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UNDERSTANDING LEARNING
Companion Volumes
The companion volumes in this series are:
Teacher Development: Exploring our own practice
Edited by: Janet Soler, Anna Craft and Hilary Burgess
Developing Pedagogy: Researching practice
Edited by Janet Collins, Kim Insley and Janet Soler
All of these readers are part of a course: Developing Practice in Primary
Education, that is itself part of the Open University MA programme.
The Open University MA in Education
The Open University MA in Education is now firmly established as the most
popular postgraduate degree for education professionals in Europe, with over
3,000 students registering each year. The MA in Education is designed particularly
for those with experience of teaching, the advisory service, educational
administration or allied fields.
Structure of the MA
The MA is a modular degree, and students are therefore free to select from a
range of options the programme which best fits in with their interests and
professional goals. Specialist lines in management, applied linguistics and lifelong
learning are also available. Study in the Open University’s Advanced Diploma can
also be counted towards the MA, and successful study in the MA programme
entitles students to apply for entry into the Open University Doctorate in
Education programme.
OU Supported Open Learning
The MA in Education programme provides great flexibility. Students study at
their own pace, in their own time, anywhere in the European Union. They receive
specially prepared study materials, supported by tutorials, thus offering the chance
to work with other students.
The Doctorate in Education

The Doctorate in Education is a new part-time doctoral degree, combining taught

courses, research methods and a dissertation designed to meet the needs of
professionals in education and related areas who are seeking to extend and
deepen their knowledge and understanding of contemporary educational issues.
The Doctorate in Education builds upon successful study within the Open
University MA in Education programme.
How to apply
If you would like to register for this programme, or simply to find out more
information about available courses, please write for the Professional
Development in Education prospectus to the Course Reservations Centre, PO Box
724, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6ZW, UK
(Telephone 0 (0 44) 1908 653231). Details can also be viewed on our web page
http: //www.open.ac.uk.
UNDERSTANDING LEARNING
Influences and Outcomes

edited by
Janet Collins and Deirdre Cook

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Paul Chapman
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 Contents

Acknowledgements vil

Introduction
Deirdre Cook

Section 1 Influences on Education

1 The politics of educational ideas

Wilfred Carr and Anthony Hartnett
2 A redefinition of liberal and humanistic education
Nimrod Aloni
2 New progressivism
Peter Silcock

Section 2 Views of Learning

4 Minds at work: applying multiple intelligences in the classroom

Mara Krechevsky and Steve Seidel
5 The acquisition of a child by a learning disability
R.P. McDermott
Situated cognition and how to overcome it
Carl Bereiter
Children yesterday, today and tomorrow
Mary Jane Drummond

Section 3. Outcomes of Assessment

8 Liberating the learner through assessment

Patricia Broadfoot
° Gendered learning and achievement 109
Patricia Murphy
10 Raising standards: is ability grouping the answer? 122
Judith Ireson and Susan Hallam
| Wide eyes and open minds: observing, assessing and respecting
children’s early achievements 134
Cathy Nutbrown
vi Understanding Learning

Section 4 Cultural Capital and Learning 147

12 ‘I'll be a nothing’: structure, agency and the construction of

identity through assessment 149
Diane Reay and Dylan Wiliam
13. Learning and pupil career in a primary school: the case of
William 162
Andrew Pollard and Ann Filer
14 Home-school links 179
Sally Tomlinson
15 Researching home-school relations: a critical approach 187
Carol Vincent

Index 203
 Acknowledgements

The editors and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to
use copyright material:

Cambridge University Press for material from R. P. McDermott (1996)

‘The acquisition of a child by a learning disability’ in J. Lave and S.
Shanklin, eds, Understanding Practice: Perspectives on activity and context,
pp. 269-301;

The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd for material from

S. Tomlinson (1995) ‘Home-school links’ in R. Best, P. Lang, C. Lodge
and C. Watkins, Pastoral Care and Personal-Social Education, Cassell,
pp. 234-45;

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc for material from Mara Krechevsky

and Steve Seidel (1998) ‘Minds at Work: applying multiple intelligences in
the classroom’ in R. J. Sternberg and W. M. Williams, eds, Intelligence,
Instruction and Assessment: Theory into Practice, pp. 17-38. Copyright ©
1998 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc; and C. Bereiter (1998) ‘Situ-
ated cognition and how to overcome it’ in D. Kirshner and J. A. Whitson,
eds, Situated Cognition: Social, Semiotic and Psychological Perspectives, pp.
281-99. Copyright © 1998 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates;

Kluwer Academic Publishers for material from Nimrod Aloni (1997) ‘A

redefinition of liberal and humanistic education’, /nternational Review of
Education, 43:1, pp. 87-107. Copyright © 1997 UNESCO Institute for
Education and Kluwer Academic Publishers;

Open University Press for Wilfred Carr and Anthony Hartnett (1996)
Education and the Struggle for Democracy, pp. 1-16;

Sage Publications for material from Cathy Nutbrown (1996) Respectful

Educators — Capable Learners, Paul Chapman Publishing, pp. 44-55.
Copyright © 1996 Cathy Nutbrown;

Taylor & Francis Ltd for material from J. Ireson and S. Hallam (1999)
‘Raising standards: Is ability grouping the answer?’, Oxford Review of

Vil
Vill Understanding Learning

Education, 25:3, pp. 344-60; D. Reay and D. Wiliam (1999) ‘Ill Be a

Nothing: structure, agency and the construction of identity through assess-
ment’, British Educational Research Journal, 25:3, pp. 343-54; P. Silcock
(1999) New Progressivism, Falmer Press, pp. 135-47; M. J. Drummond
(1998) ‘Children yesterday, today and tomorrow’ in C. Richards and P. H.
Taylor, eds, How Shall We School Our Children? Primary Education and
Its Future, Falmer Press, pp. 95-106; Carol Vincent (1996) Parents and
Teachers: Power and Participation, Falmer Press, pp. 73-90; and Patricia
Broadfoot (1996) ‘Liberating the learning through assessment’ in G. Clax-
ton, T. Atkinson, M. Osborn and M. Wallace, eds, Liberating the Learner,
Routledge, pp. 32-44.

Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders but if any have
been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the
necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
 Introduction

Deirdre Cook

The model of education that underpins this book is one in which the ideas
of values and evaluation feature prominently. These are set against a back-
ground of some of the classical traditions found in education and political
thought. It considers how current professional issues can be illuminated by
a careful reassessment of significant themes drawing on a range of inter-
linked perspectives.
As both teachers and researchers, reflection is a familiar and powerful
idea through which we, as professional practitioners, explore our relation-
ship with the world around us. We are both in and of this world and our
actions affect it and ourselves, and our reflections occur both while we are
engaged in some action or other and after we have completed them (Schon,
1983).
If you feel that it is not possible to disentangle oneself entirely from the
world of lived experiences and that it is still important to evaluate in some
way the meaningfulness of the messages which come back from it then you
will find Schon’s ideas useful. As reflective practitioners, we revise our
beliefs and theories about teaching, researching and our roles in these
continually. In carrying out these reflections, we try to be as trustworthy as
possible and record as accurately as we can our observations, thoughts,
feelings and perceptions about what is going on around us. These are
personal and subjective activities and not ones which are about establishing
objective truth or proving any specific point. This view is an attempt to
recognize that the social world in which we operate is complex and what we
do is affected powerfully by our beliefs, values and motivation for taking
action. Politics and power relations impact on our professional world and
influence what we can do in both practice and research. Since it is seldom
possible to be completely objective and detached in our endeavours to
improve practice, we need to be clear about the values we bring with us and
to be open with ourselves about the belief systems within which we oper-
ate. It is these belief systems that we use to give meaning to our reflections
in and on action.
A number of the themes we are dealing with here are concerned with
areas where it is not possible to establish a single model of truth. They are
areas where we must make judgements about ideas, to decide if we find one
good or better in some sense than another. Many of the concepts, theoreti-
cal positions and themes considered, link closely with philosophical, histor-
ical, psychological and social approaches to education. Sometimes this
requires a multidimensional and self-questioning exploration of core and
Z Understanding Learning

central concerns: examining the purpose of education, the interrelation-

ship between our ideas about individuals and the groups in which they
find themselves in terms of cultural and cognitive dimensions, and the
articulation of a personal theory of educational practice, contribute to the
development of professional ‘voice’. If teachers expect to be heard then
they too must listen to the voices of their pupils, and to those of the
parents. As many influences reach into teachers in the classroom so, too,
professional beliefs, practices and decision-making affect the wider com-
munity. In a society where democracy is a valued idea, no voice should be
excluded.
Notions of democracy, of a democratic society and of democratic educa-
tion form a recurring theme threaded through the ideas presented here.
This is sometimes explicit and on other occasions more covert, but under-
pinning everything lies a concern with creating a view of education which
will serve society well in this the twenty-first century. Central to the idea of
democracy is a belief that every individual is of value as a citizen and, as a
consequence, should have certain freedoms. These will be very familiar and
any list of them might include freedom of expression, free and frequent
elections where real choices are available, a right of assembly and a free
press, an independent judiciary and freedom of movement, religion and
teaching. Today as in the past, this system of ideas is not without its critics.
Some people simply feel that in such bureaucratic times as ours where
multinational agencies have so much influence, then our representatives
and government can no longer influence decision-making as they once did.
Others feel that democratic processes are too inefficient for fast and effec-
tive decision-making, while its advocates feel it needs to be extended to
involve more people in decision-making at as many levels as possible. The
practicality of this aspiration is questioned by those who feel that it is not
possible to do this because many of the issues are too complex. Further-
more, many people are not well practised in democratic decision-making,
having had little or no experience of it. Making informed decisions de-
mands that everyone has access to, and understands, the necessary infor-
mation and this makes demands on the individual and the state which are
unattainable.
The debate with regard to democracy, freedom and equality here is very
real, having as a fundamental question our beliefs about ‘the good life’, the
well-being of society, the nature of individual freedoms and the ensuing
tension between inclusivity and elitism. The decisions we make about what
is ‘of value’ to us as educators may result in our experiencing real conflict
and tensions within our professional lives. A commitment to freedom and
equality at either a personal, institutional or state level sits uncomfortably
with ideas about education as a consumer product and the levelling effect
of market forces.
The ideological conflict of recent years between aspects of liberalism and
democracy in education has been both intellectual and political. The asso-
ciated reforms of the curriculum and teacher education were a consequent
 Introduction 3

part of a powerful offensive to impose a particular political interpretation

of what constituted the ‘good life’ in terms of its educational prerequisites.
In order to achieve this end, teaching has increasingly been presented as a
value-free and ‘technicist’ activity having an emphasis on skills and com-
petences (Carr and Hartnett, 1996). In consequence, there seems to have
been very little time set aside to consider and reflect on the ideological
assumptions, interests and power structures which support or influence our
teaching. As a word, ‘ideology’ has increasingly taken on pejorative asso-
ciations but its origins were very much less negative. In the early nine-
teenth century it simply referred to the ‘science of ideas’ which, somewhat
ironically, we may now feel, aspired to show us how we ordered our think-
ing and acquired our prejudices.
As this term is most commonly encountered as a way of describing the
ways of thinking or organizing ideas held by particular groups and since such
groups have often been political or religious, the word had increasingly taken
on associations with ideals, beliefs and passions. When ideas are part of a
particular conviction or belief, they become tremendously important values
for that group. Ideological clashes are not at all uncommon when people see
the world in different ways. In fact one way of characterizing an ideology is
as a ‘visionary speculation’ (Carr and Hartnett, Chapter 1 in this volume).
The implications for education of an ideological stance such as their ‘demo-
cratic vision of education’ is that its systems must both lead to democratic
participation and do so through practices which can be seen as clearly re-
specting the freedoms of individuals referred to earlier. The associated pro-
cesses of empowerment and the prevention of discrimination and repression
are difficult to achieve at institutional, rather than individual, levels in
schools. This is because, traditionally, schools have power structures and
authority patterns which do not encourage or invite alternative arrange-
ments or suggestions from teachers, parents or pupils. When education is
also closely linked to the idea of grading children and beginning to prepare
them for some specified place in a world beyond the school system then,
consequently, empowerment and active democratic participation become
ideas of diminished importance. Reconciling a wish to ‘empower’ with the
role we have as key players in this grading and sorting process every day as
we assess, evaluate and plan for the learning of the children in care can be a
source of considerable professional conflict.
Multiple ideological systems exist but the outcome is not necessarily
conflict or clash. Some writers, for example Aloni (Chapter 2 in this vol-
ume), aim to ensure an integration of ideas. They believe that an open
discourse conducted in goodwill between those holding different views is to
be preferred. ‘Ideological enemies’ he claims, more commonly ‘dog-
matically demonize and delegitimate the other.’
Emphasizing comparability rather than points of difference is seen by a
number of writers as central to re-examining ideological ideas in order to
realign old and new values through informed professional dialogue. One
focus for this discussion is the debate which surrounds child-centred
4 Understanding Learning

education. This is an important ideological perspective which has had

considerable influence on both the professional formation of teachers and
on classroom practice. This is a specific example of a dominating ideology.
As educators we should be able to outline our ideological belief systems
through reasoned argument in a way which recognizes that ideologies
‘need not and should not polarize’ (Silcock, Chapter 3 in this volume). He
further suggests, that as an essential adjunct to the business of reconciling
‘the twin demands of individuals and society’, we are ‘pragmatic’ in our
decision-making. Pragmatism, from a philosophical perspective, links with
the writings of Pierce, James and Dewey. These caution us to be conscious
of the practical effects of our interpretation and justification of our beliefs.
As Silcock points out, a more politically expedient and ‘common sense’ use
of this term suggests that it is ‘whatever works’.
The educational reforms alluded to earlier led increasingly to populist
views that what education required was a return to didacticism as it was
conceived of in traditional nineteenth- and early twentieth-century class-
rooms. The progressivist child-centred ideology of the post-Plowden era
had, prior to the introduction of the Education Reform Act 1988 (ERA),
come under considerable attack. Not least because of close associations
with ideas drawn from developmental psychology which had attracted crit-
ical attention. Child-centredness, with its associated ideas of learner auto-
nomy, ambivalence about the role of the educator and individualization of
the curriculum, became associated with the supposed failure of progressiv-
ism to meet the economic challenges of a rapidly changing society. Despite
the immense criticism levelled against them from a variety of sources,
many teachers continue to hold fast to their ideological beliefs about the
value of learner-centred education. For them, outside interventions and
initiatives stand in marked contrast to their belief in curriculum adaptation
and innovation.
Silcock links progressivist child-centred ideologies not only with de-
velopmentalism but also with constructivist theories. Constructivism has its
roots in pragmatist views; it has links to both philosophical and psychologi-
cal traditions. At one level constructivism offers us an explanation of the
nature of knowledge. At another, it describes how cognitive processes
might be acquired and developed. It is used to provide models of learning
and knowledge which could be used to provide insights into teaching and
the curriculum. As Terwel (1999) points out it is ‘not a robust concept’. It
is, however, a broad and frequently referred to ideology in which the
‘overlapping’ of conceptual ideas can readily be seen across many of its
research findings and discussion.
What is central to constructivist explanations is the view that knowledge
is not seen as fixed and existing independently outside the ‘knower’, ready
to be collected by the learner. It rejects the traditionalist view of ‘know-
ledge transmission’ but does not deny that learners can learn as a result of a
range of methods (Von Glaserfield, in Airasian and Walsh, 1997). Rather
learners are to be seen as playing an active role in ‘constructing’, in some
 Introduction 5

way, their own meanings. ‘Since individuals make their own meaning from
their beliefs and experiences, all knowledge is tentative, subjective and
personal’ (Airasian and Walsh, 1997, p. 445). Terwel’s warning about its
fragility acts to remind us that despite its long history, as yet, constructivism
is an epistemological description of learning and not a practical prescrip-
tion for teaching. Teachers must be involved in educational research and
be active in relating ideas about learning to both classroom practice and
curriculum development if we are to realize what he and others see as the
ideal of ‘authentic learning’.
The linking of existing and new experiences in the process of learning is
an essential concern of progressivist and constructivist views. For many
educators this idea is most readily recognizable in the familiar framework
associated with the Piagetian ideas. Constructivism here sees learning as
the process by which children gradually come to acquire, through their own
interactions with the empirical world, the universal forms of knowledge.
There are, however, multiple theoretical and ideological extensions of this
notion of constructivism, most of which have come about in response to
challenges which could not be convincingly explained by existing evidence
or conceptualizations. Some educators see these extensions as ‘emergent’
ideologies, others as versions of that very broad category ‘constructivism’.
One of the challenges to the Piagetian-dominated infrastructure linking
constructivism to educational practices was that which saw the creation of
individual personal knowledge as being paramount. The outcomes of this
are interestingly diverse. When this Piagetian-inspired idea of individual
patterns of learning became associated with that of intelligence then this
interesting development eventually led to a way of seeing individuals’
knowledge constructions in terms of multiple intelligences within the fra-
mework of theories of mind (e.g. Krechevsky and Seidel, Chapter 4 in this
volume). Meadows (1993) outlines how early in the twentieth century ‘in-
telligence’ was considered to be unchanging and established in individuals
at birth. Later this view was challenged because there was dissatisfaction
with the outcomes of psychometric research amongst those who felt that
such approaches were not truly giving a representative picture of people’s
ability. This psychometric tradition, when linked to explorations and stud-
ies of Piagetian concepts, she considers, led to a radical extension of views
about individual constructions of knowledge and differences in perfor-
mance and rates of development. The outcome of synthesis is the view that
suggests that there are different and partially independent sorts of intel-
ligence which affect individuals and their learning (Gardner, 1993).
The other development of constructivist thinking draws attention to the
fact that an emphasis on individualized knowledge construction neglects to
consider sufficiently the impact of social cultural, contextual and interper-
sonal interactions on personal learning. This challenge resulted in renewed
attention to the writings of cultural psychologists in the Vygotskian and
neo-Vygotskian tradition. This notion of the discrediting of Piagetian
applications to education practices is quite widespread and is also discussed
6 Understanding Learning

by a number of other writers (e.g. Bernstein, 1993; Van de Veer and

Valsiner, 1994) who suggest that this created a need for a new identity
figure. For many, this came from the sociocultural or socio-historic theories
of Vygotsky.
Although a significant part of Vygotsky’s writings were directly about
educational matters his work, like that of Piaget, has been subject to the
same process of ‘partial borrowing’. This results in a fluid categorization
system for a web of interrelated ideas about constructivism and learning,
which encompasses both social and cultural psychology. There are many
points of comparability between the views of the two major theorists but
there are, especially at the deeper levels of analysis, quite profound dif-
ferences. For example in Piagetian theory cognitive development is seen as
occurring through a single invariant sequence of stages. This is a view not
shared by Vygotsky who described a very different relationship of informal
and scientific concepts within the stages of development. While there is an
emphasis in both theories on ‘activity’ there is here both a split between
Vygotskian and Piagetian theories and some further divisions to be found
between those who emphasize practical activity and those who consider
social interaction and semiotics to be a more important focus. Meth-
odological views about ways of researching in each model would also be
quite different. As one commentator pointed out experience as researched
in a Piagetian manner occurs in a material world where experience is
physical rather than cultural or emotional (Krishner, 1997, p. 86).
Studies of this kind are sometimes categorized as being social constructi-
vist or even as situated cognition. Some writers and theorists seek a ‘recon-
ciliation’ of difference while others see such a rapprochement as
undesirable or even untenable given the perceived ideological differences.
Interestingly Van der Veer and Valsiner (1994, p. 4) suggest the move
towards Vygotsky was required because the autonomous, individualistic
nature of the curriculum derived from Piagetian ideas was seen to be a
threat to ‘the authority and control of the teacher’. Pollard (1993; 1996)
also recognizes this potential threat and he further suggests this shift was
due to the increasing recognition of the social nature of children’s learning,
and greater acknowledgement of the impact on learning of discussion and
‘engagements with others’. In social constructivism, knowledge is seen in
relation to individuals and the social and cultural setting in which they find
themselves.
Situated cognition theorists are also involved in exploring ideas which
take the same starting point as social constructivists but go somewhat
further. For example, researchers such as Brown, Collins and Duguid
(1989) put forward a view of learning which ‘locates knowledge in particu-
lar forms of activity and not simply in mental content’ (Agre, 1997, p. 71).
The idea of problem-solving also features significantly in situated cognition
approaches, and much of the work has involved mathematics and science
and the way these subjects are dealt with in education and the real world
(Lave, 1988; Walkerdine, 1988). These studies ask us to remember that the
 Introduction I

problems we encounter in our everyday world are seldom neat and tidy:
they do not have clearly defined boundaries. In responding to them we
cannot find clear solutions and neat ‘step-wise’ solutions are not useful to
us. We use different kinds of knowledge in different settings with different
people for different reasons to make our decisions. What we need to think
about in a situated cognition approach are the complex interrelationships
between the person carrying out the actions and the setting in which this
takes place. Because there are so many levels and layers to think about
here, situated cognition theorists draw upon a number of disciplines to help
investigate their ideas.
Writers from these different disciplines present their work using the
vocabulary and discourse structures which often reflect their backgrounds
quite strongly and they also use the language of the emerging theory. This
is an important aspect of this perspective but makes summaries and short
overviews like this unrepresentative of its richness and complexity.
What this perspective is trying to achieve is a clearer recognition of the
social nature of learning and cognition and to refocus attention away from
the psychology of the individual mind. It sets out to challenge the individ-
ualistic and dualist ideas with which we are so familiar that they seem like
common sense to us. Situated cognition theorists feel that this individualis-
tic approach to studying learning has only recognized social and cultural
influences in a very limited way. In situated cognition studies the focus is
not on the individual but on the structures and interrelationships which
make up the activity system being studied.
Some of the ideas within situativity are probably more familiar and more
easily seen to be relevant to education than others. For example, those of
‘communities of practice’ and ‘apprenticeship’. If we think about teachers
and classrooms as communities of practice then we need to look at some
complex issues in multilayered and new ways. Looking at interrelated sys-
tems means remembering that when some element of a system changes then
this causes reciprocal reactions elsewhere (e.g. McDermott, Chapter 5 in this
volume). Since schools traditionally work towards a view of knowledge
which values decontextualization and abstraction then studies made within
this framework require a radical rethink of views of learners and learning.
Constructivist views of learning are not an argument for laissez-faire
attitudes to teaching: they recognize the need for teachers to be account-
able. Every view of learning needs to recognize criteria for making judge-
ments about achievement and progress. Deciding that one construction of
learning is more appropriate at a certain point or in a certain place is not
about controlling the learning process or imposing one specific view. The
teacher’s role here is to achieve a sense of balance by identifying, analysing
and challenging misunderstandings in order that learners can refine their
knowledge constructions. The difficulty in classrooms is that pupils quickly
learn what the teacher has in mind as a preferred outcome by the way in
which praise or marks are allocated. Respecting autonomy and making
assessments are not easily accommodated.
8 Understanding Learning

Considerations of the traditions of assessment bring to the foreground

again both the debate about the purpose of education and the tension in
the ideas of democracy and democratic education between inclusivity and
elitism. Here again it is important to look back across time and to take a
multidisciplinary view so that we can better understand how current debate
and the tensions within practice are the outcome of changing beliefs and
expectations. At the heart of all this contestation is a desire to promote
learning in the most appropriate ways. Given the intensity of the debate
surrounding the purposes, practices and procedural aspects of assessment,
it is no longer possible to believe that making judgements about children’s
ability is a straightforward thing. As practitioners we need to examine very
critically the ideologies of learning which lie forgotten behind many every-
day practices. We need too to look at the language and terminology which
we use here to separate out that which reflects older static models from
those which recognize and respect the autonomy of learners and the au-
thenticity of the tasks we use to obtain evidence for our judgements. Some
of this language is technical and complex but the way we talk about
learner’s ability can be ‘a potentially insidious form of discrimination’ (Sol-
ity. 199 bh).
Assessment practices are a source of tension, even of anxiety, for many
who have either professional or parental involvement with Primary and
Early Years education. In the latter this owes much to the ideological clash
between progressivist views of what the education of young children should
emphasize and the more recent grafting-on of goal-orientated achievement
measures which reflect a different tradition. Numerical outcomes, achieve-
ment levels and other data to support the calculation, a ‘value-added’
dimension, are more accurately located in traditional interpretation of lib-
eralism. Understanding where we stand in relation to the traditions of
assessment and the different views and practices linked to its various pur-
poses can only be helpful to us in making fair and representative judge-
ments about standards of achievement. It is important in this debate to be
clear about whether we see assessment as serving children and their learn-
ing Or as serving some other wider and more political agenda.
As part-of this wider debate about assessment, particular attention is
given to the drive to raise standards (Qualifications and Curriculum Auth-
ority [QCA] and the Office for Standards in Education [OFSTED]). As
well as reflecting on ‘how’ this might be achieved in practical ways we need
not to lose sight of the democratic and humanistic ideals associated with
educational practices. Constructivism, in its many forms, assumes that
everyone has the potential to learn and that there exists also the possibility
of incremental improvement. However, it also accepts that learning will be
different when social, cultural and contextual variation occur. In an individ-
ualistic and elitist system not everyone can have prizes. In a democratic one
everyone is of equal worth. As in our earlier reflection we need to review
more than one outcome here. On the one hand we need to think about the
‘fitness for purpose’ of the assessment instruments we use and ask if any
 Introduction 9

one can effectively serve multiple purposes. On the other hand we need
to decide about the equity or ‘fairness’ of any of the data collected not
only in the light of the professional and educational value systems we
adhere to but also in terms of the reliability and validity of the evidence.
In addition democratic and constructivist views of education require that
the practical effects of implemented beliefs be taken into account and
child-centred ones would surely insist that consideration be given to the
effect upon learners of assessment practices. Self-determination and the
ability to make soundly based critical judgements about oneself are part
of the educational processes relating to the autonomy of learners. They,
too, have a part to play in the practices to which they are subjected. The
processes of categorization and consignment affects not only the children
at an immediate and personal level but, as some recent research shows, it
also affects the pedagogical decision-making of teachers as well as the
curriculum that is offered to children. The links between testing, teaching
and driving up standards are clearly visible in studies which also expose
the extent of the pressure on the belief systems of the teachers and on the
children’s perceptions of themselves. For the children and their teachers,
as their voices tell, these are testing times (Reay and Wiliam, Chapter 12
in this volume).
Other dilemmas tend to follow from rigidly individualistic assessment
practices: that is, there is payoff between breadth of curriculum coverage
and the achievement of high scores. One can only be achieved by sacrific-
ing the other and these children speak meaningfully of the curriculum-
narrowing which precedes formal testing. There is little place either
within systems of this sort for the recognition of idiosyncratic or individ-
ualistic learning. The autonomy of both teachers and pupils is reduced to
nothingness and constructivist notions of learning rapidly revert to reduc-
tionist principles. The equitable collection of evidence from a range of
authentic and representative learning tasks would also seem to have
fallen victim to the ‘tyranny of testing’.
In our very competitive and global economy there is pressure on every
state to ensure that its citizens are fully equipped to protect their inter-
ests. This pressure in turn is replicated in the socio-political and cultural
life of everyone, competition produces winners and losers in a way which
collaboration does not. One tension in the organizational debate here is
how best to balance alienation and social exclusion against practical mea-
sures to support high achievement and reduce the complexity of the
teaching role. What is central to our concern is how is the evidence we
have available to us to be realistically assessed? To do this it is necessary
to review not only the findings of research but also examine ‘how, why,
when. and for what specific purpose’ it was carried out. Radical changes
to practice based on soundly evaluated socio-political or cognitive
grounds will produce positive improvements. Considering and debating
important professional issues will make this outcome more, not less,
likely.
10 Understanding Learning

Returning to the earlier discussion about democratic participation in edu-

cation and the idea of the right to contribute to the debate, it is important not
to fail to hear the voices of parents. Their views about links between them-
selves and the education professional are an essential element of the wider
debate about learning, educational achievement, raising standards and pro-
fessional practices. Parents occupy an interesting threefold position in the
discussion here. One of their roles is as ‘consumers’ in the educational mar-
ketplace. They have been encouraged to position themselves in this way by
the various education Acts of recent years. Parental rights and choices are a
consideration in measurement of school and teacher accountability. It is
through parents’ perceptions of a school’s effectiveness that popular schools
remain competitive and others decline. Looked at rather differently the
significance of parental roles to the successful learning of their children is
increasingly being recognized. This would encompass learning in cognitive,
social, cultural and emotional domains in school and out. However, parents
are workers, politicians, citizens, voters and employers and, as such, also
have voices in democratic processes as well as a personal stake in the answers
to the key question about the purpose of education. Without exception,
parents would claim that the well-being, attainments and achievement
of their children should be given high priority when decisions on educa-
tional issues are to be made. For all these reasons schools need to cultivate
parents and the establishing of satisfactory home-school links becomes
important.
For teachers who want to enter this debate in order to develop profes-
sional practices, it is again necessary to step back from the present and
look to the past as well as to the future. The ideological clashes which
could occur in linking home and school can only be avoided by giving due
consideration to the complex and controversial dimensions of what part-
nership is, what purposes it serves and how it is to be established and
maintained in periods of rapid changes such as ours. Positive but unques-
tioning and uncritical assumptions about the ‘right relationship’ between
the partners in this relationship will not serve either party well. Any
evidence we have should be considered for its validity and reliability and
in doing this traditional beliefs may need to be reassessed. Schools are the
crucible in which children’s personalities are forged and identities con-
firmed. What this means for us as educators is that issues of politics, social
class, gender, sexuality and racism as well as achievement will all form
part of the agenda.
Education has always featured prominently on the political agenda and
never more so than at times of significant change such as now as a new
century unfolds. Teachers have a privileged position in the debates about
essential educational issues especially when we use our ‘professional
voices’ in an informed manner. As our contributors suggest, this is best
achieved through considered and reflective involvement in researching and
teaching but perhaps also through always being conscious of the implica-
tions of our beliefs and values for our work with children.
 Introduction 11

References

Agre, P. E. (1997) Living math: Lave and Walkerdine on the meaning of arithmetic,
in D. Kirshner and J. A. Whitson (eds), Situated Cognition: Social, Semiotic and
Psychological Perspectives, London: Erlbaum Associates.
Airasian, P. W. and Walsh, M. E. (1997) Constructivist cautions, Phi Delta Kappa,
pp. 444-9.
Bernstein, B. (1993) Foreword, in H. Daniels (ed.) Charting the Agenda, London:
Routledge.
Brown, J. S., Collins, A. and Duguid, P. (1989) Situated cognition and the culture of
learning, Educational Researcher, 18(1), pp. 32-42.
Carr, W. and Hartnett, A. (1997) Education and the Struggle for Democracy, Buck-
ingham: Open University Press.
Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, London:
Heinemann.
Kirshner, D. (1997) The situated development of logic in infancy: a case study, in D.
Kirshner and J. A. Whitson (eds), Situated Cognition: Social, Semiotic and Psy-
chological Perspectives, London: Erlbaum Associates.
Lave, J. (1988) Cognition in Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Meadows, S. (1993) The Child as Thinker, London: Routledge.
Pollard, A. (1993) Learning in primary schools, in H. Daniels (ed.), Charting the
Agenda, London: Routledge.
Pollard, A. (1996) An Introduction to Primary Education, London: Cassell.
Schon, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner, London: Temple Smith.
Solity, J. E. (1991) ‘Special Needs: a discriminatory concept?’ Educational Psycho-
logy in practice 7(1) pp. 12-19 in H. Daniels (ed.) The Practice of Assessment:
Charting the Agenda, London: Routledge.
Terwel, J. (1999) Constructivism and its implications for curriculum theory and
practice, Curriculum Studies, 31(2) pp. 195-9.
Van der Veer, R. and Valsiner, J. (1994) The Vygotsky Reader, Oxford: Blackwell.
Walkerdine, V. (1988) The Mastery of Reason, London: Routledge.
 Section 1: Influences on Education

This section explores some of the social, political, and psychological influ-
ences on ideologies in education. Ideology here is conceived as the science
of ideas which would reveal its more recent sense of ideals, beliefs, values
and passions. Each chapter offers a different paradigm (or framework for
argument) for consideration but all have relevance for today’s practi-
tioners, especially those striving to provide pupils with experiences which
offer quality learning in both the immediate and longer terms. The chap-
ters in this section show something of the duality of thinking with regard to
education and schooling. Here education is seen as a process which both
‘empowers’ and yet also creates good citizens. Similarly, schools may aim
to be democratic but at the same time be striving to prepare pupils for jobs
in later life.
The chapters in this section introduce a number of key issues which are
picked up and developed throughout this book. These include:

@ democracy
acculturation
autonomy
authenticity
accountability

In Chapter 1, Wilfred Carr and Anthony Hartnett argue persuasively in

favour of seeking ‘a democratic vision of education’. Their vision of educa-
tion involves democratic participation of teachers, parents and pupils as
well as practices which can be seen as clearly respecting the freedoms of
individuals. However, they recognize that traditional power structures and
authority patterns mean that the processes of empowerment and the pre-
vention of discrimination and repression are difficult to achieve at institu-
tional levels in schools. Rather than the current ‘technicist’ view of
teaching which emphasizes skills and competencies, Carr and Hartnett
argue for time to consider and reflect on the ideological assumptions, inter-
ests and power structures which support or influence our teaching.
In Chapter 2, Nimrod Aloni develops and expands the idea of empower-
ment raised in the previous chapter. Taking as a starting point a time
before the early eighteenth century when liberal and humanistic education
were synonymous terms, Aloni puts forward a case for a redefinition of
liberal and humanistic education which draws on a wide range of diverse

12
 Introduction to Section 1: Influences on Education {3

ideological positioning. Implicit in this definition of humanism, which

stresses the empowerment of human beings, is included a commitment to
the enhancement of human freedom and growth, as well as philosophical,
social, intellectual and pedagogic principles. It is claimed that a contempo-
rary humanistic theory of education should assimilate the three founda-
tional pedagogic principles of acculturation, autonomy and authenticity.
In Chapter 3, Peter Silcock adds to the ideological debate by arguing for
a ‘new progressivism’ in education which is founded in developmental,
humanistic, democratic and pragmatic ideas. He goes on to claim that there
are empirical, ethical, socio-political and practical grounds for choosing to
be a modern child-centred teacher and that a commitment to individ-
ualized learning and learner autonomy is not a commitment to radical
politics or some sort of postmodern denial of absolutes. There is, he says,
no ambiguity involved in allying diverse, self-managed curricula to socially
responsible aims and industrial needs. Indeed, Silcock totally accepts the
validity of teacher accountability.
 1
The Politics of Educational Ideas

Wilfred Carr and Anthony Hartnett

The Deintellectualization of Educational Policy

In education, as in so much else, we are living through difficult times. Over

lum ought to be organized and controlled and about how teachers ought to
be educated and trained. Teachers have been criticized for their incompe-
~ tence, teacher educators lambasted for their obsession with progressive
educational theories, and schools blamed for a variety of social ills ranging
from a deterioration in moral standards to national economic decline. Fur-
thermore, the tasks for which teachers and schools are being held respons-
ible have accumulated at such a rate as to destroy any hope that they can all
be achieved. In these circumstances it is unsurprising to find that there is
now a growing confusion in the minds of teachers about the limits of their
professional responsibilities and the nature of their educational role. Nor is
it surprising that schools and other educational institutions are beginning to
voice serious misgivings about the adverse educational consequences of
many of the new demands that are now being made on them. More tragic,
however, is the way in which these confusions and demands have thor-
oughly demoralized the education professions and created a culture of
anxiety that operates at a level and to a degree that was previously
unknown.
Although this constellation of criticism, anxiety and frustration ob-
viously reflects a deep-seated sense of unease about the present state of
contemporary schooling, it is not so obvious how this unease ought to be
understood or expressed. One obvious source of the current malaise is the
enormous number of educational ‘reforms’ that were introduced in Eng-
land during the 1980s and 1990s, many of which were given solid statutory
status in the Educational Reform Act of 1988. These include: the imposi-
tion on all state schools of a subject-based National Curriculum; the intro-
duction of an elaborate and compulsory national system of assessment; an
increase in support for independent schools; a reduction in the powers of
teachers and local education authorities; the introduction of local manage-
ment of schools; an increase in parental choice concerning their children’s
schools; and the establishment of procedures for controlling the content
and organization of teacher education. [. . .]

14
 The Politics of Educational Ideas 15

Things were not always so. Prior to the 1980s educational policy in
Britain was largely determined through the collective deliberations of
teachers, politicians, local education authorities, employers and others with
a legitimate interest in education. At their best, these deliberations were
based on a combination of practical experience, rational argument,
theoretical insight and accumulated wisdom, and allowed the conflicting
interests of different groups to be acknowledged and their legitimate dis-
agreements to be resolved. Today all this has changed. With the educa-
tional reforms of the 1980s and 1990s now largely implemented, and with
the mechanisms and procedures that allow the state to control virtually all
aspects of the education system now firmly established, it has become
increasingly difficult to sustain the belief that educational policy should be
formed through public dialogue and collective debate. Indeed, one of the
sure signs of the 1990s is the way in which any informed or enlightened
educational thinking is derided as ‘mere theorizing’ and dismissed as uto-
pian pie in the sky that flies in the face of ordinary common sense. In many
ways we seem to be witnessing the successful attempt to deintellectualize
educational discussion and debate and abandon any pretence that educa-
tional policy has to be grounded in social and political ideals.
The effects of this attempt to deintellectualize educational thinking are
obvious enough. One has been to erode the self-confidence of those who
have sought to establish a theoretical rationale for a set of educational and
political principles which could provide a guiding strategy for education
and direct its future development. Another has been — quite literally — to
demoralize educational policy by treating attempts to examine the moral
basis of educational policy as an ‘ideological’ approach that is no longer
appropriate. Yet another has been to reinforce the belief that educational
policy can be determined, explained and defended by a pragmatic appeal
to ‘ordinary common sense’ and ‘what everybody knows’. The attractions
of basing educational policy on a comforting faith in common sense are
readily apparent. Unlike ‘theory’, common sense is an essentially un-
problematic way of thinking: an uncritical mode of thought based on be-
liefs, ideas and assumptions which are regarded as self-evidently true. What
is commonsensical is ipso facto unquestionable and not in need of critical
examination or justification. But what is also distinctive of common sense is
that it is an inherited way of thinking that is the product of precedent,
ideology and tradition and, as such, inevitably impregnated with the myths,
superstitions and prejudices of the past.
From the perspective of common sense, ‘theory’ is seen as ‘irrelevant
jargon’ and inevitably treated with suspicion and mistrust. ‘Theory’, as
Terry Eagleton puts it, ‘is not the kind of thing one might expect to hear on
the top of a bus’ and differs from common sense precisely ‘because it
involves rejecting what seems natural and refusing to be fobbed off with
shifty answers from well meaning elders’. Educational theory, in so far as it
seeks systematically to assess the validity of the central postulates of con-
ventional educational thinking, is simply a way of thinking about education
16 Understanding Learning

that strives to be more coherent and more adequate than ordinary

common-sense thought can allow. But this does not entail abandoning
common sense in favour of some purely ‘theoretical’ view of education.
What is being abandoned is an unquestioning acceptance of established
educational dogmas and creeds so that a more critical, reflective and in-
formed attitude can be adopted towards what common sense uncritically
accepts. Properly understood, educational theory does not replace com-
mon sense so much as transform it, by subjecting its beliefs and justifica-
tions to systematic criticism. In this sense, educational theorizing is always
a subversive activity, self-consciously aimed at challenging the irrationality
of conventional thinking in order to make educational ideas and beliefs less
dependent on the myths, prejudices and ideological distortions that com-
mon sense fossilizes and preserves.
There is little reason to think that all common-sense educational beliefs
are true and ample reason to suspect that many of them are false. Once it is
conceded that common sense does not have any particular claim to be
correct and that educational theorizing is no more than an attempt crit-
ically to reassess the validity of common-sense educational assumptions,
then the basis on which the attacks on educational theory have been
erected begins to crumble. For it then becomes apparent that the attempt
to defend educational policy by appealing to some nebulous ‘common
sense’ is not a way of dispelling ‘theory’. On the contrary, it is simply a
strategy for insulating the inadequacies of politically dominant ‘educational
theories’ from systematic exposure and for rejecting as ‘ideological’ any
alternative educational ideas.
This kind of blanket refusal to envisage any alternative understanding
of education to that which common sense embodies is one of the most
persistent features of the current educational reforms. But the hostility
towards alternative educational views is never based on a detailed exam-
ination of the arguments through which they are advanced. Nor is any
attempt made to answer the claim that the view of education which recent
policies sustain is itself an ideological view based on an impoverished and
outdated ‘theory’ about the role of education in society. Instead, by dis-
missing all progressive ideas as ‘fashionable theory’ and by opening up
the blind alley of ‘common sense’, the current anti-intellectual rhetoric is
simply an ideological device for closing down serious educational debate
by portraying opponents to current educational reforms as dangerous
‘theorists’ who need to be marginalized rather than given a convincing
answer. It is thus a strategy that discourages any fundamental rethinking
of conventional educational ideas. It also discourages all serious attempts
to develop an educational strategy for the future which takes account of
intellectual advances, new economic circumstances and changing cultural
conditions. It is thus unsurprising to find that progressive educational
Innovations — whether in curriculum, pedagogy or assessment — which
seek to take account of these kinds of social change are now being treated
with derision and that the validity of traditional educational practices is
 The Politics of Educational Ideas 7

being ritually reasserted. Nor should it come as a surprise if one of the

practical consequences of implementing recent policies will be to create
an educational system that only avoids the dangers and insecurities of
political, economic and cultural change by preserving the dogmas and
certitudes of the past. Still less should it come as a surprise to find that the
dominant discourse of education has become thoroughly infected by a
rampant anti-intellectualism which makes it respectable to believe that
educational theory no longer has any significant part to play in the form-
ation of educational policy. But to the extent to which nationally pre-
scribed policy has been detached from rationally justified theory,
education has become less a rational enterprise fed by the resources of
argument, evidence and debate and more a rationalized enterprise which
compels teachers and schools to conform to educational ideas and
‘theories’ which are never officially formulated or defended and to which
few would willingly subscribe.
This chapter speaks to all those who are concerned by this contemporary
deintellectualization and demoralization of educational policy. A central
argument of the chapter is that the difficulties now confronting education
will not be resolved simply by introducing still more policies for improving
the technical expertise of teachers, raising standards or increasing the
effectiveness of schools. They will only be adequately resolved when fun-
damental moral and political questions about the role of education in
promoting a desirable form of social life are openly acknowledged and
more consciously addressed.
Our central claim is that the current uncertainties and confusions sur-
rounding education can only be understood by placing recent educational
reforms within a perspective which will allow these reforms to be brought
into more open confrontation with critical questions about the kind of
society that they help to sustain. To this end, it seeks to assess the extent
to which these reforms are compatible with a vision of the role of educa-
tion in promoting the core values of a democratic society. Only by artic-
ulating a vision of education grounded in democratic values will it be
possible to ensure that non-technical, non-utilitarian questions about the
moral and social purposes being served by recent educational changes are
neither neglected or ignored. And only by doing this will it be possible to
articulate a morally principled response to these changes and determine
how educational policy might be redirected so that it can better serve
democratic aspirations and ideals. By offering arguments for this kind of
educational change and by making practical suggestions about what it
entails, this chapter not only aims to challenge many of the common-
sense assumptions now governing educational policy. It also seeks to
contribute to the intellectual resources which will help the educational
professions to resist contemporary political pressures to perpetuate
schooling in its present form and devise reasonable and practical ways of
bringing contemporary schooling into closer harmony with democratic
values and ideals.
18 Understanding Learning

The Fragmentation of Educational Theory and the

Depoliticization of Educational Debate

The current lack of any adequate theoretical resources for discussing the
significance of recent educational reforms for the future development of
democracy, is not only a measure of the success of those who have sought to
discredit educational theory while simultaneously promoting their own
theoretical conceptions and ideological beliefs. It also reveals a basic contra-
diction within modern democratic society — a contradiction between the
obvious need for members of a democracy publicly to debate the social and
political principles underlying its educational policies and the obvious failure
of these policies to address questions about the kind of education which
genuine participation in such a public debate requires. It is only in a de-
mocracy which does not take seriously the need to equip its future members
with the intellectual understandings, civic virtues or social attitudes necessary
for participating in public debate, that democratic discussion of recent educa-
tional reforms can be treated as irrelevant and largely ignored.
One of the inevitable results of this lack of concern with the democratic
purpose of education has been to deprive educational theory of any clear
understanding of its own cultural or political role. Indeed, in many ways
educational theory appears, like education itself, to be fragmented, confused
and quite incapable of providing any coherent view of what its purpose
should be. Educational theorists often behave as if they constituted a unified
intellectual community, but this simply conceals the fundamental disagree-
ments between them about how educational theorizing ought to be con-
ducted and understood. Sometimes it seems that there are now so many
different ‘educational disciplines’ and so many different ‘paradigms’ within
each of these disciplines, that whatever identity educational theory can claim
to possess stems more from its institutional embodiment in conferences and
journals than from any internal intellectual unity. Beleaguered from without
and fragmented from within, educational theory now displays all the charac-
teristics of an endangered species on the verge of extinction.
[sees
Before the end of the 1960s these disciplines — the philosophy, psychol-
ogy, sociology and history ‘of education’ — had managed to carve up their
newly conquered domain among themselves. Education departments were
reorganized, courses were restructured, professional identities were
changed, new journals and academic societies were established all display-
ing total allegiance to the image of educational theory as a form of inter-
disciplinary enquiry in which the ‘findings’ of the foundation disciplines
could be integrated into principles for formulating educational policy and
guiding educational practice.
fetes
The failure of educational theory to provide answers to the questions it
was supposed to resolve has been compounded by a failure to reach any
 The Politics of Educational Ideas 19

agreement about what these questions should be. To the more

positivistically minded education theorists, educational questions are pre-
dominantly empirical questions about, for example, how curriculum know-
ledge can best be organized and taught, learning outcomes can be
maximized, school effectiveness can be improved, teaching quality can be
enhanced or educational standards can be raised. But because non-
empirical questions about why certain kinds of knowledge are included in
the curriculum, or about the justification for the evaluative criteria govern-
ing the ways in which the concepts of ‘effectiveness’, ‘quality’ or ‘standards’
are being used, are ignored, this form of educational theorizing often serves
simply to legitimize the institutional norms and political interests that de-
termine what is to count as ‘official’ curriculum knowledge and that shape
the criteria governing the way in which evaluative educational concepts are
being understood and applied. It is thus no accident that this kind of
theorizing is always conducted from a posture of ‘value neutrality’ that
allows educational theorists to legitimate their indifference to major politi-
cal, social and moral concerns. Nor is it surprising that this kind of educa-
tional theory is so frequently used by politicians and policy-makers to
confer academic legitimacy on policies and practices which fit in with the
political status quo.
Pay]
One type of educational theory that emerged in the 1970s under the
general name of ‘reproduction theory’: a form of educational theorizing
which focused on the crucial role that education plays in the process
whereby a society reproduces in its new members the forms of conscious-
ness and social relationships characteristic of contemporary social life.
Although reproduction theory has undoubtedly made an important con-
tribution to our understanding of how education operates to maintain the
ideologies and social structures of society, it has nevertheless suffered from
two related limitations. First, by portraying the reproductive process as an
autonomous process over which individuals have little power or control, it
has tended to obscure the extent to which this process is always contested
by those holding different views about the future direction that society
should take and the role that education should play in its realization.
Second, although reproductive theory offers the basis from which to erect a
negative critique of contemporary schooling, it can only acquire this critical
role by first presuming a widespread intuitive commitment to the educa-
tional values intrinsic to the liberal democratic vision of society. But to the
extent that the critical force of reproduction theory relies ‘upon certain key
judgements and critical intentions that constitute part of the liberal frame
of mind in contemporary society’, it always presupposes an acceptance of
the normative political philosophy within which the liberal democratic vi-
sion of society is vindicated. While the sociology of education remains
separate from this kind of political philosophy, its contribution to current
educational debate will remain partial and incomplete. And without a form
of educational theory which interweaves ‘empirical’ and ‘explanatory’
20 Understanding Learning

sociology of education with ‘conceptual’ and ‘prescriptive’ political

philosophy, it will remain incapable of explicating people’s intuitive anx-
ieties about current educational reforms.
(Bera |
Only by means of a theoretical framework that treats the process of educa-
tional change and the process of social change as mutually constitutive and
dialectically related processes can the full significance of what is now hap-
pening in, and to, education be adequately grasped and the possibilities of
more desirable forms of educational change be realistically envisaged.

