, the aim of this use was predominantly com-
munication, but as the software has become more sophisticated, real pro-
gress has been made in giving non-text readers access to literacy through
symbols (Abbott, Detheridge and Detheridge 2006) and much more
detailed research has now been completed into the nature of current
symbol use (Abbott and Lucey 2005).
Children with visual difficulties may be helped by magnification soft-
ware, or by the use of other magnification technology to deal with printed
material. Such devices are very portable and make it possible for a student
with a visual difficulty to be placed on an equal footing with others. Screen
readers can offer access to a wide range of information sources including the
Internet, and web browsers can easily be set to display text in large formats.
Children with hearing difficulties sometimes communicate using email,
and the rapid increase in the number of schools with Internet access con-
tinues to open up the range of possibilities. Children who become very ill
and have to spend long periods in hospital or at home can keep in touch
with their schools through email, and be set homework in this way too.
Many children are therefore able to keep up with their exam coursework,
and the ready availability of computers may result in a vastly improved
amount of work being done during a period as an inpatient than was
previously the case.
There are some difficulties, though, that arise from the use of a computer
itself, and these can be a source of stress or frustration. This is often the
case when a child has a slight loss of fine motor control and finds that the
mouse is very difficult to control. In such cases, it is possible to substitute a
trackerball, sometimes described as an upside-down mouse, which enables
the two mouse actions of clicking and moving to be separated rather than
having to be done simultaneously. More importantly, the trackerball itself
remains stationary the movement being controlled by the large ball on
top.
Many other devices can be substituted for a mouse, and children with
physical disabilities are then able to use head switches, puff switches (con-
trolled by blowing) or even control the computer with eye movements.
Where the degree of difficulty is not so great, the perceptive teacher will use
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234 Chris Abbott
the inbuilt control facilities of the software to alter the mouse tracking
speed and rate at which double clicks must be made. Such small changes,
which take only a few seconds and are reversible for the next user, can
transform a frustrated learner into one who is able to become increasingly
confident.
Although all these uses of ICT, and many others, have always been
explored by inventive teachers in enlightened classrooms and schools, the
impetus has sometimes come from outside agencies. This support can no
longer be relied upon, as the major change in this area since the Code of
Practice came into being has been the requirement that schools investigate
the use of ICT for a particular need before outside experts are called in. This
means that all teachers, but special educational needs co-ordinators in
particular, must become familiar with the different ways in which ICT,
which may not only mean computers, can offer support. It is to the SENCO
that a teacher should turn if advice is needed about meeting a particular
need, or if a teacher has concerns of any kind about the progress or lack of it
made by particular students.
Concluding comments
The two concepts that teachers should bear in mind with regard to SEN are
context and differentiation. Teachers must be able to plan activities that
can be offered in a range of different forms so as to provide a learning
context that will meet the needs of all the students in their classes. They
need to be perceptive observers of students, noticing where they have
difficulties, and attempting to record and describe those situations so that,
in consultation with colleagues, they can attempt to improve the situation.
Where difficulties are obvious, they must not focus on why the student
cannot do something, but on whether the learning environment provided
is appropriate for that students needs. Some aspects of the environment
may be outside their control, but important factors such as their attitude,
the provision of differentiated work and their awareness of student
reaction, may not.
Inclusive education should not just be a worthy aim or a statement of
policy, but a goal towards which teachers, parents and other agencies are
striving. The LA, in particular, has an important role to play, and it has
been shown that inclusive practices must become a corporate priority
which is reflected in global targets within the LEA (Ainscow et al. 1999:
137). It will never be easy to make an education system inclusive but it will
always be indefensible to accept that it should be otherwise. Inclusion trips
easily off the tongue but can be without meaning or substance (Wade 1999:
81) but this must be avoided if education is to be a benefit which is truly
available to all: a bridge and not a barrier.
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References
Abbott, C. (ed.) (2000) Symbols Now. Leamington Spa: Widgit.

Abbott, C. (ed.) (2002) Special Educational Needs and the Internet: Issues in Inclusive
Education. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Abbott, C., Detheridge, T. and Detheridge, C. (2006) Symbols, Literacy and Social Justice.
Leamington: Widgit.
Abbott, C. and Lucey, H. (2005) Symbol communication in special schools in
England: the current position and some key issues, British Journal of Special
Education, 32(4): 196201.
Ainscow, M., Farrell, P., Tweddle, D. and Malki, G. (1999) The role of LEAs in develop-
ing inclusive policies and practices, British Journal of Special Education, 26(3):
13640.
Allan, J. (1999) Actively Seeking Inclusion. London: Falmer Press.
Billington, T. (2000). Separating, Losing and Excluding Children: Narratives of Difference.
Blamires, M. (ed.) (1999) Enabling Technology for Inclusion. London: Paul Chapman.
Clough, P. (ed.) (1998) Managing Inclusive Education: from Policy to Experience. London:
Paul Chapman.
Committee to Review Special Educational Provision (1985) Educational Opportunities
For All: Report of the Committee Reviewing Provision to Meet Special Educational Needs
(The Fish Report). London: Inner London Education Authority.
Cowne, E. (2003) The SENCO Handbook: Working within a Whole-School Approach (4th
edn). London: David Fulton Publishers.
Daniels, H. and Garner, P. (eds) (1999) Inclusive Education (World Yearbook of Education
1999). London: Kogan Page.
Department for Education (DfE) (1994) Code of Practice on the Identification and
Assessment of Special Educational Needs. London: DfE.
Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1999) Excellence in Cities.
Nottingham: DfEE.
Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (2001) SEN Code of Practice on the
Identification and Assessment of Pupils with Special Educational Needs. London: DfES.
Department of Education and Science (DES) (1978) Special Educational Needs: Report of
the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People
(The Warnock Report). London: HMSO.
Department of Education and Science (DES) (1981) Education for All. London: HMSO.
Detheridge, M. and Detheridge, T. (2002) Literacy Through Symbols: Improving Access
for Children and Adults (2nd edn). London: David Fulton Publishers.
DfES (2003) Every Child Matters. London: Stationery Office.
DfES (2004) Removing Barriers to Achievement: The Governments Strategy for SEN.
London: Stationery Office.
Great Britain (1886) Classification of Defectives Under the Mental Deficiency, Lunacy,
Idiots and Education Acts. London: HMSO.
Feiler, A. and Gibson, H. (1999) Threats to the inclusive movement, British Journal of
Special Education, 26(3): 14752.
Florian, L. and Hegarty, J. (eds) (2004) ICT and Special Educational Needs: A Tool for
Inclusion. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Lunt, I. and Norwich, B. (1999) Can Effective Schools be Inclusive Schools? London:
Institute of Education.
McKeown, S. (2000) Unlocking Potential: How ICT Can Support Children with Special
Educational Needs. Birmingham: The Questions Publishing Company Ltd.
Place, M., Wilson, J., Martin, E. and Hulsmeier, J. (1999) Attention Deficit Disorder as
a factor in the origin of behavioural disturbance in schools, British Journal of Special
Education, 26(3): 15863.
Slee, R. (1999) The inclusive school. London: Falmer Press.
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236 Chris Abbott
Spooner, W. (2006) The SEN Handbook for Trainee Teachers, NQTs and Teaching
Assistants. London: David Fulton Publishers.
Thomas, G. and Vaughan, M. (eds) (2004) Inclusive Education: readings and reflections.
United Kingdom (UK) (1995) Disability Discrimination Act. London: Stationery
Office.
United Kingdom (UK) (2001) Special Educational Needs and Disability Act. London:
Stationery Office.
Wade, J. (1999) Including all learners: QCAs approach, British Journal of Special
Education, 26(2): 803.
Warnock, M. (2005) Special Educational Needs: a New Look. London: Philosophy of
Education Society of Great Britain.
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19 English as an Additional
Language: challenges of
language and identity
in the multilingual and
multi-ethnic classroom
Roxy Harris and

Constant Leung
The demographic context
Becoming a teacher in contemporary Britain means developing effective

practice with regard to pupils who come from ethnic and linguistic minority
families. According to statistics produced by the Office for National
Statistics for the DfES, in 2004, approximately 17 per cent of pupils in
Primary and Secondary Schools in England were described as belonging to
minority ethnic groups with roughly 11 per cent of those in primary
schools and 9 per cent in secondary schools said to use English as an
Additional Language (EAL) (TSO 2004). These figures, though, need to be
treated with some caution since they contain certain inadequacies which
will be examined later. However, we will first look at the way the broad
figures disguise striking regional variations. To quote directly from other
statistical analyses utilized by the DfES:
According to the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) the pro-
portion of minority ethnic pupils varies across England in maintained
schools from 4 per cent of the school aged population of the North East
to nearly three quarters of the school aged population of Inner London
(of whom 17 per cent are Black African; 12 per cent Black Caribbean;
11 per cent Bangladeshi; 9 per cent Any other White background; 8 per
cent Mixed Heritage background). The range by Local Education
Authority (LEA) [shows] that the school aged minority ethnic popula-
tion ranges (maintained schools) from 1.5 per cent of East Riding of
Yorkshire LEA to 84 per cent of Hackney LEA. London has a high
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238 Roxy Harris and Constant Leung
proportion of Englands minority ethnic pupils compared to other

areas. Nineteen per cent of Englands minority ethnic pupils go to
school in an Inner London LEA compared to four per cent of White
British pupils; 44 per cent of minority ethnic pupils attend schools in
either an Inner or Outer London LEA compared to eight per cent of
White British pupils.
(DfES 2005(a): 34)
This regional variation in relation to ethnicity is matched by comparable
differences with respect to the figures for English as an Additional
Language. For instance in primary schools pupils with EAL vary in propor-
tion in the following way North East (3.3%), North West (7.4%), Yorkshire
and Humber (9.5%), East Midlands (6.9%), West Midlands (13.4%), East of
England (5.2%), Inner London (50.2%), Outer London (27.9%), South East
(5.2%), South West (2%). When it comes to secondary schools the variation
is as follows North East (2.2%), North West (5.2%), Yorkshire and Humber
(7.3%), East Midlands (6.3%), West Midlands (10.4%), East of England
(4.4%), Inner London (45.3%), Outer London (25.7%), South East (4.8%),
South West (1.6%) (TSO 2004).
Once teachers have developed an awareness of the demographic picture
they should begin to seek out information that will build a more specific
local awareness. For instance, a study of the languages of Londons school-
children (Baker and Eversley 2000: 5) states that in Greater London the
range of home languages spans more than 350 language names, with
English dominant at 67.86 per cent of the 850,000 schoolchildren
surveyed. Of the remaining third, the top ten are Bengali and Sylheti,
Punjabi, Gujarati, Hindi/Urdu, Turkish, Arabic, English-based Creoles,
Yoruba, Somali and Cantonese. Again, these global figures do not reveal the
particularly heavy weightings of languages, other than English, in specific
London local education authority areas such as Brent (Gujarati 23.85 per
cent), the City of London (Bengali and Sylheti 56.37 per cent), Ealing
(Punjabi 20.12 per cent), and Tower Hamlets (Bengali and Sylheti 53.81 per
cent) (ibid.:12). Of course teachers, after analysing these figures, should
then go on to develop a progressively finer awareness of what the propor-
tions might be both for their particular school and their particular class-
room. This task will be assisted by the acquisition of some background
knowledge and understanding of the historical context within which the
issue of pupils for whom English is an Additional Language has become
nationally important.
The historical context
The EAL issue became an important one in the education system in

England as a result of the inward migrations and settlement of peoples and
languages since 1945, particularly in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Martin-
Jones (1989) usefully characterizes these migrations as principally of people
entering Britain as either migrant workers or as refugees. At the same time,
she sees a significant divide between those entering from other parts of
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English as an Additional Language 239
Europe and those from former colonies and Third World nations. It has been
the languages of people from these latter nations which have had the
greatest impact on EAL policy and practice in Britain. We are speaking here
of people who migrated to Britain in relatively large numbers from India,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, Hong Kong, East Africa (principally
Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda), West Africa (mainly Nigeria and Ghana),
Vietnam, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Somalia and Cyprus (see Peach 1996) and
brought with them languages such as Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati, Hindi,
Bengali and Sylheti, Cantonese and Hakka Chinese, Caribbean Creoles,
Yoruba, Twi, Cypriot Greek and Turkish, Kurdish, Tigrinya, Amharic and
Somali (see ILEA 1989; Alladina and Edwards 1991).
Unfortunately, the entrance into the UK of migrants from former col-
onies and so-called developing countries was accompanied by a consider-
able amount of racial hostility and contempt for their languages. This led,
in earlier years, to an official assimilationist approach (Department of
Education and Science 1971), based on the idea that schools should set
about erasing the languages and cultural practices of the children of new
migrants as a precondition for their educational success. This position was
later modified following the Bullock Report (1975: 286), which stated
that:
No child should be expected to cast off the language and culture of

the home as he (sic) crosses the school threshold (and) . . . the
school should adopt positive attitudes to its pupils bilingualism and
wherever possible should help maintain and deepen their knowledge
of their mother tongues.
Despite this declaration, the Bullock Report did not indicate how schools
were to give practical expression to this aspiration. A decade later another
official report, the Swann Report (1985), while reaffirming a positive
attitude, in general terms, to the home and community languages of
ethnic minority pupils, firmly ruled out any role for what it described as the
mainstream school in relating these languages to the learning process and
the official curriculum:
We find we cannot support the arguments put forward for the intro-
duction of programmes of bilingual education in maintained schools
in this country. Similarly we would regard mother tongue main-
tenance, although an important educational function, as best achieved
within the ethnic minority communities themselves rather than
within mainstream schools.
(Swann Report 1985: 406)
However, one principle upon which the Swann Report insisted, was
that ethnic minority pupils for whom English was an Additional
Language should at all times be educated in the mainstream classroom
alongside their peers to avoid segregated provision and to guarantee
equal access to the curriculum. In recent years the profile of pupils with
EAL has changed rapidly, for instance as a result of the arrival of new
migrant populations from Eastern Europe and elsewhere stimulated by
major global economic and military upheavals. (For a fuller treatment of
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historical developments relevant to EAL, see Rampton et al. 2001.) In the

contemporary educational system in this country, access to the curriculum
means access to the National Curriculum. It is to the relationship between
English as an Additional Language and the National Curriculum that we
now turn.
English as an Additional/Second Language (EAL/ESL) and the

National Curriculum
Many of the ethnic minority pupils whom we have described so far are in
the process of learning to use English for both social and academic pur-
poses. At present, with the possible exception of some short-term English
language induction courses, all pupils with EAL are expected to follow the
National Curriculum (CRE 1986; NCC 1991; SCAA 1996; DfES, 2002 (a),
2005 (b)).1 This means that additional language learning opportunities,
particularly for academic purposes, are to be provided in mainstream classes
or subject lessons. Hence, the teaching of English is the responsibility of all
teachers (SCAA 1996: 2).
Within the National Curriculum, EAL, unlike English or science, is not
regarded as a discipline in its own right; therefore, there is no dedicated
curriculum specification for it. EAL is seen as a pupil phenomenon with
implications for teaching and learning. At the same time, for all intents
and purposes, the curriculum specifications and assessment criteria for
(the National Curriculum subject) English are used for both mother tongue
English speaking pupils and those who are still in the process of learning
EAL.2 It is emphasized that the programme of studies for Key Stages 14
should be used to develop all aspects of EAL pupils English. Official English
curriculum documents also advise teachers that they should plan learning
opportunities to help pupils develop their English and should aim to pro-
vide the support pupils need to take part in all subject areas (DfES and
QCA, 1999: 49).
1
For a detailed discussion of the development of this approach to EAL, see Mohan et al. (2001);
suffice it to say at this point that a number of official documents have argued for the mainstream-
ing of EAL provision. For instance, in a landmark investigation into the EAL provision and
practice of the Calderdale education authority, the CRE (1986) found the practice of providing
separate non-mainstream schooling for pupils with EAL to be racially discriminating and con-
trary to the prevailing educational view (p. 6) and recommended that provision for second
language speakers is made in conjunction with mainstream education . . . (p. 16). The term EAL
itself is of relatively new coinage; previously it was referred to as ESL (English as a Second Lan-
guage). Indeed in other parts of the English-speaking world, the term ESL is still preferred. For
some the notion of an additional language is generally held to be ideologically more positive
than second language, which might encourage a deficit view of pupils linguistic repertoire. For
this reason, sometimes pupils with EAL are also referred to as bilingual pupils. Also see relevant
parts of the Swann Report (1985) and Bullock Report (1975).
2
For details of pre-Level 1 and adapted Level 1 EAL assessment descriptors see QCA (2000).
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A glimpse of professional reality
In order to understand how EAL provision is organized in schools it is

important to know something about funding and staffing in schools.
EAL provision is non-mandatory (unlike subjects such as English and
mathematics). Since 1966, EAL funding came from a special grant. Up until
the late 1990s this grant was commonly known as Section 11, earmarked
to support the cost of employing additional staff to help minority ethnic
groups overcome linguistic and other barriers which inhibit their access
to, and take up of, mainstream services (Ofsted 1994: 1). Since 1998 the
monies have been administered under a DfEE/DfES grant scheme, currently
known as Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG). This grant is
time limited, often two or three years at a time. The actual amount of
funds available to a school, via the local education authority, can vary from
one grant period to another depending on the total size of grant and com-
peting demands from other schools. A vast majority of EAL teachers, often
referred to as language support teachers, are employed through this
funding.
Although since the 1960s this grant has been regularly renewed, the time-
limited nature has meant instability for schools in terms of even medium-
term curriculum response, and for individual EAL staff in terms of their
career and professional development. The shortage of funds has also meant
that, generally, EAL staff are very thin on the ground.3
Given that EAL is not a curriculum discipline with its own programme of
study and timetable slots, EAL teachers are expected to work alongside their
mainstream colleagues in the classroom and in the school, in a variety of
ways. Broadly speaking, the roles EAL teachers are expected to play include
the following:
as a classroom teacher, working in partnership with class or subject
teachers, with a special regard for EAL development within the context of
the school curriculum
as a curriculum adviser and developer to promote a more inclusive and
whole-curriculum planning approach to responding to the needs of
pupils with EAL
as a day-to-day adviser and in-service professional development provider
to other colleagues on EAL matters
as a liaison person, particularly applying to those EAL teachers who
are speakers of a community language such as Turkish and Urdu, with
minority parents and community organizations (for a fuller account, see
Bourne and McPake 1991).
The extent to which any individual EAL teacher can contribute to the
above roles depends on a number of individual and school circumstances.
Professional experience has shown that, given the shortage, EAL teachers
can only meet some of the teaching and curriculum development demands
in school. Many class or subject teachers working in classrooms with a
3
In one official press release it was reported that the proportion of specialist staff with
appropriate qualifications is now as low as 3 per cent in some LEAs (Ofsted 2002).
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high number of EAL pupils receive no assistance from EAL specialists. It is

therefore important for all teachers to have some knowledge about some of
the key concepts and principles which have been influential in shaping EAL
teachers classroom strategies. A knowledge of these principles may enable
non-EAL teachers to begin to understand the teaching and learning issues
involved.
Pedagogic principles and classroom strategies
Earlier we pointed out that EAL is a cross-curricular teaching concern.

Within this cross-curricular perspective two linked pedagogical principles
have been applied in the professional literature:
First, making learning activities and tasks personally meaningful and
understandable by encouraging children to use their own knowledge
to solving group problems, and providing timely support that might be
needed by individual children to acquire curriculum concepts and the
language needed to express them (Bourne 1989: 64).
Translated into lesson planning, two questions should be asked:
Do I plan clearly defined and staged tasks which are purposeful, practical
and geared towards the pupils experience?
Do I plan for collaborative work with visual and contextual support?
(Travers 1999: 7)
(See Chapter 3 in Edwards and Redfern 1992 for a more detailed
discussion.)
Second, using learning activities which encourage active engagement; it
is generally held that pupils:
second language skills develop well when . . . they have opportunities
to model the second language used by peers in small group collabora-
tive activities, where talk and interaction are central to the learning
going on . . .
(Hampshire County Council 1996: 2)
These principles are broadly consistent with a constructivist view of
education which puts a great deal of premium on hands-on experiential
learning. They also require the teacher to have a very clear understanding of
at least two language development issues in the classroom context:
the link between curriculum knowledge and the language used to express
that knowledge
the link between spoken and written English (and other languages)
used for interaction in the classroom, including teacher talk and
teacher writing, and the development of spoken and written English for
assignments, assessments and tests in different subject or curriculum
areas.
In the actual classroom EAL (and class/subject) teachers have to interpret
these broad principles with reference to their EAL learners who may be at
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different stages of English language development. In general terms, they are

concerned with providing, at least, the following three elements.
Contextual support using physical movements/actions, visual/audio

material and realia
Unfamiliar concepts and complex ideas can often be made more com-
prehensible by using pictures, diagrams and visual and other sensory repre-
sentations. For instance, the central ideas in the topic of paper making may
be visually supported by a series of pictures or drawings showing the process
involving tree logging, making pulp and so on. Even ephemeral and often
domain-specific concepts such as cynicism and sarcasm in a particular
narrative context may be exemplified by drama activities. In many ways
the value of this kind of contextual support is quite well understood. An
important issue here is not to assume that contextual support of this kind
can be understood by all pupils. It is possible that sometimes even the most
obvious picture, to the teacher, may not make any sense to some pupils. For
some very young pupils, the picture of an inkwell or the image of a vinyl
record, may mean very little. The usefulness of any contextualization
material and activity has to be constantly evaluated in relation to the pupils
involved. A further issue is that while contextual support may lead to a
degree of understanding, this understanding of the content meaning
does not automatically mean understanding or even being aware of the
associated language.
Opportunities for language development by teaching and modelling

language in context
Cummins (1992) distinction between basic interpersonal communication

skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) has been
useful in helping teachers see how to analyse language demands for their
pupils. A teacher asking pupils to choose a colour by holding up a colour
chart is a classroom example of BICS. From EAL pupils point of view, even
if they do not understand the question or the names of the colours, the
immediate meaning of the activity can be worked out by observing others.
The physical context of the activity and the active engagement in the
activity (by having to choose a colour) can provide an opportunity for
highly focused language modelling by the teacher, and conscious noticing
and active use by the pupil. The value of this observation can be made more
obvious if we picture a different scenario this time the teacher asks the
same question but without holding up the colour chart. This kind of use of
highly contextualized language supported by visual and other materials can
be helpful for pupils at all stages of developing listening, speaking, reading
and writing in EAL, but its benefits are immediately obvious to those
teachers who are working with pupils at an early stage of learning English.
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Opportunities to move from the here-and-now language to

academic genres
Meaning in speech in social situations can be interactionally built up.

Imagine the following:
Pupil 1: What are we doing?
Pupil 2: Miss said we have to write down what we said.
Pupil 3: Like what we did on Monday.
Pupil 1: What, like we write down the things we made up?
Classroom conversations, even when they are curriculum-related, are full
of examples of this kind of joint focus forming and meaning making. This is
indeed one of the main characteristics of everyday spoken language.
Furthermore, spoken language is often informal in that it is not necessarily
made up of well-formed sentences; the phrase or the clause is more likely to
be the unit of utterances (Kress 1994). Spoken language in social situations
also tends to use lots of referring and pointing words such as it, this, here
and there, for example, I think its 20 degrees here and thats 40 degrees when
a pupil tries to estimate the temperatures of different substances as part of a
science activity. Some of these characteristics of everyday spoken language
are not found in formal academic English. The ability to read and write
effectively in an academic style cannot be assumed, even when a pupil
appears to be able to handle here-and-now spoken English, and can
read and produce some everyday texts such as simple stories and factual
accounts.
The ability to read and understand academic texts, especially in the
senior years of schooling, requires more than a knowledge of curriculum-
related vocabulary and grammar (which is already quite a challenge for
some pupils with EAL anyway). Pupils have to develop a knowledge of text
types or genres. That is, they need to know something about the con-
ventionally established ways of selecting and structuring information in
specific formats for different purposes (for example, a narrative, instruc-
tions for games, a letter of complaint, a technical report), and the specific
features of language expression involved (for example, the use of slang in a
play dialogue or technical terms in a report). Furthermore, pupils need to be
able to go beyond the literal meaning. Some texts, and not just literary
texts, cannot be fully appreciated without an ability to understand and
decipher humour, cynicism, sarcasm, irony and other culturally supported
meanings. In face-to-face situations some of these implied meanings may
also be signalled by physical actions, contextual clues and facial expressions
which can assist interpretation.
Some of the knowledge and skills involved in the process of writing are
sometimes hidden, so to speak; only the outcomes are visible. In the
school, curriculum writing tasks tend to be about representing ideas or
describing events (for example, telling a story or reporting on the results of
an experiment.) The purpose of a great deal of writing in school is to show
that one can communicate ones ideas and thoughts without the benefit of
either contextual support or immediate contributions and feedback from
others (as in a conversation). This involves pupils drawing on their existing
knowledge and expertise to package ideas and produce a piece of text by
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themselves. This is a complex process. Beyond the level of knowing vocabu-

lary, learning to write involves:
using different types of phrases and sentences to represent ideas
organizing sentences into sequences and sections (paragraphs)
selecting, organizing and presenting information and ideas in con-
ventionally recognizable ways.
Gibbons (1998: 101) provides a highly illuminating example of how
language features change as pupils move from group talk to individual
writing:
Text 1: (spoken by three 10-year-old students and accompanying
action)
this . . . no it doesnt go . . . it doesnt move . . .
try that . . .
yes it does . . . a bit . . . that wont . . .
wont work its not metal . . .
these are the best . . . going really fast.
Text 2: (spoken by one student about the action, after the event)
We tried a pin . . . a pencil sharpener . . . some iron filings . . . the
magnet didnt attract the pin . . .
Text 3: (written by the same student)
Our experiment was to find out what a magnet attracted. We dis-
covered that a magnet attracts some kinds of metal. It attracted the
iron filings, but not the pin . . .
The above discussion shows that a great deal of the academic use of
written English in school is different from classroom spoken English in a
number of ways; some of the differences are related to vocabulary and
grammatical choice; some are concerned with information structuring; and
others are related to the properties and constraints of the different modes
of language. These differences often reflect the different purposes served by
spoken and written language in different contexts. Thus harnessing the
knowledge and understanding achieved through classroom activities
mediated by the spoken language provides a mere starting point (for a fuller
discussion on developing reading and writing in EAL, see Leung 2001; for a
further discussion on EAL provision see Leung, 2005).
Concluding comments
In educational practice, questions concerning EAL are inextricably con-

nected to questions of ethnicity, which themselves are far from simple.
Earlier a reference was made to the need to treat collected figures for the
number of ethnic minority pupils in the school system in England with
caution. Some years ago the then DfEE identified a particular problem in
this area. In the first place, according to the DfEE (1995: 1), There are
serious weaknesses with the quality and usefulness of data provided by the
current Ethnic Monitoring Survey. One immediate problem was that as far
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as ethnic origin was concerned there is a significant proportion of pupils

shown in the unclassified category (ibid.:2). The ethnic origin of 35.9 per
cent of pupils was left as unclassified because either the parent or the
school failed to complete the survey. It is possible to argue that this failure
reflected an ideological objection to supplying the requested information.
However, a more likely explanation is that it has become increasingly
difficult to fit real pupils in real schools into neat, tidy and discrete ethnic
categories. The complexities involved were fully reflected in a number of
commentaries following the 1991 UK Census. For instance, there was the
fact that among ethnic minority males aged 16 to 34, 40 per cent of those
designated as Black-Caribbean, 7 per cent of Indians, 6.2 per cent of
Pakistanis, 16 per cent of Chinese, 18 per cent of Other-Asian, 19.2 per cent
of Black-African and 60 per cent of Black-Other are currently living with a
white partner (Berrington 1996: 199200). Furthermore, as Peach (1996:
24) states:
A significant proportion of the ethnic minority population is derived
from mixed unions and new ethnic identities are being forged which
will be increasingly difficult to capture within the existing census
categories . . . Indeed, one of the lessons to be derived from the 1991
Census, is that new ethnicities are emerging in Britain.
Later, we will examine this question of new ethnicities a little more, but
first it is necessary to look at the second reason for exercising caution
concerning figures on the ethnic origins of pupils. In the DfEEs 1999
collected figures, the ethnic group categories used are as follows: White,
Black Caribbean Heritage, Black African Heritage, Black Other, Indian,
Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Any Other Minority Ethnic Group. The
inadequate nature of these categories lies in the way that the different labels
appear to be trying to measure different things. There is a colour category
White, Black Caribbean Heritage, Black African Heritage, Black Other. There
is a nationality category Pakistani, Bangladeshi. There is also an ethnic
category Indian, Chinese.4 In addition, there are the problems associated
with what the catch-all category White hides and oversimplifies. Finally,
there is no guidance as to what the practising teacher is to do with the
category of apparently unclassified pupils represented by labels such as
Black Other, or Any Other Minority Ethnic Group. In recognition of these
problems, the DfES issued further guidance on more nuanced ways of col-
lecting ethnicity data in schools following refinements introduced in the
UK National Census in 2001 (DfES 2002(b)); and although the census did
not contain a language question, schools have now also been given advice
on the collection of language data (DfES 2006).
For anyone becoming a teacher there is a need to find ways of thinking
about these issues which have some practical utility for day-to-day inter-
actions with pupils. There are a number of central problems that require
attention. First of all, schools and teachers have experienced some difficulty
4
Although Indian and Chinese could also indicate nationality referring to India and mainland
China, in British educational discourse they are just as likely to be ethnic markers referring to a
wide variety of people of Indian or Chinese extraction including, say, those from East Africa or
Hong Kong and Vietnam respectively.
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in accommodating the idea that pupils belonging to visible minority

groups are members of ethnic formations which far from being fixed, stable,
homogeneous and comfortably knowable, are instead complex, fluid and
heterogeneous. Secondly, there has been a difficulty in envisioning these
ethnic minority pupils as cultural and linguistic insiders rather than per-
manent outsiders in the UK. Thirdly, many schools and teachers have
struggled to see how these pupils might be at one and the same time aligned
to both UK/English/British ethnic identities and those associated with other
global locations. Some help is available in the work of theorists operating
generally in the field of what has come to be known as British Cultural
Studies. Space does not permit a full exploration here of the ideas involved,
but it is worth mentioning briefly a number of concepts which may be
useful. Gilroy (1987) depicts the refusal to allow for change and variation in
representations of broader British and minority ethnic identities as ethnic
absolutism. Hall (1988) suggests that minority individuals, rather than
seeking to preserve their ethnic identities unchanged, are actively and con-
tinuously engaged in a process of creating new ethnicities. Mercer (1994),
amongst others, sees significant numbers of young members of UK-based
visible minority groups as being intimately connected both with the
everyday mores of their UK locations and wider, African, Caribbean and
Asian derived diasporas. Hall provides a useful summary of the general
position being described here when he identifies the concept of translation
which:
describes those identity formations which cut across and intersect
natural frontiers, and which are composed of people who have been
dispersed forever from their homelands. Such people retain strong links
with their places of origin and their traditions, but they are without
the illusion of a return to the past. They are obliged to come to terms
with the new cultures they inhabit, without simply assimilating to
them and losing their identities completely. They bear upon them the
traces of the particular cultures, traditions, languages and histories by
which they were shaped. The difference is that they are not and will
never be unified in the old sense, because they are irrevocably the
product of several interlocking histories and cultures, belong at one
and the same time to several homes (and to no one particular
home). People belonging to such cultures of hybridity have had to
renounce the dream or ambition of rediscovering any kind of lost
cultural purity, or ethnic absolutism. They are irrevocably translated
. . . They are the products of the new diasporas created by the post-
colonial migrations. They must learn to inhabit at least two identities,
to speak two cultural languages, to translate and negotiate between
them. Cultures of hybridity are one of the distinctly novel types of
identity produced in the era of late-modernity, and there are more and
more examples of them to be discovered.
(Hall 1992: 310)
To put it briefly, the essential point for new teachers to grasp is that the
majority of young ethnic minority pupils in England are daily engaged in
the active construction of what Back (1996) terms new forms of working
class Englishness. Harris (2006) offers a detailed treatment of one example
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of this phenomenon. There are specific linguistic consequences of rele-

vance to classroom teachers. More precisely, one of the factors with which
any teacher needs to come to terms, is that there are two aspects of the
actual patterns of language use of many pupils for whom English is an
Additional Language, which are little commented upon:
Many such pupils with EAL are more linguistically comfortable with
a local urban spoken English vernacular rather than with an ethnic
minority community language which they might encounter in family
contexts (see Leung et al. 1997; Harris 1997, 1999, for examples of this
phenomenon).
Even where these pupils begin their school careers in England with very
limited English language proficiency, their entry to English tends to
be connected with a local urban spoken vernacular English, learned
informally, rather than with the spoken or written Standard English
associated with the formal aspects of the school curriculum.
Hewitt made a number of perceptive observations on the significant ways
in which urban youth, in their routine language use, participate in the
destabilisation of ethnicity (1991: 27). He suggested that an important but
often overlooked part of their language use is what he describes as a local
multi-ethnic vernacular or a community English. This language use is
the primary medium of communication in the adolescent peer group in
multi-ethnic areas (ibid.: 32). For Hewitt (1995: 97) the sources of this
language use are diasporic and global as well as local, and contribute to:
the obliteration of pure language forms deriving from a single cultural
source, evident in some inner city areas (in the UK) and . . . the
diasporic distribution of communicative forms which, whilst gener-
ated from and based in local communities, nevertheless reach out and
extend lines of connection in a global way. The local penetration and
mixing of language forms evident in some urban settings in the UK
should, in fact, be seen perhaps as a reflex of the broader linguistic
diasporic processes.
The view of reality sketched by Hewitt tends not to have been shared
by very many schools and teachers in England, who have preferred to
project onto pupils with EAL what Harris (1997) has called a Romantic
Bilingualism, referring to:
. . . the widespread practice, in British schools and other educational
contexts, based on little or no analysis or enquiry, of attributing to
pupils drawn from visible ethnic minority groups an expertise in and
allegiance to any community languages with which they have some
acquaintance.
(Harris 1997: 14)
In preference to this approach it might be useful for new teachers
encountering pupils with EAL to begin to work with a framework offered by
Harris (1999) as a prelude to developing effective classroom pedagogies
suited to differing linguistic needs of individual pupils. In this framework
there may well be three broad groups of pupils with EAL.
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The new arrivals
These pupils may be relatively recent arrivals in the country possessing

