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Reading Educational Research and Policy
The increased central control of education has meant that teachers are faced with an array
of texts which they have to read and understand. Reading Educational Research and
Policy aims to extend the educational literacy of student inservice teachers—it will
enable them to deconstruct policy, research and media texts and place them within
historical, social and literary contexts. This accessible book will examine the four
message systems through which educational meanings are conveyed in modern society:
• official policy texts
• written media
• spoken media
• research texts
Punctuated by questions, points for consideration and ideas for further reading and
research, the book’s intention is to help student inservice teachers to develop appropriate
reading strategies so they become more critical, reflective and effective teachers.
David Scott is Senior Lecturer in Curriculum at the Open University. His previous
publications include Realism and Educational Research: New Perspecti ves and
Possibilities published by RoutledgeFalmer.
Key Issues in Teaching and Learning
Series Editor: Alex Moore
Key Issues in Teaching and Learning is aimed at student teachers, teacher trainers and
inservice teachers. Each book will focus on the central issues around a particular topic
supported by examples of good practice with suggestions for further reading. These
accessible books will help students and teachers to explore and understand critical issues
in ways that are challenging, that invite reappraisals of current practices and that provide
appropriate links between theory and practice.
Teaching and Learn ing: Ped agogy, Curriculum an d Cultu r e

Alex Moore
Reading Educat ional Res earch and P olicy

David Scott
Understanding Assessment: Pu rposes, Perceptions, Practice

David Lambert and David Lines
Und erstanding S chools and Schooling

Clyde Chitty
Reading Educational
Research and Policy
David Scott
London and New York

First published 2000 by RoutledgeFalmer
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by RoutledgeFalmer
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
RoutledgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2000 David Scott
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Catalogui ng in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Catal oging in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-48752-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-79576-8 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0-7507-0993-6 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vi

Acknowledgements vii
Series Editor’s Preface ix
1 Introdu ction : Ed ucation al Literacy 1
2 Reading Poli cy Texts 17
3 Reading Resea rch Reports 42
4 Reading the W r itten Media 70
5 Making Con nections 97
6 The Educationally Literate Teach er 113
References 12 5
Subject Index 132
Author Index 138
Figures and Tables
FIG URES
2.1 Three models of policy-making 23

4.1 Chibnall’s list of positive and negative values 81
4.2 Positive and negative educational values 81
TABLE S
4.1 Summary of the interim report 89

Acknowledgements
Every effort has been made to gain permission to reproduce extracts from books, research
reports, policy texts, newspaper articles and television broadcasts. Any omissions are
regretted and apologies are made to those concerned. The following are acknowledged:
The University of Warwick for permission to reprint pages xi–xiii, the summary and the
recommendations of Scott, Rigby and Burgess (1992) Language Teaching in Higher
Education; the Daily Mail for kind permission to reprint extracts from an article entitled
‘We warned ministers over computer bungle’ which appeared on 26 July 1999; the BBC
24 Hours News Service for permission to transcribe an extract from an interview which
was broadcast on 26 August 1999; The Standing Conference on Drug Abuse (SCODA)
for permission to reprint their summary of key points from ‘Managing and Making Policy
for Drug-related Incidents in Schools’ which appeared in 1999; and The Times
Educational Supplement for permission to reprint extracts from an article entitled ‘Palms
take root in East London’ which appeared on 20 July 1997.
This p age inten tiona lly left blank.
Series Editor’ s Pref ace
THE KEY ISSU ES IN TEAC HIN G AND LEA RNIN G SERIES
Reading Educational Research a nd Policy is one of five titles in the series Key Issues in
Teaching and Learning, each written by an acknowledged expert or experts in their field.
Other volumes explore issues of Teaching and Learning, Understanding Assessment and
Understanding Schools and Schooling. The books are intended primarily for beginner
and newly or recently qualified teachers, but will also be of interest to more experienced
teachers attending MA or Professional Development Courses, to managers and
administrators in education authorities, and to teachers who are simply interested in
revisiting issues of theory and practice within an ever-changing educational context.
Reading Educational Research a nd Policy will also provide an invaluable reference and
activity book for students on research-degree programmes keen to explore and debate
methods of educational enquiry through considerations of specific texts chosen by the
author for their capacity to stimulate informed argument.
TEACHING AND THEORISI NG
There is currently no shortage of books designed to support teachers and beginner-

