Educatiom

Předkládám tímto k posouzení a obhajobě diplomovou práci, zpracovanou na závěr studia na Fakultě strojní Západočeské univerzity v Plzni. Prohlašuji, že jsem tuto diplomovou práci vypracoval samostatně, s použitím odborné literatury a pramenů, uvedených v seznamu, který je součástí této diplomové práce. Tento výsledek vznikl za podpory a na přístrojovém vybavení projektu CENTEM reg. č.CZ.1.05/2.1.00/03.0088, který je spolufinancován z ERDF v rámci programu MŠMT OP VaVpI. Proto bych rád poděkoval vedoucímu diplomové práce Doc. Ing. Milanu Honnerovi, Ph.D. za odborné vedení a pomoc při zpracování této práce. Dále děkuji panu Ing. Miroslavu Zetkovi, Ph.D. a všem zaměstnancům strojní haly za odbornou pomoc během experimentální části této práce.

Drawing on Derrida this paper considers how inclusive education in England was defined and operationalised within New Labour's educational policy and by those teachers who reconstructed this policy within the confines of schools and individual classrooms. The paper has two critical ambitions. First it argues that the epistemology of inclusion was mediated by ontological ghosts which moved it away from its creation as a construct of social justice to recreate it on a stage of the phenomenological reduction of competing policy initiatives. Second, the paper demonstrates how teachers although fully accepting of inclusion's theoretic nevertheless interpreted it in such a way that it became nothing more than spectacle where social presence cloaked educational absences. Based upon such findings the paper concludes that New Labour's inclusion policy was illusionary and perhaps was as much about presenting inequity as it was equity.

This 'think piece' re-casts the school textbook as ontological envelopes which enfold an unresolved dialectic between constituting and constituted power into the education of every school pupil. Informed by the writings of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) the authors reveal that textbooks act as 'majoritan' to categorise, contain and constrain societal conceptions of the 'Other'. The authors propose that educators must reinvent notions of freedom, authority and ethical responsibility. The authors conclude that to undermine the pernicious power of the 'normalising' textbook we need the production of a counter signifying semiotic to overcome pathologies existing in schools today.

The paper details the findings of a study which focused on the analysis of the cultural representation of disability in school textbooks in Iran and England. The paper argues that whilst inclusive education could facilitate the incorporating of disabled pupils into mainstream schools, there needs to be deeper examination as to how this transition should take place for children aged 3-13. The paper suggests that in such examinations school textbooks might be of significance in familiarizing non-disabled pupils, teachers and authorities with the issues related to disability and disabled pupils.

This ‘think piece’ re-casts the school textbook as ontological envelopes which enfold an unresolved dialectic between constituting and constituted power into the education of every school pupil. Informed by the writings of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) the authors reveal that textbooks act as ‘majoritan’ to categorise, contain and constrain societal conceptions of the ‘Other’. The authors propose that educators must reinvent notions of freedom, authority and ethical responsibility. The authors conclude that to undermine the pernicious power of the ‘normalising’ textbook we need the production of a counter signifying semiotic to overcome pathologies existing in schools today.

The development, and expansion, of "new" Education Studies programmes within the framework of Higher Education Funding Council provision is one that has been subject to a recent and rapid expansion. Furthermore, it appears this expansion is set to continue, as there is buoyant student demand. What, though, is observable in these new Education Studies programmes is the wide variety of provision which has resulted from institutions developing their programme within their own particular historical and geographical contexts. For some writers this lack of clarity over the definition and determination of the range of study risks academic incoherence. This perceived incoherence of subject matter is brought more sharply into focus if one analyses Education Studies programmes, in England, through the lens of graduate employability. Through such an analytical lens it becomes apparent that a continuum of employability claims for Education Studies programmes exists. This paper adds to a growing research base which provides data which enable an analysis of how Education Studies is defined and what employment pathways Education Studies graduates take. The paper outlines the results of a small-scale research study which sought to determine whether it is the case that Education Studies is merely the waiting room for teacher training or is, in actuality, a programme of its own merit that offers students a wide range of future career pathways.

Special education in England has over the past 25 years been subject to rapid development, not least in relation to the emergence of inclusive education. Alan Hodkinson of the Faculty of Education, Community and Leisure, John Moore's University, critically examines the development of inclusion in England and the barriers that can stall the development of this important educational and societal initiative. He discusses the journey towards inclusion from educational segregation to integration and describes the current Government stance on this important subject. Alan Hodkinson suggests that many of the barriers to effective inclusion are in practice located within the loci of Government, local authorities as well as that of schools. He concludes that it is now time to develop a new vision for the education of children with special educational needs and disabilities that is supported by straightforward, coordinated and well-resourced policies. If educational policy is to achieve an inclusive consciousness, it must ensure that the views of children, their families and educational professionals are listened to, and that inclusion is by the choice of the pupils and their parents and not by compulsion.