Education and Democracy: a Theoretical Framework

The educational reforms introduced in Britain since the beginning of the

1980s did not, of course, appear out of a political vacuum. They were a
central part of the ‘Thatcher revolution’: a systematic attempt to reverse
the historical trend towards a more democratic and egalitarian society and
to foster the progressive development of the kind of liberal society in which
individual freedom and laissez-faire economics would play a decisive part.
In particular, they were part of a political strategy designed to create the
kind of non-interventionist state which would be deeply sceptical about any
attempt to use education as a political instrument for extending democracy.
In the kind of liberal society being promoted ‘democracy’ would be pri-
marily valued as a political mechanism for protecting individual freedom
and the future of education would be determined by the only mechanism
which can safeguard and preserve individual liberty: the market.
One of the successes of this political strategy has been to create a politi-
cal climate in which previously accepted educational policies and structures
could be called into question. What, in particular, has been undermined is
the legitimacy of those post-war educational reforms — particularly the 1944
Education Act and the comprehensive reorganization of secondary educa-
tion — which were designed to promote equality of educational opportunity
and so help the eradication of those social and economic inequalities that
were preventing the majority of people from exercising their democratic
freedoms. It has thus stimulated a renewed debate about the historical
tensions within the liberal democratic tradition between the ‘liberal’ com-
mitment to individual freedom and the ‘democratic’ commitment to a more
equitable distribution of power.
Since any serious discussion of contemporary educational reforms can-
not escape this tension, fundamental questions inevitably arise about the
extent to which these reforms are consistent with the aspirations and ideals
of a democratic society. What part will they play in the development of a
more democratic society? What view of the relationship between de-
mocracy and education do they imply? Because these questions cannot be
answered in a neutral way, any assessment of recent reforms cannot avoid
 The Politics of Educational Ideas 24

entering into a general political debate about how the democratic role of
education is to be interpreted and understood. It is only by clarifying what
democracy should mean for schooling, pedagogy and curriculum that it will
be possible to engage critically with questions about whether recent educa-
tional changes legitimately express and uphold democratic values and
ideals.
Assessing the democratic legitimacy of recent educational change is not
helped by the fact that, historically, the English educational system has
never adapted to the growth of democracy. Democratic rights in England
were conceded slowly and various undemocratic institutions still remain:
an unelected House of Lords, a peculiar electoral system, and a hereditary
monarchy with considerable symbolic power. Moreover, education, like
democracy, has evolved in such a way that old aristocratic educational
institutions — such as the ancient universities and the elite public schools —
have not only survived but continue to provide the criteria of success for
the new state educational institutions that have been created.
What this has meant is that although the educational system has ex-
panded to meet the needs of a democratic society (by bringing schooling to
more of the population for longer periods), the power of pre-democratic
educational traditions and practices has continued to be felt. Clearly, if new
educational institutions are always to be judged by criteria devised by and
for old institutions, they are bound to fail. Any change would require a
fundamental rethinking of questions concerning access to higher education
and the need to develop curriculum and teaching methods that would make
education appropriate to the interests of previously excluded social groups.
More generally, it would require a wide-ranging political debate about how
the educational system could be transformed so that it no longer served the
pre-democratic purpose of excluding certain social groups, but the demo-
cratic aim of offering genuine educational opportunities to all.
While it remains the case that new educational institutions and practices
are judged by the criteria established by old institutions and practices, the
power of pre-democratic educational traditions to distort and constrain any
rational debate about the democratic role of education will remain
entrenched. New educational institutions, innovative curriculum develop-
ment, progressive pedagogies and new forms of assessment will constantly
be opposed by a rhetoric of traditional standards, quality and academic
excellence derived from the educational traditions of the past. Over the
past 20 years, as this rhetoric has increasingly become the official discourse
of education, educational arguments and debates have had to be conducted
in a language which embodies educational assumptions and vocabularies
which speak to pre-democratic traditions and prevents fundamental con-
cerns about the democratic role of education from being adequately ex-
pressed. The only way to widen the educational debate, therefore, is to
develop a language which refuses to be restricted to the official discourse of
education and allows complex issues about the role of education in the
future development of a democratic society to be articulated and discussed.
oe Understanding Learning

Such a debate is particularly important at the present time. As recently

as 20 years ago, there was still a widespread commitment to educational
reforms that were underpinned by a compelling vision of the importance of
education in fostering a more democratic society. Moreover, most educa-
tional policy-makers and educational theorists confidently assumed that
the democratic advances and achievements that had helped to galvanize
this vision in the past would remain unchallenged and unchanged into the
twenty-first century. Today, this confidence has been severely undermined,
the process of democratization has lost its momentum and there is a wide-
spread feeling that the time has come openly to concede that the relation-
ship between education and democracy needs to be radically rethought.
A a
Once it is accepted that ‘the process of change in which we are involved’
can only be understood by grasping ‘the process as a whole’ then some of
the main organizing principles for any discussion of recent educational
changes become clear. The first, and most obvious, is that ‘educational
change’ and ‘democratic change’ should not be understood as separate
processes. Still less should the current educational reforms be regarded as
the culminative achievement of democratic progress and educational re-
form. Rather, they should be seen as the latest stage in the still incomplete
‘long revolution’ — a revolution in which ‘democratic progress’ and ‘educa-
tional reform’ are two indivisible and intrinsically related parts. What this
means is that any attempt to treat ‘the history of education’ and ‘the history
of democracy’ as two separate histories must be firmly resisted. To do
otherwise would be to remain blind to the possibility that the understand-
ing of ‘education’ now dominant in modern democratic societies would not
have taken its contemporary form unless the dominant understanding of
‘democracy’ had not already been radically revised and transformed. The
‘history of education’ and the ‘history of democracy’ must thus be regarded
as two elements of the single historical process through which our contem-
porary system of education and our contemporary system of democracy
have simultaneously evolved. Only this kind of history can ensure that an
analysis of current educational change is neither confined to that particular
definition of ‘education’ to which contemporary democracy subscribes, nor
constrained by that particular view of ‘democracy’ that contemporary defi-
nitions of education serve to legitimate and sustain.
This first organizing principle entails another. Since the system of educa-
tion in a democratic society always reflects and refracts the definition of
‘democracy’ which that society accepts as legitimate and true, the educa-
tional changes occurring in a democracy at any time will reveal how that
democratic society has interpreted itself in the past and how it intends to
interpret itself in the future. This means that any analysis of recent educa-
tional reforms will inevitably be about the past, the present and the future:
about the terms in which we make sense of the past, the ways in which
these affect our understanding of the present and how our understanding
of the present affects the way we try to deal with the future. It will have to
 The Politics of Educational Ideas 23

explore the way in which the relationship between education and de-
mocracy is now understood, examine the philosophical ideas and political
theories on which this understanding is based and expose the ideological
framework within which this understanding continues to be sustained. It
will also have to offer a historical interpretation of the sequence of events
that led to the present situation and, on this basis, suggest how in the future
our understanding of the democratic role of education may be revised.
Only by doing this can the analysis ensure that questions about the extent
to which the educational reforms of the 1980s and 1990s are consistent with
democratic values and ideals are adequately formulated and addressed.
 2
A Redefinition of Liberal and
Humanistic Education

Nimrod Aloni

In the following discussion I will present an alternative approach to think-

ing and talking about liberal and humanistic education that breaks free
from what Richard Rorty (1979, p. 12) has called ‘outworn vocabularies
and attitudes’. I will try to integrate and reach beyond three distinct
established discourses: first, the contemporary philosophical/psychological
curricular discourse, [. . .] second, the historical-cultural debate over the
origin and nature of liberal education, and third, the highly politicized
debate between conservative and radical educational theorists.
Up until the eighteenth century, liberal education and humanistic edu-
cation — artes liberales and studia humanitatis — were interchangeable
synonyms. In the last two centuries, however, three other distinct forms
of humanistic education made their appearance. The first to emerge was
the romantic form, of which Rousseau was the founder and which cur-
rently finds its expression in humanistic psychology and progressive edu-
cation. A second form evolved out of existentialist philosophy and
currently draws on the rich resources of contemporary existentialist and
phenomenological literature. Finally, a third form of humanistic educa-
tion emerged from the appearance of the radical ‘counter-culture’ and
neo-Marxist educational theorists and practitioners. What is common to
these four theories — the classical plus the three modern ones - is a
commitment to humanize people: to provide a kind of education that all
human beings, qua human beings, deserve and ought to receive, so that
they can actualize their human potentialities and lead full, worthy, and
fulfilling human lives. Despite the obvious ideological and theoretical
disagreement among these approaches, it seems that they can be con-
sidered faithful to two fundamental notions of liberal education: (a) as a
general and formative education which suits free persons who have the
leisure to study and cultivate their human potentialities, and (b) as the
kind of education that aims to liberate the individual from the fetters of
ignorance, caprice, prejudice, alienation, false consciousness, the present
and the particular.
Hence I am proposing to widen the domain of liberal education beyond
its classical interpretation to include also the romantic, existentialist, and
radical forms of humanistic liberal education. Having this as my basic
premise, I shall delineate the fundamental tenets of each tradition in

24
 A Redefinition of Liberal and Humanistic Education pis)

order to evaluate its possible contribution to a contemporary theory of

humanistic liberal education. Drawing on these traditions, I will offer an
integrative model of liberal education which rests upon three major
principles: acculturation, autonomy and authenticity. Besides being
worthy in themselves, these principles are especially suitable for our pur-
pose by virtue of being widely recognized and accepted as desirable edu-
cational ends. After all, a good model of liberal education should pass not
only the test of theoretical tenability but also the challenges of attractive-
ness and practicality, without which it would remain merely theoretical
and irrelevant.
[ox]

Classical Humanistic Education

The term ‘classical education’ inherently implies the existence of an ideal

of human perfection that should serve as a universal and objective model
for regulating the education of all human beings qua human beings. The
origin of classical humanistic education lies in fifth-century Bc Athens, and
is reflected in the discussions of Socrates and the Sophists concerning hu-
man virtue and the good life. [. . .]
The Romans, as early as the first century Bc, established the artes liber-
ales or studia humanitatis as a normative and formative education for free
persons who have the leisure to study and cultivate their human poten-
tialities in order to become worthy and committed citizens in possession of
sound judgment and noble character.
The Renaissance might be regarded as the third major era of classical
humanism; of a tradition that became conscious of itself and developed a
literary and pedagogical movement of ‘humanists’. These humanists were
determined to emancipate themselves from the ignorance, dogmatism, and
self-abnegation of the ‘dark ages’ towards the kind of truth, beauty, free-
dom, and dignity that could be produced by the human faculties if only
properly cultivated and exercised — having as their model the magnificent
cultures of the ancient Greeks and Romans. |.. .]
The Enlightenment constitutes the fourth stage of classical humanism.
Here liberal education substitutes its elitist, tradionalist, and conservative
character for an egalitarian, sceptical, and liberal character. With Kant and
his contemporaries, autonomous and critical thinking were placed as a
barrier against blind acceptance of traditional conventions; individualism,
pluralism, and political freedoms served to limit authoritarian and dogma-
tic domination; and the principles of equality and respect for persons were
universalized, at least theoretically, so that all humans could be considered
eligible for a liberal education.
In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is difficult to single out
one representative among the many theorists of classical humanistic
26 Understanding Learning

education. [. . .] Liberal education within this tradition should consist of

teaching ‘what it means to be fully human . . their rightful place in the
scheme of things’ and a moral obligation ‘to certain enduring standards of
private and public conduct’ (Kirk, 1989, pp. 35-6).

Romantic humanistic education

The romantic (naturalistic) form of humanistic education makes its

appearance in the eighteenth century with the writings of Rousseau,
who considered his educational theory a counter-movement to
orthodox education. In particular, Rousseau blamed the obsession with
cultural progress and encyclopedic knowledge, unrestrained pursuit of
wealth and social status, and the practice of authoritarian artificial
education for the ills of his contemporaries. Rousseau introduced an
alternative conception of the good life which ascribes goodness to man’s
natural inclinations and self-regulated development, to spontaneous
and playful exercise of natural powers, and to self-directedness and
personal authenticity.
With this new image of human goodness Rousseau generated a major
and manifold change in educational theory and practice. He initiated a
shift in emphasis from culture to nature and from philosophy to
psychology; from reason to sentiment and from the community to the
individual; from didactic mediated learning to experiential discovery
learning and from duty that is grounded in external authority to
action that springs from the inherently good nature of the individual.
[saat]
In the course of the nineteenth century, with the works of Pestalozzi and
Froebel, the therapeutic notions of love, care, trust, and affective interper-
sonal relations became increasingly dominant, especially as conditions for
promoting self-regulated growth towards ‘full humanity’. In the twentieth
century, it was mainly the theories of A. S. Neill (and fellow supporters of
‘open education’), John Dewey (and his followers in ‘progressive educa-
tion’), Carl Rogers (and other humanistic psychologists) that formed the
child-centred naturalistic, experiential, therapeutic and individualistic form
of humanistic education.
eee
In sum, the romantic form of humanistic education can be characterized
by its fundamental premise that there exists in every one of us an ‘inner
nature’ or a ‘fixed self’ that is fundamentally good and unique, and that
pushes to unfold and actualize itself — in accordance with its built-in code —
toward healthy existence and full humanity. Romantic educators, in con-
trast to the classical, conceive the road to human perfection as the ‘turning
of the soul’, not to the universal and objective, but rather to the inner world
and unique self of the individual.
 A Redefinition of Liberal and Humanistic Education |

Existentialist Humanistic Education

Existentialist educators reject the classical notion of human beings. The

alternative advanced by most existentialists is that since the essence of man
is freedom, in the matter of values humans can appeal to no external
authority, either natural or supernatural, and are therefore destined to
choose, define, and create themselves as the true — and therefore respons-
ible — authors of their identities. [. . .]

Radical Humanistic Education

According to radicals, to consider educational issues independently of the

larger cultural, social, and economic context involves either serious igno-
rance or cynical, if not criminal, deception. Poverty, crime, homelessness,
drug addiction, wars, ecological crises, suicide, illiteracy, discrimination
against women and ethnic minorities, technocratic consciousness, and the
disintegration of communities and families, to name some of our most
pressing problems, are facts of life that affect directly the physical, emo-
tional, intellectual, and oral development of the great majority of children
in our culture. Moreover, these disturbing features of our reality are pri-
marily not the outcomes of some technological shortcoming but rather the
very embodiments of particular ideologies which serve the interests of the
dominant groups at the expense of the interests of the less dominant ones.
al

The Integrative Model

A normative definition of humanism

The problem we might face in trying to put humanism to work as a unifying

frame of reference for liberal education is not that people reject it; on the
contrary, humanism is accepted (at least in principle) by the great majority
of nations and communities as the desirable ethical code for handling
political, social, and educational issues (see, for example, the United
Nations ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ and ‘Declaration of the
Rights of the Child’). The difficulty lies in the fact that almost everybody
today professes to be a humanist, so that it has lost a definite and concrete
meaning. From both egalitarians and elitists, conservatives and liberals,
you can hear a commitment to humanism. The term has become so popular
and amorphic that it has become vacuous and lost much of its capacity to
serve as a moral and educational ideal.
28 Understanding Learning

I am proposing to identify humanism with a commitment to the enhance-

ment of human freedom and growth, to the realization and perfection of
human potentialities, and to an ethical code that places the highest value on
the dignity of humanity, as an end in itself, in relation to which all political,
religious, economic, and ideological doctrines are regarded as means to its
enhancement.
Four fundamental principles are implicit in this definition. The first is
philisophical: it entails a conception of man —- men and women ~ as free
creatures, responsible for their identity and destiny, as well as a commit-
ment to set human well-being and perfection as the ultimate goal of the
entire human endeavour.
The second principle pertains to the social domain. It takes human
equality, on the ground of people’s shared humanity, as the basis for uni-
versal morality and solidarity. On the interpersonal level, it involves a
commitment to the cultivation of sensitivity, tolerance, care and re-
ciprocity; and in the political sphere, it aims to establish a just, democratic,
and“humane social order that is committed to securing human and civil
rights as well as to providing all with the resources necessary for living a
decent human life.
The third principle pertains to the status and forms of intellectual activity.
It entails a commitment to open-mindedness, broad learning, rationality,
critical and creative thinking as the best basis for our knowledge of reality.
The fourth principle is pedagogical.

A normative definition of humanistic liberal education

A normative definition of humanistic liberal education: entails the general

cultivation and empowerment of human beings, in manners that are intellec-
tually and morally appropriate, towards the best and highest life of which
they are capable, in three fundamental domains of life; as individuals, actu-
alizing their potentialities and tendencies; as members of society, becoming
involved and responsible citizens; and as human beings, enriching and per-
fecting themselves through active engagement with the collective achieve-
ments of human culture. [. . .]

Foundational pedagogical principles: acculturation, autonomy,

authenticity

By acculturation we usually understand the process of initiating people —

usually the young — into the culture’s esteemed or worthwhile modes of
thought, feeling, action and artistic appreciation. Within the suggested fra-
mework of humanistic education, acculturation will serve as a twofold
principle: foundational and qualitative. The foundational aspect is related
to the fact that ‘a self exists only within ... “webs of interlocution” be
’,
 A Redefinition of Liberal and Humanistic Education 20,

namely, that ‘there is no way we could be induced into personhood except

by being initiated into . . . languages of spiritual and moral discernment. . .
by those who bring us up’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 35). [. . .]
The importance of ‘foundational acculturation’, as Aristotle pointed out,
cannot be exaggerated: ‘It makes no small difference, then, whether we
form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes very
great difference, or rather all the difference’ (Aristotle, 1980,
p. 29). And from another perspective, as suggested by the title of
Wayne Booth’s recent book, our education also depends on The
Company We Keep. As every parent knows, the human and literary com-
pany we keep in our childhood plays a significant role in the shaping of our
identity.
Dewey stressed the importance of foundational acculturation to educa-
tion. In ‘My Pedagogical Creed’, he addressed the social foundations of
every individual, stating that ‘all education proceeds by the participation of
the individual in the social consciousness of the race . . . shaping the indi-
vidual’s powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training
his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions’ (Dewey, 1964, p.
213). [. . .| Acculturation in a qualitative sense means, a process of human-
ization through an ever widening exposure to the multiple and diverse
modes of human experience, aiming toward a synoptic and deep under-
standing of what it means to be human and of the standards we should live
up to in order to reach true and full humanity. [. . .] If this theme is sound,
that nothing of value can be achieved without an active engagement of the
will, then it should have special implication for education.
Autonomy stands in this model as the critical principle. It denotes, liter-
ally, self-legislation or determining for oneself the values and principles in
accordance with which the individual wishes to lead his or her life. The
element of law which is inherent in the notion of autonomy — of a relatively
thoughtful and stable set of action-guiding principles — should prevent us
from confusing autonomy with ‘personal freedoms’ such as capricious, im-
pulsive, or even spontaneous behaviour. [.. .]
The importance of autonomy, which is primarily an intellectual virtue,
cannot be overestimated. Scientific and technological developments as
much as social and political progress would not have been possible without
that particular disposition to think and judge for oneself, independently of
what the ruler, teacher, employer, or parent holds to be true and
appropriate. [.. .]
The importance of autonomous and critical thinking reaches far beyond
cultural criticism into fundamental issues of life and death, human rights
and social justice. [. . .]
Authenticity, unlike the concept of autonomy which alludes primarily to
the cognitive dimension of human existence, is a quality that embraces the
totality of one’s life, and it will therefore function in this educational model
as the principle of individuality. Authenticity means not only to ‘think for
oneself’ but rather to ‘be oneself’: to assert one’s existence in the world in a
30 Understanding Learning

way that is truthful to the individual’s essential and unique nature.

Authenticity further entails eliciting the content of one’s life by means of
self-generation, self-nourishment and self-creation as well as cultivating
and affirming one’s unique vantage point and style. In praising someone for
his or her authenticity, in other words, we wish to express our respect for
that individual for not being inert, conventional, banal, artificial, fake, self-
alienated, or merely a role-player.
(Bea)
In sum, education for authenticity — in both the romantic and existential-
ist approaches — seeks to recover the individual’s sense of selfhood which is
constantly endangered by pressures and temptations to succumb to a pre-
ordained form of life — be it religion, state, ideology, knowledge, technol-
ogy, bureaucracy, public opinion or the routines of everyday life. It
requires educators not only to sensitize their students to the sense of free-
dom, possibility, and originality that are associated with discovering and
creating oneself, but also to urge and challenge them to set forth a way of
life that has something honourable or worthwhile in its particular content.
Without such qualifications, we are left with the nihilistic view that any-
thing is just as good as anything else as long as one chooses it authentically
— a position that has no place within the framework and commitments of
humanistic education.
[. . .| Education should be manifested not only in rational and efficient
thinking but also in being committed to truth as individuals and as involved
citizens; not only in sound moral judgement but also in being amiable,
caring and fair in everyday life as well as in being capable of moral indigna-
tion and effective moral action. [. . .] Similarly, it should be required of
any contemporary humanistic theory of education that it should assimilate
the important contributions of each of the four humanistic educational
positions outlined above as well as utilize the three foundational pedagogi-
cal principles of acculturation, autonomy and authenticity. The issue, again,
is not whether these principles should be implemented but rather to deter-
mine — with respect to the cultural condition, nature of the individual
student, stage of maturity and nature of the subject matter — the proper
balance in their implementation. [. . .]

References

Aristotle (1980) The Nichomachean Ethics, trans. D. Ross, New York: Oxford
University Press.
Dewey, J. (1964) My pedagogical creed, in G. Johnston (ed.), Issues in Education,
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Kirk, R. (1988) The ethical purpose of literary studies, in J. Baldacchino (ed.),
Educating for Virtue, Washington, DC: National Humanities Institute.
Neill, A. S. (1960) Summerhill, New York: Hart.
Rogers, C. (1961) On Becoming a Person, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
 A Redefinition of Liberal and Humanistic Education iil

Rorty, R. (1979) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Rousseau, J.-J. (1979) Emile or on Education, trans. A.Bloom, New York: Basic
Books.
Taylor, C. (1989) Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
 3
New Progressivism

Peter Silcock

If Webb and Vulliamy et al.’s (1997) observation that teachers’ personal

and professional beliefs threaten to break apart under the weight of
outside intervention proves prophetic, this will not signal the end of
ideological influence on education. It will mean that government-
sponsored ideologies will prosper, and since governments (even left-wing
ones) are instinctively traditionalist in beliefs, such an outcome could
easily reverse the real progress in the democratizing of classrooms which
has been discernible in primary education over many years. Such misfor-
tune should not happen, because teachers can look to their own beliefs,
not those of governments, to sustain them. And what is characteristic of
child-centred beliefs is that their caring, humanitarian ethic is an engine
of real power: it inspires teachers of young children with an emotional
resource enabling them to continue with work which is, often, arduous
and demotivating. In so far as the ideology continues to survive in
schools, it will evolve, as it must, in ways which mutually invigorate both
‘child-centredness’ and the ongoing development of the English/Welsh
National Curriculum.
There is no ambiguity involved in allying diverse, self-managed
curricula to socially responsible aims and industrial need. On the
contrary: it is likely that the most responsible citizens and best workers
are those whose ambitions are coupled to cultural ideals through choice.
Child-centred commitment to individualized learning is not a
commitment to radical politics or some sort of postmodern denial of
absolutes. It can guide learners in whatever directions the state decrees,
while keeping a weather eye on what pupils’ own choices dictate: the art
of progressivist teaching is to help learners address one goal from the
perspective of the other.
New progressivism embraces old values. Yet its aims are more affected
by social, moral and industrial demands than was needed mid-century.
Politicians ruthlessly seek to control educational outputs now, and it is
unlikely that state interference will quickly disappear. So, it is desirable to
reassess progressivist claims for sake of today’s accountability. As Richards
suggests (cited in Galton, 1989), it was probably lack of accountability
which in the past led some forms of progressivism to descend into a laissez-
faire free-for-all. Modern progressivists will welcome appraisals of their
aims and methods, providing there are no misperceptions of their belief-

32
 New Progressivism 38)

systems. Teachers should avoid helping critics by falling back upon simplis-
tic polarizations and doctrinaire stubbornness as replacements for
reasoned argument. They need to be pragmatically flexible and politically
astute in realizing what is essential to their philosophy and cannot be
compromised, and what might be left in abeyance until political fashions
change.
To remind ourselves of what progressivists should in no circumstance
compromise we need to review main principles and criticisms. When mak-
ing a cumulative case, it is easy to lose sight of the reasons why one idea
was chosen rather than another.

Ideological Foundations

New progressivism is founded in developmental, humanistic,

democratic and pragmatic ideas: there are empirical, ethical, socio-
political and practical grounds for choosing to be a modern, child-
centred teacher. Each theoretical pillar is structurally related to the
others, rather as the pillars of a temple are planned to harmonize
architecturally in order to contain a specialized set of activities. So to
concede the relevance to the whole of one kind of support is to
predispose oneself to seeing the relevance of the others, whereas to find
weaknesses in one makes it likely that weaknesses will be found in all.
This happens because new progressivism builds on an association
between children and _ cultures’ which _ stretches beyond
developmentalism into philosophy and politics, though it receives
testimony, at a factual level, from constructivist and neo-Piagetian
psychology. From this relationship with psychology is taken a definition
of personal autonomy which humanism reinforces on a philosophical
level. When asserting children’s rights, humanistic writers often
acknowledge the concept of proactive individuality promoted by
progressivists and constructivists. Establishing their ethical justification
gives additional support to progressivist teachers’ aims and values.
The complementary culture concept arising from a transformational
view of individual learning and development is a dynamic one providing a
rationale for that mutually invigorating interaction between individuals
and groups we call democratic. Since the role of a teacher is to help pupils
become educated through a process of ‘co-construction’, modern child-
centred classrooms have to be democratically organized with children
given rights and properly designated roles of responsibility within them. It
follows that primary school teaching’s pragmatism becomes channelled
into the fitting of individual needs to social opportunity, and social need to
individual purposes. This interrelationship of parts to whole underwrites
the structure of progressivist ideology, as is seen by briefly revisiting each
area of study.
34 Understanding Learning

Developmentalism

Children transform their cultures and cultures transform individuals: there

is a growing consensus among contributors to developmental studies about
this. Where there is dispute is in the detailing of mechanisms explaining
how the individual/social interaction is managed.
To throw in one’s lot with neo-Piagetians and constructivists is to believe
that teacher interventions have to ensure that child development occurs as
a cumulative, stage-wise building of capabilities. Because we no longer
think that children progress, as a matter of course, toward ‘higher-order’
skills, we have to become clear-minded about the sorts of educated citizens
we want. If we value critical argument and self-regulation, the abilities to
apply and synthesize knowledge, the understandings and academic sen-
sitivities we have always prized, we cannot believe that these will develop
in some sort of unmediated way. Such a conclusion returns us to the convic-
tion that first-hand experience and stage-related activities are as vital to
childhood education as they have ever been.
The twin principles of individual experience and culturally valued know-
ledge become child-centred when we employ the ‘constructivist’ maxim
that individuals reach cultural goals through their own volitions: goals must
be consciously known, reachable and structurally related to the academic
subject studied. A learning context will facilitate pupils’ willingness and
ability to adapt their existing views to new ideas. In curricular terms, there
are affective, cognitive and socio-political dimensions to constructivist
learning to be catered for (commitment, control and comprehension were
suggested as central ‘process’ characteristics). There are no short cuts
which bypass such a provision.

Humanism

From developmental studies we abstract a concept of individuality

which happily blends research findings with humanist philosophy. If
children shape their own minds through their own actions, they can be
regarded from the start as fully-fledged ‘whole’ persons, to be accorded
full human rights like anyone else. One supposition is not implied by the
other: but to recognize that children have a potential for voluntary
action which will ultimately give them rationality takes us some way
towards admitting into classrooms their personal views of life, and
respecting these in schools as elsewhere. Educationally speaking, the
humanist directive is to ‘teach for autonomy’ such that children take full
advantage of their natural rights. No one believes that children should
be given full control over their own learning, but many these days see
the practical as well as ethical advantages flowing from enfranchising
learners as early as possible. There is no ‘bottom’ limit to the
recognition of human autonomy, provided we define the qualities of
 New Progressivism 35

mind composing it within the context where it has to be expressed: no

matter how young a pupil is, he or she will have some decision-making
capability.
To believe that learner perspectives upon curricula should be ‘transfor-
mational’ means designing curricula to be understood, owned and poten-
tially managed by pupils, in negotiation with adults whose wider
perspectives allow them to guard against false allegiances and corrupting
influence. Whereas we have to give regard to pupils’ expanding ambi-
tions, we have also to admit that these may not always be — strategically —
in their interests. So teachers ‘liberate’ pupil capabilities through regulat-
ing individual purpose within constraints of social responsibility and a
benevolent rule-governed system. Their success in implementing curric-
ula will be detectable through the ‘process’ criteria indicating quality
learning.

Democracy

School communities are places where teachers, as well as pupils, have

rightful views, informed by the opinions of politicians, parents,
OFSTED inspectors, educational advisers, technical advisers, indus-
trialists looking for a workforce, peers and other professionals and wel-
fare workers, etc. etc. Intrinsic to the conceptualizing of a child—culture
relationship as transformational is a culture concept equally dynamic.
Cultures are webs of influence to which we attach our own personal
contributions; they are treasure-houses of habits and attitudes from
which we steal. As Dewey tells us: individuals and societies, children
and cultures are complementary not competing agencies within the edu-
cational system.
If learners are to make their own ways in the world, they can only do so
by reference to the choices of others. Which does not imply that a rough-
hewn individual aspiration must, somehow, become smoothed out
through social encounters. Sometimes, it is a whole culture which is al-
tered by the ideas of a Freud or a Darwin, a Rousseau or an Einstein.
Often enough we have to live with compromises respecting the integrity
of opposing views, and leaving, as an accompaniment of an ‘open’ forum
of teaching, a conflict of purposes, unreconciled for the time being but
providing some stimulus for further inventions. This is the nature of a
pluralist, diversely populated democratic state. Encouraging disputes,
fostering peaceful argument and reconciling views without diminishing
them are the food and drink of any democracy, including primary school
democracies. And to state that the perspectives taken from individual and
cultural purpose are both transformational is to state that each will seek
to challenge the other by nature, and that this bi-transformation (or co-
construction) is not only legitimate but is the only way each one of us can
carve out his or her own cultural niche.
36 Understanding Learning

Pragmatism

Reconciling the twin demands of individuals and society is seldom a

balanced job in the way educational dilemmas have to be resolved.
Situations always fluctuate between one pole and another. Teachers may
no sooner have sorted out someone’s emotional difficulties than they have
to rejig a task to make it acceptable to the learner without coming off track
with regard to their objectives. One cannot prescribe for this sort of
pragmatically flexible application of skill, except to realize, as Dewey did,
that the two poles of attention are not opposed to each other unless we
believe that they are. It is possible to give all one’s time to designing a
perfect curriculum without taking the trouble to match it to individual
need, and it is just as possible to become preoccupied with keeping
individual learners content without taking cognizance of broader aims. The
art of child-centred teaching is to maintain a balanced requirement within
those terms of reference (neo-Piagetian or whatever) which separate
progressivism from other ideologies.
ie]

The Critics of Progressivism

There are three standard types of criticism made of progressivist thinking.

First, there are the criticisms of those who see ideological theorizing as
either unnecessary or biased. Second, there are objections stemming from
those empirical research conclusions meant to test out progressivist claims.
Third, there are the critiques written by those who, while conceding the
validity of ideological debate, nonetheless find progressivist beliefs wanting
in some way or other.

First, politicians, pragmatists, postmodernists, those philosophers of

education and sociologists who stigmatize ideologies as by definition one-
sided, warn us against ideological decision-making. Robin Alexander’s
hostility towards the detrimental effects on education of progressivist
rhetoric bows suitably towards a recognition that much achievement in
primary schools is owed to child-centred ideals (e.g. 1994). What he is
concerned to spell out are the dangers of teachers feeling so pressurized by
orthodoxies that they adopt inflexible classroom policies. Such a false
polarization and dichotomizing of aims and methods shore up many
attacks.
Ideologies need not and should not polarize. If they do, it is probable
that the teachers concerned do not fully understand their own beliefs and
demonstrate in their mediocre teaching or biased discourse not just the
problem with ideologies as the problem with any form of behaviour relying
on poorly known principles. If we believe teachers should be able to justify
 New Progressivism BH

what they do, they must come to some understanding of theoretically

framed justifications, whether these are ideologically charged or ideo-
logically neutral. When we do engage in ideological study, we discover that
progressivism and traditionalism, as the two easiest ways to group
differences, split from each other at the level of values, but need not
polarize at the level of practice or belief.
Teachers do need the guidance of beliefs, for these are questions bound
up with professional educators’ practices which cannot be answered
factually. Questions of fact and value interweave in educational affairs, and
we have to disentangle them in order to answer theoretical questions. But
in a teacher’s daily work, pragmatic considerations always, somewhere,
serve more fundamental values, and to pretend that this is not so is tacitly
to adhere to those pragmatic ideologies which can only lead us into a
confusion of ends and means, and the likelihood of designing school
curricula which try to achieve too much and end up achieving very little.
sae)
Second, Alexander’s ‘discussion document’ (1992) was meant to move
primary school teachers forward away from their entrenched positions. To
achieve this, a host of research findings informed it; many meant to show
that progressivist methods did not work, did not exist or were flawed in
conception. The lengthy trail of such findings winds back to the immediate
post-Plowden era when erratically achieved formal skills were blamed for
Britain’s unsatisfactory trade and industrial performance worldwide. The
year 1976 was that of Callaghan’s Ruskin speech, and the year Neville
Bennett’s comparisons of progressivist and tradionalist teaching styles
were published in the wake of the William Tyndale affair (Ellis et al., 1976)
and ‘Black Paper’ attacks (Cox and Dyson, 1960; 1971). Some were even
questioning whether primary school teachers were really implementing
‘Plowden’ policies at all (Sharp and Green, 1975), a view which has become
accepted wisdom (e.g., Galton, 1989). The Bennett research and the
influential ORACLE studies (Galton, Simon and Croll, 1980), trying to
draw together teaching styles, pupil behaviour and outcomes in order to
test out the efficacy of the former, purported to show that child-
centredness — as the researchers defined it — was not producing the quality
outcomes it was supposed to produce.
But any unambiguous classification of styles risks missing that very mix
of techniques and strategies which works, because they have combined
pragmatically to achieve their ends. Bennett (1976) noticed that the most
effective teacher met during his research used a mix of methods, implying
that she was neither child-centred nor traditionalist in orientation. Yet to
mix methodologies says little about ideology. It is not methods but the
values justifying them which create child-centredness. This is not to deny
that methodologies become grouped under ideological umbrellas — it
would be surprising if child-centred teachers sought at all costs to avoid
contact with individual learners! But any teacher who seeks solely to work
38 Understanding Learning

with individuals and small groups is raising these forms of organization

themselves to the status of value, not the interests of children as
individuals.
ae
The interpretation of research findings is no hard and fast business:
researchers select and interpret from their findings what suits their own
purposes. This is not to be cynical, simply to notice the different agendas of
educationalists who are testing hypotheses belonging to distinct belief
systems. Politicians make, similarly, their own selections from research to
justify policy aims and political strategies. Only, when one looks at the
circumstances giving rise to the interpretation made, one sees that even
contradictory conclusions live together within broader verities. In applying
Piagetian or Vygotskian theory to modern classrooms for example, the
question is not (and never has been) which of the two psychologists is
correct or of whether individual and social action both have a place in
educational success. It is a question of which perspective serves our best
interests regarding educational policies, and of how, ultimately, both sets of
perspectives might be harnessed to facilitate our practices.

Third, traditionalists (such as O’Hear, 1987) look to the weaknesses of

progressivist thinking as inhering in the ideology’s very diversity and
pluralist pretensions. ‘Black Paper’ writers (Cox and Dyson, 1960; 1971)
and neo-right-wing critics (e.g., Lawlor, 1990) similarly fear or feared that
the dilution of a traditional culture by attempts to widen access to it
threatens established modes of academic achievement, such as the ability
to exercise formally acquired skills and memorize well-loved texts. Critics
more to the left of the political spectrum (e.g., Lawton, 1989) attack
progressivism for the opposite reason: they surmise that its individuality
diverts it from socially responsible ends. Again, these are not contradictory
criticisms. For the former group regrets that child-centred teachers
embrace diversity of outcome and sees this as problematic in itself, while
the latter desire in learners a particular attitude towards diversity — i.e., a
pre-specified attitude of social responsibility, tolerating differences and
recognizing issues of prejudice and discrimination.
Neo-progressivism’s developmentalism, redefining individuals and
cultures in relationship with each other, while insisting that it is pupils who
construct their minds for their own purposes, conceives as part of that
construction process a dynamic notion of culture itself. This notion makes
possible the articulating of a role for teachers and structured curricula in
both educational and developmental schemes. All developmental-stage
theories, as all educational systems which relate somewhere to them, are
value driven. So there is no conflict between an education which gives
succour to personal ambition while insisting that developments must be
guided. This is to acquiesce with the second sort of criticism above, while
redrawing the line between progressivism and the traditionalist ideology
sponsored by the first. Traditional values, depending on a ‘transmission’
 New Progressivism 39

hypothesis, have their place within a community wishing to maintain a

homogeneity of aim, a commonality of lifestyles and a consensus on values,
but not, it is suggested, within a society fluctuating in what it takes to be
appropriate lifestyles and achievements and highly patterned in terms of
values and ideals, as western societies are likely to stay for the foreseeable
future.
[..J

Modern Progressivists

Progressivism’s unfashionable image owes much to every educationist’s

and politician’s desire to improve on past ideas. Only when critiques are
shown to be based on misconceptions, misinterpretations, risky
speculations or dogma dangerously unsuited to a modern-day society might
we move forward to a more balanced assessment and, hopefully, a situation
where those preferring child-centred forms of teaching will not be
shamelessly harassed or scapegoated. It is sad that most writings about
progressivism over the past couple of decades have been critical of it, and
the success of critics has been to fragment and divide the British
movement. [. . .]
Teaching is a conservative business given its practical preoccupations.
Sutherland (1992) finds, on visiting schools, ‘no awareness whatsoever of
constructivist ideas’ (p. 81). Galton periodically wonders why innovatory
schemes in education flop fairly disastrously (Galton and Williamson,
1992). Teachers on INSET courses may find ORACLE enlightening, but
they take little heed of its research conclusions in classrooms. Yet many
teachers remain child-centred, despite media batterings and political
censure. It could be that academics’ and politicians’ belief that, in order
to raise standards, teacher attitudes must change is actually wrong. If we
trusted teachers to improve through refining their own skills in the
confidence that their professional ideologies were soundly based,
educational standards might rise more quickly than through a ‘top-down’
attempt to wrench improvements out of a profession through
unwelcomed reforms.
Primary school teachers whose values have survived the past decades
and are unabashed in advertising their ideas about the ‘whole child’,
integrated topic-based teaching and ‘informal approaches’ are already new
progressivists. Their child-centred commitment may not be as it was
because standardized curricula are not always immediately attractive to
learners and they have had to look for newer ways of applying their beliefs.
It should be more not less possible for modern primary school teachers
to reach the quite sophisticated ends at which progressivists aim, providing
we do not underestimate the time needed to do so. What modern teachers
might insist on is that any assessments made of their methods must be more
40 Understanding Learning

sensitive to cognitive gains than popular ‘pencil and paper’ tasks which
always understate comprehension in favour of accuracy of reproduction
and rote capacity. If we want rational, autonomous learners who will
pursue learning through life for the sake of public welfare as much as for
their own satisfaction, it is not good enough to use tests which measure
very limited skills. If we want high standards in education, we have to
devise ways of assessing a quality process.
The benefits which should follow from liberating the professional
energies of teachers so that they, in turn, can liberate the drive towards
learning springing out of every child’s native endowment ought to be self-
evident. What is new about neo-progressivism are its adjusted theoretical
reformulations to bring it within the value orbit of a modern industrial
society, hungry for growth, social peace and multicultural richness. It is old
in its platform of beliefs that individual teachers and pupils will perform
their roles most effectively when freed from unwanted bureaucratic
interference. There are enormous powers of achievement hidden within
even’the youngest human beings. Modern progressivist theory reminds us
of this without diminishing the role of teachers, analysing their cultural
backdrop as a more dynamic and kaleidoscopic tapestry than is often
supposed. It is the dualism of responsibilities distributed between teacher
and taught, and the friction sparked by these, hinting at the disputatious
nature of free bargaining within all democratic states, which distinguishes
the new ideology and makes its embodiment in future classroom practices
an exciting prospect.

References

Alexander, R. J. (1992) Policy and Practice in Primary Education, London:

Routledge.
Alexander, R. J. (1994) Innocence and Experience: Reconstructing Primary
Education, Stoke-on-Trent: ASPE/Trentham Books.
Bennett, S. N. (1976) Teaching Styles and Pupil Progress, London: Open Books.
Cox, C. B. and Dyson, A. E. (1960) Fight for Education: A Black Paper, London:
Critical Quarterly Society.
Cox, C. B. and Dyson, A. E. (eds) (1971) The Black Papers, London: Davis-
Poynter.
Ellis, T., McWhirter, J., McColgan, D. and Haddow, B. (1976) William Tyndale: The
Teachers’ Story, London: Writers and Readers Publishers Co-operative.
Galton, M. (1989) Teaching in the Primary School, London: Fulton.
Galton, M. and Williamson, J. (1992) Group Work in the Primary Classroom,
London: Routledge.
Galton, M., Simon, B. and Croll, P. (1980) Inside the Primary School Classroom,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Lawlor, S. (1990) Teachers Mistaught, London: Centre for Policy Studies.
Lawton, D. (1989) Education, Culture and the National Curriculum, London:
Hodder and Stoughton.
 New Progressivism 41

O’Hear, A. (1987) The importance of traditional learning, British Journal of

Educational Studies, 35, pp. 102-14.
Sharp, A. and Green, R. (1975) Educational and Social Control, London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul.
Sutherland, P. (1992) Cognitive Development Today, Piaget and his Critics, London:
Paul Chapman Publishing.
Webb, R. and Vulliamy, G. with Hakkinen, K., Hamalainen, S., Kimonen, E.,
Nevalainen, R. and Nikki, M.-L. (1997), A comparative analysis of the
management of curriculum change in England and Finland. Paper delivered to
the BERA (British Educational Research Association) Annual Conference,
University of York (obtainable from the Department of Educational Studies,
University of York).
 Section 2: Views of Learning

The previous section concluded with a chapter by Silcock who linked pro-
gressivist child-centred ideologies with developmentalism and constructi-
vist theories of learning. Here constructivism was seen as having its roots in
pragmatist views with links to both philosophical and psychological tradi-
tions. At one level constructivism offers an explanation of the nature of
knowledge. At another, it describes how cognitive processes might be ac-
quired and developed. It is used to provide models of learning and know-
ledge which could be used to provide insights into teaching and the
curriculum. Section 2 considers what it means to be a learner through an
examination of a number of views or theoretical models of the process of
learning. Here, as elsewhere in this book, social, psychological and political
perspectives are all featured. However, each of the chapters in Section 2
has a theoretical underpinning which can be traced to one or other de-
velopments of constructivism. A recurring idea within this section is that of
revisiting earlier models of learning and illustrating how increases in our
knowledge about learners forces us to change, extend or at least re-
examine our existing conceptualizations whether it concerns adults or
children.
The issues introduced and developed in this section include:

@ the theory of multiple intelligences

® situated cognition theory
® notions of situated and non-situated learning
® a social-constructivist view of learning.

In Chapter 4, Mark Krechevsky and Steve Seidel draw upon evidence

from studies of ‘out of school’ learning to challenge the traditional and
fixed view of intelligence. They provide a succinct overview of the emerg-
ing theory of Multiple Intelligences. The theory of Multiple Intelligences
provides a structure which recognizes fully the differences between individ-
uals and the very distinctive nature of the educational pathways which
potentially lead to achievement. The main thrust of this chapter lies in the
way in which Krechevsky and Seidel relate this way of conceptualizing
learning to actual practices in teaching and assessment. A key question for
educators here would be whether to teach to existing strengths or work on
areas of weakness.
In Chapter 5, R. P. McDermott clearly outlines the way in which Situ-
ated Cognition theory requires a critical shift from a focus on the individual
to that on the settings and the activities contained within them. This is in
sharp contrast to the highly individual perspective about thinking, learning

42
 Introduction to Section 2: Views of Learning 43

and problem-solving identified previously by Krechevsky and Seidel.

McDermott brings to the forefront the importance of context, language
and discourse, and reflects the view that learning should not be thought of
in individualistic terms. It is argued that at the centre of this view of
learning we find the particular relationships which are established between
people engaged in shared endeavour. Drawing on a case study of a pupil
called Adam, McDermott illustrates that what Adam learns depends on
what is around to be learned. Moreover, learning happens in the interac-
tions within Adam’s group as information is made available. With the same
people and in the same physical environment of the school we are shown a
number of Adams: what differs constantly are the context and the learning
conversations.
In Chapter 6, Carl Bereiter develops the issues raised in the previous
chapter by focusing on the idea of both situated and non-situated learning.
To examine situated cognition, he suggests, we need an example of non-
situated cognition for comparability. He explores this paradoxical relation-
ship through a comparison between artificial intelligence and human think-
ing in terms of abstraction. In the school context, Bereiter makes
comparison between two learners in the same physical environment but in
different situations with regard to their own learning. In explaining these
different situations Bereiter distinguishes between three learning goals. In
his view completion, instructional and knowledge-building goals differ in
their level of abstractedness and, correspondingly, their degree of situated-
ness. Completion goals are highly situated, whilst knowledge-building goals
are only weakly connected with the immediate situation and thus highly
transferable.
In Chapter 7, Mary Jane Drummond also draws on a view of learning in
which knowledge is seen in relation to individuals and the social and
cultural setting in which they find themselves. In particular she examines
more closely the ways in which views of childhood are changed over time,
in relation to gender, race, ethnicity and cultural practices.
 4
Minds at Work: Applying Multiple
Intelligences in the Classroom

Mara Krechevsky and Steve Seidel

A Brief Introduction to the Theory of Multiple Intelligences

All teachers have had at least one student who surprised them with the way
the student solved a particular problem or demonstrated that he or she
understood something. It may have been a child who solved a maths prob-
lem correctly but differently from the way it was taught. It could have been
an adolescent who played Romeo’s first scene with the Friar with surprising
insight into Romeo’s character. Or perhaps it was a shy seventh grader who
shocked her classmates by becoming the most articulate voice in leading
the group through a web of moral and social dilemmas and resolving a
crisis over a case of cheating in the classroom. Why were these students
surprising?
Perhaps there are two reasons. First, there were things about these chil-
dren their teachers did not know, things about the ways their minds
worked. (The students may not have known these things about themselves,
either.) So their teachers did not anticipate that the students would solve a
problem or express their ideas in a particular way. But a second reason may
be that the teachers themselves may not have ever thought about the
problem in that way.
Our sensitivity to the diverse ways in which children think, solve prob-
lems, and express themselves is often limited both by our notions of intel-
ligence (for example, that it is something finite one is born with) and our
own intellectual preferences. Intentionally or not, teachers design their
classrooms (curriculum, instruction and assessment) to reflect their ideas
about intelligence and how learning happens as well as their own ways of
making sense of the world. Almost all of us can fall into believing that if we
can only make clear the way we have come to understand something,
others will understand, too.
Based on long and careful observation, especially of children who do not
seem to understand easily what may seem obvious to others, many teachers
recognize that there are, indeed, many different ways of perceiving the
world and multiple ways of making sense of one’s experiences. Certainly, in
any group, each person notices and attends to different aspects of an expe-
rience. It often seems there are as many ways of knowing as there are

44
 Minds at Work 45

people. But a closer look at theories of intelligence can provide a middle

ground between the idea that there is a single way in which minds work and
the notion that every mind is unique. Theories, of course, are only theories;
but in attempting to understand the mind and, particularly, the minds in a
teacher’s classroom, a good theory can help educators make sense of the
surprising moves and strategies that students reveal.
Virtually every aspect of classroom life is, in some way, constructed
around what teachers want children to learn, and how they think they are
most likely to learn it. In some classrooms, desks are in rows and children
sit quietly much of the day. In other rooms, there are stations or work
areas, each designated for distinct kinds of activity. From the physical
design of the room, to the structure of assignments, to the resources pro-
vided, to the questions posed in class discussions, each choice a teacher
makes reflects, to some degree, an idea about intelligence and learning.
In this chapter, we discuss the theory of multiple intelligences (MI)
posed by Gardner in his book, Frames of Mind (1993). We describe the
ways teachers have considered the implications of a notion of intelligence
that takes for granted that students bring a broad range of capacities, each
in a distinctive balance, to their work as learners. In particular, we discuss
how teachers in various grade levels have applied MI theory to their teach-
ing and assessment practices. Acknowledging and working with diversity of
almost any kind in the classroom often seems overwhelming initially. In
time, however, this diversity becomes an opening into the creation of much
more vibrant learning environments in which all kinds of minds can be
encouraged to do their best work. Multiple intelligences theory can provide
support for creating such environments.

What is MI theory and where does it come from?

For most of this century, psychologists’ ideas about intelligence were de-
rived from statistical analyses of short-answer tests. Using these instru-
ments and analyses, psychologists articulated arguments isolating between
1 and 150 factors of intelligence (Carroll, 1993; Guilford, 1967; Horn and
Cattell, 1996; Spearman, 1961; Vernon, 1950). However, ‘g’ or general
intelligence often emerged as a factor common to various kinds of problem
solving (Carroll, 1993; Spearman, 1904/1961).
In Frames of Mind, Gardner argued that using these instruments and
methods does not adequately capture human problem-solving capabilities.
Instead of defining intelligence in| terms..of._performances on mental tests,
Gardner (1993) defines
an inielligence as the ability to solve problems or
fashion products that are valued in at least one culture. Gardner identified
eight criteria to determine whether or not a capacity qualifies as an intel-
ligence. For example, he looked at the potential isolation of an ability by
brain damage; distinctive and recognizable developmental paths; the exis-
tence of special populations like savants and prodigies who exhibit
46 Understanding Learning

unusually jagged intellectual profiles; and an identifiable set of core oper-

ations (see Figure 4.1).

. Potential of isolation by brain damage.

. A distinctive developmental history with a definable set of expert ‘end-state’
performances.
. The existence of savants, prodigies, and other exceptional individuals.
. An identifiable set of core operations or information-processing mechanisms.

. Support from experimental psychological tasks.

. Support from psychometric findings.

. Evolutionary history and evolutionary plausibility.

. Susceptibility to encoding in a symbol system.

Figure 4.1 Criteria for considering the intelligences

Based on his survey of these types of data, Gardner suggested that all
human beings possess at least seven relatively independent faculties. In
addition to thinking of intelligence as involving linguistic and logical- math-
ematical abilities, Gardner said that we should consider musical, spatial,
bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal abilities intelligences
as well (see Figure 4.2.) All human beings possess all of the intelligences,
but we differ in our relative strengths and weaknesses.

Linguistic intelligence allows individuals to communicate and make sense of the world
through language. Typical professions include journalists, novelists and lawyers.
Logical-mathematical intelligence enables individuals to use and appreciate abstract
relations. Typical professions include scientists, accountants and philosophers.
Musical intelligence allows people to create, communicate, and understand meanings
made out of sound. Typical professions include composers, conductors and singers.
Spatial intelligence makes it possible for people to perceive visual or spatial informa-
tion, to transform this information, and to recreate visual images from memory. Typical
professions include architects, sculptors and mechanics.
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence allows individuals to use all or part of the body to create
products or solve problems. Typical professions include athletes, dancers and actors.
Intrapersonal intelligence helps individuals to distinguish among their own feelings, to
build accurate mental models of themselves, and to draw on these models to make
decisions about their lives. Typical professions include therapists and certain kinds of
artists and religious leaders.
Interpersonal intelligence enables individuals to recognize and make distinctions
about others’ feelings and intentions. Typical professions include teachers, politicians
and salespeople.
Naturalist intelligence allows people to distinguish among, classify, and use features
of the environment. Typical professions include farmers, gardeners and geologists.

Figure 4.2 The multiple intelligences

 Minds at Work 47

What is the relation between MI theory and traditional ideas

about intelligence?

Aside from its unorthodox origins, Gardner’s theory diverges from some
traditional conceptions in several ways. Gardner, like other past and
current theorists (see, e.g., Ceci, 1990; Guilford, 1967; Sternberg, 1985;
1988; Thurstone, 1938), argued for a more pluralistic notion of intel-
ligence. Rather than fixing intelligence at birth, as some traditional ideas
of intelligence imply (Eysenck and Kamin, 1981; Herrnstein and Murray,
1994; Jensen, 1969; 1980), MI hee Suggests that intelligences change
and grow in response to a person’s experiences. Like a number of other
scholars (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1979; ~Céci, 1990; Feuerstein, 1980;
Perkins, 1995), Gardner viewed the intelligences as educable. They are
the result of a constant interaction among biological“afid environmental
factors.
Moreover, traditional conceptions of intelligence hold that intelligence
remains the same in all situations (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994; Spearman,
1961; 1927). That is to say, one’s intelligence does not change, whether one is
solving a maths problem, learning how to ski, or finding one’s way around a
new city. Modern conceptions point out that the thinking and learning re-
quired outside of school are often situated and contextualized (Brown, Col-
lins and Duguid, 1989; Ceci, 1990; Resnick, 1987; 1991). Most intellectual
work does not occur in isolation: when people work in different kinds of
settings, their abilities to problem solve differ (Resnick, Levine and Teasley,
1991; Rogoff and Lave, 1984). Apart from traditional test settings, problem-
solving is usually tied to certain tasks or goals and often aided by other
people and an assortment of tools and resources (Brown, Collins and Du-
guid, 1989; Lave, 1988; Pea, 1990; Perkins, 1993; Salomon, 1993; Vygotsky,
1978).
In keeping with the theories of the thinkers just mentioned, Gardner’s
definition of intelligence is likewise highly contextualized. Further, an intel-
ligence never exists in isolation from other intelligences: alltasks, roles and
products in our society call on a combination of intelligences, even if one or
more may be highlighted. For instance, concert pianists do not draw solely
on musical intelligence to become accomplished in their field. They also
must rely on interpersonal skills to connect to an audience or work with a
manager, bodily-kinesthetic skills to develop manual dexterity and intra-
personal ability to understand and express the meaning and feeling of a
piece of music.

Recent developments in MI theory

The theory of MI is constantly evolving. Recently, Gardner (1999) has

suggested that another faculty should be added to the list — the naturalist
intelligence. (The core ability of the naturalist intelligence is the ability to
48 Understanding Learning

recognize and classify the species in one’s environment.) Although some

critics claim there is no empirical evidence to support MI, Gardner exam-
ined hundreds of empirical studies in identifying the original seven intel-
ligences and he continues to review new data as they emerge. Indeed,
Gardner added the naturalist intelligence to his list based on his examina-
tion of newly published studies. Several recent investigations provide evi-
dence for the relative independence of interpersonal intelligence (e.g.,
Astington, 1993; Damasio, 1994) but refute the independence of musical
and spatial intelligences (Rauscher, Shaw and Ky, 1993).
Even though to our knowledge, there have been no large-scale studies of
schools using MI or the effectiveness of MI-based practices on student
learning, some educators have reported educational benefits for their stu-
dents (see, e.g., Campbell, 1992; Hecker, 1997; Mann, 1996). Clearly, more
research on the impact of MI on schools needs to be conducted. Several
researchers at Project Zero at Harvard are beginning to undertake such
studies to look systematically at practices associated with effective use of
the theory (Kornhaber and Hatch, 1996). They hope to convert these prac-
tices into practical resources and products that can support educators in
their efforts to apply MI.

Some common misconceptions about MI theory

It may be helpful to clear up two common confusions with regard to MI.

The first is the confusion between an intelligence and a domain of know-
ledge or discipline (Gardner, 1995). In Gardner’s scheme, an intelligence is
a biological and psychological potential — a capacity that resides in each
person. A domain or discipline is the arena or body of knowledge that gives
people the opportunity to use their intelligences in different ways and
in which varying degrees of expertise can be developed (see
Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Kornhaber and Gardner, 1993). Examples of disci-
plines or domains in our culture are mathematics, medicine and gardening.
Carrying out work in a domain or discipline requires that a person use
several different intelligences, as we saw in the example of the concert
pianist. Similarly, each intelligence can be used in a variety of domains — for
example, bodily-kinesthetic ability contributes to proficiency — in surgery,
theatre and athletics.
Another source of confusion is the equation of multiple intelligences
with learning styles. Learning styles refer to the different approaches that
individuals take when trying to make sense of diverse kinds of content (see,
e.g., Dunn and Dunn, 1978; 1992; Gregorc, 1985; McCarthy, 1982; Myers,
1980). Typically, a learning style is thought to cut across all content areas.
So, if a person is a tactile learner, he or she will learn best when learning
new material — whether history or cooking — by using his or her hands or
sense of touch. In contrast, the intelligences represent potentials or capa-
cities that are linked to neurological functions and structures and that
 Minds at Work 49

respond to particular content in the world. We cannot assume that because

one has demonstrated a good memory or ability to focus in music that he or
she will behave similarly when presented with linguistic or spatial
information.
Moreover, unlike learning styles, intelligences have distinct developmen-
tal paths that are tied to the achievement of valued roles in our society. If
we want children to become skilled artists, mathematicians or solid citizens,
then we need to nurture particular intelligences. Learning styles do not
share this connection to meaningful societal roles. One can be a tactile or
auditory learner and still become an accountant or a botanist. However, if
one has not developed strong logical-mathematical or naturalist intel-
ligences, success in those professions will be limited.

