This paper reports a small-scale qualitative inquiry in the discipline of Early Childhood Studies in Higher Education that explores how playfulness in pedagogy might create an environment in which people within the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) sector (including students) engage in dialogue about structural injustice. Participants in…

Generated by the centenary of the First World War, there has been an increased interest in how war is commemorated in English schools. Whilst other authors have argued that the way in which remembrance is marked in schools is militarised and nationalistic, this article reports on a single school case study to provide a deeper discussion of how…

This brief paper welcomes the notion of local pockets of resistance while raising two problems about it. One of these concerns teachers' values and leads into wider considerations about what the underlying aims of education should be. This prepares the ground for the 'deeper pocket' of the title. This has to do with challenging the lack of…

This paper aims to map and understand tactics and practices of resistance to standardised testing in England by focusing on the "More Than a Score" (MTAS) campaign. More specifically, this paper examines the role of professional organisations affiliated to the MTAS campaign in the production and mobilisation of expert knowledge as a tool…

Since 2002, the number of academy schools in England has increased -- first gradually and then, since the 2010 Academies Act, rapidly. For some, a full academisation of the school system in England appears inevitable. In this paper, however, I explore how new teachers and senior leaders within academy primary schools quietly resist identifying as…

The cry that today's higher education students are particularly individualist is a commonly-heard one. In England, the considerable personal cost of tuition is often blamed for creating a series of negative student traits, including consumerism (an idea that one has bought the right to a degree) and individualism (a sense of the individual as the…

Bullying remains a serious problem in schools in England and internationally despite the plethora of research, interventions and policies which aim to address it. The majority of research and interventions are based on a traditional approach where school bullying is constructed as involving a clear imbalance of power between individuals. Recently,…

This paper examines emerging discourses and practices of quality assurance in English Further Education (FE), a sector currently undergoing significant change. Using a broadly ethnographic approach and Foucauldian theories of power, we discuss how 'documentisation' contributes to governance techniques in a specific institutional context.…

Background: Despite increases in the ethnic diversity of the student population within English schools, there remains a distinct lack of Black and minority ethnic representation within the teaching profession. Research has explored the reasons behind this lacuna within education more broadly, highlighting discrimination, verbal abuse, lack of…

Neoliberal thinking has increasingly shaped global and national policy incursions in early childhood education. Research has highlighted the power effects of such policies with consequences for pedagogy, provision and the professional identities of educators. Less well understood are educator responses to these policies. Whilst literature offers…

Schools continue to produce regimes of gender and sexuality, including overt and covert curricula based on assumed essentialist differences between girls and boys, reinforced and regulated through uniform, sport and peer pressure. The recent focus on the experiences of trans and non-binary children in schools makes visible the ways in which all…

Teachers' negative experiences of high-stakes accountability have been documented extensively, but the ways in which teachers are able to engage in tactics of resistance in response are less well known. This is most especially true in terms of the subtle, covert forms of resistance which occur through the practice of teachers' everyday working…

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and related approaches are receiving increasing focus from education policy makers and educational psychologists. However, the extent to which ACEs research and theory can be used to inform practice continues to be a topic for debate. The present paper explores the development of ACE-informed practice within…

This paper examines the influence of intense scrutiny from Ofsted on school leadership and policy enactment. Data was collected in a coastal area of deprivation, providing the setting for a detailed case study of school leadership in a state secondary school and a state primary school, both with recent or ongoing experience of intense scrutiny…

This paper explores schools' new role in promoting children's mental health, as a key focus for policy makers across the global north. An education policy analysis is conducted for England and Australia, two nations advocating a 'bottom-up' approach to mental health promotion, granting flexibility to schools and municipal authorities. Here it is…