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The Covid-19 pandemic closed schools, but this hiatus provides an opportunity to rethink the fundamental principles of our education system. This book examines how, before the pandemic, the education system assumed that ability is measurable and innate, and how this myth of meritocracy reinforced educational inequalities. Since the Covid crisis began, educational inequality has become a central issue. Inspired by a project on grouping practices based on ‘ability’, the book analyses how the recent educational developments of datafication and neuroscience have reinvigorated ideas about how we classify and label children, with unequal effects. It sets out a post-pandemic hope that we can rethink the idea of innate and measurable intelligence, and thus disrupt the inequalities that result from this idea.

This edited collection profiles the sites and subjects of arts practices in different geographical contexts, including Hong Kong and mainland China, India and Sri Lanka, Finland, Chile, Brazil, Lebanon, Mexico, the USA, Germany, Canada, the UK, and Ireland. Chapters capture how collective hopes, fears, allegiances, frustrations, and memories, are sung, danced, played, etched on walls, or conveyed through puppets and theatre. Contributors to the volume thus draw attention to some of the diverse ways that groups of people collectively make sense of, re-imagine or seek to change the personal, cultural, social, economic, political, or territorial conditions of their lives, while using the arts as their means and spaces of engagement. Across its chapters, the book explores a number of broad themes and questions. How can we conceptualise the relationship between community development and arts/cultural practice? What diverse forms does this relationship take in contemporary contexts? How do communities of people engage with, utilise, make sense of and through particular artforms and media? How can we understand the aesthetic and associated meanings of such engagements? How are the power dynamics related to authorship, resources, public recognition, and expectations of impact negotiated within community-based arts processes? How do economistic and neoliberal rationalities influence arts processes and programmes in community contexts? Together, the chapters also critically interrogate if, and how, dominant rationalities are being resisted and challenged through arts practices.

This innovative study of the baby boomer generation, who are now entering old age, breaks new ground in ageing research. This post-war cohort has experienced a range of social, cultural, and medical changes in regard to their notions of body, from the introduction of the Pill and the decoupling of sex and procreation to the H-Bomb and Earthrise. Yet, paradoxically, ageing is also universal. This exciting book reflects the intersection of time, ageing, body and identity to give a more nuanced and enlightened understanding of the ageing process.

Offering a critical examination of the nature of co-produced research, this important new book draws on materials and case studies from the ESRC funded project ‘Imagine – connecting communities through research’. Outlining a community development approach to co-production, which privileges community agency, the editors link with wider debates about the role of universities within communities. With policy makers in mind, contributors discuss in clear and accessible language what co-production between community groups and academics can achieve. The book will be valuable for practitioners within community contexts, and researchers interested in working with communities, activists, and artists.

This book examines the social policies of the coalition government from 2010 to 2015, and outlines the incoming Conservative government’s approach during its first 100 days in office. Drawing on contributions on cross-cutting themes such as public expenditure and the governance of social policy, and on key service areas, including education, health and social security, it examines the key ideas underpinning the policies of the coalition government, the influences on policy, including the two governing parties, the legacy of New Labour, the financial crisis of 2008 and its interpretation, and ideology. The book argues that in most respects (although not all), the coalition government can be seen as having more in common with New Right approaches than those of New Labour’s Third Way or One Nation Conservatism. It suggests that that, combined with the emphasis on ‘austerity’ and large-scale public expenditure cuts, contributed to a reshaping of much of the welfare state, particularly in England, although the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom sought, in general, to move in a rather different policy direction. Looking at the first 100 days of the Conservative government the book concludes that the direction of travel under the coalition was likely to persist at least until the next general election, if not beyond.

The rise of Far Right populism poses major challenges for communities, exacerbating divisions, hate speech and hate crime. This book shows how communities and social justice movements can effectively tackle these issues, working together to mitigate their underlying causes and more immediate manifestations. Showing that community-based learning is integral to the development of strategies to promote more hopeful rather than more hateful futures, Mayo demonstrates how, through popular education and participatory action research, communities can develop their own understandings of their problems. Using case studies that illustrate education approaches in practice, she shows how communities can engineer democratic forms of social change.

This close investigation of student protests represents the first comparative review of the subject. Setting the wave of demonstrations within the contexts of student activism, social issues, and political movements, the book casts new light on their impact on higher education and on the broader society. The book begins with an overview of the analysis of transformation in higher education (HE) policies and student politics, linking them to research on the policy outcomes of social movements. HE policies have been shaped by various waves of student mobilization. Students have often been important actors in contentious politics, mobilizing on all main cleavages in society and often stimulating spin-off movements, as well as affecting institutional politics at large. Student protests are therefore affected by public policies at least as much as they affect them. The book focuses on these complex interactions, aiming at understanding the development of student protests within neoliberal universities. It explores four episodes of student contestation over HE reforms, which have recently taken place in Chile, Quebec, England, and Italy. In light of the findings, the book reflects on the impacts of neoliberal policies in contentious politics and point at the relevance of coalitions for a sustained impact of mobilization campaigns. The discussion also points toward the student movements' effects in terms of empowerment, the triggering of spill-over movements, and transformations in electoral and party politics. Offering sophisticated new theoretical arguments based on fascinating empirical work, the insights and conclusions revealed in this study are of value to anyone with an interest in social, political, and related studies.