Implications of MI Theory for Instruction

MI theory raises many questions for classroom practice. Should teachers

try to nurture all of the intelligences equally or should they focus on identi-
fying and developing children’s strengths? Should schools offer a wider
selection of courses or should they maintain a traditional curriculum and
provide more varied ways of engaging students in the standard subject
matter? It is important to remember that MI is not an end in itself. If a
colleague proclaims, ‘I have an MI classroom’, or ‘I teach at an MI school’,
one’s next question should be, ‘What does that mean?’ or ‘What are your
educational goals for your students and school and how does using MI
theory help you get there?’
At first glance, MI appears to be compatible with many other educa-
tional philosophies and approaches, such as educating the ‘whole child’,
‘project-based learning’, an ‘interdisciplinary curriculum’, ‘whole lan-
guage’, and so on. But this leads to the question of whether adopting the
theory simply becomes a new label to describe existing practices and be-
liefs. Although MI may sometimes serve this purpose, it also can provide a
theoretical foundation and validation for teachers’ beliefs and practices,
deepening and/or extending them to new domains (Kornhaber, 1994). The
theory can become a framework for thinking about the students we teach
and how to teach them, helping teachers become more reflective and ex-
plicit about the pedagogical choices they make. As with any theory, people
may initially use MI in superficial ways, and some may continue to do so for
years. But if educational goals and criteria for reaching those goals can be
articulated, then MI can become an ally to rigorous learning.
There is never a single, direct route from scientific theory to daily prac-
tice and there are many different ways that MI can be applied in the
classroom. As we noted above, applications vary depending on the educa-
tional goals and values for the class and the school (see also Gardner,
1993b). Although some people may believe it is important for students to
50 Understanding Learning

be introduced to and develop competence in all areas, others think certain

content (e.g. language or social skills) deserves more attention than others
and spend a lot of time nurturing students’ linguistic or interpersonal intel-
ligences. Some teachers prefer to teach to children’s strengths; others pre-
fer to focus on deficits. Even though there is no one right way to apply the
theory, we believe there are at least four important implications for class-
room instruction.

Individualizing students’ education

One implication of MI theory for instruction is that teachers need to get to

know their students well enough to become familiar with each student’s
interests, strengths, and weaknesses, and shape their instructional practices
accordingly. Of course, Gardner is not alone in suggesting that education
needs to be individualized. Sizer (1984; 1992), the founder of the Coalition
of Essential Schools at Brown University, also wrote about the critical
importance of teachers’ knowing their students well. At the elementary
level, Comer (1988) talked about the value of understanding the six de-
velopmental pathways (physical, psycho-emotional, social-interactive,
cognitive-intellectual, speech and language, and moral) along which all
children progress. The theory of multiple intelligences adds a theory about
intelligence and the way the mind works that supports such educational
beliefs and practices.
MI provides a framework for individualizing education by helping us to
understand the full range of students’ intellectual strengths. Traditional
schooling has focused on developing only math and language as cognitive
abilities. Teachers who use a multiple intelligences framework recognize
other abilities — musical, bodily-kinesthetic — as cognitive, too. But opening
one’s eyes to thinking about these other competencies in new ways is not
enough. We must also be prepared to test and support hypotheses about a
student’s strengths. Several research and development projects have ex-
plored ways to do this in the classroom.
Project Spectrum, a collaboration between Harvard Project Zero and
Tufts University, is an approach to curriculum and assessment in early
childhood that gives teachers tools for identifying and providing evidence
for children’s strengths in different areas (Chen, 1993; Krechevsky, 1998).
Spectrum researchers devised assessments ranging from structured ac-
tivities to observational checklists in such domains as movement, music,
science, art, and social understanding to help teachers recognize the
various ways students can use their intelligences. For example, Spectrum
divides the movement domain into athletic and creative movement. Ath-
letic movement abilities include power, agility, speed and balance, and
creative movement includes body control, sense of rhythm, expressiveness
and generation of movement ideas. This delineation helps teachers make
sense of key aspects of a domain with which they may not be familiar. Once
 Minds at Work Dill

a student’s strengths and interests have been reliably identified, they either
can be nurtured further or used to engage students in areas of difficulty.
At the middle-school level, students themselves can become recorders of
their own strengths and can work with teachers to individualize their as-
signments. In the Practical Intelligence for School (PIFS) Project, a collab-
oration between Harvard Project Zero and Yale University, students are
encouraged to learn about their own intelligence profiles and how to draw
on their interests and strengths in carrying out their schoolwork (Gardner
et al., 1994; Williams et al., 1996). PIFS is an effort to help students succeed
in school in part by helping them understand the nature of school, why they
attend, and how school activities can be useful in their current and future
lives. One of the PIFS curriculum units introduces students to different
notions of intelligence and encourages them to take more responsibility for
their own learning. Students personalize their education by learning about
how they learn best, reflecting on and sharing past experiences that reveal
special talents and/or interests, and engaging in a set of problem-solving
tasks and challenges that can be resolved in a variety of ways. These types
of experiences and related discussion and reflection enable students to take
more control of their education and build on their strengths by tailoring
assignments to their own interests.
Decisions about whether to offer all students a broad education in many
or all of the areas addressed by MI, or whether to tailor students’ education
to develop their strengths or remediate their weaknesses, may depend on
the developmental level of the students. Many schools using MI choose to
offer broad exposure early on, with increasing focus and specialization as
students get older. One reason for adopting this approach is the belief that
it is especially important in children’s younger years to introduce them to
many different forms of expression and meaning-making to provide them
with experiences that are as rich as possible. But as students get older,
going into depth in many different subject matters simply is not possible.
Also, the pressures of college entrance exams and the job market demand
that students be proficient in certain domains. Therefore schooling appears
to become more focused. However, even with a more circumscribed curric-
ulum, MI theory can be useful in helping students develop competence.

Teaching subject matter in more than one way

MI leads to teaching subject matter in multiple ways, providing students

with different points of entry into learning a topic. Gardner talks about
experts as individuals who are able to represent and explain thoughts and
concepts in more than one way. The more ways a teacher can explain or
teach a topic or concept, the more likely that both the teacher and the
students will understand it deeply. Because most teachers do not feel com-
fortable or knowledgeable enough to teach by drawing on a variety of
intelligences, applying MI in the classroom often leads to team-teaching or
a2 Understanding Learning

bringing in community experts to share their expertise. In one elementary

school with three kindergartens, each teacher focused on developing her
curriculum in two domains and then the children rotated among the three
rooms. Classroom teachers often team up with the school’s specialist to
share knowledge and information about the children.
In his book, The Unschooled Mind, Gardner (1991) claimed that any
substantive topic can be approached in at least five ways — through the use
of narrative, logical analysis, hands-on experience, artistic exploration and
philosophical examination (Gardner has since added participatory/
interpersonal experience). For example, students can learn about the
theory of evolution by reading about Darwin and his trip on the Beagle
(narrative); examining quantitative relationships in breeding dominant and
recessive traits (logical); breeding fruit flies for certain characteristics
(hands-on); looking for and drawing patterns of similarities and differences
in fruit flies’ wings (artistic); addressing fundamental questions such as
whether evolution yields progress in all things (philosophical); or working
together on a project where students assume different roles
(interpersonal).
The experiences of two college-level English classes (one for students
with learning disabilities) illustrate how students learn to articulate and
craft arguments in writing using bodily kinesthetic and spatial techniques
(Klein and Hecker, 1994). In these classrooms, teachers ask students to
represent their arguments by walking across the room, changing directions
to reflect shifts in logic. Students thought out loud as they stepped out their
essays, asking themselves questions about where they wanted to go and
how they could get there. New information was represented by a step
forward, contradictory information by a step back, and additional examples
by steps to the side. Having students step out their narratives seemed to
trigger ideas, help word retrieval and aid in the sequencing of events.
Another set of strategies entails asking students to build models of the
relationships between their ideas using coloured pipe cleaners, Lego or
Tinkertoys. Rather than generating a written outline for an essay, students
created models with differently sized, shaped or coloured pieces that rep-
resent different components of the essay like the introduction, main points
and conclusion. Seeing concretely how different ideas are linked helped the
students develop an overall sense for how the essay comes together. To
bridge the spatial and linguistic domains, the teachers asked the students to
describe and explain what they had built. Klein and Hecker reported that
after several papers, students only had to imagine manipulating blocks or
walking out an essay to write in a clear and organized fashion.

Project-based learning

Another natural partner of MI theory is project-based learning. As Katz and

Chard (1989) pointed out, projects draw on a range of abilities, allow for
 Minds at Work 53

multiple points of entry and often reflect meaningful, complex work over
time (see also Steinberg, 1997). Projects offer students the opportunity to
solve problems or create products — the definition of intelligence according
to Gardner. In project work, the intelligences function as means, rather than
goals, i.e., they are used in service of completing the work of the project, not
as ends in themselves. Since projects also frequently involve collaborative
work, they help students both to develop their own in terpersonal intelligence
and to value the intelligences of their peers (see, e.g., Greeley, 1996b).
An example from the earlier grades is a first grade classroom’s project to
eed the school itself (Kornhaber, 1994). Children investi ated the history

iit They explored the school’s physical structure and created scaled
floor plans out of blocks. The graphed the number of doors and windows
‘in the school and drew pictures of the pipes they discovered in the base-
“ment. Two other classrooms iin the school undertook projects studying the
community. ‘These projects included such activities as transforming the
classroom into a model community complete with churches, banks and
beach pavilions, visiting a local restaurant and making pasta, conducting
surveys of parents’ occupations and graphing and posting the results, and
drawing a mural of a passenger train. Many of these activities continued for
five months or more.

Arts-infused curriculum

As we have seen, MI theory suggests that learning in and through the arts
involves cognitive, problem-solving abilities just like more traditional sub-
ject matter. In many schools and classrooms influenced by MI, people turn
to the arts and arts-based activities as a way to implement the theory in
significant learning experiences. Teachers, parents, and students in MI-
based classrooms value achievement in the arts as more than just frills.
Because many classroom teachers have not been trained as artists, they
often find it useful to meet or team up with the school’s arts specialists or
artists from the community. One second grade arts team used dance and
movement activities to help children understand place value. They asked
children to create movement patterns to represent the 1s, 10s, and 100s
places and then to represent their solutions physically (Kornhaber and
Krechevsky, 1995). Teachers learned both from their own direct experi-
ence with the art form and from looking at student work under the guid-
ance of a trained eye, learning to identify characteristics of unusual ability.
The students got to experience at first hand the passion and mastery of
expert practitioners.
Schools often draw on local institutions and resources like museums and arts
groups to provide experiences or apprenticeships that they are unable to offer
themselves. Many schools and districts write grants to host artistic residencies
or bring in mentors or experts from the community to work with teachers or
54 Understanding Learning

students. One middle school teacher asked local experts to come into her class
one hour per week to work with students and to look at and critique their
work on a play about immigrant life in the textile mills of the nineteenth
century. A parent who was a professional composer helped students compose
original music for the play. A set designer brought in books about mills and
took the students to the library to do historical research. Because the students’
notions of research were based on linguistic rather than visual information, the
students had not previously thought of set designers as needing to conduct
historical research. The teacher also took the students to visit one of the local
mills, where they recorded the sound of the machines in operation, again
extending their ideas about the nature of research. Through writing music and
designing sets, students deepened their understanding of the immigrant experi-
ence in industrial America (Greeley, 1996a).

Some misuses of MI theory

It might be useful to identify some of the questionable instructional prac-

tices that purportedly follow from MI. Although many of these practices
are understandable as initial attempts to apply the theory, ideally, educa-
tors trying to apply MI will be able to learn from and deepen their efforts
over time.
First, MI is not a mandate to teach every topic in seven or eight ways.
Many of the lesson plans and grids that are created to help teachers apply
MI in the classroom contain seven slots or boxes, implying that teachers
need to fill in just as many learning activities for each unit or lesson. Yet,
not all topics and concepts lend themselves to being taught in seven or
eight ways, and trying to force-fit activities into each box often leads to
well-intentioned but contrived lessons. Suppose, for example, that one of
the learning objectives in a maths unit is for students to understand frac-
tions and their relationships. Asking students to sing a song about the
operations they have learned, or playing classical music in the background
during the lesson, are not particularly meaningful uses of music to support
learning maths. However, it may be that learning about different rhythmic
structures will help those students who are more musically inclined,
especially if the link back to the maths can be made explicit.
Second, many schools and classrooms that have adopted MI encourage
teachers and students to identify and honour students’ strengths. However,
celebrating strengths is not enough; the strengths need to be connected to
what students need to know and understand. In either a societal or an
academic context, nurturing meaningful achievement in a domain or disci-
pline matters much more than nurturing intelligences per se.
Third, many of us fall into the trap of applying MI by labelling children.
Or we may think that children learning to label activities as involving one
or another intelligence is the same as demonstrating understanding in the
different intelligences. But students need to know that there are different
 Minds at Work 55

standards of performance and products in different domains, so they can

learn what is considered quality work. Depending on the learning goals of a
project, standards from a range of disciplines may need to be identified and
used to judge the students’ work in various genres.
Finally, infusing domains like the arts into the regular curriculum
avoids the potential artificiality of separating out MI-based activities
from the classroom. Ideally, attention to multiple points of entry and
authentic activities in different disciplines should occur throughout the
school, not just in a specially designated MI ‘activity’, ‘discovery’ or ‘flow’
room. Although such a setup has understandable appeal, if only for ease
of implementation, it runs the risk of making MI something one ‘does’, as
opposed to a way of thinking about children, how they learn, and how
best to teach them.
eis

Concluding Note

The theory of multiple intelligences suggests that it may be more instruc-

tive to consider how people are intelligent rather than ‘how much’ intel-
ligence they have. Certainly, in classrooms, the prognosis for every child
having asuccessful learning experience is greatly enhanced when the domi-
nant paradigm is
is oone in which all children are seen as having substantial
ways of making sense of the world— including the worlds of academic
disciplines — although those ways may not be immediately obvious to the
teacher or the child. In part, the work of teaching, learning, and assessing is
coming to understand such ways of knowing.
We have identified a number of approaches to curriculum and assess-
ment, none of them entirely new, that reflect a perspective on intelligence
that is consistent with the theory of multiple intelligences. Although their
use is still far from widespread, most of these approaches have received
considerable attention during the last decade of school reform. Some, like
portfolios and project-based learning, have long histories of use in schools,
especially in arts education. Yet these practices remain largely marginal in
most schools in part because they reflect a view of intelligence that is still
marginal. The paradigm of intelligence as a fixed, measurable quantity with
limited forms of legitimate expression is convenient for certain models
(e.g., transmission of knowledge through lecture) and functions (e.g., track-
ing and sorting by social class) of schooling. But it does not reflect what
observation and empirical research indicate about the complexity of the
human mind and the process of learning.
Those with alternative perspectives must take seriously the difficulty of
implementing new practices in the classroom. In many schools, little time
is devoted to explicit thinking through of how practice reflects theories
and beliefs and how theory might inform practice. Whatever the practice
56 Understanding Learning

— old, new, borrowed or experimental — it is the responsibility of all

practitioners and institutions to consider the beliefs and theories that
justify what goes on in the classroom. Time must be allocated for the
adults in a school to have reflective conversations, engage in such study
and share this thinking with parents and the community. (Theorists, of
course, also have a responsibility to consider practical implications of
their perspectives.)
Short of this kind of restructuring of the school schedule and redefining
of a school’s culture, individual teachers can pursue these links between
theory and practice in the classroom. Simply looking carefully at one’s own
or the classrooms down the hall and asking how students are encouraged to
think, solve problems and express themselves is a good start. Some ques-
tions that are helpful to ask of curriculum, instruction and assessment are
the following:
e Are students given the opportunity to make choices that reveal their
intellectual proclivities and ways of thinking?
e Are there opportunities for assignments and projects that allow stu-
dents to pace themselves and make decisions that suit their individual
profiles?
@ Do the approaches to assessment help both teacher and student to learn
about and recognize the full spectrum of the student’s intellectual
strengths or weaknesses? Do these assessments help teachers teach and
learn more effectively in subsequent classes?
@ What options and resources are available in the classroom so students
can exercise a variety of intelligences?
@ What are the teachers’ own strengths as learners? Are provisions made
for understanding and supporting students whose strengths differ from
theirs?
Intelligence is only one aspect of theory and beliefs about teaching and
learning that needs to be examined. But it is a crucial aspect and one that is,
arguably, at the heart of the educational enterprise. From the first day of
school, students bring working minds to class. The educator’s job is to
create the best possible working environment for those minds.

Acknowledgements

Project Zero’s work on applying MI in the classroom has been supported

by generous grants from the William T. Grant Foundation, the Lilly En-
dowment, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts,
Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Spencer
Foundation. We are grateful to Tina Blythe, Howard Gardner, Sara
Hendren and Mindy Kornhaber, who gave many helpful comments on
earlier drafts of this chapter.
 Minds at Work S7/

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 =
The Acquisition of a Child by a Learning
Disability

R. P. McDermott

Sometimes if you try harder and harder, it just gets worser and worser.
(Adam, 1977, third grade)

From 1976 to 1978, Michael Cole, Lois Hood, and I gathered a series of
videotapes from one classroom of 8- and 9-year-old children in various
settings. Our effort at the time was to locate the children ‘thinking’ aloud in
the’ hope that we could identify naturally occurring examples of some
mental activities that seemed so well defined in experimental settings. Our
concern was that activities like attending, remembering, problem-solving
and the like, although often invoked in formal institutional descriptions of
our children, in fact had few referents in their daily lives. It was not just that
no one had ever seen a memory, for various unseen things (electrons, gods,
missing stars that fill out a navigator’s imagination) have had a useful
theoretical career without being seen; it was rather that we had no way to
gauge the usefulness of the theories we had available about memory, atten-
tion or problem-solving. [. . .]
As an offshoot of our main concern, we became fascinated by how we
might describe the learning biographies of different children. There was
Nadine, who seemed to know most things and to learn quickly whatever
she did not already know; there was Reggie, who seemed to know a great
deal about everything but how to get along with his peers; there was Matt,
who hid out for the year and seemingly never engaged in any official,
school-learning task; and there was Adam, who suffered as an officially
described learning disabled (LD) child, but who seemed always eager to
try. It was this last child who most captured our focus. [. . .] The present
chapter revives Adam’s story in order to raise some questions about
various approaches to the explanation of learning failures and to provide a
focus for an account of notions of context and learning.

The Argument

eee
We might just as well say there is no such thing as LD, only a social practice
of displaying, noticing, documenting, remediating, and explaining it. This

60
 The Acquisition of a Child by a Learning Disability 61

theoretical shift makes LD no less real to the participants of life in schools

where occasions for displaying LD are so frequent, but it should at least
make us wonder what we all do that makes LD so commonly sensible and
ubiquitous in our experiences with institutionalized learning. [. . .]
After following Adam for 18 months, we gave up on specifying his traits
as the explanation of his behaviour and began talking instead about what
happened around him daily that seemed to organize his moments as an LD
person. Even at this most local level, we could find that many people were
involved in Adam’s problem. On any occasion of his looking inattentive,
for example, it took Adam to look away at just the right time, but it took
many others to construct the right time for Adam to look away; it took
others to look away from his looking away, and still more to discover his
looking away, to make something of it, to diagnose it, to document it and to
remediate it. Whatever was Adam’s problem inside his head, we had forced
on us the recognition that Adam had plenty of problems all around him, in
every person on the scene, in most every scene called educative. It is in this
vein that we claimed that Adam’s disability was not just visible in the sense
that the world was a neutral medium for what he could not do, but that the
world was precisely organized for making his disability apparent, that he
was the negative achievement of a school system that insisted that every-
one do better than everyone else (Hood, McDermott and Cole, 1980).
In order to describe Adam, or better, in order to figure out what we had
described after we spent a year trying to describe Adam, we needed a
theory of learning that could take into account that learning is not an
individual possession. The term learning simply glosses that some persons
have achieved a particular relationship with each other, and it is in terms of
these relations that information necessary to everyone’s participation gets
made available in ways that give people enough time on task to become
good at what they do. If that happens enough, it can be said that learning
happens. It probably makes more sense to talk about how learning acquires
people more than it makes sense to talk about how people acquire learn-
ing. Individually we may spend our time trying to learn things, but this
phenomenon pales before the fact that, however hard we try, we can only
learn what is around to be learned. If a particular kind of learning is not
made socially available to us, there will be no learning to do. This is a
primary fact that we have made little use of theoretically. If we can stop
focusing on who learns more or less of particular, culturally well-defined
fragments of knowledge, and ask questions instead about what is around to
be learned, in what circumstances and to what end, learning achievements
would become statements about the points of contact available to persons
in various social settings (Lave, 1988a; 1988b). What could LD be in such a
world?
Before extending the arguments about context and learning in a discus-
sion of various approaches we have available for the description of children
like Adam, it is necessary to introduce Adam in the various settings in
which we came to know him.
62 Understanding Learning

Adam, Adam, Adam and Adam

We videotaped all the children in their classrooms, in some one-to-one

testing settings and, most extensively, in afternoon activity clubs that we set
up for them two days a week. We were often struck with how much some
children varied across the different settings. Adam stood out as the child
who varied the most.
There were four settings in which we knew Adam fairly well: Everyday
Life, Cooking Club, Classroom Lessons and Testing Sessions. We can
roughly gloss them along a continuum displaying either Adam’s visibility as
a problem (from invisible to a source of constant embarrassment), or
school-like demands (from fairly loose to very constrained). Adam was
least visible as a problem in Everyday Life situations. He appeared in every
way competent and, more than most of the children, he could be wonder-
fully charming, particularly if there was a good story to tell. In the Cooking
Club, Adam was only a little more visible as a problem. When he worked
with his friend Peter, he got his cake made without any trouble. When he
had to work with someone else, there were often some arguments, some
tears, and some taunting from others before he could get his work done.
Classroom Lessons presented the same story, although troubles were more
frequent, and the adults seemed to be drawn more obviously into his
problem in the sense that they would try to reframe the task he was facing
or they would chastise him for his misbehaviour. Finally in the Testing
Sessions, Adam stood out from his peers not just by his dismal perfor-
mance but by the wild guesswork he tried to do.
As the settings differed in the degree to which Adam stood out as a
problem, so they differed along a continuum to the extent that they were
school-like in their constraints and their demands. Our effort in this chap-
ter is to identify some of the approaches one could take to the description
of the continuum, to point to some of the pre-theoretical assumptions each
makes about the nature of context and learning, and to extract what might
be the most useful notions for our own purposes. The first approach
focuses on the inadequacy in Adam’s head, the second on the arbitrariness
of the tasks Adam is asked to work on, and the third on the interactional
dilemmas thrown in Adam’s way as he moves through school.

The Continuum of Difficulty and Deficit

eas
By our most popular line of folk reasoning, Adam becomes more visible
as We move across the continuum because he is performing less well in the
face of increasing demands. Under the loose constraints of Everyday Life,
Adam can blend into the crowd and do what he has to do without anyone
 The Acquisition of a Child by a Learning Disability 63

worrying about the quality of his mind. In the Cooking Club, this is equally
true when he can work with Peter, who can read the recipe and oversee the
step-by-step planning of the cake. When he cannot work with Peter, he has
to work hard to arrange for someone else’s co-operation, and, if that is not
forthcoming, he begins to stand out. In Classroom Lessons, the tasks can be
even more demanding, and Adam appears even less adequate to meeting
the challenge. A close inspection of the classroom tapes showed Adam
acting out on those occasions when he could be called on to perform. For
example, while the teacher was asking the class questions and calling on
children for answers, Adam could be found crawling under his work table,
giving the finger to a friend, and so on; when the teacher switched to the
next part of the lesson and called the children forward to see a demonstra-
tion, Adam would join the crowd. When the going gets cognitively de-
manding, Adam stands out; otherwise, he is part of the crowd.
Adam had not been spared professional labels. His LD was well docu-
mented not just by the school, but by a university reading clinic that he
attended for tutoring. As much as he seemed fine in Everyday Life, school
work seemed terribly hard for him. Although Adam’s case was extreme,
this is an experience that we all recognize. That Everyday Life seems easier
than Testing Sessions is a basic fact of life for us all, and tying it to cognitive
difficulties makes great intuitive sense. In addition, once questions about
children are framed in these terms, once our inquiry is narrowed down to
the question of what is wrong with this or that child, support for a deficit
theory can be found wherever one looks. [. . .]
The deficit approach rests on a number of assumptions of questionable
validity, however. Although it is true that Everyday Life seems easier than
life in school, there is no reason to assume that the difference has only to
do with increased cognitive demands. The tasks do not have to be cog-
nitively more complex for us to experience them as harder. The trouble
could lie along other dimensions; for example, school tasks could be harder
simply because they are more arbitrarily constructed, or because an inade-
quate performance on school tasks could lead to a degradation ceremony.
If we examine the notions of context and learning inherent in the deficit
approach, we can gain a little more insight into what we are getting our-
selves into when we describe someone as LD. In the deficit theory, as in all
common-sense uses of the term, context refers to an empty slot, a con-
tainer, into which other things are placed. It is the ‘con’ that contains the
‘text’, the bowl that contains the soup. As such, it shapes the contours of its
contents; it has its effects only at the borders of the phenomenon under
analysis. [. . .]
Accompanying this sense of context is a static theory of learning. By this
account, knowledge and skill enter heads, where they wait passively for
situations in which they might prove useful. School-derived knowledge and
skill are supposed to generalize and to make children ready for a wide
range of adaptive behaviours. The learner is a passive container, filled up
by his or her efforts in school, slowly gathering up the skills purportedly
64 Understanding Learning

essential to some jobs that will eventually have to be tackled. The problem
with LD children is that they enter school without some rudimentary skills
for paying attention and processing information. They are hard to fill.
Some school situations are easier on them than some others, but in the long
run their inability to keep pace with their peers forces them to stand out
and fall even further behind. They are what they are; learner and environ-
ment are seperable, and they do not greatly alter each other.
These static assumptions about context and learning are supported by
static notions of both language and culture. The deficit theory assumes that
language and culture are storehouses from which children acquire their
competence. Some children get more and some get less. These are asser-
tions about which we should be most uncomfortable. [. . .]
The social policy that flows from these static notions of context, learning,
language and culture are easily recognizable to us. Those who do not get
enough knowledge from home or school need to be encouraged to get
some more. They need to acquire more language and culture in order to be
ready for more situations. They cannot afford to learn on the job; they
cannot afford to assume that they will be shaped by new contexts, or that
the language and culture that they need will be available to thera in situ.
They need to get more things in their heads to cut down their deficits in the
face of difficult demands.
er

The Continuum of Arbitrary Demands and Left-out

Participants

The second way of looking at the range in Adam’s performances has us

focusing less on Adam and more on the tasks he is asked to perform. In
Everyday Life, Adam can use any resources to get a job done. If he has to
remember a telephone number, he can memorize it, write it down, call infor-
mation or ask a friend. School tasks are different from this in that a person is
often restricted in what he or she can make use of; procedure is of the essence.
On tests, this trend is exaggerated. What else is a test but an occasion on which
you cannot use any of the resources normally available for solving some
problem; memory notes or helping friends are now called cheating. Is it poss-
ible that Adam is better understood as a child who is faced not by increasingly
more difficult tasks, but increasingly more arbitrary tasks?
In Everyday Life, Adam found the resources at his disposal more than
adequate. In the Cooking Club, he had an equivalent freedom if he was
working with a friend. If, however, he was working with someone who was
not willing to help, or if the people around him were trying to outdo him,
then the task of cooking suddenly became more difficult. It is not just the
case that Cooking Club can be made easy by someone helping Adam to do
what he cannot; it is rather that, under the gentle circumstances of working
 The Acquisition of a Child by a Learning Disability 65

with the friend to make a cake together, he can do what he cannot do if the
task is both to make a cake and not to get caught not knowing how to read
a recipe. In the Cooking Club, we quite by accident organized some confus-
ing circumstances for children of this age: for example, a two-cup cup,
teaspoon and tablespoon, baking soda and baking powder, ingredients on
one side of the page and instructions on the other side. Adam’s friend Peter
is one of the children who could sort out these problems; when working
with Peter, Adam not only follows the directions Peter reads to him, he
sometimes reads the recipe himself. When working under less gentle cir-
cumstances, he will rarely look at the page. The task is obscured by the
social work he must do to arrange not looking incompetent. In this way,
reading ‘teaspoon’ for ‘tablespoon’ becomes more likely, not because
Adam’s head does not work, but because he barely looks at the page and
ordinary resources for the solution to the problem are disallowed. In the
Testing Session, Adam is so preoccupied with getting the answer that it is
not clear he even hears many of the questions. He might be handling more
mental steps avoiding the questions than he would have to handle if he
addressed the questions. Arbitrary demands make him stand out. There
may be more to LD than disability.
Understanding Adam by way of the arbitrariness of the demands placed
on him represents an advance over the blind ascription of the deficit ap-
proach. It encourages, for example, a more careful look at the child and his
or her circumstances and insists that we be more sensitive to what might be
going on in the child’s surround.
Upon careful examination, the continuum of arbitrariness leaves us with
the same sense of context, learning, language, and culture as the deficit
account. The conceptual assumptions remain the same. Contexts and their
demands are still static, although there are more of them than allowed by
the deficit approach. Adam is still Adam, and tests are tests. Context and
their members are still separable. Learning still sits inside the student
waiting to be called forth, although now in the form of specific sets of skills
that must be used in situationally specific ways. Language and culture are
still the sorts of things one can have more or less of, as if those who had less
were not a systematic version of the culture everyone else had.

A Continuum of Degradation and Labelled Children

A third approach to Adam’s behaviour focuses on how much and on what

grounds a person is liable to degradation in the different settings. What is
at stake here is an appreciation of how much each setting organizes the
search for and location of differential performances and how much that
search further organizes the degradation of those found at the bottom of
the pile. Garfinkel (1956; Pollner, 1978; see also Pollner and McDonald-
Wikler, 1985, for a stunning reverse case) has shown how degradation is
66 Understanding Learning

always a ceremony in which public agreement on what one can be de-

graded for is displayed and directed against the total identity of others.
This means that it takes much work across persons to make an individual
liable for some part of their behaviour; a person must not only do the
wrong thing, but exactly the wrong thing that everyone is looking for
someone to do and then at just the right time.
By this line of reasoning, Adam is a problem in Everyday Life, primarily
because everyday life is well organized for the systematic location of prob-
lems (Scott, 1985). Cooking Club is mostly about cooking, and only occa-
sionally a source for a learning-related degradation ceremony. On one
occasion, Adam and a friend made a green cranberry bread (a physical
possibility, we are told, in an aluminium bowl with ingredients inserted in
just the wrong order). When the others gathered around to see and laugh,
he simply said, ‘So I made a goddamn mistake, so what’. The issue passed.
Other occasions for degradation do not move along so easily, no matter
what Adam’s response. Classroom Lessons, for example, can be so well
organized for putting the spotlight on those who are doing less well than
the others that hiding becomes a sensible strategy for all of the children
some of the time and for some of the children all the time. Adam seemed to
suffer in the classroom, and this is in part how he became visible to us.
During one small-group reading lesson, Adam was having a difficult time
matching words with accompanying pictures. Reading ‘fake’ for ‘face’, he
became tangled in a complex conversation with the teacher as she walked
in and out of his group with occasional tips for the kids. It took us days of
looking even to guess at the ways they seemed to be not understanding
each other. What kept us curious was the attention paid to Adam’s dis-
ability by the other children in his group. Adam’s LD generally played to a
packed house. Everyone knew how to look for, recognize, stimulate, make
visible and, depending upon the circumstances, keep quiet about or expose
Adam’s problem.
There may be more to LD than disability. There may be many other
people involved: certainly everyone in Adam’s classroom, in various ways
everyone in the school, everyone in the schooling business, all of us. [. . .]
Could Adam be disabled on his own? Only if he could work on a task
that was not culturally defined and had no consequences for his life with
others; that not being a possibility, he can only be disabled through his
interactions with others. Culture is a sine qua non of disability. There are
basic questions asked in all scenes called educative in America: Who can
do it? Who can’t? Who is smart? Who is dumb? These are not the domi-
nant questions that are asked in all scenes in America; they can leak by way
of school into homes and on to some jobs, much less in school playgrounds,
and not at all in singles bars, but they are ubiquitous in schools. How is it,
Goffman (1979) once asked, that a young man cannot know a word in
school and feel dumb and not know a word in a car garage and have not his
intelligence but his masculinity put on the line? An identical cognitive
absence can be interpreted different ways depending on the scene. These
 The Acquisition of a Child by a Learning Disability 67

questions acquire their answers, and in the process, with the help of tests,
diagnoses, specialists and government-sponsored budgets, LD acquires its
share of the children.
The degradation account of Adam’s behaviour along the continuum of
scenes relies on a different sense of context, learning, language and culture
than the previous approaches. If the assumptions of this approach are a
little better tuned with our experiences, and possibly a little less lethal to
our children, then we may have grounds to prefer a degradation approach
to the others.

Context

Context is not a fixed entity to Adam, for it shifts with the interactional winds.
Each new second produces new possibilities along with severe constraints on
what is possible. In this sense, context is not so much something into which
someone is put, but an order of behaviour of which one is a part. Adam was a
contributing member of various organizations that made his behaviour relev-
ant to the life of LD; this happened more often in Testing Sessions and
Classroom Lessons than it did in Cooking Club or Everyday Life, and this was
made possible by people, including Adam, organizing these scenes in ways that
made LD diferentially available in the different scenes.
Adam’s LD is made available for all to see, because everyone was look-
ing for it. In the Cooking Club, it is not so much the difficulty of the
material as that Adam cannot address the material without worrying about
whether he can get it straight or whether anyone will notice if he does not.
This is not paranoia; everyone is often ready to notice and, depending on
the situation, ready also to look away or to make Adam’s problem even
more public. Looking for Adam’s LD has become something of a sport in
Adam’s class, a subset of the wider sport of finding each other not knowing
things. Adam spends his day arranging not to get caught not having infor-
mation that he could get from print. His every move is designed not to have
LD again ascribed to him and, as such, his every move confirms and re-
creates the possibility that the label of LD will be available in the classroom
for anyone to ascribe to Adam. ‘Where is the LD?’ Behaviourally, the
answer is clear. It is all over the classroom as an interactional possibility.
Everyone stands in some relation to it. Everyone is part of the choreogra-
phy that produces moments for its public appearance. LD is distributed
across persons, across the moment, as part of the contextual work members
do in the different scenes. Neither Adam, nor his disability, can be sepa-
rated from the contexts in which they emerge.

Learning
Learning traditionally gets measured on the assumption that it is a posses-
sion of individuals that can be found inside their heads. By the degradation
68 Understanding Learning

approach, learning is not in heads, but in the relations between people.

Learning is in the conditions that bring people together and organize a point
of contact that allows for particular pieces of information to take on relev-
ance; without the points of contact, without the system of relevancies, there
is no learning and there is little memory. Learning does not belong to indi-
vidual persons, but to the various conversations of which they are a part.
When Adam works in the Cooking Club he gets no time to read, but he
gets constant instruction on how to look LD. The instructions stored in the
system are not simply about how to read. Reading to get the cake made is
not Adam’s only point of contact with the other members of the class. The
instructions stored in the system are also about who is to finish first, with
the best cake, with the recognition that they are the most competent. Given
this more inclusive agenda, information about how to read can get lost
easily, and Adam can get acquired by LD. It is the business of degradation
and not education that seems to organize selected moments in the Cooking
Club, even more moments in Classroom Lessons and more still in the
Testing Sessions.

Language and culture

The language and culture that Adam encounters in his daily round may not
be what most of us assume them to be. Language is easily understood as a
neutral tool of expression that helps us to say and write what we like and to
interpret what others have said and written for us. On these grounds, Adam
needs more language. Like most children called LD, he loses his words at
various important times, and reading and writing are pure torture for him.
More language for sure. By the degradation stand, however, Adam’s lan-
guage may be quite complete. Language is not a neutral medium; it comes to
us loaded with social structure. It comes to us loaded with sensitivities to the
circumstances under which it was born and maintained in previous encoun-
ters. It comes to us biased with the social agendas of a school system that pits
all children against all children in a battle for success. Indeed, all American
culture seems well poised to have Adam and millions of others failing in
school. By this standard, Adam has exactly the language required of his
position. Culturally, he is taking one of two perfectly normal pathways
through school: he is failing. There is a language waiting in every classroom
in America for anyone who might take that road, and Adam has done his job
well. He acquired and was acquired by a culturally recognized and mandated
absence. He had achieved school failure. Adam had been acquired by the
language of LD that was in place before he was born.
Languages help us to build the scales along which we calculate our pluses
and minuses. So it is with culture. Cultures and languages fill the world
before any given child’s arrival, and they define what must be present and
what must be noticed as absent. Culture and language define what each of
us needs, force us to attend to those of us who are left short, and ideally
 The Acquisition of a Child by a Learning Disability 69

equip us to help them over their disabilities. Unfortunately, cultures are

never sO magnanimous, nor can they be. As a series of ideal types, cultures
are defined most essentially by the inability of all to live up to their directives.
Cultures offer only ‘collective illusions’, prescriptions that give us a way to
talk about how we should live together in exchange for an inarticulateness
about how we actually do live together (Murphy, 1971; 1987). Cultures
cannot supply the resources members need in order to live in them without
exposing the arbitrariness of their particular way of life. They exist by their
promises, and they feed off each of us to the extent that we try to follow
them and fail.
Languages acquire their speakers. So disabilities acquire their learners.
Who is there first? Long before Adam was born, we had LD - or an
equivalent. It is an absence we know how to look for. American culture
makes the absence of learning real as presence. Before any teachers of
children enter the schools every September, failure is in every room in
America. There is never a question of whether everyone is going to suc-
ceed or fail, only of who is going to fail. Because everyone cannot do better
than everyone else, failure is an absence real as presence, and it acquires its
share of the children. Failure and success define each other into separate
corners, and the children are evenly divided as if by a normal curve, into
successful and failing. Among those who fail are those who fail in ways that
the system knows how to identify with tests, and these children are called
special names. LD acquires its share of the children.
Context and learning no longer have individual subjects as variables, but
refer instead to the organizing devices people have available for dealing
with each other. Similarly, language and culture are no longer scripts to be
acquired, as much as they are conversations in which people can particip-
ate. The question of who is learning what and how much is essentially a
question of what conversations they are a part of, and this question is a
subset of the more powerful question of what conversations are around to
be had in a given culture (Goodwin, 1991). To answer these questions, we
must give up our preoccupation with individual performance and examine
instead the structure of resources and disappointments made available to
people in various institutions. To do this job, we may not need a theory of
individual learning and, given its use in our current educational system, we
may not be able to afford one.

Acknowledgements

Richard Blot, Eric Bredo, Robbie Case, David Charnow, Michael Cole and
Jean Lave offered helpful comments on a previous draft. Mimi Cotter
helped greatly with the occasional Gestalt flavour. This chapter is dedi-
cated to the late Robert F. Murphy who understood well how a culture can
disable. I owe him a letter.
70 Understanding Learning

References

Garfinkel, H. (1956) Conditions for a successful degradation ceremony. American

Journal of Sociology, 61, pp. 420-4.
Goffman, H. (1979) Gender Advertisements, London: Macmillan.
Goodwin, M. (1991) He-Said-She-Said, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Hood, L., McDermott, R. P. and Cole, M. (1980) ‘Let’s try to make it a good day’ —
some not so simple ways, Discourse Processes, 3, pp. 155-68.
Lave, J. (1988a) Cognition in Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Murphy, R. F. (1971) Dialectics of Social Life, New York: Basic Books.
Murphy, R. F. (1987) The Body Silent, New York: Holt.
Pollner, M. (1978) Constitutive and mundane versions of labeling theory, Human
Studies, 1, pp. 269-88.
Pollner, M. and McDonald-Wikler, L. (1985) The social construction of unreality.
Family Process, 24, pp. 241-57.
Scott, J. (1985) Weapons of the Weak, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
 6
Situated Cognition and How to
Overcome It

Carl Bereiter

The first half-century of American psychology is often represented nowadays

as a dark age of rat-running and rote verbal-learning experiments, which
ended only when it was overwhelmed by the rise of the new cognitive psy-
chology that started in the 1950s (cf. Gardner, 1985). But throughout that
early period, there was a strain of mainstream experimental psychology that
dealt with what we would now call situated learning. It was rat psychology, to
be sure, but it was a psychology of situated rat behaviour. The central tenet
was that animals do not simply learn responses, they learn their environ-
ments. Run rats in a maze under typical tightly controlled conditions, and
they learn a fixed route to the goal. Change things a little and they are lost.
But let them run around on their own and they quickly learn the whole
maze, so that they can get from wherever you drop them to wherever they
want to go by an efficient route. [. . .]
Contemporary ideas about situated cognition, having come to us from
anthropology, are heavily loaded with human cultural concerns. They are
connected with Vygotsky and his belief in the social origins of cognitive
structures. We tend to forget that animal cognition is situated, as well.
pee

Outgrowing Animal Cognition

We do not come by situated cognition through a cultural or learning pro-

cess. Our brains evolved to deal with situations in which we find ourselves.
We have, however, managed to transcend our animal heritage in certain
ways, and in this chapter I argue for the value of viewing these as ways of
overcoming the situatedness of cognition. Like other adventures in over-
coming nature, overcoming the situatedness of cognition has risks as well
as benefits and is, in a fundamental sense, illusory. But identifying the risks
and benefits and separating illusion from reality is part of the programme I
am advocating here.
The most obvious way in which we humans transcend our animal
heritage is through transforming physical environments and creating
new social structures and practices along with them. The second way is

a
Ws Understanding Learning

through acquiring expertise, which enables us to function in a novel

environment much as if we had evolved within it (Bereiter and Scar-
damalia, 1993).
Environmental transformation and expertise are to be found in
every society, but there is a third way of transcending biological
givens that is much less common and that represents a far more
radical departure from the kinds of cognitive adaptations we share with
other species. This is the kind of departure most dramatically ex-
emplified by science. It amounts to creating a world of immaterial
knowledge objects and acquiring expertise in working with them. Al-
though these knowledge objects may refer to spatially and temporally
located situations, they are not bound to those situations. Thus, this
third way represents a stronger sense in which humans may be said to
overcome the situatedness of cognition. The third way, furthermore,
greatly extends the other two. A modern city is a physical environment
within which human beings have developed many new forms of practice
and expertise, but this environment could not exist were it not for cen-
turies of development of abstract knowledge now put to use in the
construction of tall buildings, electrical power grids, heating and air-
conditioning systems, and the countless other technological underpin-
nings of a modern city.
These three kinds of advances beyond animal cognition map nicely on
to Popper’s (1972) metaphoric schema of three worlds — World 1 being
the material world of inanimate and animate things (including human
beings), World 2 the subjective world of individual mental life and
World 3 the world of immaterial knowledge objects. Lacking other
handy labels, I use Popper’s terms without implying a necessary com-
mitment to other aspects of Popper’s epistemology.
Situated cognition researchers have contributed substantially to our
understanding of the relations between Worlds 1 and 2, arguing that
these are much more directly and intimately connected than previous
cognitive theories had supposed. But they have not done the same for
World 3. Instead of according knowledge existential status in its own
right, as epistemologists have traditionally done, they have tried to ac-
count for it in terms of the practices of particular groups, such as scien-
tists or mathematicians; concrete embodiments of knowledge, such as
books and instruments; and, occasionally, as content in individual minds
— as mental models, for instance (Greeno, 1994).
Although these are important aspects of knowledge, they seem to me
to miss the core. That core is represented in the metaphor of World 3 -—a
world, wholly created by the human intellect, that enables us, for better
or worse, to escape the situational embeddedness of cognition. Without
that core, formal education becomes meaningless (as, indeed, some ad-
vocates of situated cognition seem to believe it is). Again, for better or
worse, formal education is our individual escape route from the confines
of situated cognition.
 Situated Cognition and How to Overcome It 73

Can There Be Non-situated Cognition?

Greeno, a leading exponent of situated cognition, expressed dissatisfaction

with the term. It seems to refer to a type of cognition and, thus, to imply
that there also exists a type of cognition that is not situated (Greeno, 1994).
Situativity theorists (to use Greeno’s suggested replacement term) deny
this: all cognition is situated and could not be any other way. If we accept
this premise, then the title of this chapter, ‘Situated cognition and how to
overcome it’, is an oxymoron.
But, in fact, there is non-situated cognition, and situativity theorists
have devoted a lot of effort to criticizing it. The catch is that non-
situated cognition is not found in nature (at least not in nature as it is
known to earthlings); it is found only in machines. Most of artificial
intelligence has been constructed according to a model radically at vari-
ance with the kind suggested by situativity theory. In situated cognition,
people (or other agents) carry on activity in the world, adapted to the
constraints and affordances of the environment. Cognition is the indi-
vidual or collective process by which people negotiate these constraints
and affordances, according to their individual or collective purposes.
Machine intelligence of the classic AI variety is not like that. Cognition
is an entirely internal process of symbol manipulation (Vera and Simon,
1993). Interaction with the outside world is done by means of trans-
ducers that translate inputs from sensors into symbols that the machine
can manipulate or that translate symbols into actions. Thus, a robot
controlled by AI of this kind will contain a plan — for getting from Point
A to Point B, let us say — that controls how data from its visual sensors
are translated into symbols that its program can then convert into in-
structions to its servomechanisms so that the plan is executed through
physical movement. The robot may also contain a program for revising
the plan in case of mishap. One very important line of argument in
favour of situated cognition comes from roboticists, who find that this
kind of robot cognition does not work very well (Beer, 1991). It is too
slow and crude and prone to catastrophic failure. But these kinds of
criticisms acknowledge that there is such a thing as non-situated cogni-
tion, making the case that it is not a very good kind of cognition for
getting around in the world.
The existence of non-situated cognition, albeit artificially created, is, I
believe, profoundly important for understanding human cognition and
its situatedness. For one thing, it allows us to talk about advantages and
disadvantages of situated cognition, which would make no sense if there
were nothing to compare situated cognition with. It also affords the
possibility of identifying degrees of situatedness. With such possibilities
in view, it is no longer absurd to talk about overcoming situated cogni-
tion. The questions are: why would anyone want to, and how could it be
done?
74 Understanding Learning

Advantages and Disadvantages of Situated Cognition

If we take rule-based AI as exemplified non-situated cognition, then look-

ing at what it does well and poorly (compared to human beings) may offer
us insights into the advantages and disadvantages of situated cognition.
Using rule-based programs, computers are much better than we are at
carrying out long chains of reasoning and at exhaustively searching mem-
ory (Anderson, 1985). Thus, they excel at chess. The best programs, which
can beat all but a few human experts, succeed by reasoning farther ahead
and along more paths than their human opponents (Charness, 1991). We
are abysmally bad at searching memory in a listwise fashion. Try naming
the 50 United States — or some other familiar set of about that size, if the
states are not familiar enough. Almost everyone misses one or two and has
a terrible time finding the missing ones, whereas computers have no trou-
ble with this sort of task.
What we do remarkedly well in comparison to rule-based AI is recognize
patterns — for instance, recognizing a face from the past, even though it has
aged 20 years since last we saw it. Computers, by contrast, have trouble
identifying letters of the alphabet under the normal variations of handwrit-
ing and typography, a task many preschool children can handle easily.
Another relative strength of human cognition is associative retrieval — for
instance, reading a research report and being reminded of a related finding
from a decade past, on a slightly different topic. This is a chancy business
for us, but rule-based AI cannot do it at all unless the stored items have
been appropriately indexed beforehand (Schank, Collins and Hunter,
1986). Pattern recognition and associative retrieval seem to be the means
by which we grasp analogies and metaphors, and this gives us a great
imaginative edge over the literal-minded machine (Margolis, 1987).
The relative strengths of computer and human cognition directly reflect
differences between non-situated and situated cognition. Rule-based AI
works very well when all the necessary information can be explicitly repres-
ented and indexed, as is the case with a game of chess or a gazeteer. The
rule-based system can then go to work on its stored information and pro-
duce a result appropriate to the part of the real situation of which it
contains a representation; for example, it can compute a move appropriate
to a real chess game. When all the necessary information is coded into rules
or propositions, formal logic comes to the fore as a powerful tool for
arriving at decisions, and logical operations are what computers excel at.
The trouble is that the great bulk of real-world situations cannot be repres-
ented in this way. Chess games can, but as simple a game as tag cannot.
This is because chess has a set of rules that allow all the possible moves to
be computed, whereas the possibilities inherent in a dozen kids running
around on a playground are, for practical purposes, limitless. Represen-
tations are necessarily abstractions. Abstractions based on Newton’s laws
work for physical situations involving a small number of inanimate objects,
 Situated Cognition and How to Overcome It . if

but when objects have minds of their own and can twist and dodge the way
agile children can, such abstract representations become relatively useless.
It is not that Newton’s laws cease to hold, of course; it is just that the
variables are too numerous and are impractical to measure and compute.
A tag-playing robot would need a different kind of mind from the one
that rule-based AI would give it. Instead of a mind that works on internal
representations of the playground and the participants, it would need a
mind more directly attuned to the physical and social environment, re-
sponding quickly to opportunities for tagging, switching from one pursuit
to another the instant that a more promising target presented itself. In
short, it would need situated cognition.
At this point, my account sounds like much of what appears in the
situated cognition literature. The situated actions of just plain folks come
off as flexible, adaptive and elegant — in a word, intelligent — whereas action
based on formal procedures and principles comes off as brittle, plodding,
insensitive to nuance — in a word, stupid. It is time, therefore, to look at the
other side. Although non-situated cognition may not be very good for
guiding a robot in a game of tag, it has proved capable of guiding a space
vehicle to Mars. Surely there is a lesson for us in that.

