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Article
Publication date: 1 February 1999

Thomas A. O’Donoghue and Simon Clarke

The traditional system of industrial relations in Australia has emphasised arbitrated decisions by central tribunals in order to achieve uniform wage increases without any…

Abstract

The traditional system of industrial relations in Australia has emphasised arbitrated decisions by central tribunals in order to achieve uniform wage increases without any consideration being given to productivity. Since the late 1980s, there has been a move towards negotiation at the enterprise level. Legislative reforms have occurred at both federal and state levels which present opportunities for individual enterprises to negotiate agreements defining terms and conditions considered to be most appropriate for their circumstances. One major arena where this development, popularly known as enterprise bargaining, is impacting, is that of education. Focuses on the phenomenon by: considering some of the literature on the theoretical and conceptual dimensions of the underlying notion of “bargaining”; outlining the general policy context within which enterprise bargaining has been taking place in Australia; presenting an overview of the emerging research base on award restructuring and enterprise‐based bargaining; outlining the need for research aimed at understanding participants’ perceptions of enterprise bargaining and of their experiences of the bargaining process; examining a major approach to engaging in such research, namely, the micro‐political approach.

Details

International Journal of Educational Management, vol. 13 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-354X

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 7 January 2019

Abstract

Details

The Lost Ethnographies: Methodological Insights from Projects that Never Were
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-773-7

Book part
Publication date: 22 April 2003

Shereen Benjamin

Meadway School for Girls (not its real name) is a London comprehensive school for girls aged 11–16. I worked there for just under four years as a part-time learning support…

Abstract

Meadway School for Girls (not its real name) is a London comprehensive school for girls aged 11–16. I worked there for just under four years as a part-time learning support teacher, with students who had been identified as having ‘special educational needs’. Some of these students also participated in my ethnographic research into the micro/politics of ‘special educational needs’ (Benjamin, 2002). Meadway is, in current terms, a ‘successful school’: relatively high proportions of its students attain examination results at or above normative levels, and it has a low rate of student exclusions. Every year, when the local league tables of schools’ examination results are published, Meadway vies with another local girls’ comprehensive school for top place. This contest for league table precedence is played out on the battleground of percentages of sixteen-year-old leavers achieving at least five passes at grades A to C in the externally-administered General Certificate of Education (GCSE) examinations. These examinations, traditionally regarded as school leaving examinations, measure individuals’ performance on a scale from A (the top grade) to G (the lowest grade), though employers, further education institutions and the media commonly recognise only grades from A to C as passes. Schools’ overall results are collated, and local ‘league tables’ based on the percentages of students scoring five or more A to C grades are compiled and published. In the academic year ending in 2001, just over sixty percent of Meadway’s leavers attained this ‘benchmark’ of externally-recognised success: the school’s best ever score. Such a figure is above the national average, and is well ahead of the National Learning Target of 50% of sixteen-year-olds achieving such a standard by 2002 (DfEE, 1999). In the statutory documentation of school performance, Meadway itself scores an ‘A’ grade when compared with ‘other similar schools nationally’: that is, comprehensive girls’ schools in which over thirty percent of students are eligible for free school meals.

Details

Investigating Educational Policy Through Ethnography
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-018-0

Book part
Publication date: 1 June 2007

Robert Perrucci and Shelley MacDermid

We expand the concept of time in the workplace by examining the different ways that time is discussed and the different meanings attached to time. Drawing upon observation…

Abstract

We expand the concept of time in the workplace by examining the different ways that time is discussed and the different meanings attached to time. Drawing upon observation, informal discussions, and focus groups, we examine worker discourse about clock time, work time, and family time, and argue that the meaning attached to each is related to workers’ ability to exercise some control over time. Using survey data collected from shift workers, we illustrate the connection between time and control by examining the predictors of job satisfaction and work–family conflict.

Details

Workplace Temporalities
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7623-1268-9

Book part
Publication date: 7 January 2019

Martin Forsey

My ‘lost project’ is captured in a recollection of a senior school ball, my final ethnographic encounter following 15 months of fieldwork in a middle class government high school

Abstract

My ‘lost project’ is captured in a recollection of a senior school ball, my final ethnographic encounter following 15 months of fieldwork in a middle class government high school, from which students barely get a mention in any of the publications stemming out of the overall project. Two questions are pursued in the paper, focused firstly on why students were ignored in the final rendering of my doctoral research and why I continued to continue to research student groups so actively right up to the end point of the project? Attributing this apparently contradictory set of circumstances to an anthropological commitment to holism that eschews the smallness of studies of groups and sites and fail to take account of broader socio-political contexts, the author is content enough in acknowledging that insights reported here would not have emerged without an ongoing commitment to an engaged holism throughout the whole of the project.

