Balancing securitisation and education in schools: teachers’ agency in implementing the Prevent duty

ABSTRACT

Since the introduction of the Prevent duty across the UK, schools have had to balance the need to fulfil their responsibilities under the duty – often understood to include monitoring and surveillance – with their ultimate purpose to educate their students. This positions teachers within a particular set of tensions about their own beliefs about education, their values, and their roles and relationships with young people and communities. This article draws on interviews with classroom teachers and members of school leadership teams from 10 schools, in order to compare how teachers have understood and responded to those tensions. The article will focus on the various ways in which teachers frame the policy, and the ways in which they exercise agency in their responses. Drawing on an ecological approach to theorising teacher agency our data reveals how teachers develop different responses to anti-extremism policy depending on their role; their school contexts; and their own beliefs. Whilst in some important regards the statutory Prevent duty has ‘closed down’ some options, nevertheless teachers exercise agency to interpret and enact policy and, when translating the policy into a curriculum context, also make ‘leaps’ of interpretation as concepts such as fundamental British values are turned into lessons.     

TO TEACH IS TO LEARN: OVERCOMING TOKENISM WITH MENTORS

Active mentors, persons who are not simply role models, have been shown to facilitate and enhance career growth, yet the token role of women entering traditionally masculine professions was shown to inhibit sponsorships. An analysis of a sample of exit interviews from the first women cadets to graduate from West Point revealed that the marginal peer acceptance of tokens within a competitive, somewhat constrained atmosphere discouraged the development of these sponsorships. If women plan to play sustained roles in the professions, they must actively sponsor other women. A first step in this process is to be aware of the situational pressures, noted in the present paper, that are directed against sponsorships within a token group.     

Measuring forgiveness: psychometric properties of a new culturally sensitive questionnaire: the Bolton Forgiveness Scale (BFS)

ABSTRACT

Forgiveness is a universal construct. A forgiveness measure should ensure good and diverse cultural representation and inclusivity in its development, validation and usage. The 15-item Bolton Forgiveness Scale (BFS) assesses dispositional forgiveness. Items came from interviews with 53 Nigerian and British people, existing scales and the research literature. Exploratory factor analysis with a student sample (n = 733) was followed by confirmatory factor analysis with a general sample (n = 2,017). This indicated a robust three-factor structure. Factors were, coming to terms and letting go (CLTG), developing positive feelings (DPF) and giving benefit of the doubt (GBD). Scale Validity was established and a new forgiveness definition emerged as a process that involves developing and strengthening the capacity to give benefit of the doubt that enables the offended come to terms with and let go of hurt with its negative affect thereby giving way gradually to positive feelings towards the transgressor.     

Hippocampal lesion syndrome: Switching to and from a place hypothesis

Spatial discrimination learning (Experiment I) and strategy shifts (Experiment II) were examined in experimentally lesioned rats. Sixty adult male rats were in one of five lesion groups (N = 12/group): operated controls, fornical, entorhinal, fornicoentorhinal and dorsal-ventral hippocampal. All animals reached criterion on the discrimination learning test. In the strategy shift experiment, however, animals with hippocampal lesions had more difficulty than animals without hippocampal lesions. The findings suggest that the hippocampus may not be involved in learning strategies, but in switching a strategy.