The Problem of Transfer

The main weakness of situated cognition is, it seems, precisely its situated-
ness. In traditional language, the limitations of situatedness are referred to
as problems of transfer. What we learn in one situation, we often fail to
apply in another. Situativity theory helps us to understand why this is so.
The progress of situated learning consists of increasingly fine attunement to
the constraints and affordances of the particular situation. Thus, as learning
proceeds, it tends to become less and less generalizable to other situations.
In your first job as a store clerk, you will begin by learning many things that
are applicable to store clerking in general — how to address customers, ring
up sales, bag purchases, watch for shoplifters, and so on. But as the weeks
go on, your skills will become more and more specific to the particular
store and its merchandise, clientele, management, physical layout, staff,
and so on.
Advanced stages of situated learning may, in fact, begin to yield negative
transfer, as habits are acquired that will need to be overcome in a new
situation. There is a deeper problem of transfer, however. Elsewhere, I
have tried to show that what mainly fails to transfer is learned intelligent
behaviour (Bereiter, 1995). The course of situated learning typically has
the aspect of a progression from being inept and prone to stupid mistakes
to being competent and smart. Although important parts of what is learned
in one situation may transfer to a new one, the part that does not transfer is
likely to include the being smart. Again, this makes sense in light of
76 Understanding Learning

situativity theory, for being smart just means becoming so nicely attuned to
specific constraints and affordances of a situation that you can effortlessly
cope with whatever problems arise. In a new situation, you are liable to
have to start over being stupid.
If, categorically, learned intelligent behaviour is not transferrable from
old situations to new, this has grave implications for education, of not for
humankind in general, what with the accelerating pace of change. But there
we have an irony worth pondering. The accelerating pace of change is
increasingly driven by technological innovations, virtually every one of
which is an instance of transfer of intelligent behaviour from one situation
to another. I do not want to make space travel out to be the highest
achievement of human intelligence, but it is surely our most colossal ex-
ample of transfer of learning. No amount of situated cognition or legiti-
mate peripheral participation would get people to the moon and back. It
took something more to produce that kind of transfer, and we must try to
pin down what that is. Failing in that, we may face a future in which a small
number of people have caught on to some secret of transferrable learning,
and thus are able to keep creating and adapting to new situations, while the
rest of us find it increasingly difficult to cope.
[ate|

Learning Beyond What the Situation Calls For

Flora and Dora are both A students in Algebra I. The next year, they take
Algebra II. Flora again aces the course, whereas Dora finds herself at a loss
and just manages to scrape by with the C minus awarded to students who
try hard but do not get it. Here we have an apparent case of the same
learning transferring for one person but not for another. Few mathematics
educators would buy that interpretation, however. They would conjecture
that Flora and Dora learned quite different things in Algebra I. What Flora
learned evidently provided a good basis for Algebra II, whereas what Dora
learned did not. So it is not that something failed to transfer for Dora, it is
that she failed to learn what was transferrable. How are we to account for
these different learnings, and how do they relate to situated cognition?
In the last 20 years, there has been quite a bit of research on the Floras
and Doras of the world. Even without the research, it is easy to divine that
Flora probably understood the mathematics presented in Algebra I and
that Dora did not, getting by instead on rote procedures. What the research
has done is give us an idea of what Flora did differently from Dora in order
to produce this result. Stepping down from algebra to arithmetic, a nice
example of this research comes from Resnick and Neches (1984). They
examined a practice common in elementary arithmetic, in which children
carry out operations with concrete objects that mirror such symbolic oper-
ations as borrowing and carrying (or regrouping, as it is now called). Most
 Situated Cognition and How to Overcome It vi

children, although they were able to carry out both the concrete and the
symbolic operations, failed to make a connection between them. Some
children did make the connection, however. On interviewing the children,
it was found that the children who made the connection reported that they
were trying to make a connection.
That may not sound very surprising, but consider it from the standpoint
of situated cognition. Clearly, the situation was designed to afford experi-
menting with the relationships between concrete and symbolic quantitative
operations. But any situation affords innumerable opportunities for in-
quiry. Why we would exploit one and not another — or any at all, for that
matter — depends partly on our own goals and partly on, to put it broadly,
what the situation calls for. Generically, the situation in which the children
in Resnick and Neches’ study found themselves was that of schoolwork
(Doyle, 1983). A schoolwork situation is rather like that in a garment
factory. Although a number of workers may be present in the same room,
each one is independently engaged in carrying out a task specified by the
supervisor or teacher. What the situation calls for is defined by the task
constraints. The tasks are usually defined in such a way as not to put undue
strain on the capacities of those performing them. There usually are time
constraints, however, and so there is motivation to find ways of satisfying
task requirements that economize on time. Another characteristic shared
by schoolwork and garment work is a very limited time horizon. Although
the teacher or supervisor may have long-range objectives, the students or
workers are not expected to look beyond the immediate day’s task. (School
projects are an exception, as their name implies.)
Given these characteristics of schoolwork, it then becomes remarkable
that some children would take it on themselves to try to discover a logical
connection between the concrete and symbolic components of the task
they were assigned to carry out. The task assignment did not require it. The
task components were easily enough executed that it was unlikely that an
impasse would drive them to deeper analysis. And the time horizon, sug-
gesting that it would all be over soon, offered no reason to think ahead to
the possible relevance of the current task to future situations.
Returning to Flora and Dora, their first-year algebra class probably pro-
vided opportunities — through textbook explanations and worked ex-
amples, class discussions and problems — to develop a basic understanding
of algebraic functions. But what the situation actually called for was just
solving lots of linear equations. By learning a few procedures and applying
them carefully, an assiduous student could solve the equations without any
need for conceptual understanding. That, we may surmise, is what Dora
did. It worked well through Algebra I. But then she got to Algebra II and
encountered an explosion of different types of equations and complications
in procedures for solving them. Try as she might, she made frequent errors.
Having no sense of how algebra related to arithmetic, she never checked
her answers with trial values. (Perhaps arithmetic did not make much sense
to her, either, and therefore provided no basis on which to build an
78 Understanding Learning

understanding of algebra.) Consequently, her errors went uncorrected and

the marks on her schoolwork plummeted.
Flora, we surmise, did acquire an understanding of algebra in the course
of her first year. But on the basis of related research, we may further
surmise that this did not just happen. Despite the fact that the situation did
not actually call for it, Flora must have expended effort in trying to under-
stand what algebra was about and how it connected with what she already
knew. This is what Scardamalia and I have elsewhere defined as intentional
learning (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1989). Intentional learning is primarily
a matter of goals rather than strategies. Examining the goal-related state-
ments of people studying computer programming, Ng and Bereiter (1991)
were able to identify three levels of goals. The first and most common are
task completion goals. In the Flora and Dora case, these would be goals
associated with correctly completing assigned algebra problems. At the
next level are instructional goals. These are goals related to what the
teacher or textbook is trying to teach. They can vary greatly in how ex-
plicitly and saliently they are put before the student. In a typical algebra
textbook, they would be discernible from section headings and the like, but
they could easily be ignored in the pursuit of task completion goals. Finally,
and rather rare, are knowledge-building goals, which pertain to the
learner’s personal agenda for constructing knowledge. Among other
things, the three kinds of goals differ greatly in their time horizons. In a
conventional algebra class, the time horizon for task completion goals is
usually the next day. The time horizon for instructional goals is likely to be
the next examination or, at most, the end of the course. The time horizon
for knowledge-building goals, by contrast, may extend indefinitely far into
the future, and may also extend into the past, encompassing a history of
past learning that is consciously built on in the present.
irr}
These three levels of goals differ in their level of abstractness. Corres-
pondingly, we may say that they differ in their degree of situatedness.
Action in pursuit of task completion goals is highly situated, being directly
linked to manifest constraints of the situation. The pursuit of instructional
goals is less so. And when we get to pursuing knowledge-building goals, we
are talking about action that is only weakly connected with the immediate
situation, that consists largely of mental work on symbolic objects, some of
which are abstracted from the current situation but others of which origi-
nate quite outside it.
Situativity theorists might concede that something like this continuum of
abstraction exists, but they would argue that the more abstract kind of
mathematical activity is just as situated as the more concrete. This is where
the relational character of situativity becomes important. Although Flora
and Dora may be in the same physical environment, they are in different
situations. The affordances and constraints are different, reflecting their
differing motives and capacities. But even though one may be plodding
through a workbook assignment while the other is reflecting on the nature
 Situated Cognition and How to Overcome It uo

of mathematical functions, each is engaged in a cultural practice that is

adapted to situational constraints and affordances.
file]

Schooling and Knowledge Work

Although situated cognition researchers have taken a lively interest in

learning, both in and out of school, they have not come up with anything
that could be called a new educational vision. Instead, situativity theorists
have tended to endorse various innovations of a social constructivist cast,
interpreting them within their own frameworks. As has been pointed out
(Wineburg, 1989) and acknowledged (Brown, Collins and Duguid, 1989),
however, the educational ideas coming from situativity theorists have not
advanced notably beyond those of Dewey. The main difficulty, I would
suggest, is that situativity theory has not been able to provide a cogent idea
of the point of schooling. This difficulty, in turn, derives from a serious
confusion between product and process.
L004]
The source of the confusion is that knowledge production, like any kind
of human activity, takes place in some physical and social situation, and
accordingly situated knowledge also develops. This is knowledge con-
stituted in the practice of the community and intimately involved with the
affordances and constraints of the situation. But this is not the same as
the knowledge that is the product of the situated activity, any more than
the situated knowledge of the workers in the paint factory is the same as
the paint they produce.
Some knowledge-production situations are less confusing than others,
however, so let us consider one of those first. A forensic chemistry labora-
tory produces knowledge of a particular kind. Through analysis of mater-
ials obtained at a crime scene, knowledge is produced that contributes to
creating an account of what went on at the scene. In this case, it is not
difficult to distinguish between the knowledge embedded in the practice of
the chemists and the knowledge that they deliver to the detectives. The two
kinds of knowledge relate to entirely different situations. The distinction
becomes trickier if the chemists are doing basic research. In this case, the
knowledge they produce relates to their own practice as well as to others’.
But with a little effort, the distinction can be maintained. If, however,
chemical research is being carried out by students in a school laboratory,
then the distinction becomes even less obvious. This is because the students
are likely to be the only users of the knowledge they produce. Neverthe-
less, I believe that the school situation, like the other situations in which
knowledge is created, can best be understood by striving to distinguish
knowledge implicit in the process from knowledge that is the product of the
process.
80 Understanding Learning

No such distinction is normally made in education, even with the popu-

larization of constructivist ideas. The results of knowledge construction are
thought of as entirely internal — internal to the minds of individual students
under most construals, or internal to the distributed cognition of the class-
room community under construals influenced by sociocultural theories
(Cobb, 1994). Accordingly, constructivism becomes more or less syn-
onymous with learning by discovery, and it competes — not always suc-
cessfully — with direct instruction (Harris and Graham, 1994).
The observable goings-on in this activity that we call collaborative
knowledge-building fall easily within the spectrum of what others might
call constructivist learning, cognitive apprenticeship, inquiry learning or
talking science. The distinctiveness is conceptual; it is a matter of how
teachers and students conceive of what they are doing and the effect this
has on efforts to do it better. One thing that must be recognized about the
many exciting experiments in educational uplift that are going on (it is true
of all the ones I have knowledge of, and so I confidently generalize to the
rest) is that reality falls well short both of the ideal and of the exemplary
episodes reported in the literature. Hence, in pedagogy as in science, im-
provability is of the essence. The following are ways in which a knowledge-
building conceptualization of schooling offers advantages over other ap-
proaches that regard both knowledge construction and the knowledge pro-
duced as situated:

1. The focus of classroom activity shifts from improving students’ minds to

improving their theories or other knowledge objects. This is a clearer
objective and one that students and teachers alike can more readily
track.
2. A developmental continuum may be recognized that runs from uncon-
scious learning in early childhood (Montessori, 1967) to self-aware, in-
tentional learning (Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1989) and then to inquiry
that is focused on the external world and finally to inquiry that is
focused on World 3 objects as they relate both to the external world and
to one’s own purposes (Scardamalia, Bereiter and Lamon, 1994). Help-
ing students advance along this continuum then becomes a meaningful
educational objective.
3. Production of knowledge objects inevitably involves building on or other-
wise dealing with existing knowledge objects (hence Newton’s avowal that
he stood upon the shoulders of giants). Consequently, familiarity with
culturally significant World 3 objects — the goal of cultural literacy (Hirsch,
1987) — comes about naturally rather than through a didactic regimen.
4. Progressive education sought to avoid inert knowledge by having learn-
ing come about naturally through the social life of the community. But
the social life of school communities does not naturally give rise to much
learning of an abstract or theoretical nature. Students experience the
power of concepts in science and other disciplines by using them to help
solve problems in their own knowledge-building efforts.
 Situated Cognition and How to Overcome It 81

5. Knowledge-building is not in competition with instruction. In schools,

there is no reason why time cannot be taken out from knowledge build-
ing, to whatever extent is judged necessary, and devoted to explicit
learning activities.
6. Knowledge-building provides a natural basis for involving people out-
side the school who are engaged in related activities — scientists, curators
and librarians, experts in various trades and professions, and so on. This
involvement of talents beyond the classroom is almost obligatory if
students are free to follow a knowledge-building project wherever it
leads them (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1994).
7. The knowledge objects students produce in school will tend naturally to
be ones of very basic and general applicability. This is because there is
no particular job that the knowledge must serve (as there is, for in-
stance, in the forensic chemistry laboratory); and students’ questions,
when freely generated, tend to be why questions that lead toward deep
principles (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1992). Consequently, the know-
ledge that students produce is the kind that serves broadly to overcome
the limits of situated cognition.
8. The situated learning that does occur is learning how to function in a
community of practice whose work is work with knowledge. The trans-
ferrability of this learning to knowledge work in out-of-school situations
is, of course, chancy; but it seems reasonable to assume that students
who have had years of experience in explicitly working with knowledge
will have an advantage over ones whose experience has been limited to
the traditional kinds of scholastic learning and doing in which know-
ledge, as such, is seldom the object of attention.

eee
A major social issue for our time is whether the world will be run by an
expert elite on one side of the divide while the bulk of humanity remains on
the other. It seems to me that today’s schools are on the wrong side of the
divide. That bodes ill for prospects of moving much of the population to
the post-industrial side.
One of the most disturbing indicators that I encounter comes from my
experiences in speaking publicly about the ideas discussed in this section.
People in modern businesses understand what I am talking about immediately.
Educators usually do not. They think I am just talking about active learning.
Educators are immersed in World 3, but they are like the proverbial fish
immersed in water. They cannot see it. They do not conceive of knowledge as
something that can be manufactured, modified, worked with and, in some
cases, even packaged and sold. Unfortunately, the rise of situated cognition
theory does not help in this regard. It has contributed greatly to our under-
standing of the kind of knowledge that is implicit in practice, but by treating all
knowledge as situated, it renders the world of knowledge objects invisible.
In a famous statement, Sir Isaac Newton likened himself to a child
finding pretty stones on the shore ‘whilst the great ocean of truth lay all
82 Understanding Learning

undiscovered before me’. Those pretty stones, however, were the founda-
tion of the modern world. We need schools in which students learn to work
with pretty stones. As for the great ocean of truth, all we can say with
confidence is that, if it ever is discovered, it will not be by fishes.

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Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
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 7
Children Yesterday, Today and
Tomorrow

Mary Jane Drummond

In this chapter I will explore the proposition that the most important
considerations in the debate about how primary education should be re-
formed for the twenty-first century are not questions of power politics, nor
of whose definitions of curriculum should prevail. The core of the debate
must focus on the children who will be living and learning in this century;
we need to consider the characteristics of these children, before we can
shape a curriculum that is fit for them. As a starting point, here are the first
few lines from a book I sometimes use on in-service courses, in my work
with teachers and other educators.
Once upon a time there was a little girl.
She had a Father, and a Mother, and a Grandpa, and a Grandma, and an Uncle,
and an Aunty; and they all lived together in a nice white cottage with a thatched
roof.

This little girl had short hair, and short legs, and short frocks (pink-and-white
striped cotton in summer, and red serge in winter). But her name wasn’t short at
all. It was Millicent Margaret Amanda. But Father and Mother and Grandpa and
Grandma and Uncle and Aunty couldn’t very well call out ‘Millicent Margaret!’
every time they wanted her, so they shortened it to ‘Milly-Molly-Mandy,’ which
is quite easy to say.
Now everybody in the nice white cottage with the thatched roof had some
particular job to do — even Milly-Molly-Mandy ...
And what did she do? Well, Milly-Molly-Mandy’s legs were short, as I’ve told
you, but they were very lively, just right for running errands. So Milly-Molly-
Mandy was quite busy, fetching and carrying things, and taking messages. (from
Milly Molly Mandy Stories, Joyce Lankester Brisley)

First published in 1928, the Milly-Molly-Mandy stories were reprinted in

paperback right through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. They are still in print,
still being asked for in bookshops, still being read by children today.
When I ask early years educators on in-service courses to read a chapter
or two of Milly-Molly-Mandy’s adventures, many of them admit to having
loved her dearly during their own childhoods. Those educators who meet
Milly-Molly-Mandy for the first time are divided: some cannot get excited
by this relic of a bygone age, but others are disgusted by her vacant expres-
sion and little beady eyes. With encouragement, the educators list her other

84
 Children Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 85

characteristics: her obedience, her immature speech, her dependence (it

takes six mature adults to protect and provide for her) her politeness, her
sweet tooth, her thrift, her innocence of pain and grief (and mud). We go
on to note how quiet, clean, safe and snug is her thatched cottage, how
enclosed and self-contained her well-kept village, how the adults in her life
rarely talk to one another and never, ever, say anything the slightest bit
disagreeable.
What’s the point of this discussion? To trigger an investigation into the
taken-for-granted concepts childhood and children; to stimulate questions
about the nature of children, especially ‘child-like children’. This is a con-
cept that the Japanese have a word for (see Tobin, Wu and Davidson,
1989). I have found it useful in the process of examining my own values and
beliefs about children and childhood. What about this child, for example?
We lit fires. We were always lighting fires.
I preferred magnifying glasses to matches. We spent afternoons burning little
piles of cut grass. I loved watching the grass change colour. I loved it when the
flame began to race through the grass. You had more control with a magnifying
glass. It was easier but it took more skill... We’d have a race; burn, blow it out,
burn, blow it out. Last to burn the paper completely in half had to let the other
fella burn his hand. We’d draw a man on the paper and burn holes in him; in his
hands and his feet, like Jesus. We drew long hair on him. We left his mickey till
last.
We cut roads through the nettles. My ma wanted to know what I was doing going
out wearing my duffle coat and mittens on a lovely nice day.
— We’re doing the nettles, I told her.
The nettles were huge; giant ones. The hives from their stings were colossal, and
they itched for ages after they’d stopped stinging. They took up a big corner of
the field behind the shops. Nothing else grew there, just the nettles. After we
hacked them over with a sideways swing of our sticks and hurleys we had to mash
them down.
(Doyle, 1993)

I use this extract like the first, to raise questions that may not get asked
very often among those who live and work with children, questions that are
however, still worth thinking about. Is Paddy Clarke a child-like child? If
Milly-Molly-Mandy misses out on noise and danger and rough words,
what’s absent in Paddy Clarke’s life? Is he more or less of a child than she
is? If an intelligent Martian, with a working command of English but no
conception of children or of childhood, were to be confronted with these
two extracts, what sense could he, she or it make of them?
Where these questions lead is towards other, and more serious ones:
whose definitions of children and childhood do we, parents and educators,
subscribe to, probably without even knowing it? Whose images of the
child-like child do we carry, deep in our mind’s eye, as we care for and
educate children? Do we know enough about the effect these images,
definitions, expectations might have on the children in our families and our
primary schools? It is not difficult to accept the proposition that the way we
86 Understanding Learning

(you, I, society at large) see children in general affects the ways in which we
treat them as a whole; it is harder to disentangle cause and effect in particu-
lar adult interactions with children, in individual adult-child relationships.
And yet I believe this is an area well worth exploring, since our practices in
educating children must be inextricably tangled up with our aspirations
about what kind of people we think they are, and what kind of people we
want them to become.
As such an exploration gets under way, as it now is, in numerous re-
search studies and seminars, in books and journals — (e.g. Pilcher and
Wragg, 1996; Walkerdine, 1997), it is necessary to be aware that it can only
proceed on the basis of our rejection of a different way of understanding
children, a mindset that James and Prout (1990) diagnose as the ‘old para-
digm’ of childhood. In this version, children are seen in stark contrast to the
adults whom they will one day become. James and Prout list the charac-
teristics of adults and children, in this ‘old paradigm’, as if they were two
different instances of the same human species.
Children Adults
immature mature
irrational rational
incompetent competent
asocial social
acultural cultural
(adapted from James and Prout, 1990, p. 13)
The passage from one state of being to another is achieved, according to
socialization theory, by the natural process of development (from the sim-
ple to the complex, from the irrational to the rational) and by the equally
natural process of parenting. The adults direct, the children respond; the
adults trigger learning and co-operation by operating reward and punish-
ment systems; the social order is perpetuated, as the irrational, passive
infant becomes the competent, active adult. In this model, the universal
child, natural and culturally naked, as it were, is transformed into the adult
at home and at ease in a particular, ordered, taken-for-granted, social
world.
James and Prout reject this way of seeing, forcefully arguing that al-
though the physical, biological facts of infancy and childhood are fixed,
their cultural manifestations can and do vary dramatically. The facts get
taken over by the ways in which society (which includes parents and
teachers) apprehend, interpret and give shape to the facts. In the ‘new
paradigm’, James and Prout claim, it is recognized, first, that childhood is
always socially constructed and, second, that children are also social con-
structivists, that they make meanings for themselves, as they contribute to
the shaping of the world of childhood they inhabit.
Tobin, Wu and Davidson (1989) provide vivid, chapter-long illustrations
of the social construction of childhood in three very different worlds, in
China, Japan and the USA. English early years educators with whom I
 Children Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 87

have used this challenging book are often especially excited by the descrip-
tion of Hiroki, a 4-year-old boy in a Buddhist preschool in Kyoto:
On the day we videotaped at Komatsudani, Hiroki started things off with a
flourish by pulling his penis out from under the leg of his shorts and waving it at
the class during the morning welcome song. During the workbook session that
followed, Hiroki called out answers to every question the teacher asked and to
many she did not ask. When not volunteering answers, Hiroki gave a loud run-
ning commentary on his workbook progress (‘now I’m coloring the badger, now
the pig. . .’) as he worked rapidly and deftly on his assignment. He alternated his
play-by-play announcing with occasional songs, entertaining the class with loud,
accurate renditions of their favourite cartoon themes, complete with accompany-
ing dancing, gestures, and occasional instrumental flourishes. Despite the de-
mands of his singing and announcing schedule, Hiroki managed to complete his
workbook pages before most of the older children (of course, those sitting near
him might have finished their work faster had they a less distracting tablemate)

Lunch over and the room cleaned up, Fukui-sensei (the teacher) returned to the
balcony where, faced with the sight of Hiroki and another boy involved in a fight
(which consisted mostly of the other boy’s being pushed down and climbed on by
Hiroki), she said neutrally, ‘Are you still fighting?’ Then she added, a minute
later, in the same neutral tone, ‘Why are you fighting anyway?’ and told everyone
still on the balcony, ‘Hurry up and clean up (the flash cards). Lunchtime is over.
Hurry, hurry.’ Hiroki was by now disrupting the card clean-up by rolling on the
cards and putting them in his mouth, but when he tried to enter the classroom
Fukui-sensei put her hand firmly on his back and ushered him outside again.
Fukui-sensei, who by now was doing the greatest share of the card picking-up,
several times blocked Hiroki from leaving the scene of his crime, and she play-
fully spanked him on the behind when he continued to roll on the cards.

There is plenty more to read about Hiroki’s exciting day, and typically the
discussion becomes quite heated, especially when we turn to comments
made by other participants in Tobin’s study — the educators representing
the ‘three cultures’ being investigated.

Comments Arising from the Observation of Hiroki

e@ Staff team at Hiroki’s school:

‘We think Fukui-sensei (Hiroki’s teacher) dealt with Hiroki in a satisfac-
tory way. We think it is right to ignore the most provocative, aggressive
and exhibitionist actions. This is a strategy we have agreed on.’
@ Higashino: Assistant Principal of Hiroki’s school:
‘We should not punish Hiroki. He has pride and he will be hurt if we yell
at him or make him sit alone. We must avoid confronting or censuring
Hirokv’.
e@ American early years specialist:
‘Hiroki is bored, he finishes his work quickly, his behaviour is an attempt
to make things more exciting, better matched to the pace and level of
stimulation he needs. He is gifted, talented, intelligent.’
88 Understanding Learning

@ Fukui-sensei — Hiroki’s teacher:

‘Hiroki is not especially intelligent; if he is so clever, why doesn’t he
understand better? If he understood better, he would behave better.’
@ Yoshizawa: Principal of Hiroki’s school:
‘Misbehaving, including fighting, is a lost art for today’s sheltered
nuclear-family raised children.’
@ Fukui-sensei — Hiroki’s teacher:
‘T let the boys fight because it is natural for boys of that age to fight, and
it is good for them to have the experience while they are young of what it
feels like to fight.’

When the heat of the discusssion has died down, it is time to think about
what Hiroki can teach us about our own observations and perceptions of
children. What internal categories, invisible to ourselves but glaringly ob-
vious, we must assume, to Hiroki’s educators, govern our understanding
and our practices? And are these categories compatible with our most
cherished aspirations for our children?
As the discussion continues, the participants begin to disentangle the
strands that make up our version of Tobin’s account of Hiroki’s story. It
becomes easier to see which bits of children, and of a particular child, are
necessarily part of being a child; these can then be set apart from those
parts that are the outcomes of firm expectations, however unself-
consciously enforced, those parts that are a projection of our most optimis-
tic aspirations, and those parts that children construct for themselves. For if
Hiroki teaches us nothing else, he certainly reminds us that children have
voices and important things to say, just as much as their educators.
We need not, of course, travel to Japan to find differences in the ways we
construct children and childhood. Here in England, in January 1996, the
School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) published a slim
document called Desirable Outcomes for Children’s Learning on Entering
Compulsory Education. Reactions from the early years professional com-
munity were, on the whole, hostile. But in one quarter, the early years
educators were more than hostile: they were implacably opposed, on
principle, to the desirability of some of the ‘desirable outcomes’ set out in
the document. These educators were speaking on behalf of the Steiner-
Waldorf kindergarten movement, an international group who draw their
inspiration from the philosophical writings of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925),
and whose kindergartens number more than 1000 worldwide. Their work is
dedicated to a particular view of childhood, and the ways in which children
under 7 (or, in their own terms, before the second dentition) grow, develop
and learn. Their account of the essential features of early childhood parts
company with SCAA’s desirable outcomes approach in several important
particulars. The chief of these is the way in which the SCAA document sets
out key expectations for early achievement in literacy.
Children enjoy books and handle them carefully, understanding how they are
organized. They know that words and pictures carry meaning, and that, in
 Children Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 89

English, print is read from left to right and from top to bottom. They begin to
associate sounds with patterns in rhymes, with syllables, and with words and
letters. They recognize their own names and some familiar words. They recog-
nize letters of the alphabet by shape and sound. In their writing, they use pic-
tures, symbols, familiar words and letters, to communicate meaning, showing
awareness of some of the different purposes of writing. They write their names
with appropriate use of upper and lower case letters.
(Ibid.)
These capacities - outcomes or achievements — whatever we might choose
to call them, have no place in the Steiner kindergarten. There the educators
use no picturebooks or printed material of any kind. They do not require
their children to learn either the names or the sounds of the letters of the
alphabet.
The rationale for their approach is to be found in Steiner’s teaching
about certain key stages in the development of children. Drawing on a
threefold model of adult humanity, comprising the powers of the head, the
heart and the will (thinking, feeling and doing), Steiner educators maintain
that young children are essentially in ‘doing’ mode, exercising their whole
bodies, under the control of their will, in sustained, creative, imaginative
exploration of their world. In the Steiner kindergarten, there is no place for
the abstraction of the printed page or the letters of the alphabet. But their
3- to 7-year-olds are not deprived of stories, folk tales, myths, poetry and
song. Their lives are daily enriched by the most entrancing stories and
songs, as I know from my own observations in the Rosebridge Kinder-
garten in Cambridge.
The programme for these young children is built on very different foun-
. dations from the ‘areas of experience’ familiar to mainstream nursery edu-
cators. The Steiner programme is based on rhythm, routine, reverence,
ritual, creativity, stories and song. At the centre of this programme are the
children, who, like children anywhere, are by turns boisterous, dreamy,
fretful, absorbed, noisy, joyful, wondering, inventive and energetic. During
the morning session they move from a period of spontaneous imaginative
play to gather round the big table for painting, baking or craft activities.
There is a time for ring-games and songs, and for outdoor play in a wonder-
ful garden. There are times to come together to eat the bread they have
baked, to celebrate festivals, to listen to their teacher tell them stories.
These stories are selected not just for their rich language and literacy
worth, but for their moral meanings; they are stories that will act as a
grounding for the children’s moral life. All knowledge, claims one Steiner
educator, starts with a state of wonder; the kindergarten seeks to support
and foster this sense of wonder. The adults in the kindergarten are the
guides who protect the children absorbed in exploring their world, and who
feed their energies with nourishing activities.
Several times now, I have invited Steiner educators to contribute to my
in-service courses for early years practitioners. They are listened to in a
profound silence, which is half born of incredulity (that a system so dif-
ferent could exist on one’s very doorstep), and half born of respect for the
90 Understanding Learning

reverence and intensity with which these people speak of their work with
children. Once, however, I remember, a nursery teacher from a huge inner-
city primary school, serving an economically disadvantaged estate, with all
its associated problems, was moved to object to what she was hearing. The
essence of her strenuous objection was that the Steiner kindergarten and its
trappings — muslin, candles, wooden blocks, flowers, shells, logs, brown
bread and freshly made jam — could not be said to constitute a preparation
for the real world, where the children she knew best were living and learn-
ing. The Steiner educator paused for a moment and gently replied: ‘Sur-
rounded by the beautiful, being shown what is good . . . I don’t think that
makes you unprepared for the world.’ Needless to say, the discussion did
not end there.
But the point the speaker was making has a wider relevance than a
discussion about the advantages — or disadvantages — of the Steiner ap-
proach. At the heart of her proposition is the simple principle that the
prime responsibility of educators, of whatever philosophical or political
conviction, is to give their children the intellectual and emotional nourish-
ment that will match their growing and developing powers. Difficulties and
differences only arise when educators disagree about what these powers
are, and which are the most important. Where Steiner educators prioritize
the good and the beautiful, the authors of SCAA’s Desirable Outcomes
prioritize (among other things) capital letters, word recognition and num-
bers up to ten. At stake here are different constructions of childhood,
different conceptualizations of what it is that young children should do and
feel, know and understand, represent and express.
Where do we go from here? Recognizing differences, and accepting the
inevitability of such differences is only a first step. But it is an important
step, because it reminds us that we — parents, teachers, society at large — do
have real choices to make. In early years provisions in nurseries, infant,
first and primary schools, it is possible for people, parents and educators, to
come together to do some thinking work around these issues, returning
perhaps, as a starting point, to the Japanese concept of the child-like child.
What do we understand by ‘child-like children’, of 3, of 5, of 7 or 11?
Any attempt to come to terms with these difficult questions will be
immeasurably enriched by close attention to the work of the early years
educators in the region of Emilia Romagna in Italy. Here the services to
young children, from birth to 3, and from 3 to 6, are justly world famous.
Their work has been celebrated in a staggeringly impressive travelling
exhibition The Hundred Languages of Children, which was seen in England
for the first time in the summer of 1997, in two venues, under the auspices
of the British Association for Early Childhood Education. The title of the
exhibit refers to the principle at the heart of the Reggio-Emilia approach,
(as it has come to be known) - the principle that children have at their
disposal 100 languages, of which the school steals 99. In Italy children start
elementary school at the age of 6; in the full day childcare available from
birth to 6 in the preschools, nurseries and toddler centres of Reggio-Emilia,
 Children Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 91

the educators are committed to restoring the full ‘one hundred languages
of children’.
Their approach
fosters children’s intellectual development through a systematic focus on sym-
bolic representation. Young children are encouraged to explore their environ-
ment and express themselves through all of their natural ‘languages’ or modes of
expression, including words, movement, drawing, painting, building, sculpture,
shadow play, collage, dramatic play and music.
(Edwards, Gandini and Forman, 1994)

These are not empty words, or wishful thinking; this description of the
educators’ aspirations is followed through into practice.
In every provision for young children there is a richly equipped
workshop-cum-studio — the atelier — staffed by a professionally trained
artist/educator, the atelierista. In the atelier, children’s powers to represent
their experiences, their questions, their problems, and their dreams, are
given the richest opportunities for growth. Using the multitude of materials
available, children are daily engaged in complex representations of their
pressing emotional and cognitive concerns. Child-like children, in Reggio-
Emilia, are honoured for characteristics that make ‘the appropriate use of
upper and lower case letters’ look like very small beer. Carla Rinaldi, a
pedagogical co-ordinator who works to support curriculum development
and in-service work in a group of preschools, sums up their principled
position:
The cornerstone of our experience, based on practice, theory and research, is the
image of children as rich, strong and powerful . . . They have the desire to grow,
curiosity, the ability to be amazed and the desire to relate to other people...
(They) are open to exchanges and reciprocity as deeds and acts of love, which
they not only want to receive but also want to offer.

In describing the Reggio-Emilia approach so enthusiastically I am not

trying to suggest that it could simply be transplanted, root, branches and
flowers, into primary education in this country. But I do believe that British
teachers and other educators would do well to assimilate the understanding
that Rinaldi refers to as their ‘cornerstone’, their confident belief in chil-
dren’s powers.
In the years since 1988, and the passing of the Education Reform Act,
untold time and energy (and forests of paper) have been expended in the
project of devising and revising curriculum structures (programmes of
study, attainment targets, end of keystage descriptions, desirable out-
comes), through which a whole generation of primary and preschool chil-
dren have passed. These structures have been elaborated in terms of
knowledge, concepts and skills; their reference points are to the external
world, as we apprehend it through the subject studies of the National
Curriculum, themselves derived from the academic disciplines of the gram-
mar schools of earlier centuries. The curriculum review now under way,
which will take us into the twenty-first century, is an opportunity to start
again with a different set of conceptions in mind, the conceptions that are
2 Understanding Learning

the theme of this chapter. If we decided to design a primary curriculum for

the future by starting with children, we would be well on the way to con-
structing a curriculum fit for children. This would be a more truly educa-
tional enterprise than perseverating in our attempts to fit children into a
curriculum imposed from without.
Starting with children would entail, as the Italian educators do, recog-
nizing their powers. It would mean abandoning our tendency to focus on
children’s weaknesses and incapacities, as evidenced in hundreds of items
in baseline assessment schedules that record what children cannot do, or do
not seem to know. It would mean recognizing that all children learn, that
learning is what they do best and that they have been doing it from birth. It
would mean that child-like children, right through the primary school,
would have their powers acknowledged, exercised and strengthened. Their
power to speak at least two languages, for example, grossly neglected in
many present-day schools, could be recognized. Their powers to imagine,
‘to see into the life of things’, in Mary Warnock’s expressive phase (Warn-
ock, 1978), could be more effectively nourished if we accepted that the
absolutely logical consistency required of the flight controller or income tax
inspector is not a characteristic of children’s thinking. As the celebrated
American kindergarten teacher, Vivian Gussin Paley (1981), puts it:
(The 5 or 6-year-old child) is at a singular period. He is not a captive of his
illusions and fantasies, but can choose them for support or stimulation without
self-consciousness. He has become aware of the thinking required by the adult
world, but is not committed to its burden of rigid consistency.
(pp. 29-30)

Magical and imaginative thinking, in Paley’s version of the child-like child,

is not a weakness, but young children’s way of deploying their power to see
things as they might be, not simply as they are. And this power brings
insight and understanding.
The child is the ultimate magician. He credits God and lesser powers, but it is the
child who confirms the probability of events. If he can imagine something, it
exists . . As soon as he learns a language well enough, and before he is told he
cannot invent the world, he will explain everything.
(Ibid., p. 81)

Warnock (1978) pushes home the point in terms of what educators must do
if these powers are to survive in school:
I have come very strongly to believe that is is the cultivation of imagination which
should be the chief aim of education, and in which our present systems of educa-
tion most conspicuously fail, where they do fail . . . in education we have a duty
to educate the imagination above all else.

When Diderot and his associates, a group of radical French philosophers,

drew up the syllabus for the great Encyclopaedia, published in 35 volumes
between 1751 and 1776, they used the simplest of frameworks. All of
humanity’s great achievements, all of society’s accumulated knowledge and
wisdom, all was subsumed under just three heads: Memory, Reason and
 Children Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 93

Imagination (see Furbank, 1992). Such bold simplicity, with its emphasis on
the powers of the human intellect, encourages me to argue that acknowl-
edging what we know about young children’s intellectual and emotional
powers is a promising starting point for their education. The Italian educa-
tors in Reggio-Emilia choose to start here, and they have convincingly
documented the exceptional quality of children’s lives in their nurseries
and preschools.
But not every society chooses to start from the same premise. In the
USA, the Quality 2000 Project has announced that the first national educa-
tional goal for the twenty-first century is to be: ‘All children will start
school ready to learn.’ This is an absurd inversion of the priority for the
future as I see it; the first step must be to ensure that all schools are ready
for children who have been learning since birth, who are already, when
they cross the threshold of formal education, dedicated learners, adven-
turous explorers, committed scientists, expressive artists and compassio-
nate friends. It is up to schools to make sure they stay that way, while they
lead them on to greater things.
Not all educationalists are convinced that schools are capable of meeting
this responsibility. Mary Willes’s challenging study of what happens to
young children when they become pupils stands as an awful warning of
what does happen in some schools, where she carried out her observations,
and what could happen in many more, if teachers and other educators
ignore or neglect the essential characteristics of the children in their
classrooms.
The minimal inescapable requirement that a child must meet if he is to function
as a participating pupil is not very extensive. It is necessary to accept adult
direction, to know that you say nothing at all unless the teacher indicates that you
may, to know that when your turn is indicated you must use whatever clues you
can find, and make the best guess you can.
(Willes, 1983, p. 83)

The pupils evoked in this chilling passage have had their powers stripped
from them. Even more pessimistic is Willes’s scathing summary of what it is
to be a pupil: ‘Finding out what the teacher wants, and doing it constitutes
the primary duty of a pupil’ (ibid., p. 138).
Even allowing for exaggeration, which can be attributed to the author’s
passionate desire for a better deal for children, there is an uncomfortable
grain of truth in Willes’s observation. Everyone who has ever worked with
young children in large numbers knows that, for at least part of the time,
harmony in the classroom depends on compliance. Many aspects of life in
the primary school routine are predicated on obedience. What would hap-
pen, I sometimes wonder, if one day, when the teachers of England rang
the bell for the end of morning playtime, the children simply refused to
respond?
This fantasy of country-wide school refusal has been strengthened by
reading Iona Opie’s painstaking observations of The People in the Play-
ground (Opie, 1993). Opie made weekly visits to observe in a junior school
94 Understanding Learning

playground from January 1970 until November 1983. Her prime purpose
was a continuation of her and her husband’s earlier researches into school-
child lore, games, songs, riddles and jokes; she found in the playground an
astonishingly rich vein to mine. The main interest for the primary educator
is in what Opie saw that the teachers on playground duty rarely see (be-
cause they are busy looking for trouble): the energy and enthusiasm that
the children (or people as they always refer to themselves) invest in their
imaginative and physical play. One image sticks in my mind: two girls
plunging down the steps into the playground; one calls to the other ‘going
on with witches and fairies, right?’ The fractions and the apostrophes on
the blackboard are left far away as the children fly back to their shared
imaginative worlds. In schools of the future, my fantasy continues, this
energy, and this power to live through the imagination, will be characteris-
tic of classrooms as well as of playgrounds.
It is interesting to note that for Kieran Egan (1988), this possibility is no
fantasy, but an educational necessity. Egan’s work starts by considering the
tradjtional opposition between the powers of logical reason and those of
fantasy. Education as we know it, so far, has been constructed around the
primacy of rationality; fantasy, ‘which ignores the boundaries of reality, is seen
as the enemy’ (p. 11). He goes on to call for a redistribution of emphasis;
drawing attention to young children’s mental lives, of which a prominent part
is fantasy, he argues that the education of young children must take account of
this way of thinking, which is, he claims, energetic, wholesome and important
for intellectual growth. In Primary Understanding he sets about the project of
devising a whole primary curriculum, and a range of teaching methods, that
would enable teachers to get in tune with children’s robust imaginative
powers.
Kieran Egan’s version of the child-like child is a person who may, on the
one hand, ‘be unable to conserve liquid quantity, (but who) may, on the other,
lead a vivid intellectual life, brimming with knights, dragons, witches and star
warriors’ (ibid., p. 23). The children of today — and tomorrow — argues Egan,
deserve a curriculum ‘made up of important content, rich in meaning . . . our
curriculum concern will be to get at what is of human importance to our social
and cultural lives’ (ibid., p. 199). And so, once again, we see there are choices
to be made; the choices we make in constructing our own versions of child-like
children will in turn affect the decisions we make in selecting important educa-
tional content, which makes human sense to them.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have argued that the children of tomorrow, who will live
and learn in the primary schools of the twenty-first century, deserve an
education that fosters and strengthens their powers to do, to feel and to
think: an education for the domains of the will, the heart and the head, as
 Children Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 95

the Steiner educators would put it. To be able to provide such an educa-
tion, parents and educators, the whole community of those concerned for
children’s lives, will need to recognize that there is work to be done, to-
gether, in thinking through what these words entail. The quality of this
thinking is crucial. The task is a challenging one: to debate what sorts of
children we want to become the citizens of the future, to consider what sort
of lives we want them to lead, in childhood and in adulthood, to investigate
the conception of the ‘good life’ for children, and for the society in which
they learn. The rigour and creativity of the thinking we engage in, the
openness with which we explore difference and dissent, the energy with
which we collaborate in the task — all these will affect the quality of the
primary education of the future.

Acknowledgement

I am deeply grateful to Janni Nicol and Stephanie Grégelein for allowing

me to observe from a corner of their kindergarten, and for giving so much
time to help me understand what I saw.

References

Doyle, R. (1993) Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, London: Secker and Warburg.

Edwards, C., Gandini, L. and Forman, G. (1994) The Hundred Languages of Chil-
dren, NJ, Norwood: Ablex.
Egan, K. (1988) Primary Understanding, London: Routledge.
Furbank, P. N. (1992) Diderot: A Critical Biography, London: Minerva.
James, A. and Prout, A. (eds) (1990) Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood:
Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, London: Falmer
Press.
Opie, I. (1993) The People in the Playground, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Paley, V. G. (1981) Wally’s Stories, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pilcher, J. and Wragg, S. (eds) (1996) Thatcher’s Children? Politics, Childhood and
Society in the 1980s and 1990s, London: Falmer Press.
Tobin, J. J., Wu, D. and Davidson, D. (1989) Pre-school in Three Cultures,
Princeton, NJ: Yale University Press.
Walkerdine, V. (1997) Daddy’s Girl Young Girls and Popular Culture, London:
Macmillan.
Warnock, M. (1978) Imagination, London: Faber.
Willes, M. (1983) Children into Pupils, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
 Section 3: Outcomes of Assessment

As identified in the introduction to this book, considerations of the tradi-

tions of assessment bring to the foreground the debate about the purpose
of education, the dilemmas inherent in the ideas of democratic education
and the tension between inclusivity and elitism. A constructivist view of
learning assumes that everyone has the potential to learn and that there
exists also the possibility of incremental improvement. However, it also
accepts that learning will be different when social, cultural and contextual
variations occur. In an individualistic and elitist system not everyone can
have prizes, but in a democratic one everyone is of equal worth. Given the
intensity of the debate surrounding the purposes, practices and procedural
aspects of assessment it is no longer possible to believe that making judge-
ments about children’s ability is a straightforward thing. Deciding that one
construction of learning is more appropriate at a certain point or in a
certain place is not about controlling the learning process or imposing one
specific view. The teacher’s role is to achieve a sense of balance by identify-
ing, analysing and challenging misunderstandings in order that learners can
refine their knowledge constructions. The difficulty in classrooms is that
pupils quickly learn what the teacher has in mind as a preferred outcome
by the way in which praise or marks are allocated. Respecting autonomy
and making assessments are not easily accommodated.
Taken together the chapters in this section:

® consider the importance of achievement within the learning process

explore how attainment might be measured
® examine where current ideas about assessment and testing have their
roots
@ show that psychological, political and cultural beliefs and values have
important and significant effects on children’s construction of themselves
as learners
® consider some possible outcomes of assessment in terms of ability
grouping.

In Chapter 8, Patricia Broadfoot outlines the development of a number

of key issues and identifies links between them and models of learning. She
argues that assessment should be located in learning and not in measure-
ment. The challenge here is to the nineteenth-century ideology of objec-
tive, scientific classification achieved through reliable and valid techniques.
Although this is a long-standing criticism, there are many echoes today of
these assumptions to be found in the comments of advocates of tests, value-
added measures and unjust and unjustifiable league tables. Much of the

96
 Introduction to Section 3: Outcomes of Assessment Si)

debate in this area arises from our unexamined beliefs. Understanding

where we stand in relation to the traditions of assessment and the different
views and practices linked to its various purposes can only be helpful to
those involved in making fair and representative judgements about stand-
ards of achievement.
In Chapter 9, Patricia Murphy develops the themes of the book by
examining the relationship between assessment outcomes and sources of
gendered learning within and outside school. She identifies the way in
which assessment practice is implicated in the creation of gender gaps
in children’s performance. In her exploration of recent developments in
thinking about learners and learning she distinguishes between ‘processing’
and ‘constructing’ views of learning. She also explores the way in which a
cultural view of learning and assessment has to take into account the dif-
ferent cultural beliefs and experiences of boys and girls. Of particular
importance here are the ways in which gendered roles create different
learning opportunities. Gender differences in achievement are discussed in
relation to a number of curriculum areas, specifically, mathematics, English
and science. The chapter concludes by considering the implications for
curriculum and assessment.
In Chapter 10, Judith Ireson and Susan Hallam remind us that the de-
bate about the selection and grouping of pupils has been rekindled in
response to the perceived need to raise academic standards. As a contribu-
tion to the debate their chapter reviews the literature on ability grouping
and its effects on academic and non-academic outcomes for pupils, includ-
ing self-esteem, attitudes towards school and alienation. In addition, they
consider aspects of the school environment that may mediate the influence
of organizational grouping on pupil outcomes. Drawing on their reading of
this research evidence, Ireson and Hallam argue that a return to a system
of selection and structured grouping is unlikely to raise standards. They
conclude by suggesting some alternatives to ability groupings.
In Chapter 11, Cathy Nutbrown considers how educators might demon-
strate their respect for learners through careful observation and assess-
ments. Drawing on case study observations of young children in a variety
of settings within and outside school Nutbrown discusses practical aspects
of observation and shows just how important the careful collection and
analysis of evidence can be. She then focuses on assessment, what that
might mean and, in particular, issues leading to the notion of respectful
assessment. She concludes the chapter with some ideas that educators may
wish to consider if they wish to respect children’s achievements.
 8
Liberating the Learner through
Assessment

Patricia Broadfoot

Since the earliest days of mass educational provision, terminal

assessment procedures have largely governed the content of the
curriculum, the way in which schools are organized, the approach to
teaching and the learning priorities of students. Assessment has become
both the vehicle and the engine that drive the delivery of education as
we currently know it in schools and colleges. Because of this, it is
arguably assessment that has been, for most students, the single most
significant influence on the quality and shape of their educational
experience, on their motivation and hence on their learning. The central
role played by assessment in shaping the way in which education is
delivered has come into increasingly sharp focus in recent years as
governments have shown a growing awareness of the capacity of
assessment policies to effect desired changes in the education system.
Thus unless there is some fundamental breakdown in the long-standing
link between education and employment, or governments are
persuaded that accountability does not need formally to be provided
for, the results of educational assessment are likely to continue to
constitute the language by which the achievements of individuals,
institutions and even whole education systems are judged.
But what model of learning do these powerful assessment traditions
assume? How far are the assumptions that underpin their use
appropriate for today’s ‘learning society’? Do traditional forms of
assessment ‘liberate the learner’, or do they rather inhibit the pursuit of
more and better learning? These are the questions which this chapter
will address. In seeking an answer to them the chapter will first of all
consider briefly the reasons why we have inherited the particular
assessment traditions which are currently so pervasive. Second it will
argue for an approach to assessment which is rooted in what we know
about learning - especially the kind of learning needed for today’s
society — rather than what we know about measurement. Third it will
consider the extraordinary resilience of the measurement paradigm. In
offering this analysis, the chapter concludes with some suggestions for
possible ways forward in assessment that do offer the potential for
liberating, rather than locking up, the learner.