teachers in their professional development, offering what must sometimes seem a
bewildering choice. Many of these books fall into the ‘how-to’ category, offering
practical tips and advice for teachers on a range of matters such as planning for students’
learning, managing classroom behaviour, and marking and assessing students’ work.
Such books have proved very successful over the years, providing beginner-teachers in
particular with much of the support and reassurance they need to help them through their
early experiences of classroom life, as well as offering useful advice on how to make
teaching maximally effective. Increasingly, such books focus on sets of teacher
competences—more recently linked to sets of standards—laid down, in the UK, by the
Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) and the Teacher Training Agency (TTA)
(see, for instance, OFSTED/TTA 1996). Other books have focused on the teacher’s need
to be reflective and reflexive (e.g. Schon 1983; 1987; Valli 1992; Elliott 1993; Loughran
1996). These books may still be described as ‘advice books’, but the advice is of a
different kind, tending to encourage the expert or teacher to think more about human
relationships in the teaching—learning situation and on the ways in which teaching styles
connect to models of learning and learning development.
More predominantly theoretical books for teachers are perhaps in shorter supply, and
those that do exist often address issues in decontextualised ways or in very general terms
that do not immediately speak to classroom practitioners or take account of their
particular academic backgrounds. There is, furthermore, evidence that, partly through
time constraints, some of the most profound works on educational theory are very little
read or discussed on teacher training courses (Moore and Edwards 2000), while the work
of developmental psychologists, which used to feature very prominently on PGCE and
BAEd courses, has become increasingly marginalised through a growing emphasis on
issues of practical discipline, lesson planning, and meeting National Curriculum
requirements.
REA DING EDU CAT IONA L RESEA RCH AN D POLIC Y
Reading Educational Research a nd Policy, like the other books in this series, seeks to
address this imbalance by exploring with teachers important educational issues and
relating these to relevant theory in a way that encourages interrogation and debate. The
book does not ignore or seek to devalue current trends in educational practice and policy,
or the current dominant discourses of competence and reflection. Rather, it strives to
provide readers with the knowledge and skills they will need in order to address and
respond to these and other educational discourses in critical, well-informed ways that will
enhance both their teaching and their job satisfaction.
With this in mind, Reading Educational Research and Policy aims to extend and
develop the educational literacy of its readers. It takes as its starting point an
understanding that all educational texts, be they policy, research or media reports, are
constructed in certain ways and on the bases of certain interests, and need to be read as
such if they are to be properly understood and utilised. The author’s underlying premise
is that the educationally literate teacher will have the capacity to deconstruct such texts
and to place them within historical, social and literary contexts. In arguing this premise,
Scott acknowledges Anthony Giddens’ suggestion that ‘A text…is a “work” in the sense
in which it involves a chronic process of “monitored” production [whereby] the author is
a producer working in specific settings of practical action’ (Giddens 1987, p. 105).
This notion of a text being a ‘monitored’ production is developed by Scott through his
suggestion that such an analysis can be applied to all educational texts regardless of
whether the writer is a policy-maker, a journalist, an academic or a researcher. The only
difference, he suggests, is that the constructing process is different in these different
settings, with writers working to different sets of rules and negotiating particular webs of
cultural, political and social constraints.
STRUCTU RE AND CO NTENT OF TH E BOOK
The book is divided into four principal chapters, plus an introductory chapter and a
chapter of summaries and conclusions. Each of the four principal chapters focuses on a
particular type of educational text—the policy text, the research report, the written media
text, and the broadcast media text. As each type of text is interrogated, text-based
activities are provided to enable the reader to engage in an immediate practical
application of the ideas introduced. Each chapter is rounded off with a helpful summary
of key points and with annotated suggestions for further reading on the topic.
Chapter 1: In troduction sets out the scope and territory of the book, explaining why
educational literacy is necessary not only in order to critique and challenge some of the
dominant and often misleading messages about education that are ‘naturalised’ through
their uncritical presentation in public texts, but also as a way of developing effective—
and reflective—practice. As with other chapters in the book, key points are supported
through reference to existing texts, which readers are encouraged to interrogate and
debate through carefully chosen questions.
Chapter 2: Readi ng Policy Texts. In this chapter, Scott examines policy texts, which,
he argues, are becoming increasingly influential in the United Kingdom as relations
between the different constituents of the overall socio-economic and educational systems
change. Such texts may include White Papers, Acts of Parliament and Government
Reports, in addition to texts produced by semi-independent bodies such as QCA or
OFSTED. In the latter case, these may be the products of commissioned research and
evaluation, inspection reports or policy documents. Scott explores the construction and
