3 research outputs found
The teaching and learning of pupils in low-attainment sets
No full textThis study explored the ways in which schools addressed the needs of pupils in low-attainment class groups, or sets, in the context of multiple and contrary government policy directives and inconclusive research findings about setting. In this article we have focused on school and classroom practices as well as the organisational processes through which low-attaining pupils were identified, grouped and reviewed within schools. The empirical data reported here predominantly refer to case studies involving classroom observations and interviews with teachers, pupils and other staff in 13 schools – both primary and secondary – from four local authorities (LAs).In the latter part of the article, however, we also draw on survey data collected from a larger sample of schools in 12 LAs in England. Although the study found ample evidence of innovative school practices and efforts by individual teachers aimed at optimising the learning opportunities for children in low-attainment class groups, the findings also raise important questions about some of the processes of set allocation, the lack of mobility between sets, and the over-representation of particular social groups in low-attainment classes. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for equity and inclusion that moves beyond an emphasis on classroom practice to include questions about the in-school processes of social selection and educational mobility for pupils identified as low-attaining
Configurations of mothering in post-war British women's playwriting
Get PDFWhile examining a selection of plays centred on the phenomenon of mothering, my
thesis also investigates the interaction between theatre and feminism in post-war
Britain, aiming to highlight mutual correspondences between women's theatre
making and feminist agendas. I focus mainly on the period of second-wave
feminism, but I also discuss the decade preceding the appearance of the Women's
Liberation Movement, as well as its aftermath up to the mid-nineties. Scrutinising
proto-feminist, feminist and post-feminist stances, I argue that several fifties women
dramatists anticipated key concerns of the late sixties and seventies; and equally, that
many playwrights active after the heyday of second-wave feminism revisited the
climate of the seventies in an attempt to evaluate the transformations that have since
occurred in women's lives. In this manner, I not only contextualise some of the
major achievements and shortcomings of successive feminist interventions, but also
elaborate on key changes that have taken place in the negotiation of dramatic form
and content.
Rather than privileging one dominant theoretical position and adopting its
perspective for the purposes of my analysis, I connect the work of playwrights
informed by different artistic positions and political convictions, in order to pinpoint
the principle of co-existence and multiplicity. This aesthetic and ideological diversity
in women's writing for the stage, characteristic of the past five decades, has been
confirmed not only by the primary and secondary sources that I drew upon but also
by the playwrights themselves, whom I interviewed. For most present-day female
dramatists, as this thesis argues, contemporary British women's theatre is a space of
experimentation and of confluence - in which the broad range of individual voices
can situate themselves next to one another, without the urge to replicate an ultimate
direction imposed by hegemonic political constraints or artistic platforms