98
 Liberating the Learner through Assessment 99

The Social and Historical Context

The assumptions on which most educational activity is based are rooted in

notions of ‘measurement’ that date back to the changes that started to take
place in Europe during the seventeenth century: to the growing beliefs in
the power of science and of rational forms of organization which are the
cornerstones of the ‘Enlightenment’ (Broadfoot, 1996). New types of test
were invented to provide a ‘scientific’ - and hence apparently rational —
basis of determining individual levels of competence, which could thus
provide a fair basis for selection. The long-standing emphasis on the de-
monstration of practical competence in a trade or craft, which had been
until this time virtually the only formal assessment practised, gave way to
tests and examinations which were designed as much for selection as they
were for attesting competence, and so had to provide for the ranking of
candidates against each other rather than against some set and explicit
standard. To this end the content of the test, its conduct and its subsequent
grading all had to be standardized, if the tests were to be a truly equitable,
and hence rational, basis for selection. Thus entered the formal syllabus
with its emphasis on content to be covered; the written test that lent iteslf
to controlled conditions of administration; and the language of marks and
grades that provided some common basis for interpreting the results so
produced.
Associated with this change, as Claxton (1996) points out, was a transfor-
mation in theories of learning. Claxton contrasts the ‘psychomythology’ of
the pre-Enlightenment, pre-Cartesian era, in which learning was seen as
involving many different types of activity and outcome, to the current
situation in which learning is closely associated with the deliberate applica-
tion of the concept of ‘intelligence’ and in which assessment, consequently,
is based on ‘the ability to describe and explain what one knows, rather than
to reveal it spontaneously under appropriate real-life conditions’. Thus
new types of test were invented that reflected the new emphasis on candi-
dates’ relative achievement, rather than the previous emphasis on
standards.
Particularly significant in this respect was the advent of intelligence test-
ing. This represented a move away from the assessment of some kind of
achievement towards the assessment of innate ability. The assumption that
individual potential could be measured in an objective, scientific way un-
derpinned the growth of a pervasive and powerful belief that, among other
things, educational assessment could somehow be detached from its con-
text of operation and like, a ruler, be used in an absolute way to produce
measurements of both achievement and potential. At the time, there was
little substantial critique of this notion either in terms of principle or in
terms of the techniques which were developed to operationalize it. Perhaps
more surprising still is the fact that, although many such critiques have
subsequently emerged concerning both the accuracy of the measures used
100 Understanding Learning

and their impact on the processes of teaching and learning, they have yet
seriously to dent the assumptions which underpin the measurement para-
digm in general and notions of intelligence in particular.
Yet the model of learning that informs this chapter — integrated learning
theory — makes such a view of assessment untenable. This theory argues
that learning takes many forms, some of which are more measurable than
others. It Maintains that whether, and to what extent, learning occurs is a
function of individuals’ strategic judgement, their cost-benefit analysis con-
cerning the risk-reward ratio of their investing effort aimed at achieving a
given goal. Social constructivism, of which integrated learning theory is a
variant, suggests that learning is a messy business which is influenced in
idiosyncratic ways for any given individual by the complex mixture of
understanding, beliefs and attitudes which is the product of past learning
experience. Such a view is simply not compatible with any of the unidimen-
oni or even fixed notions of ability which have for so long informed
educational thinking and practice. —
Nor are such conceptions of assessment compatible with the knowledge
and skills that will be needed by tomorrow’s citizens. Just as a shift in
employment patterns provoked the emphasis on measurement for the pur-
poses of selection with which we have become familiar over the last hun-
dred years, so advances in technology and management practices are now
prompting employers to call for educational systems in developed coun-
tries which equip the workers of tomorrow with transferable skills, a high
level of adaptibility and, above all, the commitment to go on learning. Thus
Resnick (1994) is typical of many in emphasizing the need for a more
‘pragmatic epistemology’ which conceives learning as rooted in interactive
cognition.
Describing the influential ‘New Standards Project’ in the USA, Resnick
stresses the need to challenge several centuries of tradition in which the
conception of knowledge has been theoretical rather than interactionist,
and has therefore not, of itself, led to the capacity actually to perform. By
contrast, the New Standards Project, with its emphasis on projects and
portfolios, large-scale investigations and idiosyncratic learning goals, em-
phasizes a variety of ways of interpreting quality and defining achievement.
It recognizes that learning can involve many different ‘genres’ of both
activity and outcome. The power of new priorities, and hence practices, to
challenge the domination of the measurement paradigm and its associated
epistemology of learning is evidenced by the rapid growth of the movement
in the USA. Nineteen states are now involved in the initiative which in
consequence has begun to achieve the status of a quasi-governmental body
(Resnick, 1994). Similar testimony to such changing priorities is evident at
the present time in many other countries which are seeking to introduce
assessment practices that support the full range of learning goals.
Yet these initiatives, which include the move to introduce records of
achievement and student self-assessment in the UK during the 1980s, have
still seriously to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy in the minds of
 Liberating the Learner through Assessment 101

politicians and public. It is still a reliable vote-catcher for politicians to talk

of increasing the level of testing as part of a bid to raise standards (Aira-
sian, 1988). In England, the government’s retreat since 1993 from contin-
uous assessment in favour of traditional unseen exams, despite a chorus of
protest from many of the communities involved — teachers, employers and
even parents — provides a telling example.
Thus while it may be true to say that there is a growing acceptance of
more learning-centred theories of assessment among educational profes-
sionals around the world, such novel perspectives have done little, as yet, to
challenge the power of traditional forms of assessment, and the way in
which they in turn influence conceptions of learning and teaching. In coun-
tries where the selection imperative is still overwhelmingly important —
where, in effect, education has to be rationed — this is hardly surprising. In
such contexts, examinations and especially multiple-choice tests provide
the ‘least worst’ means of rationing educational opportunity: that is, both
cheap and accepted as broadly fair, in that they are based on demonstrated
merit and therefore seen as legitimate (Heynemann, 1993). But the assess-
ment problems facing developing countries are more akin to those which
originally gave rise in the West to the current assessment orthodoxy during
the nineteenth century than they are to the assessment problems which
post-industrial countries now face.
The measurement paradigm in assessment developed, as we have seen,
as a specific response to the pressing need for a trustworthy and widely
acceptable means of rationing educational opportunity according to some
idea of ‘merit’. Despite the inevitable technical limitations of any such
device, the advent of a measure of professionalism and technical expertise
to assist in the important business of deciding life chances was, on the
whole, a step forward. And it is no doubt for this reason that the examina-
tion and testing industry is one of the most lasting legacies of colonial
influence. Indeed it has now developed into one of the most successful
international industries, which, like Coca-Cola, touches the life of almost
everyone on the planet. Activity on this scale implies many entrenched
interests, as well as a good deal of inertia and the sheer impossibility of
even conceiving of forms of educational provision which have not been
shaped by the discourse of measurement.
Nevertheless such new conceptions must be not only realized but imple-
mented if we are to ‘liberate the learner’ in the way that is now required.
Whilst it may have been reasonable to turn a blind eye to some of the well-
documented shortcomings of traditional forms of assessment when, on the
whole, they were doing their job well, it makes very little sense to allow
such practices to continue when the limitations lie not only in their techni-
cal characteristics but much more fundamentally in their capacity to inhibit
urgently needed change in education, and to obscure the real imperative
facing education for the twenty-first century, which is the creation of com-
mitted and effective learners. The following sections elaborate this
argument.
102 Understanding Learning

Testing Testing

It is argued in this chapter that learning, and hence, by implication, perfor-

mance, is the result of feelings, values and other learned attitudinal re-
sponses, as well as of cognitive processes. If this is so it should not be seen
as surprising that so much research exists demonstrating the inaccuracies of
conventional assessment techniques (see, for example, reviews by Satterly,
1994, and Ingenkamp, 1977). Apart from the possible sources of error in
the measurement itself — for example, the teacher may not have taught
what is tested in the examination; students may guess, if the format is a
multiple-choice one; the test may be incorrectly normed for a given popu-
lation of students; and so on (Lee Smith, 1991, provides a comprehensive
list of these flaws) — performance itself has been shown to be neither
constant nor a necessarily true reflection of learning.
At the most obvious level, the test may measure performance on a given
day which has no connection with long-term retention by the student.
Students may be bored or disaffected and not engage to the best of their
ability with the test or examination. They may find the questions confusing
or ambiguous. They may not be able to apply their knowledge because of
the limitations of handwriting or other mechanical abilities. Many achieve-
ment tests merely measure endurance or persistence rather than learning.
Some students who are divergent thinkers may read too much into the
question. Some students become frightened and ‘freeze up’ in the testing
situation, especially those who have little self-confidence or some kind of
emotional or family disturbance. Furthermore, research in the psychology
of assessment has consistently demonstrated that small changes in task-
presentation, in response mode, in the conditions under which assessment
takes place, in the relations between assessor and assessed, and within
students on different occasions — all can affect performance (Black, 1993;
Wolf and Silver, 1993).
Thus the measurement paradigm offers us what is, at best, only a rough
and ready tool for identifying achievement. It offers us even less as a basis
for predicting potential — which now is widely recognized as being neither
innate nor fixed (Vernon, 1957; Karier, 1972). The increasingly extensive
research literature on assessment in operation shows quite clearly that
assessment is an essentially social process. That is to say, it is to a greater or
lesser extent an interactive operation, in which a whole range of circum-
stances will affect the outcome: who the assessor is (even in an apparently
objective multiple-choice test) or where the assessment takes place (Gipps
and Murphy, 1994). Clearly this does not mean there is no place for mea-
surement techniques in the tool-cupboard of educational activity. Indeed
there are many situations in which it is important to try to generate an
accurate picture of individual or indeed group achievement — for diagnosis
of a learner’s strengths and weaknesses; to gauge the success of a particular
course in achieving its objectives; to provide information on the overall
 Liberating the Learner through Assessment 103

performance of an education system; and, not least, the certification of

achievement. Rather what it does mean is that it is time to challenge the
‘sacred cows’ of assessment, the concepts and preoccupations that have for
too long inhibited the educational community from engaging with the quite
different, but potentially much more important, assessment agenda which
concerns its role in promoting learning.
The work of the French philosopher Michel Foucault traces the power to
control the way reality is defined which is embodied in the evaluation of
particular discourses. One such discourse, he suggests, legitimates the ‘hier-
archical authority’ and ‘normalizing judgement’ which are the defining
characteristics of the traditional examination. Students can be located, ac-
cording to their demonstrated success, in an evaluative framework in which
the whole territory of the development of learning has already been
mapped out. External assessment represents the imposition of these stan-
dardized norms of progression according to the criteria of worth already
laid down by the hierarchical authority (Broadfoot, 1996). Whether or not
one is disposed to accept the finer points of Foucault’s structuralist anal-
ysis, it is difficult not to accept its central tenet, namely that the language
we use to articulate a particular subject has built into it particular concepts
and assumptions that tend to delimit the arena of debate, and hence to
preclude other ways of theorizing experience, for which an equivalent
language, and hence conceptual base, is lacking. Thus what we think assess-
ment is, what it can do and how it might be improved, have all been
questions that, until recently, could only be raised in terms of the dominant
assessment paradigm.
To a great extent this remains the case. Despite a growing international
obsession with assessing quality, this does not seem to have prompted an
equivalent measure of development in assessment thinking. Indeed the
opposite is the case, as the obsession with league tables, performance in-
dicators and standards reinforces the preoccupation with measurement,
while questions which focus on how such performance can most effectively
be encouraged go not only unheard but even unthought. One explanation
for the persistence of an assessment status quo which is increasingly out of
step with the priority of raising and broadening learning thresholds is
doubtless the inertia of habit, and the tendency to fall back on the tried and
tested. Among politicians — who play a key role in perpetuating such think-
ing — traditional approaches to assessment have acquired a legitimacy
which makes them invaluable, both as a rhetorical device and as a means of
managing the aspirations of individuals. For the last hundred years or so,
traditional forms of assessment have proved themselves to be vital tools in
the hands of those responsible for managing the priorities and procedures
of the education system.
But, if historically, educational assessment has been driven by a per-
ceived need to measure individual capacity, it now needs to be driven by
the need to develop that capacity — and to create new kinds of capacity in
people of all ages, in short, to ‘liberate the learner’. Problem-solving
104 Understanding Learning

capacity, personal effectiveness, thinking skills and a willingness to accept

change are typical of the general competencies straddling both cognitive
and affective domains that are now being sought by employers. It is becom-
ing increasingly apparent, however, that until we develop new kinds of
assessment procedures that can relate to this wide range of skills and
attitudes, not only will it be impossible to produce valid judgements about
the success of the educational enterprise as a whole in terms of its goals; it
will also help to ensure that certain desired learning outcomes will be
neglected in practice. Not surprisingly perhaps, this is a lesson which is
rapidly being learned in those areas of education which are most closely
connected with the world of employment. In many countries, including the
UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA, efforts are under way
to introduce more flexible and meaningful systems of vocational qualifica-
tions based on demonstrated, rather than inferred, competence (Curtain
and Hayton, 1995). Characteristic of such frameworks is the inclusion of
competencies which break down the inevitably artificial division between
the capacity to perform a task at a given level and the attitudes that pre-
dispose an individual so to do. But if the English National Vocational
Qualifications (NVQs) and those of other countries with similar charac-
teristics represent a significant attempt to break out of the straitjacket of
marks and grades, formal examinations, set syllabuses and built-in failure
levels — in short of the whole paraphernalia of traditional assessment think-
ing and practice — they nevertheless stop well short of fulfilling the criterion
of an approach to assessment that has the capacity to ‘liberate the learner’.
lees!
Claxton (1996) argues for the critically important role of motivation —
and of non-cognitive factors generally — in promoting or inhibiting learn-
ing. Assessment is perhaps the most powerful influence on such drives and
feelings. Although some students are motivated by the spur of competition
and the glitter of potential reward, many more learn not to try for fear of
failing. Claxton cites Dweck’s work concerning students whose self-esteem
is progressively eroded by negative assessment results and who frequently,
in consequence, become what Dweck terms ‘helpless prone’. Indeed re-
search by Bandura (1977) and others shows that the amount of persistence
exhibited by students is a function of how successful they expect to be. In
short, students who have an image of themselves as successful learners are
likely to be more motivated than those who have formed a more negative
view of themselves in this respect.
A moment’s thought confirms that it is assessment that is the purveyor of
such messages. For students, the daily diet of evaluative language which is
an inescapable, and probably essential, part of teaching is regularly rein-
forced by more formal evaluative communications in the form of marks
and grades, and still further reinforced by the weighty messages of reports
and parents’ evenings, a process that ultimately culminates in the ‘summing
up’ (Harlen, 1994) of the formal examination. Given that in this latter
respect at least, failure is built into the system by definition, in that a given
 Liberating the Learner through Assessment 105

proportion of candidates is expected (and often required) to fail, it is

unlikely that many learners will be liberated by such assessment.
Ironically perhaps, it was in an attempt to address directly the demotivat-
ing effects of such built-in failure that the educational community began to
stumble on far more significant insights concerning how assessment might
be used to transform the process of teaching and learning itself. In the UK,
the Records of Achievement movement started with the idea that by
broadening the range of achievements that could be formally acknowl-
edged in a school-leaving document, this would improve the motivation of
students who could not hope to succeed in public examinations. Gradually,
however, the teachers committed to these initiatives came to realize that
what was really making a difference in students’ motivation and in the
quality of their learning were the changes they were introducing actually in
the classroom. These changes included sharing and discussing curriculum
goals with students; encouraging students to set their own learning targets
and to draw up more general ‘action plans’; involving students in assessing
their own work so that they were both more willing and more able to
monitor their own learning; and teacher and student reviewing progress
together. The opportunity for one-to-one discussion in particular made an
enormous impact on many students who had never before had the chance
of an individual conversation with a teacher about their learning on a
regular basis.
Elsewhere I have argued that the educational community in general, and
students in particular, have paid a heavy price for the failure to locate this
ferment of activity in a scientific rationale that was capable of being every
bit as convincing as that on which the previous assessment orthodoxy had
been based (Broadfoot, 1993). In Crooks’s (1988) comprehensive review of
the psychological literature concerning the impact of assessment on learn-
ing is all the ammunition required to construct such a case. Caught up in
their enthusiasm for the exciting things that were happening in their class-
rooms, however, teachers were content to trust their own experience, and
to seek for no further explanation for the changes in motivation and capa-
city to learn that they were witnessing in their students (Broadfoot et al.,
1988). In other countries the pattern has been essentially similar. Thus, in
each case, when the politicians have begun to huff and puff they have
apparently succeeded, with relatively little difficulty, in blowing down a
house that lacks solid theoretical foundations. As the ‘standards’ agenda
has become increasingly dominant internationally; as many governments
have sought to create a market in education using a currency of test results
and league tables; as ‘performance indicators’, quality assessment and in-
spection have come to define the Zeitgeist of the 1990s, so schools have had
to revert to a very different set of enthusiasms and imposed priorities.
It is one of the odd ironies of educational research, however that, as
Nisbet and Broadfoot (1981) argue, its impact is rarely direct. Rather ideas
gather momentum — sometimes quite indirectly — until the time comes
when conditions are right for them to make a specific impact. So it has been
106 Understanding Learning

with new assessment thinking. Ideas that were forged out of the more
obvious shortcomings of traditional assessment practices, as these im-
pacted on schools, have been taken up and developed in circumstances
where the combination of needs and constraints has been more auspicious
for their growth. It is in the arena of professional learning in particular that
there has been a recognized need to engage learners with developing the
full range of professional skills, and a rapid realisation of the value of the
new approaches to assessment, involving student learning, diaries, target
setting, self-assessment, regular reviews of progress on an individual basis,
the collection of portfolios of evidence, and so on — approaches which were
often developed in rather different learning contexts (Gonczi, 1994). It
emphasizes the mixture of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values involved
in such learning and the necessarily central role that reflection and self-
evaluation play in promoting it.
It is not hard to find other, similarly inspired examples of this trend.
While schools have been drawing back from implementing the more radi-
cal aspects of the new assessment thinking as far as pupils are concerned,
the implementation of its rationale has become commonplace in the con-
text of teacher appraisal. Here again the emphasis is typically on using
assessment — in the shape of personal review, discussion and target setting
— to promote professional learning. In initial teacher education too, as
Figure 8.1 illustrates, the new concern with identifying competencies is
frequently integrated into a more formative assessment design, aimed at
encouraging the learner teacher to develop skills of self-reflection and
review.
Such approaches are rapidly approaching the status of a received
orthodoxy in this kind of learning context, where there is an obvious neces-
sity for professionals to be broadly equipped with a mixture of both cogni-
tive and affective skills. The rapid spread of such practices in the arena of
professional and vocational training has also helped to establish notions
such as self-assessment and action planning as mainstream educational
concepts, despite their relatively recent origins. Thus although the battle to
‘liberate the learner’ through assessment may temporarily have been lost in
schools, the war continues. The beginnings of a new assessment discourse,
of concepts which reflect a preoccupation with learning, rather than with
dependable measurement, suggest that we are witnessing a genuine para-
digm shift; that the tyranny of testing is at last being challenged. To mea-
sure or to learn: that is the question.

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108 Understanding Learning

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 9
Gendered Learning and Achievement

Patricia Murphy

Introduction

Concern about gender and achievement has emerged in recent years in

relation to boys’ achievement in, and attitudes to, schooling. Policy recom-
mendations suggest that these gender differences can be addressed by
changes in the curriculum and its teaching (QCA/DfEE, 1999). This raises
the question of what in the current curriculum, its teaching and assessment is
implicated in creating differences between girls and boys. Policy recom-
mendations have also raised assessment as an issue but in relation to teacher
assessment rather than national tests. However, no assessment is socially
neutral, rather assessment practices need to be viewed as social techniques
that have social consequences (Connell, Johnston and White, 1992). From
this perspective it is essential that children’s understanding in relation to
assessments are not assumed but are made problematic both in the develop-
ment of assessments and in the interpretations of their outcomes.
The chapter examines the relationship between assessment outcomes
and sources of gender differences in children’s learning both within and
without school. The evidence discussed indicates how, if not taken into
account, the consequence of children’s learning out of school impacts on
their achievement throughout schooling. The chapter looks at the way
assessment practice is implicated in the creation of gender gaps in chil-
dren’s performance. The chapter is organized in sections. The first section
introduces issues arising from recent developments in thinking about
learners and learning, and the implications of these for assessment and how
we understand gender. The second section explores these implications by
looking at gendered learning. The main section examines gender dif-
ferences in achievement in a number of curriculum areas and highlights
research about the sources of these differences. The chapter concludes by
considering the implications for curriculum and assessment.

Background

How we understand the influence of gender on children’s learning and how

this in turn affects the way they understand and respond to assessments

109
110 Understanding Learning

depends on our perceptions of the ways children make sense of their

worlds. There are various theoretical traditions that influence our percep-
tions of learning in schools. One tradition of long standing sees learning as
‘mental’ processing. In this view thinking is a stage separated from sensory
input and precedes activity, which is seen as an outcome of thinking. The
human mind ‘sees’, ‘thinks’ then ‘acts’. In this approach to learning the
learner is separate from the environment and acts on it. This has been
described as a mind and body separation. An emerging tradition, cultural-
ism, challenges this way of thinking about learners. In a cultural approach
to learning thinking is not separate from or interposed between perception
and action. Viewed in this way “There is no separation of mind and body,
because the physical interaction involved in inquiry is simply a part of the
process of acting mindfully’ (Bredo, 1994, p. 1).
In a ‘processing’ view of the human mind the learner plays a passive,
receptive role in the learning process. The teacher dispenses knowledge,
learners process it and thus acquire it. Increasingly the emphasis on learn-
ing as an individual’s internal mental processing has been challenged. One
key challenge sees learning not as processing but, rather, as constructing. In
other words, reality is made not found. Bruner describes this view of the
learner as ‘proactive, problem-orientated, attentionally focused, selective,
constructional, directed to ends’ (Bruner, 1996, p. 93).
Whilst these challenges to learning are currently being debated in the
context of teaching little attention is paid to them in assessment. Current
views of assessment reflect a ‘processing’ model of mind. The task of as-
sessment being ‘how to read out the stored knowledge [of the learner] in
the most accurate and reliable way’ (Roth, 1997, p. 9). If the challenges are
taken seriously they require us to think critically about the tasks we set in
assessment. In a processing view of learning it is assumed that information
is given and that tasks are therefore stable across learners, i.e., children
perceive and interpret them in the same way. In a cultural view of learning
the whole task for children includes the task of figuring out what the task is.
The tasks we give to children either in formal or informal assessments are
therefore strategic fictions, i.e., their meaning is determined by the learners
and changes during activity (Newman, Griffin and Cole 1989). Conse-
quently communicating tasks and their goals becomes much more complex,
and establishing children’s perceptions becomes an essential part of the
learning and assessment process. A cultural approach to learning is so
labelled because it views mind as shaped by culture. As Bruner puts it
‘Although meanings are ‘in the mind”’ they have their origins and their
significance in the culture in which they are created’ (Bruner, 1996, p. 3).
That is not to say that learners are mirrors of their cultures rather that the
meanings they make reflect both their unique history and sense of self and
the culture’s ways of constructing reality. One of these ways includes
cultural beliefs about what it is to be a girl and a boy. Culturally defined
stereotypes and expectations of girls and boys are in evidence at all levels
of socialization. Duveen (1999) argues ‘a new born infant is not a neutral
 Gendered Learning and Achievement 111

object but one which is invested with the characteristics of a social identity’.
Duveen emphasizes the transition from ‘external identities as children are
incorporated into the social world through the actions of others to inter-
nalised identities as children become independent actors in the field of gen-
der’ (Duveen, 1999). From birth, girls and boys experience different
socialization processes. Parents’ expectations differ for boys and girls. These
different expectations are reflected in the activities and toys parents provide
and in their reactions to their children. Consequently boys and girls engage
in different hobbies and pastimes from an early age, and their interests
continue to diverge with age. An outcome of different socialization patterns
is that children develop different ways of responding to the world and
making sense of it, ways which influence how they learn and what they learn.
In this way children learn to value those activities, traits and behaviours
associated with their gender and, consequently, gender becomes a self-
regulating system. The more children engage in gendered activities, the more
they develop the skills and understandings associated with them, understand-
ings which emerge as gender-related ways of being in the world.
It is important to remember that gender is only one cultural representation
that influences children and its influence will vary across children within a
group. The data discussed are about group not individual performance,
however.

Gendered Learning
Studies of preschool children have helped to characterize some of the
gender differences in interests that emerge as a consequence of children’s
socialization. Murphy (1997) reported the role play differences between
boys and girls:
You see the maternal instinct in girls from a very early age and this does tend to
motivate their play. Boys bring their own agendas — they get into some very
active, very physically involved games.
Boys like to be people in authority, policemen, fire fighters or super-heroes.
(p. 120)

In these roles children become involved in the activities associated with

them. These create different learning opportunities. From an early age
children are paying attention to different details in the environment and
developing different views of what is salient. In the same study play care
staff described girls’ and boys’ interests:
Girls are much more interested in drawing and as a result quite often are more
forward than boys when it comes to using pencils and scissors. Girls seem to
enjoy the colours and the process of drawing. Boys just aren’t interested.
As soon as you have a sort of machinery gears or something the boys are inter-
ested straight away. I think it inclines them more to the sort of mathematical side
of things.
(Murphy, 1997, pp. 121 and 122)
112 Understanding Learning

Browne and Ross’s (1991) results were similar in their large-scale study of
preschool children. They described children’s first choice of activity on
entering day care in the following way:
Many girls chose to play in the home corner to do a drawing to become involved
in a creative activity read a book or to talk to an adult. It was extremely rare to
observe a girl choose to play with a construction toy ... whereas it was very
common to observe boys doing so.
(p. 42)

Perhaps, unsurprisingly, baseline assessments of children entering school

show girls ahead of boys in social skills, letter identification, writing and
drawing (Arnot, David and Weiner, 1996). Studies in the USA of children’s
toys have also suggested that typical girls’ toys and boys’ toys provide
different opportunities for learning mathematical skills. Damarin (1990)
observes that girls’ toys tend to be single objects or sets of objects whose
relations to each other are one-to-one correspondence. Boys more than
girls have access to toys with interrelated parts (blocks, Lego, Meccano,
K’Nex, etc.). She argues that extensionality, i.e., length and thickness as
well as other geometric features, are key features of such toys. Play with
such toys allows children to build understanding of part—whole relations, a
concept central to fractional arithmetic; and the relations between and
among objects based on their extensionality. In contrast, play with typical
girls’ toys provides understanding of ideas of correspondence. Damarin
describes girls’ play as a continuing process never finished, whereas boys’
toys tend to focus their attention on projects or products in which the order
of operations is crucial. One can imagine this contrast if one compares the
social play of girls with dolls versus the production of a Lego model of a
moving vehicle. Girls may be disadvantaged in their learning in two ways:
by not having the relevant prior experience that boys have; and having
their alternative approaches judged inappropriate.
A further feature of gendered learning of particular significance for
children’s achievements in school are their approaches to reading and writ-
ing. The earlier observations suggest that girls are more likely than boys to
come to school with initial writing skills. It is also the case that preschool
boys are seen to have less interest than girls in reading: ‘Getting them to
settle down to a story was really quite a task. What I resort to is any book
that has a tractor, a dumper in it, any sort of machinery. I don’t have a
problem settling the girls’ (Murphy, 1997, p. 121).
Two potential effects arise from such a response. It can orientate boys
further towards particular experiences and to paying attention to specific
aspects of their environment. It also introduces boys from an early age to
texts of a particular style. Thus boys’ future choices of reading materials
and learning about appropriate styles of expression may be influenced.
Evidence of this self-regulating characteristic of gender is available. For
example Browne and Ross (1991) observed that children in infant classes
continued to follow their gendered interest even when apparently engaged
in the same activity. When observed playing with Lego, girls made houses
 Gendered Learning and Achievement 113

and simple structures as part of their social play, boys made vehicles or
guns incorporating movable parts and focused on movement, structure and
balance.

Gendered Achievement: Mathematics

Evidence from international surveys in mathematics show girls and boys

differ in the way they achieve their scores in tests. Girls’ superior perfor-
mance is associated with computation, whole number and estimation and
approximation as well as algebra. Boys’ superior performance is associated
with geometry, particularly three-dimensional diagrams, measurement and
proportional thinking. These findings bear close relationship to the gen-
dered learning referred to earlier. National surveys in the USA and in
England and Wales also found boys outperformed girls on the use of
measuring instruments but only where boys had more experience of using
them outside school. These achievement differences can thérefore be un-
derstood in terms of children’s opportunity to learn rather than their ability
to learn.
In national assessments of mathematics in England and Wales overall
similarities in girls’ and boys’ performances are reported and very little
attention paid to performance at question level (QCA, 2000a; 2000b). This
is despite findings that more boys than girls achieve the highest level 5 and,
more girls than boys the intermediate and lower levels. Damarin (1990)
linked the emergence of boys’ superior performance in mathematics at
grade 4 to the appearance in the curriculum of fractional arithmetic. In the
report of national assessment it is noted that only level-5 pupils (where
there are significantly more boys than girls) answer these questions well. It
is also noted that children in levels 3 and 4 (where girls are more highly
represented than boys) do significantly less well on ‘shape, space and
measures’.
Teachers’ expectations differ for boys and girls and this is reflected in
their decisions about tier entry in maths assessment (Stobart et al., 1992).
Boys more than girls are entered for higher tiers to motivate them and are
more likely to be excluded from entry because teachers see disaffection as
a problem for boys. Girls are seen to be less confident than boys and tend
to be entered for lower or middle tiers as a consequence. Affective factors,
such as children’s confidence, easily become translated in practice into
cognitive ones, i.e., high confidence equates with ability, low confidence
with its lack. Teachers’ beliefs about pupils do influence pupils’ self-
concepts in relation to subjects. Head (1996) describes the way boys tend to
attribute success to their own efforts and failure to external factors while
girls do the converse. A review of research studies concluded that boys
dominated class interactions. Teachers selected boys more often than girls,
in part because they attracted more attention (Howe, 1999). Boys also
114 Understanding Learning

received more feedback from teachers both positive and negative. Al-
though girls received less negative feedback what they received was more
often focused on their work and influenced their expectations of them-
selves and their abilities negatively (Dweck et al., 1978). Davies and Brem-
ber (1995) in their longitudinal study of children in primary schools found
that by the end of primary schooling all pupils were less positive about
school but boys were even less concerned about discipline and conforming
to the rules, whereas girls were even more concerned to do what the
teacher required of them. Assessment plays an important role in providing
feedback to children and therefore in influencing their developing sense of
self. The increased role of assessment in the primary curriculum suggests
that care in how we treat each child is particularly critical. As Pollard
(1997) noted in a study of national assessment in the primary years, ‘assess-
ment structures may unwittingly be undermining positive disposition to
learning’. Another finding from research into assessment in mathematics
concerns children’s perceptions of questions and solutions.
We have argued from a cultural view of learning that it is learners who
construct sense in assessments. That is assessment questions are not given,
rather they are reformulated. Research by Cooper and Dunne (2000) has
highlighted the different ways that groups of children respond to questions
set in what they refer to as ‘realistic’ settings. An example of a realistic
setting would be using pie charts to represent the different types of socks
worn by boys and girls in a school day, and asking children to interpret
them. They studied 10-11-year-old children’s understandings of national
test questions in mathematics and their views of what are appropriate
solutions. They found that working- and intermediate-class children per-
formed less well than those from higher socio-economic backgrounds on
these questions because they drew on their everyday knowledge rather
than their mathematical knowledge. For example, one boy disputed the
‘reality’ represented which showed no boys wearing white sports socks and
20 per cent wearing patterned ones. This was described as an inappropriate
use of everyday knowledge. However, the charge seems more appropri-
ately levelled at the assessor and not the pupil. The research also found
that this effect resulted in the mathematical achievements of those children
being misrepresented. The biggest performance gap was between boys in
the highest social class grouping and girls in the lowest social class group-
ing. The authors argue that much more thought needs to be given to what
these national test questions assess: ‘Is it primarily children’s ‘‘mathemati-
cal” knowledge and understanding . . . or is it primarily their capacity to
negotiate the boundary between the “mathematical” and the ‘“‘real”’ as part
of the process of discovering the test designers’ intentions . . . ?’ (ibid., p.
200). An examination of such questions, the ‘sock’ one being a good ex-
ample, often reveals that the real setting is irrelevant to the question and
acts as an unnecessary barrier to some pupils. If however, the intention is to
assess children’s understanding of the application of mathematics then the
setting must be central to the question and the solution and the mark
 Gendered Learning and Achievement 115

scheme should give appropriate credit. If not then the interpretation of

scores for different children will not be the same. The way in which the
setting of a task can influence children’s responses is considered again in
the discussion of science performance.

Gendered Achievement: English

International surveys show that girls outperform boys in reading and writ-
ing across the 5-16 range. In reporting national assessments of reading in
England and Wales attention to gender differences occurs because a prob-
lem is identified when the assumption of equality of outcome for boys and
girls is interrupted (QCA, 2000a). However, if opportunity to learn varies
between children, such an assumption is not justified.
At age 6-7 years girls perform better than boys in reading but it mattered
if the text was story or information based. The performance gap in favour
of girls was reduced on questions drawing on information texts. Boys were
found to outperform girls on some multiple-choice questions. Girls’ perfor-
mance was enhanced on questions to do with feelings and motivation, boys
where reasons for actions were sought. What the task was about mattered,
for example, if it was about a girl’s viewpoint or a boy’s viewpoint. Girls
performed better on the former and boys better on the latter.
At the older ages (10-11) more girls achieved the expected level than
boys (76 per cent compared with 65 per cent). Boys’ superior performance
was associated with questions drawing on information with short or
multiple-choice responses. Girls’ superior performance was associated with
open-ended questions requiring extended responses involving interpreta-
tion and explanation. Girls tended to do better than boys when questions
involved imagery and poetic language.
In writing tasks girls were ahead of boys at both ages but little detail
about the sources of the gender gap were provided. Girls spell significantly
better than do boys though the size of the difference declines with age.
Girls also use punctuation more and structure and organize their work
better than boys (QCA, 2000b). Boys do better when questions required
short responses or right/wrong answers, as in multiple choice, and overall
writing competence was not required.
These gender differences in English persist through school even when
there is no evidence to suggest they reflect differences in innate linguistic
ability (OFSTED, 1993). An argument to explain this is again related to
gendered choices and learning. Girls’ and boys’ preferred writing styles
reflect their choice of reading materials outside of school and there are
marked differences in their choices. In the infant phase boys’ choices are as
described earlier. The tendency for teachers and others to promote boys’
interest in reading by enlisting their interests develops by the age of 7 into a
preference for hobbies and sports books. Girls read widely in a range of
genres (Collins, Hunt and Nunn, 1997).
116 Understanding Learning

Girls’ styles of writing have been described as extended, reflective com-

position, boys’ as more often episodic, factual and focusing on commenta-
tive detail. The source of these differences can readily be linked to the style
of writing that children meet in their choice of reading. The link between
the content of questions and performance can be traced to the different
subjects that children pursue through their reading and mirror children’s
play interests.
There appears to be a link between ways of responding more typically
associated with girls and the widespread finding that multiple-choice items
disadvantage girls irrespective of the subject being assessed (Gipps and
Murphy, 1994). Research evidence shows that extracting is a ‘masculine’
approach to thinking whereas females are more likely to apply an embed-
ded model (Head, 1996). Girls’ responses to tasks across a range of subjects
have been described as reflecting: ‘multiple perspectives’ (English); ‘an
ability to take on a wide range of issues’ (Design and Technology); and ‘a
willingness to consider a range of views’ (History). Multiple-choice items
rely on extraction. Ambiguity in distractors is also more likely to be per-
ceived if multiple perspectives are applied. Add to this, girls’ preference for
extended written responses, then the finding that girls more than boys do
not respond to multiple choice items or tick more than one box comes as no
surprise. Mode of response is another potential source of differential valid-
ity therefore in that a zero score may not be because of a lack of the
achievement being assessed, merely an outcome of a thoughtful response
to an ambiguous item.

Gendered Achievement: Science

In science as in mathematics performance overall shows little difference

between boys and girls of primary age. There is again the tendency for boys
to achieve in the higher levels and girls in the intermediary levels. How
girls and boys achieve their scores also differs. A long-standing finding is
that boys across the ages outperform girls on tests of physical sciences and
this holds true still (Preece, Skinner and Riall, 1999). There are several
links that can be made between this finding and gendered learning. Girls’
and boys’ interests in science related topics vary. In national surveys of
science systematic content effects were observed across different types of
achievement and these were found for primary and secondary pupils (DES,
1988; 1989). The content is what the task is about, for example, it could be
reading a table about different fibres used in clothing or the different
metals used in car production. Across the ages girls and boys as groups
avoided certain contents irrespective of the question being asked. Ques-
tions that involved health, reproduction, nutrition and domestic and social
situations showed girls performing at a higher level than boys. This gap
arose as more boys failed to respond to such tasks and more girls
 Gendered Learning and Achievement Ty

approached them with confidence. The converse occurred with ‘masculine’

contents, e.g., traffic, building sites, submarines, space flight, etc. In physics
assessments ‘masculine’ contents dominate and there is often use made of
diagrams to represent phenomena. Girls more than boys will have less
experience of these contents, consider them to be gender inappropriate
and so lack confidence in their approach to them. This may lead some girls
to not respond, and others to engage more tentatively with the question.
Overall this will lead to a reduction in girls’ score as a group.
There is an issue here in relation to how we interpret assessment out-
comes as a content effect prevents children showing what they know. There
is a further issue about the selection of content for assessment tasks in that
the selection should not alter what is intended to be assessed, i.e., the
construct, nor should it disadvantage some children over others.
Other gender differences in performance that overall results can mask
relate to children’s different views of salience. For example when given the
choice girls and boys focus on different aspects of phenomena. Girls more
than boys pay attention to colour, sound and smells. Boys on the other
hand pay attention to structure and movement more than girls (Murphy
and Elwood, 1998). In both cases these differences link closely to those
noted in the play of preschool and infant pupils. However, these views of
salience often go unobserved and emerge later in assessments as achieve-
ment differences (Kimbell et al., 1991). Recent observations of year 6
children (age 10-11) in Design and Technology showed the self-regulating
nature of gender development in operation but in ways unremarked and
therefore unchallenged by teachers. The children had to design a vehicle of
their choice. The issues for learning were to do with the design and make
aspects of the task. What vehicle was made and, therefore, what aesthetic
issues if any obtained were irrelevant. Typically boys made sports cars,
army vehicles, rocket carriers and the occasional train. Girls’ vehicles were
to transport food, e.g. pizzas, circus animals, families and the occasional
stretch limousine. The finish of the product therefore engaged the children
in different details but it was the quality of the finish rather than the details
that were noted by the teacher. This is another example of differences in
opportunity to learn that needs to be taken into account to inform inter-
pretations of assessment outcomes.
Another issue that has already emerged but is understood slightly dif-
ferently in the context of science assessment is the effect of the question
setting. If realistic settings are used in science they are intended to enhance
the relevance of the work and therefore the motivation of the children.
Girls, however, more than boys pay attention to features of a setting and
incorporate them in their task and their solutions to them. For example,
using the setting for a scientific investigation of the effect of temperature
on the rate of dissolving, of a father not being able to get his sugar to
dissolve in his tea, can have unintended effects that lead to the misrepre-
sentation of children’s achievement. In the example mentioned a mixed
group of children were observed in a science lesson. These children aged
118 Understanding Learning

9-10 were competent investigators. However, in this situation they could

not agree a strategy as the girl did not want to test cold water as one of the
temperatures whereas the boy was adamant that it would be a ‘rubbish’ test
without it. The girl, however, insisted on many occasions that ‘nobody
drinks cold tea’. For her the problem was to use her science to solve the
father’s dilemma of when to put sugar in his tea. For the teacher and the
boys in the group that was irrelevant, the task was the scientific investiga-
tion (Murphy, 2000). Setting is therefore a critical issue in assessment both
in informal and formal situations as it influences the task as it is understood
by the individual. This understanding will reflect the views of salience that
children have developed both within and without school.

Summary

If we consider overall test results, gender differences in achievement may

appear to be only an issue in relation to boys’ achievement in English. This
is far from the case. The pattern of achievement in maths and science for
example is not equally distributed for boys and girls. Boys typically are
represented in greater numbers in the highest levels of achievement com-
pared with girls. This pattern appears to hold across schooling and has been
associated with the differential expectations of teachers and pupils. Feed-
back is critical in shaping pupils’ perceptions of themselves in relation to
subjects and schooling generally. Assessment plays a key role in this. One
concern is the way that affective characteristics often acquired through
schooling become understood as cognitive abilities. Thus girls’ conformity
can be understood as intellectual timidity and lack of flair, and some boys’
disruptive behaviour as lack of ability and others’ independence and risk-
taking as brilliance. Patterns of achievement which see girls typically clus-
tered in the middle levels and boys spread more and at the extremes begins
to make sense seen in this light. Differences in the distribution of boys and
girls across levels and grades in assessment may also arise when the selec-
tion of achievements in subject tests reflect those skills and understandings
they acquire through their gendered choices and ways of interacting in the
world. There is evidence of this across the core subjects.
Another problem is the assumption that there should be equality of
outcome between girls and boys which presumes equality of opportunity to
learn. The chapter has drawn attention to the way that gendered learning
can constrain the opportunities available to children. The chapter has pro-
vided examples of the way assessment practice can compound gender dif-
ferences by the use of particular contents, settings and modes of response
and, therefore, serve to create the gender gaps they purport to measure.
Gender differences arise from an interaction of subeffects in questions.
The recent controversy over the 1999 reading test provides a useful
example of this. It highlighted the way we need to look at assessments in
 Gendered Learning and Achievement 119

order to understand the potential for creating barriers or indeed reducing

them for pupils. The Spinners poem about spiders was judged to be more
boy-friendly than poems used in previous tests. Of course whether or not
you agree with the criticism depends on how you understand gender
differences in performance emerge statistically. The evidence presented
in the chapter would support the criticism. The question combined a
multiple or short response format with a content that interests boys more
than girls, and used cartoon illustrations that boys like. These combined
effects will mean that some boys’ confidence in their ability to tackle the
question, and therefore their engagement with it, is enhanced and some
girls’ confidence in their ability in relation to the task is reduced. Some
girls’ beliefs that they know nothing about spiders will mean they fail to
respond at all. Hence gender actively mediates the possibilities available
for individuals to demonstrate their achievements on this question. These
effects may or may not result in an overall difference in girls’ and boys’
scores, this data is not available in the public domain. We have argued
that if we adopt a cultural approach to learning assessment cannot be
viewed as objective. It can, however, aim to be just. To achieve this
children need to be given opportunities to show what they know and
interpretations of scores need to recognize and distinguish between a lack
of achievement and a lack of opportunity. Interpretations of outcomes
also need to take account of assessment artefacts such as mode of re-
sponse that can create barriers for some children and lead to a misrepre-
sentation of their achievements.
In the short term it would help children if assessments were examined
critically as part of a subject’s curriculum. This is not teaching to the test,
rather looking at tests as representation of subjects. In this way children
can consider the types of response and views of salience valued and at the
same time consider those accorded less value. This allows them to develop
a critical stance to the curriculum and their own learning. The use of
particular contents in subject assessments can also be examined to help
children see through the content to the task. In looking at question settings
children can examine the extent to which these have any thing to do with
what is being assessed. They can also reflect on their own and other chil-
dren’s responses to different settings. Using assessments in these ways has
long-term consequences as well.
Gender differences increase with schooling as we unwittingly build on
children’s strengths and fail to recognize the limitations that gendered
learning can create. Children’s responses to both teaching and assessment
situations can be used to make explicit alternative views of salience. Exam-
ining typical boys’ responses and girls’ responses reveals how they are
equally valid and partial views of the world. If the examination includes a
consideration of the possibilities for learning in different perspectives, chil-
dren can come to understand how gender mediates their learning. This
examination will also provide insights for teachers about missed oppor-
tunities for learning that will inform future planning.
120 Understanding Learning

Gendered styles of response put children at an advantage or disadvan-

tage depending on the subject being assessed. If styles are taught explicitly
as part of a subject’s curriculum and justified in terms of the different goals
of that subject, then this constraint upon pupils can be addressed to the
benefit of all.
Assessment has the ability to inform and misinform, to liberate and to
control. Attention to children’s ways of knowing is essential if its benefits
for learning are to be realized.

References

Arnot, M., David, M. and Weiner, G. (1996) Educational Reforms and Gender
Equality in Schools, London: Equal Opportunities Commission.
Bredo, E. (1994) Reconstructing educational psychology, Educational Psychologist,
29, p. 1.
Browne, N. and Ross, C. (1991) Girls’ stuff, boys’ stuff: young children talking and
playing, in N. Browne (ed.), Science and Technology in the Early Years, Milton
Keynes: Open University Press.
Bruner, J. (1996) The Culture of Education, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Collins, F., Hunt, P. and Nunn, J. (1997) Reading Voices, Plymouth: Northcote
House.
Connell, R. W., Johnston, K. and White, V. (1992) Measuring Up, Canberra: Aus-
tralian Curriculum Studies Association.
Cooper, B. and Dunne, M. (2000) Assessing Children’s Mathematical Knowledge
Social Class, Sex and Problem-Solving, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Damarin, S. (1990) Gender and the learning of fractions, paper presented to the
American Educational Research Association, Boston, MA, April.
Davies, J. and Brember, I. (1995) Attitudes to school and the curriculum in Year 2,
Year 4 and Year 6: changes over four years, paper presented at the European
Conference on Educational Research, Bath, England, 14-17 September.
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of APU Survey Findings, London: HMSO.
Department of Education and Science (DES) (1989) Science at Age 13 — A Review
of APU Survey Findings, London: HMSO.
Duveen, G. (1999) Representations, identities, resistance, in K. Deaux and G.
Philogene (eds), Social Representations: Introductions and Explorations, Oxford:
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Dweck, C. S., Davidson, W., Nelson, S. and Enna, B. (1978) Sex differences in
learned helplessness: the contingencies of evaluative feedback in the classroom,
Development Psychology, 14, pp. 268-76.
Gipps, C. and Murphy, P. (1994) A Fair Test? Assessment, Achievement and Equity,
Buckingham: Open University Press.
Head, J. (1996) Gender identity and cognitive style, in P. Murphy and C. Gipps
(eds), Equity in the Classroom: Towards Effective Pedagogy for Girls and Boys,
London: Falmer Press/ UNESCO.
Howe, C. (1999) Gender and Classroom Interactions, Edinburgh: Scottish Council
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 Gendered Learning and Achievement 124

Murphy, P. (1997) Gender differences — messages for science education, in K.

Harnqvist and A. Burgen (eds), Growing up with Science: Developing Early
Understanding of Science, London: Jessica Kingsley.
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J. Arthur and J. Moss (eds), Issues in the Teaching of Science, London:
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Murphy, P. F. and Elwood, J. (1998) Gendered experiences, choices and achieve-
ment — exploring the links, /nternational Journal of Inclusive Education, 2(2), 85—
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Newman, D., Griffin, P., and Cole, M. (1989) The Construction Zone: Working for
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Performance in Examinations at 16+: English and Mathematics, London: Schools
Examination and Assessment Council.
 10
Raising Standards: Is Ability Grouping
the Answer?

Judith Ireson and Susan Hallam

Introduction

During the 1990s debate about the selection and grouping of pupils has
been rekindled, initially in relation to the issue of selective schooling and
more recently in relation to ability grouping within schools. The concern
about pupil grouping is in response to the perceived need to raise academic
standards nationally and to the difficulties some schools have been experi-
encing in relation to the behaviour and attendance of some pupils.
In this chapter we will present an overview of the research on ability
grouping and its effects on pupils’ academic achievement. We will also
review the research on other important outcomes associated with ability
grouping, such as pupils’ attitudes towards school, their self-esteem and
attendance at school. Finally, we will consider aspects of the school en-
vironment that may mediate the influence of organisational grouping on
pupil outcomes. The review will refer extensively to British research but
will draw on international research where appropriate. It must be recog-
nized, however, that differences in cultural attitudes and education systems
limit the relevance of research in other countries.
Overall, the research suggests that there are both advantages and disad-
vantages in formalizing the grouping of pupils through selective schooling,
streaming, banding or setting. Perhaps because of this it is an area which
fuels intense debate. Those favouring structured grouping tend to stress its
effectiveness in terms of pupil achievement, whereas those against stress
the inequity of the system and its social consequences.

Types of Grouping

Historically, grouping in the UK has been based on measures of general

ability or intelligence, such as verbal reasoning or cognitive abilities. Dur-
ing the 1960s and 1970s such tests were used by many secondary schools to
allocate pupils to streams on entry. Pupils were then taught in their
streamed classes for all lessons. Since then, many schools have introduced

122
 Raising Standards 123

less rigid forms of grouping such as banding and setting. Banding intro-
duces flexibility by restricting the number of streams to two or three, so
that each band contains a moderate range of ability and pupils may be
placed either into mixed ability classes or regrouped into sets within a band
for different subjects. Setting is used to group pupils into classes on the
basis of their attainment in a particular subject. This means that a pupil
may be in a high set for one subject and a lower set for another. Practical
constraints such as timetabling and availability of staff sometimes reduce
the amount of flexibility in setted systems. Where pupils are in sets for all
subjects, setting may approximate streaming, as certain pupils end up in all
the bottom sets while others are in all the top sets. Sometimes different
forms of grouping may be operating simultaneously at different levels
within the same school (Rutter ef al., 1979; Laarhoven and de Vries, 1987;
Slavin, 1987) with schools typically increasing the amount of ability group-
ing in the later years (Benn and Chitty, 1996). In addition, the grouping
practices may differ from one year to the next, in response to pressure from
school inspections or changing views of staff. Even where a school has a
policy of mixed ability grouping, individual teachers may group pupils by
ability in their classes. Because schools have such a variety of groupings, it
has been difficult for researchers to establish with any clarity just what
grouping particular pupils have experienced during their time in school.

Effects on Academic Achievement

A number of large-scale studies in the UK have investigated the impact of

selective and non-selective school systems on pupil achievement. Some
have demonstrated minimal differences in terms of learning outcomes on
standardized reading and mathematical tests and examination performance
(Gray, McPherson and Raffe, 1983; Marks and Pomian-Srednicki, 1983;
Steedman, 1980) when prior ability is controlled for, while others have
found that pupils’ performance becomes increasingly differentiated de-
pending on the kind of school they are in (Lughart et al., 1989). Pupils of
average ability seem to perform better in high-ability schools than compar-
able students in schools where the majority are pupils of lower ability.
At primary level in the UK, streaming was introduced after the 1931
Primary School Report. By the early 1950s, articles criticizing the practice
had begun to appear and it was largely phased out with the demise of the 11-
plus examination. During this time several studies were undertaken, the
most comprehensive by Barker Lunn (1970) which compared the achieve-
ment gains of students in 36 streamed and 36 unstreamed junior schools,
matched on social class. There were no meaningful differences in achieve-
ment between the pupils in streamed and unstreamed schools. The size and
quality of this study provides particularly strong evidence that ability group-
ing is not by itself a major factor affecting achievement at primary level.
124 Understanding Learning

Among the American elementary school studies, a study by Goldberg,

Passow and Justman (1966) stands out as providing particularly strong
evidence. This study involved 86 Grade 5 classes in New York elementary
schools. Pupils were assigned to classes on the basis of IQ scores according
to 15 different grouping patterns that varied in terms of homogeneity. They
remained in those classes for two years. Most achievement comparisons
were not significant, and those that were supported heterogeneous rather
than homogeneous grouping. This evidence is consistent with that of the
Barker Lunn study, referred to above.
Kulik and Kulik (1992) concluded that the clearest effects on achieve-
ment are obtained in enrichment programmes and accelerated classes,
which involve the greatest curriculum adjustment. Generally the higher-
ability groups benefit, but there do not appear to be negative effects on the
achievement levels of middle and low groups. A subsequent meta-analysis
of the effects of within class grouping (Lou et al., 1996) concludes that on
average this form of grouping produces significant gains in attainment.

Affective Outcomes

One of the concerns of those who argue against grouping by ability is that
placement in the bottom groups has an adverse impact on pupils’ self-
esteem, self-concept and on their attitudes towards school and schoolwork
(Lacey, 1974; Oakes, 1985; Gamoran and Berends, 1987). The research
findings regarding the relationship between pupil self-esteem and ability
grouping practices are complex and difficult to interpret, particularly as a
variety of measures have been used, both in questionnaire form and inter-
views. Gamoran and Berends (1987), reviewing the international literature,
suggested that there was a negative impact of ability grouping on the
motivation and self-esteem of students assigned to low ability groups. Fur-
ther longitudinal studies are needed to establish a causal relationship.
Students in high tracks or streams tend to have higher educational aspi-
rations and more positive academic and personal self-concepts (Rudd,
1956; Oakes, 1985). Oakes suggests that for low-track students the self-
concept becomes more and more negative as years go by and students tend
to be critical of their own abilities. Some comparisons of academic self-
esteem in mixed-ability or streamed groups indicated that lower-ability
pupils tended to have lower academic self-esteem regardless of the way in
which they were grouped (Newbold, 1977; Essen, Fogelmann and Tib-
benham, 1978).
Ethnographic accounts of individual pupils’ views demonstrate that
placement in a low set or stream can be viewed negatively (e.g., Lacey,
1974; Boaler, 1997), but it is not clear how many pupils are affected in this
way or for how long. In their meta-analysis of 13 studies of the effects of
ability grouping on self-esteem, Kulik and Kulik (1992) found no overall
 Raising Standards 125

effect, but ability grouping tended to raise the self-esteem scores of lower
aptitude students and reduce the self-esteem of higher aptitude students.
Pupils’ reference groups may be an important influence on their aca-
demic self-concepts, but the strength of this relationship may depend on
the extent to which teachers emphasize group placement as limiting pupils’
chances of success. It seems likely that the effects on self-esteem are medi-
ated by the behaviour of teachers and peers and that these in turn are
affected by school ethos.

Attitudes Towards School, Relationships and Alienation

Ethnographic research in this country during the heyday of streaming

and in American tracked systems demonstrates that streaming can lead
to anti-school attitudes and alienation from school. Where whole peer
groups feel alienated anti-school cultures can develop. Streaming, it is
argued, can play a major role in polarising students’ attitudes into pro-
and anti-school camps (Hargreaves, 1967; Lacey, 1970; Ball, 1981;
Schwartz, 1981; Gamoran and Berends, 1987). High-ability pupils in
high streams tend to accept the school’s demands as the normative
definition of behaviour, whereas low-stream students resist the school’s
rules and may even attempt to subvert them. Over time, streaming
fosters friendship groups (Hallinan and Sorensen, 1985), which may
contribute to polarized stream-related attitudes, the high-stream pupils
tending to be more enthusiastic, while those in the low stream are more
alienated (Oakes, Samoran and Page, 1991). Pupils also tend to be
labelled and stereotyped by teachers according to the stream that they
arenun «(Harereaves, 11967. Lacey, 1970; ‘Keddie, 1971; Ball, 1981;
Schwartz, 1981; Burgess, 1983). Schwartz (1981), for example, reports
teachers’ stereotyped descriptions of pupils as thick, bright, slow,
difficult, etc., and pupils’ own stereotypical labels such as teacher’s pet,
brain, dumb, stupid. At primary level, the research suggests that
children in unstreamed classes have healthier and more positive
attitudes towards school than children in streamed classes and that this
is particularly true for those of lower ability (Barker Lunn, 1970).
Where the teachers favoured streaming, children of lower ability tended
to be bullied and friendless, reflecting the teachers’ attitudes towards
lower-ability children. As the Elton Report suggested, bad behaviour
can occur in lower streams because of pupils’ recognition of their place
in the scheme of things — at the bottom (DES, 1989). Research
considering the social climate within the classroom indicates that peer
relationships are more supportive in high-ability groups, although these
classes also tend to be more competitive.
Overall, the evidence relating to alienation and pupils’ attitudes towards
schools is mixed. Both probably depend to a large extent on the individual
126 Understanding Learning

school ethos and staff attitudes. One question, as yet unresolved, is

whether negative school attitudes result from streaming, banding or
setting, or whether grouping procedures merely reflect existing attitudes.
What appears to be an outcome of streaming may in fact be a reflection of
social alienation, which is reinforced in the school context.

Social Implications

The most serious criticisms of selection, streaming, banding and setting

derive from their perceived social consequences. There is clear evidence
that low-ability groups tend to include disproportionate numbers of pupils
of low socio-economic status (Douglas, 1964; Sandven, 1971; Winn and
Wilson, 1983; Oakes, 1985; Burgess, 1986; Vanfossen, Jones and Spade,
1987; Peak and Morrison, 1988), ethnic minorities (Winn and Wilson, 1983;
Oakes, 1985; Burgess, 1986; Tomlinson, 1987; Commission for Racial
Equality, 1992; Troyna and Siraj-Blatchford, 1993), boys, and those born in
the summer (Douglas, 1964; Barker Lunn, 1970). Recent supporting evi-
dence comes from Northern Ireland, where selective education continues
and schools are denominationally based. A report for the Northern Ireland
Economic Council (McAdam, 1995) recorded concern about the disparities
in attainment between social classes and denominations, with middle-class
children 2.6 times as likely to enter grammar schools, and Catholic students
more likely than Protestants to leave school with no qualifications. There is
now considerable hostility towards the grammar schools system (Benn and
Chitty, 1996).

Other Aspects of School that Mediate Grouping Practices

The organization of pupils into groups is likely to reflect and impact on

many of the factors outlined as important in effective schooling, namely
shared vision and goals, the learning environment, concentration on teach-
ing and learning, purposeful teaching, high expectations, positive reinforce-
ment, monitoring progress, pupil rights and responsibilities, and home-
school partnerships. These may all mediate the effects of grouping pupils
by ability. Streaming, setting or banding policies within a school also seem
to be related to school ethos and values, although whether they determine
or reflect school ethos is not clear. For example, there is some evidence that
both primary and secondary headteachers who favour ability grouping and
separate classes for pupils with difficulties in learning do so on pragmatic
grounds, whereas those who favour mixed-ability teaching and the integra-
tion of pupils into mainstream classrooms tended to hold egalitarian values
(Ireson et al., 1992). In the past, rigid systems of pupil grouping were more
 Raising Standards 127

likely to be found where there were more pupils of lower socio-economic

status, larger classes, greater discipline, tighter controls on school uniform,
more authoritarian teachers, more testing and a greater concentration on
the 3Rs (Fogelman, 1983). This situation in the UK appears to have
changed, with many inner city schools currently adopting mixed-ability
policies.