Radical reforms are taking place to public service education in western style democracies. We identify the corporatisation of governance, and the role and influence of corporate elites within and external to institutions and public education. Supported by a Foreword from Professor Romuald Normand, we present 15 essays organised in two parts: one that examines this from a system perspective, and one that gives more attention to provision. These essays present primary research and analysis from a range of national settings, where corporatisation is examined and charted. We interrogate this data and analysis in order to identify major trends that are not only national but also global. The book makes an original and significant conceptual and empirical contribution to understandings and explanations of public policy.

In 2014 the UK government launched an investigation into the “Trojan Horse” affair: an alleged plot to “Islamify” several state schools in Birmingham. Twenty-one schools in Birmingham were subjected to snap Ofsted inspections and included in the various inquiries into the affair. The book's authors — one who was an expert witness in the professional misconduct cases brought against the teachers in the school, and the other, who researches the government's counter-extremism agenda — challenge the accepted narrative, arguing that a major injustice was inflicted on the teachers, and they go on to show how the affair was used to criticize multiculturalism and justify the expansion of a broad and intrusive counter-extremism agenda. The government cites the 'plot' in its argument about the need to develop a new counter-extremism strategy that confronts extremist ideology and not just threats of violence. However, the Kershaw Report and some other commentators argue that there was, in fact, no evidence of extremism.

How can higher education contribute to tackling today's complex challenges? In this wide-ranging book, the author argues that, in order to inspire and equip students to generate better responses to global challenges, we need a pedagogy that develops their imagination, creativity, emotional sensibilities and practical capabilities. The author proposes a critical-creative pedagogy that incorporates design-based activities, experiential teaching, serious play and future-oriented practices. Crucially, the book demonstrates the importance of moving beyond analysing limitations to working towards alternatives for more equitable, just and sustainable futures. Presenting concrete ideas for the reimagination of higher education, this book is an essential read for both educators and students in any field studying global challenges.

In the light of high-profile Supreme Court cases surrounding affirmative action, this book looks at the actors involved in the debate and what they are saying. That is, the book looks at who is setting the line of discussion in the Supreme Court by look at legal documents arguing for and against the case as well as the framing techniques they use to make their arguments noteworthy. Findings demonstrate that while supporters are made of a heterogeneous array of individuals and groups with a stake in affirmative action in higher education (e.g., students, professors, etc.), opponents are mainly represented by think tanks and other interest groups. Furthermore, this book finds that frames vary greatly between the groups, with supporters raising concern of what eliminating the policy will mean for minority students and opponents conversely arguing that such a policy is dangerous for our society and for those who merit inclusion into elite universities would not benefit from affirmative action. This book uses prominent sociological theories to put these arguments in broader contexts.

What has been done to achieve fairer and more efficient education systems, and what more can be done in the future? This book provides a comprehensive examination of crucial policy areas for education, such as differential outcomes, the poverty gradient, and the allocation of resources to education, to identify likely causes of educational disadvantage among students and lifelong learners. This analysis is supported by 20 years of extensive research, based in the home countries of the UK and on work in all EU 28 countries, USA, Pakistan, and Japan. The book brings invaluable insights into the underlying problems within education policy, and proposes practical solutions for a brighter future.

Attempts at educational equity amount to local activities performed within unequal and disjunctive political forces. As a politics, educational equity is redolent of the conditions that produce unequal schooling in the first place. Based on a four-year multi-modal study, this book identifies the forces that produced unequal schooling opportunities for Black families in Toronto, Canada, while simultaneously identifying the conditions that generated an Africentric Alternative School for these families and the Black community. The book identifies how the conditions that created unequal schooling were some of the very conditions that produced educational equity in the form of the school. This includes four preconditions to relay an account of the school’s origin, including biopolitics, neoliberalism, the politics of recognition, and the city and its relationships to ideologies of race and multiculturalism. Each precondition is discussed in a separate chapter and in relation to a significant policy event that precipitated the becoming of the Africentric Alternative School. The book utilises an unique feature by developing a ‘subtext’ that accompanies each chapter, whereby the authors reflect upon the theoretical and methodological choices in each corresponding chapter. The book concludes how this particular analysis of education policy can be used to map constellations of power and force that have a large degree of influence over policy subjects and policy actors, in concerted attempts to identify the important preconditions that shape recurring attempts at racial justice.

