Table Of ContentKnowledge, Policy and Practice
in Education and the Struggle for
Social Justice
To the memory of Geoff Whitty
Knowledge, Policy and
Practice in Education
and the Struggle for
Social Justice
Essays Inspired by the Work of
Geoff Whitty
Edited by Andrew Brown and Emma Wisby
First published in 2020 by
UCL Press
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
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Brown, A., and Wisby, E. (eds). 2020. Knowledge, Policy and Practice in Education and
the Struggle for Social Justice: Essays Inspired by the Work of Geoff Whitty. London: UCL
Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781782772774
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781782772774
Contents
About the Contributors vii
List of Figures and Tables xv
List of Abbreviations xvi
Acknowledgements xviii
Preface xix
Introduction 1
Andrew Brown and Emma Wisby
PART I KNOWLEDGE
1 Social Mobilizations and Official Knowledge 13
Michael W. Apple
2 Sex, Sexuality and HIV: ‘Education’, in the Broadest Sense
of the Word 28
Peter Aggleton
3 Education for Inclusion or Exclusion: Representation of Ethnic
Minorities in Chinese Mainstream History Textbooks 39
Yan Fei
4 Social Theory, Biological Sciences and the Sociology of
Knowledge in Education 64
Deborah Youdell and Martin R. Lindley
5 Geoff Whitty: Student, Friend and Colleague;
Some Personal Reflections 83
Michael Young
v
PART II POLICY
6 The Neoliberalization of the State, the Processes of
‘Fragmentation’, and Research Implications of the
New Political Terrain of English Schooling 97
Stephen J. Ball and Richard Bowe
7 The White Bones of Policy: Structure, Agency and a
Vulture’s-Eye View with Critical Race Theory 115
David Gillborn
8 From Bastion of Class Privilege to Public Benefactor:
The Remarkable Repositioning of Private Schools 134
Tony Edwards and Sally Power
9 Pursuing Racial Justice within Higher Education:
Is Conflict Inevitable? 149
Nicola Rollock
10 The Policy Sociology of Geoff Whitty: Current and
Emergent Issues Regarding Education Research in Use 165
Bob Lingard
11 Revolutions in Educational Policy: The Vexed Question of
Evidence and Policy Development 179
Hugh Lauder
PART III PRACTICE
12 Why Isn’t This Empowering? The Discursive Positioning
of Teachers in Efforts to Improve Teaching 199
Jennifer Gore
13 Can Teachers Still Be Teachers? The Near Impossibility of
Humanity in the Transactional Workplace 217
Sharon Gewirtz and Alan Cribb
14 Contestation, Contradiction and Collaboration in Equity and
Widening Participation: In Conversation with Geoff Whitty 233
Penny Jane Burke
15 Quality, Impact and Knowledge Traditions in the
Study of Education 255
John Furlong
Geoff Whitty: A Biographical Note 277
Index 293
vi ContEnts
About the Contributors
Andrew Brown is Emeritus Professor of Education and Society at the
UCL Institute of Education (IOE) and Senior International Research
Advisor at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education,
University of Newcastle, Australia. He is a sociologist of education with
research interests in the process of research capacity and capability
building and the relationship between everyday professional and
academic discourse and practice. He has been Visiting Professor at the
National Institute of Education, Singapore, and the Hong Kong Institute
of Education, and was founding Director (Research) at the Institute for
Adult Learning, Singapore. He served as Interim Director of the IOE
and UCL Pro-Vice-Provost (London). Before joining the IOE as a teacher
educator in 1987, he taught in primary and secondary schools in London.
Emma Wisby is Head of Policy and Public Affairs at the IOE. Prior to
that she was Committee Specialist to the House of Commons Education
Select Committee and a researcher in the field of education policy, during
which time she undertook a review of school councils and pupil voice for
the UK government. Following a PhD at the University of Sheffield, which
examined the post-Dearing shift to standards-based quality assurance in
the UK higher education sector, she spent her early career conducting
consultancy research for various government departments and their
agencies across schools, further education and teacher education policy.