Placement of Pupils in Groups

The research evidence indicates a number of practical difficulties

relating to the grouping of pupils by ability, with the result that children
of similar ability are often placed in different streams. Standardized
tests of general cognitive or verbal ability are frequently used to
allocate pupils to schools or streams. The use of such tests bases the
allocation on an assumption that general intelligence is a single entity
which predicts achievement at school. This view has been challenged by
recent theories of intelligence, such as multiple intelligences (Gardner,
1983). It is also clear that the environment plays an important role in
achievement, and correlations of IQ with school grades, whilst being
significant, still leave much variation unexplained. Placement of pupils
into groups on the basis of general tests is therefore at best inexact and
can lead to the incorrect placement of children (Jackson, 1964). Within
a school, pupil behaviour may influence placement, leading to a badly
behaved bottom set. Pupils who remain in too high a stream tend to
improve but those in too low a stream tend to deteriorate (Barker Lunn,
1970; Peak and Morrison, 1988). The former tended to be the older
pupils and the latter the younger pupils in the year group.
In the UK, with the introduction of the National Curriculum and
standard assessments at the end of Key Stage 2 (year 6), some secondary
schools are now using the Key Stage test scores to allocate pupils to
groups in English, mathematics and science. This should mean that
pupils will be more easily placed into groups on the basis of progress
within the curriculum at least in those subjects. The problems of
incorrect placement and lack of movement between groups will
nevertheless remain. Once placed in too low a group, movement to a
higher group will remain difficult, because of the increasing gap in
curriculum covered.
Teachers’ preferences for ability grouping are perhaps a reflection of
the immense complexity of the task of responding to the differing needs
of a class of 30 learners. Ability grouping is seen as one way of reducing
the range of needs, thus making the teacher’s job easier. In fact, recent
inspection reports suggest that teachers frequently underestimate the
range of needs in ability grouped classes (OFSTED, 1995). This may be
one reason why better results are not achieved in such classes.
128 Understanding Learning

Classroom Practices

A substantial literature now indicates the tendency for instruction in lower

ability groups to be of different quality to that provided for high-ability groups
(Evertson, 1982; Oakes, 1985; Gamoran, 1986). While some differences are to
be expected, such as a slower pace, the concern is that instruction in low-ability
groups is conceptually simplified with more structured written work, which
leaves work fragmented (Hargreaves, 1967; Schwartz, 1981; Burgess, 1983;
Page, 1984; Oakes, 1985). Higher-ability classes tend to include more analytic,
critical thinking tasks (Hargreaves, 1967; Oakes, 1985). Pupils in high-ability
groups are also allowed more independence and choice, opportunities are
provided for discussion, and pupils are allowed to take responsibility for their
own work. Low streams tend to undertake work that is more tightly struc-
tured. There is a concentration on basic skills, worksheets and repetition with
fewer opportunities for independent learning, discussion and activities that
promote critique, analysis and creativity (Hargreaves, 1967; Burgess, 1983;
Oakes, 1985; Page, 1992). Schwartz (1981) also found that when high-track
students gave incorrect answers, teachers coaxed them to develop correct
answers, while low-track students who were incorrect were ignored. Page
(1984) suggested that streaming or tracking sets in motion a vicious cycle.
Based on stereotypes and past experience, teachers hold low expectations for
low-ability students. Perceiving these views, the students lower expectations
for themselves, confirming and further reducing expectations. Some re-
searchers have suggested that there is a hidden agenda for the low-ability
students concerned with conformity, getting along with others, working
quietly, improving study habits, punctuality, co-operation, and conforming to
rules and expectations (Oakes, 1985). Conversely, top sets may be highly
competitive with a rapid pace in lessons allowing little time for consolidation
and understanding (Boaler, 1997).
On the other hand, mixed-ability teaching is not without its problems.
There appears to be a mismatch between the underlying philosophy of
mixed ability teaching and its practice (HMI, 1978; Kerry and Sands, 1984).
In classrooms, whole-class teaching predominates and there is little evi-
dence of genuine mixed-ability group work. The cognitive demands made
on students tend to be low, as are the cognitive levels of verbal transactions
between pupils (Kerry, 1982b, 1982c; Kerry and Sands, 1984). Few group
tasks make sufficient cognitive demands on the more able and in many
cases do not even stretch average pupils. Few teachers seem to advocate
individualized learning programmes to satisfy the needs of their pupils
(Kerry, 1982a; Kerry and Sands, 1984), except in mathematics where work-
cards or textbooks are used. These studies predate the introduction of the
National Curriculum in this country and it may well be that greater cogni-
tive demands are now being made on pupils.
The evidence to date suggests that successful mixed-ability teaching re-
lies heavily on teacher skills (Reid et al., 1982). Successful teachers of
 Raising Standards 129

mixed-ability classes are flexible, use a variety of teaching modes in one

lesson, vary the pace and style of approach, use a range of audiovisual
media and encourage a variety of pupil activities. They have informal
relationships with their pupils, involve pupils in decision making and
engage them in their learning activities (Kerry and Sands, 1984). To sup-
port mixed-ability teaching schools need good backup facilities and re-
sources (Ingleson, 1982).

Alternatives to Ability Grouping

For many years, it has been recognized that a major problem of the UK
education system has been the low attainment of a large proportion of
school pupils. International comparisons in mathematics and science still
demonstrate a ‘long tail’ of poor attainment among English pupils (Keys,
Harris and Fernandes, 1996; Reynolds and Farrell, 1996; Prais, 1998). It is
clear from this review that a return to selective schooling is unlikely to
solve this problem. Instead, the emphasis should be on developing alterna-
tive forms of grouping and improving pedagogy.
One option is to adopt structured ability grouping procedures but at-
tempt to minimize their negative effects according to the principles out-
lined by Slavin (1987). First, a student’s main point of identification should
be with a mixed-ability class and regrouping by ability should occur only in
subjects in which reducing the spread of attainment in the group is par-
ticularly important. Second, the grouping plan must reduce student vari-
ability in the specific skill being taught, not just in general ability or
achievement. Third, grouping plans should frequently reassess pupils’
group assignment and should be flexible enough to allow for easy move-
ment between groups. Fourth, within the groups teachers must actually
vary their pace and level of instruction to correspond to students’ levels of
readiness and learning rates. These principles can also be applied to groups
formed across or within year groups or within classes. Within this frame-
work schools might also explore the formation of flexible groups for spe-
cific purposes, e.g., to improve language usage, attendance, literacy or the
achievement of particular groups.
A second option is to place less emphasis on ability and more on effort.
Research comparing the education systems in the Far East, the USA and
Europe suggest that the Western concern with differential ability minimizes
the importance of student, teacher and parental effort. The concept of dif-
ferential ability sets a ceiling on what can be expected from a child, whereas
in Japan and Taiwan, pupils, with support from parents and teachers, are
expected to put in additional effort if they are not successful (Stevenson and
Lee, 1990). Similarly in many European countries, the teacher’s role is to
ensure that the class moves forward together and that learning is consoli-
dated by pupils before moving on. This approach assumes that all pupils will
130 Understanding Learning

attain similar specified levels of achievement and implies that the teacher will
adopt a whole-class approach to instruction.
Another alternative is to modularize the curriculum, allowing greater
flexibility in the ways in which students can progress through school. Pupils,
with advice and support from their teachers, take greater responsibility for
their own learning, selecting modules or levels of work within modules, and
evaluating their progress. This might be done for some or all curriculum
subjects, while maintaining a core of compulsory subjects. Extension and
support modules in core subjects could also be included. Such an approach
would facilitate the broadening of access to learning. It could be accom-
plished within the normal school day but a more radical option would
require a longer school day, with classes taking place in the evenings and at
weekends in addition to ‘normal’ school times. Timetabling would become
more flexible and there would be more stress on independent study and
improved library and computer facilities. Schools would become centres of
learning for the whole community with classes including adults and school-
aged children. Such a scenario would enable schools to play a central role
in the development of a learning society.
Apart from grouping procedures, there are further possibilities that might
be considered. One is to improve methods for teaching mixed-ability classes
by studying effective mixed ability teaching both in this country and over-
seas. In this country there has been a tendency to play down the science of
pedagogy and to consider teaching as an art (Simon, 1984). This view, cou-
pled with the emphasis on the differential abilities of pupils, has tended to
focus attention and debate on the individual development of teachers and
pupils. Other countries, such as Germany, France, Switzerland and Japan,
have placed more importance on the development of pedagogy with the
specific goal of ensuring that all pupils in a class attain a certain standard.
Although there is now a large international literature on ability group-
ing, there has been very little research in this country in recent years. The
current intense debate in the USA and Canada, where there is consider-
able pressure to discontinue tracking because of its undesirable social con-
sequences, suggests that a return to a national system of selection and
structured grouping is, in the long term, no more likely to succeed in the
UK now than it did earlier this century. Educators and researchers, in
collaboration with parents and other interested parties in the wider com-
munity, need to develop alternatives which will carry us forward into the
twenty-first century and will encourage the development of the skills and
expertise of today’s young people for the future, not for the past.

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 11
Wide Eyes and Open Minds: Observing,
Assessing and Respecting Children’s
Early Achievements

Cathy Nutbrown

This chapter will consider, in three sections, how educators might demon-
strate their respect for young children through their observations and as-
sessments. First, I will use some stories about children and their parents to
discuss aspects of observation. Second, I focus on assessment, what it might
mean and issues leading to the notion of respectful assessment. Finally, I
conclude with some ideas that educators may wish to consider if they are
further to respect children’s achievements.

Observing Children

Children seeing with wide eyes

Children have an awesome capacity to observe in fine detail and they learn
from what they see. Parents and other early childhood educators who
watch young children know that they have learned so much from watching
those close to them and paying attention to things they see. They learn
about the uses of keys, how to pour tea from a play teapot, use a knife and
fork, use computers, turn on the television, choose a favourite video, oper-
ate the video or audio tape recorder, read books, get dressed, hold conver-
sations, hypothesize about how things work or why they have become,
resolve conflicts, seek help when they need it. There is so much to learn in
the early years, and learning is so complex, that perhaps it would be true to
say that only young children are capable of it! Such a capacity for uninter-
rupted, unthwartable, multidisciplinary learning deserves enormous re-
spect from adults.

Seeing, understanding, acting

Children approach their learning with wide eyes and open minds, so their
educators too need wide eyes and open minds to see clearly and to under-

134
 Wide Eyes and Open Minds 135

stand what they see. If educators are blinkered, having tunnel vision, they
may not have the full picture — so it’s not simply a case of understanding
what is seen but it is first crucial to see what is really happening and not
what adults sometimes suppose to be happening. Children and the things
they do need to be seen in the whole context and adults working with
them must be open to seeing what exists not what their professional mind
tells them they should see. Educators need wide eyes too, to guard
against stereotypes and to combat prejudices about capabilities of chil-
dren based on such factors as their gender, race, language, culture or
disability. Watching children thinking is one of the greatest privileges of
any educator, and there is wide agreement that close observation is an
essential process of working with young children (PPA, 1991; Drum-
mond, Rouse and Pugh, 1992; Pugh, 1992; Drummond, 1993; Nutbrown,
1994a).
Educators need to watch the children they work with, keeping open
minds and responding with sensitivity and respect to what they see. Chil-
dren need well-educated educators with knowledge at their fingertips,
adults working with them who:
@ see what is happening,
@ understand what they see, and
®@ act on what they understand.
Just seeing, just understanding, is not enough. The next essential stage is to
take children further along their own learning pathways. This is a marker
of quality in any early education provision.
The notion that young children’s learning is linked with developmental
patterns, or schemas, has been explored by Chris Athey (1990). Educators
can provide a more appropriate curriculum which matches the develop-
mental levels and interests of children by using their knowledge of schemas
and their skills as observers to develop greater awareness of patterns of
learning and understand more about children’s predominant interests. The
following example shows how adults’ knowledge of one child’s schema
supported her learning and development. The educators (at her group
provision and her mother at home) were seeing, understanding and acting
upon what they saw.

Belinda
Belinda was 3 years old and she seemed to be tuned in to spotting or
seeking out opportunities to enclose or be enclosed, and objects which
enclosed. At home she enjoyed emptying and filling the washing machine,
and in the garden and the bath she filled numerous containers with water to
the point that they overflowed. She and her mother built up a collection of
tins and boxes that she enjoyed fitting inside one another in different
combinations and she often enjoyed sitting inside cardboard boxes used to
carry the shopping from the supermarket, sometimes pretending that it was
a car, bus, boat or rocket. Some of Belinda’s favourite books contained
136 Understanding Learning

stories of hiding or enclosing in one way or another; stories like Boxed In

(Williams, 1991) and Where’s Spot? (Hill, 1980). At her sessional group
Belinda particularly enjoyed playing in the house and hiding the farm
animals inside the little wooden farm buildings. She dressed up and liked to
play in the tunnel and hidey boxes outside.
Exploring her enveloping/containing schema, Belinda encountered
much learning which linked with different areas of learning and experi-
ence. She learned about being with others and being apart, co-operating
when equipment needed to be shared and dealing with her emotions when
she wanted to be the only person in the house and was told to allow other
children to play too. Opportunities at home and in the group enabled
Belinda to explore her schema and develop her knowledge. The adults
around her, sensitized to her interests, provided encouragement where a
lack of knowledge may have led adults to stop Belinda doing some of the
things she found interesting.
All the adults who lived or worked with Belinda were able to support
and extend her learning. She encountered mathematical experiences of
collecting, sorting, selecting, counting, ordering, reordering, grading, cate-
gorizing, placing. She puzzled ideas of shape and size and how things fitted
together. She asked questions such as ‘Why does the washing have to get
covered in water before it is clean?’ and ‘Why do we have to wrap the
potatoes before they go in the oven?’, ‘Why won’t this one [big tin] fit
inside this one here [small tin]?’ Her mother extended her interest and in
doing so provided more linked experiences such as involving her in baking,
washing, writing letters and posting them. They looked at holes and hiding
places, talked about being inside a lift and packed the shopping into boxes
in the supermarket. She began to learn more about space and place rela-
tionships, finding out about relative size. Belinda’s mother acted on what
she saw and what she understood.
Vygotsky (1978) stressed the crucial role of the adult. Believing that
adults with expertise, who were well ‘tuned in’ to the child they were
working with, could bridge the gap (the zone of proximal development)
between what a child can do with help ‘today’ and what — with sensitive and
well-timed support — she can do ‘tomorrow’. Much of Belinda’s learning
became possible through interaction.
Children have a right to educators with good observation skills, and the
ability to match learning opportunities to a child’s prevailing interest. Prac-
tice must be underpinned by theories of how children learn, and all the
adults involved need to work together and make sense of what they see.
Children are denied this right when they spend time with adults who are
poorly trained and inadequately supported.
Communication between parents and educators and continuity of expe-
rience between home and group settings is all-important. Learning experi-
ences at home can be reinforced at the group when adults working
alongside children make time to observe and understand and are able to
define their own role more clearly in relation to the children.
 Wide Eyes and Open Minds 157

Time must be made for ongoing, co-operative and informed dialogue

between parents and educators in home or group settings if children’s
efforts are to be noticed and understood. This makes for a partnership of
the highest order and it is an all-important factor in supporting, extending
and challenging children as they learn and nurturing them through the
emotional struggles that go alongside that learning. Respectful observation
can occur where the climate is such that educators and parents — together —
watch, listen to and talk with children.

Adults seeing with wide eyes and open minds

Adults need to make detailed and sensitive observations really to ‘see’

what children are doing, to make sense of their actions, to recognize their
achievements and to create further learning opportunities.
Nadia (7 months) was sitting in her high chair eating a plate of pasta and peas.
Using her left hand she carefully picked up each piece of pasta with her fingers
and ate them until only peas were left on the plate. Then she ate the peas, one at
a time, picking up each one with her fingers, looking at it closely before putting it
in her mouth.

Nadia showed any interested and attentive adult that she knew what she
wanted to eat first, how she wanted to eat it, which hand she preferred to
use and that she could sort different things, in this case two types of food.
Young children seize everyday experiences such as eating to develop and
then to apply their newly acquired abilities, and adults who watch carefully
then have the opportunity to understand a little more of what they know
and can do. Adults who persist in teaching children of 2 and 3 to sort
coloured counters, bricks or specially purchased plastic toys need first to
observe the children to see if it is a skill they already possess and use in
real-life situations and therefore do not need to practise in specially created
situations of dubious purpose.
As well as observing children to support their learning and understand
their development adults have a role to play in protecting children and a
responsibility in relation to healthy development, for as Brierley (1980, p.
17) wrote: ‘Progress in education and health go hand in hand, for a sick,
tired and hungry child will not learn properly.’

Charlotte
Charlotte was just 4 years old. She was admitted to the nursery when she
was 3 years and 10 months old, after her mother applied for a place.
Initially, Charlotte attended part-time as pressure on places in the nur-
sery class made it difficult to offer more than a part-day place to any child
other than those with special educational needs or who needed priority
for some other recognized reason. Both the nursery teacher and the
nursery nurse felt uneasy about this little girl; they felt that her initial
attitude to them as unknown adults was wary and she seemed, even as
138 Understanding Learning

time went on, to find it difficult to trust them. At first they put this down
to natural apprehension of a new situation, but observed carefully and
felt that her timidness and general lack of confidence were a cause for
concern. One morning Charlotte arrived later than normal and her grand-
mother, who brought her, explained that the child had stayed with her the
night before. That day she was very distressed and spent much of the time
putting the dolls to bed and then getting them out, smacking them and
telling them to be quiet. The staff observed carefully and later, during a
quiet moment in the home corner, she said something in an almost inaud-
ible voice that made the teacher think there was reason to suspect that
Charlotte might have suffered some form of abuse. Events moved swiftly,
bringing Charlotte, her mother and the teacher into contact with social
workers, police, medical personnel, the child psychologist and the child
protection liaison teacher, to name but a few. Charlotte’s mother, a single
parent, was most distressed, she had two other children under 5 at home
and always wanted what was best for all her children. Alerted to
Charlotte’s behaviour and comments in the nursery, she recognized other
signs that something might be happening at home and suspected a young
male baby-sitter of violence towards Charlotte. This led to court proceed-
ings and eventually a conviction. A home start volunteer offered friend-
ship and support to Charlotte’s mother to help her to cope through the
distressing time, and counselling and appropriate medical treatment were
arranged for Charlotte.

Parents seeing with open minds — partnership

As the story of Belinda illustrates, parents can often see things others do
not see, and through working in partnership, parents and educators can
see, understand and act together.

Sean
Sean was 3% years old. He attended a nursery class each morning, where
he spent much of his time playing outdoors, on bikes, in tents, climbing,
gardening and running. His nursery teacher was concerned that he did not
benefit from the other things available indoors — painting, writing, drawing,
construction, sharing books, jigsaws, and so on. Even when some of these
opportunities were placed outside, Sean still seemed to avoid them. The
nursery teacher spoke with Sean’s mother, who said: ‘We don’t have a
garden and there’s nowhere for Sean to play outside — he hasn’t got a bike
and there’s no park for climbing, or swings around here, or a space to do
outside things, but we have lots of books and jigsaws, Lego, play people, we
draw and make things.’ Sean was balancing his own curriculum — but the
adults involved needed to observe and discuss in order to understand what
he was doing.
 Wide Eyes and Open Minds 139

The Sheffield Early Literacy Development Project (Hannon, Weinberger

and Nutbrown, 1991) worked with parents to explore how together parents
and the project team could promote children’s early literacy. After home
visits and group meetings the parents saw more of their children’s capabil-
ities and they understood more of what they saw. Children’s homes and
members of their families can offer powerful learning encounters. It makes
sense for professional educators and families to work in collaboration,
sharing their knowledge, insights and questions.

Views of Assessment

Drummond and Nutbrown (1992, pp. 87-97) discussed four questions in

relation to observing and assessing young children:
Why assess and observe young children?
Observation and assessment are the processes by which we can both establish the
progress that has already been made, and explore the future, the learning that is
yet to come.
Which children should be assessed?
Every child in every form of early years provision is a learner with a right to
equality of learning opportunities. Every child’s educators, therefore, have the
responsibility of observing, assessing, understanding, and so extending that
learning.
What do we observe and assess?
Children, and everything they do: exploring, discovering, puzzling, dreaming,
struggling with the world, taking their place in it, and making their mark on it.
How do we set about observing and assessing young children?
All early childhood educators already use observation as an integral part of their
daily work. The implicit, covert skills of these acts of observing can be developed,
and made more explicit: the fruits of observation can be stated more confidently
as we learn to record, examine, reflect and act upon the knowledge we gain
through observation and assessment.

The UK government requires that all children are assessed from the age of
5. Decisions have been made about ‘what counts’ as ‘worthwhile’ assess-
ment and, in the process, what learning is worthy of assessment. Assess-
ment must go further than this, it must incorporate some underpinning
principles that guide educators in their assessment of children. The
principles of assessment underpinning the work of Drummond and
Nutbrown (1992, adapted from pp. 102-3) are summarized below.
@ Respect: Assessment must be carried out with proper respect for the
children themselves, for their parents, carers and educators.
® Care and education (‘educaré’): The care and education of young chil-
dren are inseparable. Quality care is educational and quality education is
caring. In our assessment practice we will recognize little children learn-
ing to love one another, as well as learning to count.
140 Understanding Learning

@ The power of the educator: Early years educators must first acknowledge
their awesome power and, second, use it lovingly. The ‘loving use of
power’ (Smail, 1984) in the assessment of young children is a central
principle.
@ Jn the interests of children: Assessment is a process that must enhance
children’s lives, their learning and development. Assessment must work
for children.
Views of assessment depend upon decisions about what to assess, why it is
assessed, who assesses and how and when to assess. Every educator needs
to consider what a respectful assessment process might look like and how
to assess young children’s learning and development repectfully. Wolfen-
dale’s (1993) review of baseline assessment instruments is useful in this
process of consideration and decision-making. The pack, Making Assess-
ment Work (Drummond, Rouse and Pugh, 1992), helps educators to attend
to emotional dimensions of assessment as well as philosophical, pedagogi-
cal and practical issues. The introduction to the section ‘About Feelings’
states (ibid., p. 21):
Helping children to have a sense of their own self worth, encouraging them to
believe that they are special, capable, unique individuals, helping them to recog-
nize and accept the importance of their feelings about themselves and other
people; these are some of the most difficult and challenging tasks all early years
educators undertake. And if we are to do these things effectively, we need to
think carefully about children’s emotional development, and about how their
feelings are affected by our words and deeds — and feelings.
In making observations and assessments of children’s development —
cognitive, physical and affective educators make numerous decisions. If early
education is, in the terms of the UN Convention, to enable every child to fulfil
his or her potential, ways need to be found to identify strengths and to support
developmental needs. Key questions need to be addressed: Whose knowledge
is of most worth? Is it what adults know or can assessment value what children
know and the sense they make of situations they encounter? Decisions about
what counts as valid goals and outcomes need to be made, and along with this
goes the question of who decides: educators, governments, employers, local
education authorities, children, parents? The UK Prime Minister’s decision to
include responsibility for employment within the Department for Education in
July 1995 suggested a policy position that education is for training and training
is for work. It also indicated that education is about training to do a job, a
narrower focus than a view of ‘education for life’ might suggest, or the broader
notion of ‘lifelong learning’ debated by the Commission on Social Justice
(1994). Such decisions can influence ideas of ‘what counts’ as learning and
therefore what is worthy of assessment.

A language of assessment
Different educators talk in different ways using different words about their
work. These discourses employ a variety of terms and assumptions.
 Wide Eyes and Open Minds 141

Positive discourses about young children can include their abilities and
their struggles to include themselves in the worlds of home, centre, com-
munity, that adults place them in. Other discourses take place in the media,
in government, and where observers of, and participants in, early child-
hood issues continue their own discourses. Terminology chosen for each
discourse can contribute significantly to the debate and may influence the
climate in which the discourse takes place. As Michael Rosen (1994, p. 1)
notes: ‘We use the same word for the educational process as we do for
horse racing — a course; a predetermined sequence of obstacles that will be
negotiated by all participants; anyone falling will be eliminated; only the
first three give returns on bets.’
Some participants in the discourse about education choose (or adopt)
the language of battle and competition: ‘orders’, ‘standards’, ‘levels’,
‘stages’, ‘targets’, and so on. Others choose a language more fitting to
‘cherishing the growth of the young’, using terms like support, nurture,
cherish, development, facilitation, opportunity. Language and common un-
derstanding of the terms we use are so important. Many early childhood
teachers are already ‘bilingual’ in some professional settings where necess-
ary, reading, recording and communicating in the imposed language of the
National Curriculum and its assessment. At the same time they may work,
think, worry and discuss with colleagues and parents in the language of
early childhood, the language of educaré (Nutbrown, 1994a, 1994b). Con-
versations that value children’s achievements and positive discourses in
early childhood are impossible without words like development, explora-
tion, facilitation, response, support, interest, investigation and growth.

What does respectful assessment look like?

Respectful assessment takes account of a range of factors and achieve-

ments, and values the participation of the person being assessed as well as
the perspectives of those carrying out the assessment. It includes self-
assessment and collaborative assessment as well as assessment of one per-
son by someone else. There are examples of respectful assessment (Wolf-
endale, 1990; Barrs et al., 1991; Bartholomew and Bruce, 1993; Whalley,
1994) where parents, children and their educators and carers work together
to record achievement and progress and where such assessments contribute
to planning further opportunities for learning.

Respecting Children’s Early Achievements

If educators observe children carefully and thoughtfully with wide eyes and
open minds they will be showing children the respect they deserve, both as
people and as learners. A 6-month-old baby amazes her parents with the
142 Understanding Learning

tenacity with which she explores, how she uses every single second to find
out, enjoy, request, repeat, seek. She is learning, as any 6-month-old will
learn — demanding opportunities, challenging (noisily) some of the situa-
tions she finds herself in, seizing every moment — thinking about each
experience, concentrating on simple things: a toy, a finger, a collar of a silky
dressing gown, a spoon, a piece of banana, a reflection in a mirror, a sound,
an expression. Adults who respect children’s early achievements make the
best educators, for they know that showing respect means accepting some
responsibility.

Responsibilities
The responsibilities which early child educators and carers must shoulder
in order to show respect for children’s early achievements are considerable
(Drummond, 1993; Nutbrown, 1994a). People who work with young chil-
dren must themselves continue to learn. If they do not continue to read,
discuss and to think, to keep up to date with current issues, with theory and
practice, they show a disrespect for the people they work with, the children
and their parents. Systems of funding and management that do not support
early childhood educators in furthering their own learning perpetuate
a disrespect for young children. There must be consideration of the
principles of observation and assessment and serious and continuous
efforts to put them into practice. In carrying out all these responsibilities,
wherever children are living and learning, ways need to be found to allow
children the time they need.

Allowing children time

Time is a precious and important commodity for all human beings and
most of us feel that time is remorselessly short. Technology developed to
enable us to accomplish things more quickly seems to have the effect of
requiring us to do more in a shorter time, and adults at home and at work
try to fit so many tasks into their day. But children have their own pace and
while, as adults, we pursue our own (and others’) timescales and agendas
we need to be mindful of the need young children have to take their time.
Pausing to listen to an aeroplane in the sky, stopping to watch a ladybird on
a plant, sitting on a rock to watch the waves crash over the quayside —
children have their own agendas and timescales, as they find out more
about their world and make their place in it: they work hard not to let
adults hurry them and we need to heed their message.

Seizing the day and biding one’s time

Gardeners don’t plant runner beans in January to get an earlier harvest than
their neighbours; if they tried, they would probably get shrivelled and stunted
 Wide Eyes and Open Minds 143

beans. They fertilise the ground in the early months of the year, so that when the
beans are planted — at the right time — they will flourish.
(Oxfordshire County Council, 1991)

There is a sense of urgency about childhood — of hastening progress, of

accelerating development. Is this born out of wanting the best for children
or from some belief or value base which says the state of childhood is worth
less than the state of adulthood and so we must do all we can to reach the
day when childhood is over? Gabriela Mistral said:

We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worse crime is abandoning
the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait.
The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is
being made and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer
‘Tomorrow’. His name is ‘Today’.

This sense of urgency, the need to pay attention to children when they need
it, can often become confused or be misinterpreted as the need to hasten
progress. This is seen in the statutory age of schooling in the UK, where
children must begin school at 5, and, even more worrying, in the current
trend to admit 4-year-olds into school, endorsed by the decision of the UK
government in July 1995 to issue vouchers to parents of 4-year-old children
that can be used for a variety of forms of ‘nursery education’, including
early entry into primary schools. To what extent is this plan made out of
respect for children? Are its roots more securely embedded in financial and
political motivations? These are questions which respectful educators —
parents and professionals — would do well to ponder.
There is much truth in Mistral’s words — for children it is today here,
now, this minute that matters, but what we give them today must be made
of the things they need today. Early intervention of the right kind at the
right time bears dividends, but inappropriate intervention can cause harm.
There is a mischievous mistruth in the belief that doing certain things early
helps children to get ready for the next stage. The best way to help a child
to get ready to be 5 is to let her be 3 when she is 3 and let him be 4 when he
is 4, and to hold high expectations of what children in their first 48 months
of life might achieve. The quality of experiences offered to children in their
formative years are most important.
The Children Act 1989 (Department of Health, 1989) focused attention
mainly on health and safety of premises and child protection, but it is
equally important to nurture healthy minds, secure emotions, grounded
personalities and build on children’s capacity for quality thinking. Provid-
ing opportunities for healthy living and learning from birth to 5 is a way of
seizing the day and biding one’s time simultaneously — making the most of
every moment as well as having patience and respect for the pace of
childhood.
Respectful educators will strive to afford every child equality of oppor-
tunity. Not just children who are easy to work with, obliging, endearing,
clean, pretty, articulate, capable, but every child — respecting them for who
144 Understanding Learning

they are, respecting their language, their culture, their history, their family,
their abilities, their needs, their name, their ways and their very essence.
This means understanding children’s needs and building on their abilities.

To build on children’s abilities, adults with knowledge and

expertise are needed

Adult knowledge is crucial to extending children’s learning and essential if

children’s early achievements are to be recognized and respected. Gura
(1992) demonstrated how being able to discuss children’s brick con-
structions with the correct technical language — language of mathematics,
architecture, art and aesthetics — was essential in building on children’s
abilities. The importance of assessing children’s progress is acknowledged
by the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority, which describes the
following as a feature of good practice (1996, p. 6): ‘Children’s progress and
future learning needs are assessed and recorded through frequent obser-
vation and are shared regularly with parents.’ Adults’ knowledge about
children’s learning must be derived from their informed observation of
them and dialogue with them and their parents.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the

assessment of children

With proper respect for children and childhood we can construct a curricu-
lum for young children which, in the words of the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, ensures that:
Every child shall have the right to freedom of expression: this right shall include
freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless
of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any
other media of the child’s choice.
(article 13)

We can then find effective ways of assessing children’s progress within such
a curriculum.
The assessment of children in their early years must also find ways to
enact the rights of children to ‘the development of the child’s personality,
talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential’ (article
29).
Our view of childhood, of education, and hence the ways we observe and
assess their development, can be one which respects children and their
early achievements if childhood is viewed as a time of growth to be valued
for itself. As Hepworth said: ‘Perhaps what one wants to say is formed in
childhood and the rest of one’s life is spent in trying to say it.’! Adults with
expertise who respectfully watch children engaged in their process of liv-
 Wide Eyes and Open Minds 145

ing, learning, loving and being are in a better position to understand what it
is these youngest citizens are trying to say and find ways of helping them to
say it.

References

Athey, C. (1990) Extending Thought in Young Children: A Parent-Teacher Part-

nership, London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Barrs, M., Ellis, S., Hester, H. and Thomas, A. (1991) Pattern of Learning: The
Primary Language Record and the National Curriculum, London: Centre for
Language in Primary Education.
Bartholomew, L. and Bruce, T. (1993) Getting to Know You: A Guide to Record-
Keeping in Early Childhood Education and Care, London: Hodder and
Stoughton.
Brierley, J. (1980) Children’s Well-Being: Growth, Development and Learning from
Conception to Adolescence, Slough: NFER.
Commission on Social Justice/Institute for Public Policy Research (1994) Social
Justice: Strategies for National Renewal, London: Vintage.
Committee on the Rights of the Child (1995) Consideration of Reports of State
Parties: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, CRC/C/SR.205,
January.
Department of Health (1989) The Children Act, London: HMSO.
Drummond, M. J. (1993) Assessing Children’s Learning, London: David Fulton.
Drummond, M. J. and Nutbrown, C. (1992) Observing and assessing young chil-
dren, in G. Pugh (ed.) Contemporary Issues in the Early Years: Working Collab-
oratively for Children, London: NCB/Paul Chapman Publishing.
Drummond, M. J., Rouse, D. and Pugh, G. (1992) Making Assessment Work,
London: NCB/NES Arnold.
Gura, P. (ed.) (1992) Exploring Learning: Young Children and Block-Play, London:
Paul Chapman Publishing.
Hannon, P., Weinberger, J. and Nutbrown, C. (1991) A study of ways of working
with parents to promote early literacy development, Research Papers in Educa-
tion, 6(2), pp. 77-97.
Hill, E. (1980) Where’s Spot?, London: Heinemann.
Newell, P. (1991) The UN Convention and Children’s Rights in the UK, National
Children’s Bureau, London.
Nutbrown, C. (1994a) Threads of Thinking: Young Children Learning and the Role
of Early Education, London: Paul Chapman Publishing.
Nutbrown, C. (1994b) Young children in educational establishments, in T. David
(ed.) Working Together for Young Children, London: Routledge.
Oxfordshire County Council (1991) Quality in Learning for Under Fives, Oxford:
Oxfordshire County Council.
Pugh, G. (ed.) (1992) Contemporary Issues in the Early Years: Working Collab-
oratively for Children, London: NCB/Paul Chapman Publishing.
Preschool Playgroups Associated (PPA) (1991) What Children Learn in Playgroup:
A PPA Curriculum, London: PPA.
Rosen, M. (ed.) (1994) The Penguin Book of Childhood, London: Penguin.
School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) (1996) Nursery Education:
Desirable Outcomes for Children’s Learning on Entering Compulsory Education,
London: SCAA and DFEE.
146 Understanding Learning

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Level Psycho-

logical Processes, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Whalley, M. (1994) Learning to be Strong, London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Williams, V. (1991) Boxed In, London: Red Fox.
Wolfendale, S. (1990) All About Me, London: NES, Arnold.
Section 4: Cultural Capital and Learning

The final part of this reader returns to the earlier discussion about demo-
cratic participation in education. In particular this section highlights the
importance of pupils and parents contributing to, and having a voice in,
debates about education. Parental rights and choices are a consideration in
the measurement of school and teacher accountability. It is through par-
ents’ perceptions of a school’s effectiveness that popular schools remain
competitive and others decline. On the other hand the significance of par-
ental roles to the successful learning of their children is increasingly being
recognized. This would encompass learning in school and out; in cognitive,
social, cultural and emotional domains. Moreover, as other chapters have
indicated, within constructivist views of learning children’s perceptions are
an essential part of the learning and assessment process.
The ideological clashes which could occur in linking home and school
can only be avoided by giving due consideration to the complex and con-
troversial dimensions of what partnership is, what purposes it serves and
how it is to be established and maintained. Positive but unquestioning and
uncritical assumptions about the ‘right relationship’ between the partners
in this relationship will not serve either party well. Schools are the crucible
in which children’s personalities are forged and identities confirmed. What
this means for us as educators is that issues of politics, social class, gender,
sexuality and racism as well as achievement should all form part of the
agenda.
Taken together the chapters in this section:

examine the effect of a testing regime on the learners’ self-perceptions

consider the formation of academic and social identity of learners
explore the notion of home-school partnerships
examine issues of cultural capital within home-school relationships
consider the ways in which the interests of certain groups work against
the interests of others.

In Chapter 12, Diane Reay and Dylan Wiliam examine a dimension of

assessment which is often overlooked, namely, the effect of assessment on
the learners in terms of their experience of the assessment process, of the
judgements made about them and their perceptions of themselves as
learners. Drawing on interviews and observations, Reay and Wiliam iden-
tify how the processes of categorization and consignment affect not only

147
148 Understanding Learning

the children at an immediate and personal level, but also the pedagogical
decision-making of teachers and the curriculum that is offered to children.
In this chapter the links between testing, teaching and driving up standards
are clearly visible, exposing the extent of the pressure not only on the belief
systems of the teachers but on the children’s perceptions of themselves. For
the children and their teachers, as their voices testify, these are testing
times.
In Chapter 13, Andrew Pollard and Ann Filer also highlight the need to
consider the views of children and to pay heed to the factors which influ-
ence self-perception and identity. Developing a recurring theme in this
book, Pollard and Filer emphasize the importance of social relationships in
both learning and in the formation of identity. Drawing on longitudinal
case study data of one child, they show how William shaped, maintained
and changed his social and academic identity through changing structures,
expectations and teacher perceptions of successive classroom contexts. It is
important to remember that the models of ‘learning, identity and social
setting’ and ‘dynamics of strategic action’ presented in this chapter were
originally constructed as part of a much larger longitudinal studies.
In Chapter 14, Sally Tomlinson turns her attention to issues related to
home-school partnerships. She begins her chapter with an overview of the
history of home-school contacts. This reveals that up until the 1970s home—
school contacts were never a large priority in English education. Moreover,
discrimination and repression of some parent groups have always featured
as part of the debate. For example, the literature discussing the relationship
between school attainment, personal and social behaviour has, Tomlinson
would argue, always worked to the disadvantage of working-class homes
and parents. The four stages of progression in the growth of home-school
partnerships provides a useful framework for those wishing to establish and
maintain more equitable and democratic links between home and school.
In Chapter 15, Carol Vincent develops and expands issues raised in the
previous chapter by giving further consideration to the way in which rela-
tionships between parents and teachers, homes and schools are presented
in the literature. She argues that much of the home-school literature lacks
a critical appproach particularly with regard to class, gender or ethnic-
based differences. The aim of this chapter is to rectify this omission by
highlighting, with reference to two schools, some of the salient ways in
which ethnicity, class and gender affect home-school relationships. The
chapter concludes that a focus on such issues is an integral part of an
analytical approach to researching and debating home-school relations.
 12
‘Pil Be A Nothing’: Structure, Agency
and the Construction of Identity through
Assessment

Diane Reay and Dylan Wiliam

The primary purpose of the 1988 Education Reform Act was to create an
educational ‘market’ that, it was assumed by its proponents, would increase
standards of performance in schools. Freeing schools from the homogeniz-
ing effects that local education authorities were believed to exert would
create a diversity of provision, allowing parents, who were generally
viewed as the ‘consumers’ of education (rather than, say, students, or the
wider community), to choose schools that reflected their aspirations and
wishes. Popular schools would expand, and those that were not, would
have to improve or, if they could not, would close. However, in order to
allow the market to function ‘efficiently’, it was necessary to create an
index of performance. The national school-leaving examination (the Gen-
eral Certificate of Secondary Education) provided such an index for stu-
dents at age 16, but of course would provide no information about the
performance of students in primary schools. The solution enacted in the
Education Reform Act was the creation of a National Curriculum for all
students of compulsory school age in England and Wales, with national
assessments for all 7-, 11- and 14-year-olds, the results of which, at least for
11- and 14-year-olds, were to be published for each school.
Although it was claimed that these results would also be useful for
informing parents of the academic progress of their children, the informa-
tion on the attainment of 7-, 11- and 14-year-olds is not available until June
or July, and is therefore far too late to influence choices of junior or
secondary schools, or of subject options in upper secondary school. The
primary purpose of National Curriculum assessment is to provide informa-
tion on the performance of schools, rather than individuals, in order to
inform parental choice (Daugherty, 1995).
Since the development and implementation of the National Curriculum,
however, it has become clear that parents and students have not relied
exclusively, or even primarily, on aggregate measures of the academic
achievement of students in selecting schools, as might have been hoped for
by the proponents of the Education Reform Act (see, for example, Gewirtz,
Ball and Bowe, 1995). A range of other factors, such as the appropriateness
of the school for the individual child, are also taken into account.

149
150 Understanding Learning

More recently, however, the pressure on schools to improve their stu-

dents’ performance on National Curriculum tests and in national examina-
tions has been increased by the use of aggregate measures of student
performance in the national system of school inspections. The original
report of the National Curriculum Task Group on Assessment and Testing
(1988) proposed a system of reporting National Curriculum assessment
results that would allow the increase in students’ attainment over a period
of schooling (the so-called ‘value added’) to be reported alongside any
absolute measures of achievement. Despite the considerable technical diffi-
culties in agreeing an operational definition of ‘value added’ (Wiliam, 1992;
Jesson, 1996), it is government policy that such value-added measures of
achievement should be published alongside absolute measures of students’
academic performance.
In view of this, the insistence of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of
Schools (Office for Standards in Education, 1997) that inspections of
schools take into account absolute levels of achievement in schools, irre-
spective of the students’ prior attainment, seems rather perverse. While it
cannot be denied that there are considerable variations in the academic
success of schools drawing students from similar cultural and socio-
economic backgrounds, to subject a school to ‘special measures’ (the
preliminary stage of a process that can result in the school being closed)
because its students arrive at the school with lower attainment than might
be expected for their age is clearly unjust. More importantly for the
purpose of the present study, it creates a situation in which schools,
particularly those in socio-economically disadvantaged areas, are under
pressure to increase the indices of performance (e.g., the proportion of
students achieving a given level in the National Curriculum tests) at
almost any price.
The effects of such ‘top-down’ attempts to improve educational provi-
sion on teachers and on school communities have been the subject of
extensive studies (see, for example, Corbett and Wilson, 1991), but apart
from the work of Rudduck, Chaplain and Wallance (1995) with secondary
school students and that of Andrew Pollard and his colleagues with prim-
ary pupils (Pollard with Filer, 1996; Pollard, Thiessen and Filer, 1997),
there is virtually no literature which engages with students’ perspectives.
Rather, it is in the silences in relation to children’s perspectives that it is
assumed either that National Curriculum assessments have minimal impact
on children’s subjectivities or that children’s concerns and attitudes are
merely a backdrop to the assessment process; simply part of the social
context. On the one hand the interplay between the assessment process
and children’s identities and identifications is not considered an important
area for research and theoretical consideration, while on the other hand
children are subsumed as a means to an end within a process which is
primarily an exercise in evaluating schools and teachers. However, despite
the former assumption that their agency is unaffected by the assessments
and the latter assumption that they are passively caught up in a process
 ‘Till Be A Nothing’ 151

where the main focus is teachers and the institution, children are
simultaneously active in the assessment process and profoundly affected by
it.

The research study

Patricia Broadfoot describes the assessment arrangements for National

Curriculum assessment as an example of the ways in which apparently
benign and rational techniques of assessment are currently being used to
impose norms by reducing value debates to technical questions (Broadfoot,
1996). However, the consequences of the new assessment system for pupils
have been overlooked in much of the research which examines changes in
assessment. This small-scale study attempts to highlight the importance of
considering children’s perspectives on assessment if we are to glimpse the
extent to which new subjectivities are being constructed in the primary
classroom. Although the research project extended over the full school
year from September 1997 until July 1998, this chapter draws on empirical
data gathered over the Easter term 1998 to provide some preliminary
indications of the impact of National Curriculum assessment on year 6 (age
10-11) students’ self-definitions as learners.
The focus of this chapter is a class of 20 students in Windermere School —
a south London primary school serving a predominantly working-class,
ethnically mixed community, and whose students typically achieve levels
slightly below the national average. Initially, all the students were inter-
viewed in focus groups and half the class were then interviewed individ-
ually about their attitudes towards, and feelings about, impending National
Curriculum tests. Additionally, both the children and their class teacher
were observed over the term as increasing amounts of time were devoted
to test preparation. The themes generated through focus group discussions
were strongly supported both in individual interviews and by the data
collected through participant observation.

The SATs: Shifting Identifications as Learners

Hannah: Im really scared about the SATs [standard assessment tasks]. Mrs
O’Brien [a teacher at the school] came and talked to us about our
spelling and I’m no good at spelling and David [the class teacher] is
giving us times tables tests every morning and I’m hopeless at times
tables so I’m frightened I’ll do the SATs and I’ll be a nothing.
Diane: J don’t understand Hannah. You can’t be a nothing.
Hannah: Yes, you can ’cause you have to get a level like a level 4 or a level 5S and
if you’re no good at spellings and times tables you don’t get those levels
and so you’re a nothing.
152 Understanding Learning

Diane: Im sure that’s not right.

Hannah: Yes it is ‘cause that’s what Mrs O’Brien was saying.

This is a particularly stark example but it exemplifies some of the ways in

which children’s identifications as learners (Skeggs, 1997) are constructed
through the assessment process. For Hannah what constitutes academic
success is correct spelling and knowing your times tables. She is an accom-
plished writer, a gifted dancer and artist and good at problem-solving yet
none of those skills makes her somebody in her own eyes. Instead she
constructs herself as a failure, an academic non-person, by a metonymic
shift in which she comes to see herself entirely in terms of the level to which
her performance in the SATs is ascribed. Although Windermere School
had a general policy of playing down the importance of SATs, Hannah’s
teacher, in his second year of teaching, was still feeling under intense
external pressure to ensure his pupils do well. As is apparent in the follow-
ing quotation, the fever pitch in the classroom surrounding the impending
SATs is generated in no small part by his anxieties:
I was appalled by how most of you did on the science test. You don’t know
anything. I want to say that you are judged at the end of the day by what you get
in the SATs and some of you won't even get level 2.
Some children resist and challenge such all-embracing assignments; for
example, Terry was outraged by his teacher’s comment and shouted out,
‘Hold on we’re not that bad’. However, others, like Hannah, appear to
accept and internalize its strictures.
Hannah’s account underscores the extent to which SATs have set in
motion a new set of tensions with which year 6 students are expected to
cope. As the quotations presented later indicate, all the children, apart
from Terry, expressed varying degrees of anxiety about failure. While there
is a gender dimension to this anxiety in that girls expressed higher degrees
of anxiety than boys (see also Shaw, 1995), the overall impression from the
year 6 interviews was that most pupils of both sexes took the SATs very
seriously. They wanted to do well. At the same time, children expressed a
great deal of concern about the narrow focus of the SATs and not being
able to produce their best under strict (and unfamiliar) test conditions.
Their concerns seem to be borne out by research into the validity of the
Key Stage 2 English SATs:
Nicely rounded handwriting and reasonable spelling of fairly simple words
seemed to impress some markers favourably. In contrast, idiosyncratic or jerky
handwriting with insecure spellings seemed to prejudice some markers against
the content.
(Close, Furlong and Simon, 1997, p. 4.30)

The students also seemed very aware of the (not-so) hidden agenda sur-
rounding SATs:
Mary: — SATs are about how good the teachers have been teaching you and if
everybody gets really low marks they think the teachers haven’t been
teaching you properly.
 Tl Be A Nothing’ 135

and:

Diane: So what are the SATs for?

Jackie: To see if the teachers have taught us anything.
Terry: If we don’t know nothing then the teacher will get all the blame.
Jackie: |Yeah. It’s the teacher’s fault.
Tunde: Yeah. They get blamed.

Yet, despite frequent rationalizations that SATs were primarily judge-

ments of teaching, nearly all the children indicated a sense of unease and
feelings of discomfort about what SATs might reveal about themselves as
learners. Some of the children seemed to be indicating far-reaching con-
sequences in which good SATs results were linked to positive life prospects
and, concomitantly, poor results meant future failures and hardships:
Sharon: I think I'll get a two, only Stuart will get a six.
Diane: So if Stuart gets a six what will that say about him?
Sharon: He’s heading for a good job and a good life and it shows he’s not
gonna be living on the streets and stuff like that.
Diane: And if you get a level two what will that say about you?
Sharon: Um, I might not have a good life in front of me and I might grow up
and do something naughty or something like that.

In three of the focus group sessions the children drew on an apocalyptic

tale of ‘the boy who ruined his chances’. There follows an excerpt from the
girls’ focus group, but both the boys’ and the mixed group referred to the
same example in order to exemplify how things can go terribly wrong in the
SATs if you don’t make the right choices:
Norma: There was someone so good at writing stories...
Mary: Yeah, and he wrote a leaflet...
Norma: He picked to write a leaflet and then when he wrote the leaflet he
blew it.
Lily: He just ruined his whole SAT. He ruined it. If he’d written the story
he would have got a really good mark. He was the best at writing
stories. And he thought he wanted to try it out. . . and he just ruined
it for himself.
Norma: Mrs O’Brien said that he was... what was the word, kind of scared
thing... ?
Diane: Got in a panic.
Norma: Yeah, and he didn’t do the story because he thought he would get
that wrong.
Mary: So he did the leaflet and he just ruined his chances, totally ruined his
chances.

In this excerpt and the others, performance in SATs is about far more than
simply getting a test right or wrong, it is conflated in the children’s minds
with future prospects. To perform badly is ‘to ruin one’s chances’. At other
times there was far more disputation and contention about the importance
of SATs for future prospects:
Diane: So are they important, SATs?
Lily: Depends.
Tunde: Yes.
154 Understanding Learning

Terry: No, definitely not.

Lewis: It does affect your life.
Ayse: Yeah, it does affect your life.
Terry: | No, as if it means you know I do badly then that means I’m gonna be
a road sweeper.
However, while Terry is clear that SATs have no impact on future pros-
pects, other students lack his certainty:
Diane: You mean, you think that if you do badly in SATs then you won’t be
able to do well or get good jobs?
Jackie: |Yeah, ’cause that’s what David’s saying.
Diane: | What is he saying?
Jackie: He’s saying if we don’t like, get good things, in our SATS, when we
grow up we are not gonna get good jobs and...
Terry: _ Be plumbers and road-sweepers .. .
Tunde: But what if you wanted to do that?
Diane: Instead of what?
Terry: Footballers, singers, vets, archaeologists. We ain’t gonna be nothing
like that if we don’t get high levels.
Diane: _ And does that worry you about your future?
Jackie: Yeah.
Lewis: Yeah.
Ayse: Yeah it worries me a lot.
Terry: No, because he’s telling fibs.

Assessment in English schooling in the late 1990s is surrounded by con-

troversy and disputation (Black, 1998). It has become a political football.
Yet, despite heavily contested changes there are enduring continuities.
Students have always informally assessed their own academic performance
and that of their peers. Class 6S is no different. There is unanimous agree-
ment among the children that Stuart is the cleverest child in the class and
almost unanimous agreement that Peter is the second cleverest:
Norma: Stuart is the cleverest child in the whole school. He’ll get level 6 for
everything.
In this short excerpt cleverness is very clearly conflated with doing well in
the SATs. There is an assumption of causation; being clever automatically
leads to good SAT results. Yet, later on Norma talks about her own nerv-
ousness and how that might affect her own performance in the same tests:
Norma: Vm no good at tests. I get too nervous so I know I won’t do very well.
Patricia Broadfoot writes of the elements of panoptic surveillance em-
bedded in assessment processes whereby pupils learn to judge themselves
‘as if some external eye was constantly monitoring their performance’
(Broadfoot, 1996, p. 68), encouraging the internalization of the evaluative
criteria of those in power.
Because the commitment to technical efficiency is increasingly being incorpor-
ated at the level of meaning and volition, as well as that of practice, this provides
pressure for the non-bureaucratic, potentially contradictory languages of profes-
sionalism and democratic participation to define their own criteria of value and,
hence, personal accountability in the same terms.
(Broadfoot, 1996, pp. 239-40).
 ‘ll Be A Nothing’ 155

One result is a strong pressure on both pupils and teachers to assume that
value can be quantified.
Belief systems concerning the individual should not be construed as inhabiting a
diffuse field of ‘culture’, but as embodied in institutional and technical practices —
through which forms of individuality are specified and governed. The history of
the self should be written at this ‘technological’ level, in terms of the techniques
and evaluations for developing, evaluating, perfecting, managing the self, the way
it is rendered into words, made visible, inspected, judged and reformed.
(Rose, 1989, p. 218).
The battle over assessment and the triumph of publishable, measurement-
based, competitive, pencil and paper tests over diagnostic, open-ended,
process-oriented assessments has resulted in the establishment of assess-
ment procedures which operate primarily ‘as performance indicators of
teacher effectivity’ (Ball, 1994, p. 41). At the macro-level SATs can be seen
as regulatory mechanisms that link the conduct of individuals and organiza-
tions to political objectives; the assumption being that they will impact
powerfully on teachers’ subjectivities and practices. However, as the chil-
dren’s discussions quoted earlier illustrate, at the micro-level of the class-
room there are regular glimpses of the normalizing and regulatory function
of the SATs on children.
Perhaps Tracey provides the best example of ‘the governance of the soul’
(Rose, 1989).
Tracey: 1 think even now, at night times I think about it and I think I’m going
to get them.
Diane: You think about your SATs at night time?
Tracey: Yeah, lots. When I’m in bed, because I’ve got stars on my ceiling, ’'m
hoping and I look up and I go, ‘I know I’m gonna get there’. And my
mum goes, ‘Who’s talking in there?’ And I goes, ‘Nothing mum’.
Diane: So what are you hoping?
Tracey: Um, I think about a three. I dunno. I don’t think I'll get a five. ’m
hoping to get a five. When I look at the stars I hope I'll get a five.
Allan Hanson writes about the increasing disposition of American students
to define themselves in terms of test scores, citing an example of college
students who displayed their scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test on
their T-shirts (Hanson, 1993). While we are not suggesting that processes of
quantifying academic ability were anything like as extreme as Hanson
found in some American colleges, there were disturbing shifts in how
children viewed themselves and others, which could be attributed to the
assessment process and the ways in which the classroom pedagogy trans-
formed in response to the imminence of the SATs.
Assessment procedures are implicated in technologies of the self and the
struggle to gain ‘intimate and secure’ social relations — intimate because
they feed into the ordering of subjectivity, and secure because of the appar-
ent naturalness of the categories they generate (Donald, 1985). As the term
progressed children increasingly referred to the levels they expected them-
selves and others to achieve. Their talk raises concerns about the crudeness
of the assessments to which pupils have access. The SATs levels constitute
156 Understanding Learning

very simplistic judgements purged of any subtlety and complexity about the
sort of learners pupils are judged to be.

