This article provides an analysis of the emerging market for ‘edutainment’ media in the UK. It covers three main sectors: print publishing, software and on-line learning. In each case, it argues that the development of the market is towards concentration of ownership; and that this is reinforced by the influence of contemporary educational policy. This results in a narrowing in the diversity of material available to the consumer and in the forms of learning that are promoted. However, the article also suggests that there is a considerable degree of instability in the market, as different sectors expand and contract in response to economic, technological and political change; and it argues that attempts to target both parents and children by combining ‘education’ and ‘entertainment’ are bound to prove problematic.

As the UK government places a growing emphasis on the importance of learning in the home, commercial companies are increasingly targeting the educational aspirations of parents.This article offers a critical analysis of a range of 'edutainment' magazines aimed at pre-school children, most of which are based on children's television programmes and characters. It describes the expansion of this market in the context of the broader commercialization of children's media culture and the growth in cross-media merchandising. It then provides an analysis of the educational rhetoric of the magazines, as embodied in their sales pitches and pedagogic advice to parents. Finally, the pedagogic strategies of the magazines are analysed through an account of their mode of address and their positioning of the child reader.The article suggests that many of the magazines are informed by a reductive and disciplinary conception of learning, combined with an apparently contradictory emphasis on entertainment and 'fun' -a combination which, it suggests, may be symptomatic of contemporary changes in the forms and sites of learning.

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This article explores the value of applying groupwork expertise and skills in conducting focus group research. It identifies and provides an analysis of comparisons between the arenas of focus group moderation and social groupwork facilitation drawing from literature from both fields. In addition, the article discusses key skills needed by focus group moderators highlighting how these are also foundational social groupwork competencies. The article draws from the authors' experiences of designing and facilitating focus groups with teenagers as part of a 2-year research study examining the perceptions and experiences of young people from marginalized communities in relation to accessing third-level education. In light of this analysis, the authors assert that some developments in focus group research methodology have resulted in a greater degree of alignment between these two spheres and that focus group moderation is enhanced and rendered increasingly effective when groupwork skills, knowledge, and insights are employed.