a limited acquaintance with, and low levels of expertise in, the English
language together with little familiarity with contemporary British cultural
and educational practices.
The low-key British bilinguals
Pupils born and brought up in a multilingual home in a British urban

area. They have regular routine interaction with family and community
languages other than English without claiming a high degree of expertise
in these languages. They are entirely comfortable with the discourse
of everyday English, particular local vernacular Englishes and with con-
temporary British cultural and educational practices. They have, how-
ever, along with fellow pupils of all ethnic backgrounds, including
white British ones, difficulty in reproducing accurate and fluent written
Standard English in the preferred written genres favoured in specific
school subject disciplines.
Pupils born and brought up in British urban areas who enter early years
schooling with a dominant spoken language proficiency in a home/
community language originating from outside the UK, but not in
English.
Pupils born in another country who enter the British schooling system
some time between the ages of 5 and 16 and appear to gradually move
from the new arrival to the low-key British bilingual category
Pupils of Caribbean descent who perhaps constitute a special case of
point one in terms of their patterns of language use. That is, they may
have substantial experience and expertise in a Caribbean Creole language
such as Jamaican Creole, which while having a lexical relationship with
English is often not intelligible to English-speaking outsiders.
The high-achieving multilinguals
These pupils have a good level of expertise or an untapped potential to

rapidly acquire expertise in home/community language(s) other than
English. At the same time they also have a high degree of proficiency in the
kinds of written Standard English required for school success.
It should be evident that each of these distinct groups of pupils will
require distinct approaches to language and learning developed by sensitive
teachers. The pedagogic principles discussed earlier should be translated
into classroom strategies and teaching activities with reference to the actual
pupils in the classroom. To sum up, for many teachers, as Garcia (1996) has
commented from a North American standpoint:
it has become necessary to cope with a process of change whereby the
ethnolinguistic identity of children is itself undergoing rapid change
. . . The greatest failure of contemporary education has been precisely
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its inability to help teachers understand the ethnolinguistic com-

plexity of children, classrooms, speech communities, and society, in
such a way as to enable them to make informed decisions about
language and culture in the classroom.
(Garcia 1996: vii)
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Garcia, O. (1996) Foreword, in C. Baker, Foundations of Bilingual Education and
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Part 4 Across the curriculum
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20 Literacy
Bethan Marshall
Introduction
Literacy dominates most educational debates. Whether it is the need to be

literate, the means by which we become literate or the fear that we are
becoming less literate, some aspect of literacy is never far away from the
news headlines. In a way this is hardly surprising. Access to the world of
print is the foundation of most schooling and a prerequisite for most
employment. To be illiterate is to be virtually disenfranchised as a twenty-
first century citizen. Its importance and newsworthiness make it a subject
that politicians cannot ignore and since New Labour came to power in
1997, there has been an unprecedented number of initiatives aimed at rais-
ing attainment in this key area of the curriculum.
1998 saw the first national literacy strategy (NLS) for primary schools
(DfEE 1998). Three years later, a similar framework was introduced for
secondary school English departments (DfEE 2001). The following year,
guidelines were made available for literacy across the curriculum (DfEE
2002). In 2003, the primary national strategy was launched, under which
umbrella the NLS was now to work. And 2006 saw the publication of the
Rose Report, commissioned to inform future policy. This set out the precise
method to be used in teaching young children to read a strategy known as
synthetic phonics which will be discussed below (DfES 2006).
With the possible exception of the cross-curricular document, all these
publications share a common tone. They are immensely detailed and pre-
scriptive, particularly the Rose Report (2006). Each characterizes literacy as
a series of competencies that need to be acquired before an individual can
become literate; most come with a clear set of targets. The primary national
strategy, for example, requires schools to set specific and agreed targets
(with the local authority) as to the number of pupils who are to achieve a
level 4 in national tests at age 11; the national target is 80 per cent. All these
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256 Bethan Marshall
documents are, as yet, non-statutory, unlike the National Curriculum. They

gain their force in schools from the rubric of Ofsted, which inspects the
ways in which schools have negotiated and implemented the strategies.
Yet, while the flurry of initiatives of the past ten years is unusual in its
scope and intensity, the focus on literacy, in this fashion, is not new. There
are possible reasons why policy makers are so exacting in the requirements
for teachers when tackling literacy: a fear that standards are falling and a
desire to be seen to be doing something vigorous about it.
The standards debate
Concern about falling standards, for example, is a common feature of

almost every official report throughout the twentieth century (see Marshall
2000) and one of the most frequently cited sources of those concerns
are employers. The seemingly annual complaints from the Institute of
Directors about falling standards echo much earlier reports such as the
Newbolt Report of 1921. Citing Boots Pure Drug Co. it commented that,
The teaching of English in present day schools produces a very limited
command of the English language (Newbolt Report 1921: 72). In the
same report, all but a few employers complained that they had found dif-
ficulty in obtaining employees who can speak and write English clearly and
correctly (ibid.: 72). Successive reports make similar observations. Yet
research comparing standards over the last 30 years carried out by the
National Foundation for Educational Research (Brookes 1997) has shown
that no such decline in standards has occurred.
Debates about how to put right the so-called decline are similarly well
rehearsed. In terms that are eerily familiar, Katherine Bathurst, an Inspector
for the Board of Education in 1905, describes the process of learning to read
from a new boys point of view:
A blackboard has been produced, and hieroglyphics are drawn upon it
by the teacher. At a given signal, every child in the class begins calling
out mysterious sounds: Letter A, letter A in a sing-song voice, or Let-
ter A says Ah, letter A says Ah, as the case may be. To the uninitiated
I may explain that No. 1 is the beginning of spelling, and No. 2 is the
beginning of word building. Hoary headed men will spend hours dis-
cussing whether c-a-t or ker-ar-te are the best means of conveying
the knowledge of how to read cat. I must own an indifference to the
point myself, and sympathise with teachers not allowed to settle it for
themselves.
(cited in Van der Eyken 1973: 121)
The return, in 2006, to a very particular form of phonics teaching, to
the exclusion of all others, comes, as with the perception of declining
standards, supported by little research evidence. The Rose Report based its
recommendation on a small, but highly publicized study in Clackman-
nanshire, which appeared to find that synthetic phonics worked better than
all other methods in the teaching of reading. But the study was not actually
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Literacy 257
designed to assess this question and the pupils involved were exposed to a
raft of other initiatives, which may well have also contributed to their
success (Ellis 2005). A much larger and more systematic survey carried out
by the American Reading Panel, which reviewed hundreds of studies, found
that there was no difference between children taught either by analytic
or synthetic phonics (National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, NIH, DHHS 2000).
Language and learning
Dominating the construction of literacy underpinning current policy,

however, is the idea that it is about decoding print. Another way to under-
stand what it means to be literate is to focus attention on the way print
conveys meaning through language. Concentrating on the part played by
language in literacy broadens the debate into a consideration of the
role of language in learning. In this way, literacy becomes about much
more than decoding print. Through talk pupils can, for example, gain
access to difficult and demanding texts that otherwise they might struggle
to read.
The NLS does state, near the very beginning of the document that:
Literacy unites the important skills of reading and writing. It also involves
speaking and listening which, although they are not separately identified in
the Framework, are an essential part of it (DfEE 1998: 3). Yet it moves away
from understanding language as a vehicle for learning in the following
comment by narrowly focusing on knowledge about language itself:
Good oral work enhances pupils understanding of language in both
oral and written forms and of the way in which language can be used to
communicate (ibid.: 3).
The idea that language is essential to the learning process gained currency
in this country through the writing, amongst others, of James Britton,
Douglas Barnes and Harold Rosen in books such as Language, the Learner and
the School (Barnes, Britton and Rosen 1972) and Language and Learning
(Britton 1974). Their work built on the writing of the Russian psychologist
Vygotsky. Although Vygotskys research was carried out in the 1930s, it
was not translated in the West for nearly 30 years. Vygotsky argued that
language was an essential cognitive tool.
[By] focusing attention on the interaction between speech and the
childs social and cultural experiences, Vygotsky provides us with a
model of learning which emphasises the role of talk and places social
discourse at the centre. Most significant is the notion that children can
learn effectively through interaction with a more knowledgeable other
(which may be a peer or adult).
(Corden 2000: 8)
This notion underpinned Vygotskys pivotal learning theory of the zone of
proximal development (ZPD) (Vygotsky 1978a). In essence, he argued that
as each new learning situation arises, we move from a state where we do not
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understand to a position where we can understand, if supported through

interaction with the more knowledgeable other (the ZPD), to a situation
where we are independent. The aim of the teacher is to support the pupil
through this process either through class or group discussion. The theory of
ZPD has often been connected in practice with the work of Bruner. He
coined the term scaffolding (Bruner 1985) to describe the process by which
children need initial support on engaging in a new activity and then have
that support gradually withdrawn as they become more independent and
are able to work unaided.
Implementing Vygotsky and Bruners theories effectively in the class-
room demands what Dewey would call, high organisation based upon
ideas (1966: 289), whereby teachers have the difficult task to work out
the kinds of materials, of methods, and of social relationships that are
appropriate (ibid.: 29) to help pupils learn. In other words, they orchestrate
classroom activities where dialogue and discussion become essential
exploratory tools to extend and develop thinking. More recently Robin
Alexander has stressed the significance of talk in learning in his pamphlet
Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk (2006a).
But to view literacy in this way is to take a very particular educational
stance. Literacy, which everyone is agreed is important, provokes con-
siderable controversy. While this chapter has thus far presented the idea of
language and learning as an essential component of literacy, extending
it beyond simply decoding print, for others this is taking a very radical,
possibly subversive stance. One way of understanding the passion that the
literacy debates provoke is to see how closely our view of what it means to
be literate relates to our view of the purpose of education and, through
education, our beliefs about the nature of society and our place within in it.
Literacy and the purpose of education
This elision between what might be called a progressive philosophy of

education and vision of how society should be organized is evident in the
title of Vygotskys work Mind in Society (1978b) and in Deweys most famous
work Democracy and Education (1916). It is present also in another of
Alexanders pamphlets called Education as Dialogue: Moral and Pedagogical
Choices for the Runaway World (2006b). In it he notes that:
In some countries education has been required to mould individuals
into compliant subjects; in others it has attempted to develop active
and questioning citizens [. . .] Thus, education may empower and lib-
erate, or it may disempower and confuse.
(Alexander 2006: 5)
It is evident on which side of the debate he sits for he wishes actively to
promote dialogue in the classroom because it:
Requires willingness and skill to engage with minds, ideas and ways of
thinking other than our own; it involves the ability to question, listen,
reflect, reason, explain, speculate and explore ideas . . . [it] lays the
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Literacy 259
foundations not just of successful learning but also social cohesion,

active citizenship and the good society.
(Alexander 2006: 5)
His views chime with those who advocate what is known as critical literacy.
Literacy becomes a meaningful construct to the degree that it is viewed
as a set of practices and functions to either empower or disempower
people. In the larger sense, literacy must be analysed according to
whether it promotes democratic and emancipatory changes.
(Freire and Macedo 1987: 41)
For such writers the type of literacy required by government documen-
tation is simply schooled literacy (Street and Street 1991), an ability to
decode the print on the page but little else. By contrast:
Critical literacy responds to the cultural capital of a specific group or
class and looks to ways in which it can be confirmed, and also at the
ways in which the dominant society disconfirms students by either
ignoring or denigrating the knowledge and experiences that charac-
terise their everyday lives. The unit of analysis is social and the
key concern is not individual interests but with the individual and
collective empowerment.
(Aronowitz and Giroux, cited in Ball, Kenny and Gardiner 1990: 61)
Others, such as Shirley Bryce Heath, have problematized the issue still
further by examining the literacy of different social groups and noting
how children from certain communities are disadvantaged by narrow
definitions of schooled literacy (Heath 1983). As Gee notes, such a percep-
tion of what it means to be literate means that the ability to talk about
school based sorts of tasks is one way in which Western-style schools
empower elites: they sound like they know more than they do (Gee, cited
in Corden 2000: 27).
Even those with a less overtly radical agenda use the term critical literacy
to describe a form of literacy that goes well beyond the basics. Richard
Hoggart in his essay Critical Literacy and Creative Reading writes:
The level of literacy we now accept for the bulk of the population, of
literacy unrelated to the way language is misused in this kind of
society, ensures that literacy becomes simply a way of further sub-
ordinating great numbers of people. We make them literate enough to
be conned by the mass persuaders [. . .] The second slogan has to be
Critical Literacy for All. Critical Literacy means [. . .] teaching about
the difficulties, challenges and benefits of living in an open society
which aims to be a true democracy.
(Hoggart 1998: 60)
For all these writers, to varying degrees, literacy becomes a means of
reading the society in which we live. Integral to this task is a demand that
we do not take authority at face value, but question and challenge it as
part of the democratic process. They do not want passive subjects but active
citizens.
But the relationship between literacy and society is not simply the
property of the left. T.S. Eliot, whose views were well to the right, made a
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260 Bethan Marshall
similar connection. In his essay, On Modern Education and the Classics, Eliot
describes education as:
A subject which cannot be discussed in a void: our questions raise
other questions, social, economic, financial, political. And the bearings
are on more ultimate problems even than these: to know what we want
in education we must know what we want in general, we must derive
our theory of education from our theory of life.
(Eliot, cited in Tate 1998: 34)
The progressive, Dewey, defines the main purpose and objective of
traditional education, such as that espoused by Eliot, as the preparation of:
The young for future responsibilities and for success in life, by means
of acquisition of the organised bodies of information and prepared
forms of skill which comprehend the material instruction. Since
the subject matter as well as standards of proper conduct are handed
down from the past, the attitude of the pupils must, upon the whole,
be one of docility, receptivity, and obedience.
(Dewey 1966: 18)
The societal and moral implications associated with this position become
clearer when we apply Eliot and Deweys observations to the literacy
debate. John Rae, the former headteacher of Westminster School, wrote, for
example, in the Observer in February 1982:
The overthrow of grammar coincided with the acceptance of the
equivalent of creative writing in social behaviour. As nice points of
grammar were mockingly dismissed as pedantic and irrelevant, so was
punctiliousness in such matters as honesty, responsibility, property,
gratitude, apology and so on.
(Rae, cited in Graddol, Maybin, Mercer and Swann 1991: 52)
In identifying progressive teaching so closely with the permissive society,
Rae appears to locate a problem with literacy developing somewhere
around the mid-1960s. As we have seen, his observation is misplaced
and there is little evidence that standards have altered over time. Yet such
an opinion has found credence with more recent social commentators,
including the journalist Melanie Phillips. In her book All Must Have
Prizes, written as an invective against what she sees as the failings of
the liberal educational establishment, she comments, The revolt against
the teaching of grammar becomes a part of a wider repudiation of external
forms of authority (Phillips 1996: 69). In a chapter ironically sub-
titled Proper literacy, she lays the blame at the door of radical English
teachers:
English, after all, is the subject at the heart of our definition of
our national cultural identity. Since English teachers are the chief
custodians of that identity we should not be surprised to find that
revolutionaries intent on using the subject to transform society have
gained a powerful foothold, attempting to redefine the very meaning
of reading itself.
(Phillips 1996: 69)
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Literacy 261
Both Rae and Phillips analysis of the problem is almost certainly more to
do with their view of society than literacy standards in schools. There is a
subtle but significant elision between rules of language and standards of
behaviour where anxiety about the latter requires greater emphasis on
the former. Grammatical rules become societal laws. Any suggestion that
these might be redefined or abandoned becomes a threat to civil order. For
Phillips and Rae, literacy is to be taught as a set of rules in order to reinforce
an orderly society.
Literacy, economic growth and phonics
If the battle lines over literacy and the good society are clearly drawn, there
seems apparent harmony over the notion that high levels of literacy are
needed for economic growth. Yet scratch the surface of the consensus and
the same divisions appear. The relationship between the individuals need
for literacy and the needs of the economy are made clear at the beginning of
the NLS framework. David Blunkett, then Secretary of State for education,
writes: All our children deserve to leave school equipped to enter a fulfil-
ling adult life. If children do not master the basic skills of literacy and
numeracy they will be seriously disadvantaged later (DfEE 1998).
Yet, the way the literacy framework is conceived owes much more to
Deweys definition of traditional education than it does to a more pro-
gressive vision. As we have seen, it currently omits any notion of talk as
part of literacy. Underpinning the strategy is the notion that there are
three elements required in children becoming literate word level, which
to a greater or lesser extent involves the teaching of phonics; sentence
level, which looks at grammar, and text level. While the developers of the
strategy insist that these are integrated, the term levels implies a hierarchy
or rather a teaching order and it is this, along with the sheer weight of
the content that must be delivered, that has given the NLS its traditionalist
feel.
This criticism is even more true of the new proposals for the teaching of
early reading synthetic phonics, and it is worth digressing for a moment
to look at the debate to appreciate the extent to which the understanding
of the beginning of literacy has narrowed. The NLS recommended a blend
of approaches to early reading. This included real books; children learning
to read using picture books rather than reading schemes. Margaret Meek,
one of the best-known advocates of real books, takes what she calls a social
constructivist, or Vygotskian perspective on early reading (see, for example,
Meek 1988 and 1991). In other words, she has sought to build on what
young children already know, which includes their knowledge of how
books work and how print conveys meaning. In this way, reading and writ-
ing are always taught within a clearly defined context. The work of the
Centre for Language in Primary Education (CLPE) has built on this work.
Research publications such as The Reader in the Writer (Barrs and Cork 2001)
show how children use their readerly knowledge of how stories and texts
work in their writing.
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262 Bethan Marshall
More dominant, however, has been the teaching of phonics as a gateway

to literacy. The type of phonics to be used, has, until the publication of
the Rose Report, never been specified. Analytic phonics, currently the more
commonly used method, encourages pupils to make sense of print along-
side the teaching of sounds. It asks children to focus on the initial word
sounds onset, and then make analogies about the second half of the word
based on their knowledge of the pattern of sounds. The books of Dr Seuss
are a good example of teaching phonics using onset and analogy through
the way they play with sound and rhyme.
Those advocating synthetic phonics break the English language down
into 44 phonemes, or units of sounds. These are then taught through drills
and then put together to form words. Purists of the synthetic phonics
approach recommend that children do not attempt to read a book for
themselves until they have mastered all 44 phonemes. They are then intro-
duced to carefully graded reading schemes, which stage the introduction to
words of increasing complexity.
Of course the fundamental problem in this country with any reading
programme that relies totally on phonics is that English is a notoriously
unphonetic language. How, for instance, is the word was taught phonetic-
ally? Think of the permutations of pronunciation of the letters ough. How
do we make sense of the difference between read and read or tear and tear
unless we understand from the context of the sentence whether we are
looking at a noun or a verb? Children taught by using phonics alone are
confronted by a myriad of exceptions and variations to the rule every time
they look at a page. As a method, however, it is closer to Deweys definition
of traditional education in that it requires the acquisition of the organised
bodies of information and prepared forms of skill which comprehend
the material instruction (Dewey 1966: 18).
But it is not just the impracticality of phonics that poses a problem for its
critics. If we return to the economic imperative of literacy we find writers
such as Gunther Kress (1995, 1997) arguing that the model of literacy
apparently endorsed by the NLS will not fit pupils for the economy of the
future. Part of his contention is that traditional schooled literacy does
not pay sufficient attention to the demands of the new technologies.
But his argument is more significantly dependent on the notion that the
new economies, built on fast capitalism, demand adaptable and flexible
workers. He writes:
The question I am posing is simply this: in relation to the economic

and social futures such as these, what is the English curriculum
doing? [. . .] If jobs are moveable with the speed of global fiscal
markets, then certain requirements of a fundamental kind follow
the kind of person whom we are preparing for that world. Somehow
they will have to be prepared not just to cope, but to control their
circumstances.
(Kress 1995: 18)
However, his agenda is most clearly seen when he attempts to define the
literacy necessary to achieve this end. In terms that clearly echo Deweys
definition of traditional education, he writes:
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Literacy 263
If we represent literacy, in the curriculum, as a matter of fixed, immut-

able rules, we encourage a different attitude to the one suggested by a
representation of literacy as a set of resources shaped by society and
constantly reshaped by each individual reader and writer. The former
encourages an acceptance of what is; a certain attitude to authority;
a limitation accepted and internalised by the individual. The latter
encourages curiosity about how things have come to be as they are;
a certain attitude to individual responsibility and agency; and an
internalisation of the individual as active, creative and expansive.
(Kress 1995: 75)
In other words, to produce the flexible worker of the future, to create the
learning society we need to cope with an ever-changing economic land-
scape, we need a theory of literacy that incorporates a vision of an active
participant rather than a passive receiver of predetermined rules. And it is
this notion of the individual as active that governs his view both of the way
in which we need to learn and the beginnings of literacy in pre-school
children. He does not assume, however, that all children will engage in the
process in the same way, but wants to understand what they are doing in
order to develop them further: My preference is for intervention, for aiding
and abetting, for making sure that children have to hand what will make
that possible (Kress 1995: 37).
In his advocacy of the importance of dialogue in the classroom Robin
Alexander shows how education can be used to shape the moral questions
that lurk behind this economic future. Globalization, he argues, means
that we have to think beyond our countrys own economic needs and
address international challenges (Alexander 2006b: 6). For him, this
means, acknowledging that global interdependence carries moral
obligations from which no country is immune; and that education can
serve to unite rather than divide (Alexander 2006: 6).
Considerations of literacy, then, extend far beyond the best method of
teaching young children to read or how pupils might gain access to a
science textbook. Our views on what it means to be literate are shaped by
what we think education is for and what role we believe the children in
the classroom today should play in the society of tomorrow. And this is the
last element of literacy that needs to be discussed. For some it involves an
element of futurology.
Concluding comments
Writers such as Kress argue that not only do we need to address the eco-
nomic needs of the future but also that to confine literacy to the printed
word is to misrepresent the complexity of what it now means to be literate.
He has coined the term multi-modality to represent what he means by this
new type of literacy (see, for example, Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; Kress
2003). Children, he observes, are growing up in a world of web pages, blogs,
MSN and texting. Traditional conventions of print do not apply to the type
of reading and writing that uses images and symbols as an integral part of
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the way meaning is conveyed. More importantly, Kress argues, this new
literacy provides valuable opportunities to extend the type of learning
offered by simple print literacy.
If the limits of the imagination imposed by one mode of representa-
tion are reached it seems a decidedly positive situation to be able to
move to another mode, which extends these limits in certain ways,
or offers a different potential. This offers an enormous potential
enrichment, cognitively, conceptually, aesthetically and affectively.
(Kress 1997: 29)
Pahl and Rowsell (2005 and 2006) have researched how young
children explore and represent their ideas in a range of modes:
Each mode contains its own meaning making potential, its affordance.
Children, when they make texts, explore the affordances of modes,
that is they draw on the potential in the stuff [i.e. different modes and
materials] from which they make meaning.
(Pahl 2006: 21)
Classrooms, they argue, are places where this type of experimentation and
expression needs to be encouraged.
Literacy lies at the heart of education, however we understand it; as a
finite skill to be acquired or as a process that lies at the heart of teaching
and learning. This chapter has attempted to explore how complex a subject
it is and the extent to which our view of education, and through education
our beliefs about the type of society we wish to create, govern our under-
standing of what it means to be literate. There are sides in this debate and
while they may more often be represented as shades of grey it is important,
when listening to the latest initiative or literacy fad and fashion to ask from
which perspective it comes. And perhaps most importantly of all, we need
to ask ourselves where we stand and what this says about how we view what
education is about.
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21 Citizenship and
citizenship education
Ann-Marie Brandom
Introduction
In 1999, the publication of the National Curriculum Orders for Citizenship

established a new foundation subject in the revised National Curriculum.
The inclusion of citizenship as a discrete subject was a direct result of the
publication of the Final Report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship, now
known as the Crick Report (Advisory Group on Citizenship 1998). When
the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) drew up the Orders,
which included the programmes of study and end of key stage descriptors,
the then Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) set up a
Ministerial Working Party in 2000 to oversee the introduction of the new
subject.
At Key Stage 1, citizenship was introduced as part of the non-statutory
framework for personal, social and health education (PSHE) in August 2001
(see Chapter 23). In August 2002, citizenship was introduced as part of the
non-statutory PSHE framework at Key Stage 2 and as part of the National
Curriculum at Key Stage 3. It was introduced as part of the statutory
National Curriculum at Key Stage 4 in August 2004. The establishment of
the Ministerial Working Party gave secondary schools two years to audit
their practice and devise their individual responses to citizenship provision
at Key Stage 3, in preparation for its introduction at Key Stage 4.
In fairness to many schools, provision for the subject already existed,
either for historical reasons or because schools had implemented the
non-statutory cross-curricular themes of the National Curriculum. These
themes had been introduced in 1990 to augment the subject-based
content of the National Curriculum. The five themes were: health educa-
tion, citizenship, economic and industrial understanding, careers educa-
tion and guidance, and environmental education. Schools were encouraged
to include these themes across the curriculum. In reality, with no official
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268 Ann-Marie Brandom
time allocation, no reporting instructions and no assessment requirements,

the themes had not been generally prioritized in schools (Kerr 1999; Beck
2000: 128).
The new statutory orders provided a framework, an assessment obligation
and the inclusion of the subject at inspection level. Schools were galvanized
into action at the same time as having to make provision for the Key Stage 3
Strategy with its emphasis on numeracy and literacy, and the revised
National Curriculum in the form of Curriculum 2000. Secondary schools
now had to fit another subject into an already crowded curriculum, which
according to Curriculum 2000, had been slimmed down. What motivated
the addition of citizenship as a new subject at Foundation Level in the
National Curriculum?
A rationale for the introduction of citizenship education in England
According to the QCA Handbook on Citizenship:

Citizenship gives pupils the knowledge, skills and understanding to
play an effective role in society at local, national and international
levels. It helps them to become informed, thoughtful and responsible
citizens who are aware of their duties and rights. It promotes their
spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, making them more
self-confident and responsible both in and beyond the classroom.
It encourages pupils to play a helpful part in the life of their schools,
neighbourhoods, communities and the wider world. It also teaches
them about our economy and democratic institutions and values;
encourages respect for different national, religious and ethnic iden-
tities; and develops pupils ability to reflect on the issues and take part
in discussions.
(QCA/DfEE 1999: 12)
The government argued for the centrality of citizenship at a time when
there were worrying signs of alienation and cynicism among young
people about public life and participation, leading to their possible dis-
connection and disengagement from it (Kerr 1999: 3). Social issues in the
late 1990s:
appeared to confirm what many had already assumed or suspected:
that there were deteriorating social and cultural conditions in England
and that political and voluntary participation in the affairs of society
was in decline.
(Arthur and Wright 2001: 6)
Osler (2000) also argues that the introduction of the legislated study of
citizenship was a means of addressing the deep-seated inequalities resident
in society, as evidenced in the Macpherson Report, published as result
of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (Macpherson 1999). Bottery (2003)
claims that citizenship education was a direct response to the contentious
notion of identity, as the concept of the nation-state continues to unravel
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Citizenship and citizenship education 269
in current global contexts. This context may, in part, explain the govern-
ments approach and determination to establish citizenship as a discrete
subject. It certainly explains the emphasis on a form of active citizenship
rather than a merely theoretical examination of modes of government. The
model of citizenship education put forward in the Orders emphasizes
the need for pupils to have knowledge, skills and understanding of their
role in society in order that they might better understand what participa-
tion in a variety of arenas might actually look like.
For pupils to know what citizenship is, the government argued, they
must be given access to a curriculum that will give them confidence to
begin the examination of what it is to be a respectful member of society.
They must be encouraged to critique the status quo using a range of skills in
order to understand better the diverse value systems of the local, national
and international society to which they belong. Finally, pupils, it suggests,
need to be given the physical opportunity to participate in some form of
community-based work to enable them to reflect on the role they will play
in their adult life.
The evolution of citizenship education in England
Until 1999, education for citizenship had not held a statutory place in the
school curriculum. As such, England was unique among its European,
North American and Australian counterparts where civics or citizenship
education had played an explicit role in education. This is not to say that
individual schools in England had not been active on this front, nor that
constituent lobbying for the inclusion of citizenship had not taken place,
it is simply acknowledging the insignificant role that citizenship played in
national legislation until this time.
There had been periods of time when citizenship had been advocated in
English schools (Batho 1990). Two significant instances are related to the
crises of war. After the First World War, Frederick Swann published
the Primer of English Citizenship in 1918 to endorse the moral character
of the British citizen. In 1935, the Association for Education in World
Citizenship (AEWC) was established to preserve the democratic fabric of
society in response to the rise of totalitarianism. The association was built
upon the desire to emphasize the social responsibility of the individual
citizen, to foster an allegiance to the principle of freedom and to raise
awareness of the political and economic factors that shape the modern
world. These principles will begin to sound familiar when we compare them
to the current National Curriculum guidelines for citizenship.
Attention was paid to the AEWCs definition of citizenship in the post-
war years but no official programme was ever advocated at a national level.
The subject was not taken forward and it was not until the introduction of
the comprehensive school system in the mid-1960s, and the appearance
of social studies courses such as sociology, social studies and politics, that
citizenship was recognized, albeit at a low level, in the school curriculum.
Although voluntary work in the community and participation in the
broader life of a school were hallmarks of many educational institutions, it
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tended to be as a result of the enthusiasm of individual teachers (Fogelman

1997).
The National Curriculum
With the introduction of the 1988 Education Reform Act, citizenship

was given some form of legislative recognition. The National Curriculum
contained not just an explanation of what was to be taught in each subject
area, excluding the content for religious education (which was to be part
of the basic curriculum), but also a framework of guidance for cross-
curricular themes. The themes were provided as a means of augmenting
the National Curriculum and were designed to give coherence to the
educational experience of the pupil. As previously stated, the five themes
were: health education; careers education and guidance; environmental
education; education for economic and industrial understanding; and
education for citizenship (NCC 1990a).
Non-statutory guidance was published for each theme (NCC 1990b).
Schools were encouraged to develop their own policy document in
response to the statement, Education for Citizenship develops the
knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for exploring, making informed
decisions about and exercising responsibilities and rights in a democratic
society (NCC 1990b). Some schools did produce policy documents but it
quickly became apparent that the pressure on curriculum time was so great
that citizenship education had fallen by the wayside.
Even after the publication, in 1990, of the report of the Speakers
Commission on Citizenship, Encouraging Citizenship, and the National
Commission on Education report (NCE 1993), there was little practical
application of the blueprints on offer. Both reports endorsed the signifi-
cance of citizenship and the former even attempted a definition of citizen-
ship by referring to the work of the sociologist T.H. Marshall. Marshall
had recommended that citizenship should be compulsory from the age
of seven, but it was still up to schools to ensure provision and this was too
problematic.
The review of the National Curriculum by Sir Ron Dearing in 1994
(Dearing 1994) could not find a formal place for citizenship. Representa-
tions were made to him but the slimming down of the subject content took
priority (Fogelman 1997). The lack of any evidence of much good practice
in citizenship education in schools did not, however, hinder research
into the arena. In 1991, for example, the Centre for Citizenship Studies in
Education was established at Leicester University. Surveys were carried out
to ascertain schools provision of citizenship and one such review, carried
out in 1995, found that:
43 per cent of primary schools and 62 per cent of secondary said that it
is an essential or very important part of the curriculum . . . on the other
hand it was still the case for almost all schools that there was no
mention, or only a very brief one, of citizenship education in the
school development plan. About two thirds of schools (both phases)
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stated that pressures on the timetable had been a major constraint on

their ability to provide citizenship education; lack of funding for
resources and lack of staff expertise were also mentioned by significant
numbers.
(Fogelman 1997: 93)
The election of a Labour government in May 1997 provided an oppor-
tunity for change. The White Paper, Excellence in Schools (DfEE 1997)
proposed that the teaching of democracy and education for citizenship be
strengthened. To this end, the Secretary of State for Education initiated
the formation of an advisory group to establish the aims and function of
citizenship in schools; to define in broad terms what effective citizenship
should be; and make practical recommendations to the QCA in the light
of the authoritys review of the National Curriculum. The group was to be
chaired by Professor Bernard Crick and the groups recommendations were
to provide the framework for what citizenship education has become.
The Final Report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship, was submitted in
1998 (Advisory Group on Citizenship 1998). The Crick Report recom-
mended that 5 per cent of curriculum time should be given over to the
subject across the key stages. Subsequently reviewed by the QCA working
party, known as Preparation for Adult Life, the recommendations in the
report formed the framework for citizenship in the revised National
Curriculum 2000.
As well as the recommendation of 5 per cent of curriculum time, the
report suggested that there should be a degree of interpretation permitted
in the programmes of study, in order to provide schools with a means of
adapting the guidelines to the particular situation they were in. The report
also suggested that provision for citizenship education, whilst not statu-
tory, should be made available in the post-16 sector.
The Crick Report
The Crick Report outlined the rubric of citizenship along three lines:
understanding social and moral responsibility
becoming involved in the community
developing political literacy.
The report leans heavily on Marshalls definition of social citizenship
(Marshall 1950, 1964); a citizenship that involved three inter-related
elements, the civil, the political and the social. The civil element stemmed
from an understanding of individual freedom liberty of person, freedom
of speech and the right to justice. The political element referred to the
right to participate in the exercise of political power as a member of a body
vested with political authority or as an elector of the members of such a
body. The social element referred to the whole range from the right to a
modicum of economic welfare and security to the right to share to the full
in the social heritage . . . prevailing in society (all quotations from Marshall
1964: 78). These three strands form the basis of the current definition of
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what constitutes the effective education of citizenship: first, the social and
moral responsibility given to, and expected of, pupils in school; second,
their community involvement, learning about and becoming responsibly
involved in the life and concerns of the community; third, the notion of
themselves as politically literate, in other words aware of the scope of what
it means to be an active citizen in society.
Underpinning Marshalls three-stemmed approach is the progressive
notion of the child as a future citizen. In other words, his model anticipates
the active engagement of the pupil in the decision-making process.
This position contrasts with a view that assumes a more passive model of
learning in which pupils need to receive information to enable them to
participate in adult life.
Thus the Group prefaced their report with the statement:
We aim at no less than a change in the political culture of this country
both nationally and locally: for people to think of themselves as active
citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life
and with the critical capacities to weigh evidence before speaking and
acting; to build on and to extend radically to young people the
best existing traditions of community involvement and public service,
and to make them individually confident in finding new forms of
involvement and action among themselves.
(QCA 1998: 7)
National Curriculum 2000 requirements for citizenship
The three strands of understanding social and moral responsibility;

becoming involved in the community; and developing political literacy
have been incorporated into broad programmes of study at Key Stage 3 and
Key Stage 4. As a result of citizenship education, pupils are to:
become informed citizens
develop skills of enquiry and communication
develop skills of participation and responsible action.
(QCA/DfEE 1999: 6)
To become an informed citizen, a pupil is required to have the opportunity
to learn about a myriad of key political, social and cultural aspects. The
requirements, which are content laden, include learning about the law
and the human rights and responsibilities that underpin society. Pupils are
to be taught about the diversity of national, regional, ethnic and religious
identities in society and they should understand the function of local
and central government, with the aim of appreciating the importance of
their own participation now and when they are able to vote. They should
understand how the voluntary sector operates and how significant the
media is in affecting opinion. Finally, they should learn about the global
community and about resolving conflict (QCA/DfEE 1999: 14). Thus, the
model of citizenship is defined less through a conceptual process or frame-
work but rather, as with the numeracy and literacy strategies, as a body of
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knowledge to be acquired. There is, however, obvious progression from

