Ecologies of educational reflexivity and agency – a different way of thinking about equitable educational policies and practices for England and beyond?

The politics of education policy in England

“…'Making a difference' is the cultural trope enabling modernization, where papers by Mills and Keddie examine this: Mills through looking at the possibilities of how the Co-operative Society might enable public values to be protected and deployed for inclusion, and Keddie through examining how CONNECT as an academy chain focuses on neoliberal values through principal leadership. Both papers give recognition to what has always been evident in the common school: values of caring and inclusivity, and a focus on achievement and aspiration, and these are also reflected in the analysis by Raffo et al (2015), Wilkins (2015), and Mintz and Wyse (2015). The relocation of public education into the market place and the impact this has on children, parents and the profession is running through as a core theme in this research.…”

“…Reading the research reported in this special issue through this conservative restoration project illuminates the dominance of the Lifestyle page: for Raffo, Forbes and Thomson (2015), schools are sites that like Hello! radiate inequality through the cultural emphasis on individuality; for Wilkins (2015) there is only one Lifestyle for a teacher, and hence the neoliberal makeover is one of teacher proofing through best practice; and for Mintz and Wyse (2015) the issue to be confronted is about what happens when the perfect celebrity body and taste cannot even be mimicked by those who are additionally othered through special needs.…”

Curriculum projects, learner agency and young people’s fullness of life

“…In this work, we developed a curriculum intervention that was designed to enable a small group of disengaged and disaffected middle year students (aged 13–14)—who in Archer's (2003) terms might have been labelled ‘fractured reflexives’ 1 —to alter their forms of reflexivity and to re‐engage purposively with the mainstream school curriculum. In particular, we focused on Archer's ideas that explored how courses of action for such young people might be enabled through their reflexive deliberations that—with appropriate levels of support—are able to subjectively determine and change their practical projects in relation to their objective structural and cultural biographical circumstances (Raffo et al ., 2015).…”

“…In particular, we focused on Archer's ideas that explored how courses of action for such young people might be enabled through their reflexive deliberations that-with appropriate levels of support-are able to subjectively determine and change their practical projects in relation to their objective structural and cultural biographical circumstances (Raffo et al, 2015).…”