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In the last 20 years, the teaching of reading in Britain has moved away from an interest in how children take delight in, and make meaning of, their literature to a preoccupation with a mechanistic approach to literacy which breaks down texts into bite-sized chunks and fragments reading into a series of isolated skills. Although an expensive, comprehensive system for literacy has been put in place with its plethora of related materials for teachers and pupils, it has not been particularly successful in raising literacy standards, and it has turned some children away from reading. Using The Arabian Nights as a case study (the book most often mentioned as favourite childhood reading of dozens of famous writers from the eighteenth century to the present day, worldwide), I have examined its influence on certain famous writers living in the nineteenth century with particular reference to how it may have shaped their approach to writing fiction. Using a cross-disciplinary approach, I have tried to combine the skills and insights of the literary critic and the literary historian: the former showing how literary texts work and how writers construct them to provoke a range of responses in their readers; the latter exploring the biographical and social context of the emergent writer, identifying and evaluating the factors that contributed to developing their particular creative identity. A further strand is that of the educator seeking to glean insights from tantalisingly fragmentary historical data which may cast light on some contemporary concerns about children’s learning, including debates about the teaching of reading. By bringing these different approaches together, my specific intention is to further the understanding of one aspect of learning in the modern world - that of children’s reading. The message that my tentative findings suggest is that whatever policy initiatives are taken in literacy, encouraging children to take pleasure in reading whole books of their own choosing should be a priority.

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The National Student Survey (NSS) of course experience satisfaction is sent to final year students of all higher education institutions in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales (N=171,290 and 157,342 students in 2005 and 2006) and results are made publicly available. The present investigation assesses the reliability and appropriate use of the NSS from a multilevel perspective. Although NSS responses provide a limited basis for discriminating amongst universities and courses within universities, the ratings of universities are highly reliable and stable over time due to the large number of students (2005 and 2006 rankings correlated r=.86). The unresolved question is whether very small (only 2-3 per cent of the variance explained) but reliable and stable differences between universities provide useful information for benchmarking universities, self-improvement, and informing student choice.

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Ernest and Shena Simon were leading liberal thinkers and activists in early twentieth-century England who were committed to preparing their children for public life by educating them in liberal values and active citizenship. They produced two sons, Roger and Brian, and a daughter, Antonia (Tony). Their ‘liberal education’, and the learning that accrued, provide significant insights into the potential tensions that have underlain these processes in the modern world, and also into the character of civic leadership and education for citizenship that was championed by Ernest Simon in the 1930s. The privileged family environment of the Simons provided a key basis for their learning, as did the avowedly progressive public school Gresham’s under its headmaster J. R. Eccles. The social organisation of learning, framed by social class and gender, accommodated a transition between the liberalism of the father and the Marxism espoused by the sons in their adult lives.

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Cinemas are an important site of learning for young people. Far from being a passive means of instruction, films aimed at children and young people provide an opportunity for a nation’s youth to interact with films’ messages both in and outside the cinema. From deciding which films to attend, to discussing the film’s ideas with their peers, parents and teachers, they offer young people the possibility of participating in a dialogue with adults about accepted social and cultural mores, such as gender and sexuality roles. This process is especially evident in socialist societies of the cold war era, where the state owned a monopoly on the film industry. This article examines representative children’s and young people’s films from the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany), focusing especially on the well-known fairy tale films from that country, in order to demonstrate the changes in social attitudes and practices regarding girls’ and boys’ place in society as young, gendered, citizens of the nation.

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In the context of existing 'quantitative'/'qualitative' schisms, this paper briefly reminds readers of the current practice of testing for statistical significance in social science research. This practice is based on a widespread confusion between two conditional probabilities. A worked example and other elements of logical argument demonstrate the flaw in statistical testing as currently conducted, even when strict protocols are met. Assessment of significance cannot be standardised and requires knowledge of an underlying figure that the analyst does not generally have and cannot usually know. Therefore, even if all assumptions are met, the practice of statistical testing in isolation is futile. The question many people then ask in consequence is - what should we do instead? This is, perhaps, the wrong question. Rather, the question could be - why should we expect to treat randomly sampled figures differently from any other kinds of numbers, or any other forms of evidence? What we could do 'instead' is use figures in the same way as we would most other data, with care and judgement. If all such evidence is equal, the implications for research synthesis and the way we generate new knowledge are considerable.