Key Stage 3 to Key Stage 4. The same topics are covered again at Key Stage 4,
but in more depth and with more scope for analysis. This approach is
designed to encourage further enquiry and provide the opportunity to form
reasoned opinion.
In addition, although the programmes seem to focus on the content,
rather than the process, it is the emphasis on skills that offers much scope
for training pupils in intercultural dialogue. Pupils are to be taught to think,
to justify, to contribute, to use their imagination, to negotiate and decide,
and to participate responsibly in school and in community-based activities.
It is this last element that distinguishes the rubric on citizenship. Schools
must provide opportunities for pupils to participate in voluntary work. The
framework is not just theoretical, it is active and practical (QCA/DfEE 1999).
In providing such a framework for the subject, schools have had to
wrestle with the issue of citizenship in their respective unique and indi-
vidual situations. Responsibility now lies with the school to demonstrate
how they provide for citizenship education within curriculum time. Crick
endorsed the freedom of the orders, which carried no advice about the
methods of delivery or teaching methods appropriate to citizenship.
Pedagogically, schools and teachers were free to interpret the nature of the
programmes of study.
The importance of individual and corporate responsibility and partici-
pation, within the framework, is consistently emphasized. The learning
outcomes are designed so that pupils have the opportunity to identify the
many factors that influence society and begin to understand their own
position within the political framework. As a result, they should be able to
justify their personal opinion on these matters in the light of the issues they
have studied hence the focus on becoming politically literate. An outline
is provided to indicate how citizenship can promote pupils spiritual,
moral, social, and cultural development as well as the key skills. Subsequent
schemes of work were published to demonstrate how schools could inte-
grate the subject, as they saw fit, in their context.
Much of the content provides detailed cross-curricular links. Science,
modern foreign languages, information and communication technology,
music as well as English, history, art and design and geography are all
mentioned. For example, requirement 1i pupils should be taught about:
the world as a global community, and the political, economic, environ-
mental and social implications of this is linked with Sc2/5a, Hi/13, Gg/3b
and MFL/4c (QCA/DfEE 1999: 14).
Assessment of citizenship takes the form of end-of-key-stage descriptors
rather than the eight-level scale. The movement from knowledge of the
mechanisms of a democratic society at Key Stage 3 to the broader under-
standing of what constitutes the support and development of such a
society, through active participation by Key Stage 4, is a measure of the
progression expected of school-based schemes of work as they sustain an
education into citizenship. The means of assessment are again left open
to innovation and individual school interpretation. There are now GCSE
syllabuses for citizenship; however, these cannot address the active citizen-
ship rubric of the Orders, nor are they legislatively proscribed. They do
provide a route to report on pupil progress in the subject. The process of
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assessment of citizenship is an area that has generated much debate with

the introduction of the subject. However, as there is no set format for
reporting and recording progress, schools are struggling to develop ways of
enabling pupils to self-assess as well as be more objectively assessed (Gearon
2003).
Implications of the programmes of study
Citizenship must be taught, but there is no proscribed approach to the

implementation of the subject at any key stage. This approach encourages
schools to adapt to their own needs, plans and communities. Kitson (2004)
helpfully outlines a number of approaches that schools have taken when
integrating citizenship into the curriculum. Kerr (1999) has undertaken
longitudinal research to map the response of schools in England to the
citizenship initiative. He, too, documents a number of different models of
provision (Kerr and Cleaver 2006). His findings have thrown up a myriad
number of questions, not least surrounding the actual definition of citizen-
ship, of which there are apparently over 300. Kerrs (1999) literature review
is probably one of the most comprehensive surveys of the current status
of citizenship. He identifies three areas of research: the organization of
citizenship education in schools; the issues affecting students undertaking
citizenship education; and the issues surrounding teachers and the
teaching of citizenship education.
Apart from the autonomy of interpretation written into the orders on
citizenship, one of the most significant elements of the statutory frame-
work is the emphasis on pupil participation. Schools must be able to offer
some form of voluntary programme to students, in order to allow them the
opportunity to develop their commitment to their community. This could
be in the form of a school council or voluntary community work. If citizen-
ship is to be integrated into the present curriculum, schools must be
prepared to examine the value system they uphold through the ethos of
the school because the school itself is a community and therefore acts as a
model of citizenship. Pupils will automatically be acquiring knowledge,
understanding and skills to cope in their school. They will very quickly
glean the role they are to play in school, the extent of their rights and
responsibilities and the nature of what is and is not valued. As Burkmisher
says:
If the school is a model . . . what is the schools vision? What is its
purpose? Are the aims clear and understood and subscribed to by all? Is
there clarity about values which underpin the aims? Do members of
the school share in the discussion of these values? Do they measure
their own practice against values? Are the values understood and
shared by the wider community which the school serves? Given that
we see our state as democratic, how democratic are our schools and in
what ways can we make them more democratic?
(Burkmisher 1993: 8)
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Hart (1997) has also developed a helpful ladder of participation in order

to judge (metaphorically) active citizenship. Hart does not advocate that
the final rung is the final goal to aim for; he offers the ladder as a means of
assessing democratic opportunity in a school community. By discussing the
notions of tokenism, consultation and child-initiated versus adult-initiated
decisions, Hart emphasizes that power must be actively shared in a demo-
cratic community, not just assumed. Deakin-Crick et al. (2004) state, in
their literature review on research into citizenship education, that the
teachers own beliefs and value systems were found to contribute to their
choice of strategy [in the classroom], leading to the conclusion that the
development of the teachers own reasoned, comprehensive and flexible
socio-moral credo is important (Deakin-Crick et al. 2004: 64). The authors
suggest that all schools should examine the ethos and values attached to
their system of government, as only through interrogation of this could the
school honourably meet the requirements of the orders. This self-reflection
is necessary if open and trusted dialogue is to take place, and power is to be
understood and shared effectively.
Underlying the programmes of study is a commitment to respect both
the individual and the diversity of communities in society. Yet, through
their experience in and outside school, pupils will already be aware that
there are structures in society that dictate authority. Citizenship can pro-
vide a means for pupils to reflect on their moral and personal development
while learning how to acknowledge the value system that is in operation
underpinning the society in which they live.
Since pupils will then be aware of their place in society, the Crick Report
suggests it will become apparent that pupils have responsibilities to others
in the community, hence the emphasis on the second aspect of effective
citizenship, that of community involvement. This approach is not designed
to be limited to the pupils time in school, either, this is education for life.
The intention is to demonstrate to pupils the role the community plays
and their life-long part in it. They need, therefore, to be made aware that
personal decision making and conflict resolution also have implications for
all levels of society, from within families, to local community level through
to the national, European and international level.
The nature of citizenship
The nature of citizenship continues to be a contentious issue. What does

citizenship mean, what does the teaching of citizenship entail? Is it a con-
glomeration of facts about the democratic system of government in the UK
which are be learned, or an opportunity to participate in the democratic
process, or a mixture of both, which is certainly how the Home Office
present their documentation on becoming a citizen of the UK (HMSO
2000). How is citizenship to be defined; on a local, national, European,
international or global level? What constitutes a good education in citizen-
ship, what is to be the outcome of such an education? These are not new
questions. Aristotle was driven to declare in The Politics that there is no
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unanimity, no agreement over the nature of citizenship (Aristotle 1981:

168).
In the pluralistic, secular society in which we live, citizenship needs to
promote a liberal democratic form of education. Such a model, in and of
itself, is of course not neutral but underpins the values expressed in the
National Curriculum. Accordingly, the Foreword to the Orders on Citizen-
ship states that education in citizenship and democracy will provide
coherence in the way in which all pupils are helped to develop a full
understanding of their roles and responsibilities as citizens in a modern
democracy (QCA 1999: 4). What then is the aim of citizenship education:
social cohesion, preparation for participation in democracy to ensure that
young people will vote, inclusion in and understanding of what is meant by
society, an understanding of rights and responsibilities?
The government finally gave a formal place to citizenship in the National
Curriculum in 2000. Evidence of two models of learning, one progressive
and one content-laden, lies within it, but the governments solution to
the potential tension between these two approaches may not be to every-
ones liking because of the amount of prescribed content. Nor is there,
necessarily, wholehearted acceptance for the underlying rationale of this
programme of citizenship. However, the emphasis given in the documenta-
tion on the skills of enquiry, communication, participation and inter-
cultural discourse enables us to respond to the question of what it means to
be educated for citizenship.
Concluding comments
The implications of Marshalls three strands, as translated into the pro-

grammes of study for citizenship, are not without their problems. The
nature of the term active citizenship demands response by the individual,
yet any inherent inequality within society means that the response of some
is curbed. Yes, lobbying Parliament in a democracy is your right, but it does
not necessarily imply that things will change. In the same way, if pupils are
to be offered a context for decision making in a school, a context which,
more often than not, takes the form of a student council, what powers, if
any, does the council actually wield?
What kind of model of democratic rights are we promoting when we
dictate, in the first instance, a certain moral code of acceptable behaviour?
What right do we have as teachers to dictate to students what the QCA have
defined as good citizenship education? We are back to questions again. To
find answers, we need to examine the underlying values operating in our
educational system. Our educational system is caught up in the same
dilemma; according to which value system has our national curriculum
been developed? This question echoes the current debate over a liberal
political theory . . . confronted by a diversity of beliefs and values (Beck
2000: 136) (see also Chapter 4).
At no point in time is citizenship education advocating an anarchic
model for pupils, yet our democratic society promotes, in fact demands,
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open debate concerning claims to possessing the right understanding.

Consequently, sources of truth are actively interrogated and scepticism
reigns supreme. This, in turn, invites people to doubt authoritative institu-
tions, preventing them forming allegiances, encouraging them to ask the
question Why? and subsequently providing their own alternatives to
the dominant assumptions of the day. If this approach is coupled with a
diverse, multicultural society that has clusters of people who define
their own authority structures separately, then there is confusion as
to what makes a good citizen, let alone what makes for good citizenship
education.
The key question here is how teachers are to deal with controversial issues
in the classroom. There is no rubric for the presentation of the topics on
citizenship, but an endorsement to engage pupils with complex concepts
and create an environment for healthy debate, discussion, respectful dis-
agreement and critical thinking. The danger of this is that to engage pupils
thinking capacities is to allow them to question, and if you allow them to
question, they will begin to interrogate the autonomy they are permitted
in school, they will challenge the status quo and they will perhaps lobby
for change. The advocacy of education for citizenship is an exciting move
forward in educational terms, if, by education, we mean the freeing of the
child to question. (Some suggestions about teaching controversial issues
can be found in Oulton et al. 2004a and b.)
On a final note, it is the ethos of the school which will ultimately deter-
mine the provision of effective citizenship education. The ethos of the
school is upheld by members of its community. As a member of the school
community you, as a teacher, must ask yourself what your understanding
of citizenship is in order to make explicit your own value system. In doing
this, you will be more confident in addressing the issues of citizenship
because you will have answered the questions for yourself.
Since pupil self-confidence is a vital ingredient to establish, it should also
be the case that teachers are confident in the material they are handling and
the critical thinking processes they are advocating. If you provide pupils
with the skills with which to assess and analyse their role in society,
you may well be giving them the opportunity of a lifetime. If you simply
ensure that they have learned how the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights came about, you may never hear them mention its sig-
nificance again. Pupils need to own the process of democracy, not just be
taught about it.
References
Advisory Group on Citizenship (1998) Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of
Democracy in Schools: Final Report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship. London:
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
Aristotle (1981) The Politics (rev. edn) T.J. Saunders (ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Arthur, J. and Wright, D. (2001) Teaching Citizenship in the Secondary School. London:
David Fulton.
Batho, G. (1990) The history of the teaching of civics and citizenship in English
Schools, The Curriculum Journal, 1(1): 91107.
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Beck, J. (2000) Citizenship and education for citizenship, in J. Beck and M. Earl (eds)
Key Issues in Secondary Education. London: Cassell.
Bottery, M. (2003) The end of citizenship: the Nation State threat to its legitimacy
and citizenship education in the twenty-first century, Cambridge Journal of
Education, 33(1): 10022.
Burkmisher, M. (1993) Creating a climate for citizenship education in schools, in
J. Edwards and K. Fogelman (eds) Developing Citizenship in the Curriculum. London:
David Fulton.
Commission on Citizenship (1990) Encouraging Citizenship. Report of the House of
Commons Commission on Citizenship. London: HMSO.
Deakin-Crick, R., Coates, M., Taylor, M. and Ritchie, S. (2004) A Systematic Review
of the Impact of Citizenship Education on the Provision of Schooling. London: EPPI
Centre: Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education.
Dearing, R. (1994) The National Curriculum Council and its Assessment: Interim Report.
London: NCC/SEAC.
Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1997) Excellence in Schools.
London: DfEE.
Department for Education and Science (DES) (1988) Education Reform Act. London:
HMSO.
Edwards, J. and Fogelman, K. (1993) Developing Citizenship in the Curriculum. London:
David Fulton.
Fogelman, K. (1997) Citizenship education in England, in K. Kennedy (ed.)
Citizenship Education and the Modern State. London: Falmer Press.
Gearon, L. (2003) Developing schemes of work in citizenship, in L. Gearon (ed.)
Learning to Teach Citizenship in the Secondary School. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Hart, R. (1997) Childrens Participation; The Theory and Practice of Involving Young
Citizens in Community Development and Environmental Care. London: Earthscan
Publications Ltd.
HMSO (2000) The Immigration and Asylum Appeals (Procedure) Rules 2000. Statutory
Instruments 2000 No. 2333 (L.21). London: HMSO.
Hogan, D. (1997) The logic of protection: citizenship, justice and political com-
munity, in K. Kennedy (ed.) Citizenship Education and the Modern State. London:
Falmer Press.
Kitson, A. (2004) Citizenship, in V. Brooks, I. Abbott and L. Bills (eds) Preparing to
Teach in Secondary Schools. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Kerr, D. (1999) Re-examining citizenship in England, in J. Torney-Purta, J. Schwille
and J-A. Amadeo (eds) Civic Education Across Countries: 22 Case Studies from the Civic
Education Project. Amsterdam: Eberon Publishers for the International Association
for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.
Kerr, D. and Cleaver, E. (2004). Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study: Literature
Review. Citizenship Education One Year On: What Does It Mean? Emerging Definitions
and Approaches in the First Year of National Curriculum Citizenship in England (DfES
Research Report 532). London: DfES.
Macpherson, W. (1999) The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. London: Stationery
Office.
Marshall, T.H. (1950) Citizenship and Social Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Marshall, T.H. (1964) Class Citizenship and Social Development. Chicago, IL: Chicago
University Press.
National Commission on Education (NCE) (1993) Learning to Succeed. Report of the
National Commission on Education. London: Heinemann.
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Curriculum. York: NCC.
National Curriculum Council (NCC) (1990b) Curriculum Guidance 8: Education for
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Osler, A. (ed.) (2000) Citizenship and Democracy in Schools: Diversity, Identity, Equality.
Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.
Oulton, C., Day, V., Dillon, J. and Grace, M. (2004a) Controversial issues teachers
attitudes and practices in the context of citizenship education, Oxford Review of
Education, 30(4): 489507.
Oulton, C., Dillon, J. and Grace, M. (2004b) Reconceptualizing the teaching of
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22 Spiritual education
Ann-Marie Brandom,
Mike Poole and
Andrew Wright
Introduction
To achieve qualified teacher status (QTS) new teachers must demonstrate

that they can plan opportunities to contribute to pupils personal,
Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development (DfEE 1998: 12). This
chapter deals solely with the topic of spirituality. Why? Because in the first
instance, although there are issues around definitions of what constitutes
moral, social and cultural development, there are very specific difficulties
in defining spirituality, not least being the fact that it is not necessarily a
subject of comfortable public discourse. Second, although there are
resources to support the delivery of spirituality across the curriculum, they
do not address the issue of teacher confidence in handling spirituality in
the classroom.
The requirement to be able to plan opportunities to contribute to pupils
personal, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development (DfEE 1998: 12)
reflects government concern that insufficient attention has been paid
explicitly to the spiritual . . . aspects of pupils development (DfE 1994: 9).
The 1988 Education Reform Act requires the promotion of the spiritual,
moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at school and
of society (DES 1988: 1). This requirement is reinforced by the Office for
Standards in Educations (Ofsted) Framework for the Inspection of Schools
(Ofsted 1993a) which expects inspectors to report on the provision made by
schools for the spiritual development of children.
What exactly is spiritual development? Is it merely a rhetorical reference
to the conglomeration of experiences that constitute postmodern
identity? Or does it have a more substantial and critical role to play in the
education of our pupils? We suggest that spiritual development is at the
heart of the educational process since authentic education is inextricably
bound up with ultimate questions of the meaning and purpose of life.
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Spiritual education 281
This chapter develops a working definition of spirituality, explores the

developing place of spirituality in education, considers spirituality as a
whole-school issue, and finally, presents a case study designed to stimulate
reflection on classroom practice.
What is spirituality?
Effective spiritual education in schools requires a clear understanding of

what teachers are being asked to deal with. Spirituality is a notoriously
ephemeral concept; although it has something to do with the ultimate
meaning and purpose of life, attempts at a tighter definition tend to prove
elusive. The traditional equation of spirituality with Christian piety, in
which the task of spiritual education was to nurture children into a con-
fession of the Christian faith, seems disturbingly narrow in the context of
our multi-faith and multicultural classrooms. However, there is a real
danger that, in resisting such Christian exclusivism, schools will inadvert-
ently embrace a bland inclusive spirituality that, in trying to be all things
to all people, ends up having nothing of value to say to anybody. Con-
sequently, spiritual educators have embarked on a search for a flexible
definition of spirituality, one acceptable to the broad sweep of public
opinion yet at the same time open to the insights of specific spiritual
traditions.
A frequent starting point in the search is the ambiguous relationship
between spirituality and religion. For many, genuine spirituality is rooted
in the sphere of the sacred, bound up with a desire to locate the ultimate
meaning and purpose of life in some form of transcendent reality above
and beyond the universe. The religious disciplines of prayer, worship and
meditation enable the believer to enter into a spiritual relationship with
God, Nirvana or some other conception of ultimate reality. Though the
religious quest resonates with contemporary New Age sensibilities in
sharp contrast to the earlier rationalistic rejection of religious discourse
as meaningless superstition it is not without its problems. If we accept a
necessary relationship between spirituality and religion, which specific
religious tradition(s) ought we to teach in schools? In doing so, do we not
effectively disenfranchise the spiritual lives of atheists and agnostics?
A second starting point is the dualism between the physical or material
and spiritual or immaterial. Plato viewed the material world as transient
and contingent, contrasting it unfavourably with the eternal and stable
realm of spiritual forms (Hamilton and Cairns 1961). The ultimate meaning
and purpose of our lives lies not in our physical bodies, which are destined
to return to dust and ashes, but in the flourishing of our immortal souls.
This Platonic dualism gave birth to an anthropology in which our spiritual
selves are represented as ghosts in the machine and spirits in the material
world. This dualism leads to forms of spirituality rooted in the ascetic
renunciation of the physical world, such as a decision to resist the material-
istic values of consumer capitalism or to follow the eight-fold path of
Buddhism. A mirror image of this ascetic spirituality is to be found in the
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282 Ann-Marie Brandom, Mike Poole and Andrew Wright
Epicurean celebration of the brute fact of human sensuality, sexuality and

physicality.
A third starting point can be found in the idea of human freedom which
places the introspective and self-conscious individual at the spiritual centre
of the universe. This positioning can lead to the equation of spiritual health
with psychological well-being and an ultimate concern for self-awareness,
self-understanding and self-acceptance. Such introspective spirituality is
cultivated by a variety of modern techniques such as therapy, meditation
and counselling. Two important observations need to be made about this
perspective: in the first place, there is an increasing consensus that we are
relational creatures, and that our self-understanding is as much dependent
on our external relationships with society, culture and nature as it is on
our internal self-understanding. Second, postmodern philosophers, such as
Foucault, argue that our identities are in constant flux and, consequently,
spiritual health depends not on our ability to find ourselves but rather
on our ability constantly to construct and celebrate multiple identities
(Gutting 1994).
These three approaches to the complex question of spirituality are best
seen as complementary and interconnected rather than as mutually
exclusive: our ultimate spiritual concern needs to take account of our
religious or secular world views, of the relationship of our inner selves to
our bodies and to the material world, and of our developing identities as
we seek to relate both to ourselves and those around us. This leads us to
propose the following working definition of spirituality:
Spirituality is the relationship of the individual, within community

and tradition, to that which is or is perceived to be of ultimate
concern, ultimate value and ultimate truth, as appropriated through
an informed, sensitive and reflective striving for spiritual wisdom.
(Wright 2000: 104)
Some comments will help clarify this definition:
Spirituality here is intimately linked with personal identity as formed

both by inner self-understanding and by our developing relationships
with the world about us.
The distinction between the way we see the world and the way the world
actually is opens up the possibility of our spiritual values being either in
harmony or dissonance with the actual order of things.
It follows that our ultimate concerns may be pathologically misdirected;
for example, in a desire to dress in the latest fashion or in a more sinister
need to victimize others on the basis of their race or sexual orientation.
Spiritual truth is not neutral but value laden and demanding of our full
engagement.
Wisdom rooted in an ability to reflect in-depth on our experience of
life, rather than abstract rationality or unrestrained emotivism, is the
appropriate means of examining our spiritual commitments.
The definition deliberately leaves the question of the substantial content
of spirituality hanging in the air, not because the issue is unimportant
but because the issue is too important prematurely to close down any
options.
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The definition is offered not as a final statement but as a working model

intended as a heuristic tool to enhance the possibility of cultivating
spiritual literacy in schools.
Spirituality and education
There is no easy route from establishing a working understanding of

spirituality to successful classroom practice. As a teacher you need to begin
this journey by taking account of the legislation concerning spirituality,
and of a range of approaches to spiritual education traditionalist, progres-
sive and critical (Wright 1998; Copley 2000).
When the 1944 Education Act referred to the spiritual dimension of
education, it had in mind a specifically Christian spirituality. The context
was that of a partnership between the state and the established Church
of England that sought to utilize education as a means of bringing about
the moral and spiritual rejuvenation of the nation in the aftermath of the
horrors of the Second World War. The Act adopted a traditionalist model of
education as cultural transmission that has its roots in the educational
philosophy of John Locke ([1693] 2000). If the immediate task was to
transmit knowledge through the traditional disciplines, the overriding
aim was to cultivate those moral and spiritual virtues and habits of mind
necessary for pupils to find their proper place in a civilized society. This
fundamental task was to be achieved through compulsory religious
education and daily acts of collective Christian worship. Pupils were to be
nurtured into a Christian value system drawn from the Sermon on the
Mount and the Ten Commandments. Spirituality was narrowly and
exclusively Christian spirituality.
The 1960s saw a reaction against this traditionalist Christian pedagogy,
driven by the recognition that given the reality of an increasingly secular
and pluralistic society Christian values were being transmitted in an
authoritarian manner which effectively silenced the voices of alternative
spiritual traditions. The reaction against Christian traditionalism reconcep-
tualized rather than rejected the task of spiritual education. In effect, the
source of spiritual values was relocated; no longer rooted in Christian
revelation, they were instead to be found in the innate spiritual insight of
children uncorrupted by society. Spiritual values were to be discovered
introspectively rather than imposed externally. The task of the emergent
progressive child-centred education that came to dominate the 1960s was
to free childrens spirituality from external constraint and enable them
to discover their own inner spiritual selves. It was to Rousseaus romantic
pedagogy rather than Lockes traditionalism that teachers turned for
philosophical inspiration (Rousseau [1762] 1986).
The 1970s and 1980s saw a reaction against child-centred progressivism
linked to sustained attempts to recover a traditional subject-centred educa-
tion, a process exemplified in the introduction of the National Curriculum.
The 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA) adopted a minimalist approach
to spiritual education: schools must offer a balanced and broadly based
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curriculum in such a way that it promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural,

mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society
(DES 1988: 1). When the legislation was enacted, many observers assumed
that this fleeting reference to spirituality would be treated as a mere
rhetorical flourish that would have little direct impact on schools. The fact
that, on the contrary, there has been a renaissance in spiritual education
in schools since 1988 requires some explanation. Two key factors appear to
have influenced this process. The first is the traditionalist concern of succes-
sive governments to utilize education as a tool for the moral rejuvenation of
society (aided by the decision of Ofsted to report on the provision made by
schools for the spiritual development of their pupils rather than the out-
comes of this provision). The second factor was the response of teachers
concerned with the rigid subject-centred nature of the National Curriculum
who found in the reference to spirituality a Trojan horse that opened up the
possibility of recovering a more flexible form of progressive child-centred
pedagogy. As Tate observes, nobody wants their child to leave school
clutching a handful of certificates, but no idea of how to be a human being
(Talbot and Tate 1997: 2).
The result has been a flourishing of spiritual education, coupled with
a fundamental confusion concerning its nature, material content and
pedagogical processes. There is an impasse between those traditionalists
who wish to transmit clear spiritual values to children (either in the form of
an inclusive liberal humanism or an exclusive Christian pietism) and those
progressives who see spiritual education as a means of undermining the
incipient authoritarianism of the 1988 legislation (by freeing children to
create their own spiritual identities against the backdrop of a child-centred
education reconstituted within a postmodern framework). In recent years
there has been an attempt to break the traditionalistprogressive deadlock
through the development of a critical spiritual pedagogy based around five
key principles.
Spirituality is a controversial issue. Since there is no public con-

sensus regarding the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, teachers
should acknowledge a range of competing and conflicting spiritual
traditions. This strategy rejects a relativistic education that treats all
spiritual perspectives as equally valid and invites pupils to create their
own spiritual values on the basis of their untutored desires and inclin-
ations. Such a move ignores the possibility that our ultimate concerns
can be both morally unacceptable and intellectually inadequate.
Spirituality enhances human freedom. Critical spiritual pedagogy
seeks to maximize the spiritual freedom of pupils by rejecting the
paternalistic pedagogic strategies of both traditionalists and progressives.
Traditionalists are paternalistic in imposing a single dominant spiritual
tradition on pupils, while progressives are paternalistic in imposing
on pupils the postmodern ideology that their immediate spiritual
preferences are always valid. Authentic spiritual freedom, it is claimed,
requires that pupils learn to engage critically with the ambiguous nature
of spirituality.
Spirituality is rooted in nurture. Critical spiritual pedagogy accepts
that spiritual nurture understood as the induction of pupils into a
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specific value system is an inevitable outcome of formal schooling. It

rejects the myth that schools can be spiritually neutral institutions: they
will always work if only implicitly with a set of ultimate values that
will help shape the spiritual lives of pupils. It follows that schools should
openly embrace their role as transmitters of spiritual value and strive to
bring spiritual integrity in all aspects of the life of the community.
Spirituality must be appropriated critically. The process of
spiritual nurture must always be supplemented with a process of critical
spiritual education. Nurture alone will produce only spiritually con-
tented pigs while critical education will strive to form spiritually dis-
contented philosophers. Pupils will need to be led towards a critical
awareness of their own spiritual horizons, of the spiritual horizons of
the school as an institution and of the spiritual horizons of a range
of alternative spiritual traditions.
Authentic spirituality demands spiritual literacy. Critical
spiritual pedagogy requires schools to equip pupils with appropriate
levels of spiritual wisdom, thus enabling them to engage with spiritual
questions in an informed, sensitive and intelligent manner. Pupils must
be taught spiritual discernment, insight and understanding if they are to
have the freedom to flourish as spiritual beings.
Spirituality in the whole school
It is time to ground the abstract discussion of the previous two sections in

the concrete reality of schools and classrooms. Any discussion of the place
of spirituality in the whole school needs to take account of the politics of
education. The final two decades of the last century saw a polarization
of authority and responsibility away from local educational authorities into
both central government and individual schools. The current system gives
central government the role of setting the broad educational agenda, and
via a complex system of surveillance and inspection ensuring that indi-
vidual schools successfully conform to this agenda. At the same time
individual schools have significant levels of responsibility for their own
development as they seek to organize and structure themselves to meet the
demands of central government. This increase in local autonomy has led
to a structural pluralism in which an increasingly diverse range of schools
plough their own individual furrows. The minimalist nature of the legisla-
tion covering spirituality offers schools a fair degree of autonomy in
developing their provision for spiritual education.
Government advice on the implementation of spiritual education,
presented in Spiritual and Moral Development (SCAA 1995), reinforces this
picture of the autonomy of individual schools in their provision for
spiritual development. The document offers no more than a generalized
understanding of spirituality: spirituality is presented as being fundamental
to the human condition, transcending ordinary everyday experience and
concerned with the search for identity and meaning in response to death,
suffering, beauty and evil; spirituality may be encountered in our beliefs,
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sense of awe, wonder and mystery, feelings of transcendence, search for

meaning and purpose, self-knowledge, relationships, creativity and feelings
and emotions; the promotion of spiritual development requires the nur-
turing of curiosity, imagination, insight and intuition (Wright 1998: 17). It
is clear that this understanding leaves room for engagement with a broad
range of specific spiritual traditions, both religious and humanistic, and
does not preclude traditionalist, progressive or critical approaches. There is,
though, a clear expectation that spiritual provision will be encountered in
the schools ethos, its collective worship and in its explicit curriculum.
The spiritual ethos of the school will need to be a reality rather than
an aspiration. The Department for Education and Employment (DfEE)
expects schools to include a mission statement in their documentation that
provides an opportunity for schools to make explicit their specific spiritual
visions of the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, in general, and of
education, in particular. Mission statements vary from school to school,
depending on each schools foundation. A state-sponsored Muslim school,
for example, is likely to have a very different spiritual vision than that of a
multicultural school that grounds its values in the tradition of liberal
humanism. The mission statement needs to be public property, articulated,
owned and implemented by the whole school community. Gold and
Evans claim that research demonstrates that a school where the purpose of
education is clearly articulated and communicated is a far more effective
school than one in which there is no obviously agreed purpose (1998: 14).
The quality and integrity of a schools provision for spiritual education is
likely to be reflected in its response to the vexed question of collective
worship. A healthy mark of any community is its ability to celebrate its
spiritual achievements and aspirations. All too often, collective worship
reflects spiritual sickness rather than health. An apologetic attempt to
appease Ofsted inspectors through a hesitant act of worship with which few
can identify introduces a spiritual vacuum into the very heart of the school
community. A schools core spiritual values need to be celebrated with
dignity and integrity. This may take the form of either a religious act of
worship or a secular assembly, since the legislation regarding collective
worship is extremely flexible and makes available a range of religious and
secular options.
The contribution of individual teachers to the spiritual life of the school
will be reflected in their engagement with the institutions ultimate
values. This need not indeed frequently ought not be a process of blind
acquiescence. A healthy spiritual community will be open to self-criticism if
its spiritual values are either inappropriately formulated or implemented.
More specifically, individual teachers will need to reflect on the place of
spirituality in the classroom in their roles as form tutors and subject
teachers.
Effective promotion of spiritual development in individual subject areas
needs to respond to the ultimate questions about the meaning and pur-
pose of life that are integral to each academic discipline. This applies to
a geography teacher teaching about the weather system, to an English
teacher addressing Keats suggestion that Beauty is truth and truth beauty,
and to a PE teacher inviting students to reflect on the importance of
physical fitness. In each subject area there is opportunity to allow students
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to step back and see the larger picture of life, rather than simply knuckle
down and improve their grades. Classroom teachers will need to ensure
that the broader spiritual picture informs their lesson planning so that
their classroom teaching effectively stimulates the critical, imaginative and
creative dimension of their pupils spiritual lives.
Science education a case study
Ofsted (1993b: 17) emphasized that The promotion of pupils spiritual,