Details

The Lost Ethnographies: Methodological Insights from Projects that Never Were
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-773-7

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 October 2010

Joshua Doane, Judy A. Lane and Michael J. Pisani

Volume 25 celebrates the 25th year of publication for the American Journal of Business (AJB). Launched by eight MAC schools of business in March 1986, the Journal has featured…

Abstract

Volume 25 celebrates the 25th year of publication for the American Journal of Business (AJB). Launched by eight MAC schools of business in March 1986, the Journal has featured more than 700 authors who have contributed more than 330 research articles at the intersection of theory and practice. From accounting to marketing, management to finance, the Journal prominently covers the breadth of the business disciplines as a general business outlet intended for both practitioners and academics. As the Journal reaches out beyond the MAC in sponsorship, authorship, and readership, we assess the Journal’s first quarter century of impact.

Details

American Journal of Business, vol. 25 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1935-5181

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 20 April 2022

Anette Rasmussen

In the context of globalisation, setting standards for excellence in education is considered necessary to enhance human capital to ensure future global competitiveness of the…

Abstract

In the context of globalisation, setting standards for excellence in education is considered necessary to enhance human capital to ensure future global competitiveness of the national economies (Rasmussen & Lingard, 2018). In line with education thus being set up as the basis for the economy, the development of talent has become an important part of the education political agenda in Denmark. This agenda claims that the Danish mass of talent should develop to a high level, and even more students should reach the highest levels of excellence (Ministry of Education, 1997). Accordingly, it labels the next generation of students ‘the mass of talent’.

This chapter questions the terms of talent applied in global education policies and their enactment into other agendas of concurrent standardisation and diversity. Empirically, the analysis of the wider policy context draws on policy texts at EU, OECD, and national level, in particular a ministerial report from 2011 (Rasmussen & Ydesen, 2020), as well as information materials and ethnographic case study research on a talent programme at upper secondary school level in Denmark (Bomholt & Rasmussen, 2020).

The analysis departs in an ambition to uncover the questions, how do global education policies frame standards for talent in a national context and how does this standardisation interact with the standards produced in the local programme? Therefore, the chapter focuses on the terms of talent applied in policy contexts at different levels of the specific case. For this, it employs the analytical approach of policy technologies (Ball, 2008), which involves viewing talent from the three policy technological perspectives of market, management and performance. They form a generic part of global convergence and work across the public sector as a whole.

It combines the empirical levels of macro and micro by referring to policy text and enactment at the global, national and local school level. The combination means first outlining the historical background for the policies in question and then considering how local actors bring their terms of talent into action at municipal and school level (Ball, Maguire, & Braun, 2012), emphasising the different actor rationalities.

Details

Educational Standardisation in a Complex World
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80071-590-5

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 17 June 2020

Verónica Gottau

School choice is a global phenomenon with significant variations in terms of conception, design, and viability. In the city of Buenos Aires, State funding to the private sector of…

Abstract

School choice is a global phenomenon with significant variations in terms of conception, design, and viability. In the city of Buenos Aires, State funding to the private sector of education allows for free choice. The purpose of this study is to analyze the values that are at stake in the family process of school choice. I draw on the theory of cultural evolution (Inglehart, 2018) to analyze the interviews. I interviewed 30 parents who live in the city of Buenos Aires and had to choose school for their children. It was possible to infer four categories that condense the materialistic and post-materialistic values: preeminence of materialistic values relative to security and protection; preeminence of materialistic values relative to academic achievement; preeminence of post-materialistic values relative to socialization and preeminence of post-materialistic values relative to political concerns.

Details

Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2019
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-724-4

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Policy Matters
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-481-9

Article
Publication date: 22 March 2011

Megan Kimber and Lisa Catherine Ehrich

The paper seeks to apply the theory of the democratic deficit to school‐based management with an emphasis on Australia. This theory was developed to examine managerial…

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Abstract

Purpose

The paper seeks to apply the theory of the democratic deficit to school‐based management with an emphasis on Australia. This theory was developed to examine managerial restructuring of the Australian Public Service in the 1990s. Given similarities between the use of managerial practices in the public service and government schools, the authors draw on recent literature about school‐based management in Australia and apply the democratic deficit theory to it.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is conceptual in focus. The authors analyse literature in terms of the three components of the democratic deficit – i.e. the weakening of accountability, the denial of the roles and values of public employees, and the emergence of a “hollow state” – and in relation to the application of this theory to the Australian Public Service.

Findings

A trend towards the three components of the democratic deficit is evident in Australia although, to date, its emergence has not been as extensive as in the UK. The authors argue that the democratic principles on which public schooling in Australia was founded are being eroded by managerial and market practices.

Practical implications

These findings provide policy makers and practitioners with another way of examining managerial and market understandings of school‐based management and its impact on teachers and on students. It offers suggestions to reorient practices away from those that are exclusively managerial‐based towards those that are public‐sector based.

Originality/value

The value of this paper is that it applies the theory of the democratic deficit to current understandings of school‐based management.

Details

Journal of Educational Administration, vol. 49 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0957-8234

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