reading of such texts through considerations of the notion of ‘official writing’. Adopting
Burton and Carlen’s notion of official discourse as ‘a technology of ideological
closure’ (Burton and Carlen 1979, p. 13), he argues that the text itself is typically
represented as the ‘truth’ rather than a particular perspective on it, that opposition to
official policy is often pathologised or discredited within the text, and that as a
consequence the text works to marginalise rather than promote educational debate.
Chapter 3: Readi ng Research Reports examines how research reports—both empirical
and non-empirical—are constructed according to a set of rules which constitute ‘the
academic text’. The form that such reports generally takes, says Scott, is realist and
representative, conveying the impression that the reports stand for a set of phenomena
that exist outside them and that can therefore be understood without reference to the ways
in which they have been constructed. In encouraging more critical readings of these texts
via approaches that reveal their modes and means of production, Scott also examines and
encourages the use of alternative textual forms in research reports, such as ‘broken’,
‘confessional’, ‘reflexive’, ‘transparent’ and ‘dialogic’ forms. These ways of writing,
Scott suggests, recognise the authorial bias and interpretative nature of research projects,
that other, ‘realist’ reports seek to ignore or disguise.
In Chapter 4: Rea ding the Written Media, Scott examines written media texts, building
on Hall et al.’s suggestion that ‘[t]he media do not simply and transparently report events
which are “naturally” newsworthy in themselves’ but that ‘“News” is the end-product of
a complex process which begins with a systematic sorting and selecting of events and
topics according to a socially constructed set of categories’ (Hall et al. 1978, p. 34). This
chapter focuses on the process of sorting and selecting carried out by the national press,
and addresses such issues as stereotyping, personalisation, using and ascribing positive
and negative legitimising values, misrepresentation and simplification. These issues
themselves are contextualised within the role played by ideology in the ways in which the
press operates.
Chapter 5: Making Connections looks at broadcasting media texts, and examines the
way the spoken media construct and reconstruct educational events and activities so that
in some cases they are barely recognisable from their original form. Scott shows how the
use of visual images, in addition to words, allows the recontextualising process to be
more powerfully enacted, even if the same media devices are being used. The assumption
that television and radio coverage of educational matters comprises the recording of ‘hard
facts’ is powerfully challenged through the argument that news itself is a social practi ce,
constructed by practitioners working within specific discourses.
Chapter 6: Edu cational Literacy. Having provided a thorough examination of four
different types of texts and four different ways by which educational messages are
delivered, Scott’s final chapter considers the rules by which the texts themselves are
constructed, supporting our understanding of those rules—and offering ways of
counteracting them—through specific, distinctive reading strategies. These strategies
involve the ‘surfacing’ of the power networks which inevitably accompany any reading
of a text, and their substitution with alternative interpretative perspectives in order to
empower readers and to enable them, through more subtle readings of the texts they
encounter, to become more effective practitioners. Acknowledging that readers will
remain positioned within other types of constraints, which can only be partially negated
by a critically literate, deconstructive reading of texts, Scott nevertheless presents a
powerful argument for the importance of the kinds of informed reading he promotes,
offering tantalising glimpses as to how those other constraints might be recognised,
managed and opposed. Scott’s appeal for healthy scepticism and the need to imagine and
explore altern atives is linked to a lucid account of the difference between two popular but
contrasting perceptions of the nature and process of learning: ‘symbol processing’ and
‘situated cognition’.
REFERE NCE S
Burton, F. and Carlen, P. (1979) Official Discourse: on Discou rse Analysis, Government
Publications, Ideology and the State. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
Elliot, J. (1993) ‘The relationship between “understanding” and “developing” teachers’
thinking.’ In Elliott, J. (ed.) Reconstructing Teacher Education. London: Falmer Press
Giddens, A. (1987) Social Theory and Modern Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press
Hall, S., Chrichter, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the
Crisis: Mugging. London: Macmillan
Loughran, J. (1996) Developing Reflective Practice: Learning About Teaching and
Learning Through Modelling. London: Falmer Press
Moore, A. and Edwards, G. (2000) ‘Compliance, Resistance and Pragmatism in
Pedagogic Identities.’ Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American
Educational Research Association, New Orleans, 24–28 April 2000
OFSTED/TTA (Office for Standards in Education/Teacher Training Agency) (1996)
Fra mework for the Assessment of Quality and Standards in Initial Teacher Training
1996/97. London: OFSTED
Schon, D.A. (1983) The Reflective Pra ctitioner: Ho w the Professionals Think in Action.
New York: Basic Books
Schon, D.A. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practi tioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Valli, L. (ed.) (1992) Reflective Teacher Education. New York: State University of New
York Press
This p age inten tiona lly left blank.
1
Introduction: Educational Literacy
This chapter intro duces the idea of educational literacy, and suggests
that read ing educational texts in a cri tical way allows the read er to