moral, social and cultural development is a whole school issue . . . other
subjects [than religious education] can play no less significant a part in
inviting pupils to reflect on the purpose and meaning of life. There is not
the space here to consider the spiritual dimension of every subject, so our
discussion is limited to a single case study, science. Some science teachers
have found difficulty in promoting the spiritual dimension of their subject
and some have resented the requirement as an intrusion into teaching
the facts. However, far from adulterating science with metaphysics, the
requirement is better seen as having a corrective role in showing science
with a human face. It serves to redress some of the scientific imperialism of
the early part of the twentieth century, which still lingers on as one strand
of popular culture. As the foregoing discussion has indicated, the category
spiritual has many facets, several of which can help teachers show pupils
the scientific enterprise in ways that neither exaggerate nor undermine its
capabilities. They can be placed in four groups:
Awe, wonder and mystery
Young pupils find aspects of the natural world quite breathtaking, but
increasing age is often accompanied by a blas attitude. There is some
justification for this change of attitude since something remarkable may
seem like magic to a young child who has not yet understood the physical
structures and processes involved. There is no good reason, however, why
the sensations of awe, wonder and mystery generated by gazing into the
night sky or studying how our bodies work should be diminished through
increased learning, as though explaining scientifically somehow explains
away non-scientific perspectives. Such sensations are most likely to be
fostered and preserved if science teachers themselves experience and refer
to them and are constantly aware of how little anyone knows of what there
is to be known.
Curiosity, creativity and imagination
The role of curiosity in initiating scientific investigation needs no com-

ment, but an understanding of the roles of creativity and imagination
in scientific discovery has, over recent decades, grown considerably.
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The place of metaphor and conceptual models in promoting understanding

of theoretical structures is now widely acknowledged in science as else-
where. Teachers might help pupils to see how this has worked by intro-
ducing them to such examples as the water circuit model of electricity
flowing in a wire or the solar-system model of the hydrogen atom.
Meaning, purpose and identity
The question Why do I exist? can have several meanings. It can be

answered by reference to parental desires; it can be answered by a
mechanistic description of the biology of human reproduction; it can be
answered with reference to the purpose of a transcendent agent, God. The
first two answers come from the behavioural and life sciences. The third
answer lies outside the remit of science. Pupils sometimes ask for scientific
proof that God exists. They have not spotted that it is no use going to
science, the study of nature, for answers to religious questions about
whether anything other than the natural world exists and to which the
world owes its existence. It is beyond the competence of science to answer
such questions and Science in the National Curriculum indicates that Pupils
should be taught . . . to consider . . . the kinds of questions science can and
cannot answer (DfEE/QCA 1999: 37, 46) and, more, recently, that there are
some questions that science cannot answer, and some that science cannot
address (DfEE/QCA 2006: 37). Nevertheless, science studies may prompt
such questions. Why is there something rather than nothing? is a question
of great antiquity, which the noted scientist Stephen Hawking (1988: 174)
has recently rephrased as Why does the universe go to all the bother of
existing? A debate in class over this question could constitute an awareness
of that which is of ultimate value.
More recently has come an awareness of the apparent fine-tuning of the
universe for life. If the physical constants of nature were even minutely
different some estimates give a minuscule difference of one part in
one followed by 60 noughts as significant we should not be here. Does
this mean the universe is planned and purposeful? The mystery does not
disappear by pointing out that this fine balance may result from an
inflationary model of the universe. That simply pushes the question back a
stage further to Why did the early universe have the properties which gave
rise to an inflationary period, which in turn gave rise to the fine tuning?
It is important to remember when teaching science that there is more
than one type of explanation. A scientific explanation of the existence of
the universe in terms of a hot Big Bang is compatible with a religious
explanation in terms of a purposeful creator. Failure to recognize a
plurality of explanations is perhaps the most serious and probably the most
common philosophical error encountered in science teaching. However,
such recognition provides an opportunity for a discussion on the variety of
world views held by members of the class. Such acknowledgement of this
diversity would again be addressing questions about ultimate value.
The first half of the twentieth century saw an elevation of the status of
science to a level that could not be justified. Since science had been so
successful in its rightful area of mapping the natural world, it was elevated
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by some philosophers to the position of the ultimate test of meaning, in a

movement called logical positivism. Supposedly based on science, all
statements had to be verified empirically if they were to be counted as
meaningful and therefore possible candidates for truth. The system
crumbled, however, because science itself contained assumptions, like the
uniformity of nature, that could not be verified scientifically. Science as a
subject does not have all the answers, but if the logical positivist position
had been defensible it would have negated notions of transcendence.
Feelings of transcendence
The term spiritual has come into fashion in education over recent years,
used in a way that encompasses those who do not hold specific religious
beliefs as well as those that do. Although, as Ofsted (1993a: 21f) has pointed
out, Spiritual is not synonymous with religious , religious beliefs do
form a major component of the broader concept of spirituality. Religious
beliefs have played a role in the development of modern science from the
seventeenth century onwards, and studies of the interplay between these
two disciplines have become a big industry worldwide in academia over the
last few decades. True, some sections of the media persist in an outdated
confrontational approach and give to a few voices a disproportionate
amount of air time to back up the notion of conflict. But academic his-
torians of science have found the warfare model inadequate to describe
a set of relationships that is much more positive and interesting. Even the
folklore accounts of the Galileo affair and the Darwinian controversies have
been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Geoffrey Cantor, Professor
of History of Science at Leeds, has summed up a contemporary view of these
episodes:
Galileo can no longer be portrayed as the harbinger of truth and
enlightenment who was pitted against reactionary priests . . . his
censure resulted partly from his mishandling of a sensitive diplomatic
situation. The other paradigmatic conflict concerns the Darwinian
theory of evolution and centres on the HuxleyWilberforce confronta-
tion in 1860. These opponents are now viewed as trading minor insults
in the heat of debate and not as exemplifying the necessary conflict
between science and religion.
(Cantor 1991: 290)
Teaching science in the National Curriculum provides many natural
opportunities for introducing topics such as these from the history of
science when the work of Galileo and Darwin are taught. In parallel with
such historical episodes, it is valuable to include certain philosophical
points about science, such as the nature of explanation, reductionism,
scientific laws, language and models as well as the presuppositions of
science. It has largely been due to misunderstandings about points like
these that the idea of a mismatch between science and spirituality has
arisen. A detailed discussion of such points and some practical classroom
suggestions can be found in Poole (1995, 1998) and Charis Science (2000).
A further encouragement for the engagement of science with spirituality,
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albeit within the time constraints of a crowded curriculum, comes from the
religious education community. A survey of two-thirds of the locally
determined Agreed Syllabuses for Religious Education (Bausor and Poole
2002, 2003) showed that two-thirds of these contained entries on science-
and-religion. It was evident that more could be done and the appearance of
the Non-Statutory National Framework for Religious Education in October 2004
set a good example by including substantial reference to the importance of
treating this aspect of spirituality.
Concluding comments
For many teachers, the current climate of education, with its stress on
academic attainment at the expense of a commitment to the development
of the whole child, is a cause of deep concern. There is a real danger of the
soul of education being smothered by bureaucracy and a range of political
agendas. Despite such concerns, the fact remains that teachers have a
fundamental responsibility to develop the spiritual lives of their pupils by
enabling them to engage in an informed, sensitive and intelligent manner
with questions about the ultimate meaning and purpose of life.
References
Bausor, J. and Poole, M.W. (2002) Science-and-religion in the agreed syllabuses an

investigation and some suggestions, British Journal of Religious Education, 25(1):
1832.
Bausor, J. and Poole, M.W. (2003) Science education and religious education:
possible links? School Science Review, 85(311): 11724.
Cantor, G. (1991) Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist. Basingstoke:
Macmillan.
Charis Science (2000) Resources for Spiritual and Moral Development across the Curric-
ulum. Nottingham: The Stapleford Centre.
Copley, T. (2000) Spiritual Development in the State School. A Perspective on Worship and
Spirituality in the Education System of England and Wales. Exeter: University of Exeter
Press.
Department for Education (DfE) (1994) Circular 1/94, Religious Education and Collective
Worship. London: HMSO.
Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (1998) Circular 4/98, Requirements
for Courses of Initial Teacher Training. London: HMSO.
Department for Education and Employment/Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority (DfEE/QCA) (1999) Science in the National Curriculum. London: HMSO.
Department for Education and Employment/Qualifications and Curriculum
Authority (DfEE/QCA) (2006) Science: The National Curriculum for England. London:
HMSO.
Department for Education and Science (DES) (1988) Education Reform Act. London:
HMSO.
Gold, A. and Evans, J. (1998) Reflecting on School Management. London: Falmer.
Gutting, G. (1994) The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
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Hamilton, E. and Cairns, H. (eds) (1961) Plato: The Collective Dialogues. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Hawking, S.W. (1988) A Brief History of Time. London: Bantam Press.
Locke, J. ([1693] 2000) Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) (1993a) Handbook for the Inspection
of Schools: Part 2, Framework for the Inspection of Schools. London: HMSO.
Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) (1993b) Handbook for the Inspection of
Schools: Part 4, Guidance on the Inspection Schedule. London: HMSO.
Poole, M.W. (1995) Beliefs and Values in Science Education. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Poole, M.W. (1998) Teaching about Science and Religion: Opportunities within Science in
the National Curriculum. Abingdon: Culham College Institute.
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority/Department for Education and Skills
(2004) The Non-Statutory National Framework for Religious Education. London:
QCA.
Rousseau, J.J. ([1792] 1986) Emile. London: Dent.
School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) (1995) Spiritual and Moral
Development. SCAA Discussion Papers No. 3. London: SCAA.
Talbot, M. and Tate, N. (1997) Shared values in a pluralist society, in R. Smith and
P. Standish (eds) Teaching Right and Wrong: Moral Education in the Balance. Stoke-on-
Trent: Trentham Books.
Wright, A. (1998) Spiritual Pedagogy. A Survey, Critique and Reconstruction of
Contemporary Spiritual Education in England and Wales. Abingdon: Culham College
Institute.
Wright, A. (2000) Spirituality and Education. London: Falmer.
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23 The importance of teachers

and schools in health
promotion
Peter Duncan
Sex and school dinners: what exactly is health promotion?
In February 2005, the celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, appeared in the Channel
Four television series, Jamies School Dinners. Featuring Kidbrooke School
in the London Borough of Greenwich, Olivers programme focused on the
poor quality of food being served up in UK schools and the general lack of
training and understanding in the area of nutrition. The series led to a
petition of nearly 300,000 signatures being taken to 10 Downing Street and
the then Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, agreeing to a 220m increase in
funding for school catering services. It was also central to the establishment
of the watchdog School Food Trust and provoked wholesale changes
to menus and food choices in schools across the country (Plunkett 2005;
Lawrence 2006).
Towards the end of the same year, a report from the Governments
independent advisers on sexual health and teenage pregnancy recom-
mended that detailed knowledge about sex should be included routinely in
the education of all pupils. The report came in the wake of Britain con-
tinuing to maintain a Western European lead for teenage pregnancy rates,
and rising levels of many sexually transmitted diseases among young
people (Campbell 2005).
These separate stories of school dinners and sex represent a number of
important things. First, they tell of the wide levels of interest in schools
as places where good health, whatever that means, can be encouraged.
Second, they signify that our interest in promoting the health of young
people is often accompanied by high degrees of emotional fervour and
debate. Third, they represent the complexity inherent in efforts at health
promotion. We want young people to choose a healthy diet and be careful
in their sexual behaviour, but how do we balance this with a desire
that they should make the choices they want, and in the context of a wider
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The importance of teachers and schools in health promotion 293
world that, in some respects, is not much interested in people choosing

health?
Above all else, though, the stories raise the question, what exactly is
health promotion and what can be done to promote health in schools?
Should we be banning fizzy drinks and crisps, or engaging in dialogue with
pupils about food choices? Should we be scaring young people into sexual
abstinence with horror stories of disease and unwanted babies, or should we
be supporting their emotional development so that they make the best
decisions for themselves about their own sex lives and relationships? I think
the answer to these questions lies in developing a careful understanding
of the nature of health promotion; of why its important for schools to
commit themselves to the promotion of health; and what teachers can do
in support of effective health promotion. This chapter tries to address these
issues.
It all depends on what health is . . .
If we want to move towards greater understanding of what needs to be done

to promote health, it makes sense to suggest that we need a clear idea of the
nature of health itself. Achieving this clarity, though, will be problematic,
because health is a contested concept (Katz et al. 2001; Seedhouse 2001).
Different individuals, communities and societies are likely to hold separate
views about the nature of health. What might be called the medical model
account, that is, health as the absence of disease, has historically been
highly influential in shaping understanding, but has met with robust
challenges, particularly over the last half-century or so. These challenges,
often reinforced by empirical evidence, assert that health is (or ought to be)
seen in much broader terms; as encompassing notions of positive well-
being, and possessing emotional, social, mental and spiritual dimensions as
well as the narrow physical one (World Health Organisation 1986).
Whatever our views about the nature of health, it seems clear that they
will play a large part in moulding our perceptions of what influences
and determines health, what needs to be done to promote it and who has
responsibility for taking action. If someone believes that health is, say, the
absence of disease, they may well consider that what determines an indi-
viduals health is access to good quality health care and disease prevention
services. The purpose of health promotion then becomes the provision of
expert-led advice on health care access and on the prevention of disease. If
this advice was persuasive and offered from the top down, we might call
it medical model health promotion (Tones and Green 2004). On the other
hand, if information was presented in a more even-handed and neutral
way, we might consider this to be health promotion according to the
educational model. Then again, if we think that health has quite a lot to
do with a capacity to function appropriately in our social context, then
what determines it might be things like our levels of income, the quality
of our family and other relationships, our environment and so on. The
purpose of health promotion might now be to engage in sustaining or
improving these sorts of things, either through work addressing social
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294 Peter Duncan
structures (health promotion according to a social change model) or

through supporting people as they attempt to deal with them for them-
selves. We might call this latter empowerment model health promotion
(Tones and Green 2004).
It all depends on values . . .
Of course, its not impossible that our conceptions of the nature of health
and the purpose of health promotion will involve both disease prevention
and a concern with social circumstance. This is quite reasonable, and an
attempt to deal with health by addressing issues in both respects would
certainly be pragmatic and quite possibly worthwhile. But its also impor-
tant to recognize that the models above, and the subsequent approaches
to health promotion that they suggest, are essentially rooted in values. If
we believe, say, that health promotion is about the prevention of disease
(the medical model), then we will place value on work and approaches that
aim to reduce disease. We are also likely to value the knowledge of expert
professionals who we think are best placed to direct individuals about what
they need to do to avoid health-harming, disease-causing behaviours. We
are much less likely to place value on the development of people as
autonomous individuals who have the capacity to make up their own
minds about whether they choose to avoid the behaviour that professionals
deem to be health-harming. On the other hand, this would be exactly the
kind of value important to the empowerment model health promoter.
If this discussion about values sounds rather abstract and makes health
promotion seem rather vague, there are two important points to be made.
First, the essential place of values in understanding and going about the
promotion of health makes it no different from any other aspect of the
enterprise of schooling and education (Cribb and Gewirtz 2001). Second,
depending on the values we hold, the ways in which we undertake health
promotion might be very different. Imagine, for a moment, that there
are two teachers in separate schools, both of whom have responsibility
for co-ordinating health promotion. Both have also been asked by their
respective heads to address the issue of smoking. Mr Green believes in
medical model health promotion and the values associated with this,
while Ms White has a strong belief in the values of the empowerment
model. My assertion is that the separate values of these two teachers mean
that they will want to plan and implement two quite different programmes
for smoking prevention in their schools. Yet both of them would believe
that they are engaging, in a worthwhile way, in health promotion.
Why should we be concerned about health promotion?
If health promotion is as potentially disputed and contested an area as

this, the question of why we should be concerned with it at all becomes
pertinent. I want to suggest that there are three possible kinds of reasons.
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Because we have to be concerned
Health promotion in the National Curriculum what is referred to as

Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) is subject to non-statutory
guidelines at Key Stages 3 and 4 (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
2006). Sex education, which we might reasonably see as contributing to
health promotion, is different again. Here, there is an obligation on schools
to teach biological aspects of sex through science. Schools also have
an obligation to teach about HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted
infections. However, parents may request that pupils be excused from
any aspect of sex education apart from that contained in the National
Curriculum (Scriven 2001; Campbell 2005). The closely connected area of
citizenship education is also a compulsory subject at these Key Stages.
All of this complexity contributes to a sense that education policy makers
are both grappling with, and wary of, health promotion. It seems as if they
recognize its importance but, at the same time, realize the potential for
contention that it contains. This situation is perhaps no more than is to be
expected, given the value-laden nature of the field. Overall, however, it is
possible to suggest that the policy climate is gradually edging towards a
position in which the promotion of health becomes a requirement, one
way or another, placed on schools and teachers. Ofsted now expects, for
example, that schools are able to demonstrate how they are contributing to
the five national outcomes for children stipulated by Every Child Matters and
the Children Act 2004:
being healthy
staying safe
enjoying and achieving
making a positive contribution
economic well-being (Department of Health 2005).
It has been suggested that this inspection requirement can be closely

connected to the purposes and outcomes of effective health promotion,
particularly in the context of the National Healthy Schools Programme
(Department of Health 2005). In short, there is more and more reason to
believe that teachers have to be concerned with health promotion.
Because we want to be concerned
Arguably, though, an organizational and policy requirement to be con-

cerned with the promotion of health is not the best reason for involvement.
A sense of the value of health promotion also ought to be driving interest;
the idea that, because of your identity as a teacher and your professional
persona, you want to be concerned with it.
At one level, the promotion of health is important, professionally, to the
teacher because healthier pupils and schools are likely to be more produc-
tive places of learning and teaching. There is strong evidence to support the
connection between positive learning and the kind of environment created
by and within schools committed to health promotion (Weare 2000).
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296 Peter Duncan
This reason for the professional value of health promotion to teachers is

important, but it is also rather instrumental. A more fundamental reason
is that health promotion, or at least the version connected to notions of
empowerment that I described earlier, aligns very closely with what many
regard as the essential ideals of education.
Liberal notions of the aims of education involve, among other things,
its attempting to foster not simply an individuals ability to function in
society, but to develop in ways that are autonomous and independent
(Schnack 2000). These are also the ideals of health promotion according
to the empowerment model. We want to encourage the development of
young people who have due regard for their health. We want to do so in
ways that recognize them as individuals moving towards independence and
autonomy. Indeed, for empowerment model health promotion, autonomy
development is a fundamental aspect of the health we are seeking to
promote. Is it possible to see someone as properly healthy if they are
constrained and coerced at every turn in their daily lives? So the goal of
health promotion in the empowerment model is analogous to the broad
aims of liberal education. If, as a teacher, you are committed to the ideology
and values of liberal education, part of this commitment should include
an interest in empowerment-oriented health promotion. Some might even
see (rightly in my view) liberal education itself as health promotion. Of
course, none of this is to suggest that everyone in our society will subscribe
to the particular ideal of liberal education.
Because being concerned makes sense
Carefully considered, the set of reasons I have just presented for being con-
cerned about health promotion revolving around policy requirements
and professional values come together to form the view that interest in
this area is simple good sense. Encouraging development of the capacity to
make appropriate health-related decisions will benefit pupils (Halstead
and Reiss 2003). Engaging in activity that is (or at least ought to be) closely
related to the ideals of liberal education itself will benefit teachers. It will do
this, in part, through enhancing their senses of professional identity and
the fundamental importance of their occupational task. This is perhaps
especially important at a time when critique and criticism of the profession
of teaching is relatively widespread in our society (Weare 2000). And the
benefit of health promotion to pupils and teachers will naturally result in
benefit to schools as institutions, with a key social role in promoting the
health of future populations (Tones and Green 2004).
Perhaps the central questions, at this point, are these: can you, as some-
one becoming a teacher, agree with any or all of these kinds of reasons that
Ive given for being concerned with health promotion? Are there additional
reasons you would want to draw on? And if its the case that youre not
able either to agree with my reasons or construct any of your own, why is
this so?
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The difculty with empowerment
My account of the reasons for teachers being concerned with health

promotion has revolved, in part, around it operating according to what I
have called an empowerment model. It is true that there are good reasons
for bringing this to the foreground in any discussion of the field. The
model holds a prominent position in the writing of theorists (Ewles and
Simnett 1995; Naidoo and Wills 2000; Tones and Green 2004). The power-
ful theoretical construction of the model has included claims that
individuals who are genuinely empowered are far more likely to make
healthy choices. Those who are held back by misinformation or by the
health promoters desire to control, are likely to adopt strategies of
resistance, including forming or continuing with unhealthy behaviours.
In the context of efforts to promote health, then, empowerment is regarded
as a practical necessity as well as a moral requirement (Tones and Green
2004: 2).
But this formulation of the importance of empowerment in health
promotion also contains its essential difficulty. In imagining empowered
individuals making healthy choices, and others resisting health,
empowerment health promoters are tacitly admitting that they have pref-
erences about the choices people make (Lucas and Lloyd 2005). Would Ms
White, in the example above, really be happy if the end result of all her hard
work according to the empowerment model was that the number of pupils
smoking in the school stayed the same, or even increased? The blunt truth
might be that while their methods will be different, both Ms White and Mr
Green (who is wedded to the medical model) actually have the same aim in
mind, that is, they both want to see smoking levels reduced. The difficulty
for Ms White lies in the fact that her efforts at empowerment might have
that specific (although probably not explicit) aim. If they do, how can they
be genuinely empowering?
The problem is compounded by the context in which school health pro-
motion takes place. While we might possibly be able to imagine Ms White
being genuinely disinterested in all outcomes except empowered pupils
making independent choices, what about her headteacher? The head
may well see rising levels of smoking as a poor indicator of the schools
success in promoting health. This is particularly likely given the wider
political context in which the Department for Education and Skills and
the Department of Health have established or agreed national health
priorities, which include reducing young peoples drug, alcohol and
tobacco use (Department of Health 2005: 3).
The reality for health promotion in schools (as well as in other settings)
is that there are limits to empowerment. The limits are placed, in part, by
the political nature and the political context of schools and education.
Of course, this does not necessarily mean that teachers should abandon
all efforts to work in ways that aim to be empowering. I have tried, so far, to
emphasize the importance of the empowerment model. I have done
so both because of its essential connection with the aims and purpose of
wider liberal education, and because there is substantial truth in the idea
that empowering people is more likely to result in health improvement
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298 Peter Duncan
(regardless of what we understand health to be). But we need to recognize

and understand both the limits and the possibilities contained within
the idea of empowerment health promotion, and how these might play
out in the context of schools and the practice of teaching. This is now the
direction of my discussion.
Empowerment in context: healthy schools
The idea of schools as important settings in which health promotion

takes place is not a new one. The genesis, however, of what might now be
called The Healthy Schools Movement can be traced back to a 1989 World
Health Organisation (WHO) conference (Tones and Green 2004) and the
publication of The Healthy School (Young and Williams 1989). The latter
identified the three central components of the health promoting school:
health promotion as taught through the formal curriculum (what some
people would refer to as health education)
school ethos and environment
relationships between the school and the wider community in which it
is located.
For a school to be regarded as health promoting there is a need for each of
these components to operate in synergy with the others. So health is not
confined, for example, to an hour of teaching a week. Rather, curriculum
opportunities are enhanced and fed by wider work (the development of
appropriate school-wide policies related to health, say, or the building
of community links).
This relatively holistic understanding of how schools might be able to
promote health led, in the mid-1990s, to the establishment of a European
Network of Health Promoting Schools (ENHPS). Detailed sets of criteria and
specifications for action were developed and refined, which schools seeking
to be recognized as health promoting needed to meet. Criteria included,
for example, the active promotion of the self-esteem of all pupils, and of the
health and well-being of school staff (Beattie 2001).
In England and Wales, the concept of the health promoting school was
taken up in part through the establishment of the National Healthy Schools
Programme (NHSP). Schools were invited to work towards the achievement
of Healthy School status. Revised guidance issued in September 2005
clarified what schools were required to do in order to achieve such status:
Schools are asked to demonstrate evidence in [all of] the core themes
using a whole-school approach involving the whole school community:
personal, social and health education including sex and relationship
education and drug education (including alcohol, tobacco and
volatile substance abuse);
healthy eating;
physical activity; and
emotional health and well-being (including bullying).
(Department of Health 2005: 4)
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Government expectation is that by 2009, every school will be working

towards achieving national Healthy School status.
A number of key issues emerge when considering the potential for success
(or otherwise) of schools that seek to become health promoting. Given the
emphasis of both ENHPS and Department of Health criteria on whole-
school involvement, there is a clear need to encourage participation of all of
the school community. As Tones and Green (2004) have pointed out, how-
ever, this participation cant be token. If all in the community are to com-
mit to the ambitious objectives of a school aspiring to be health promoting,
then everyone needs to be drawn into what Elliot-Kemp (1982) calls the
circle of understanding. Principles such as involvement and equity become
fundamentally important in establishing and maintaining such a circle.
There is also a need to try to ensure that the programme of work is sustain-
able, as far as possible, and, again, this is only likely to be the case if there is
a groundswell of participation from the community concerned.
But while those managing schools might, in theory, agree with the sorts
of principles that ought to lie at the heart of the health promoting school,
commitment in practice could be altogether more difficult. A school can
be regarded as, essentially, a hierarchical organization, depending for its
existence and progress on particular kinds of power relationships, both
within and outside the institution itself (Ball 2003). As I have already
described, schools are also subject to conflicting policy demands, with
health often seeming to occupy an uncomfortable place in orders of
priorities. Given that part of the schools context involves organizational
hierarchy and policy conflict, how easy will it be to adhere to the principles
that I have argued are needed to develop schools as health promoting,
empowering environments? As one recent evaluation of the impact of
the National Healthy School Standard found, more active participation
of children and young people is essential if the future success of the pro-
gramme is to be ensured (National Foundation for Educational Research/
Thomas Coram Research Unit 2004). The central question is one of how
this can be achieved, given the nature of schools. To what extent can a
school really empower its pupils to engage in issues related to their emo-
tional and mental health, say, when its existence is premised on highly
structured and organized power relationships?
Empowerment in context: health in the curriculum
The NHSP makes clear that health-related teaching in the curriculum is just
one component of a wider and more holistic approach to health promotion
in schools. However, the curriculum is such an important representation
of schools purpose and priorities that it is worth thinking specifically
about the extent to which it might support the kind of health promotion
according to the empowerment model for which I have been mainly
arguing.
NHSP guidance contains clear criteria that schools need to meet with
regard to the PSHE curriculum if they are to achieve Healthy School status.
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300 Peter Duncan
These include use of the National Curriculum framework to deliver a

planned programme of PSHE, which is monitored and evaluated to ensure
teaching and learning quality, and involves assessment of pupils progress
in line with Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) guidance
(Department of Health 2005: 6).
At Key Stages 3 and 4 (as well as the earlier primary stages), there are three
strands to the framework:
developing confidence and responsibility and making the most of
abilities
developing a healthy, safer lifestyle
developing good relationships and respecting the differences between
people.
(Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 2006)
The clarity of both the NHSP guidance and the National Curriculum
framework is certainly encouraging. Commentators have seen the frame-
work as providing greater opportunity for consistency, coherence and
progression in the area of PSHE than had perhaps previously been the case
(Scriven 2001). Some have gone so far as to suggest that the PSHE frame-
work, together with citizenship education, represent the beliefs and aims of
the National Curriculum itself. In particular PSHE, allied with citizenship,
can be connected to the belief that education is the route to individual
well-being; and to the broad curriculum aim of promoting moral, social and
cultural development (Bramall and White 2000; see also Chapter 22). The
emphasis on understanding and skills development within the frame-
work, rather than simply the acquisition of knowledge, seems especially
important for those wedded to the idea of health promotion as empower-
ment. Surely one of our central purposes is to support the development of
confidence and responsibility within young people?
In the midst of all this positive talk, however, there is a need to offer,
again, the reminder that the PSHE framework, in contrast to citizenship, is
non-statutory (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 2006). Once more,
context might well place limits on health promotion. Schools and teachers
will naturally allow more importance to those subjects that they are
statutorily required to teach. Crucially, success in compulsory subjects such
as English, mathematics and science (as measured through examination
results) is frequently seen as the prime embodiment of individual schools
success or otherwise. In a feverish climate of exam results and league
tables, how easy will it be for teachers to commit themselves to a non-
statutory, unexamined subject of considerable complexity?
We might consider that, to some degree, this circumstance is odd. On
the one hand, PSHE is seen by some as an important representation
within the curriculum of an education policy imperative related to self-
development. Part of this representation might entail an orientation
towards empowerment health promotion. On the other hand, much of
the remaining message from policy makers, embodied within the bulk
of the curriculum, is that young people (and those who teach them) need to
be firmly pointed in certain ways if their development is to be effective in
educational terms. Why is there this conflict?
The example of sex and relationships education (SRE) might help to
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answer this question. Sex education is the one aspect within the broad field
of PSHE that is designated as a statutory requirement. At Key Stages 3 and 4
sex education is a compulsory subject. There are, however, limits to this
compulsory nature. In the first place, parents can ask for their children to be
excused from any aspects of sex education outside the National Curriculum
(HMSO 1996). In effect, it is possible to divide SRE into sex education (bio-
logical, scientific and compulsory) and relationships education (emotional,
cultural and vulnerable to the right of parental excuse). In the second place,
the way in which this relationships aspect of SRE should be taught is sub-
ject to restrictions. Students should be taught, among other things, about
the nature and importance of marriage for family life and bringing up
children (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority 2006).
So SRE, as the single compulsory component of PSHE, is potentially con-
strained through both parental acceptance and governmental prescription.
This constraint emerges as a result of conflicting values. For some, the
value lies in forming and maintaining stable relationships, and promoting
this should be the fundamental aim of SRE. Others might see value as lying
in the development of questioning, autonomous young people who are
able to make up their own minds about the kinds of relationships they
have. This clash of values is rendered even more problematic by the real
possibility that some people might well think that schools and teachers
ought not to have any kind of role in teaching about relationships; this is a
job to be conducted by parents, within families. These conflicting values
lead, in turn, to separate views of the aims of SRE and frameworks within
which it is conducted. Frameworks might range from believing that schools
sex education should not occur at all, through to one founded on the belief
that it is about promoting autonomy (Halstead and Reiss 2003).
If, as the example of SRE seems to demonstrate, values lie at the heart of
how (and indeed whether) teaching about health is included in the curric-
ulum, then there is a need to recognize that the value of empowerment is
only one of a cluster of health-related values. Others holding different
values and conceptions might well challenge this way of learning and
teaching. And as thinking about SRE has shown, the minefield of values is
compounded by policy and curriculum directives and guidelines, which
somehow have to balance the separate perceptions of individuals, com-
munities and societies about what kind of health we should be promoting.
The value of health promotion
I began this chapter by raising the question of what exactly it is we are

trying to do in promoting health. When schools and teachers think about
food and food choice, say, or about sex and relationships, should they be
trying to restrict what is considered unhealthy or should they be attempt-
ing to encourage pupils to come to their own decisions about these things?
I have tried to argue that, for both practical and moral reasons, schools and
teachers should broadly be trying to do the latter. However, their capacity
to do so may well be limited by policy and organizational structures that
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302 Peter Duncan
often seem to be much more interested in attempting the former. Where

does this leave our discussion?
There are a number of things that it is important to emphasize to move
forward the debate, and our wider development with regard to health
promotion. We need to remind ourselves that health is fundamentally
important and a huge source of interest within society. So, given this, it is
natural that schools and teachers have an essential role in promoting
health to the young people with whom they work.
Ways of promoting health are based on values. Recognizing this is key to
establishing what we want to do in promoting health in determining our
purpose and practice in the area. Recognition of the importance of values is
also central to understanding how others might or will react to our health
promotion work. And if we can understand and predict reactions, there
seems to be a greater possibility of engaging in robust justification
that might convince others about the worth of our approach. At the very
least, understanding others reactions and perspectives will help us to tailor
our work so that it fulfils our own demands as well as others; a win-win
situation is often possible.
And while compromise might sometimes (perhaps often) be required, we
need to hold on to the essential importance of empowering as a goal of
health promotion in schools; both because of its match with the values
of liberal education; and because, plainly speaking, its more likely to be
effective. Schools and teachers have an essential role to play in promoting
health. I hope you will take up the challenge of that role.
References
Ball, S. (2003) The Micropolitics of the School. London: Routledge.

