This imaginative and original book challenges the traditional scientific view that naturally occurring psychological and sociological `realities' are to be discovered underlying appearances. Instead, it claims that such orderly realities are both socially constructed and sustained within the context of people's disorderly, everyday conversational activities. John Shotter's interdisciplinary analysis highlights the socially contested but imaginary nature of many of the `things' we talk about in social life and illuminates the processes of their construction. He offers a broad-ranging exploration of the rhetorical, argumentative nature of conversational communication, using examples from psychotherapy, management and everyday life.
`This is an important publication, which I urge colleagues to read and to consider carefully all the implications' - Early Years `... This provocative analysis with its clear examples is worth reading for its fresh look at where we could be headed come the 21st century'- Nursery Equipment Early childhood services in the UK have been badly neglected. The consequences are serious: chronic underfunding and increasing fragmentation; most staff poorly paid and trained; access often a matter of potluck and money; low aspirations and even lower expectations. Increasingly, young children are seen as important for what they may become rather than for what they are, and the case for early childhood services is made out in terms of later performance in school and adult life rather than the needs and rights of young children themselves. No current political vision redresses this undervaluing of early childhood or addresses the parlous state our early childhood services are in. Drawing on the rich early childhood tradition in the UK, going back to Robert Owen, and giving examples from current practice, Transforming Nursery Education offers a critique of the status quo, a vision of early childhood services and practical strategies for achieving it.The book covers a wide range of day care and education services and critical issues such as staffing, funding, curriculum, models of provision and the age at which children start compulsory schooling. Within this broad approach, the book focuses in particular on the history and current practice of nursery education. It argues that the present narrow approach to nursery education is neither appropriate to the needs of today nor inevitable. It answers a critical question: how can nursery education be transformed to play a leading role in the comprehensive, integrated and coherent early childhood service that today's families really need?
Is social research political? Should it be political? What are the implications of the politicisation of social research? Recent years have seen a growing range of challenges to the idea that research should be governed by the principle of value neutrality. Critical, feminist, anti-racist and postmodernist analyses have argued that social research is intrinsically political. In this stimulating and often controversial book, Martyn Hammersley weighs the arguments offered in support of these positions. He considers the fundamental issues that the debate raises about the nature of social research, its political dimensions and its contemporary relevance. At the same time he provides a robust defence of value neutrality as a constitutive principle of social research, and makes a reassessment of the role of research in modern societies. "The Politics of Social Research" will be of interest both to scholars engaged in research across the range of social science disciplines, theoretical and applied, and to students on advanced undergraduate and graduate courses.
This is a novel account of social change that supplants conventional understandings of `society' and presents a sociology that takes as its main unit of analysis flows through time and across space. Developing a comparative analysis of the UK and US, the new Germany and Japan, Lash and Urry show how restructuration after organized capitalism has its basis in increasingly reflexive social actors and organizations. The consequence is not only the much-vaunted `postmodern condition' but also a growth in reflexivity. In exploring this new reflexive world, the authors argue that today's economies are increasingly ones of signs - information, symbols, images, desire - and of space, where both signs and social subjects - refugees, financiers, tourists and fl[ci]aneurs - are mobile over ever greater distances at ever greater speeds.
Associate staff are all those who are employed in schools, but who are neither teachers, nor training to be teachers. The staff of the school are the key to effective and cost-effective education. This book is based on a study funded by the Department for Education. It presents findings from 25 schools where innovations have taken place. The authors attempt to assess the cost-effectiveness of the innovative posts. They also describe the boundaries between the daily activities of teaching and associate staff, the tensions that can arise and the considerable benefits that can occur.
Told through the fresh, sharp eyes of new organizational recruits, these sometimes comic, often traumatic, but always vivid and revealing accounts of organizations have much to say to learners and old hands alike. Grouped in sections on `images', `winning and losing' and `survival and injuries', the narratives encompass a wide gamut of themes and issue. These include: power and politics in organizations; organizational cultures and change; gender and discrimination; appearances and realities; leaders and followers; and emotion, motivation and stress. The authors also focus on the coldly competitive features of businesses where processes such as restructuring, rationalization and downsizing are increasingly commonplace. Throughout, commentaries by Stephen Fineman and Yiannis Gabriel highlight particular points of analysis and learning, while each chapter concludes with questions for discussion and a selected bibliography enabling further reading.
This book is the result of more than 6 years of work in schools in Hertfordshire, helping children make the transition from primary education to the big school. The 6 sessions are based on a Circle Time approach and supplemented by follow-up activities. Each session has comprehensive teacher instructions with the necessary worksheets. A memory map technique provides a unifying element to the programme. Issues covered include: - bullying - friendship - meeting new people - organisation and induction day Teacher comments include: The vulnerable children seem less worried. The programme was a success and made the children more confident and less anxious. Childrens comments include: 'Many of the worries I had are now gone and I cant wait for secondary school' - Eleanor ' Helped me with confidence and facing my fears such as bullying' - Daniel An interactive and fun approach using Circle Time techniques to assist all teachers who want to help Year 6 pupils make a successful transition.
This volume draws together critical assessments of Michel Foucault's contribution to our understanding of the making and remaking of the modern organization. The volume provides a valuable summary of Foucault's contribution to organization theory, which also challenges the conventions of traditional organizational analysis. By applying Foucauldian concepts such as discipline, surveillance and power/knowledge, the authors shed new light on the genesis of the modern organization and raise fresh questions about organization theory. The bureaucratic career is, for example, analyzed as a disciplinary device, a mechanism that seeks to alter rational choice rather than constrain bodies. This raises questions about Foucault's linking of the modern organization's birth with the enlightenment. Other contributions review the impact of totalizing managerial discourses and the limits and possiblities of resistance, and question the profound pessimism of Foucault. The volume concludes by examining the implications of Foucault's later work in which he suggests that people are much freer than they feel.
This irreverent but serious work systematically challenges the underlying assumptions and values of contemporary linear organization theory. The author looks at the pain, violence, death, failure and chaos hidden underneath, at the prison-like surveillance systems, the rotting structure - the organizational hell disregarded by conventional organization theory and practice. Disclaiming the voices of positivist science, the author presents a metaphor for the rejection of linearity, the reassertion of organizational creativity, and the return of actual human beings into the equations of organization theory and practice.