Recent research has shown profound impacts of institutional settings of education systems on educational inequalities, i.e. systematic disadvantages and advantages in education being structured by characteristics like class, gender, ethnicity, (dis)ability and their intersections. The main education system characteristics which have been identified as driving forces are stratification (tracking), standardisation and vocational specificity. The text centres on questions of how and via which social factors and processes these characteristics of education systems produce inequalities – not only in educational attainment but also in status attainment and life chances. The first part of the book comprises contributions that focus on theory and methods to examine the effects of educational systems on educational inequalities. The second part contains works on the influences of social attributes on educational attainment in terms of competencies or credentials. The third and last part of the book centres on social inequalities in educational returns while including both job related factors (job prestige, income, etc.) and nonmonetary educational returns (health, well-being, etc.). Finally, a discussion on “good” and “bad” education systems centres on the question of how an ideal education system could look like.

This book provides a new study of ethnic segregation across English state schools in the period from 2011 to 2017. It examines whether patterns of school-level segregation decreased or increased over the period, how those patterns compare with patterns of residential segregation, whether particular types of schools are associated with greater ethnic separations, and whether socio-economic differences add to the geographies of ethnic segregation. We find that high levels of ethnic segregation do exist between the majority White British and some other ethnic groups such as the Bangladeshi and Pakistani, more so at the primary than secondary level of schooling, and increased also for the more affluent of the White British. However, there is no compelling evidence that ethnic segregation is increasing – instead, the general trend is towards desegregation and greater ethnic diversity within local authority areas and their schools. Nor is there persuasive evidence that ethnic segregation is exacerbated greatly (at least, not directly) by the present system of school choice because school intakes appear comparable to the characteristics of their surrounding neighbourhoods in their ethnic composition.

The 21st century has witnessed significant changes to the structures and policies framing Higher Education. But how do these changes in norms, values, and purpose shape the generation now coming of age? Employing a generational analysis, this book offers an original approach to the study of education. Drawing on a British Academy-funded study, comprising a policy review, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with students and with academics of different generations, and an analysis of responses to the Mass Observation Study, the book explores the qualitative dimensions of the relationship between academics and students, and examines wider issues of culture and socialisation, from tuition fees and student mental health, to social mobility and employment. The book begins with a discussion of the emergence of a ‘graduate generation’, in a context where 50 per cent of young people are encouraged to go to University, on the basis that this is a personal investment in their future careers. Subsequent chapters review the policy changes that have led to this framing of Higher Education as an increasingly individualised experience, where ‘student choice’ is operationalised as the means by which Universities are funded and held to account; historical differences in the experience of Higher Education; and the impact of these changes on the role and status of academic staff and the experience of current and prospective students.

Thousands of children from minority and disadvantaged groups will never cross the threshold of a classroom. What can human rights contribute to the struggle to ensure that every learner is able to access high-quality education? This book explores how a human rights perspective offers new insights and tools into the current obstacles to education. It examines the role of private actors, the need to hold states to account for the quality of education, how to strike a balance between religion, culture and education, the innovative responses needed to guarantee girls' right to education and the role of courts. The book draws together contributors who have been deeply involved in this field from both developing and developed countries which enriches the understanding and remedial approaches to tackle current obstacles to universal education.

As international interest in promoting and assessing the impact of research grows, this book examines the ensuing controversies, consequences and challenges. It places a particular emphasis on learning from experiences in the UK, since this is the country at the forefront of a range of new approaches to incentivising, monitoring and rewarding research impact achievements. The book aims to understand the origins and rationale for these changes and to critically assess their consequences for academic practice. Combining a review of existing literature with a range of new qualitative data (from interviews, focus groups and documentary analysis), The Impact Agenda is unique in providing a comprehensive, cross-disciplinary empirical examination of the ways in which various forms of research impact assessment are shaping academic practices. Although the primary focus of the book is on the UK, the book also considers the different approaches that other countries with an interest in research impact are taking (notably Australia, Canada and the Netherlands). While noting the benefits that the increasing emphasis on outward facing work is bringing, the book draws attention to a wide range of challenges and controversies associated with research impact assessment and, in particular, with the UK’s chosen approach. It concludes by using the insights in the book to propose an alternative, more theoretically robust approach to incentivising and rewarding efforts to undertake and use academic research for societal benefit.

At a time when public education and reform agendas are changing the way we approach education, this book critically examines the key issues facing the public with implications for education policy makers, professionals and researchers. Drawing on empirical evidence gathered over 20 years, the book confronts current issues about social justice and segregation. The book uses Arendtian ideas to help the reader to ‘think politically’ about education and how and why public services education can be reimagined for the future.