Beattie, A. (2001) Health-promoting schools as learning organisations, in A. Scriven
and J. Orme (eds) Health Promotion: Professional Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Bramall, S. and White, D.J. (2000) Will the New National Curriculum Live up to its Aims?
Ringwood: Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.
Campbell, D. (2005) Sex lessons planned for all children, Observer, 4 December.
Cribb, A. and Gewirtz, S. (2001) Values and schooling, in J. Dillon and M. Maguire
(eds) Becoming a Teacher (2nd edn). Buckingham: Open University Press.
Department of Health (2005) National Healthy Schools Status: A Guide for Schools.
London: Department of Health.
Elliott-Kemp, J. (1982) Managing organisational change, in J. Anderson (ed.) HEA
Health Skills Project. Leeds: CCDU.
Ewles, L. and Simnett, I. (1995) Promoting Health (3rd edn). Harrow: Scutari.
Halstead, J.M. and Reiss, M.J. (2003) Values in Sex Education. London: Routledge
Falmer.
Her Majestys Stationery Office (HMSO) (1996) Education Act. London: HMSO.
Katz, J., Peberdy, A. and Douglas, J. (2001) Promoting Health: Knowledge and Practice
(2nd edn). Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Lawrence, F. (2006) Junk foods banned in schools from September, Guardian, 3
March.
Lucas, K. and Lloyd, B. (2005) Health Promotion: Evidence and Experience. London:
Sage.
Naidoo, J. and Wills, J. (2000) Health Promotion: Foundations for Practice (2nd edn).
London: Bailliere Tindall.
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National Foundation for Educational Research/Thomas Coram Research Unit (2004)

Evaluation of the Impact of the National Healthy School Standard: Research Summary.
Slough: NFER.
Plunkett, J. (2005) Oliver reheats school food debate, Guardian, 26 October.
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) (2006) National Curriculum Online.
www.nc.uk.net (accessed 14 March).
Schnack, K. (2000) Action competence as a curriculum perspective, in B. Jensen,
K. Schnack and V. Simovska (eds) Critical Environmental and Health Education.
Copenhagen: Danish University of Education.
Scriven, A. (2001) The influence of government policy on the provision of health
education in schools, in A. Scriven and J. Orme (eds) Health Promotion: Professional
Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Seedhouse, D. (2001) Health: The Foundations for Achievement (2nd edn). Chichester:
Wiley.
Tones, K. and Green, J. (2004) Health Promotion: Planning and Strategies. London:
Sage.
Weare, K. (2000) Promoting Mental, Emotional and Social Health: A Whole School
Approach. London: Routledge.
World Health Organisation (WHO) (1986) Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion.
Ottawa: World Health Organisation.
Young, I. and Williams, T. (1989) The Healthy School. Edinburgh: Scottish Health
Education Group.
Further reading
Department of Health (2005) National Healthy Schools Status: A Guide for Schools.
London: Department of Health.
Lister-Sharp, D., Chapman, S., Stewart-Brown, S. and Sowden, A. (1999) Health
Promoting Schools and Health Promotion in Schools: Two Systematic Reviews,
Health Technology Assessment, 3(22): 1207. Available at http://www.ncchta.org/
execsumm/summ322.htm (accessed September 6, 2006).
Ryder, J. and Campbell, L. (1988) Balancing Acts in Personal, Social and Health Educa-
tion. London: Routledge.
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24 Education, the
environment and
sustainability
Justin Dillon
Introduction
It is a little known fact that we are in the Decade of Education for Sustain-
able Development. The Decade, which began in 2005, was proposed by the
United Nations (UN) in 2002 (Resolution 57/254). The resolution was
adopted by the UN General Assembly and UNESCO, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, was designated as the
lead agency responsible for the Decades promotion (see, UNESCO 2006).
As part of its contribution to the Decade, the Department for Education and
Skills (DfES) published its Sustainable Development Action Plan under the
title Learning for the Future in 2006. In this chapter, I examine the tensions
and controversies around the term Education for Sustainable Develop-
ment (ESD) and why it is important that all teachers understand some
of the many connections between education, the environment and
sustainability.
The environment
Before we go any further, it is worth noting that the word environment is

itself contested. Writing in 1996, the Canadian researcher, Lucy Sauv
(1996), summarized different ways of conceptualizing the environment,
and indicated how they were related (see Table 24.1). It should be evident
from Sauvs taxonomy how a science teacher, a geography teacher, a
warden of an environmental education centre, and the head of education at
a natural history museum might use quite different conceptualizations
of the environment. These different views of the environment might well
affect how they teach and what they teach.
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Education, the environment and sustainability 305
Table 24.1 Conceptualizations of the environment (Sauv 1996)
Environment as nature . . . to be appreciated, respected, preserved: dualistic,

Cartesian interpretation, humans are removed from
nature.
Environment as a resource . . . to be managed: this is our collective biophysical
heritage and we must sustain it as it is deteriorating
and wasting away. As, for example, in the Judeo-
Christian view (Book of Genesis).
Environment as a problem . . . to be solved: the biophysical environment, the life
support system is threatened by pollution and
degradation. We must learn to preserve its
quality and restore it (problem-solving skills
emphasized).
Environment as a place to to know and learn about, to plan for, to take care of:
live . . . day-to-day environment characterized by its
human, socio-cultural, technological and historical
components.
Environment as the in which we all live together, in the future: Spaceship
biosphere . . . Earth (Fuller) and Gaia (Lovelock) self-regulating
organism.
Environment as a community in which to get involved (that is, a context that affords
project . . . opportunities for working with others for the benet
of all).
Environment of a human a shared living place, political concern, the focus of
collectivity . . . critical analysis: solidarity, democracy and personal
and collective involvement in order to participate in
the evolution of the community.
So, for example, in Our Common Future (WCED 1987) which, as we will see
below, is a seminal document in the history of education and the environ-
ment, the implicit conceptualization of the environment appears to be
dualistic and Cartesian, that is, the environment is seen as a global resource,
to be developed and managed for sustainable profit and as nature, to be
revered and respected for the enjoyment and survival of human beings,
thus:
the environment does not exist as a sphere separate from human

actions, ambitions and needs and attempts to defend it in isolation
from human concerns have given the very word environment a
connotation of naivety in some political circles . . .
(WCED 1987: 6)
There are many who see Our Common Future as a simplistic document that
tries to be all things to all people. However, one of the positive elements of
Our Common Future was that it recognized the links between development
and the environment:
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306 Justin Dillon
The environment is where we all live; and development is what we all

do in attempting to improve our lot within that abode. The two are
inseparable.
(WCED 1987: 6)
Now this is an important statement because it recognizes that focusing
on the physical aspects of the environment without considering social
issues such as health, employment, legislation and education is, at best,
problematic and, at worst, intellectually bankrupt and morally indefensible
(see, also, Dillon and Teamey 2002). In the next section, I will examine the
key concepts of sustainability and sustainable development, pointing to
some problems with the ways in which the terms are used and understood.
Sustainability and sustainable development
Opinions vary as to what is meant by sustainability or sustainable

development. In general, though, the lack of agreement about the terms
is glossed over, and policy makers make bold assertions without much by
way of a caveat. So, for example, the UK Governments sustainable
development strategy (DfES 2006: 4) aims to enable all people throughout
the world to satisfy their basic needs and enjoy a better quality of life,
without compromising the quality of life of future generations. The policy
contains five principles that underpin the UKs sustainable development
policy. The principles provide clues as to how sustainable development is
conceptualized by elements within the government. The five principles are:
living within environmental limits ensuring the natural resources
needed for life are unimpaired and remain so in the future;
ensuring a strong, healthy and just society meeting diverse needs and
creating opportunity for all;
achieving a sustainable economy with efficient resource use
incentivized;
using sound science responsibly strong scientific evidence, taking into
account scientific uncertainty and public attitudes and values; and
promoting good governance effective, participative systems of govern-
ance in all levels of society.
(DfES 2006: 4)
In essence, then, we can have our cake now as long as we ensure that
there will be enough cake for future generations to eat. Although the
principles are contentious and open to interpretation just what is meant
by effective governance, for example? it would be hard to argue that they
are hugely undesirable. It would, however, be easier to argue that they are
unachievable or that they do not address some of the key problems facing
the world. The DfES sees the overall vision as one which is an innovation
agenda, inviting us to rethink how we organise our lives and work so that
we dont destroy our most precious resources (2006: 4). Given that policy
framework, how do teachers contribute to such laudable, far-reaching aims?
What do you need to teach in order that all people throughout the world
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[are enabled] to satisfy their basic needs and [can] enjoy a better quality of
life, without compromising the quality of life of future generations?
In order to address questions such as those, the UK Government estab-
lished a Sustainable Development Education Panel in 1998. One of the
recommendations, in the Panels first annual report, was that all children
should have an entitlement to education for sustainable development
(SDEP 1999). This entitlement was to be ensured through the requirements
of the National Curriculum, the school inspection framework and through
initial and in-service teacher training. The panel commented that:
Education for sustainable development is not new. It has roots in
environmental education, which has evolved since the 1960s, and in
development education which first emerged in the 1970s, and also
links with a number of related approaches to education which stress
relevance to personal, social, economic and environmental change. In
the past decade these approaches have increasingly found commonal-
ity under the label of education for sustainable development and
there is a strengthening consensus about the meaning and implica-
tions of this approach for education as a whole.
(SDEP 1999: 28)
The idea that there is a strengthening consensus is questionable. In
1998, the Panel commissioned a study to identify a coherent language
for the education of Sustainable Development which is relevant to a wide
range of bodies and individuals (SDEP 2000). The authors of the study
commented that: A pure or uniform understanding of Sustainable
Development is unlikely to develop, given the necessarily diverse interests
of different Influencers meaning that different sectors (business, educa-
tion, etc.] will approach it through different gateways (SDEP 2000).
Partly because the language of sustainable development is so unfamiliar,
perhaps, the reports authors also commented that:
Broadly speaking, people are not able to make even the most rudimen-
tary connections between their behaviours and those of businesses and
nations on local and global societies, economics and environments.
(SDEP 2000)
If there is a challenge for everyone involved in education, it is to enable
people to see the connections and to appreciate how so many of our actions
influence a network of individuals and communities around the world.
Some context
Even if it is difficult to appreciate fully the connections between our lives

and those of others, it would be difficult not to be aware of the global nature
of environmental problems. The impact of the environment on peoples
lives whether they be in New Orleans or Phuket, whether they be affected
by storm or tsunami, is all too apparent. To what extent environmental
catastrophes are caused by, or exaggerated by, human impact is not yet
known but the strong scientific evidence mentioned above points to the
need for humans to do more to protect the environment. Doing more
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308 Justin Dillon
might mean imposing more rules and regulations, it might mean travelling
by train not plane, or it might mean teaching other people not to make the
mistakes of this and previous generations.
Concern about the environment grew rapidly around the middle of the
last century and, although the topics of concern have changed, there is
still wide public interest in issues such as global warming, climate change,
air and water quality, the impact of development on communities and so
on. In recent years, links between food, the environment and health have
become more widely understood. Politicians and parents are concerned
about immunizations, what children consume and about the amount of
exercise that they get. The links between health, the environment and edu-
cation are explored further in Chapter 23.
In the 1950s and 1960s, people became increasingly aware that scientific
and technological advances sometimes came with undesirable side-effects.
Rachel Carsons Silent Spring, which celebrated its fortieth anniversary in
2002, exposed the catastrophic effects of pesticide spraying in the USA and
elsewhere (Carson 1962/1999). The book has rarely been out of print,
although Carson was heavily criticized at the time of its publication by
politicians, industrialists and the media (Dillon 2005).
In the 1970s and 1980s, a series of international conferences and
declarations helped to focus the attention of environmentalists, educators
and policy makers on the key environmental problems and how education
might play a role in their solution. The United Nations Conference on
the Human Environment in Stockholm in 1972 was a key event in the
development of what became commonly known as environmental educa-
tion (EE). There are many definitions and conceptualizations of environ-
mental education and there are several reviews of the EE literature (see, for
example, Hart and Nolan 1999; Rickinson 2001). The differences between
environmental education and education for sustainable development
are complex and it is beyond the scope of this chapter to do them justice.
Suffice to say that it is impossible to talk about ESD without understanding
that it has its roots in EE as well as in development education, as was
mentioned earlier.
The publication of Our Common Future (WCED 1987) (also known as
the Brundland Report) by the World Commission on Environment and
Development, in 1987, led to the popularization of the definition of sus-
tainable development as development that meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs. This conceptualization underpins much current thinking about
sustainable development. Five years later, in 1992, The Rio Declaration
from the World Conference on Environmental and Development (WCED
or The Earth Summit) began by stating:
Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable develop-
ment. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony
with nature.
(WCED 1992)
Education as the foundation of sustainable development was reaffirmed
at the Johannesburg Summit, as was the commitment embodied in
Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 of the Rio Summit, 1992. A decade later, at the
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World Summit on Sustainable Development, the Johannesburg Declaration

announced that world leaders were committed to build a humane,
equitable and caring global society cognizant of the need for human dignity
for all (UNESCO 2006). In the same year, 2002, the United Nations pro-
posed the Decade of ESD. The Decade can be seen as another attempt to get
the environment and development into the school curriculum across the
world.
Criticisms of sustainable development and ESD
Verbal felicity and practical logic
Sustainable development as a concept has its critics. Speaking at a con-

ference in 2000, the Guardians architecture correspondent Martin Pawley
criticized the Brundland definition, and another simpler version which
spoke of leaving the planet to the next generation in no worse state than
that in which the present generation found it, as embodying a breath-
takingly serious number of contradictions and flaws (Pawley 2000). He
added, What they gain in verbal felicity they lose in practical logic. Pawley
pointed out that both definitions were textbook examples of the political
fudge which combined opposing positions (sustainability and develop-
ment) by proposing a third (sustainable development). Another critic,
Sachs, argued that, sustainable development calls for the conservation of
development, not for the conservation of nature (1995: 343). This extract
from Our Common Future hints at another of the tensions in the term
sustainable development: What is needed is an era of new economic
growth growth that is forceful and at the same time socially and environ-
mentally sustainable (WCED 1987: 6). Easy to say but incomparably dif-
ficult to achieve. The Canadian environmental educator and philosopher
Bob Jickling (2000) related the contradictions inherent in sustainable
development to Orwells double think that is, ordinary citizens become
brainwashed into accepting contradictory meanings for a term. Sustain-
ability is so hard to pin down that its utility becomes questionable. Terms
such as sustainable development, Stables argues, are paradoxical com-
pound policy slogans (2001). This might not necessarily be a bad thing,
argue Scott and Gough (2003), as long as teachers can use the debate about
terms to educate students about the use of language in everyday life.
Education for . . .
Critics of Education for Sustainable Development have not been reticent in

their arguments. When Hopkins wrote that education should be able to
cope with determining and implanting these broad guiding principles [of
sustainability] at the heart of ESD [education for sustainable development]
(Hopkins 1998: 172), Jickling responded by arguing:
When highlighted in this way, most educators find such statements a
staggering misrepresentation of their task. Teachers understand that
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310 Justin Dillon
sustainable development, and even sustainability, are normative

concepts representing the views of only segments of our society. And,
teachers know that their job is primarily to teach students how to
think, not what to think.
(Jickling 2000: 469)
Jickling also expressed his concerns about the lack of educational philo-
sophical analysis in environmental education and the use of education as
a tool for the advancement of sustainable development: if education is
trying to get people to think for themselves then education for anything
is inconsistent and should be rejected (Jickling 1992: 7). So, although
there are many advocates of ESD, it has its critics. In the next section I will
examine what an education about or for sustainability might involve.
What should people learn and how could they be taught?
Despite continued concern about the environment, both local and global,
the low levels of public knowledge and understanding continue to worry
environmentalists. In a relatively recent study, only three in ten people in a
telephone survey in the USA recognized the term biodiversity and could
describe accurately what it meant (Belden et al. 2002) (On the positive side,
the figure in 1996 had been two in ten.) Education about the environment
is manifest in the curriculum in many countries. For example, in England,
Key Stage 3 pupils should be taught about ways in which living things and
the environment can be protected, and the importance of sustainable
development (QCA 2006).
Early ideas about what should be taught in ESD were relatively simplistic
and general. So, for example, the UK Sustainable Development Education
Panels (SDEP) 1998 report recommended that:
Schools [should] provide education for sustainable development, and
[should] be making progress at implementing policies to become
sustainable institutions.
Pupils [should] be competent to practice sustainability at the end of
compulsory schooling.
Initial and continuing school and pre-school teacher training [should]
integrate education for sustainable development.
UNESCO provides guidance on what ESD might look like, at least in
terms of overall learning outcomes. UNESCO says that ESD is about
learning to:
respect, value and preserve the achievements of the past
appreciate the wonders and the peoples of the Earth
live in a world where all people have sufficient food for a healthy and
productive life
assess, care for and restore the state of our planet
create and enjoy a better, safer, more just world
be caring citizens who exercise their rights and responsibilities locally,
nationally and globally.
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Over a decade ago, Fettis and Ramsden argued that one of the best edu-
cational experiences is to have students conduct short research projects on
topics directly relevant to or leading to sustainability (1995: 89). Sustain-
ability for them meant the:
beneficial use of resources by minimum intervention or cyclical

renewal to retain the status quo with the least practical waste of energy
and pollution levels which do not lead to the long term detriment of
the environment.
(Fettis and Ramsden 1995: 84)
which they argued could be a universal definition of the term. On a simi-

larly positive note, Rauch (2002) saw the environmental education and ESD
as providing opportunities for schools to become thematic breeding
grounds for innovation. In the UK, Huckle (2001) has suggested having
healthy schools for children as part of education for sustainability. Other
writers have identified a broad range of outcomes for teaching about issues
relating to sustainability beyond knowledge and understanding (see
Rickinson et al. (2004) for a comprehensive review of the effects of outdoor
learning).
One of the founding fathers of environmental education, Bill Stapp
(2000), who began the Global Rivers Environmental Education Net-
work (GREEN), saw watershed and rivers as linking different interests
and cultures together towards environmental problem solving. Hopkins
and McKeown (1999), outlining what they describe as key steps towards
sustainability, argued that students in programs that have been reoriented
will also learn to practice a sustainable lifestyle by gaining skills tailored to
the conditions of the community:
For example, in a community that relies on wood for fuel, pupils may
learn about sustainable harvesting, replanting and other silviculture
techniques. In an area of shrinking water supply, pupils may learn to
use new agricultural techniques and to plant crops that require less
water. In affluent communities, pupils may be taught media literacy
and awareness of the influence of advertisers in promoting a level of
consumption that leads to increased resource use.
(Hopkins and McKeown 1999: 256)
However, cautiously, they go on to note that:
Messages such as vaccinate your children, boil drinking water, do not

drive drunk, and do not take drugs are simple statements compared
to the complex range of environmental, economic, and social issues
that sustainable development encompasses. Success in sustainable
development education will therefore take much longer and be more
costly than simple-message public opinion campaigns.
(1999: 27)
Although they pointed out that a range of bodies including governments,

ministries of education, school districts are willing to adopt education for
sustainable development, they added that no successful working models
currently exist (1999: 27).
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312 Justin Dillon
In a later paper, Hopkins and McKeown (2001) describe innovative

curriculum development in Toronto schools in the 1990s. Pedagogic strat-
egies, such as residential fieldwork for all students and environmentally-
friendly practices, such as the examination of chemicals used in cleaning
schools, were instigated across a number of schools. Ironically, the
development was not sustained a change in the complexion of the local
government resulted in the projects abandonment.
Later attempts to describe possible pedagogical approaches mixed older
ideas of holism and interdisciplinarity with newer ideas such as participa-
tory decision making. So, for example, according to UNESCO, ESD will aim
to demonstrate the following features:
Interdisciplinary and holistic: learning for sustainable development

embedded in the whole curriculum, not as a separate subject.
Values-driven: it is critical that the assumed norms the shared values
and principles underpinning sustainable development are made
explicit so that that can be examined, debated, tested and applied.
Critical thinking and problem solving: leading to confidence in address-
ing the dilemmas and challenges of sustainable development.
Multi-method: word, art, drama, debate, experience . . . different
pedagogies which model the processes. Teaching that is geared simply to
passing on knowledge should be recast into an approach in which
teachers and learners work together to acquire knowledge and play a role
in shaping the environment of their educational institutions.
Participatory decision-making: learners participate in decisions on how
they are to learn.
Applicability: the learning experiences offered are integrated in day-to-
day personal and professional life.
Locally relevant: addressing local as well as global issues, and using the
language(s) which learners most commonly use. Concepts of sustainable
development must be carefully expressed in other languages languages
and cultures say things differently, and each language has creative ways
of expressing new concepts.
(UNESCO 2006)
In 2006, the DfES claimed that since 2003 it had pushed sustainable
development significantly higher up the education agenda (DfES 2006: 6).
It pointed to a series of significant achievements:
providing a richer and more enjoyable learning experience by

encouraging schools to take learning outside with the Education Outside
the Classroom Manifesto and Growing Schools;
improving pupils well-being with school transport and health
initiatives, such as Travelling to School: an action plan, and the Healthy
Living Blueprint;
ensuring pupils gain knowledge about people and life in other countries
through the international and citizenship work we have undertaken,
creating and developing the Global Gateway and each year holding a
successful International Education Week;
making the school infrastructure more sustainable through the BREEAM
[Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method]
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Schools environmental assessment method, which considers a wide

range of environmental factors that are affected by the construction and
operation of school buildings; and
building greater awareness of sustainable development in the higher and
further education sectors with the development and implementation of
the sustainable development strategies of the Higher Education Funding
Council for England and the Learning and Skills Council.
The Education Outside the Classroom Manifesto
In the light of the success of the Manifesto for Music, the Education
and Skills Select Committee recommended that the government should
publish an Education Outside the Classroom Manifesto. The manifesto
was announced by the DfES in 2005 and its draft vision states:
We believe every child and young person should experience the
world outside the classroom as an integral part of their learning and
development, complementing learning in the classroom. High quality
education outside the classroom can stimulate and inspire; foster
independence; aid personal and social development; and can often
motivate reluctant learners. These experiences should be stimulating,
safely managed and enjoyable, and contribute to meeting the needs of
every child.
(Teachernet 2006a)
The manifesto is an attempt to ensure that all pupils have reasonable access
to the outside environment. Opportunities to address sustainability
through learning outdoors are plentiful and the Growing Schools website
(Teachernet 2006b) provides a host of useful links.
Growing Schools
The Growing Schools programme aims to reconnect young people with

their environment, in both urban and rural settings, through the National
Curriculum (Teachernet 2006b). Within three years of its beginning,
more than 15,000 schools had registered their interest in the programme.
Growing Schools focuses on food, farming and the countryside and on
ensuring that pupils are given first-hand experience of the natural world
around them and that outdoor learning activities are integrated into
everyday teaching practices.
The Growing Schools website brings together a range of resources, pro-
jects and initiatives including the Eden Projects Growing for Life pro-
gramme, the National School Fruit Scheme and the Five-a-day Programme.
The Making the case section of the website describes research into learning
outdoors and discusses relevant education theories.
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314 Justin Dillon
Learning in out-of-school contexts
In recent years there has been growing interest in the opportunities avail-
able for learning out of school whether it be in residential centres, museums
or the school grounds (see, for example, Dillon et al. 2005). The curriculum
on offer at such centres tends to match the National Curriculum. How-
ever, the range of teaching approaches used goes beyond what is the norm
in schools. Minstead Study Centre in the New Forest is a well known
example of an innovative residential centre. The centre aims to provide
both environmental education and education for sustainable development
during its courses, which normally last five days (Dillon and Reid, in
press). The centres ethos is to promote respect for all living things and to
encourage children to work together:
Developing personal responsibility and nurturing positive attitudes
towards each other ranks high amongst the aims of the Centre. Such
diversity allows us to reach a wider audience. We feel it is through such
experiences that children are able to establish and understand their
connection, influence and responsibilities towards the people, plants
and animals of Planet Earth.
(Minstead Study Centre website: www.wildwoodweb.co.uk/)
Concluding comments
I have tried to show that we are still struggling to understand whether

education for sustainable development is more than a slogan and, if it is,
how might it be enacted in schools and beyond. Underlying the debates
about the validity of the terms sustainability and sustainable develop-
ment there are bigger, more philosophical issues to do with what is the
purpose of schooling what or who is education for? In the end, I have to
disagree with my Danish colleagues, Jensen and Schnack who, when
describing environmental activities carried out by school students, wrote:
it is not and cannot be the task of the school to solve the political
problems of society. Its task is not to improve the world with the help
of pupils activities. These activities must be evaluated on the basis of
their educational value and according to educational criteria [. . .] The
crucial factor must be what students learn from participating in such
activities . . .
(Jensen and Schnack 1997)
Education is about change and teachers are change agents. If you believe
that you can offer a value-free education, then I believe that you are mis-
taken. Whether education actually will make a difference to the publics
view of the environment or will help us to stop destroying the environ-
ment, is another question. But I believe that we need to consider what
contribution we are going to make to that goal in our lives as teachers.
Whether you agree with the Sustainable Development Education Panels
analysis:
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The term sustainable development is not well understood and is not

user-friendly. The real challenge is to make sustainable development
relevant to the experience of people from all backgrounds and to
engage them in making all aspects of their own lives and those of their
community more sustainable.
(SDEP 2000)
or not, there is clearly a long way to go in whichever direction we decide to
travel.
References
Belden, Russonello and Stewart (2002) Americans and Biodiversity: New Perspectives in
2002. Available at http://www.biodiversityproject.org/02toplines.PDF (accessed
on May 1, 2006).
Carson, R. (1999) Silent Spring. Originally published in 1962. Penguin: London.
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2006) Sustainable Development Action
Plan, Learning for the Future. London: HMSO.
Dillon, J. (2005) Silent Spring: Science, the environment and society, School Science
Review, 86(316): 11318.
Dillon, J., Morris, M., ODonnell, L. et al. (2005) Engaging and Learning with the
Outdoors The Final Report of the Outdoor Classroom in a Rural Context Action
Research Project. Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research.
Dillon, J. and Reid, A. (in press) Science, the environment and citizenship: teach-
ing values at Minstead Study Centre, in D. Corrigan, J. Dillon and R. Gunstone
(eds) The Re-emergence of Values in the Science Curriculum. Rotterdam: Sense
Publishers.
Dillon, J., Rickinson, M., Teamey, K. et al. (2006) The value of outdoor learning:
evidence from research in the UK and elsewhere, School Science Review, 87(320):
10711.
Dillon, J. and Teamey, K. (2002) Reconceptualising environmental education
taking account of reality, Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology
Education, 2(4): 46783.
Fettis, G.C. and Ramsden, M.J. (1995) Sustainability what is it and how should it
be taught? ENTRE 95 Proceedings, 8190.
Hart, P. and Nolan, K. (1999) A critical analysis of research in environmental
education, Studies in Science Education, 34: 169.
Hopkins, C. (1998) The content of education for sustainable development, in
M.J. Scoullos (ed.) Environment and Society: Education and Public Awareness
for Sustainability; Proceedings of the Thessaloniki International Conference. Paris:
Unesco.
Hopkins, C. and McKeown, R. (1999) Education for Sustainable Development, Forum
for Applied Research and Public Policy, 14(4): 258.
Hopkins, C. and McKeown, R. (2001) Education for sustainable development: past
experience, present action and future prospects, Educational Philosophy and Theory,
33(2): 23144.
Huckle, J. (2001) Primary education for sustainable development, Primary Practice,
29: 1319.
Jensen, B.B. and Schnack, K. (1997) The Action competence approach in environ-
mental education, Environmental Education Research, 3(2): 16378.
Jickling, B. (1992) Why I dont want my children to be educated for sustainable
development, Journal of Environmental Education, 23(4): 58.
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Jickling, B. (2000) Education for sustainability: A seductive idea, but is it enough for
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Jickling, B. (2001) Environmental thought, the language of sustainability, and digital
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11 July. Available at http://www.audacity.org/Resourcing%20the%20future.htm
(accessed on May 1, 2006).
Rauch, F. (2002) The potential of education for sustainable development for reform
in schools, Environmental Education Research, 8(1): 4351.
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Rickinson, M. (2001) Learners and learning in environmental education: a review of
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Rickinson, M., Dillon, J., Teamey, K., Morris, M., Choi, M.Y., Sanders, D. and
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Sustainable Development. Available at http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/
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Foster, J. (2001) Education as sustainability, Environmental Education Research, 7(2):

15365.
McKeown, R and Hopkins, C. (2003) EE ESD: defusing the worry, Environmental
Education Research, 9(1): 11728.
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Lucas, A.M. (1991) Environmental Education: what is it, for whom, for what purpose
and how, in S. Keiny and U. Zoller (eds) Conceptual Issues in Environmental
Education. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Sachs, W. (1995) Global ecology and the Shadow of development, in H. Huni and
K. Tato (eds) Deep Ecology for the Twenty-first Century. Boston and London:
Shambhala, 42844.
Scott, W. and Gough, S. (2003) Sustainable Development and Learning. Framing the
Issues. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Stables, A.W.G. (1996) Reading the environment as text: literary theory and
environmental education, Environmental Education Research, 2(2): 18995.
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25 Information and
communications
technologies
Ian Stevenson
Introduction
In 1998, the UK Government launched its ambitious National Grid for

Learning (NGfL), investing 700m in connecting schools via the NGfL, and
230m on training teachers and librarians in the use of Information and
Communications Technologies (ICT). It established the British Educational
Communication and Technology Agency (Becta) to oversee the Grid and
develop content for teaching and learning. The combined initiatives were
relaunched in 2003 as ICT in Schools, spending 510m in that one year
alone. A range of other ICT initiatives have been introduced including a
popular Laptops for Teachers scheme, Strategic Leadership in ICT for
managers, Curriculum Online to provide evaluated content, Regional
Broadband access for schools, and the Testbed Project in which schools in
three diverse geographical areas have been equipped to very high levels and
evaluated (Ofsted 2004). Large numbers of schools and colleges have intro-
duced ICT as some part of their approach to teaching and learning (DfES
2004). Recent reviews show that there is great progress in the introduction
of hardware such as computers, interactive boards, and other digital
devices, but much slower embedding of ICT in the day-to-day practices of
teachers and learners (Becta 2006).
Why is ICT so important in education that it warrants such a large
investment? Hawkridge (1990) identified four main reasons which are still
valid: ICT is a life skill since technology is an integral part of everyday life
(social); ICT is part of the working world (vocational); ICT changes the way
pupils are taught (pedagogic); and ICT changes the nature of schooling
(catalytic). Introducing ICT into education has, and continues to have, a
major impact on teachers and what they are expected to do (Preston 2004).
Developing both personal and professional skills in using ICT are now a key
part of initial teacher training, with the expectation that teachers will use
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Information and communications technologies 319
technology as an integral part of their practice (Stevenson and Hassell

1994).
This chapter presents four ways that ICT is commonly used as a support
for teaching; as a tutor; as a tool; and as an environment together with
some examples and evidence from research to show in what ways they are
effective. Learners uses of ICT outside the classroom and their implications
for learning are explored in the final part of the chapter.
ICT as support for teaching and learning
The most common use of ICT in education is to support teaching and

learning. This approach integrates ICT into existing educational practices,
ranging from teachers using presentation software with interactive white-
boards in face-to-face sessions, through to courses delivered completely
on-line, often taken at a distance. Choice and control of the technology are
determined by the needs of the curriculum, institutional policy and com-
mitments, and the discretion of teachers (Scrimshaw 2004). Also known as
Technologically Enhanced Learning, this broad approach usually takes the
form of blended or on-line learning.
Blended learning
Blended learning uses a variety of technologies as part of established edu-

cational practices in achieving the learning objectives of a fixed curriculum.
A range of on-line resources is used together with subject-specific and
generic applications (for example, word processors, spreadsheets, data-
bases) to help learners with particular curriculum topics. Degrees of
blending can happen with ICT being used in classroom work as well as
real-time chat and messaging (synchronous communication) or bulletin
and discussion boards (asynchronous communication) activities to support
face-to-face activities.
Snapshot 1 Nazi propaganda with Year 11 history class at a
Technology College
The activity began with revision of previous work on Hitler, which
consisted of two-and-a-half lessons on Nazi Germany, one lesson
looking at chronology and one lesson looking at Hitlers background.
In the first phase of this activity the teacher used an interactive white-
board to recap on the main points, and introduced a paper-based activ-
ity to sort a randomly ordered timeline. Learners worked individually
or in pairs on the task to highlight, summarize and classify, and
report back their results for recording on the interactive whiteboard.
Finally, the whiteboard was used to show propaganda posters, and the
group worked together in directing a student scribe to highlight areas
of impact on the posters. The teacher sign-posted key ideas, and later
there was a plenary question-and-answer session to consolidate the
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320 Ian Stevenson
activity. To follow up the session, there would be more analysis of

