In this uplifting book, David Halpin suggests ways of putting the hope back into education, exploring the value of and need for utopian thinking in discussions of the purpose of education and school policy.

'At the beginning, with Thomas More, utopia sets out an agenda for the modern world. Today, five hundred years later, what are the uses of utopia?'. This paper provides an answer to this question by examining More's utopian 'method' which, it is suggested, offers a model way of thinking imaginatively and prospectively about the form and content of social reform in general and educational change in particular.

(1991). Grant‐maintained schools: Making a difference without being really different 1 . British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 409-424.

This paper offers an analysis of the nature of hope and explicates its significance for and relation to education. This entails distinguishing initially two kinds of hope - absolute and ultimate hope. While absolute hope is an orientation of the spirit which sets no conditions or limits on what is achievable and has no particular ends in view, ultimate hope is an 'aimed hope ', that is to say a form of hopefulness that entails identifying and struggling to realise in (...) the here and now particular improved states of affairs - for oneself, for others and for society generally. To that extent, ultimate hope, despite efforts to undermine it prompted by despair, relativism, cynicism and fatalism, is a crucial aspect of the educational process. On the other hand, absolute hope, combined with a 'larger love' of teaching, provides those educators who have it with a significant personal resource in coping better with the special demands of their work. (shrink)

Although the French Renaissance sceptic Michel de Montaigne is a much-admired thinker among many literary historians and some philosophical ones, his oeuvre hardly features in critical surveys of ideas in education. This is strange given that Montaigne offers modern educators an exemplary form of communicative discourse which anticipates contemporary education theory's emphasis on the importance of reflective practice and learning from experience. While each of these themes is capable of being rendered as repetitious slogans, sound-bites even, Montaigne, through his emphasis (...) on free thinking and self-study, helps to rescue them from such a fate, identifying a dialectical method called ‘essaying’ which has genuine purchase on practice and its improvement. (shrink)

This paper offers a brief guide to implementation research and some of the conceptual and methodological issues it raises. In the course of reviewing investigations of the import of aspects of the 1988 Education Reform Act, it also considers the issues posed for education policy studies in a context where the 'centre' is connected to a dispersed and differentiated periphery.

Significant differences in perceptions between teachers in primary and secondary grant-maintained schools are reported and analysed. Parents were more frequently involved in promoting opting-out in primary schools, primary teachers had more favourable attitudes to the grant-maintained school policy and, in primary schools, grant-maintained status delivered improvements in classroom conditions, most notably reduced class size and increased para-professional support in classrooms. The findings are discussed in terms of the management of primary schools, of theorising about reputation management in grant-maintained schools, and (...) of the explicit objectives of the grant-maintained policy. It is further suggested that the evidence provided about grant-maintained primary schools could be used to inject new life into a policy faltering in secondary schools. (shrink)

Significant differences in perceptions between teachers in primary and secondary grant-maintained schools are reported and analysed. Parents were more frequently involved in promoting opting-out in primary schools, primary teachers had more favourable attitudes to the grant-maintained school policy and, in primary schools, grant-maintained status delivered improvements in classroom conditions, most notably reduced class size and increased para-professional support in classrooms. The findings are discussed in terms of the management of primary schools, of theorising about reputation management in grant-maintained schools, and (...) of the explicit objectives of the grant-maintained policy. It is further suggested that the evidence provided about grant-maintained primary schools could be used to inject new life into a policy faltering in secondary schools. (shrink)

No one sincerely doubts that schools should take seriously the need to develop children's imaginations and their capacity to be imaginative. The issue is what does this mean? And what are its implications? This paper, which is mostly inspired by the writings about the imagination of two British nineteenth-century Romantic poets -- Coleridge and Wordsworth -- provides some answers.

Within the field of education management studies, recent reforms promoting devolution and choice are often seen to provide exciting new opportunities. It is claimed that the 'new' education management, with its emphasis on site-based decision-making and consumer accountability, will enable headteachers and principals to 'take control' of their schools and make them more productive environments in which to work and study. However, our review of research findings from five different countries that are putting in place devolution and choice policies suggests (...) that these new opportunities are more illusory than real. Positioned between the competing demands of the state and the market, school managers are becoming increasingly isolated from colleagues and classrooms - leading to a growing divergence between the managers and the managed. The paper considers the implication of recent developments for managers in general and for women managers in particular and concludes by discussing the relationship between the personalisation of responsibility and the legitimation of crises within the state and public education. (shrink)