Synopses & Reviews
In this fully updated edition of The Education Debate, Stephen J. Ball guides us through a flood of government initiatives and policies concerning education over the past twenty years, showing how these policy interventions have changed the landscape and meaning of education, turned children into learners and parents into consumers, and played their part in the reformation of contemporary governance. Analyzing current policies and ideas around education from a sociological approach, he addresses issues of class, choice, globalization, race, and citizenship. The book will interest student teachers, other students of politics and social policy courses, and the general reader who wants to go beyond the simplistic analyses of newspapers.and#160;
Review
andldquo;The Education Debateand#160;is one of the clearest and most insightful analyses of education policy I have ever read. In this new edition, Stephen Ball once again documents why his work is essential for our understanding of educational politics and processes. The book can serve as a model for how one can write about these complex issues.andrdquo;
Review
"
The Education Debate is a tour de force not only for its authority and penetration but also . . . its accessibility."
Review
andquot;Insightful and wholly accessible and contributes to broader debates about education policy, initiatives, and economic imperatives found across public services.andquot;
Review
"His introduction to key concepts should be required reading both for those engaged in policy making processes and those seeking to influence change in education."
Review
"Stephen Ball provides the intellectual resources for understanding how education policy is produced, what it seeks to do and what its effects are. Theoretically and empirically adroit, it is essential reading for all those needing to understand education policy and politics."
Synopsis
This introductory textbook explores education policy, looking at where we came from, where we are and where we are going. In this introduction to educational policy, practice and the professional, the authors focus first on historical policy from the state's first interventions in education through to Thatcherism, and Blair's Education, Education, Education. They then explore the key contemporary policies of recent times and offers a critique on how they have worked in practice, before moving to look at the hysteria that often surrounds education policy, with focus on media representation and the effects this has for the teaching profession. Commentaries and case studies are presented throughout providing an accessible link to what it was really like to learn, teach and live at the time the policy was in place. This title is an essential reading for all undergraduate education studies students.
Synopsis
About the Author
Stephen J. Ball is the Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education at the University of London.and#160;
Table of Contents
List of tables, figures and boxes
List of abbreviations
About the author
Acknowledgements
Preface by Michael Hill, Series Editor
Introduction: education, education, education policy
1. Introduction to key concepts: education policy, economic necessity and public service reform
2. Class, comprehensives and continuities: a short history of English education policy
3. Current policy models and The UK Governmentand#8217;s Approach to Public Service Reform
4. Current key issues: forms of policy and forms of inequity
5. A sociology of education policy: past, present and future
References
Index