reposition themselves in relation to argu ments, policy prescriptions
and directives in ways which are not intended by the writers of these
texts. The educationally literate teacher therefore understands
educational texts, whether they are policy documents, Press reports or
resea rch reports, a s constructed and ideologically embedded artifacts.
The education system in England and Wales has undergone a profound transformation in
the last twelve years. These changes have included the introduction of a national
curriculum, national testing at key stages of formal education, the removal of influence
and power from the Local Education Authorities and Local Financial Management within
schools and colleges. Teachers have, furthermore, lost some of their capacity to control
events in their classrooms, with a concomitant loss of professional status. They have, we
could say, begun to lose the ability to think critically about the processes which they
initiate, and to experiment in situ. Part of the reason for this is that central government
has tightened its grip on how they should think and behave. With the willing
acquiescence of the written and broadcasting media, teachers are now losing their
capacity to think in ways which are not prescribed by policy-makers. In short, they are
becoming educationally illiterate.
The term ‘literacy’ is commonplace in educational discussions. Originally it referred to
or indicated a capacity to read a text. Both words, ‘reading’ and ‘text’, are now
understood in different ways. ‘Reading’ is used to refer to a transforming process where
the reader does more than simply decipher the symbols on the page but actively engages
with the text, and as a result creates meanings and understandings for themselves.
Likewise, the ‘text’ is now understood as more than just words on paper or on a computer
screen, but as a way of thinking and behaving. Furthermore, we now have ‘social
literacy’, ‘political literacy’, ‘emotional literacy’, ‘technological literacy’, ‘visual
literacy’ and ‘personal literacy’. For example, social literacy is ‘defined as the ability to
understand and operate successfully within a complex and interdependent social world. It
involves the acquisition of the skills of active and confident social participation,
including the skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for making reasoned judgements
in a community’, and as ‘the empowerment of the social and ethical self which includes
the ability to understand and explain differences within individual experiences’ (Arthur
Reading Educational Research and Policy 2
and Davison 2000, p. 11).
This book will focus on a companionate concept, that of educational literacy. Teachers
read various texts which seek to position them within powerful discourses, and this has
the effect of restricting their freedom to think and act in alternative ways. In this book,
the ‘text’ will be understood in its more restricted sense as documentary material. Four
types of text will be examined: official policy documents, Press reports of educational
activities, reports from the broadcasting media and research reports produced by the
academic community. Each type of text or document works in different ways, which adds
to the complexity of the process of becoming an educationally literate teacher. He or she
is defined here as someone who has acquired the capacity to read these texts so that they
are not imprisoned within their discursive structures and entanglements, that is, the
educationally literate reader allows themselves the opportunity of taking up a position
which is not intended by the authors of these various texts. If they read a newspaper
report about an educational event, they understand that report as a constructed
representation of the event, and not as the only possible way of describing it.
Furthermore, by understanding it as constructed and constructed in a particular way, the
educationally literate teacher demystifies the processes of knowledge development and
dissemination, and is in a better position to make a judgement about the issue referred to.
Teachers however, do more than read official or unofficial texts. The practices which
they are engaged in are constructed in other ways, not least by the arrangements made
within their institutions. Texts influence such practices both at the level of the classroom
and at the level of the school, and this is why it is important for teachers to develop
strategies for reading these various texts, which, if applied, transform their sense of how
they understand their own practice.
This critical and transformative process then becomes an intuitive and barely thought
about part of their everyday behaviours as teachers. It is not about developing
competencies, though the educationally literate teacher is competent within the practice
itself; it is about what Freire (1972) describes as reflection upon action: ‘a conscious
objectification of their own and others’ actions through investigation, contemplation and
comment’. The educationally literate practitioner has the capacity to resist and indeed
transcend the powerful messages which inform and structure educational texts and
documents. These textual messages may also be framed not just to indicate to the reader
that they should think and act in specific ways, but that there is no alternative way of
thinking and acting. Educational texts attempt at every opportunity to disguise their real
nature and deceive the reader into thinking that the knowledge within the text they are
reading has a special authoritative character, whether because it is the truth of the matter,
or because its evidential base is incontrovertible, or because it distils within it a form of
democratic legitimation which privileges it over other texts and other ideological
positions.
This meta-knowledge, the core of educational literacy, is, as Lankshear (1997, p. 72)
suggests:
…knowledge about what is involved in participating in some discourse(s). It is

