Teacher Identity and Curriculum Change: A comparative case-study analysis of small schools in England and Finland

Reviews of research in rural schools and their communities: Analytical perspectives and a new agenda

“…Observational surveys which map curriculum provision (Galton and Patrick, 1990) also exemplify Category II. Research on school-community relationships also tends to be in Category II, based on multiple case studies (Bell & Sigsworth, 1987) or a select few such as Vulliamy, Kimonen, Nevalainen, and Webb's (1997) unique comparative Anglo-Finnish case studies, which provide detailed close-up views of teachers' work and professionalism. Research in Categories III and IV, which take time as an explanatory dimension are unusual but include Hargreaves et al (1996) study of rural schools' clusters in Category III, and studies which return to the same sites after several years and collect data in the same ways (e.g.…”

Respect and responsibility: Review of research on small rural schools in England

“…Vulliamy and Webb (1995) and (Richards, 1998) also noted also that the small schools' success in teaching quality and pupil achievement may partly result from their greater use of specialist and semi-specialist teaching, thanks to their strategic use of the part-time teachers who are employed to cover the teaching-heads' administration time. 2 In an unique Anglo-Finnish comparative 3 partial ethnographic study, Vulliamy, Kimonen, Nevalainen, & Webb (1997) conducted case studies of how two very small schools in England responded to curriculum change. This study employed an ingenious and under-used design which permitted international and school size comparisons by including two very small schools within its samples of six primary schools in Finland and England.…”

Teachers as mediators between educational policy and practice

“…This is best illustrated in the period between the Education Acts of 1944 and 1988. At this time both the curriculum and its delivery were, to large extent, determined by teachers, and these displayed not only school on As identified by Vulliamy (1994, 1997), much of the literature reviewing educational policy into practice appears to have less emphasis on actual practice than on the policies and systems, yet it is obvious that policies are mediated by teachers within their schools, indicating a need for the examination of the mediation (see Bowe et al, 1992, and for a good example of a study that does the latter, see Vulliamy et al, 1997). The present paper sets out to examine teacher mediation and to suggest that a proper understanding of it could lead to an appropriate professional role for teachers within policy-making and implementation that would enhance schooling.…”