Children’s Emotional Responses to Assessment

As is evident throughout the children’s texts cited earlier, there are strong
currents of fear and anxiety permeating children’s relationships to the
SATs process:
Tunde: Because if you get too scared or something, or paranoid, or
something it kind of stops you from doing it, because you just think
you are going to get everything wrong and it’s easy to get paranoid
about the SATs.

and:
Diane: |Norma, why are you worried about SATs now?
Norma: Well, it seems like I'll get no points or I won’t be able to do it, too
hard or something.
Diane: |What would it mean to get no points?
Norma: Well instead of being level three I'll be a nothing and do badly — very
badly.
Diane: | What makes you think that? Have you been practising?
Norma: No, like I analyse . . . I know I worry about loads of things.
Diane: — Like what?
Norma: J don’t know, I just worry about things and my mum is going to take
me to a special aromatherapy lady, or something like that. I don’t
know, but she said something about that because I am always
panicking and I’ve been worrying about when it’s SATs.
Diane: But no one was mentioning SATs last term, were they? What’s made
everybody start worrying about it now?
Norma: Mrs O’Brien came in today and she was doing language and she said
loads of things, well not language, but dictionaries and she said loads
of things about SATs.
Diane: — And you got in a panic.
Norma: [Laughing] Well, not in a big panic, it was just like, what if I get stuck
here and I don’t finish the story and I don’t get any points or things
like that.
and:
Stuart. What if I get level one?
Diane: You won't get level one. Honestly, I’m quite positive you won’t get
level one.
Stuart: I might in English, since Mrs O’Brien told us about that boy messing
up his chances I’ve been worried about it ’cause it’s the sort of thing I
could do.

After children have marked each others’ practice mathematics SATs there
is the ritual recounting of marks. Nadia, Mary, Jessica, Terry, Peter and
Lewis have all got 20 but a big commotion breaks out when the others
realize Stuart has only got 16. Peter says, ‘God did you really only get 16?’
Simon tells him, ‘Your brain must have stopped working’, while Lewis
 Tl Be A Nothing’ 157
comments, ‘He’s lost his genius man’. Stuart rather forlornly comments,
‘At this rate I’m only going to get level one for maths’. As these excerpts
indicate, the negative emotions generated by the impending SATs and a
changing classroom curriculum affected all the children, regardless of abil-
ity levels.

Impact on Pedagogy and the Curriculum on Offer

Many studies have examined the consequences of high-stakes assessment

systems on the breadth of curriculum that students experience (see, for
example, Kellaghan, Madaus and Airasian, 1982). However, almost all of
these studies have taken an ‘outsider’s’ perspective on curricular changes.
Even where studies have attempted to work from an ‘insider’s’ perspective,
it has been assumed that the students themselves have little to contribute
on this aspect of the social consequences of test use (Messick, 1980).
However, the evidence from the current study is that students as young as
11 have very clear perceptions about the influence of external assessment
on the curriculum:
Jackie: |We’ve already had SATs. We’ve been doing them for so long, all the
old papers we must have done, we must have done three SATs
already.

A narrowing of the curriculum was very evident in 6S over the spring term
and was a cause of both complaint and regret among the children:
Lewis: I wish we did technology.
Jackie: Yeah, that would be good.
Tunde: We should do more dance. We should have dance in the SATs.
Terry: — And they never teach you anything about cavemen either.
Ayse: And we don’t do history any more.
Terry All I know is because I’ve read about it on my own.
Ayse: And we don’t do geography. Only science, language and maths. Just
over and over again.
Diane: — So is the curriculum very different this term to what it was last term?
Terry: Yeah.
Jackie: |Last year we done music and dance, interesting things.
Terry: The best thing we did is PE. And last week was the best session we’ve
had in ages ’cause it was something different. And I hate football and
it was football but it was the best session we done in ages.

But it was the emphasis on more individualized, competitive ways of work-

ing, which were increasingly displacing the mutually supportive, collabora-
tive group work to which the children were accustomed — a shift from a
‘communitarian climate’ to ‘academic press’ (Phillips, 1997) — that caused
the most disquiet:
Tunde: Peter helped me, Peter and Lewis.
Terry: But we’re not allowed to help, to help anyone, they’re all on your
own.
158 Understanding Learning

Jackie: |Yeah, but we’re used to helping each other.

Lewis: I still help people.
Jackie: SodolI.
Ayse: I didn’t get no help.
Terry: | We’re not allowed to help any more. It’s cheating.

Progressive primary schools like Windermere have not traditionally

been subject to processes of overt differentiation and polarization (Lacey,
1970). Such processes have normally been found in selective secondary
schools where streaming and setting are common practice. However, there
were indications of both increasing differentiation and polarization in the
class under study (6S), with negative repercussions for both teacher—pupil
and pupil—pupil interaction. Webb (1993) suggests that the Key Stage 2
teachers in her study appeared to be altering both their curriculum and
pedagogic strategies as a result of the pressures exerted by OFSTED and
the new assessment regimes and this also seemed to be the case in 6S.
Over the course of the spring term 1998 the researcher spent 60 hours
observing teaching and learning processes in the classroom and also
amassed extensive field notes documenting both changing pedagogic ap-
proaches and the children’s responses to them. During this period there
were innumerable mundane examples of overt academic differentiation as
a direct consequence of the teacher’s increasing preoccupation with SATs.
Concomitantly, there were many examples within the peer group of the
deepening of existing divisions, as well as the opening up of new divisions
based on academic rather than social criteria as a direct result of SATs and
SATs practice, of which the two examples described next are only the most
stark.
In March 1998 the children were working their way individually through
an old science SATs paper. Fumi had protested at the beginning of the
session when told the children were expected to work on their own, telling
the teacher, ‘But we’re used to working together’. Every few minutes she
would sigh audibly until eventually the teacher came across to where she
was sitting and proceeded to put lines through a number of the SATs
questions, commenting, ‘Don’t try and do these. They’ll be too difficult for
you. Answer the easy ones.’ Fumi struggled on for a few more minutes. It
was Clear to the researcher and the children sitting near her that she was
crying. After a few more minutes she got to her feet, pushing her chair out
of the way and stormed out the classroom, sobbing. Out in the corridor she
kept on repeating over and over again ‘He thinks I’m thick. He thinks I’m
thick. He wants all the others to think I’m thick.’ As we have discussed
earlier, children did engage in informal assessments of each others’ aca-
demic ability, but prior to the SATs such processes had a benign air and
had never resulted in confrontations between either the teacher and a
student or between students. Even when Fumi was eventually coaxed back
into the classroom she was openly rebellious, scribbling all over the SATs
paper and muttering ‘I hate you’ under her breath at the teacher —
behaviour which resulted in her missing her playtime.
 T’ll Be A Nothing’ 159

Equally worrying was the consequence of regular SATs practice for

Stuart’s positioning within the peer group. In earlier interview sessions,
carried out over the autumn term, children often compared themselves
academically to Stuart, citing him as the cleverest child in the class. Such
comments were presented simply as statements of fact and there was no
malice or ill-feeling expressed. However, towards the end of the Easter
term, with a programme of daily mathematics tests and regular science and
English SATs practice, Stuart’s situation among the peer group, par-
ticularly with the other boys, was becoming increasingly vulnerable. On
one occasion, after the teacher had pointed out that Stuart was the only
child to get 20 out of 20 for the mathematics test and that everybody else
must try to do better, Terry leaned over and thumped him hard in the back.
Twice Stuart came back from playtime with scratches either to his cheek or
the back of his neck. He was not sure ‘exactly who was responsible’ but
complained that the other boys had started to ‘gang up’ on him. The
language other children used to describe him shifted discernibly. Before he
had simply been recognized as clever; now he was increasingly labelled as
‘a swot’ by both girls and boys. There are frequent entries in the field notes
which testify to a growing climate of hostility towards Stuart. For example:
Jolene: (hate Stuart, he’s just a teacher’s pet — a spotty swotty...

and:
Alice: Stuart’s such a clever clogs that’s why no one likes him.
Diane: — But you said you liked him.
Alice: That’s before he started showing off.

But Stuart had not started to show off. Rather, the classroom practices in
6S over the spring term had dramatically increased processes of differentia-
tion, which in turn had led to a growing polarization among the peer group.
In particular, the relationship between Stuart and the rest of 6S noticeably
worsened.

Conclusion

While we make no claims that the shifts in both the children’s self-
perceptions and the teaching regime in 6S over the course of the term are
representative of all year 6 classrooms, we would argue that what our
evidence does indicate is a need for further investigation to map out the
extent to which both pupil and teacher identities and practices are being
modified through new assessment processes. We believe that the data that
we have presented here provide convincing evidence that students as
young as 10 or 11 are well aware of the effects of National Curriculum
assessments, and their voices are an important part of any picture of the
social consequences of the use of test results as measures of educational
effectiveness.
160 Understanding Learning

The threat to the continued existence of a school posed by poor SATs

results creates a situation in which individual teachers are under increasing
pressure to improve the scores achieved by the students, irrespective of the
consequences for students’ achievement in wider terms. For some, this may
be exactly what was intended. By asserting that National Curriculum as-
sessments embody all that is valid, the narrowing of the experiences of
students to just those aspects that can be assessed in a one-hour written test
represent a return to the certainties of the ‘curriculum of the dead’ (Ball,
1993). However, it seems to us far more likely that for most observers, this
narrowing of the focus of assessment, together with an emphasis on achiev-
ing the highest scores possible, produces a situation in which unjustifiable
educational practices are not only possible, but encouraged. Whether
‘teaching to the test’ in this way is regarded as cheating or not is open to
question (Smith, 1991), but there is no doubt that such activities rob
National Curriculum assessments of the power to say anything useful about
what the students have learnt. The more specific the government is about
what it is that schools are to achieve, the more likely it is to get it, but the
less likely it is to mean anything.
The teacher of the class we have been describing is relatively inex-
perienced, and therefore, perhaps, less able to resist the pressure to con-
centrate on the narrow range of achievements assessed in the SATs.
However, as the government’s new requirements on schools to set targets
for aggregate school and individual achievement increases pressure on
schools to improve measured performance, it seems more than likely that
students will be inscribed into school practices entirely in terms of their
ability to contribute to the school’s target for the proportion of students
achieving specified levels in the national curriculum assessments.

References

Ball, S. J. (1993) Education, Majorism and the ‘curriculum of the dead’, Curriculum
Studies, 1, pp. 195-214.
Ball, S. J. (1994) Education Reform: A Critical and Post-Structural Approach, Buck-
ingham: Open University Press.
Black, P. J. (1998) Testing: Friend or Foe? The Theory and Practice of Assessment
and Testing, London: Falmer Press.
Broadfoot, P. M. (1996) Education, Assessment and Society: A Sociological Anal-
ysis, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Close, G. S., Furlong, T. and Simon, S. A. (1997) The Validity of the 1996 Key Stage
2 Tests in English, Mathematics and Science, report prepared for Association of
Teachers and Lecturers, London: King’s College, London School of Education.
Corbett, H. D. and Wilson, B. L. (1991) Testing, Reform and Rebellion, Hillsdale,
NJ: Ablex.
Daugherty, R. (1995) National Curriculum Assessment: A Review of Policy 1987-
1994, London: Falmer Press.
Donald, J. (1985) Beacons of the future: schooling, subjection and subjectification,
in V. Beechey and J. Donald (eds) Subjectivity and Social Relations, Milton
Keynes: Open University Press.
 ‘Tl Be A Nothing’ 161

Gewirtz, S., Ball, S. J. and Bowe, R. (1995) Markets, Choice and Equity in Educa-
tion, Buckingham: Open University Press.
Hanson, F. A. (1993) Testing Testing: Social Consequences of the Examined Life,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Jesson, D. (1996) Value Added Measures of School Performance, London: Depart-
ment for Education and Employment.
Kellaghan, T., Madaus, G. F. and Airasian, P. W. (1982) The Effects of Standardized
Testing, Boston, MA: Kluwer.
Lacey, C. (1970) Hightown Grammar: The School as a Social System, Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Messick, S. (1980) Test validity and the ethics of assessment. American Psycholog-
ist, 35, pp. 1012-27.
National Curriculum Task Group on Assessment and Testing (1988) A Report,
London: Department of Education and Science.
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Inspector of Schools, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.
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ship of communitarian climate and academic climate to mathematics achieve-
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Pollard, A., Thiessen, D. and Filer, A. (eds) (1997) Children and their Curriculum:
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Curriculum assessments, British Educational Research Journal, 18, pp. 329-41.
 13
Learning and Pupil Career in a Primary
School: the Case of William

Andrew Pollard and Ann Filer

This chapter draws on a pair of longitudinal ethnographies known as the

Identity and Learning Programme (ILP) (Pollard and Filer, 1987-2001).
The ILP is concerned with tracking the learning, identity and pupil careers
of two cohorts of children, from very different socio-economic commu-
nities, through their primary and secondary schools. This chapter relates to
the primary phase of the project and to Greenside School, situated in the
more affluent and middle class of our two sample communities. It presents
theoretical models which illustrate the recursive and dynamic nature of
pupils’ learning and strategic action in response to successive classroom
contexts. Drawing on case study data relating to the home, classroom and
playground life of one child, William, this account shows how he shaped
and maintained his academic and social identity through changing struc-
tures, expectations and teacher perceptions of successive classroom con-
texts. We use this case to illustrate the analytic models we have
constructed. Unavoidably, the account is highly condensed and a more
complete account can be found in Pollard and Filer (1999).

Social Relationships, Learning and the Case of William

Figures 13.1, 13.2 and 13.3 are matrices compiled from data collected for
William. The matrices enable an overview of his career, assisting the pro-
cess of analysis and the creation of William’s story. Data relating to the
contexts of home and family relationships, the playground and peer rela-
tionships and the classroom and teacher relationships, for each year of the
study, are organized in the first three columns respectively. A summary
analysis for each year can be found under the headings of ‘Identity’ and
‘Career’ in the right-hand columns.
In the following we use the case of William to illustrate a simplified
representation of a model of learning, identity and social setting (Figure
13.4). Clearly this model (and the more complex one from which it derives)
was constructed from a huge amount of data relating to other children as
well as to William.

162
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Learning and Pupil Career in a Primary School

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166 Understanding Learning

Five deceptively simple questions were posed in the analysis of The Social
World of Children’s Learning (Pollard with Filer, 1996) and these are repres-
ented in Figure 13.4. The first question, ‘When and where is learning taking
place?’, asserts the significance of the socio-historical context. Throughout
our longitudinal studies, children’s case studies are contextualized within the
broad socio-cultural, economic and political circumstances of the country,
region, city, community, families and school over the period concerned. For
instance, some of this wider socio-historical context concerned the rising
prosperity among the predominantly middle-class families of Greenside dur-
ing much of the life of the Thatcher government of the late 1980s and into
the 1990s. This contrasted with the increase in unemployment and the re-
duced lifestyle of some of the poorer citizens of Easthampton (Filer, 1997;
Filer and Pollard, 2000) and in the United Kingdom generally. During
William’s primary school years, momentous changes to the nation’s educa-
tion system in the form of, for example, the National Curriculum, national
assessment and local management of schools had a profound impact upon
Greenside School, as in schools across the country. At the same time, other
changes in expectations for teachers and pupils were being introduced into
Greenside School by a new headteacher, Mrs Davison. Traditional and
somewhat formal approaches supporting exam success and cultural expecta-
tions of the independent sector gave way to a complete change of ethos in
the school. Expectations were increasingly for children to be active in plan-
ning, negotiating and reviewing their curricular learning. Throughout the
period of the study, many Greenside parents opposed such changes, their
position fuelled by continuing political and public debate surrounding teach-
ing methods and standards in primary schools.

mp SR SSSR Q1 When and where is learning taking place? ---------------- >

Q2 'Who' is learning?

Q5 What are the Q3 What is to be

outcomes? learned?

Q4 How supportive is the

learning context?

Figure 13.4: A simplified model of learning, identity and social setting

(from Pollard with Filer 1996, p. 14).
 Learning and Pupil Career in a Primary School 167

‘Who is learning?’ is a reference to the key issue of identity — or ‘self’. In

The Social World of Children’s Learning each child’s sense of self is seen
primarily as a product of their relationships with significant others.
However, the influence of biological endowment and social circumstances
are recognized as considerable. Thus interpersonal factors in the develop-
ment of identity are conditioned by both intellectual and physical poten-
tialities as they are realized, and by the opportunities or constraints
afforded by the material, cultural and linguistic resources available to each
family. Thus, for example, William’s matrix for his Reception year alludes
to the strong Christian convictions of his parents, that he was taught early
reading skills before he went to school and something of his early learning
strategies at home. The matrix cell relating to his home life also gives an
indication of early social competence and the degree of confidence with
which he embarked upon school life:
He had a playgroup he went to three times a week . . . It wouldn’t be unfair or
whatever, to say that he was very popular at playgroup, both to the helpers and to
the other children. He was very well liked. He was very outgoing. . .
His very first day at Greenside, he was positively excited about it before he
started and he ran in and his exact words to me were ‘Bye Mummy. I don’t need
Se ge aes al (Mrs Patterson, parent interview, March 1988, Reception)

The third question, “What has to be learned?’, draws attention to the form
and content of new learning challenges and to the learning stance and
strategies which each child adopts. New learning challenges arrive in the
form of experiences and relationships as well as in the form of curricular
tasks. In each case, the content of the particular learning challenge will
affect each child’s motivation, self-confidence and degree of control which
they are able to exert in particular social settings. In turn, this will affect the
range of strategic resources on which they draw. We can take William’s
data matrix relating to Year 1 as an example to illustrate these factors in
relation to the model. As indicated above, during the early years of the
cohort’s primary experience, despite changes under way in the school, a
fairly traditional, teacher-structured and, for William, relatively unde-
manding set of curriculum expectations were in place. The matrix summar-
izes what the data for that year tells us about his learning strategies at that
time. Thus we see that, although William was beginning to make a bid for
academic status in the classroom that year, this tended to be motivated by
extrinsic rewards such as parental approval and the classroom status of
grades. However, the culture of the peer group, his status within it and the
pursuit of his own interests were strong counter attractions:
Yes, he is very assured, very noisy, will think up the ideas and get everyone else
doing them . . . William I think is quite devious. I think he is very attuned. (Last
year) he probably thought he was quite a laugh, quite a character.
(Miss Scott, teacher interview, November 1988, Year 1)
He is often at the centre of some distracting activity. Confident and outward
going, friendly with relationships well established. He can be quite a strong willed
168 Understanding Learning

child, insisting on his own innocence even when obviously at the centre of some
argument. A leader of his own group of boys. Apt to do his own thing.
(Miss Scott, teacher records, November 1988, Year 1)

From data such as this we can begin to perceive William as having a social
identity in the classroom that was characterized by autonomy and chal-
lenge, communicative competence and exuberance. The data also indicates
William’s socially astute nature, which allowed him to operate on a knife-
edge of asserting his own interests and staying out of trouble with his
teacher. However, as this and the summary matrix (Figure 13.1) suggest,
William’s social identity did not enhance his academic identity in the eyes
of his Reception and Year 1 teachers. His classroom social relations were
seen as a threat to teacher control and authority and as a source of distrac-
tion for others as well as for himself.
‘How supportive is the learning context?’ takes us to questions about the
quality of classroom relationships and assistance in learning. For example, we
can ask ‘How is power used in the classroom?’ and ‘Is instruction well matched
to the child’s cognitive and motivational needs?’ The question concerns how
these factors affect children’s willingness to take risks as they engage in learn-
ing, and the issue is as apposite in homes as it is in schools. To illustrate the
way in which this question relates to William’s learning we can draw on a
comparison between the different expectations of teachers in William’s Year 3
of primary school (Figure 13.2). His teacher in that year experienced and
interpreted his social identity in different ways than had been the case in his
early years. A new school ethos had brought a corresponding complete change
of teaching staff at Greenside School. From William’s Year 2 onwards, the
expectation was that pupils should be active and interactive learners, taking
some responsibility for their own learning. The data cell relating to teacher
relationships in Year 3 (Figure 13.2) is again indicative of high levels of interac-
tion with friends in the classroom, of autonomy and challenge to teachers and
of exuberance. Now however, these same characteristics were positively val-
ued as integral to the learning process and to good teacher—pupil relationships:
William is very loud, that’s the biggest thing, it’s trying to quieten him down but
he’s an ideas man and thinks hard about things. He’s buzzing with ideas, they come
shooting out at all times. Wrong times! But very much an original thinker Id say.
He’s always saying, ‘Why can’t we do this? Why don’t we do that?’, which is nice. If
I throw things back at the class and say ‘How are we going to solve this problem?’,
those are the two who I would expect to come up with the answer first.
(Teacher interview, October 1990, Year 3)

In his later years at Greenside, William and his cohort met still different
teacher expectations. In Year 5, for example, although William again had
Mr Brown for his teacher, he was now among the youngest in a class of
predominantly Year 6 pupils. The data box relating to his relationship with
Mr Brown that year (Figure 13.3) indicates that the highest teacher esteem
and classroom status seemed to be accorded to Year 6 pupils with greater
social maturity and academic and sporting prowess than William was cap-
able of at that time. The following descriptions of William given by Mr
 Learning and Pupil Career in a Primary School 169

Brown can be compared with those he gave in Year 3, and are indicative of
the loss of confidence and retreat from risk in both his relationships with
his teacher and in his approach to learning.
He’s still fairly familiar with teachers but at the same time he’s afraid to go too
far. William will only chat when everyone else is, when we’re having a joke, and
he’ll dive in then. And again it’s Year 6 that have that maturity. A lot of the girls
can certainly come in and have quite a mature conversation and that shows a big
difference really that you find you can’t have with many of them.
He has all the skills there to take things on and get on with it but he isn’t quite as
confident to go for it. As I’ve said before he tends to conform. He’s a bit more
frightened that I’ll come along and say ‘What are you doing?’ But more often
than not he’ll think of how he’s going to approach something, then check with me
before he takes the plunge. So you’ll find his topic book is fairly sort of standard
in the way he presents his findings or whatever. It’s fairly sort of run of the mill.
He doesn’t kind of think of a really exciting way of doing it very often.
(Mr Brown, teacher interview, July 1993, Year 5)
A change in William’s structural position in Year 5 thus had implications
for the competent management of his relationships with his teacher and
with his peers as well as for his competent management of classroom tasks.
The fifth question, ‘What are the outcomes?’, draws attention both to
formal and informal outcomes. In formal terms, the learner achieves a new
capability, attainment or standard, and may even be tested and certified for
it. In terms of identity formation, however, there are perhaps even more
significant informal processes, as friends, family and teachers affirm, mediate
and interpret those achievements. The consequence is that social status, self-
esteem and perception of one self as a learner are affected, and their influ-
ence rolls round to contribute once more to the question of identity — ‘Who is
learning?’ The longitudinal tracking of William’s learning outcomes enables
us to analyse this recursive process of development. Indeed, as we show in
the above data samples, we cannot discuss questions one to four in relation
to William without also discussing outcomes. Thus social and academic out-
comes reflect continuities and change in family and school expectations, in
William’s sense of self as a learner, in his motivation and social strategies in
relation to particular classroom contexts, tasks, status and power relations,
etc. In fact, in his case, his involvement in learning, responses to tasks,
achievement of potential and co-operation with teachers changed with the
different contexts. His classwork could show individuality and flair — but it
could also become low-risk, minimalist and conformist. His usual easy, nego-
tiative relationships with teachers could degenerate and flounder into critical
opposition or withdrawal of effort. Teacher and peer perceptions of his
academic and social identity were fluid and dynamic. The classroom and peer
status for which he strove was not always achievable.
The model of learning, identity and social setting therefore describes a
recursive process. From the small amount of data that we have been able to
reproduce from William’s story and from the summary matrices, we hope
to have shown something of that continuous dynamic and thus something
of the evolution of his primary school learning and identity as a pupil. Our
170 Understanding Learning

full 20,000 word narrative of William’s career is told in The Social World of
Pupil Careers (Pollard and Filer 1999), together with the stories of three
other children from the cohort.
We can thus conceptualize the dynamic and recursive aspects of pupil
career in terms of a spiralling through successive classroom and other
school learning and social contexts, year on year. As we spiral the ‘learning
and identity’ model (Figure 13.4) on through the years, ‘pupil career’ is
constituted from the patterns of a pupil’s coping strategies and of the
learning and social outcomes they achieve. The process is one of contin-
uous shaping and developing one’s identity and status as a pupil.
The concept of a spiral focuses our attention on the longitudinal aspects
of the study, and of William’s story in particular, as we move on to discuss
learning and identity at the further analytic level of ‘pupil career’.

Pupil Identity, Pupil Career and the Case of William

‘Pupil identity’: the background and development

The ‘learning and identity’ model in Figure 13.4 poses the question of
identity in terms of ‘Who is learning?’ The learner in the model has certain
resources and potential, relationships and experiences to draw on and
which are brought to successive learning contexts. Recursively it is also
what she or he becomes through interaction with significant others and the
quality of learning experiences. We can see this process at work through
the ‘identity’ column of William’s matrices. There, in his reception year, we
indicate that the data shows William beginning to shape and articulate a
positive image of himself as a learner. In Year 2 he sees himself as ‘clever
and hard-working’. In Year 3 his teacher sees him as an ‘ideas man’, and so
on.
In The Social World of Pupil Careers ‘identity’ is developed more specifi-
cally in relation to ‘pupil identity’. We were able to see children’s school
experience in terms of patterns which were coherent across their relation-
ships with teachers and peers, their motivation and learning stance, their
learning outcomes and status outcomes. As the children got older, we also
saw them moving into school-wide social and learning contexts in addition
to those of classroom and playground as important sites for shaping and
maintaining their identities in primary schools. We can see this in William’s
matrices with references, for instance, to the school orchestra (Year 4) and
sports teams (Year 5). Thus the spiral of career progression must be refined
to incorporate distinct but interrelated areas of experience, through which
pupil identity and career are constructed. We distinguish four main el-
ements of this, with associated questions:
® Academic identity: how is the child seen as a learner in terms of the
school curriculum, and what is the child’s own perception?
 Learning and Pupil Career in a Primary School eit

@ Official social identity: how is the child seen in terms of school behaviour
and social relationships, and what is the child’s own perception?
@ Extracurricular identity: how is the child seen as a participant in extracur-
ricular activities, and what is the child’s own perception?
@ Unofficial social identity: how is the child seen by his or her friends and
by other pupils, and what is the child’s own perception?

We have identified these particular aspects as constituting what it means to

be a pupil. They represent aspects of school experience which are assessed
and evaluated, both formally and informally, by teachers, peers, and par-
ents (see Filer and Pollard, 2000) and therefore through which pupils
shape, maintain and experience their status and sense of self as a pupil. As
well as aspects of pupil identity, therefore, they can, analytically, also be
regarded as aspects of pupil career: aspects of school within which pupils
interact, work and compete (or not as the case may be) for what is valued
by their significant others; peers, parents and teachers, as well as by pupils
themselves.
They are thus the aspects of career through which pupil identity is ex-
pressed and through which it is reflected (i.e. evaluated by others). In this
therefore, as in the ‘identity and learning’ model (Figure 13.4), we continue
to see reflected the symbolic interactionist view whereby identity is con-
structed from how individuals see themselves as well as how others see
them.

Patterns and dimensions of strategic action

Sociologist have studied pupil cultures and adaptations to school life for
many years, with the result that we are not short of analytic models and
representations. These range from the relatively simple bi-polar opposition
of ‘pro-school and ‘anti-school’ (e.g., Hargreaves, 1967; Willis, 1977;
Turner, 1983) to more sophisticated typologies of strategies (e.g., Woods,
1979; Ball, 1981). Such classifications are usually empirically derived and
often take on local colour through the naming of groups. The ‘Goodie,
Joker and Gang’ classification developed by Pollard (1985) is a case in
point. Like many other typologies, it achieves its object in conveying some-
thing of the social organization of pupil groups at the time at which they
were studied. The same occurs at the level of empirical illustration. Thus
Pollard (1985) offers us ‘Janine’s Terrors’ and “The Scorpion Gang’; Mac
an Ghaill (1989) ‘Black Sisters’ and the ‘Black Brotherhood’; and Aggleton
(1987) ‘Rebels’.
This rich accumulation of studies provides excellent resources for under-
standing pupil cultures, though almost all of it derives from relatively short,
cross-sectional studies based on one or two years of fieldwork. A resulting
strength is that such work is often thoroughly contextualized. A concomi-
tant weakness is that it has tended to yield relatively static analytic models.
172 Understanding Learning

We have found these to be unsuitable for tracking processes of strategic

adaptation and change over seven years of primary school education, and
on into the further five years of secondary education to which we are
committed in the Identity and Learning Programme as a whole.
As well as being static, existing studies are also partial. None of them
extends across the range of academic, extracurricular official and unofficial
social experience that this longitudinal study has enabled us to identify as
sites for strategic action, and hence for shaping and maintaining one’s
identity as a pupil.
We have therefore attempted to develop an analytic structure which is
relatively timeless and more contextually portable than previous work on
pupil cultures. We also wanted it to be conceptually parsimonious, whilst
also, of course, being capable of representing the complexities and dy-
namics of strategic adaptation as they occurred.
In considering the detail of the analytic progression of the concept of
strategic action, we can return to the ‘learning and identity’ model (Figure
13.4). From that, just as we develop ‘identity’ in patterned ways as
‘learners’ become ‘pupils’, so we develop ‘strategy’ as pupils’ coping strat-
egies are seen to evolve into patterns of strategic action. In fact, a major
concern for us has been the development of a model through which we
could present data relating to seven years’ work in a dynamic way.
The dimensions illustrated in the typology in Figure 13.5 indicate pat-
terned ways in which pupils relate to and negotiate the structures and
expectations which are enbedded in the major aspects of pupil career:
academic, extra curricular, official and unofficial aspects of career. At the
core of this representation is the concept of conformity, and the conven-
tional counterpoint to this is anti-conformity. However, our models also
introduce the dimensions of non-conformity and redefinition. In a little
more detail, the dimensions can be described as follows:

© Conformity: reification of academic and social structures, expectations

and norms; low-risk conformity to others’ learning and social agendas,
characterized as ‘adaptation’.
@ Anti-conformity: rejection of academic and social structures, expectation
and norms; oppositional learning and social agendas, characterized as
‘deviance’.
@ Non-conformity: some indifference and lack of awareness of academic
and social structures, expectations and norms; little perception of risk
because pupils have own learning and social agendas, characterized as
‘independence’.
@ Redefining: personal identification with academic and social structures,
expectations and norms; high-risk strategies for influencing learning and
social agendas, characterized by ‘negotiation and challenge’. ©
Referring again to William’s data, it can be seen that we constructed the
dimension concerned with redefining in relation to coherent collections of
strategies which he, and a number of other pupils, fairly consistently
 Learning and Pupil Career in a Primary School 73

Anti-conformity
(deviance)

Increased potential
for tension between
individual and
teachers/peers

Conformity
(adaptation)

Increased potential Increased potential

for tension between for tension between
individual and individual and
teachers/peers teachers/peers

Redefining
Non-conformity
(negotiation/
(independence)
challenge)

Figure 13.5: Dynamics of strategic action

deployed. Pupils using redefining strategies are certainly associated with the
mainstream patterns of expectations, achievement and cultural norms as
the majority of their peers. However, they are not so much operating
within them and conforming to them as at the cutting edge of them and
shaping them. They are pushing at the boundaries of teacher and peer
group expectations, negotiating, challenging and leading their peers. We
examine further William’s strategies in this light below in considering the
‘dynamics of strategic action’. It is, however, important at this point to
stress the difference between this typology and those constructed in the
past by sociologists of edcuation. That is, unlike the sorts of typologies
derived from cross-sectional studies described above, the ‘dimensions of
strategic action’ do not describe pupils or groups of pupils. Similarly, unlike
traditional psychological taxonomies of conformity, neither do they
represent psychological ‘types’. Rather the typology describes coherent
174 Understanding Learning

collections of strategies which pupils adopt in shaping and maintaining

their sense of self as a pupil, as a girl or boy, as a member of a peer group
and friendship group and so on. Our longitudinal tracking of pupils, in the
contexts of both schools in the Identity and Learning Programme, shows
pupils using particular dimensions consistently, in so far as the meaning of
the context remains the same for them. However, pupils can change their
patterned responses. This can happen where accustomed status, identity, or
preferred ways of working become subject to disruption or change, becom-
ing no longer appropriate or viable. This, as we have shown in the case of
William, can happen through changed teacher expectations or structural
position vis-a-vis a class of peers. We can now use William’s career story to
illustrate how we conceptualize the nature of this dynamic, and to present a
model of it.

The dynamics of strategic action

The model in Figure 13.5 is designed to show the dynamics of pupil strat-
egy. Pupils may, as we saw in William’s case, move towards greater or
lesser conformity in response to a particular pedagogy or structural pos-
ition in the learning context. For similar reasons, as again we saw in
William’s career, a switch from, for example, a redefining position of nego-
tiation and challenge towards anti-conformity (deviance) may occur. Let us
examine some of the dynamics of William’s career in more detail in order
to illustrate the model.
With respect to his relationships with teachers and curricular expecta-
tions, William was cue-conscious. He was also socially adept, especially
with regard to testing the boundaries of rules and expectations. In his early
school years he strove for autonomy and operated at the boundary of the
permissible while retaining reasonably good teacher relationships. In his
middle years he developed special, easy, negotiative relationships that won
him some indulgences to operate, and develop, his own interactive and
humorous identity within the classroom. In his later years, however, nego-
tiation turned to challenging the rights of others to academic status and
teacher esteem when it seemed to William that teachers withheld them
from him. During these years he displayed strategies of deviancy or anti-
conformity, withdrawing co-operation from one teacher and critically op-
posing structures and reward systems of school. These forays into deviancy
were brief. Though William and his like-thinking friends dubbed them-
selves ‘The Rebels’ during this time, none of them set up the alternative
status systems that would have been indicative of true rebelliousness (anti-
conformity). Teacher and parental pressure put William back on track and
understandably so, for it was always in relation to the existing academic
and social structures that William struggled for recognition and esteem.
In relation to other pupils, William was a leader within the mainstream
peer cultures of the playground and classroom. He was popular though
 Learning and Pupil Career in a Primary School (lye)

often seen by his peers as the ‘smart guy’ who was exclusive in his friend-
ship choices, and at the forefront of the sorts of ‘sophisticated’ social and
sexual behaviour associated with the dominant, higher-status friendship
group to which he belonged.
It was clear, however, that William’s redefiner status was only viable where
and when his structural position was sufficiently high to enable him to operate
at the cutting edge of classroom and peer group culture. This was not a realistic
option for him when he was matching himself against the skills and maturity of
much older Year 6 children in his Year 5. In that circumstance, as well as
retreating into a pattern of conformity to teacher expectations he showed some
aspects of anti-conformity in his peer relations. This took the form of periods
of ‘hitting out’ at other, more successful peers, challenging their right to success
and denigrating others in the class of low achievement and status.
Thus William negotiated a career at the cutting edge of classroom, play-
ground and school life generally. Redefining, for the autonomous William, was
in many respects a risky operation, frequently carried out on a knife-edge of
social approval. It was a matter of a socially astute, highly interactive and
competitive bid for status; a collection of strategies not open to all his peers by
any means and only altogether manageable or viable even for the socially
astute William within some classroom contexts and expectations that he met.
To return to Figure 13.5, the model of the ‘dynamics of strategic action’
is also designed to depict the way in which the gaps between conformity
and the other strategic actions of anti-conformity, non-conformity and re-
defining are potentially sites of tension. Such tension may occur between an
individual pupil and a teacher or between individual pupils and their peers
as a result of a learning stance or an expression of identity which con-
travenes the norms and expectations of classroom or playground.
Some of this potential for tension has been demonstrated in William’s
data and in his career ‘story’ above. As we have seen, as William encoun-
tered different teacher expectations and learning contexts, so his commu-
nicative, exuberant, autonomous and challenging identity was liable to be
experienced and interpreted differently by different teachers. Thus, in rela-
tion to ‘identity’ we have focused on the way in which William’s social
identity was in some years seen as a hindrance to his academic identity and
was a threat to the teacher—pupil relationship. In other years it enhanced
his academic identity, indeed was seen as integral to the learning process,
and promoted rapport in his relationships with teachers. From the point of
view of William himself, perhaps the difference between ‘best working boy’
and a ‘Jester’ (Year 3) and a ‘Rebel’ (Year 6) also reflects some of the ebb
and flow of tension in relation to successive teachers.

The Relevance of Longitudinal Ethnography

Perhaps the most powerful benefit of longitudinal ethnography lies in the

fact that it adds the dimension of time to the holistic and multi-perspective
176 Understanding Learning

research design of classic ethnography. In so doing it is more able to

distinguish the enduring from the transient in social action, to track condi-
tions for change together with the ways in which change is differentially
experienced and acted upon by individuals and groups. Below, we present
a summarized account of the cumulative arguments which continue to be
developed through the Identity and Learning Programme. Three key issues
are fundamental:
® Children are active in constructing and negotiating their experience in
coherent and patterned ways.
@ Children are influential in shaping the experiences and strategies of
others.
@ Children’s actions are context related and are responsive to changing
circumstances.
The analysis and models relating to learning (Figure 13.4) and career (Fig-
ure 13.5) have developed these propositions in the following ways.
Figure 13.4 encapsulates the early learning experience concerned with
the influence of interpersonal processes on learning, social outcomes and
the development of one’s identity as a learner. In the analytic development
of that model, and building on questions 1-3 in Figure 13.4, the following
insights were gained.
@ Children’s development of their identity as learners can be concep-
tualized as a recursive process. Through their encounters with successive
learning challenges in particular social contexts, children are influenced
by informal as well as formal outcomes in the development of their sense
of self as a learner.
@ Relationships with parents (or carers) and siblings are major formative
influences on a very young child’s sense of self as a learner. As children
progressively engage with the world beyond the family, parents, and
increasingly peers, act as mediators — interpreting new experiences and
acting as a significant reference point with regard to engagement with
learning and the meaning and valuation of outcomes.
@ There are two major social influences on pupils’ classroom learning.
First, pupils become effective if they are able to manage their coping
strategies and presentation of self in ways which are viable in relation to
different teachers’ expectations, changing structural positions and peer
group contexts. Second, pupils become effective when they have suffi-
cient self-confidence and trust in their teacher to manage risk and task
ambiguity in classrooms. They are then, of course, dependent on
teachers providing them with appropriate intellectual challenge and
support.

While we have illustrated some of these insights in relation to William’s

data, the matrices provide further instances of others.
Figure 13.5 is a formal representation of the dimensions and dynamics of
pupil identities and careers through their primary school. Extending the
 Learning and Pupil Career in a Primary School LW

longitudinal development of children’s case studies has enabled us to ad-

vance the conceptions of ‘identity’ developed through The Social World of
Children’s Learning. Through documenting continuity and change within
and between cases, we have been able to advance those earlier conceptions
of children’s ‘sense of self as learner’. In so doing we have formalized the
concept of ‘pupil identity’ in terms of the dimensions of strategic action and
the dynamics of strategic action. By way of major conclusions therefore, we
suggest the following:
1. For analytical purposes, it is helpful to distinguish four major dimen-
sions of strategic orientation: conformity, anti-conformity, non-
conformity and redefining. These are not ‘pupil types’ or ‘psychological
types’ but rather reflect characteristic orientations and coherent patterns
of response to school life.
2. Children’s strategic orientations are coherent with (which is not to say
they are necessarily the same as) patterns of action formed within the
family, including siblings, the wider family and community. Children’s
strategic orientations reflect the mediating influence of parents.
However, by the same token, parents’ strategies and responses are
shaped by those of their children through challenge, negotiation and
compromise. Similarly children’s strategic responses articulate with peer
social systems. They are mutually influential with regard to stability and
change within the microcultures of pupil friendship groups.
3. While pupils exhibit relatively continuous patterns of strategic orienta-
tion through their primary school, there is nothing fixed or inevitable in
this, nor in the way their strategies are perceived or responded to by
teachers and schools. Individuals continuously shape, maintain and ac-
tively evolve their pupil identities as they move through successive class-
room contexts. A child’s sense of self as a pupil may be enhanced or
threatened by successive changes in their relative success, failure or
structural position in their classrooms, and similarly by teacher expecta-
tions, pedagogic strategies, classroom organisation, criteria of evalua-
tion, modes of interpretation, etc. In such circumstances, existing
strategies are liable to modification or change, if they become no longer
viable, appropriate or comfortable for a pupil to maintain. Strategic
action is therefore dynamic as children actively negotiate a path through
successive teacher and classroom settings, shaping and maintaining their
identity and career as a pupil.
These models and conclusions represent our analytic insights regarding
pupils’ strategic orientations and adaptations to school and regarding the
interrelation of classroom, home and peer group contexts and their effect
on learning and career.
In terms of the generalizability of this analysis, we certainly claim the
capacity of ethnography to generate grounded, valid and holistic insights
that are not available through other forms of enquiry. We are also aware of
the many readers who continue to find a resonance between school
178 Understanding Learning

ethnography and their own experiences as pupils, teachers and parents.

While this gives credence to the work, it is up to each reader to judge the
applicability of our analysis to situations with which he or she is concerned.
We would argue that this process can promote reflection, particularly in
relation to the practices of teachers and parents.

References

Aggleton, P. (1987) Rebels Without a Cause, Lewes: Falmer Press.

Ball, S. (1981) Beachside Comprehensive, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Filer. A. (1997) At least they were laughing: assessment and the functions of chil-
dren’s language in their news session, in A. Pollard, D. Thiessen and A. Filer
(eds), Children and their curriculum, A New Challenge, London: Falmer.
Filer, A. and Pollard, A. (2000) The Social World of Primary School Assessment,
London: Continuum.
Hargreaves, D. H. (1967) Social Relations in a Secondary School, London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul.
Mac an Ghaill, M. (1989) Young, Gifted and Black, Buckingham: Open University
Press.
Pollard, A. (1985) The Social World of the Primary School, London: Cassell.
Pollard, A. with Filer, A. (1996). The Social World of Children’s Learning, London:
Cassell.
Pollard, A. and Filer, A. (1999) The Social World of Pupil Careers, London: Cassell.
Turner, G. (1983) The Social World of the Comprehensive School, Beckenham:
Croom Helm.
Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class
Jobs, Aldershot: Saxon House.
Woods, P. (1979) The Divided School, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
 14
Home-School Links

Sally Tomlinson

This chapter is largely about the development of links between homes and
schools which create a partnership. For most of the twentieth century
education has been equated with schooling, teachers have defended their
professional territory and there has been a separation of home and school.
Now, there are increasingly moves to reverse this situation and to recog-
nize that children’s school performance and their personal and social de-
velopment are most successful when a partnership is established between
home and school. Home-school relations figure prominently on the
agendas of politicians, professionals and parents, although from different
perspectives, but there is a widespread acceptance that ‘good’ relations
include effective communication and information-giving, accountability of
school to parents, encouraging parents to support children’s learning and
development, and creating a sense of shared purpose and identity between
parents, pupils and teachers. However, there is currently a political divide
as to the form parental involvement should take. The 1986, 1988 and 1993
Education Acts have encouraged parents to regard themselves as con-
sumers in an educational market and as managers via representation on
governing bodies. Parental choices of schools are intended to promote
competition between schools and to help close ineffective ones. Whether
the role of parent as consumer and agent of competition will actually
improve children’s educational performance and enhance their personal
and social development is debatable.
This chapter briefly reviews home-school contacts in Britain up to the
present, noting that much of the literature on home-school relations has
used a simplistic social class model in which ‘working-class’ homes have
been regarded as deficient and less likely to care about children’s achieve-
ments or pastoral needs. The chapter also covers problems inherent in
creating partnerships and the experiences of other European countries.

Home-School Contacts

Home-school contacts have never figured large as a priority in English

education, and up to the 1970s talk of partnership in education usually
referred to that between central and local education authorities.

179
180 Understanding Learning

Literature discussing the relationship between school attainments, per-

sonal and social behaviour and homes has always worked to the disadvan-
tage of working-class homes and parents. On measures of achievement,
children from manual workers’ homes and those with unemployed parents
have tended on average to do less well, and it has usually been children
from the lower socio-economic groups who have acquired the labels and
reputation for being ‘troublesome’. Explanations for this have, over the
past hundred years, run a gamut from Victorian beliefs in the genetic
inferiority of the ‘lower classes’ (Tredgold, 1908) through material and
social disadvantage, cultural and linguistic deprivation, apathetic parenting
and ineffective homes (Rutter and Mage, 1976). The misuse of Basil Berns-
tein’s 1960s work on language codes (Bernstein, 1973) reinforced teachers’
views that working-class speech was ‘deficient’. Many teachers came to
believe that school influence was marginal when set against a ‘poor’ home
background, and held low expectations of large groups of children. This
included, from the 1960s, pupils from ethnic minorities who were also
subject to stereotyped beliefs about their culture, language and
potentialities.
The middle—working class divide appearing in much of the literature
undoubtedly led some teachers to underestimate the ambitions and capab-
ilities of working-class and minority parents and their children, and many
of the perceived problems in home-school contacts do have a class and a
racial dimension. Research during the 1980s demonstrated that working-
class and minority parents actually have very positive attitudes to educa-
tion but lack the knowledge and information about the education system,
and how to ‘manage’ it, that middle-class parents usually have (Roberts,
1984; Tomlinson, 1984; 1991; Gewirtz, Ball and Bowe, 1992). It has become
a truism that it has always been the more informed and articulate parents
who can obtain most from the education system.

Home-School Links

The Plowden Report (1967) proved to be a watershed in helping schools to

understand why closer home-school links were desirable.
It set out a minimum programme by which schools could inform par-
ents and encourage home-school links. This included welcome to school,
open days, regular reports and written information, and meetings with
teachers. By the 1980s the extent of home-school links in a majority of
schools had gone beyond this minimum programme. Visits of teachers to
homes, and parents to school, letters, circulars, pupil reports and records
of achievement, governors’ reports, school prospectuses and education-—
employer—parent compacts all constituted very direct forms of communi-
cation and linkage. Parental involvement in day-to-day activities as class-
room helpers, translators, materials-makers, assistants on outings, and in
 Home-School Links 181

home-school reading, maths and homework schemes, and involvement

via parent-teacher and other associations had also become more
commonplace.
Parental partnerships and home-school links have been furthered, to
some extent, by the existence of parents’ voluntary organizations. The
Home-School Council, founded in 1930, and the National Confederation
of Parent-Teacher Associations, founded in 1956, have acted as pressure
groups on government to improve home-school links, as have more radical
groups such as the Campaign for State Education (1962), The National
Association for Governors and Managers (1970) and local groups such as
the All London Parents Action Group, and the Haringey and Brent Black
Parents Associations. The only national parental advisory service, ACE
(Advisory Centre for Education, 1962), is currently encouraging the cre-
ation of local advisory services, to help give parents a local power base
from which to influence schools and government policies.
Legislation in the 1980s gave parents far more rights to information
about schools, access to curriculum documents, governors and HMI re-
ports, and equal representation on governing bodies. From 1988 parents
were, however, encouraged to ‘choose’ between schools rather than opt for
a local neighbourhood school, and to vote in ballots for their children’s
school to opt out of local authority control and become grant maintained
by central government. A Parents’ Charter, published in 1991, set out
existing parental rights and promised a variety of new rights but devoted
only a short section to the notion of parents as partners. While this legisla-
tion and approach placed a premium on home-school links best described
as customer-provider, and actively discouraged parents from supporting
local schools in their local community, there has also been, during the 1990s
particularly, a countervailing movement. There has in practice been an
expansion of many different kinds of home-school links which indicate an
increasing desire on the part of teachers and parents to work together.
A project exploring expanded partnerships in education, was set up in
1989 by the Royal Society of Arts and the National Association of Head-
teachers. This project was initially based in 20 schools around Britain, the
schools being selected on the basis of an interest in developing home-
school relations. The essence of the project was that it set out to:
@ consider changing legal and contractual requirements to develop effec-
tive partnerships between schools and homes. This means that part-
nership will be not an optional extra but an essential requirement, and
will include all parents, not just the ‘active and unrepresentative’ ones.
@ develop whole-school approaches to policy and practice — reviewing
existing home-school relations, developing home-school contracts or
signed understandings, and planning, organizing and evaluating home—
school activities.
This project, which included a strong European dimension, is described in
Tomlinson (1991) and Jones et al. (1992).
182 Understanding Learning

Parents as Partners

Whatever the political context and desires of government, home-school

links cannot be forced. Contacts take different forms and are at different
levels, most parents initially becoming involved in school activities to im-
prove the progress and well-being of their own child. From this point parents
may become involved at whole-class and whole-school level, but only a few
go on to influence school policies via governance and management. A major
obstacle to the creation of partnerships has been that many teachers have
embraced a notion of professionalism that excluded parents, and needed to
be persuaded that professional teaching does recognize the integral role of
parents in education. Macbeth (1989) suggested that there were four stages
of progression in the growth of home-school partnerships which depended
on a developing teacher and school acceptance of a new professionalism:

@ The self-contained school is characterized by teacher autonomy, limited

and formalized contacts with parents, little parental choice or consulta-
tion, a denial of access to school records, and with curriculum and teach-
ing methods regarded as the teacher’s domain.
@ Professional uncertainty is characterized by tentative experiment with
home-school liaison and participation but teachers still restricting con-
sultation and blaming homes for low pupil attainment.
® Growing commitment is the stage at which the school leadership encour-
ages liaison and consultation with parents, recognizes the value of home
teaching, encourages parents on to governing bodies, and generaily be-
gins to adapt the school system to include parents.
@ The school and family concordat represents the ultimate stage in the
attempt to involve all families in formal schooling, recognizing that
home learning is part of education and the role of parents is crucial in
this, and emphasizing the obligation of parents to be involved and to co-
operate with schools.

Schools in Britain could certainly be rated along this continuum, with many
being at stages one or two. On the parental side, many parents are still
reluctant to become involved in their children’s formal education, lacking
confidence and knowledge, or regarding classroom affairs as the teacher’s
domain.
Asking teachers to incorporate a ‘practice’ of home-school contacts into
their professional activity, to accept criticism of their practice and to accept
parents as equal partners, requires justification. Teachers must be con-
vinced that it is in their interests, as well as the interests of parents and
children, to regard parents as integral to the whole process of education
and training from preschool to post-16. They will also have to work out the
different kinds of partnership required as children progress through school.
New requirements for teacher-training, however, do not encourage
student-teachers to think of parents as partners, but as consumers to be
 Home-School Links 183

informed of their children’s comparative achievements vis-a-vis other

children’s.
There are other problems inherent in the notion of partnership —
particularly from the parents’ side. Parents, for example, have no distinc-
tive power base. There is a plethora of local and national groups but no
single group that the government could negotiate with or fund. Parents’
organizations may influence policy on single issues but are not regarded at
national, local or school level as integral to decision-making. Parent gover-
nors still have limited influence, especially given the historically dominant
position of headteachers in England.
Parents often find the language of education difficult, particularly as the
educational reforms have introduced a whole new curriculum and assess-
ment language, and initials and acronyms abound. In addition, many as-
pects of school are beyond actual parental influence. Inadequate
resourcing and poor teachers are two issues which worry parents but which
are difficult to address, particularly if parents are regarded simply as clients
and consumers.