Hitlers propaganda methods with groups of students choosing one
method to research.
On-line learning
On-line learning covers a range of uses for communications technologies

such as email and conferencing, together with resource delivery and
assessment. Use is made of the Internet and other networks to provide
flexibility and personalization so that teaching and learning is not con-
strained by time or place. Learners can choose where, when and how they
learn, and teachers can make use of virtual spaces to engage with indi-
viduals or groups of learners either in real time or through discussion
boards. Associated with this approach are Virtual Learning Environments
(VLE), which combine content delivery and course management systems
such as electronic submission of work and assessment with synchronous
and asynchronous communication tools. Blogs, where teachers and learn-
ers can share their thoughts and ideas on-line, are being used to support
classroom activities in different ways. Communications technologies offer
excellent opportunities for MFL through pupils having email key pals,
making presentations or accessing appropriate web pages and news feeds
in their target languages.
Snapshot 2 Using a Virtual Learning Environment in a mixed
comprehensive
Mortwell School draws its pupil intake from a large area in a major city
with below the national average in socio-economic terms and a range
of ethnic minority backgrounds. There are at least 20 interactive
whiteboards installed in several departments in the school, and most
departments have access to 30 laptops. The school uses a VLE for
revision and exam practice covering the main subjects taught at Key
Stage 3 level, as well as most GCSE subjects. Pupils work on activities
in school and then continue at home using a password protected,
dial-in system, submitting their work either for automatic assessment
or for teachers to view and comment. The system keeps records of
pupils progress, and how often they log in. It is popular with both
pupils and parents, who can track progress together.
ICT and attainment
Starting with the first ImpaCT study (Watson et al. 1993), evidence has
accumulated to show how using ICT can positively affect attainment in, for
example, literacy and numeracy (Moseley and Higgins 1999). ImpaCT2
(Becta 2002) is the most recent large-scale study to examine the connection
between using ICT and attainment. Commissioned by the DfES, it evalu-
ated the gains associated with the introduction of the NGfL, and aimed
to identify the factors that contribute to raising attainment with ICT. It
took place between 1999 and 2002, involved 60 schools in England, and
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was organized into three strands. Strand One analysed the statistical
relationship between the effective implementation of ICT and standards
of performance in national tests and at GCSE. Strand Two examined
how pupils use ICT, particularly out of school, and what they gain from
this experience, while Strand Three explored the nature of teaching and
learning using ICT in a variety of settings, focusing on pupils, teachers
and managers.
Strand Ones approach was to measure attainment in terms of pupils
relative gains in their formal examination scores when compared with
those predicted for pupils with a similar profile but no ICT experience. The
gains were set against the amount of time spent using ICT, and showed a
variety of positive results across different Key Stages and subjects. There was
also variation in the outcomes which did not display a consistent pattern,
and raised a number of questions about the relationship between attain-
ment and ICT (Stevenson 2004).
More recently, a smaller study tried to access the impact of using
interactive whiteboards (IWB) on pupil attainment in Year 6 mathematics,
English and science (Higgins et al. 2005). By comparing Key Stage 2 test
results in mathematics and science with pupils of similar profile who had
not been taught using IWB, the research team concluded that there was
no consistent pattern. Although the IWB pilot schools showed a small but
statistically significant improvement in mathematics and science Key
Stage scores during the first year (2003), there was no difference in 2004.
Following this up with a more detailed analysis using a comparison group
of schools from each of the LEAs used in the study showed a similar
picture. Low-achieving pupils showed some improvement in English with
the overall impact being greatest on writing, but there was no difference in
the ways that boys and girls performed.
A recent subject-by-subject review of the relationship between ICT and
attainment concludes that there is a positive effect from specific uses of
ICT on pupils attainment in almost all the National Curriculum subjects
(Cox and Abbott 2004). The most substantial positive outcomes are in
mathematics, science and English at all Key Stages. However, there is a
strong relationship between the ways in which ICT has been used and the
resulting attainment outcomes, suggesting that the crucial components in
the use of ICT within education are teachers, and the degree to which ICT is
embedded in their approaches to teaching and learning.
ICT as tutor
Using computers as teaching machines is an idea that has been around for
over 40 years. Based on ideas from behaviourism and artificial intelligence
research, these tutorial applications aim to adapt to a learners development
by matching their responses to an ideal learner model. At their heart is a
very detailed breakdown of a specific knowledge domain which forms
the basis for a range of tutoring strategies selected on the basis of learners
responses to questions.
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322 Ian Stevenson
Integrated learning systems (ILS) are the most common form of this
approach to an adaptive testing model found in schools and colleges
(Underwood and Brown 1997). They consist of three main elements:
curriculum content organized according to a specific model of the
knowledge to be learnt, together with a range of tutorial, practice and
assessment modules based on that domain model
a pupil recording system that maintains information on pupils levels of
achievement against the ideal learner model
a management system which interprets pupils responses in relation
to an ideal learner model, automatically updates records based on
individual responses, selects curriculum pathways based on learners
responses, and constructs an appropriate sequencing of learning
modules.
The systems are interactive and give feedback to pupils and teachers, with
the direction and selection of learning determined by the management
system, and the pace through the modules controlled by the learner.
Figure 25.1 shows the interactions between these elements, and is the basis
for most adaptive testing approaches.
Figure 25.1 Structure of an integrated learning system. The management system

constructs pathways using the domain model by comparing learners responses to an
ideal learner model.
Thinking of the computer as a tutor is highly attractive, but current

implementations lack the intelligence of human teachers to select and
adopt strategies in real time according to specific needs of individuals. Their
main use is for developing skills in mathematics, science and languages,
and they are often used with pupils with special needs.
Snapshot 3 Revising times tables with a lower band Year 7 in a mixed
ability comprehensive
The lesson starter was an oral revision, solving problems using the
6-times table in whole group with extensions to the 7 and 8-times
tables. For the main section of the lesson groups of six pupils went to a
computer suite with a teaching assistant to use an ILS, with the pupils
each having their own work project. Most pupils were at a similar level,
and the remainder of the class worked on problems using addition,
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subtraction and spatial reasoning. Five groups had 15 minutes using

the computers, and the computer-generated work allowed individual
pupils to access interactive activities, with support and feedback.
Assessment was available automatically for pupils and teacher, to help
planning and provide a sense of progression. As a plenary, the class
reviewed their tables.
Between 1994 and 1998 there were three studies on the impact of ILS on
pupils attainment in secondary schools (Becta 1998). Reviewing the studies
Wood et al. (1999) concluded that outcomes ranged from statistically
significant, positive and educationally worthwhile effects for the first
study, through relatively neutral findings in the second study, to the third
study in which it was difficult to find anything but an apparently negative
effect on achievement (p. 91). Although the three parts of the evaluation
used different methods, a large study undertaken in the third part of the
evaluation used a similar approach to ImpaCT2 Strand One. It compared
the examination scores of pupils who had used ILS for varying amounts of
time with students of a similar academic and socio-economic profile, but
with no ILS experience. The ILS study showed that the gains were negative
across subject and age range.
Following up these studies by classroom observations, Wood et al. (1999)
point to the importance of considering the relationship between an ICT
system, learners and teachers, and by implication its designers (Squires and
McDougal 1994). ILS are designed to be used by individuals in well-defined
circumstances. By contrast, Wood et al. found that ILS were used in a variety
of ways, including some not recommended by the designers. They found
that teachers training and attitudes to ICT played vital roles in an ILSs
effectiveness, and they also noted a considerable mismatch between the
format of assessment in ILS (mainly multiple choice) and those found in
public examinations. Wood et al. (1999) concluded that an ILSs impact on
pupil learning needed to be examined in the context of how the technology
was integrated into actual classroom practices over an extended period of
time.
ICT as problem-solving tool
Describing ICT as a tool is one of the most common ways of talking and
thinking about digital technology in everyday life, suggesting both useful-
ness and availability. Two senses of this metaphor are usually associated
with ICT. On one hand, ICT is a neutral tool (Somekh 1997) rather like a
pencil or pen, simply available to do a range of jobs and chosen according
to what has to be achieved a tool to work with. On the other hand, ICT
is a mindtool (Jonassen 2006) that amplifies and extends thinking and
problem solving a tool to think with.
The English and Welsh ICT National Curriculum is based on the idea of
digital technologies as problem-solving tools, structured by the System Life
Cycle, illustrated in Figure 25.2.
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324 Ian Stevenson
Figure 25.2 System Life Cycle (DfES 2006)
The System Life Cycle has the following stages:

analysis of a problem
designing a solution
implementing the solution in a practical situation
testing to check that the solution works
evaluating the outcomes in light of the original problem.
In the English and Welsh ICT National Curriculum, fitness for purpose is
the main criterion for evaluating ICT-based solutions, and learners have to
access their own solution by comparing what they intended with what they
achieved in practice. This process helps learners to be self-critical and
enables them to access other peoples solutions, although they do not have
a choice, by and large, about which problems they should solve.
ICT-based modelling illustrates the instrumental and cognitive aspects
of ICT as tool both as part of a subject and across the curriculum.
Mathematics and science are the most obvious subjects where ICT-based
modelling can be used since they both rely heavily on making or using
models for their content. Learners can explore existing models to develop
their understand of mathematical or scientific ideas by asking what if
questions, and extending models by adding new elements in the light
of their experience. By building and using their own ICT-based models,
learners can express their understanding of, for example, mathematical and
scientific concepts (Bliss 1994). Besides design and technology other sub-
jects using ICT-based modelling include geography and business studies,
and there are opportunities for cross-curricular work, often around topics or
themes.
Snapshot 4 Year 9 mixed-ability pupils working on the topic of
insulation
The classroom was laid out with benches/tables around the room for
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group work, with half of the class working on experiments and

the other half building computer models, before changing over.
Experimental work involved investigating how heated water lost its
heat with different forms of insulation around its container. Using
Model Builder, a dynamic modelling application, pupils worked in
groups of two or three to build up a model of the inputs (heat gains)
and outputs (heat losses) to the heat balance of a house. Once they
were happy with the model, they had to find out what happened to the
heat balance over time and then investigate how much effect altering
the variables would have. The pupils had been introduced to the
software prior to the session, and were able to complete the practical
experiment without much help. The class teacher, with some support
from another teacher during the lesson, spent most of the time helping
those on the computer. Support was of two types: helping with the use
of the program; and posing questions to make the pupils think about
the content of their model. The pupils wrote up both the experiment
and the computer-based work using word processing facilities, and
stored the report and models in their personal work area on the
network.
GCSE ICT exam results are one of the main ways of assessing the out-
comes of this approach. Using the System Design Cycle is both an integral
part of ICT as a curriculum subject and its assessment criteria. Ofsted (2004)
report that the greatest improvements in ICT capability is due to it being
taught and assessed as a subject within the National Curriculum. A recent
development in assessing ICT as a problem-solving tool is the Key Stage 3
on-screen tests that are being piloted for introduction in 2008 (QCA 2006b).
The tests are set and assessed within a closed and secure on-screen system
that makes use of a specially developed suite of generic applications for
pupils to use. The applications are similar to those which pupils normally
use, but focus on functionality that pupils would be expected to know: (for
example, word processor, spreadsheet, email, file manager, web browser,
database, presentation and control). Unlike the first approach above but
in common with the second, the tests make ICT an integral part of the
assessment process. However, unlike both the first and second approaches
(that is, as a support for teaching and as a tutor), ICT is also an integral part
of the pupils learning of the subject.
ICT as environment
A central claim for ICT is that it allows learners to follow their own inter-
ests and build their own understandings. Inspired by Piagetian views of
learning as an active, adaptive and constructive process, this use draws on
the idea of ICT as a collection of tools and resources that can be used
flexibly by learners, either on their own or with others. Simulations,
games, web browsing and searching, and programming languages all
place control with learners, who decide how and what they choose to focus
on.
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326 Ian Stevenson
A classic example of this approach is Paperts Turtle Geometry which

aimed at enabling young children to use powerful computers, using the
turtle as an object to think with (Papert 1980). He introduced the idea of a
microworld as a simplified slice of reality which could be actively explored,
extended or which learners could build for themselves. More recently he
has identified six dimensions that draw out the sense in which a micro-
world contains a model of a knowledge domain, a set of tools for learning,
and a theory of cognitive development (Papert 2002).
Qualitative research into ICT as an environment and its relationship to
conceptual and personal development has been going on for 25 years.
As Cox and Abbott (2004) point out in their review, there is substantial
evidence from small, focused studies which indicates that specific uses of
ICT aid pupils learning. These include the use of simulations and
modelling in science and mathematics, and the use of word processing
in English. Personal factors such the development of self-confidence,
motivation, autonomy and collaboration are also linked to this use of
ICT (Crook 1994). However, these are areas of attainment that are not
recognized by formal assessment, but have been identified as ones to which
ICT makes a contribution.
Snapshot 5 Designing personal databases with Year 11 in a mixed-

ability PSHE group
As part of a PSHE programme, the group was introduced to pro-
gramming using MITSI, a form of the programming language Prolog.
A database in Prolog consists of facts about a topic, and a set of rules for
generating new facts from those given. Starting with a prepared data-
base based on family relationships in a well known BBC soap, the
group extended it by adding more characters as facts or creating new
relationships, such who was dating, who was cheating on who, and who
was pregnant. Once the students discovered that they could add any-
thing (within reason), they became very creative, and followed their
own interests with the soap. The next task was to make a database
on a topic of the pupils own choosing. Phil was not very talkative
and found programming quite difficult, but asked if he could create a
database about films which were his real interest. He turned up to the
next session with his notebook and proceeded to enter information
with great intensity, and spent several hours of his own time working
on the database. When it came to presentations, Phil demonstrated
his, by now, sophisticated and large database in a confident and articu-
late way, having mastered a number of advanced programming
techniques.
Two difficulties exist in evaluating attainment based on this approach

to using ICT. First, it can lead to learners developing knowledge, under-
standings and skills in areas that are not covered by the school curriculum.
Very early on in the development of ICT there was a debate about the
relevance of this approach to learning, in a period when there was a move
away from so-called child-centred strategies towards teacher-centred and
whole-class approaches. As a result seeing ICT as an environment in the
sense being used here became unfashionable and it disappeared from
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classrooms (Noss and Hoyles 1996). With the Governments strategy

document Harnessing Technology; Transforming Learning and Childrens
Services (DfES 2005), there is a swing back to learner-centred approaches
in ICT. A second issue is the relationship between ICT and formats of
assessment since the school curriculum is predominantly based around
paper and pencil technologies, which do not fit easily with digital
media. A fundamental separation of the medium of learning in this
case ICT from the methods of assessment (for example, handwritten sit-
down exams) means that the role of digital technology becomes ambigu-
ous. One possible solution is a greater use of e-portfolios in which learners
can collect, manage and share their work in a digital form, and ICT becomes
an integral part of both learning and assessment (QCA 2006a; Ridgeway
2004). E-portfolios are currently being piloted, and reflect a commitment
to using the flexibility that ICT offers in fostering personalization and
inclusion.
ICT in the home
An emerging theme since 1998 is the recognition that learners have a rich
experience of ICT outside of classrooms and schools, which has an impact
on their work and attainment. Significant factors include access to ICT at
home, playing games, use of mobile technologies and person-to-person
contact including chat, messaging and music exchange. Childrens and
young adults experiences of ICT in the home are varied both in terms
of types and extent. Several factors are present in the domestic uses of
computers, which relate to childrens education, parental needs and
entertainment. Increased Internet access and use, together with more
sophisticated equipment than is found in school settings, lead to children
mixing educational activities with entertainment (Becta 2002; Valentine
et al. 2005). The ScreenPlay Project (Sutherland et al. 2000) identified specific
differences between school and home, which are summarized in Table 25.1
taken from the final report (Furlong et al. 2000).
Table 25.1 Differences between home and school uses of ICT (Screenplay Project,
Furlong et al. 2000)
At home At school
Young person chooses activity Teacher chooses activity

Time for exploration Insufcient time for exploration
Learning is incidental Learning is the purpose
Expertise is celebrated Expertise not recognized/rejected
Extensive social and artefactual resources Limited resources
Depth model Breadth model
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328 Ian Stevenson
They conclude that, in terms of control and use of resources, home use
can lead to deep learning. If this is the case, then disjunction between
home and school experiences seems to suggest that they do not interact,
and may even be antithetical. However, the increase in confidence,
autonomy and motivation with digital technology which may emerge
through this personal use does have some influence on childrens activities
in classroom.
Game playing, far from being an activity undertaken by lone males,
is actually the focus for a range of social interactions. With the convergence
of digital, print and communications media, communities form around
games and gaming, with their own social structures. Expertise in specific
games confers status and power on individuals who induct and support
new members of groups that coalesce around gaming activities (Williamson
and Facer 2003). Developing expertise in playing games and the associated
uses of technology has the potential for influencing attainment, albeit in
subtle and diverse ways. Attempts to harness this experience of game
playing for educational purposes is an important contemporary area of
investigation, particularly with commercial simulations such as SimCity,
Civilisation and The Sims (MacFarlane et al. 2002; Sefton-Green 2004).
Sharing music also has a number of important social facets. Ones status is
expressed through the amount of hard-drive space or bandwidth that one
makes available for others to share music. Working on the principle of a gift
economy, trust and status are built through demonstrations of generosity
or citizenship by sharing music files freely (Ebare 2004).
Over the past few years there has been a rise in the use of and access to
mobile phones, chat and email, suggesting that children are making greater
use of the communications possibilities offered by digital technologies.
Recent work by Ito (2003) explores how mobile technologies are used by
Japanese teenagers to subvert adult controls, while de Zengotita (2005)
focuses on their role in mediating adolescent identity. A number of projects
have been set up to try and use the mobile technologies to include young
adults who are disengaged with formal education. More worrying for for-
mal education is the uncritical access to a range of on-line sites and
resources, which conflict with the formal curriculum and lie outside of
adult control.
Concluding comments
How far the current ways of using ICT in schools matches the supposed
rationales for its use is an open question. Although the principal use of
ICT is currently to support existing forms of teaching, it will be a long time
before it can be used to replace teachers, which is how Hawkridges catalytic
rationale is sometimes interpreted. What the research on teachers integra-
tion of ICT into teaching and learning does indicate is that this is a process
of adapting and reconfiguring technology, designed mainly for non-
educational purposes, to suit a non-digital curriculum (Squires 1999; Cox
and Webb 2004). Learners need to be given the opportunities that ICT
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offers to work in ways that suit them, and as the research on out-of-school
ICT uses indicate, they are already highly sophisticated users of digital
technologies. Digital technologies are a permanent feature of our lives, and
will play an increasingly significant role in education. ICT provides a
lens on current educational practices, and prompts us to ask whether the
knowledge, understanding and skills that are being developed and assessed
by the present pencil curriculum are appropriate for a digitally mediated
21st century world? Whatever the answer to this question, it promises to be
an interesting journey.
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for DfES. Coventry: Becta. Available at http://www.becta.org.uk/research/

research.cfm?section=1&id=3119.
Stevenson, I.J. and Hassell, D. (1994) Modelling and teacher change, in H. Mellar,
J. Bliss, R. Boohan and C. Tompsett (eds) Learning with Artificial Worlds: Computer-
Based Modelling in the Curriculum. London: The Falmer Press.
Sutherland, R., Facer, K., Furlong, R. and Furlong, J. (2000) A new environment for
education? The computer in the home, Computers and Education, 34: 195212.
Underwood, J.D.M. and Brown, J. (eds) (1997) Integrated Learning Systems: Potential
into Practice. Oxford: Heinemann.
Valentine, G., Marsh, J. and Pattie, C. (2005) Children and Young Peoples Home Use of
ICT for Educational Purposes: The Impact on Attainment at Key Stages 14. Research
Report RR672. London: Department for Education and Skills. Available at
www.dfespublications.gov.uk.
Watson, D., Cox, M. and Johnson, D. (1993). Impact: The Report. An Evaluation of the
Impact of Information Technology on Childrens Achievements in Primary and Secondary
Schools. London: DfES and Kings College London.
Williamson, B. and Facer, K. (2003) More Than Just A Game: The Implications
For Schools Of Childrens Computer Games Communities. NESTA Futurelab. Bristol:
NESTA Futurelab. Available at http://www.nestafuturelab.org/research/draft/
02draft01.htm.
Wood, D., Underwood, J. and Avis, P. (1999) Integrated systems in the classroom,
Computers and Education, 33: 91108.
de Zengotita, T. (2005), Mediated: How The Media Shapes Your World And The Way You
Live In It. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Useful websites
British Educational Communication and Technology Agency www.becta.org.uk

Department for Education and Skills Standards www.standards.dfes.gov.uk
Office for Standards in Education www.ofsted.gov.uk
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority www.qca.org.uk
National Curriculum on-line www.nc.uk.net
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26 1419 education and the

great divide
Alex Manning
Introduction
The intention of this chapter is to explore the specific issues related to

education for 1419-year-olds in the UK. Historically, ideas about
educational provision have changed and evolved, as has been highlighted
in previous chapters. However, arguably none have been in such a state
of flux as those in 1419 education. The courses students follow and the
exams they sit have changed and will continue to change. In fact, the only
guarantee is that the age range is static. The 1419 education you received is
highly unlikely to be the same as you will be teaching now and it is similarly
doubtful that it will remain unchanged throughout your time in the
profession.
A historical perspective
Prior to 1944, the education system was somewhat makeshift, in fact the
concept of secondary education was not suggested until 1926.
Primary education should be regarded as ending at about the age of

11+. At that age a second stage, which for the moment may be given
the colourless name post-primary should begin; and this stage which,
for many pupils would end at 16+, for some at 18 or 19, but for the
majority at 14+ or 15+, should be envisaged so far as possible as a single
whole.
(The Hadow Report 1926)
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1419 education and the great divide 333
A range of sponsors supported different schools, education was not

available for all and, since it was a drain on financial resources, secondary
education remained a luxury, mostly for the middle classes. Very few
working-class children received a formal education beyond the age of 12.
However, in 1944, the tripartite system was introduced, comprising of
grammar, technical and secondary modern schools. The three tiers of
school were state run and the intention was to assign students to one of the
three school types which were deemed to best suit them and their needs.
The decision as to which school children were sent was based on the results
of the 11-plus examination.
The tiers can be thought of as a pyramid (though this representation was
not publicized), with grammar schools at the top and secondary moderns
at the bottom, in terms of prestige. Grammar schools catered for the top
twenty per cent of the top ability age range (Gill and Johnson, 2001: 274).
Owing to limited funding, there were very few technical schools and, con-
sequently, about 70 per cent of the school population was consigned to
secondary modern schools. Sanderson (1994) provides a detailed overview
of technical schools, and their decline, for most of the twentieth century,
while Taylor (1963) offers a comprehensive account of the secondary
modern school.
The Labour Party had been in favour of the comprehensive system since
the late 1950s and after gradual implementation, the tripartite system
was replaced with the comprehensive school system. Approximately 164
grammar schools still remain. Although specialist schools, city academies
and city technology colleges have been introduced over the years, they
can be seen as developments of the comprehensive ideal rather than a
full-blooded return to selection for all.
In terms of changes in the 1419 setting more specifically, from the
late 1960s onwards, this phase has been characterized by almost constant
restructuring and reforming. Wright and Oancea (2005) present A
Chronology of policies from 1976 to the present day for the Nuffield 1419
Review. They themselves claim to have only considered the key proposals,
and may not reflect the complexity of some documents and programmes
(Wright and Oancea 2005: 1). Despite this, in tabular form only, they
manage to fill more than 40 pages of their review with policies which have
impacted on 1419 education.
Both the academic and vocational pathways have experienced a series of
qualification reforms. In the academic route, there has been the Certificate
of Secondary Education (CSE), and the General Certificate of Education
(GCE) Ordinary and Advanced level. Whilst A levels currently remain,
albeit with the new AS/A2 separation, the CSE and O level were replaced
by the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). New vocational
courses have also been introduced.
Gill and Johnson (2001) highlight the relative success of the Technical
and Vocational Education Initiative (TVEI), in providing money for schools
to design and implement a heavily technologically orientated curriculum
for 1416-year-old pupils (Gill and Johnson 2001: 275). Vocational qualifi-
cations organized by the Business and Technology Education Council
(BTEC) and City and Guilds courses were introduced in many sixth
forms but were very specific: what schools needed was something more
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334 Alex Manning
generalized (Gill and Johnson 2001: 276). Given the wide array of courses
available, the National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) was
set up to provide uniformity within vocational education but also to
address the divide between vocational and academic education (Gill and
Johnson 2001). This was a steep challenge, hence the development of the
National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) and General National Vocational
Qualification (GNVQ). These new vocational qualifications had nominal
equivalence to the established academic qualifications. An advanced GNVQ
being equivalent to two GCE A levels; an intermediate GNVQ, four GCSEs
grade AC. NVQs had five levels, level 2 (craft) can be compared with
intermediate GNVQ and level 3 (technician supervisor) with advanced
GNVQ (Smithers and Robinson 1993).
It should be noted, however, that any equivalence here between NVQs,

GNVQs and academic qualifications can only be regarded as a claim
or an assertion which has yet to be substantiated. NVQs are not
normally regarded as being equivalent to GCSE or A level by colleges
and universities, and GNVQs have still to be empirically tested and
evaluated.
(Hyland 1994: 8)
The account above shows how vocational education has evolved; all
these initiatives have been in response to the dissolution of the technical
school. However, such courses have become heavily school-based. This has
become known as weakly vocational; vocational learning in school is very
different from that in the workplace with respect to such resources as staff
and equipment. Stanton (2004) describes weak vocational learning as one
end of the spectrum because although:
it raises awareness of the world of work, and uses examples taken from
it, it does not necessarily require staff with experience of the relevant
sector, or equipment that is up to modern industrial or commercial
standards.
(Stanton 2004: 3)
Conversely, the strong vocational learning is situated at the opposite

end of spectrum:
Vocational education that justifies the description of being strongly

vocational requires staff who not only have up-to-date experience
of the relevant vocational sector, but the ability themselves to perform
to modern occupational standards. The facilities in the form of such
things as motor vehicle workshops, training restaurants and in-college
beauty salons need to be of industrial standard.
(Stanton 2004: 4)
Apprenticeships should be mentioned here as an example of an attempt

at strong vocational learning: Apprenticeships of the past were demand
rather than supply-led. Employers decided when and if they needed
apprentices (Fuller and Unwin 2003: 9). Young people were trained in the
workplace and usually gained employment in their chosen profession.
However:
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in 1994, the then Conservative Government introduced the Modern

Apprenticeship for 1624-year-olds as an attempt to increase the stock
of young people trained to intermediate (or technician) level.
Apprenticeship numbers had been declining since the mid-1960s.
(Stanton 2004: 6)
The adjective modern indicated these apprenticeships were unlike those
of the past; they covered a wider range of occupations. Modern Apprentice-
ships were intended to improve the education offered by youth training
schemes: many were treated as cheap labour, did not achieve any qualifica-
tions, and were sacked as soon as their traineeship ended (Stanton 2004: 7).
To achieve this goal, responsibilities for the new scheme were transferred
from the government to National Training Organizations (NTOs). There are
a number of issues which have arisen; there are huge variations in pay,
length of training, provision of training and qualifications offered. Fuller
and Unwin (2003) assert that the employers are broadly accountable for the
limited success of the scheme, with their lack of experience, low skill
requirement and inadequate sense of ownership of the Modern Apprentice
routes.
The issues
Constant change in the 1419 setting, particularly in the area of vocational-

ism, has resulted in a number of key issues, discussed below.
Definitions
As was mentioned above, the tripartite system ultimately became a two-tier

system. We now talk of academic and vocational education. However,
defining these terms is problematic. Pring (in press) points out that Rogets
Thesaurus associates academic with irrelevant and the Oxford English
Dictionary adds cold and unpractical.
What school would be proud of its academic reputation where that
means it produces lots of pupils who are unpractical, cold and merely
logical.
(Pring in press)
Pring notes that vocational can mean answering a call or related to a
particular job or career. Pring goes on to suggest that these definitions
are weak and therefore unhelpful and confusing as Law is regarded as an
academic subject and yet it is clearly geared to the preparation of Lawyers
(Pring in press). Pring continues by looking at the level of abstraction and
intention associated with each term. However, we need to establish an
understanding in order to move on. Academic education is mostly con-
cerned with acquisition of theoretical knowledge in certain subjects while
vocational education is mainly concerned with preparing an individual for
work and concentrates on practical concerns.
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336 Alex Manning
Divisions
In defining the terms academic and vocational we have made them dis-
tinct, however, the distinction within education is much more divisive.
In the UK high quality learning and its associated benefits are best
ensured through the types of what is commonly termed as formal
academic education. What is termed as vocational education comes
a poor second and in some cases shares third place with those who
appear to have benefited little from the many millions that are put into
the provision of formal educational opportunities of any kind.
(Halliday in press)
It is commonly perceived that vocational courses have become less
desirable as the years have gone by:
it is clear that the A-Level route is the preferred and most sought after
route by large numbers of students. Few middle or aspirant middle-
class parents will be satisfied with any other routes.
(Tomlinson 1997: 6)
Hayward (2004) explores the decline of vocational learning particularly
in the work-based setting. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, there was a rapid
increase in participation rates in 1619 education and training, but over
the past decade these rates have remained virtually constant. However, as
Hayward points out, participation rates are highest for 16-year-olds, and
they decrease as the age of the participants increases. He describes this as
a progressive loss of learners between the ages of 16 and 19 resulting in a
medium participation system with a high rate of attrition (Hayward 2004:
6). This change in participation has the consequence that, as the size of
the age cohort declined, institutions could not afford to be as selective if
they were to maintain their student numbers and the associated levels of
funding (Hayward 2004: 8). A greater proportion of young people now
choose to stay in full time education rather than follow work-based training
routes. Hayward (2004: 16) believes schools offer weak vocational learning
which serves its clients and the economy poorly.
Aims, values and purpose
Pring (1995) claims that, all too often, we discuss economic aims rather
than educational values; for example, our need for an educated workforce,
in order to compete with economic rivals. He suggests it is somewhat short-
sighted to educate to our current needs as this does not take into account
possible future changes in our market, and it also restricts the number who
are educated to a particular level. In an earlier work, Pring (1995) discusses a
hierarchy of values that exist within the educational setting; for some it is
the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and the training of useful know
how for others (Pring 1995: 134). He prompts the questions: Why are some
thought to be more educated than others? Why is an often narrow scope
associated with intellectual excellence while a broader landscape is not seen
to afford the development of the intellect?
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Fragmentation
Teachers views of 1419 education, as Sally Tomlinson (1997) points out,

have rarely been sought despite it being those professionals who teach and
assess within the system. Tomlinson asked teachers about curriculum con-
tent, assessment and organization in the 1419 setting. They reported being
unhappy with the divide between academic and vocational education and
reported they would prefer a more unified system:
By and large the teachers were not in favour of dividing pupils up into
those who can do academic work and those suited to the vocational
although they admit that the divide had such a strong tradition in
English schooling that it is difficult to overcome.
Having considered some of the enduring tensions in 1419 education
provision in England, I now wish to look at the current position and at
where new policy proposals might be taking us. I shall consider the Nuffield
Review of 1419 Education, and the independent information which has
been gleaned through the review. Additionally I will look at The Tomlinson
Report, which was commissioned by the government, and at some of the
papers published after the report was made public.
The Nufeld review of 1419 education and training
The Nuffield Foundation commissioned a three-year review of 1419 educa-

tion and training. The review began in October 2003 and was intended
to be independent and comprehensive, providing evidence-based recom-
mendations for policy and practice. In the first year alone, 23 papers
were commissioned covering the background to the 1419 area. These
and many other useful resources can be found on the reviews website
(www.nuffield1419review.org.uk). The reviews premise was that:
there is a need to think afresh about education and training and
about how it is organised to determine what would be appropriate and
beneficial both for the young people themselves and for the economic
and social world they are entering.
(Hayward et al. 2004: 18)
The review draws attention to a number of areas mentioned above,
such as participation rates and the polarization between vocational and
academic education. However, the review refers to other issues. The first is
that young peoples decisions, and the factors influencing them, are not
only complex but also poorly understood, particularly those related to
the disengaged (that is, disaffected young people) (but see Ball et al. 2000).
The second is that the quality of work-based and work-related learning is
variable. Thirdly, partnerships between learning agencies are fragmented
due to their competitive ethos; the partnerships need to be more coherent
and the role and responsibility of employers need to be more evident in the
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338 Alex Manning
1419 debate. As the review states, there is too much discontinuity of

policy and too many abortive attempts to reform qualifications (Nuffield
2004: 54). The review notes that relevant statistical evidence is patchy and
it is therefore difficult to see generalized patterns.
In the light of these initial findings, key questions were set to focus the
next year of the review teams work. The analysis and findings published in
2005 fit into three strands; aims, learning and curriculum; understanding
the dynamics of the system; and the institutional dimension.
Given that the directorate of the review includes a number academics
quoted in this chapter, including Richard Pring, Geoff Hayward and Ewart
Keep, it is hardly surprising that their views and agendas feature in the
review. One point made in the review was the necessity to involve
the learners in decisions about this crucial phase and their teachers in the
development of the curriculum. The review recognized that pedagogy
needs to change; curriculum development alone is pointless (Hayward
et al. 2005: 52). The review also comments that the assessment driven
system is impacting on worthwhile learning. The new diplomas, which
we shall consider later, are discussed in relation to the haste with which
they have been introduced. Incentives were suggested to address the par-
ticipation rates. Finally, the point was made that the effect of piecemeal
policies is short-sighted and fails to learn from previous legislation.
The Nuffield Foundation independent review identified key issues in the
1419 debate. What is difficult to understand is why policies are being
changed by government at such a rate rendering it impossible for the
findings of the review to inform policy. Keep (in press) discusses the central
control role of government:
The resulting shift has been characterized by a process of delocaliza-
tion, centralization and nationalization, whereby the English educa-
tion system moved over a period of 15 years from being the least to the
most centrally-controlled system in the world.
(Keep, in press)
Recent government policies and reports
In October 2004, the Working Group on 1419 Reform published its

