3 Minute Literature

Abstract: In 2022 both England and Wales released policy documents entitled  A National Plan for Music Education . While the English policy was a long-awaited update to a similar policy published in 2011, the Welsh policy was unexpected and seemingly lacked precedent. Despite some attempt to align itself with the concurrent implementation of the new Curriculum for Wales, it more closely mirrored t...

Abstract: This article is a sequel to the conversation on learning initiated by the editors of Educational Researcher in volume 25, number 4. The author’s first aim is to elicit the metaphors for learning that guide our work as learners, teachers, and researchers. Two such metaphors are identified: the acquisition metaphor and the participation metaphor. Subsequently, their entailments are discuss...

Abstract: While worldwide policy attention turns to mentoring to develop new teachers' practice, researchers have not investigated mentoring exchanges that support novices' teaching of historical reasoning and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development. Drawing on case studies of U.S. mentor-novice pairs, authors ask: How, if at all, is the teaching of history represented in mentoring...

Abstract Although teachers and researchers frequently acknowledge that music education can benefit pupils’ academic achievement, health and well-being, and social development, classroom music-making can have long-lasting, detrimental impacts. Individuals’ experiences of failure, disappointment, and exclusion in the music classroom highlight an urgent need for music education to be reframed by an u...

Abstract In June 2015, the British government presented ‘the social justice case for an academic curriculum’ as the justification for recent radical changes to educational policy. However, this justification failed to account for both the key changes in the newly-revised National Curriculum for Music and the place of music in the National Curriculum as a whole. Through a critical evaluation of the...

Abstract Within a theoretical framework drawn from sociologists of education Bourdieu and Bernstein, this paper will examine some of the findings of an ethnographic case study conducted with a secondary school music teacher and one class of her pupils in Wales. This teacher attracted 25% of Year 10 (14-year-old) pupils to study music as an optional subject against a national background of 8% avera...

Abstract: This paper will share the arts-integration methodology used in Project AIM and address the question; “How is translation evident in interdisciplinary arts instruction, and how does it affect students?” Pruitt, L., Ingram, D. and Weiss, C. (2014) 'Found in Translation: Interdisciplinary Arts Integration in Project AIM', Journal for Learning through the Arts: A Research Journal on...

Philpott, C. and Spruce, G. (2012) Debates in music teaching. London: Routledge. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203117446.

Abstract The premise of this paper is that the acknowledged gap between research and practice is primarily a gap between two sharply contrasting kinds of knowledge. The nature of this contrast is described and it is suggested that these two kinds of knowledge are at the opposite ends of a spectrum of kinds of knowledge related to classroom teaching and learning. Three possible ways of bridging thi...

Abstract The paper begins by arguing that knowledge-blindness in educational research represents a serious obstacle to understanding knowledge-building. It then offers sociological concepts from  Legitimation  Code Theory – ‘semantic gravity’ and ‘semantic density’ – that systematically conceptualize one set of organizing principles underlying knowledge practices. Brought together as ‘semantic pro...

Maton, K 2013, Knowledge and Knowers : Towards a Realist Sociology of Education, Taylor & Francis Group, London. 

Abstract Education reform requires the commitment and investment of teachers if it is to succeed. Recognising the importance of teacher engagement, some countries have made teacher agency a feature of their curricula. Wales has embraced the notion of teacher agency within the building of its new curriculum by creating a body of Pioneer teachers to shape its new curriculum framework. This paper con...

Abstract Curriculum integration is a feature of many new curricula that have emerged in different countries since around the turn of the millennium. It focuses on removing the boundaries between traditional subject specialisms, to enable more holistic and ‘joined-up’ learning opportunities. This study draws on the experiences of a group of primary and secondary teachers in Wales, engaged in creati...

Abstract This article presents an analysis of various language policy mechanisms currently circulating in secondary schools in England, with a particular focus on those that intermingle ‘language’, ‘standard English’ and ‘discipline’. Although the connections between language, ideology and behaviour are well established within critical educational linguistics, this has not been explored in relatio...

Bernstein, B. (1975) Class, Codes and Control Volume III: Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul https://people.bath.ac.uk/edspd/Weblinks/MA_CS/PDFs/Session%202/Bernstein%20volume%203%20chapter%205.pdf

The focus of this special issue is the changes to Initial Teacher Education (ITE) that have been instituted in Wales over the last two years. At the heart of the new approach is the insistence that in the future all programmes of ITE should be planned, led and delivered not by universities alone, but by universities working in close collaboration with a number of partner schools. But what is the j...