more than merely knowing how (i.e. being able) to engage successfully in a
Introduction: Educational Literacy 3
particular discursive practice. Rather, metalevel knowledge is knowing about the
nature of that practice, its constitutive values and beliefs, its meaning and
significance, how it relates to other practices, what is it about successful
performance that makes it successful, and so on.
It empowers in three ways:

• it allows the individual to perform better in the practice;
• it enhances and develops the workings of the practice itself;
• it enables the practice to be transformed.
Understanding how each text is constructed means that the subsequent reading of those
texts takes on a different form. This allows the reader to understand both how the author
of the text is seeking to position them as a reader and it allows the reader the opportunity
to make adjustments to how they are being positioned. In extreme cases it allows the
reader to resist the power arrangements implicit within the text itself. Surfacing the power
relations which authors of texts have constructed for their readers allows those readers to
reflect on the issue in hand and more importantly, make genuine choices about their own
practice. They therefore act as critical thinkers. It is also about acting as a critical thinker.
Brookfield (1987, p. ix) argues that critical thinking comprises a number of processes:
When we become critical thinkers we develop an awareness of the assumptions

under which we, and others, think and act. We seem to pay attention to the
context in which our actions and ideas are generated. We become sceptical of
quick fix solutions, of single answers to problems, and of claims to universal
truth. We also become open to alternative ways of looking at, and behaving in,
the world.
He identifies four dimensions of critical thinking:

1 Identifying and challenging assumptions. Those assumptions may be taken-for-
granted notions about education, accepted ways of understanding educational
matters or habitual patterns of behaviour. They may refer to behaviours at the level
of practice, but equally to the way teachers are positioned within political, policy-
making and representational contexts.
2 Challenging the importance of context. Being aware of these contexts allows the
reader or practitioner to transcend them. It allows the practitioner to develop
alternative ways of understanding and alternative modes of practice to those
intended by policy-makers, journalists or researchers.
3 Imagining and exploring alternatives. The thinking of the practitioner goes beyond
the merely conventional or accepted way of thinking and behaving. Thinking about
practice becomes rooted in the actual context of teaching and learning and it allows
the practitioner to experiment within their own practice.
4 Developing reflective scepticism. This is not a negative exercise, though it has been
construed in this way. It involves being sceptical of all claims to knowledge unless
and until the reasons for those claims have been evaluated and deemed appropriate
(Brookfield 1987, pp. 7–9).
These four dimensions are central to the practice of critical reflection within teaching.
Reading educational texts in a critical way allows the reader to