final report (The Tomlinson Report), chaired by Mike Tomlinson. The
working group was set up by ministers to advise on the reform of curric-
ulum and assessment arrangements for 1419-year-olds. Tomlinson stated
from the outset that:
it is our view that the status quo is not an option. Nor do we believe
further piecemeal changes are desirable. Too many young people leave
education lacking basic and personal skills; our vocational provision is
too fragmented.
(Working Group on 1419 Reform 2004: 1)
The recommendations of the lengthy report refer to a new framework of
core and main learning. Core learning would include the necessary
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basic generic skills and it should include an extended project; main

learning would be selected by the learners. The report also proposed that
programmes should be certified by diplomas available at the first four levels
of the National Qualifications Framework (Working Group on 1419
Reform 2004: 6) Therefore successful completion of a programme at a given
level should lead to the award of a diploma recognising achievement across
the whole programme (Working Group on 1419 Reform 2004: 7). The
intention of the diploma framework was to be transparent, easily under-
stood and to improve vocational provision.
Ministers, having received the detailed advice they requested, then
responded with the 1419 Education and Skills White Paper, in a matter of
months, in February 2005. On the surface it would seem that many of the
working groups suggestions had been adopted, with slight tinkering
with respect to numbers of available levels and lines; however, closer con-
sideration revealed a different story. The proposals in the White Paper are
less student-centred and the framework for qualifications is less unified
than anticipated. Hodgson and Spours (2005) explore this lack of cohesion
in policy development. Their main criticism is the need for a more unified
approach to the 1419 phase, as is the case in much of the reform in other
European countries. They believe unification in vocational qualifications
across the European Union will bring to an end a political era of upper
secondary education dominated by conservative ideology and to open up
a new and progressive era of system expansion based on inclusion and
collaboration (Hodgson and Spours 2005: 3). They discuss how the policy
process is affected by the political space. The opened up political space
following the Tomlinson Report was closed down by the upcoming general
election and changes of key ministers, with a:
White Paper Drafted behind closed doors [. . .] the 1419 White Paper
with its political compromises reminds us of the temporary nature
of political space in the English system and the limits of government
radicalisation of policy.
(Hodgson and Spours 2005: 6)
Let us finally turn our attention to the implementation of the White
Paper (DfEE 2005a) and to where 1419 education might be heading. An
Implementation Plan was presented in December 2005 (DfEE 2005b), and
is currently (at the time of writing) going through Parliament as a Bill. In
line with recommendations from the Tomlinson report, implementation
will be carried out over ten years. Fundamentally, there will be two types of
diplomas; general and specialized. The general diploma will be awarded
to those achieving five A*C grade GCSEs, including English and maths,
and specialized diplomas will be employer-designed. There will also be a
functional skills qualification to be incorporated into specialized dip-
lomas. There will be 14 specialized diplomas, developed by Diploma Devel-
opment Partnerships (DDPs) and led by the relevant Skills Sector Councils
(SSCs). The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) will set the
standards and accredit the diplomas. The first five specialized diplomas will
be ready for teaching in 2008, the next five in 2009 and the final four in
2010. The underlying aim is to raise the participation rate of 17-year-olds
from 75 per cent to 90 per cent by 2015.
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340 Alex Manning
Keep (2005) highlights some key absences in 1419 policy debates, in line
with those of Fuller and Unwin (2003), with regard to employers and the
labour market. Keep comments that previously employers have proved
unwilling or unable (perhaps sometimes both) to deliver the goods (Keep
2005: 536). Keep relates his ideas to the new diplomas, noting it is unclear
how much consultation there has been between the DfES and SSCs with
regard to employers willingness to engage with the Governments agenda.
Given that the employers role is crucial, their lack of support will surely
affect the success of the diplomas. Keep goes on to consider how the
inconsistency between the skill demand and the skills provided by
vocational education might make the diplomas ineffective. The final point
worth considering is the employer opinions of qualifications:
only 22% of employers said they took qualifications into account
a lot when recruiting young people [. . .] with a small number of
exceptions, employers place relatively little emphasis on qualifications
or specific technical skills or experience when talking about things
they look for in potential new recruits.
(Keep 2005: 541)
Keep suggests that softer social attributes, which are often not con-
sidered to be certifiable, such as interpersonal skills, are becoming more
necessary in the workforce. The Award Scheme Development and Accredit-
ation Network (ASDAN) does aim to certify such skills but, as yet, this is
not widely available. Additionally, low-level vocational qualifications,
below level 3, are not associated with better financial rewards in salaries:
Unfortunately, the governments obsessive love affair is not a passion
necessarily shared by employers to anything like the same extent
(Keep 2005: 543).
Overall, in terms of curriculum and certification, there appears to be very
little change in the status quo with regard to the General Diploma, other
than greater focus on basic skill development. It would appear then that
this new curriculum has been set up on the basis of a divided system from
the start, and, in many ways, it appears to replicate many of the issues
explored earlier in the chapter in relation to the academic/vocational divide.
One issue that emerges from any review of education and training for the
1419 age group is that it has always been, and continues to be, a classed
and gendered provision (Ball et al., 2000). Many middle-class students have
tended to progress though the academic gold-standard route of A-level
work. Their career goals have, in the main, been related to some form
of higher education and professional work. In contrast, the routes for
working-class male and female students have more frequently been circum-
scribed by stereotypical outcomes in post-compulsory education and train-
ing. Working-class young people have been more likely to move out of, and
away from, schools where they may well have perceived themselves as less
successful, towards some form of (almost compulsory) vocational training
in FE institutions (Archer and Yamashita 2003). I say compulsory because
social welfare benefits are no longer available to most young people aged 16
and this significantly reduces their options.
Simultaneously, a group of young people, mainly those who have done
least well in formal schooling, have drifted away from any post-compulsory
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education and training, working perhaps in the black economy. New

Labour has been particularly concerned with this group, which might
involve as many as 20 per cent of the national cohort, and have imple-
mented policies designed to support and keep them in the education and
training system. New Labour have been concerned that this group might be
at risk of longer term social exclusion as a result of their less successful
schooling, lack of skills and lack of certification (Ecclestone 2005). One
policy imperative has been the development of the Education Maintenance
Allowance (EMA) (HERO 2006) that pays students to stay in post-
compulsory education and training. Another set of policies lie in the
diploma courses that are intended to attract and retain the disaffected
1419-year-old students, and thereby contribute towards New Labours
knowledge economy and learning society.
Concluding comments
The new vocational diplomas are expected to achieve parity of esteem

with academic routes. If this is to have any serious meaning in terms of
choice of route and labour market outcomes one aspect of this parity
must be some narrowing of the gap in the individual rates of return
between academic and vocational qualifications. This in turn means
that employers must come to value vocational qualifications more
highly, favour them more strongly in recruitment and selection
decisions and be willing to pay a significant wage premium to those
who possess them [. . .] a very large mountain to climb [. . .] unless and
until employers change [. . .] the proposed diplomas will fail.
(Keep 2005: 544)
As Keep notes, there appears to be very little change in the overarching
approach to 1419 education. The introduction of the new diplomas
will no doubt cause much upheaval, especially for teachers. Teachers will
be required to rewrite schemes of work, yet again; align schemes with a new
curriculum; retrain to be able to effectively provide the new framework;
liaise with a number of external agencies; and prepare students for new
courses and assessments. There will also be a degree of competition between
establishments to attract young people to complete these new courses.
I would like to think that this latest initiative will bring progressive
change to 1419 education. However, the seemingly constant revisions to
policy have had negligible impact on the archaic divide between academic
and vocational education. If every child really matters, then we should have
an educational system which does not set up segregating social pathways,
as 1419 education has been doing for so long.
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www.nuffield1419review.org.uk.
Pring, R. (1995) Closing the Gap: Liberal Education and Vocational Preparation. London:
Hodder & Stoughton Educational.
Pring, R. (in press) 1419 and Lifelong Learning: Distinguishing between Academic
and Vocational Learning, in L. Clarke and C. Winch (eds) Vocational Education in an
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International Context; Historical and Philosophical Dimensions. London: Routledge

Taylor & Francis.
Sanderson, M. (1994) The Missing Stratum: Technical School Education in England
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Smithers, A. and Robinson, P. (1993) Changes Colleges: Further Education in the Market
Place. London: Council for Industry in and Higher Education.
Stanton, G. (2004) The organisation of full-time 1419 provision in the state sector.
Nuffield Review of 1419 Education and Training. Working Paper 13. London: Nuffield
Foundation. www.nuffield1419review.org.uk.
Taylor, W. (1963) The Secondary Modern School. London: Faber and Faber.
The Hadow Report (1926) The Education of the Adolescent. London: HM Stationery
Office. http://www.dg.dial.pipex.com/documents/hadow/2603.shtml.
Tomlinson, S. (ed.) (1997) Education 1419 Critical Perspectives. London: The Athlone
Press.
Working Group on 1419 Reform (2004) 1419 Curriculum and Qualification Reform:
Final Report. London: Department for Education and Skills.
Wright, S. (2005) Young Peoples Decision Making in 1419 Education and Training: a
Review of the Literature. Briefing paper for Nuffield Foundation Review of 1419
Education and Training. www.nuffield1419review.org.uk.
Wright, S. and Oancea, A. (2005) Policies for 1419 Education and Training in England,
1976 to the present day: A Chronology. Briefing paper for Nuffield Foundation Review
of 1419 Education and Training. www.nuffield1419review.org.uk.
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27 Beyond the subject

curriculum: the form
tutors role
Jane Jones
Introduction
Your mental image of yourself teaching probably involves you explaining

key elements of your subject. However, you will spend a significant amount
of time in school doing something for which you may have had little
preparation and which opens up innumerable opportunities to frustrate
and fulfil. Government policy means that schools can be pressed to deliver
national policies on such diverse matters as teenage pregnancy, the respect
agenda, healthy eating, etc.; it is frequently the form tutor who has to
manage this response. Almost certainly, you will be involved as a form tutor
within months of starting to teach. With the pressures on young people
seemingly increasing with each generation, you will play a major part in the
lives of large numbers of pupils in ways in which it is hard to imagine now.
This chapter is an attempt to help you to prepare for the challenges that lie
ahead beyond your role as subject teacher in your school.
The work of the form tutor cuts across subject specialisms and emphasizes
study and coping strategies as well as personal, vocational and life skills,
creating a multidimensional role (Startup 2003). Thus, the form tutor needs
to provide support and act as first port of call and a guide in short, be
available on a daily basis to provide stability for the pupils. Consequently,
the role of the form tutor, which is currently undergoing changes, is
challenging, unique and rewarding.
The character and ethos of a school are, according to Tattum, determined
by decisions about the curriculum, the allocation of resources, the group-
ing of pupils and the arrangements made for guidance and welfare (1988:
158). While government policy and funding largely determine factors
such as school resources and the content of the curriculum, pupil grouping,
student welfare and personal guidance, under the guise and auspices of
the pastoral system, still remain within the decision-making processes
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Beyond the subject curriculum: the form tutors role 345
of individual schools and teachers. Partly in response to teachers legitimate

complaints, over many years, about administrative overload (but mainly
as a response to a DfES commissioned report (Smithers and Robinson 2003)
on continuing high rates of wastage from the teaching profession), the
government published, in 2003, Raising Standards and Tackling Workload:
A National Agreement (DfES 2003), which brought in a process referred to
as workforce remodelling. This initiative was designed to ensure some
non-contact time for all teachers and to shift many of their administrative
functions, as well as some aspects of the former tutor role, to support staff
and to non-teaching staff (Cooper 2005). These members of staff may be
referred to as pastoral assistants, behaviour managers or student develop-
ment leaders, amongst other things.
The agreement was followed by the introduction, in January 2006,
of teaching and learning allowances (TLRs). The agreement required all
management allowances to be replaced by TLRs by September 2008 with
new job descriptions to be agreed with the relevant staff. Since allowances
can only be given for teaching and learning responsibilities, with which
the existing concept of pastoral support sits uneasily, traditional pastoral
posts of responsibility can no longer be remunerated and even the term
pastoral is falling out of use. Bottery and Wright (2000) found that, in a
large number of secondary schools, the pressure of targets, performance
management and the focus on delivering the National Curriculum meant
that wider aspects of being an extended professional, for example, in the
tutor role, were being displaced (Bottery and Wright 2000). Such a shift,
potentially threatening jobs, and also challenging a core belief of many
teachers in the pastoral role, has met with some opposition.
Schools have been directed to introduce the changes, and have imple-
mented them in diverse ways. Many are structuring their organizational
and pastoral support in ways that reflect the schools strategic awareness,
priorities and its culture. The form tutors role is, doubtless, in transition
from the traditional role to something quite different, involving liaising
with a team of support staff and using more electronic means to deal with
administration and monitoring, thus providing the tutor with the best
overview regarding the progress and general development of pupils. Even
with a diffusion of the role and ongoing substantial changes that you, as a
new tutor have to be aware of, the role is one that remains vital to the
well-being of pupils and central to that of being a teacher.
The tutor within the school system
There are over 4500 secondary schools in England and, within each one,
the headteacher faces the demanding task of organizing the pupils, staff
and other resources to produce an effective learning environment. During
the setting up of the comprehensive system in the 1950s and 1960s,
considerable thought was given to developing an organizational system in
which individual pupils would feel valued, noticed and encouraged
in their learning. Some schools but not many state schools set up vertical
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346 Jane Jones
systems, in which three or four pupils from each year group were placed in
the same tutor group, resulting in a mixed-age group somewhat akin to
a (very large) family, where younger pupils could rely on the help and
support of older pupils, as well as on their tutor. In return, older pupils took
care of the younger ones in the tutor group, which assisted the develop-
ment of their social and life skills. However, while the vertical system
provided a strong integrating system to support individual pupils, it also
created problems, particularly administrative ones.
During research in a Kent school, in 2006, which was about to change
from a year (horizontal) group system to a vertical system (Jones 2006),
pupils in a Year 7 class stated that they would prefer to be in a form of their
own age because that was how they made friends. Their tutors view was
that the group dynamics were crucial in a vertical system, and that the
mix of pupils needed to be arranged very carefully. She also stressed that
continuity of tutoring was important, as pupils needed time to develop
their confidence and to share their feelings, a factor also emphasized by
Hornby et al. (2003).
By far the most common arrangement found in schools is the horizontal
system, in which tutor groups contain pupils from only one year group,
which is the system normally found in primary schools (with the form tutor
replacing the class teacher). Such a system, with pastoral leaders working
with a group of form tutors, creates a pastoral management structure which
may, or may not, integrate well with the academic system of heads of
department and subject teachers. Whilst this structure brings stability,
some Year 10 pupils, for example, in the school mentioned above, reflected
that it was unfair if you are stuck with a tutor you dont get on with.
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, and some schools have
combined horizontal and vertical systems with pupils belonging both to
a house and a year group. In these schools, the year group is the main
organizational division, with the house system bolted-on for activities such
as competitive sports. It is, however, a focus on making provision for per-
sonal growth and achievement rather than the particular type of system
that is the key to success (Standish et al. 2006).
Learning to be an effective form tutor
A form tutor is the one person, probably in conjunction with a pastoral

assistant, who has daily contact with a group of pupils, monitoring their
general well-being and possessing an exclusive overview of their progress
across all subjects. Just being there is an important factor, providing pupils
with what might be the only point of security in the case of pupils with
chaotic home lives. When a pupil mistakenly calls a tutor Mum or Dad,
it can be a powerful reminder of how few adults actually talk with rather
than at their children.
Your own education, in terms of school studies and degree work, may not
have prepared you for the variety of routine and not-so-routine tasks that
a form tutor may face. Discussing the death of a friend or relative of a pupil,
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monitoring a target or explaining notices, might well constitute the daily

pastoral agenda of a form tutor all within a very brief time slot. The range
of issues raised in those few minutes may be greater than in the rest of your
day in school. Admitting to not knowing the right answer may work in
lessons, but pupils expect their tutor to follow up the issues they discuss
with her or him.
Pupils in a form may come from very different backgrounds to yourself,
may hold very different attitudes and may have faced a range of emotional
experiences that you may never encounter, except through them. The
lives of some pupils may be so fraught with problems that you may wonder
how they manage to cope. Trying to empathize without direct experience is
challenging, and cannot be learnt quickly. Learning to be a good form tutor
may be more demanding than learning to be a teacher of your subject. The
role is a highly skilled one, requiring a range of personal qualities, skills and
attitudes. One headteacher interviewed by Jones (Jones 2006) described a
good tutor as one who knows the pupils well, is highly structured and
organised, and that includes the fun bits like the end of term parties, sets
boundaries so the pupils are clear and well informed, and is fair.
Observing experienced tutors, taking part in target setting and reviewing
sessions, attending parents evenings, talking to colleagues about your
concerns, listening to pupils and hearing their views and keeping up-to-
date with official documentation with regard to pastoral concerns and
developing your own experiences will help you to become an effective
tutor. To learn effectively, however, needs commitment on your part, as
well as access to the right information. The DfES website is a priority for
researching and keeping up-to-date with the constant stream of govern-
ment initiatives. A key document in this respect is the influential DfES
(2004) report, Every Child Matters, an all-embracing initiative concerned
with the well-being of children from birth to the age of 19. It also provides
you with guidelines, case studies and other practical advice to help you
acquire the knowledge and skills that will enable you to undertake what is
expected of a form tutor as effectively as possible.
Tutor knowledge and skills
In addition to invaluable experience in the classroom, there are many pub-

lications and other resources available on PHSE,1 for example, Bests review
of research in the pastoral domain (see further reading) can be used to
develop your knowledge and skills in this role. Relevant publications, for
example, The Journal of Beliefs and Values, contain articles on issues such as
sexuality and bereavement, and Pastoral Care in Education is a particularly
rich resource for tutors. In this journal, you find discussions about topics
such as work planners, careers education, citizenship, bereavement courses,
1
Many schools now deliver citizenship as part of the pastoral, health and social education
programme (PHSE). Accordingly, more schools now refer to what they call the PHSCE
curriculum.
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348 Jane Jones
the development of study skills, personal development, behaviour manage-

ment, and bullying. The latter has become, in recent years, a consider-
able social problem in various areas of life and in schools in particular, and
there is no shortage of literature on the topic (for example, Sullivan 2005).
Evidence, collected over many years, and in many countries, shows that
bullying is usually a much bigger problem than most teachers realize. A
pupil who claims to have been bullied must always be taken seriously and
a pupil asking for help needs time and reassurance, even if it is not immedi-
ately available. This gives a potent message, first to those pupils who
are bullied and, even more importantly, to would-be bullies who may be
deterred by visible, decisive and speedy action by form tutors. Schools are
required to have an anti-bullying policy and the form tutor needs to be
familiar with this and with the associated procedures. Furthermore, as a
form tutor you are not alone for you will invariably have recourse to the
support of experienced colleagues. As long as bullying is endemic to school
life, many pupils will experience unhappiness as a result of incidents
generated by the school culture. They need to be made aware that the form
tutor is the one named person to whom they can turn and who will be
fully informed. With sensitive issues, counselling skills are needed and the
form tutor, who is categorically not a counsellor, may well have to act as
counsellor at times in situations where individual pupils need personal
responses. As King (1999: 4) writes:
The emphasis now is on equipping teachers with basic counselling
skills: not training them as counsellors or to work as counsellors, but
helping teachers perform their pastoral work more effectively,
and enabling them to recognize problems which need referring on
to a specialist or a specialist agency.
Pellitteri et al. (2006) call this emotionally intelligent school counseling.
Such basic skills, King (1999: 4) suggests, would involve listening skills, the
skills of empathetic understanding, responding skills and a clear awareness
of boundary limits. Some schools have experimented successfully with
peer counselling whereby older pupils are trained to listen to and to provide
support for younger pupils.2 Keeping an eye on the education press can alert
you to strategies that others have used successfully to deal with what, for
you, might seem an intractable problem.
During the 1960s and 1970s, some schools were able to appoint counsel-
lors, but their numbers declined as budgets were tightened in the decades
that followed. Counselling pupils will normally be part of the form tutor
role, but lack of time and expertise will mean that many issues will, by
necessity and perhaps to the benefit of a greater number of pupils, be
explored within the tutor group context. The task here is to create a
2
The Workforce Remodelling Agreements teaching and learning allowances (TLRs) can only
be awarded for teaching and learning responsibilities. At time of writing, schools are still wrest-
ling with this regulatory change. Many are starting to appoint behaviour managers/counsellors
to manage behaviour issues and attendance problems. The cost of employing these non-teaching
personnel is cheaper than paying a teacher for non-contact time to undertake this work. Thus, the
traditional binary role of the pastoral team, academic mentoring and behaviour management, is
being divided up and reallocated. These sorts of changes will influence and shape pastoral work in
the future.
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supportive environment and to nurture support through activities such as

role play, drama, debate and discussion. One-to-one counselling, with
all the time implications involved, should still be the right of pupils, par-
ticularly those for whom the form tutor is the only caring adult that they
encounter on a daily basis.
Responsibilities and problems take up a fair share of the tutoring time
available, but there are humorous moments to be shared within the form
group and many occasions when you will be uplifted by their spontaneity,
their acts of generosity and by the care that they show for each other. Tutors
should also celebrate the full range of achievements of their pupils, some-
times with due pomp and circumstance if certificates are to be awarded,
for example, or a quiet word of praise to an individual pupil in another
situation. Many pupils tend to dislike being praised in front of their peers
possibly because they are embarrassed or because there is more status in
receiving a reprimand. However, good behaviour and good work benefit
from reinforcement through appropriate praise.
The negative self-image that results from inadequate feedback about a
pupils ability can manifest itself when it is time to write self-assessments,
for example, for a record or statement of achievement, or student portfolio.
Pupils are notoriously lacking in confidence when it comes to identifying
their strengths and achievements, which are often considerable. It is the
form tutor who, as the teacher with an overview of a pupils progress across
all subjects, can coax these strengths out, thereby helping pupils to increase
their self-esteem and construct a more positive, more accurate self-image
and self-assessment. Following the remodelling of the workforce initiative,
monitoring and assessment to focus on individual pupil requirements and
learning needs are becoming, increasingly, the key function of the role of
the form tutor, as more of the traditional pastoral aspects are devolved to
support staff.
Monitoring and assessing
The integration of electronic communication into the everyday life of

schools facilitates collecting the tracking data relating to registration, and
the recording and monitoring of progress. Once a crucial function of the
form tutor, with schools now obliged to report their attendance rates, filling
in the register and chasing up absences have become key tasks of the
school central administration using appropriate technological support
systems. Essentially, the form tutors role in relation to attendance consists
of a single act of entering pupils presence and absence electronically. One
system found in schools is Bromcom, which uses codes for reasons for
absence when these have been evidenced by parents or carers (for example,
M = medical). Given the greater efficiency of electronic registration, paper
registers are rapidly being replaced, at least in secondary schools, and some
schools have initiated self-registration, using swipe cards, for their post-16
students. The information is instantaneously available to the school
administration, where the designated attendance manager pursues
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350 Jane Jones
unaccounted absences by phone or email. The attendance manager also

enters reasons for absence which have been notified to the school by phone
or email.
Schools have facilitated communication with parents by setting up tele-
phone numbers offering a menu that allows parents to report lateness or
absence by voicemail rather than handwritten note. A pupils presence/
absence and the reason is therefore available centrally to the form tutor and
other staff who teach the pupil. A bona fide appointment is an authorized
absence, although many schools are restricting such absences in the school
day and expressly forbid their pupils to go on holiday in term time. From
a schools point of view, the absence of even one or two pupils can affect
the national test results or, indeed, GCSE percentages. In addition to the
record book or homework diary used to monitor and to communicate
with parents and guardians, schools have started to use email as a mode of
communication with parents. Teachers can now use their laptops to com-
municate using email between year teams as well as between members of a
department and receive whole-staff communication rather than putting up
notices in the staff room (which has the added benefit of increasing pupils
privacy: only those who need to know are given personal information
about pupils). Technological advances can, thus, assist tutors in identify-
ing irregular attendance patterns and acting quickly in response to this
and other behaviours of concern that contribute to pupil unhappiness
and underachievement. As with any continuous monitoring, these
methods help to identify problems sooner rather than later, allowing for
solutions to be negotiated, targets set and achievements recognized and
rewarded.
In addition to information on attendance, you will, in your role as
form tutor, receive assessments made by colleagues of other subjects on
your tutees learning. Based on this information, and taking the whole
pupil into consideration, you will need to work out with the pupil, parents
and colleagues an individualized learning plan. The importance of the
personalized learning agenda in developing teachers leadership and
mentoring capability, with a view to creating and supporting student
autonomy, self-assessment and a sense of pupils responsibility for their
own learning, has been highlighted in the National College for School
Leaderships (2005) paper Leading Personalised Learning in Schools: Helping
Individuals Grow.
Many schools have moved away from the end-of-year summative report
and now build in progress reviews, on a one-to-one basis, in tutorial time,
in accordance with the widespread adoption of formative practices in
classrooms (part of an assessment for learning framework discussed
in Chapter 17). This system is more likely to be targeted at older pupils, who
may have GCSE support tutorials (Year 10 is a major transition time for
pupils who may be launched into a different pace and style of learning and
may quickly come to grief without support), but in an increasing number
of schools, academic tracking and support starts in Year 7. In fact, target
setting and progress reviews are now well established in most schools with
proper timetabled slots that enable pupils to have, what one tutor called,
private quality time for all, not just those seen to be in trouble and singled
out (Jones 2006). Whilst the focus of the system is on academic progress,
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this tutor also commented that it is the form tutor who, alone, sees how
personal issues impact on learning (Jones 2006).
Typically targets will relate academic matters (for example, spelling in
English or developing revision strategies), social concerns (for example,
lateness or a lack of organization) and extra-curricular activities (after
school contributions or interests and responsibilities outside of school).
Each pupil will then specify, How I am going to achieve this target. The
review provides an opportunity for the pupil to consider How am I doing?,
and to set new targets. Increasingly, schools organize tutorial days, an
arrangement by which the timetable is suspended on particular days
so that pupils and their parents can attend interviews with the form tutor to
discuss any concerns, as well as progress across their subjects and target
setting.
Personal, health, social and citizenship education
The concept of spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) education,

which underpins the National Curriculum, emphasizes the need for a
whole-school approach to the drawing up and delivery of a pastoral
curriculum (Best 2000). All dimensions of a school, and the curriculum as a
whole, contribute to the personal and social development of the pupils in
some way. Nonetheless, pastoral programmes will be clearly identifiable
in most schools, and many topics, issues, activities and outcomes will be
considered best handled by form tutors, as part of a tutorial programme.
The tutors role, which up to now may appear sometimes reactive and
random, becomes coherent within the whole-school personal, health,
social and citizenship education (PHSCE) structure. In the best systems
observed by Ofsted, teams of tutors worked alongside a pastoral leader/stu-
dent development manager on a range of issues related to personal devel-
opment relevant to each age group. This strategy often results in a pastoral
curriculum built on the identification of issues deemed relevant to a par-
ticular age range. Thus a Year 7 group may undertake an induction pro-
gramme and focus on transition; Year 9 may focus on options; and Year 11
may look at study skills or careers. A spiralling model, whereby themes
are constantly revisited (but in different degrees and in different ways)
optimizes learning opportunities and deepens understanding of the issues.
Crucially, the success of the PHSCE programmes depends, to a large extent,
on a schools commitment to them. Effective PHSCE delivery requires:
an adequate time allocation
ownership of materials (participation by staff in their creation)
variety of inputs (outside speakers, videos, debates, etc.)
managerial support.
Unfortunately, you will find that all these factors are not always available,
and for historical and financial reasons, the programmes are typically
delivered by form tutors as an add on to their subject. Schools with a more
strategic awareness of the purpose of TLRs, are devising more effective
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352 Jane Jones
and imaginative ways of delivering PHSCE; for example, timetabling whole

days for teaching the programmes and developing the expertise of a team of
selected form tutors to teach them, enabling them to show the initiative
and creativity that they invariably demonstrate in their subject teaching. In
such cases, tutors can seek to develop tutorial skills that can enhance the
learning environment for all the pupils, and enable them to take advantage,
on a daily basis, of all that the school offers. In the longer term, tutors help
pupils to feel that they are an integrated and important part of classroom
and school life and to develop the skills and understanding needed to live
confident, healthy and independent lives.
Whole-school worship and moral education
The majority of schools have experienced some difficulty in responding

to the legal requirement for a collective act of worship, although as Gill
(2000: 110) asserts: Most schools claim to make a regular provision for their
pupils which, taken over a year, incorporate a broadly religious dimension.
The provision might include whole-school assemblies, tutor and year
group assemblies, and opportunities for individual silent reflection. In
county primary, denominational and independent schools, Gill found that
assemblies were considered an opportunity for the pupils to encounter
the possibility of religious commitment (Gill 2000: 109). In some schools,
notably denominational ones, teachers were able to demonstrate, and
share, their faith, while in others teachers experienced a personal dilemma,
as Gill (2000: 110) explains:
in the conflict they experience between their desire to be seen by
pupils to uphold the law in respect of a religious activity in which they
feel unable to participate, while retaining their standing with pupils as
individuals of personal and professional integrity.
It will be important for you to assert your beliefs and to recognize your
own personal dilemmas, but also to resolve and accommodate these
within the culture and ethos of the school in which you have chosen to
work. At the very least, you will be expected to accompany pupils to
assemblies, support them in form assemblies, and undertake whatever tasks
are required of you in that aspect of tutor time that comprises the collective
act of worship.
Gill discovered a more fulsome acceptance by teachers of a responsibility
to contribute, generally, to the moral development of the pupils. This
aspect of the teachers role, for example, took place in PHSCE or form time,
and focused on social interactions and the application of moral principles,
such as justice and respect, and the discouragement of prejudice, bullying
and racism. According to Gill, the teachers sometimes organized structured
debates, while on other occasions, spontaneous discussion arose as a result
of critical incidents in school.
Marland and Rogers suggest that the tutors role is to identify issues and
prompt group discussion, enabling pupils not just to arrive at decisions, but
to focus on how to arrive at decisions. They argue that:
The process of tutoring is empowering the tutee, but with the giving of
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self-power must go the development of the ability to be sensitive

