Recent years have seen international and national policy intensification in early childhood education (ECE). This has manifested in multiple ways, including the design and implementation of increasingly prescriptive curricular policies. Against this backdrop some early educators are pushing back. Drawing on work from their recent enquiries and…

This article reflects, and encourages, the growth of grass-roots revolt to bring about change in an assessment system which systematically undermines real education.

This article uses data from a research project exploring grouping practices based on 'ability' in classrooms for children aged 3-7 years in England to consider the relationship between teachers' views of ability and their ways of organising children. The widespread use of grouping with young children and the concomitant 'fixed-ability thinking' by…

This article introduces this Special Issue of "FORUM" with a discussion of freedom and autonomy and considers the ways in which alternative approaches to pedagogy might provide opportunities to address inequalities in the context of education and in society beyond education. The article draws on work carried out in a project funded by an…

This article investigates how vested interests, particularly the teacher unions, responded to the British Labour government's school reforms designed to increase educational equality. Two significant reforms introduced to this end were Circular 10/65 on comprehensive education and the Learning and Skills Act of 2000 on the City Academies. The…

Efforts to reform public education along free-market, corporate-styled models have swept across many nations. In the USA these reforms have included an intense focus on the use of high-stakes, standardized tests to quantify students, teachers, and schools for market comparisons, the deprofessionalization of teaching, and the establishment of…