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Oral testimonies generated in a research project involving a group of women graduates of Western Australia’s state teachers’ college indicate that contradictions existed between competing discourses of femininity and teaching in the State in the early decades of the twentieth century, and that these opened up new possibilities for women teachers. The research was feminist in that it foregrounded the hitherto ‘lost’ history of women teachers. The danger of assuming a totally deterministic patriarchy was also considered. These matters are dealt with in the first part of this paper. The second part is an analysis of the recollections of the participants regarding the first formal phase in their learning to be teachers, namely, the monitoring period. What is revealed is that they were educated, were encouraged to enter the teaching profession, and were rewarded for their intellectual achievements. They learned to invest themselves in developing their rational and critical capacities. Nevertheless, there were still strong social expectations that they would remain ‘properly feminine’, not challenge masculine authority, and eventually leave teaching in order to become wives and mothers.

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The 2004 Higher Education Act introduced variable tuition fees of up to [GBP] 3,000 for full-time undergraduates in England. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) charging the maximum tuition must give low-income students bursaries of [GBP] 300. On top of this mandatory minimum, HEIs now provide additional discretionary financial support exceeding this level to these and other students. The degree to which these new bursaries and discretionary financial support have become a policy instrument for improving access and widening participation has not, as yet, been documented. Little is known about why the government introduced bursaries and what the government saw as their role. Even less is known about the type of bursaries HEIs have introduced or how they are being used, because up till now they have not been examined systematically. This article presents the first such analysis. It concludes that, from the evidence currently available, a mismatch exists between government aspirations and HEIs' actual use of bursaries and scholarships. Moreover, the bursaries and scholarships put in place may perpetuate existing divisions within and across higher education.

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The data discussed in this paper derive from post-lesson and end-of-year interviews with 17 teachers in their second year of teaching. They form part of a longitudinal study which first tracked these teachers through their initial postgraduate teacher education programme and induction year. In the light of earlier analysis, which had highlighted both the enduring importance of individuals' dispositions towards their own learning and the profound sense of professional isolation that some teachers experience once the support of their induction year is withdrawn, this paper focuses specifically on the interplay between teachers' orientations towards their own professional learning and the nature of the learning environments in which they are working. The complex interrelationships between these two dimensions are illuminated by six case studies, which offer strong support to those who have challenged exclusive conceptualisations of 'learning' as either 'construction' or 'participation'. The findings have important implications for all those responsible for the professional education of beginning and early career teachers, especially as they respond to the government launch in England of a new 'national framework' intended (eventually) to offer opportunities for Masters level professional learning to all newly qualified teachers.

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Since the publication of the Moser Report in 1999, improving the basic skills of adults has been a major priority for all of the UK’s governments. There has been a particular interest in building up workplace provision, because of the assumed relationship between the basic skills of the employed population and productivity. A longitudinal study tracked 53 workplaces which hosted subsidised basic skills courses, and examined the impact on the enterprises themselves as well as on learners. It established that employers were not, contrary to policy-makers’ expectations, concerned about employees’ literacy levels, and supported provision largely as a way of providing general development opportunities. Learners, who made small literacy gains at best, did not change their behaviour in ways which were likely to affect productivity. Once subsidies ended, employers were unwilling to support further provision at full cost. This provides further evidence that basic skills tuition does not have an immediate impact on performance. Overall the subsidised programmes used an extremely costly approach, and left no lasting legacy. The findings have major implications for the organisation of effective educational provision for less-skilled employees and suggest that the current approach to subsidising workplace training is seriously defective.

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The article investigates unequal admissions patterns at the University of Oxford. Statistical work shows differences in admission rates by social class, ethnicity, gender, qualification status and secondary schooling. In-depth interviews with admissions tutors, college and university officials and observations of eight admissions meetings provide insights into the processes behind those admissions patterns. Results illustrate that adjustment of applicants' performance in the light of their schooling can account for the statistical observation of a lower chance of admission for private school applicants compared with their state school counterparts. The advantage in admissions chances enjoyed by post-qualification applicants appears to be related to the lower risk they pose with regards to their attainment. Little direct evidence is found, however, to explain inequalities in admission rates by social class, ethnicity and gender. A tentative suggestion is made that homophilic tendencies among selectors might account for these unequal admissions rates. It is recommended that future research should use different methods, such as experiments or detailed observations, to gain a better viewpoint on these proposed mechanisms. The article concludes by considering implications for policy and the social stratification literature.

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