and appropriately generous. Morality and ethics are at the heart of
tutoring.
(Marland and Rogers 1997: 26)
In my own research with adolescent girls (Jones 2006), many said that
they liked the opportunity to gather in a larger group, especially if pupils
were presenting an assembly, or if they had a special visitor, or if the focus
of an assembly was an issue of concern and interest to them. Likewise,
they enjoyed debates on similar themes in PHSCE, especially where they
had an opportunity to air their views (and for these not to be scorned by
tutors), and to be listened to with seriousness and respect. Gill, in her
research, found that what young people value most is sincerity and rele-
vance (Gill 2000: 114). Pupils had strong feelings about apparent injustices
and the problems of modern society, and were greatly moved by natural
catastrophes and other disasters, possessing an instinctive desire to want to
help. As Gill suggests: Contemporary issues, current affairs and a wider
discussion about the problems which confront the young in an imperfect
world should receive a much greater emphasis (Gill 2000: 115). She echoes
Marland and Rogers suggestion for the need to create opportunities for
pupil participation and involvement in the exploration of such issues. You,
as form tutor, have a role in helping to create such opportunities within
the whole-school spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development
framework and in helping the pupils to relate these concerns to their own
lives.
Pupils perceptions
The pastoral system, as part of your new schools ethos and culture, pro-
vides a framework for initiating and sustaining shared perspectives of indi-
vidual pupils. In secondary school, pupils are frequently taught by ten, or
more, teachers and may be perceived differently by each one. This atomistic
approach does little to help them to create a sense of identity as learners and
as participants in the school system. The form tutors role within the system
is to mediate between the teachers, parents and learners. By presenting a
more complete picture of the pupils in a class to its teachers, you may
ensure that future interactions take place in an informed and stable
environment neither marred nor exaggerated by uncharacteristic episodes
or behaviours.
To do so, it is useful to know how the organization, in this case the
school, is perceived by the individual, that is the pupils, since this percep-
tion is, as Handy and Aitken (1988) point out, one of the most important
factors in organizational theory. To investigate this issue, I undertook a
small-scale survey in a large, mixed London comprehensive in 1995 (Jones
1995) and again in 2006 (Jones 2006) in a school in Kent, and found
remarkably similar and consistent results in terms of the pupils perceptions
of the form tutor role. In each case, 40 pupils across years 711 were asked:
What do you think a form tutor is for?
What makes a good form tutor?
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354 Jane Jones
The 1995 cohort of pupils had very clear ideas, and gave responses that
were remarkable in their uniformity. The responses to the first question
focused primarily on the pastoral support role, evidenced by comments
such as to look after you, to see how youre doing and to help you solve
your problems. Some aspects of organization and administration were
identified, such as to take the register, to watch punctuality and to help
the kids during fire drills. Most surprising of all, was the fact that almost
every response given made reference to what the pupils saw as a central
disciplinary function of the tutor role, expressed in a variety of ways: to
teach you to behave, to stop us from talking and getting into trouble
and, more graphically, to stop us from getting up and ranging around and
to stop fights. The 2006 cohort made similar comments, although they
distinguished between the talking about problems role of the pastoral
assistants and the monitoring role of their form tutors: she checks our
homework diaries, talks about progress, gives out notices. They were quite
clear that their first point of contact was always the form tutor.
Responses to the second question exemplified and validated these
comments, with the pupils suggesting the following qualities as essential
for a good form tutor:
someone who listens
[someone who has] a sense of humour
[someone who is ] helpful and understanding
[someone who is] strict and having the ability to keep order.
Typical responses were: She talks to people a lot and listens and shes good
fun; Hes funny and he helps his tutor group and hes good at keeping
order and Hes funny, but strict but he makes you laugh when hes strict.
You can carry out a similar piece of research to find out and verify the
expectations your pupils have of you as their tutor. The results from the
research I undertook reflect two very basic pupil needs: first individual care
and support, and, second, the need for the teacher to maintain orderliness
within the peer group. This conclusion concurs with Delamonts enduring
assertion that the main strength of a teachers position is that, in general,
pupils want her to teach and keep them in order (1983: 90). While
the demands the pupils put on teachers may seem simple, the means of
providing for their needs remains a challenging and diversified task in the
case of the form tutor. Sizing up pupils is a continuous and evolving task
for you, as form tutor, as you will be in a unique position perceiving
pupils in a holistic manner, mapping their strengths and weaknesses, and
recognizing their successes and needs. With this perspective in mind, the
form tutor fosters and supports the classroom interactions to assist pupil
learning and development.
Concluding comments
The form tutors role then, in conjunction with pastoral team colleagues, is
to cohere all aspects of the pastoral and academic curricula. The tutor
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is, accordingly, the integrative centre for the schools whole curriculum
(Marland and Rogers 1997: 6). Research such as that by Weare (2005), shows
that schools that focus on this aspect of their work with young people,
actually enhance pupil attainment. These schools are also aware of changes
and developments and, after critical analysis, integrate these into their
work. Currently, there is an upsurge of interest in emotional intelligence
and literacy, and helping youngsters to be happy and confident through
enhancing their self-understanding, their capacity to understand others
and their ability to manage and reduce conflict and stress. The role of the
tutor is going through an exciting renaissance, and an important task for
experienced and new form tutors, like yourself, is to consider how you
can elaborate the developmental and creative potential of this role and
the special contribution you can make in each of your tutees personal
development.3 It is a role that, though challenging and changing, is
immensely rewarding, and a good form tutor, who adheres to being firm,
friendly and fair, is rarely forgotten.
References
Best, R. (ed.) (2000) Education for Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development.
London: Continuum.
Bottery, M. and Wright, N. (2000) Teachers and the State. London: Routledge.
Clarke, P. (2000) Target Setting. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Cooper, V. (2005) Support Staff in Schools: Promoting the Emotional and Social Develop-
ment of Children and Young People. London: National Childrens Bureau.
Delamont, S. (1983) Interaction in the Classroom. London: Methuen.
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2003) Raising Standards and Tackling
Workload: A National Agreement. Available at http://www.remodelling.org/remodel-
ling/nationalagreement.aspx (accessed on September 5, 2006).
Department for Education and Skills (DfES) (2004) Every Child Matters: Change for
Children. London: DfES.
Gill, J. (2000) The act of collective worship, in R. Best (ed.) Education for Spiritual,
Moral, Social and Cultural Development. London: Continuum.
Handy, C.B. and Aitken, R. (1988) Understanding Schools as Organizations. London:
Penguin.
Her Majestys Stationery Office (HMSO) (2002) A Time for Standards. London: The
Stationery Office.
Her Majestys Stationery Office (HMSO) (2004) The Children Act. London: The
Stationery Office.
Hornby, G., Hall, C. and Hall, E. (2003) (eds) Counselling Pupils in School: Skills and
Strategies for Teachers. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Jones, J. (1995) What Makes a Good Form Tutor? Kings College London: unpublished
paper.
3
The form tutors role is currently undergoing substantial changes, as outlined above. Some of
the traditional duties, such as collecting money and analysing attendance figures, have already
been passed to non-teaching members of the school staff such as the attendance manager. In the
future, it may be that the work of the teacher will become more like that of her other European
colleagues, where form tutors and heads of year are unknown. At time of writing, it is too early to
know what the longer-term impact of changes in the TLRs will be for this area of work in school.
There is a transition underway, from the more traditional role, to a different model whose details
are yet unclear.
Page 355
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356 Jane Jones
Jones, J. (2006) Student Perceptions of In-school Tutoring and Mentoring. Kings College
London: unpublished paper.
King, G. (1999) Counselling Skills for Teachers. Talking Matters. Buckingham: Open
University Press.
Marland, M. and Rogers, R. (1997) The Art of the Tutor. Developing Your Role in the
Secondary School. London: David Fulton.
National College for School Leadership (NCSL) (2005) Leading Personalised Learning:
Helping Individuals Grow. Nottingham: NCSL.
Pellitteri, J., Stern, R., Shelton, C. and Muller-Ackerman, B. (eds) (2006) Emotionally
Intelligent School Counseling. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Smithers, A. and Robinson, P. (2003) Factors Affecting Teachers Decisions to Leave the
Profession. Nottingham: DfES.
Standish, P., Smeyers, P. and Smith, R. (2006) (eds) The Therapy of Education:
Philosophy, Happiness and Personal Growth. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Startup, I. (2003) Running Your Tutor Group. London: Continuum.
Sullivan, K. (2005) Bullying: How to Spot it and How to Stop it; A Guide for Parents and
Teachers. London: Rodale.
Tattum, D. (1988) Control and welfare: towards a theory of constructive discipline in
schools, in R. Dale, R. Fergusson and A. Robinson (eds) Frameworks for Teaching.
London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Weare, K. (2005) Improving Learning Through Emotional Literacy. London: Paul
Chapman.
Further reading
Bullock, K. and Wilkeley, F. (2004) Whose Learning? The Role of the Personal Tutor.
Burgess, R.G. (1988) House staff and departmental staff, in R. Dale, R. Fergusson and
A. Robinson (eds) Frameworks for Teaching. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Hamblin, D. (1993) Tutor as Counsellor. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Pring, R. (1984) Personal and Social Education in the Curriculum. London: Hodder &
Stoughton.
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) (1997) The Promotion of Pupils
Spiritual, Moral and Cultural Development: Draft Guidance for Pilot Work. London:
QCA.
Tindall, J.A. (1994) Peer Programs: An In-Depth Look at Peer Helping, Planning, Imple-
mentation and Administration. Bristol, PA: Accelerated Learning. Available at:
http://www.bera.ac.uk/pdfs/BEST-PastoralCare&PSE.pdf (accessed on September 5,
2006).
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28 Whats next? CPD and the

whole school
Philip Adey
Continuing to learn
Rosenholtz (1989) made an extensive study of schools in Tennessee. Some

were well set up with well-qualified teachers, while others were in difficult
areas where it was hard to recruit staff, and these often resorted (illegally) to
employing unqualified individuals. Rosenholtz distinguished schools
which she described as learning enriched, where there was a positive
attitude to curriculum change and new learning methods, from learning
impoverished schools where teachers basically went through the motions
of transmitting set textbook material to the students. She asked hundreds of
teachers an apparently simple question: How long did it take you to learn
to teach? (You might pause to consider how long you think it will take
you to master the art of being an excellent teacher and, if you are brave, you
might try asking the same question of a few teachers in your practice
schools.)
What Rosenholtz discovered was that in the impoverished schools
teachers tended to answer something like Oh two or three years while
those in the learning enriched schools gave a completely different sort of
answer. They would be far more likely to say, Oh Im still learning or
Youve never learned it all, however long they had been teaching. You
should not find this depressing, it is the sign of professional activity (see
Chapter 2 for a full account of what it means to be a professional). Teaching
is not simply a skill which can be mastered in a finite period of time; it is
a complex professional art which you will continue to develop throughout
your teaching career. And that is one of the things that makes it so
engaging.
Continuing Professional Development, (CPD) should be just that, a pro-
cess of professional development which continues throughout your teach-
ing career. Here are some of the types of CPD in which you may engage:
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358 Philip Adey
learning specific skills, such as use of the interactive whiteboard

updating your subject knowledge and making it part of your teaching
repertoire
developing your general teaching methods or introducing new ones,
such as questioning skills, behaviour management, or teaching for
high-level thinking
preparing you for increased responsibilities, for example, a course for
new heads of department.
Of these, only the first is a relatively simple matter of acquiring new skills
which you will readily master with adequate practice. All of the others will
require some conceptual development and possibly even belief changes
on your part. They will inevitably take time and, if effective, will lead to
changes in your practice and to changes in your students, such as better
learning, better thinking, or better behaviour. Such changes are not earned
lightly and in this chapter I will explore some of the key indicators of
effective professional development and try to offer some sort of buyers
guide to help you judge when professional development is worth pursuing
and when it is not.
Drivers of professional development
Your development as a professional has parallels with the ways in which

your students develop understanding of your subject area, but it also has
unique features. Professional development involves conceptual change, and
this is of the same type as the conceptual change you are trying to engender
in your students. It also requires reflection on practice and this may have a
parallel in your students learning, if you are in the habit of encouraging
them to be metacognitive (for example, asking them to think back to
how they learned something, or what mistakes they made and how they
corrected them). Finally, your professional development requires you to
practise new skills so that they become intuitive, and this is rather par-
ticular to the development of professional skills. This section will consider
each of these drivers in turn.
Conceptual change
Borko and Puttnam (1995) put a cognitive-psychological perspective on

professional development in which change in practice is associated with
changes in the inner mental workings of teachers and their constructions of
new understandings of the process of learning. An example of approaching
professional development in the context of conceptual change is provided
by Mevarech (1995) who discusses the role of teachers prior conceptions of
the nature of learning and describes the U-shaped learning curve which
they encounter when trying to replace one skill, and the epistemology on
which it is based, with another. Bell and Gilbert (1996) also approach the
professional development of teachers from a constructivist perspective,
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Whats next? CPD and the whole school 359
showing how teachers need to interrogate their own current constructs of

teaching and learning before they are ready to re-construct new beliefs. The
value of this conceptualization of teacher change is that it can draw on the
extensive parallel literature on conceptual change and attitude change in
students. It leads us to focus on teachers prior conceptions and to recognize
that you are unlikely to make significant changes in practice unless you face
up to and, if necessary, challenge your current deep-rooted beliefs about the
nature of knowledge transmission. It indicates that such change is likely to
be a slow and difficult process, and that real change in practice will not arise
from short programmes of instruction, especially when those programmes
take place in a centre removed from your own classroom.
In focusing on the need to tackle fundamental concepts and attitudes,
I am not necessarily prescribing that this is the first thing that must happen
before change in teaching practice can occur. Indeed Guskey (1986) has
argued persuasively that changes in teachers beliefs and attitudes may well
follow the change in perceived student responses which come about from
changed teaching practice. Nevertheless, whether they are a precursor or a
consequence, such deep-seated changes are necessary for permanent effects
on teacher practice.
Reflection on practice
The idea of the teacher as a reflective practitioner has had a long and
respectable history in the literature. For example, Baird et al. (1991) have
shown the central role that reflection both on classroom practice and
on the phenomena of teaching and learning has in the pedagogical
development process of both pre-service student teachers and experienced
teachers on in-service courses. More recently, Cooper and Boyd (1999) have
described a scheme of peer- and group-oriented reflection on practice
developed amongst teachers in a New York City school district which pro-
vided a systemic self-help strategy for the long-term maintenance of
innovative methods in classrooms.
Reflection may be achieved through diaries or other forms of logs,
or orally at feedback sessions with colleagues and course leaders. You
benefit from such feedback sessions through putting your experiences and
associated feelings, both positive and negative, into words and discussing
them with peers.
Intuitive knowledge in teaching practice
It is now well accepted that expert practitioners possess a complex personal

knowledge base which they draw upon intuitively. This knowledge base is
acquired through training and experience but individuals may not always
be able to articulate why they do what they do (Atkinson and Claxton 2000;
McMahon 2000).
In discussing the intuitive nature of much of the procedural knowledge
of teaching, it is important not to confuse the ideas of intuitive and
instinctive. The latter implies something in-built, perhaps a personality
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factor over which no normal professional development course could be

expected to have much influence. Intuitive, on the other hand, implies a
behaviour which occurs without explicit cognition at the moment at which
it arises. The basis of the behaviour remains in the unconscious. The term
implicit knowledge is used for this type of unconscious understanding
which gives rise to intuitive behaviour (Tomlinson 1998). Intuition is how,
as teachers, we react almost instantaneously to situations as they arise in
the complex social environment of the classroom. It would be impossible to
proceed through every classroom moment entirely on the basis of rational
and conscious decision making or problem solving. The professional
response in such situations depends much on intuition, a process well
described by Brown and Coles (2000). The important point here is that this
intuitive behaviour is based on our implicit knowledge, and that knowledge
is based on previous situations and on the constructs we have built on such
experience but not necessarily externalized or made conscious.
Such implicit knowledge may be an influence for good or for ill in the
direction it proposes for action. Implicit knowledge can be derived from
working in a traditional context rooted in an authoritarian view of teacher
student relationships and based on a simple transmission epistemology.
On the other hand, it may be derived from a combination of a personal
philosophy of guided democracy with some experience of the process of
constructivism, and the observation of colleagues who have shown how
all students can be encouraged to contribute to the construction of their
own understandings. This relates to the professional strand in Bell and
Gilberts (1996) three-part model of the professional development of
science teachers.
These three strands of thought on the nature of professional develop-
ment (concept change, reflection and intuition) are not alternatives. On the
contrary, they intertwine and feed into one another. What is an effective
way of inducing a process of conceptual change? Why, to encourage
reflection. And what is the basis of the intuitive knowledge which guides
action? It is the underlying conceptions and attitudes of the individual.
Guided reflection assists the process of conceptual change, and conceptual
change re-structures the intuitive knowledge upon which teaching practice
rests. In his seminal work on professional development, Schn (1987)
shows how reflection is an essential part of the process by which teachers
incorporate the perceived needs of a situation within their own system of
beliefs, and this is all part of the development of their professional artistry.
This is a good description of practice arising from implicit understandings.
The practicalities of effective professional development
Recently, colleagues and I (Adey et al. 2004) were able to undertake a

comprehensive study of the factors which make for effective professional
development, where we interpreted effective rather stringently, as pro-
fessional development which has a real effect on teachers and on their
students. The factors which determine whether a professional development
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programme is effective or ineffective fall into two broad categories: those

internal to the school (such as school ethos, the senior management, and
the attitudes of teachers) and those which are more to do with the pro-
fessional development programme itself (such as its duration, intensity,
quality and subject matter). Altogether the factors can be grouped as two
school-level factors, and two professional development programme level
factors. We will deal with the latter first and rather briefly (as you have
less direct control over them) and then attend more closely to the internal
school factors which determine the effectiveness of professional
development.
Effective professional development programmes
What is being introduced?
Firstly, the material or method being introduced by the professional

development must itself have proven value. Fullan and Stiegelbauer (1991)
emphasize the pointlessness of organizing professional development for an
innovation which is not itself worthwhile or of established quality. They
attribute failure of the post-Sputnik reforms in science education in the
USA to the fact that the innovations were driven by politicians
and had not been established as educationally sound. In selecting a profes-
sional development experience from those on offer, ask yourself: Does the
innovation being introduced have any sound theoretical foundation? Is
any good evidence offered for the effectiveness of the innovation? As an
example, a professional development programme introducing the idea of
learning styles (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic) may be fun, may be well
presented, and may appear plausible but you will not find many psycholo-
gists who give any credence to the validity of learning styles, nor will you
find any evidence (in peer reviewed academic journals) for the efficacy of
labelling children with a supposed learning style (Adey et al. 1999; Coffield
et al. 2004).
How is it being introduced?
Secondly, the quality and quantity of the professional development pro-

gramme matters. The one-shot, in-service education and training (INSET)
day is universally recognized as a complete waste of time for bringing about
any real change in teaching practice or student learning, but how many
shots are needed to be effective? Fullan and Stiegelbauer (1991, Chapter 4)
think that two years is a minimum for real change to occur and Joyce and
Weil (1986) believe that a new pedagogic skill requires 30 hours of practice
before it becomes intuitive. Our own experience of running cognitive
acceleration programmes (see Adey et al. 2004) for the last 15 years suggests
that although there can be some trade-off between the intensity and the
longevity of a programme, the general guidelines of two years/30 hours are
sound. This estimate of a minimum requirement is entirely consistent with
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362 Philip Adey
the notion that real change in practice requires conceptual change in the
teacher, and conceptual change is well known to be slow. The building of
new skills into intuitive practice must require plenty of practice aided by
opportunities for reflection. It is more for the professional development
designers and school senior management than it is for a newly qualified
teacher to consider how these difficult-sounding requirements can be met,
but you should at least be aware of the potential problem.
As for the quality of presentations on professional development courses,
nothing is less convincing or more ironic than a formal lecture on the
benefits of constructivist teaching. It seems obvious that a teacher is
unlikely to be encouraged to use active methods in the classroom by a
monologue delivered from the front of the room. This seems so obvious
that it would hardly seem worth writing, had we not ourselves frequently
experienced such mis-matches between message and delivery method. So,
yes, I will spell it out: if you want to promote teachers use of cognitive
conflict, then present your teacher audience with some cognitive conflict
at their own level. If you want to encourage teachers to promote social con-
struction in their classrooms, the professional development course should
have activities for teachers which can only be solved by collaboration with
colleagues.
Finally, a professional development programme which fails to reach into
the classroom will fail. There must be some mechanism by which, as you try
new methods in your own classroom, you can enlist a critical friend to
observe your efforts and provide coaching. From a meta-analysis of nearly
200 studies of the effect of professional development, Joyce and Showers
(1988) concluded that of all the features which are normally incorporated
into professional development programmes, it was coaching which proved
to be an essential ingredient when the outcome measurement was student
change. Coaching in innovative teaching methods can be provided by
peers, by senior colleagues, by the professional development tutors, or by
local authority advisers, and it may be managed using video recordings.
But it must, emphatically, be distinguished from appraisal or inspection.
Coaching is a friendly, supportive, and non-judgemental process.
An effective environment
Collegiality
Notwithstanding the main focus of this book on the teacher her- or himself,
it is clear from the literature and from experience that teachers are rarely
if ever able to make real changes in their pedagogy unless the school
environment in which they find themselves is, at the very least, tolerant of
innovation. My colleague Nicki Landau produced some very deep case
studies of teachers engaged in long-term professional development pro-
grammes (Chapter 8 of Adey et al. 2004). She looked into the situations of
teachers whose attitudes to change were either positive or negative,
working in schools whose ethos was either supportive or unsupportive of
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change. Obviously not much can be expected of a negative teacher in an

unsupportive school, while the positive teacher in a supportive environ-
ment must fly. The interesting cases were the other two combinations and
they tell us a lot about the nature of a supportive school ethos. It turns out
that there are two main aspects to this: one is the presence or absence of
collegial support and the opportunity to share experiences informally but
frequently; and the other is more related to the extent to which innovation
is embedded in the management structure of the school.
Stoll and Fink (1996) list collegiality as one of ten features of a positive
school culture (which include also shared goals and responsibility for
success, continuous improvement, lifelong learning, risk taking, support,
mutual respect, openness, celebration and humour), but under collegiality
they note that:
this much used but complex concept involves mutual sharing
and assistance, an orientation towards the school as a whole, and is
spontaneous, voluntary, development-oriented, unscheduled, and
unpredictable.
(Stoll and Fink 1996: 934)
Teachers who are trying to change their practice find it extremely difficult
to be different from their colleagues in the same school. Schools which are
most successful in taking on an innovation are ones in which there was
much communication between teachers in the department about the new
methods. No one individual, however well-motivated and energised, can
maintain a new method of teaching if she or he feels isolated. McLaughlin
(1994: 33) quoted by Fullan (1995) reported that:
as we looked across our sites at teachers who report a high sense
of efficacy, who feel successful with todays students, we noticed
that while these teachers differ along a number of dimensions . . . all
shared this one characteristic: membership in some kind of strong
professional community.
Just what this collegiality looks like on the ground can be described on a
scale from teachers having virtually no professional conversations with one
another, through informal chats about the innovation in the corridor or
over coffee, to the situation where one or two members of a department
have responsibility for overseeing the implementation, and can act as
sounding-boards for the others as they try out novel approaches. Better
again is the addition of regularly scheduled meetings devoted to assessing
progress in implementing the innovation, and best of all is some form of
peer-coaching. Units of collegiality within schools form subcultures which
may be productive (as in the case of a department that happily shares both
professional and social experiences) or may be Balkan (Stoll and Fink
1996), a carping and disruptive influence.
Senior management
Critical to establishing a school ethos supportive of change and develop-

ment is the senior management team (SMT). Joyce et al. (1999) place much
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364 Philip Adey
emphasis on the necessity of effective leadership for the implementation of

any educational innovation, as do Fullan (2001); Mortimore et al. (1988)
and most other writers on the subject of effective schools. There are two
particular aspects where the headteachers role is necessary, without which
professional development is unlikely to be effective. The first is in recogniz-
ing the time required for in-school professional development, and the sec-
ond is in building the innovation into the structure of school, or at least of
the department. These correspond roughly to two of the key features which
Fullan and Stiegelbauer (1991) report as essential if an innovation is to
become institutionalized: the commitment of the headteacher and the
incorporation of structural changes into school and classroom policy. Let us
consider each of these in turn.
All of the strategies described in the last section for maximizing pro-
ductive collegiality depend critically on recognition by managers in the
school typically the headteacher and the head of department that
investment in time for sharing amongst teachers is at least as important
as is time for in-service training provided by outsiders. I have, from time
to time, been quite surprised to find that a headteacher who is prepared
to find a significant sum of money for a professional development pro-
gramme then baulks at creating the time for teachers to meet together to
share experiences and to develop their practice collaboratively within the
department. This occasional headteacher seems to act as if paying the
money was all that was required for magic to follow. The best profes-
sional development programme in the world will have no deep-seated
effect on practice if there is no active support mechanism for teachers
introducing new methods, to ensure that the hard work involved in
high-quality teaching is recognized, and to establish methods of sharing
practice.
The second aspect, a common factor in failing and struggling schools, is
the absence of any structural sustainability built into the school. It is the
responsibility of senior management in the school to provide systems
which ensure that a method or approach that has been introduced and
which is still considered positively is actually maintained. Practical signals
that an innovation has been adopted into the structure include requests
from the headteacher for updates on the implementation, attention
by management to timetabling requirements, and the inclusion of the
innovation in departmental policy documents and development plans.
Without the establishment of such sustaining structures, efforts put into
in-service work are in danger of being lost when one or two key teachers
leave the school.
Concluding comments
As you progress through your career over, with luck, 30 or even 40 years
from beginning teacher to NQT, accruing new responsibilities in the
pastoral and subject areas, then increasingly demanding management
posts, possibly back into academia, or into local authority advisory roles, or
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out to curriculum projects, or through union activity, or straight through

the school system to headteacher of increasingly demanding schools, at
every step you will be meeting new challenges. You will need to acquire new
skills and new understandings, learn to see things from new perspectives,
occasionally even to change camps as from poacher to gamekeeper. At every
step, grab what opportunities arise for professional development. Some of it
will be inspiring, some of it adequate, and some of it rubbish. As a rough
guide to finding your way through the maze of professional development
on offer, ask these questions (all based on principles summarized in this
chapter, and spelled out in Adey et al. (2004):
Will there be an opportunity to share the professional development
experience with others, or is it likely to remain an individual personal
experience? If the latter, beware.
Looking at what a professional development programme offers, ask about
theoretical bases, whether the programme shows any evidence of effect
on students, and whether the teachers who are to use it find the materials
accessible and relevant.
Find out whatever you can about the quality of delivery. Look for active
workshop approaches.
Does the programme claim to lead to changes in students achievement,
motivation, or other characteristics on the basis of a short one-off
intensive course? If so, be sceptical. Effective programmes should provide
for follow-up which explores implementation and actually assists you in
trying new methods in your own classroom.
Look to your school: are senior managers prepared to make any structural
changes to the timetable and/or to school and department development
plans to maximize the chance of an innovation becoming a long-lived
feature of the school? If not, you may be wasting your time.
And as you progress through your career, and find yourself in a position
where you are allocating CPD funds within a school, bear in mind the
difficulties of managing effective (as opposed to stylish) professional
development for yourself and colleagues. It may be better to distribute the
funds unfairly across departments in order to concentrate funds where
they have a chance to be effective than to be fair in the distribution of
one-day INSETs, not one of which will have any effect at all on classroom
practice.
No, you will not have got it all sorted out in a couple of years time. If
you are fortunate you will continue to learn and develop more complex
subject knowledge, pastoral understanding, and management capabilities
throughout your career. Thats a pretty exciting prospect.
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Page 366
Page 367
Index
11-plus examination, 13, 70, 188, 202, copyright, 1456

333 corporal punishment, 1445
coursework, 478
ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), 228 Crick Report (1998), 267, 2712,
ADHD, see ADD 275
Advanced Skills Teachers, 80 cross-curricular themes, 2678
appraisal, 37 curriculum, 456
assessment Curriculum 2000, 268, 2724, 276
and discipline, 179
national, 4649 Decade of Education for Sustainable
National Qualifications Framework, Development, 304
339 dialogic teaching, 171, 210, 2589
qualifications, 3334, 339 discipline
and the law, 1435
Blended learning, 319 duty of care, 1414
British Educational Communication and dyslexia, 229
Technology Agency (Becta), 318
Bullock Report (1975), 239 Education Act (1902), 75, 103
Education Act (1944), 13, 70, 75, 129,
Callaghan, J. 283
Ruskin College speech, 74, 103 Education Action Zones, 77, 1334
Children Act (2004), 133, 295 Education Outside the Classroom
Chris Woodhead, 102, 1078 Manifesto, 313
City Academies, 3940, 79 Education Reform Act (1988), 13, 32, 42,
City Technology Colleges, 75 45, 63, 745, 226, 280, 2834
class. see social class Education (Schools) Act (1992), 103
classroom Education Act (1996), 144
management, 56 Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant
mixed ability, 5 (EMAG), 241
collegiality, 89, 3623 Every Child Matters (White Paper) (2003),
communication, 56 133, 224, 295
needs of pupils, 228 examinations, 13
Conservative Government, 32, 756 Excellence in Cities, 65, 78, 1334, 229
Page 367
Page 368
368 Index
Excellence in Schools (White Paper) National Numeracy Strategy, (NNS), 14

(1997), 271 negligence, 1423, 1489
Excellent Teachers, 80 New Labour, 30, 33, 36, 38, 626, 889,
91, 117, 127, 1325, 341
formative assessment, 184, 195, 2157,
3501 Ofsted (Office for Standards in
Fresh Start, 778 Education), 72, 756, 90, 1038,
182, 213, 256, 280, 2867, 289,
gender, 1146, 15860 295
General Teaching Council (GTC), 7, 15
gifted and talented students, 190 parental choice, 634
globalization, 312, 87, 263 parents, 50, 63, 1223
GNVQ, 345 working with, 67
Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP), 90 pastoral role of teachers, 67, 3459,
Growing Schools, 313 3535
payment by results, 1213, 85
Health and Safety at Work Act, 1467 performance management, 63, 345
Her Majestys Inspectors, 12, 745, performance related pay (PRP), 91
1023 personal qualities, 78
personalized learning, 9, 30, 350
identity, 1578, 2889 phonics, 26163
intelligence, 69 PHSCE (Personal, Health, Social and
IQ, 204 Citizenship Education), 3512
inspection, 12, 1314, 43, 63, 746, Piaget, J., 157, 1645
1028, 202 Plowden Report (1967), 13, 70
Private Financial Initiative (PFI), 389
Labour Government, 767, 271 privatization, 3740
leadership professional qualities, 7
and CPD, 3634 professionalism, 1418, 925
and school effectiveness, 723, 7980 PSHE (Personal, Social and Health
league tables, 32, 34, 636, 89, 202, 225 Education), 267, 300, 3512
learning styles, 361
literacy questioning, 1956, 2167, 21920
standards of, 34
London Challenge, 134 race, 116120
reflective practice, 99102, 35860
managerialism, 3335 Registered Teacher Programme (RTP),
market reforms, 61, 634, 132 2324, 80
mentor, 89, 10 remodelling the workforce, 9092, 345
mixed ability, 5, 1889 Rose Report (2006), 2557
National College for School Leadership, School Centred Initial Teacher Training
79, 350 (SCITT), 90
National Curriculum, 6, 16, 623 Schools: Achieving Success (White
and citizenship, 267, 2701, 351 Paper) (2001), 36
and EAL/ESL, 240 School Action Plus, 232
and health promotion, 295 school dinners, 292
and ICT, 3234 school trips, 171
and PSHE, 267, 351 setting and streaming, 45, 188
and spirituality, 284 sex education, 2923, 295
and science, 289 social class, 120123, 12830, 132, 340
cross-curricular themes, 2678 social inclusion, 30
National Grid for Learning (NGfL), 318 Special Educational Needs, 224234
National Literacy Strategy (NLS), 14, special needs departments, 65
133, 255, 257, 261 Specialist Schools, 76, 789
Page 368
Page 369
Index 369
standards Teaching Taster Courses, 4

for headteachers, 7980 Teacher Training Agency (TTA), 80, 89
for teachers, 223, 34, 80, 934 TGAT (Task Group on Assessment and
of student attainment, 357, 43, Testing), 467
4849, 69, 1145, 256 Tomlinson Report (2004), 338
personal, 4 Training and Development Agency for
streaming, 701 Schools (TDA), 80, 89, 1756
stress, 4, 89, 104 TVEI (Technical and Vocational
subject knowledge, 1420, 2324, 358 Education Initiative), 333
summative assessment, 21821
Sure Star Programme, 133 uniform, 65, 178
Swann Report (1985), 239
values, 294, 336
Teachers: Meeting the Challenge of Change Virtual Learning Environments (VLE),
(Green Paper) (1998), 89 320
teacher retention, 902 Vygotsky, L., 1656, 192, 2578
teacher supply, 8790, 127
teachers Warnock Report (1978), 226
as craft workers and technicians, Workforce Reform and Remodelling
1617 Agenda, 912, 345
careers, 10
identity, 12 Zone of Proximal Development, 1656,
teaching assistants, 65 192, 2578
Page 369
Becoming a teacher pb:Layout 1 10/5/07 12:16 Page 1
Third Edition
Third Edition
Becoming a Teacher
Issues in Secondary Teaching
Teachers touch the lives of thousands of young people during their

Third
Edition Becoming
careers, inspiring and motivating learners to reach their maximum
potential. In order to be able to do their jobs effectively, they need to
understand the context within which they work and be able to reflect a Teacher
Becoming a Teacher
critically on what they do and why. If you are embarking on a career in
teaching and the prospect of influencing the future through your work with
young people is both exciting and daunting, then this book has been
written for you.
The new edition is revised and updated throughout. It remains a unique
Issues in
and powerful combination of ideas, analysis, questions, answers and
wisdom, with the combined professional experience of the editors and Secondary
contributors providing a wealth of knowledge and opinion. Whilst the
books philosophy remains the same, the addition of three new chapters
on education for sustainability, school effectiveness and improvement,
Teaching
and education policy combined with eleven new contributors - provides
fresh perspectives, ideas and issues for discussion.
The book is divided into four main sections:

First thoughts
Policy, society and schooling
Teaching and learning
Across the curriculum
It provides a broader context in which education sits by addressing
fundamental areas such as classroom management, adolescence and
assessment for learning, alongside practical advice and key issues to
consider. Finally, the authors provide information about roles and
Dillon and Maguire

information technology, literacy and citizenship.
Becoming a Teacher is inspiring reading for prospective, trainee and new
teachers, tutors and mentors.
Justin Dillon is Senior Lecturer in Science and Environmental Education

at Kings College London.
Meg Maguire is Professor of Sociology of Education at Kings College London.
Edited by
Justin Dillon
Meg Maguire
9 780335 221448

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Teachers touch the lives of thousands of young people during their

The book is divided into four main sections:

Dillon and Maguire

Justin Dillon is Senior Lecturer in Science and Environmental Education

Open University Press

and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 101212289, USA

First published 2007

Copyright Justin Dillon and Meg Maguire

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN-10: 0 335 22144 0 (pb) 0 335 22145 9 (hb)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

To the memory of Rod Watson (19472007).

Foreword to the third edition xvii

Part 1 First thoughts 1

1 Developing as a beginning teacher 3

Part 2 Policy, society and schooling 27

3 Education policy and schooling 29

4 Ideology, evidence and the raising of standards 42

5 Values and schooling 55

6 School effectiveness and improvement 69

7 Reforming teachers and their work 85

8 Reflection, inspection and accountability 98

9 Social justice in schools: engaging with equality 112

10 Education, schools and cities 127

11 Teachers and the law 139

Part 3 Teaching and learning 151

13 Learning in and outside of the classroom 163

14 Classroom management 175

15 Differentiation in theory and practice 187

16 Setting, streaming and mixed-ability teaching 201

17 Making assessment work in the classroom 213

18 Aiming for inclusion: removing barriers and building bridges 224

19 English as an Additional Language: challenges of language and

Part 4 Across the curriculum 253

21 Citizenship and citizenship education 267

22 Spiritual education 280

23 The importance of teachers and schools in health promotion 292

xii Notes on contributors

and Deputy Chairman of the National Curriculum Council from 1989 to

Notes on contributors xiii

Studies co-ordinator. He has research interests in professional development

xiv Notes on contributors

in mathematics education. He is co-author (with Dylan Wiliam) of

Foreword to the third

I am delighted to have been asked to write a foreword to the third edition of

xviii Foreword to the third edition

methods of assessment and recording of progress to use, how to group

Justin Dillon and

of what goes on in school and should help you to gain an overview of a

How to use the book

Part 1 First thoughts

Justin Dillon and

4 Justin Dillon and Meg Maguire

Developing as a beginning teacher 5

6 Justin Dillon and Meg Maguire