The paper outlines the findings from a literature review of the English's government's response to the issue of training pre-service teachers in the delivery of effective special educational needs support. The Review's findings detail that although educational practice in mainstream classrooms has changed considerably since the 1970s the training of pre-service teachers with regards to special educational needs has seemingly changed very little. The paper argues that the government needs to radically rethink its policy of inclusion to ensure that a coherent plan is formulated which enables Higher Education Institutions' initial teacher training programmes to train students who are competent and confident in their abilities to work with children with special educational needs and/ or disabilities.

Within this article the definition of inclusion is critically explored in relation to the previous New Labour government's educational policy of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This exploration demonstrates that inclusion rather than being located in terms of equality should actually be observed as a complex ideological construct which legitimised the process of the subordination and domination of vulnerable groups in our society. In the article it is argued that whilst supposing to ensure the presence of all children, on their terms, in mainstream schools, inclusion in this guise only insinuated itself in-the-place-of integration and thereby operated as a continuous and homogeneous reparation and modification of presence in the representation of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. The article concludes therefore that inclusion became located as a ‘guise of truth’ which employed a cultural cloak of equality to create double binds whe...

The article analyzes teacher’s emplacement of the image of disability within school’s intranet sites in England. The image unearthed within such sites was problematic as it did not display a positive or realistic image of disability or disabled people. Within the article historical archaeology and colonialism are employed as theoretic framework to interpret this artifact of disability. The article also provides an ethnographic subscript to the creation of a space of possibilities and how this became striated by missionary teachers who colonized this brave new intranet world. Deciphering of the organization and representation of the disabled indigene, through this theoretical framework, unearthed a cartography inscribed by the scalpel of old world geometry.

This paper outlines research into homophobia in primary schools that was conducted with academics, support staff and students engaged in initial teacher training at a university in the North West of England and teaching staff from local primary schools. The research involved the use of questionnaires, semi-structured and unstructured interview to gain insight into the existence of homophobia in primary schools. The data from the study suggests that homophobia exists within primary settings and that children as young as five employ discriminatory language. The study details that incidents of homophobia include those related to gender identity; perceptions of masculinity and femininity; school and workplace bullying and multimedia coverage of homosexuality. The study demonstrates that barriers to tackling homophobia exist in primary schools and that these may stem from staff, parental attitudes, school policy and issues relating to faith and religion.

This paper examines the cultural construction of disability detailed within school reading schemes. The study by the employment of proto-text analysis followed the 'reading journeys' that a four-and five-year-old child experienced during the course of one academic year. The study examined 61 reading books that contained 2199 illustrations, 100 photographs and 1006 pages of text. The major finding of the research is that the reading schemes contained a limited construction of disability and one that was contextualised within medical deficit and narrative prosthesis. The research concludes that school reading schemes are potentially acting as a Trojan horse to introduce a page thin hegemonic that inculcates young children into the systems of dominance and 'ableist' agendas which are seemingly replete in our society.

This article critically analyses the concept of space in generality and specifically the employment of safe space as an educational concept. In addition, by employing Derrida's notion of the arrivant, the article provides an account of the author's frustrations during his analysis of space and of his attempts to reorientate his quantitative writings to ones that are more autobiographical in nature. The argument emplaced in the article is that safe spaces are not safe but in reality are ‘warped spaces’ where landscapes reveal topographies of despair which mimic modern technological and capitalist development.

Through the employment of the three stanzas of Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Self-Unseeing,” this article seeks to tremble the picture of disability located in the pedagogical materials in English schools. By mobilizing, and then reversing, Derrida’s concept of the visor and the ghost, as well as Bentham’s Panopticon, this story reveals the power of the them, the their, and the they. In materializing the ghost of the real of disability within a utopia of hope, this story deconstructs the power of their transparent house by revealing people with disabilities as magnificent beings.

This brief article acts as an introduction to this special edition on Fundamental British Values (FBV). From the outset, it is important to state that we as a group of contributors believe it is fundamental to value Britain and all of its peoples in different and differing ways to those espoused in the Government Prevent Agenda, FBV, and the “media’s moral panics” about the terrorist within.

In 2014, the United Kingdom Coalition Government, after the now infamous Trojan Horse incident, insisted that all children learn Fundamental British Values. Cameron, as Prime Minister, argued that such values, coupled with “muscular liberalism” would “challenge extremist ideology, exposing it for the lie that it is.” This article exists at the place of the apostrophe—as the scare mark (‘ ’) becomes an enclosure, enclosing a manufactured possession. “Is Britishness just a made up concept? Who determines what is or is not fundamental? I want to problematize what they include and exclude in their concept of “British Values.” What is this “British” they talk about and why do they feel a need for this “Britain” to exist? Within the enclosures provided by ‘ten scare marks’, I present research into historical and contemporary formulations of Britishness taken from academic texts, school textbooks, and websites. In addition, by invoking the work of Serres, Bhabba, and Billig, I seek to conf...