European Policies

It is useful to consider some other European home-school policies and

learn from positive developments. A European Economic Community
(EEC)-funded project in the early 1980s, The School and Family in the
European Community, suggested that politicians, educators and parents
themselves often assumed that home-school partnerships could be
achieved by simple strategies (Macbeth, 1989). An EEC conference held
in Luxembourg in 1983 noted that ‘there is widespread recognition that
parents and teachers should be partners in educating children but there
are difficulties in putting this ideal into practice’. However, it is possible
that Europe-wide parental initiatives are now in advance of governmen-
tal or educationalists’ thinking. The European Parents Association — and
a more recent French initiative, the Centre Européen des Parents d’Ecole
Publique (CEPEP) — aim to work out joint goals for the future of publicly
funded education in Europe which will include parental partnership.
CEPEP has representation from parents’ organizations in France, Eng-
land (via Parents Initiative), Eire, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal and
Belgium and interest expressed by groups in Holland, Denmark, Greece,
Austria and Luxembourg. This group has set in train discussion of a
common educational philosophy for EEC countries and has suggested
that national education systems should all include a home-school associa-
tion in every school, government-funded parent associations, home—
school links to be compulsory study in teacher training, and parents to be
represented at all local and national levels where educational policies are
formulated.
184 Understanding Learning

In France the schooling is secular and centralized, teachers are civil

servants and there is a national curriculum. However, dialogue with par-
ents has been a feature of the education system for some time. The Minis-
try of Education publishes material explaining the education system and a
bulletin, ‘A letter to parents’. All French primary schools are required by
law to have a joint committee of teachers and parents and parents are
consulted over the choice of books and materials for schools.
In Italy co-operation with parents has been included in Ministerial de-
crees since 1955, and a decreti delagati in 1974 introduced an elaborate
system of councils which were intended to involve parents and local com-
munities in all aspects and levels of education. The complexity of the
pyramid of councils — school class, school, district, provincial and a national
council — and the elaborate system of representation has not notably in-
cluded parents in actual decision-making but the councils have reduced
mutual mistrust between parents and teachers, given parents better infor-
mation and encouraged parents to regard education as a joint home-school
process.
In Germany the post-war Federal Basic Law laid down broad guidelines
for the control and administration of education in (West) Germany, which
is undertaken by the eleven provinces (Lander). The Basic Law incorpor-
ated principles of parental rights and responsibilities for their children’s
education and all the provincial constitutions require co-operation between
schools and families, although each province varies in the details of its
written requirements. The Bavarian constitution, for example, notes that
‘The common educational task which confronts school and parents re-
quires co-operation carried out in mutual trust’. In Rhineland-Palatinate,
‘parents have the right and duty to co-operate with school in the education
of their children’.
All provinces have legal requirements for parents’ councils at different
levels of education. In Baden-Wiirttemberg, for example, there are school
class councils chaired by a parent, school, district and provincial councils.
The provisional parents’ council offers advice to the Ministry of Education
and must be kept informed by the Ministry.
The Danish school system is rooted in the notion of community educa-
tion and gives more legal recognition and informed support to partnership
between the family and the school than any other country. The Danish
Basic School Law of 1975 reads: ‘The task of the Basic School is, in co-
operation with parents, to offer possibilities for pupils to acquire know-
ledge, skills, working methods and forms of expression which will contrib-
ute to each individual’s development’ (Macbeth, 1989, p. 174). The Danish
approach recognizes that schools can do no more than make facilities
available; they cannot, unaided, educate the ‘whole child’ and make no
claims to this. Pupils attend the basic school (Folkeskole) for a minimum of
nine years, and the class teacher moves with the pupils accentuating the
possibilities of partnership with families. Municipal committees oversee the
folkeskoles and there is parental representation on these committees. Each
 Home-School Links 185

school board comprises parents with voting rights, teachers and pupils in its
participants. Within schools, class associations of parents, teachers and
pupils have developed, and the Education Ministry publishes a guide to co-
operation between homes and schools. The national parents’ organization,
Skole og Samfund, incorporates all school boards and voluntary parental
associations. Danish parents are recognized in law and in practice as
sharing partnership rights and responsibilities at all levels of schooling.
In Spain one approach to parental involvement has been to recognize
that parental involvement means educating parents in school and educa-
tional matters in ways not hitherto envisaged. At the University of Navarro
‘schools for parents’ have been devised, working on a modular basis with
university staff and parent co-ordinators. Sexton, who learned about this
development at a European Parents Association Conference in Italy, was
so impressed by the way such courses improved parental participation in
education that he has introduced pilot ‘schools for parents’ in the UK
(Sexton, 1992).

Conclusion

This chapter started from the premise that improving children’s educa-
tional performance, enhancing their personal and social development and
creating genuine home-school links could happen only if the current stress
on parents as consumers of education and agents of competition gave way
to a belief that parents must be partners in the educative process.
If we are really concerned to raise educational standards and improve
the quality of education, a convergence of home and school and a part-
nership between parents and teachers is a necessity. Policies must be
geared to the understanding that schools and homes are joint producers of
education and that in future parents will need to be more centrally involved
in the process of schooling.
Any government which is seriously concerned about raising standards
and offering an improved education to all pupils will concentrate on
enhancing parental support, involvement and obligation to participate in
formal education. It will also recognize that a more equal relationship
between parents and teachers will require a different legislative framework
to the present one. The legal framework will need to include more right to
information, for parent education, for parents to be involved in their chil-
dren’s day-to-day schooling, to be automatically members of a home-
school association and to make an educational agreement whith the school.
Home-school partnerships can remain empty rhetoric, be a cover for
enhancing professional powers or become another mechanism for ‘pol-
icing’ pupils. We need open and equal relationships between schools and
homes to contribute to better understandings, higher standards and an
improved quality of education.
L186 Understanding Learning

References

Bernstein, B. (1973) Class Codes and Control, vol. 1, London: Routledge.

Gewirtz, S., Ball, S. and Bowe, R. (1992) Parents, privilege and the education
market place, paper to the British Educational Research Association, Stirling,
Scotland, August.
Jones, G., Bastiani, J.. Bell, G. and Chapman, C. (1992) A Willing Partnership:
Project Study of the Home-—School Contract of Partnership, London: Royal
Society of Arts.
Macbeth, A. (1989) Jnvolving Parents, Oxford: Heinemann.
Parent’s Charter (1991) You and Your Child's Education, London: DES.
Plowden Report (1967) Children and Their Primary Schools, London: HMSO (2
vols).
Roberts, K. (1984) School Leavers and Their Prospects, Milton Keynes: Open Uni-
versity Press.
Rutter, M. and Madge, N. (1976) Cycles of Disadvantage, London: Heinemann.
Sexton, S. (1992) Parents can be teachers too, The Times, 3 November.
Tomlinson, S. (1984) Home and School in Multicultural Britain, London: Batsford.
Tomlinson, S. (1991) Home-school partnerships, Teachers and Parents, Education
and Training paper no. 7, Institute for Public Policy Research. London, pp. 1-18.
Tredgold, A. E. (1908) Mental Deficiency, London: Balliere, Tindal and Cox.
 15
Researching Home-School Relations:
a Critical Approach

Carol Vincent

Introduction

This chapter gives further consideration to the way in which relationships

between parents and teachers, homes and schools are presented in the
literature. The first section of this chapter argues that much of the home-—
school debate lacks a critical approach, and advances three illustrations to
support this. The typology is expressed in terms of ‘parents’, and lacks
detailed references to class, gender or ethnic-based differences. Therefore
the second task of this chapter is to rectify that omission, by highlighting,
with reference to Hill St and Low Rd, some of the salient ways in which
ethnicity, class and gender affect home-school relationships. The chapter
concludes by suggesting that a focus on structural dimensions, such as
social class, is an integral part of an analytical approach to researching and
debating home-school relations.

Problematizing Home-School Relationships

A closer look at the literature

Before focusing on class, ethnicity and gender, three illustrations can be

advanced to illustrate and support the contention that discussions around
home-school issues are often perfunctory and superficial. The first example
is the reliance on consensual language, such as ‘partnership’, ‘dialogue’,
‘involvement’, ‘sharing’, which feature strongly in the home~—school litera-
ture, thus editing tension and conflict out of the relationship. Such terms
encourage easy agreement, but may also serve to obscure difficulties in
interpretation and emphasis. These differences may not be articulated, but
can nevertheless result in increasing tensions, capable of significantly dis-
rupting an initiative. Consensual words and phrases, although vague and
lacking specificity, can also be powerful in constructing norms for home—
school relations. The terms suggest a warm ‘community spirit’; if this is not
achieved both teacher and parents are vulnerable to feelings of disillusion-
ment and inadequacy, and the initiatives may lapse. However, in the

187
188 Understanding Learning

recounting of projects, a cheery, unfailingly positive tone seems de rigueur,

which means that pitfalls, problems or failures get edited out of the ‘story’
being told. This manner of dissemination means that it is difficult to get
beneath the rhetoric and critically assess projects. Thus an article in the
Royal Society of Arts’ (RSA) ‘Parents in a Learning Society’ newsletter
purports to evaluate home-school activities in 15 schools in East London
(Wolfendale, 1994). This, admittedly short, article categorizes parental re-
sponses into six groups. All the categories and illustrative quotes from
parents are positive. Yet even the most successful project surely runs into
some problems, fails to reach some groups, tries, perhaps successfully, to
broaden its scope. All these considerations are absent. Dissemination in
this manner fails to inform or aid others trying to develop practice in this
area, and instead cloaks the possibility or actuality of conflict, non-
participation, apathy or hostility with a rosy glow. This is being addressed
to some extent by the increasing degree of contact between small, local
projects.
Fhe second factor illustrating the occasionally superficial nature of
home-school discussions is the assumption of a positive correlation be-
tween parental involvement and children’s educational achievement (for
example, Epstein, 1994; Jowett, Baginsky and MacDonald MacNeil, 1991;
Stacey, 1991; Lareau, 1989; ILEA, 1985). On closer examination, the exact
relationship is unclear. What kind of involvement triggers such improve-
ment, and how is that improvement defined? There are two main claims in
this area. Some projects argue that their results reveal a quantifiable in-
crease after a period of close parental intervention in the curriculum (Ep-
stein and Herrick, 1991; Dye, 1989; Hewison and Tizard, 1980). Others
claim a more general improvement. For instance, frequent, positive home—
school contact is assumed to result in the child feeling happier in the
classroom, and thus achieving a higher standard (Stacey, 1991; Edwards
and Redfern, 1988). With reference to the first group, Peter Hannon (1989)
examines several home-reading initiatives and the evidence supporting
their claim for higher achievement. He identifies several problems with
reading tests. Do they test recognizable reading behaviour, or do they ask
the child to decode out-of-context words? Are they prone to cultural bias?
Other variables can also affect results, such as levels of existing parental
involvement, and the attitudes of staff (ibid.; Boland and Simons, 1987).
Hannon (1989) concludes, ‘we know . . . that in some circumstances, par-
ental involvement improves scores, whereas in other circumstances there
may be virtually no improvement’ (p. 39). He adds that at least there does
not appear to be any evidence that parental involvement decreases
achievement levels! Awareness of such problems leads advocates to make
more general assertions concerning the value of parental involvement for
children’s learning. In theory, positive parent-teacher relationships will
result in trust and congruence between home and school, which will then
help the children progress further and faster. However, improvements in
parent and teachers’ social relationships do not necessarily increase the
 Researching Home-School Relations 189

amount of interaction over educational issues (Smith, 1988; Tizard, Mor-

timore and Burchell, 1981). Second, increasing the congruence of home
and school often means in practice that the home is required to change to
match the school, a task which many parents will be unable or unwilling to
undertake. Therefore, conclusive evidence of the direct link between par-
ental improvement and achievement is difficult to obtain because of the
many variables involved (David, 1993).
A third illustration of the home-school debate’s somewhat superficial
nature is its vulnerability to trends (Torkington, 1986). This results in one
particular innovation being seen as sufficient to ‘solve’ the ‘problem’ of
home-school relationships. One such example, particularly prevalent in
City in the mid-1980s, was the establishment of parents’ rooms in primary
schools. A more recent example is home-school contracts. As single strat-
egies however, such initiatives can have only limited and temporary effects.

Social class, ethnicity, and gender in home-school relations

Over the last 50 years, educationists’ approaches to home-school relation-

ships have undergone considerable change both in style and emphasis.
Parental roles, once confined to ensuring that children attended school,
have expanded to include the provision of ancillary help within the school,
and even a role as educator in conjunction with teaching staff. Once the
potential of parental influence upon the child’s attitudes, behaviour, and
perhaps abilities, entered the professional consciousness, educators sought
to induct parents into school norms (see the Haddow Report, Consultative
Committee, 1931, and the Plowden Report, CACE, 1967). Ideas of ‘appro-
priate’ parental behaviour were, of course, influenced by dominant social
discourses concerning social class, gender and ethnicity. The Plowden Re-
port, for instance, is pervaded by middle-class conceptions of ideal parent-
child interaction. Hewison (1985) comments,
Parents were seen as essentially passive ‘supporters’ of the activities of schools: a
‘supportive’ home provided a child with appropriate language skills, an appropri-
ate interest in books and learning, and even appropriate role models. . . children
from supportive homes arrived at school well-equipped to learn from their
teachers; children from ‘unsupportive’ homes provided teachers with much less
satisfactory educational raw material.
(p. 45)
‘Norms’ of child development evolved from the experiences of middle- and
upper-class children in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Yet it was against
this ‘norm’ that working class children were also measured and often found
lacking (Steedman, 1985). Therefore, mothers (the term ‘parent’, despite
its gender neutrality, often applies primarily to women) required careful
guidance to ensure that they exercised their influence in pursuit of the
correct goals (David, 1993). As teachers are predominantly white, middle-
class individuals (Musgrave, 1979), their relationships with working-class
190 Understanding Learning

parents are shaped by in imbalance of structural power (in class terms at

least). Teachers also have recourse to their professional identity, which
may enable them to remain dominant in a relationship with parents with
whom they share a social class position. New teachers are introduced to
particular values, attitudes, and language, as part of their socialization into
the profession. Values and attitudes are also refined locally, through staff-
room conversations which reflects both the school’s general ethos on
home-school relations, and the reputations of particular families. Many
parents lack access to an equivalent forum. Andrew Brown (1992)
comments:

Through actual interactions, spoken or written, an image of ‘what parents are’ is

built up within teacher discourse. This acts to build up a ‘normalizing’ image of
parents and parenting practice, which in turn provides ... a standard against
which to judge ‘actual’ parents. This is however, at a high level of generality,
although the inscribed qualities might be highly specific . . . placed in relation to
this ‘general’, ‘normal’ or even ‘natural’ parent, are specific groups of parents
who may diverge in some way.
(p. 197)

One identifiable, though heterogeneous group of parents who may be seen

to diverge from the norm are ethnic minority families, particularly non-
white groups. Research has consistently found evidence of stereotypical
and negative attitudes towards black pupils, (Tomlinson, 1984; Wright,
1987; 1992; Mac an Ghaill, 1988; Gee, 1989; Gillborn, 1990; 1995). The
same attitudes extend to their families. When Barbara Tizard and her
colleagues (1988) asked white teachers about their experience of black
parents, 70 per cent mentioned a negative attribute in reply (see also
Townsend and Brittan, 1972; Smith, 1988; Howard and Hollingsworth,
1985). Heidi Mirza (1992) argues that the neo-conservative discourse of
‘dysfunctional’ families, often applied to African/Caribbean families, em-
phasizes ‘family composition’ (for example, one-parent families) over ‘fam-
ily disposition’ (for example, attitudes and values). Unsurprisingly, black
groups and individuals often respond with disillusionment and suspicion of
the white-dominated education system. Participants at an ACER (Afro-
Caribbean: Educational Resource Centre) conference in the late 1980s re-
vealed considerable wariness of home visiting, for instance. One is reported
as asking, ‘are they coming with a set of values and assumptions that imply
our way of life is inferior?’ (ACER, 1986, p. 17). Indeed the tone employed
by 1960s compensatory initiatives lingers on. A project described by Mac-
leod (1985), attempted to ‘involve’ South Asian parents in their young
children’s education. Home-school liaison teachers (HSLTs) (mainly
monolingual) visited parents at home to ‘explain school policy and prac-
tice’ (ibid., p. 2).
Macleod illustrates the ‘problem’ of ‘parents who fail to conform’ (ibid.,
p. 14), by describing a mother who did the ironing throughout the HSLT’s
visit. ‘She showed no sign that she had even the remotest understanding of
the value of the . . . intervention programme — or indeed any motivation to
 Researching Home-School Relations 191

understand what was going on’ (ibid., p. 30). Macleod continues, not by
suggesting any reasons for this reaction — perhaps the woman resented the
invasion of her privacy by someone intent on showing her how to interact
with her child — but by warning the HSLTs to guard against being treated
like childminders (for examples of similar attitudes among education pro-
fessionals, see Mac an Ghaill, 1988; Mirza, 1992). However, Tizard, Mor-
timore and Burchell (1988) and Tomlinson and Hutchinson (1991;
Tomlinson, 1992) also writing about the involvement of ethnic minority
parents, comment on the isolation of schools and teachers from the sur-
rounding locality and its residents. Teachers may spend little time in the
area, other than when they are inside the school building. They may be
unaware of locally based groups or provision, such as supplementary
schools, although, to parents, these may be important sources of education
for their children. Such isolation does not help foster teachers’ awareness
of cultures, religions or languages other than their own (Tomlinson and
Hutchinson, 1991). Nor does it foster close parent-teachers links, leaving
minority parents, who may have been educated in different, and often
more formal, school systems, disenchanted with what can, in contrast,
appear as the lax atmosphere characterizing many British primary schools.
In schools which are fundamentally monocultural, in terms of curriculum,
staffing and ethos, racial prejudice may go unremarked. While equal op-
portunity policies may be fairly widespread now, in many settings these
remain ‘paper policies’, making little difference to practice (Troyna, 1993;
Gillborn, 1995). Certainly, parents are rarely involved in the planning of
such policies and may not even know of their existence. Tizard, Mortimore
and Burchell (1988) conclude that, faced with this situation, it is hardly
surprising that many minority parents view their children’s school with a
mixture of wariness, bemusement and anger.
Much literature on home-school relations speaks routinely of ‘parents’.
Yet particularly in primary schools the overwhelming majority of parents,
involved with the school, are women. The use of ‘parents’ can be seen as an
advance from the once-common and overtly paternalistic ‘mums’. ‘Parent’
at least includes the possibility of male involvement. However, Bob Bur-
gess and colleagues noted in their recent study, that the slippage from
‘parents’ to ‘mums’ persisted and was common among nursery educators
(Burgess, Hughes and Moxon, 1991; David, 1990). Furthermore, gender
divisions were reinforced as women helpers were assigned tasks tradi-
tionally designated as ‘female’ occupations, such as sewing and cooking.
In recent years, feminist researchers have highlighted the way in which
mothers, especially in the early stages of their child’s education, are subject
to considerable pressures to conform to an idealized image of ‘good
mothering’. State education has long been seen as a potential remedy for
the inadequacies of working-class mothers (David, 1993; Griffith and
Smith, 1987). Specific practices (notably a child-centred approach) are nor-
malized through the agencies of (often female) teachers and healthcare
‘experts’, as well as the media. As many ‘school-approved’ activities stem
192 Understanding Learning

from the cultural practices and values of a specific socio-economic group,

(the white middle class), white working-class women, or women from eth-
nic minorities are presented with an image of ‘good mothering’, which for
various economic, cultural or ideological reasons they may be unable or
unwilling to fulfil (Duxbury, 1987; Walkerdine, 1985; Finch, 1984b). For
example, Valerie Walkerdine (1985) suggests child-centred approaches are
less likely to be adopted by those in an economically insecure position.
Failure to maintain the correct image can cause feelings of guilt or inade-
quacy; if the woman rejects or is unaware of the ideal, she risks being
branded by professionals as a ‘bad mother’.
Walkerdine and Lucey (1989) develop the concept of the ‘sensitive
mother’. This requires women to educate their preschool children in two
ways; first, by giving them experience of early number and language ideas
by turning household tasks into ‘learning experiences’, and second, by
teaching them social skills. Walkerdine and Lucey argue that the ‘sensitive
mother’ ideal oppresses women who ascribe to it. Their study suggests that
these mothers made little time for themselves because of the pressure of
constantly interacting in a ‘sensitive’ way with their child. Again failure to
match the image could provoke severe guilt. Similarly Griffith and Smith
(1987) argue that once a child is school aged, her mother has little oppor-
tunity, and less power to intervene in the classroom. Yet if a problem arises
concerning the child, the likelihood is that the mother, rather than the
teacher or any other family member, will assume responsibility for the
child’s ‘deficiency’.

Hill St and Low Rd: Class, Gender, Ethnicity

Class: the experiences of working-class parents

Perceptions of social class distinctions between parents and teachers were
particularly noticeable at Low Rd School. Although there were many
individual exceptions, relationships between parents and teachers were
often marked by wariness and in a few occasions, outright hostility. It
may be thought that the degree of mutual suspicion which existed sug-
gests that this school is atypical in this respect. However, I would argue
that relationships pushed to the limit more easily reveal their underlying
assumptions.
Although incidents of physical and verbal abuse were not the determin-
ing characteristic of most teacher—parent contacts, there had been a
period at the end of the 1980s when there had been a marked increase in
such assaults. The legacy of this time was discernible in the attitudes of
the present staff. For many teachers, the working-class parents of Low Rd
were distinguished by their ‘otherness’, and were perceived as a potential
threat, both to teachers personally and to the smooth running of the
school.
 Researching Home-School Relations 193

There are undeniable pressures upon some families. However, such an

emphasis risks ignoring the school’s contribution to parent-teacher rela-
tionships. Schools are not neutral institutions, and while their effects are
undoubtedly more minor than poor housing, or high unemployment rates,
they are nevertheless discernible. The period 1988-90, coinciding with the
rise in the harassment of staff, was a time of disruption at Low Rd with high
levels of teacher turnover and inexperienced staff. The degree to which
such organizational disarray affects the standards of learning and be-
haviour within schools is often not appreciated by those not in daily contact
with them.
The headteacher, Ms Court, had attempted to strengthen the school’s
links with social services, housing departments, police and health service.
This is explained by the school’s need to know what is going on in other
areas of the children and parents’ lives in order to understand conflicts that
might surface at school; an approach which is common in schools in areas
of economic deprivation and has been influenced by the ideology of refor-
mist community education. The rationale is that the school should no
longer appear remote from other concerns in everyday life, nor blind to
outside influences affecting the children’s enthusiasm and willingness to
learn. However, this type of contact with other agencies operates over the
heads of local families (see also Baron, 1989). The school appears to form
part of a ‘wall’ made up of the ‘caring professions’, backed up by the police,
and designed to ‘manage’ the local population. The families themselves
remain ‘cases’ or ‘clients’ and have no entry into the power structure of
such institutions. The amount of blank walls some parents met with in an
attempt to run their lives was guaranteed to induce a severe sense of
frustration. The following quotation gives some sense of this, although the
respondent emphasized that she felt herself to be in a more secure financial
and personal position than many.
It’s a poor area, housing conditions are bad, it’s not just education, there are
other social problems. You try and keep the children settled and calm but look at
the bad housing, the unemployment. I’m not trying to make excuses for the kids
not learning, but parents do try to keep them on a steady keel and present some
form of normalcy. My husband was unemployed for almost two years. That’s not
just a one-off thing, here it’s almost normal . . . There’s just too many factors.
What can you do? ... I said to the councillor, ‘Look at this place, it’s not
centrally heated, we can’t even get our repairs done.’ This is just basic living,
we’re not asking for a swimming pool in the back garden.
(African/Caribbean mother, Low Rd)
This sense of having to battle to improve or just to protect one’s position
and belonging increases the likelihood of conflicts between parents and
teachers starting because the parent is defending his or her child, often on
non-educational matters. This individualistic focus did not mean that par-
ents thought their own children were incapable of doing wrong; indeed,
several respondents acknowledged how difficult it was for the school, and
sometimes themselves, to manage the child. However, they often perceived
the school’s criticism of their children as an implicit criticism of their
194 Understanding Learning

parenting ability, and in self-defence would turn the complaints back

against the school. One mother finally responded to what she perceived as
constant disparagement of her child with the words: ‘You deal with it,
youre the teacher. You never say nothing good about him.’ For many
parents the school was another institution seeking to exert control over
their families, but over which they apparently had no control. The school
made demands of them (send your children to school regularly and punctu-
ally, make sure their behaviour is good, read to them at home and so on),
but there seemed to be no effective channel through which parents could
present their demands. Anger grew from frustration; but it also served
another function, motivating parents into tackling those who worked in the
school, who understood how it operated, and who could (seemingly) deter-
mine their children’s future (see also Grace, 1978; Carspecken, 1990). The
teachers, however, perceived the situation quite differently, feeling them-
selves vulnerable as potential victims of parents’ often misdirected anger.
Experience of a very few abusive parents had contributed to some
teachers’ seeing parents’ lifestyles and personalities as abnormal, which
helped to legitimize their exclusion from school.
However, some teachers at Low Rd, especially the (all female) senior
management team (SMT), stressed the severe social and economic press-
ures which prevented parents becoming more closely involved with the
school.
The parents are all interested, if it’s your child, you’re interested. It’s either
pressure of work, or they think you’re the teacher they'll let you get on with it, or
possibly language differences. A couple of children in the class, their families
have got so many pressures, home pressures, emotional pressures, social press-
ures, they’re just glad that someone’s looking after the children during the day.
(White, female teacher)

It should be remembered, however, that Low Rd parents were not offered

many opportunities to display their interest in their child’s education or the
school. When I asked one woman if there had been school social events for
parents, she laughed,
Ms Castle: People do that way out [in the suburbs]. This is [City], they wouldn’t
do that here.
CV: Is that because the teachers wouldn’t do it, or the parents wouldn’t
be interested?
Ms C: (pause) I don’t know. If they did discos even for the kids ... we
could come in and help. They could give something a try.

Ms Castle had regular contact with the school, concerning her son’s be-
haviour. She was aware that home-school communication on issues other
than discipline was limited, and disliked this minimal relationship.
However, she accepted it as the norm for an inner-city school. She dis-
cerned quite clearly the social class differences that characterized the two
‘sides’. However, she was unaware that she, and parents like her, were seen
by the teachers as responsible for this situation through their apparent lack
of support for the school.
 Researching Home-School Relations 195

Gender: the experiences of mothers

The negative views held by many of the Low Rd teachers of their pupils’
parents were also gendered, and did not impact equally upon the children’s
mothers and fathers. An example of this is the casual derogatory comments
both male and female teachers made about the sexual morality of particu-
lar women.
Her children have all got different fathers, she’s not ‘Mrs.’ at all!
Some of these kids don’t even know where their mum spends the night, if you see
what I mean.
Oh, he’s terrible [the child] and she’s awful! . . . Of course, she’s not the mother
really, she’s his dad’s girlfriend.

Two mothers who met at a battered women’s refuge and now shared a flat
commented, ‘We tell everyone we are sisters, otherwise they’ll think we’re
gay ... they don’t like us round here anyway’. The implications of such
remarks is that women who do not live within a traditional nuclear family
are inadequate as mothers; they are deemed so for disrupting conventional
notions of sexual morality. These constraints do no apply to men. Similarly,
not all women are subject to the same degree of prurience. Middle-class
women (with the possible exception of lesbian mothers) are less likely to
have their ability to be a parent measured in terms of who they are having a
relationship with. With limits on welfare state spending, unorthodox fam-
ilies who cannot provide for themselves economically are seen as likely to
be suffering moral poverty too (Isaac, 1990). Such value systems are perva-
sive. Gender, sexuality and class discrimination interact. For the working-
class women of the Low Road area, sexual behaviour is one characteristic
that contributes towards the picture of them as the ‘undeserving poor’
(Golding and Middleton, 1982). Such comments were not made about
mothers at Hill St. It is arguable that Low Road mothers, because of the
greater degree of poverty in the area, were seen as living less ‘normal’
lifestyles than their Hill St counterparts. Golding and Middleton (ibid.)
conclude that explanations for poverty that focus on individuals’ failings —
‘blaming the victim’ — are widespread and coexist with a persistent belief in
the existence of an irresponsible welfare ‘scrounger’ figure (also Taylor-
Gooby, 1985). The prevalence of such ideas within society has the potential
to affect all its members, including teachers. Certainly, more casual com-
ments made by some teachers — for instance, “The parents were all in the
pubs, instead of doing PACT” [the home-reading scheme] — suggested that
they employed such stereotypes.

Ethnicity. the experiences of black and bilingual parents

On paper, Hill St and Low Rd both had anti-racist policies. In practice,

however, the two schools reacted to particular racial incidents rather than
196 Understanding Learning

proactively trying to create an environment in which racism was deemed

unacceptable (see Troyna and Carrington, 1990; Gillborn, 1993). Low Rd
provides an example of this point. While there were instances of stereotyp-
ing and ethnocentric remarks made to me by white parents at both schools,
it was at Low Rd that a significant minority of white parents and children
made overtly racist comments, particularly directed towards children or
adults of Bangladeshi origin. The primary complaint of these racist parents
(16 per cent of the Low Rd parent-respondents) was that the school fa-
voured the ‘Pakis’, although no one was able to give any example of this
phenomenon. This was unsurprising given that little or no provision existed
which was specifically directed to the Bangladeshi population. It might be
argued that there is little a school can do to affect parents’ attitudes and
behaviour. However, Low Rd made few overt attempts to encourage a
climate throughout the school, which might mitigate such behaviour on the
part of the children, and clearly publicize its non-racist stance to their
parents. Indeed, as becomes clear in the following section, the school neg-
lected the experiences and concerns of Bangladeshi families and other
minority groups; a neglect which, in effect, compounded the overt racism
shown by some parents.

Parent-teacher communication: Bangladeshi parents at Low Rd

The families of approximately one-third of Low Rd’s pupils came from
Bangladesh. Speaking mainly through Shajna, the interpreter, the parents
who took part in this study felt very strongly that the school’s ethos was
shaped by teachers with whom they shared no common ground, be it in
terms of ethnicity, social class, language or religious belief. As evidence,
they argued that Low Rd had only one Bengali-speaking member of staff,
made no provision for Bengali classes, and had no books in Bengali
(teachers claimed the school did actually have a few dual-language books
and was ordering more). Several factors combined to make communication
between home and school particularly difficult for Bangladeshi parents.
The one Bengali/Sylheti speaking teacher, Ms Ali, was a class teacher, and
therefore, despite her best efforts, not always available to see parents. This
problem was compounded by the absence of any regular parent-teacher
meetings at Low Rd. There was widespread parental support for specific
invitations to visit the school. Planned parent-teacher meetings with inter-
preters present were particulary important for those Bangladeshi parents
who were monolingual, and found themselves faced with monolingual
teachers. Since the primary mode of teacher-parent communication at
Low Rd was informal, unscheduled conversations, Bangladeshi parents
frequently resorted to using their children as interpreters. This often pro-
ved unsatisfactory, particularly as the children themselves were usually the
subject of discussion. As Ms Ali was the only person able to translate notes
home, she tended to concentrate on individual letters, and the more
general notes often went out in English only. Given this situation, it is
unsurprising that all of the Bangladeshi parents interviewed during
 Researching Home-School Relations 197

fieldwork, felt, first of all, that they had no reliable and easily accessible
source of information on the progress of their individual child, and second,
that they were precluded from knowing about general, organizational de-
velopments at Low Rd.
This linguistic isolation was mirrored in the parents’ perception of Low
Road’s attitude towards religion. Little attention seemed to be given to
Islam; even obvious opportunities to do so, for example by celebrating Id-
ul-Fitr, the festival which marks the end of Ramadan, had not been taken
(a similar criticism was made by Muslim parents at Hill St). Later in the
year, Low Rd appointed a second Bengali/Sylheti speaker to the staff. This
teacher considered that Bangladeshi culture and Islam should be afforded
a more visible role in school life. He found that other teachers were not
opposed to such developments (they encouraged him as he organized a
celebration of Id, for example). Such inaction, he commented, was in itself
an action, symbolizing the marginalization of Bangladeshi families at
Low Rd.

Community-school relations: South Asian Muslims and Turkish-speaking

parents at Hill St
It was not only at Low Rd where ethnic minority parents suggested that
they felt the school was unaware of, and uninterested in, their concerns and
opinions. At Hill St, many black and bilingual parent-respondents revealed
a similar sense of alienation. The combined impact of the incidents and
events to which they referred indicates the level of institutional neglect of
issues related to ethinicity.
Hill St School had instituted twice-weekly, separate assemblies for Mus-
lim children. The initiative had been prompted by a Muslim governor, and
was supported by a nearby mosque. The Muslim parents who participated
in this study all welcomed the development, which, however, proved short-
lived. The assemblies were soon reduced to a weekly basis; the school
apparently found, as one teacher put it, that the logistical requirements for
more frequent assemblies were ‘intrusive’.
This was not the sole initiative that Hill St undertook, as one member of
its staff expended considerable time and energy in building links with local
community groups, particularly the two nearby Islamic associations. But
the school, as a corporate body, had no clear view of the type of liaison it
wished to establish. The issue, in fact, was not discussed, as visiting the
centres was seen as an end in itself. Thus the community groups were used
as resource centres, places that could provide translations, information and
teachers for language lessons. Pressure of work on all those involved meant
that such contact remained limited and infrequent. Thus opportunities to
establish a more interactive, pervasive link between Hill St School and the
community centres were lost.
This is exemplified by the school’s arrangements for the Gujerati and
Urdu lessons which were offered to South Asian children during the school
day. Teachers for these lessons were found through one of the local Islamic
198 Understanding Learning

community associations. In several respects, however, the programme

seemed half-hearted. The lessons were conducted in the shabby room
which was nominally the Parents’ Room. There was no attempt to integrate
these teachers into the main staff body; when they finished their lessons,
they left the premises, having had little chance to make contact with other
teachers or children (see also Macdonald et al., 1989, for similar examples).
Families recently arrived in England are particularly likely to perceive
institutions as remote and distant, unless the institution actively endeavours
to present itself otherwise. One of the most recent groups of arrivals in City
were Turkish-speaking families. Hill St had a part-time Turkish-speaking
teacher, Dideem, who was funded by a local community group to work with
children from eight or nine families. All the families had been in England for
less than two years (although the issue was not explored, it is likely that most
of these families were Kurdish refugees). Through Dideem, I spoke to five
parents. On arrival, many had had no information on schools, housing, or
jobs, and were almost totally reliant on other community members. They
stressed the importance of education for their children, but found the
English education system informal and unstructured, compared to Turkey’s
(see Sonyel, 1987). This contributed to their difficulty in gaining information;
there was no timetable, no homework, and the children claimed they mostly
did maths and drawing (i.e. simple activities for teachers to arrange for
bilingual beginners). The parents wanted opportunities to talk to the
teachers, to ask about teaching methods and school routines, and how they
could help their children at home. In previous years, and on her own initia-
tive, Dideem had arranged meetings to try and answer these questions.
However, the teachers tended to perceive her as a resource, someone to
interpret and translate for them. This was important work, but Dideem was
able and willing to establish coherent links with Turkish-speaking parents,
rather than simply acting as a link between individual teachers and parents.

Discipline and behaviour: Bangladeshi parents at Low Rd and African/

Caribbean parents at Hill St
Bangladeshi parents at Low Rd shared a general parental concern with
questions of discipline and behaviour, and this was a frequent topic in inter-
views. With Shajna interpreting (and contributing her own experiences), we
also discussed racial abuse and harassment. Parents had divergent opinions
on the issue of racist behaviour at school. Some felt that bullying and name-
calling were directed at Bangladeshi children more than at other groups.
Others considered that there was a generally high level of indiscipline at Low
Rd which involved all children. (It should be noted that children may not
always tell their parents about racist incidents; Troyna and Hatcher, 1992.)
Nevertheless, the Bangladeshi parents all agreed that teachers rarely
followed up incidents or complaints from children. This criticism was in
fact voiced by parent-respondents from all ethnic groups. Low Rd did have
a policy for dealing with fighting and name-calling, and all such episodes
should have been recorded and the headteacher notified.
 Researching Home-School Relations 199

Issues of discipline and behaviour are particularly controversial in respect

of the disproportionately high rate of exclusions of African/Caribbean chil-
dren, especially boys. Several studies have explored the interaction between
teachers and black children in an attempt to explore the factors which lead to
this situation. David Gillborn (1990), for example, focuses on what he terms
‘the myth of an Afro-Caribbean challenge to authority’ (p. 19). Gillborn
argues that much conflict is triggered by teachers’ expectations that African/
Caribbean boys will engage in disruptive or challenging behaviour, and also
by their ethnocentric interpretations of these pupils’ preferred clothes, their
manner of speech, or even the ways in which they walk (ibid.; see also
Wright, 1987; 1992; Mac an Ghaill, 1988). Four of the ten Hill St African/
Caribbean mothers who took part in this study conimented on this syn-
drome. They felt that they had witnessed examples of their children being
labelled as ‘troublemakers’, as this mother describes.
They think I think he wears a halo, but I know what kind of kid he can be...
[But] the child who came to school was not the child who came home ...
Sometimes he’s treated quite rightly, sometimes it’s just the name of the child,
regardless of who did what. It he’s involved, he’s the culprit . . . He’s got a name
that goes with him from class to class.

fees
Incidents such as these are not atypical. They may, in isolation, be con-
sidered insignificant by the school authorities, and therefore not fully inves-
tigated. They may only rarely have such formal consequences as a
complaint to the school’s governing body. But from a parent’s perspective,
they may contribute to rapidly cooling home-school relations.
Many black and minority ethnic parents at Low Rd and Hill St har-
boured an appreciable sense of disaffection with their children’s apparently
insular, ethnocentric schools. But it cannot be assumed that a particular
view of, or approach to, a school can be ‘read off’ from membership of a
particular ethnic group. Although most parent respondents also shared the
same gender and class groups, other factors played a integral part in struc-
turing their attitudes. These included such matters as their previous famil-
iarity with the English primary education system, their perceptions of their
children’s progress, and also their religious affiliation. Similarly, many
white working class parents who took part in the study also argued that the
schools neglected their particular needs and concerns. As McCarthy (1990)
has suggested it is oversimplistic to conclude that the reactions and rela-
tions of actors in any school context can be explained simply in terms of
ethnicity.

Conclusion

This chapter locates the home-school debate as an illustration of Miriam

David’s assertion that,
200 Understanding Learning

a particular framework has been used by policy-makers and social scientists alike
to inform and interpret social and educational reforms. This framework has
tended to ignore, or not make explicit, questions of gender or race. However
despite both the gender-neutral and race-neutral language, reforms and research
have been constructed around gender and racial divisions.
(David, 1993, p. 207)

The chapter has supplied empirical examples of the ways in which home—
school relationships are framed by the effects of social class, gender and
ethnicity. Omitting these, and other structural dimensions, from the debate
can result in uncritical and superficial discussions, which assume consensus
over key issues such as appropriate teacher—pupil relationships, curriculum
issues, or modes of parental involvement. However, a closer analysis of
home-school relations may reveal differences and divisions between dif-
ferent social groups concerning all these issues. Understanding this situa-
tion is vital if simplistic strategies are to be avoided.

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 Index

ability grouping, 130 assessment, 98

academic achievement, 123-4 ability grouping, 127
affective outcomes, 124—5 of children, 114, 144
alternatives, 129-30 flaws in, 102-6
anti-school attitudes, 125-6 gender differences, 118-19
classroom practices, 128-9 of mathematics, 114-15
effective schooling, 126-7 social and historical context, 99-101
placement of pupils, 127 views of, 139-41
social implications, 126 see also identity through assessment;
types of, 122-3 reassessment
abuse, teacher-parent communication, ateliers, 91
192 Athens, classical education, 25
academic identity, 170 attitudes
acculturation, 28-9 ability grouping, 125-6
achievements of teachers, 190
curriculum coverage, 9 authenticity, 29-30
desirable outcomes, 88-9, 90 autonomy, 29
grouping, 123-4
respecting children’s early, 141-4 banding, 123
social relationships, 169 Basic School Law (1975), 184
value-added measures, 150 behaviour, home-school relations,
see also gendered achievement 198-9
activities, gender differences, 112 belief systems, 155
adults, observation of children, 137-8 Bennett, S. N., 37
Advisory Centre for Education, 181 Bernstein, Basil, 180
affective outcomes, grouping, 124-5 biographies, learning, 60
African-Caribbean Educational bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, 46f, 52
Resource Centre, 190 brain damage, potential isolation, 46f
Afro-Caribbean families British Association for Early Childhood
home-school relations, 198-9 Education, 90
teacher perceptions, 190
Alexander, Robin, 36, 37 capacity, and assessment, 103-4
alienation, ability grouping, 125-6 care, in assessment, 139
animal cognition, 71-2 Centre Européen des Parents d’Ecole
anti-conformity, 172, 174 Publique (CEPEP), 183
anti-school culture, 125-6 change, process of, 22
anxiety, SATs, 152 child-centred education, 3-4, 32, 39
aristocratic institutions, 21 childhood
Aristotle, 29 concepts of, 85-6
artes liberales, 24, 25 social constructions of, 86-94
artificial intelligence, 73, 74-5 children
arts infused curriculum, 53-4 assessment of, views on, 139-41
aspirations, ability grouping, 124 effective assessment, 144

203
204 Index

as interpreters, 196-7 degradation, learning disability, 65-9

and learning, 84-95 deintellectualization, educational
observing, 134-9 policy, 14-17
Children Act (1989), 143 democracy
citizens, freedom of, 2 and education, 2, 20-3
classical humanistic education, 25-6 lack of concern for, 18
classroom lessons, 62, 63, 66 new progressivism, 35
classroom practices developmental paths
ability grouping, 128-9 intelligences, 49
knowledge building, 80 knowledge building, 80
multiple intelligences, 49-50, 56 developmental patterns, appropriate
co-construction, 33 curricula, 135-7
cognition see animal cognition; non- developmentalism, new progressivism,
situated cognition; situated cognition 34, 38
cognitive development, 6 Dewey, John, 26, 29, 35
collaborative knowledge building, 80 Diderot, 92
common sense, in education policy, 15, differences, recognising and accepting,
16 90
communication see teacher-parent differentiation, 158
communication discipline, home-school relations, 198-9
communities of practice, 7, 81 domain knowledge, 48
community-school relations, 197-8 dysfunctional families, neo-
competencies, in assessment, 104, 106, conservative discourse 190
107f
competitive economy, achievement, 9 education
competitive work, 157-8 debates about purpose of, 14
computation, gendered achievement, and democracy, 20-3
113 ideology in, 2-3
computer intelligence, 74 knowledge production, 79-82
concrete operations, 76-7 multidimensional exploration of, 1-2
confidence, mathematical achievement, see also child-centred education;
sls humanistic education
conformity, 172, 175 Education Act (1944), 20
constructivism Education Reform Act (1988), 14, 91,
child development, 34 149
child-centred ideology, 4 education theory
learning, 4-6, 7, 8 in education policy, 15-16
consumers, parents as, 10 fragmentation of, 18-20
context, and learning, 62, 63, 67, 69 educational policy, 14-17
cultural approach, learning, 110 educational reforms, 14, 15, 20
culture educators see teachers
deficit theory, 64 effort, grouping, 129
and disability, 66 Elton Report, 125
and learning, 35, 68-9 empirical research, critics,
pupils’, 171 progressivism, 37-8
curriculum empowerment, 3
arts-infused, 53-4 English, gendered achievement, 115-16
assessment system, 157-9 Enlightenment, 25, 99
coverage and achievement, 9 environmental transformation, 72
developmental patterns, 135-7 ethnicity
modularization, 130 African Carribean families, 198-9
review of, 91-2 Bangladeshi parents, 196-7
see also National Curriculum black and bilingual parents, 195-6
Muslim and Turkish-speaking
deficit model, learning, 63 parents, 197-8
 Index 205

ethos, ability grouping, 126 Turkish home-school policies,

Europe, home-school policies, 183-5 197-8
European Parents Association, 183 South Asian home-school policies,
existentialist humanistic education, 27 197-8
expertise, 72 home-school contacts, 179-80
extracurricular identity, 171 parents as partners, 182-3
home-school relations
failure black and bilingual parents, 195-6
anxiety about, 152 discipline and behaviour, 198-9
assessment system, 104-5 experiences of mothers, 195
of educational theory, 18-19 literature on, 187-9
fantasy, in education, 94 Muslims and Turkish-speaking
Federal Basic Law, 184 parents, 197-8
fixed self, 26 parent-teacher communication,
Foucault, Michel, 103 196-7
foundational acculturation, 29 social class, ethnicity and gender,
Frames of Mind, 45 189-92
friendship, ability grouping, 125 working-class parents, 192-4
human faculties, 46
gender human goodness, 26
home-school relations, 189-92, 195 humanism, 28
socialization, 111 new progressivism, 34-5
gendered achievement humanist liberal education
assumption of equality, 118-19 pedagogical principles, 28-30
concerns about, 109 humanistic education, 24—5
English, 115-16 classical, 25-6
mathematics, 113-15 existentialist, 27
science, 116-18 integrative model, 27-30
gendered learning, 111-13 radical, 27
goals, intentional learning, 78 romantic, 26
good life, 2-3, 26 humanists, 25
‘good mothering’ image, 192
Greek classical education, 25 Identity and Learning Programme
grouping see ability grouping (ILP), 162-78
identity through assessment, 149-60
health, progress in education, 137-8 children’s responses, SATs, 156-7
‘helpless prone’, 104 pedagogy and curriculum, 157-9
hierarchical authority, assessment, 103 research study, 151
high-ability pupils, 125, 128 SATs, 151-6
home-reading initiatives, 188 ideology
Home-School Council, 181 critics, progressivism, 36-7
home-school liaison teachers (HSLTs), in education, 2-3
190-1 government-sponsored, 32
home-school links, 180-1 of new progressivism, 33-6
ethnic home-school relations, 189-92 imaginative thinking, 92
European policies 183-5 individualisation, of education, 50-1
Denmark, home-school policies, individuality
184 authenticity, 30
France, home-school policies, 184 humanism, 34
Germany, home-school policies, individuals
184 freedom of, 2
Italy, home-school policies, 184 transformational view, learning, 33,
Muslim home-school policies, 35
197-8 innate ability, 99
Spain, home-school policies, 185 inner nature, 26
206 Index

innovatory schemes, 39 liberal society, 20

inspections, of schools, 150 life prospects, SATs, 153-4
institutions, educational, 21 literacy, SCAA, 88-9
instructional goals, 78 longitudinal ethnography, 175-8
integrated learning theory, 100 low-stream students, 125, 128
integrative model, humanistic
education, 27-30 market, in education, 105
intellectual activity, humanism, 28 mathematics, assessment of, 114-15
intelligence measurement, educational activity,
learning through application of, 99 99-100, 101, 102
see also artificial intelligence; measuring instruments, gendered
multiple intelligences achievement, 113
linguistic machine, 46f, 73 mental processing, 110
logical-mathematical, 46f metaphoric schema, three worlds, 72
multiple, 44—S methodologies, in teaching, 37
musical, 46f MI theory, 54
naturalist, 46f middle class
spatial, 46f knowledge, education system, 180
intelligence testing, 99 parent-child interaction, 189
intentional learning, 78 modularization, curriculum, 130
interpersonal intelligence, 46f mothers
intrapersonal intelligence, 46f home-school relations, 195
idealized image, 191-2
Key Stage test scores, grouping, 127 motivation, in learning, 104
knowledge, constructivism, 4-6 multiple intelligences, 44-5
knowledge objects, 72, 80 arts-infused curriculum, 534
knowledge production, 79-82 classroom practice, 49-50
knowledge-building goals, 78 conclusions, 55—6
defined, 45-6
labelling misconceptions, 48-9
learning disability, 65-9 misuses, 54-5
MI theory, 54 MI theory, 50-2, 54-5
language project-based learning, 52-3
of assessment, 140-1 recent developments, 47-8
deficit theory, 64 student education, 50-1
of education, 183 teaching subject matter, 51-2
and learning, 68-9 theory, 54
Reggio-Emilia approach, 90-1 traditional ideas, intelligence, 47
teaching ethnic, 198
language codes, 180 National Association of Headteachers,
learning 181
change in theories of, 99-100 National Confederation of Parent-
constructivism, 4—6, 7, 8 Teacher Association, 181
and disability, 60-70 National Curriculum, 149, 151, 160
pupil career, 162-78 National Curriculum Task Group on
static theory of, 63 Assessment and Testing, 150
styles, 48-9 Neil, A. S., 26
theoretical traditions, 109-11 New Standards Project, 100
through observation, 134 non-conformity, 172, 175
transformational view, 33, 35 non-situated cognition, 73
views of childhood, 84-95 normalising judgement, assessment, 103
see also gendered learning; Northern Ireland, ability grouping, 126
intentional learning; professional
learning; project-based learning observation, of children, 134—9
liberal education, 24 official social identity, 171
 Index 207

old paradigm, childhood, 86 critics, 36-9

opportunity to learn, 117, 119 derision of, 16
ORACLE project, 37, 39 ideological foundations, 33-6
outcomes see achievements progressivists, modern, 39-40
Project Spectrum, 50-1
Paley, Vivian Gussin, 92 Project Zero, 48, 50, 51
panoptic surveillance, 154 project-based learning, 52-3
parents psychomythology, 99
Bangladeshi, discipline and pupil career
behaviour, 198-9 arbitrary demands, 64-5
language isolation, 196-7 degradation and labelling, 65-9
bilingual, 195-6 difficulty and deficit, 62-4
involvement in achievement, 188 pupil identity, 170—S
legislation, parental partnership, 181 settings, variations in learning, 62
partnership with teachers, 138-9 social relationships, 162-70
role in education, 10 pupils, grouping, 127
see also home-school links; home-
school relations; teacher-parent radical humanistic education, 27
communication reading, gender differences, 112, 115
Parent’s Charter, 181 reading test (1999), 118-19
participatory/interpersonal experience, realistic settings, achievement, 114, 117
2, reassessments, ability grouping, 129
partnership Records of Achievement movement,
educators and parents, 10, 138-9, 181 105
see also home-school links redefining, 172-3, 175
Pedagogical Creed, 29 reflection, 1
pedagogical principles, humanism, Renaissance, classical humanism, 25
28-30 reproduction theory, 19-20
pedagogy, assessment system, 157-9 respect
peer groups, 159, 167 in assessment, 139
philosophers, French, 92-3 for children’s early achievements,
philosophical principle, humanism, 28 141-4
Piagetian theory, 5, 6 responsibilities, respect for
Plowden Report (1967), 180, 189 achievements, 142
polarization, 158 robot cognition, 73, 75
politics, education in, 10 Rogers, C., 26
Popper, Karl, 72 role play, gender differences, 111
powers, accepting children’s, 92-3 Romans, classical education, 25
pragmatic epistemology, 100 romantic humanistic education, 26
pragmatism, 4, 36 Rousseau, J. J., 26
Primary School Report (1931), 123 Royal Society of Arts, 181, 188
primary schools, streaming, 123 rule-based artificial intelligence, 74-5
problem solving
intelligence, 45 salience, gendered achievement, 118
knowledge building, 80 SATs see standard assessment tasks
situated cognition, 6—7 Scholastic Aptitude Test, 155
process, and knowledge, 79 School Curriculum and Assessment
processing view, learning, 110 Authority (SCAA), 88, 144
professional learning, 106 school derived knowledge, 63-4
professional uncertainty, 182 school effectiveness, grouping, 126-7
progress, assessing children’s, 144 ‘school and family concordat’, 182
progression, home-school partnerships, school refusal, fantasy of, 93-4
182 schools see home-school links; home-—
progressivism, 32-3 school relations
child-centred ideology, 4 science, gendered achievement, 116-18
208 Index

self-determination, 9 home-school partnership, 138-9,

self-esteem, 104, 124-5 182-3, 189-92, 197-8
selfhood, 30 power in assessment, 140
‘sensitive mother’, 192 relationship with parents, 189-91
setting, 123 respectful, 143-4
sexual morality, mothers, 195 teaching
situated cognition, 6-7 ability grouping, 128-9, 130
advantages and disadvantages, 74-5 technicist activity, 2
learning beyond the situation, 76-9 teaching to the test, 160
problem of transfer, 75-6 testing see assessment
situations, knowledge production, 79 testing sessions, 62, 63
social class three worlds, metaphoric schema, 72
ability grouping, 127 time, allowing children, 142
home-school relations, 189-92 toys, learning opportunities, 112
mathematical achievement, 114 traditionalism, assessment, 103
social constructions, childhood, 86-94 traditionalists
social constructivism, 6, 100 critics of progressivism, 38-9
social domain, humanism, 28 ideas about intelligence, 47
social identities, 111 transfer, situated cognition, 75-6
social implications transformational view, individual
ability grouping, 126 learning, 33, 35
use of test results, 157, 159-60
social relationships, pupil learning, UN Convention on the Rights of the
162-70 Child, 144
socialization Universal Declaration of Human
gender, 111 Rights (UN), 27
and learning, 86 unofficial social identity, 171
of teachers, 190 urgency, in childhood, 143
standard assessment tasks (SATs)
children’s responses to, 156-7 value neutrality, educational theory, 19
shifting identifications, 151-6 value-added measures, achievement,
standards, drive to raise, 8, 101, 105 150
Steiner-Waldorf kindergartens, values
88-90 ability grouping, 126
strategic action of teachers, 190
dynamics of, 174-5 visionary speculation, 3
patterns and dimensions, 171-4 Vygotskian tradition, S—6
structured grouping procedures, 129
studia humanitatis, 24, 25 Willes, Mary, 93
symbolic operations, 76-7 working-class
symbolic representation, 91 gendered achievement, 114
home-school relations, 192-4
task completion goals, 78 measures of achievement, 180
teacher-parent communication, 136-7 parents, 192
teachers writing, gender differences, 112, 115,
expectations 116
mathematical achievement, 113
pupil learning, 168-9 zone of proximal development, 136
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Understanding Learning: Influences and Outcomes
Understanding Learning: Influences and Outcomes contains specially
chosen material which brings together issues of theory and practice.
It invites teachers to examine, review and
research their own practice in their own
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Section three considers the importance of
achievement, how this might be measured
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Section four illustrates how children's self
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