Peter Aggleton is an honorary professor in the Centre for Gender and
Global Health at UCL, Emeritus Scientia Professor at the University of
New South Wales, Sydney, and a distinguished honorary professor at the
Australian National University. He is a sociologist and educationalist by
vii
training and held academic positions at the former Bristol Polytechnic,
Goldsmiths College, London, and the IOE in London, where for 10 years
he was Director of the Thomas Coram Research Unit. He has worked
internationally for national governments and UN system agencies on
issues such as HIV, gender and sexuality, and sexual and reproduct-
ive health. He is the editor-in-chief of three major international peer-
reviewed journals: Culture, Health and Sexuality, Health Education
Journal and Sex Education, and co-edits (with Sally Power and Michael
Reiss) the Foundations and Futures of Education series published by
Routledge. His formative years as a teacher were spent working in adult
and further education – for the Open University and a number of colleges
of further education.
Michael W. Apple is the John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and
Instruction and Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin–
Madison and holder of the Distinguished Hui Yan Chair at Beijing
Normal University. A former elementary and secondary school teacher
and past president of a teachers’ union, he has worked with educational
systems, governments, universities, unions, and activist and dissident
groups throughout the world to democratize educational research,
policy and practice. Michael has written extensively on the politics of
educational reform, on the relationship between culture and power and
on education for social justice. Among his many books are: Ideology and
Curriculum; Education and Power; Teachers and Texts; Official Knowledge;
Democratic Schools; Cultural Politics and Education; Educating the ‘Right’
Way; Knowledge, Power, and Education; Can Education Change Society?;
and most recently, The Struggle for Democracy in Education. Michael has
been selected as one of the 50 most important educational scholars of
the twentieth century. His books Ideology and Curriculum and Official
Knowledge were also selected as two of the most significant books on
education in the twentieth century.
Stephen J. Ball is Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology of
Education at the IOE. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in
2006 and is also a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and Society of
Educational Studies and a laureate of Kappa Delta Phi; he has honorary
doctorates from the Universities of Turku (Finland) and Leicester. He is
co-founder and managing editor of the Journal of Education Policy. His
main areas of interest are in sociologically informed education policy
analysis and the relationships between education, education policy and
viii ABout thE ContriButors
social class. He has written 20 books and published over 140 journal
articles. Recent books include Edu.Net and Foucault as Educator.
Richard Bowe. After completing a degree at Manchester University
Richard completed a PGCE at Bath University and spent two further
years as a research assistant. Following three years as a teacher at
Hailsham Comprehensive school in East Sussex, Richard took up a
three-year studentship at the Open University. He subsequently worked
as an evaluator for the Technical and Vocational Education Initiative and
latterly at King’s College, London.
Penny Jane Burke is Global Innovation Chair of Equity and Director of
the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University
of Newcastle, Australia. Since completing her PhD in 2001, she has
been actively involved in shaping the field of equity in higher education
through research, institutional leadership and the development of
research networks and programmes. Pushing the boundaries of the
field, she developed praxis-based approaches that work towards trans-
forming educational spaces and imaginaries and bringing research,
theory and practice together. Her personal experience of returning to
study via an Access to Higher Education programme has fuelled her
ongoing commitment to generating research with impact. Penny Jane
has published extensively in the field, including Changing Pedagogical
Spaces in HE (with Gill Crozier and Lauren Ila Misiaszek) and The Right
to Higher Education. Penny Jane is also an inaugural member on the
Australian government’s Equity Research and Innovation Expert Panel.
Alan Cribb is an applied philosopher, based at King’s College, London,
with a particular interest in health and education policy, health services
research and professional education. He began his career at the University
of Manchester where he worked as Deputy Director of the Education and
Child Studies Research Group in the Department of Epidemiology and
Social Oncology and as a fellow of the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy.
He moved to King’s in 1989 where he is currently Professor of Bioethics
and Education and Co-director of the Centre for Public Policy Research.
In recent years he has undertaken research on shared decision-making
and collaborative working in healthcare, higher education values and
ethics, medical education and service learning. He is currently working
on a five-year Wellcome Trust-funded project entitled ‘But Why is That
Better?’, which is focused on the relevance of applied philosophy to
quality improvement.
ABout thE ContriButors ix