reposition themselves in relation to arguments, policy prescriptions
and directives in ways which are not intended by the writers of these
texts. The educationally literate teacher therefore understands
educational texts, whether they are policy documents. Press reports or
research reports as constructed and ideologically embedded artifacts.
THE THEORY-PRACTICE REL ATIONSHI P
Furthermore, teachers are now being positioned within a discourse of competence in

which they are expected to acquire certain definite ways of behaving and thinking and be
in a position to display them. These competencies are meant to reflect good practice per
se, but in fact represent a particular position taken by powerful people in society both
about what education is for and how teachers should behave.
They reflect a view of the teacher as a technician, whose primary function is to develop
the skills to put into practice a set of behaviours determined by policy-makers. The
relationship between theoretical knowledge and practice-based knowledge may be
understood in five ways.
1 The scientistic approach. This term has been coined by Habermas (1987) to
indicate that scientific descriptions of the world are pre-eminently the only sensible
and rational ways of understanding it. The scientistic approach refers to: ‘science’s
belief in itself; that is, the conviction that we can no longer understand science as
one form of possible knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with
science’ (ibid., p. 4). Knowledge of practice is considered to be inferior to scientific
know-ledge. This scientific approach allows the researcher or policy-maker to
identify appropriate knowledge of educational activities, which is, because of the
way it is collected, objective, value-free and authoritative. There is one correct
approach and one set of methods. Teachers therefore need to put to one side their
own considered and experience-based ways of understanding what they do because
their view of their own practice is subjective, and based on the local and the
particular. Practitioner knowledge is context-dependent, problem-solving,
contingent, non-generalisable and is judged not by objective criteria but by whether
it contributes to the achievement of short-term goals and problems encountered in
situ. However, if this scientific model is accepted, an assumption is made that the
objective knowledge which is produced about educational activities and institutions
binds the practitioner in certain ways; those ways being the following of rules
which can be deduced from that knowledge. Practitioner knowledge therefore is

inferior because it is incorrectly formulated. This has been described as the
technical rationality model of the theory—practice relationship.
2 The interpretative approach. The second perspective shares many of the
assumptions of the technical rationality model in that it understands the relationship
between theoretical and practice-based knowledge in a similar way. What is
different is that the researcher constructs the original knowledge differently. For
example, the researcher may believe that if they want to understand how teachers
and other educational workers operate, then they have to collect data about how
those teachers construct meanings about their working practices. Even here, the
researcher still believes that the practitioner should divest themselves of their
experiential knowledge if it conflicts with knowledge precepts developed by
outside researchers. Usher et al. (1996, p. 26) describe this model as:
…the solving of technical problems through rational decision-making based on

practical knowledge. It is the means to achieve ends where the assumption is
that ends to which practice is directed can always be predefined and are always
knowable. The condition of practice is the learning of a body of theoretical
knowledge, and practice therefore becomes the application of this body of
knowledge in repeated and predictable ways to achieve predefined ends.
Teachers are understood as technicians and in the process are disempowered within
their own practice settings.
3 Multi-methodological ap proa ches. There is however a third way of understanding
the relationship between theoretical and practice-based knowledges. Researchers
would deny that there is a correct way of seeing the world but would advocate a
multi-perspectival and multi-methodological view. There is no one correct method,
only a series of methods which groups of researchers have developed and which
have greater or lesser credence depending on the way those groups are constructed
and the influence they have in society. The educational texts which they produce
are stories about the world, which in the process of their telling and retelling,
restock or re-story the world itself. They have influence because enough
practitioners see them as a useful resource for the solving of practical problems they
encounter in their everyday working lives. Whether or not the practitioner works to
the prescriptive framework of the researcher depends on the fit between the values
and frameworks held respectively by theorist and practitioner. The outside theorist
can produce broadly accurate knowledge of educational settings, but the
practitioner then adapts and amends it in the light of the contingencies of their own
work practices. However, in all essential respects the practitioner still follows the
prescriptive framework developed by the outside researcher.
4 Pra ctitioner knowledge. There is, however, a fourth way of understanding the
relationship between theoretical and practice-based knowledges. Walsh (1993, p.
43) argues that the relationship which concerns us here ‘turns on the perception that
deliberated, thoughtful, practice is not just the target, but is the major source
(perhaps the specifying source) of educational theory’. He goes on to suggest that
‘there is now a growing confidence within these new fields that their kind of
theorizing, relating closely and dialectically with practice, is actually the core of
educational studies and not just the endpoint of a system for adopting and
delivering outside theories’ (ibid., p. 43). This view-point takes another step away
from the technical—rationality position described above. First it suggests that there
may not be a role at all for the theorist, because they operate outside practice.
Practice is understood as deliberative action concerned with the making of
appropriate decisions about practical problems in situ. However, this should not
lead us to accept that there is no role for theory at all. What is being
reconceptualised is the idea of theory itself. Proponents of this view reject the
notion of means—end implicit in the technical—rational model and argue that
practitioner knowledge involves more than deciding how to apply precepts
developed by others. Practitioner knowledge is not just about the identification and
application of pre-defined ends, it is also about the designation of ends in the light
of deliberative activity about practice. As Usher et al. (1996, p. 127) suggest,
practice situations are ‘characterised by a complexity and uncertainty which resist
routinization’. Such knowledge therefore can never be propositional, but always
involves continuous cycles of deliberation and action. This closely ties together
theory and practice; informal theory central to practice is, as Usher et al. (1996)
suggest, ‘situated theory both entering into and emerging from practice’.
5 Separa ting theoretical and pra ctice knowledge. The fifth position which it is
possible to take is an extension of the last, in that the theorist and the practitioner
are actually engaged in different activities. Walsh (1993, p. 44) for instance,
suggests that there are four mutually supporting but distinctive kinds of discourses:
deliberation in the strict sense of weighing alternatives and prescribing action in

the concrete here and now…evaluation, also concrete, and at once closely
related to deliberation and semi-independent of it…science, which has a much
less direct relationship to practice…and utopianism, being the form of discourse
in which ideal visions and abstract principles are formulated and argued over.
If we accept this argument, we are also accepting the idea that the theorist and the
practitioner are engaged in different activities and therefore that they will operate
with different criteria as to what constitutes knowledge. This creates two problems:
how does one decide between these different versions of the theory—practice
relationship and how does one therefore conceptualise the relationship between
practitioner and academic knowledge?
Choosing between these different accounts of the theory-practice relationship is
problematic because it is not possible to derive a role for the theorist and a role for the
practitioner from an a priori examination of the concept of education. In other words,
how these matters are considered and what conclusions are drawn about the most
appropriate relationship between theory and practice is a question of value; it involves
deliberation and argument about the purposes of the educational enterprise and such
deliberation is located within power structures, and inscribed formally in different types
of text, which provide the essential contexts for action. Furthermore these texts seek not
just to persuade the reader about the merits or demerits of certain educational practices or
even to adopt a particular perspective on an educational issue, they also seek to persuade
the reader that practitioner knowledge is inferior to theoretical knowledge developed by
outsiders to the practice setting, and that, as a consequence, they as practitioners should
be less concerned with the designation of educational ends and more concerned with the
technical process of implementing those ends. In other words, they are persuaded to
accept the technical-rationality model of the relationship between theoretical and
practical knowledge, and in the process conform better to what is intended by
governments and other reconceptualising bodies such as the educational Press.
Five ways of understanding the theory-practice relationship have

been identified. The technical-rationality model seeks to position
teachers as technicians whose role is to implement policy which has
been decided upon at the policy level. Educational literacy challenges
the implicit assumptions underpinning this view of practice.
TEXTU AL RULES
This book will be concerned with a number of key concepts and processes. Educational
texts exert a powerful influence on how practitioners think and behave. However, they
are only one part of the mosaic of ideas and concepts which the practitioner throughout
their career has to confront. Furthermore, texts are interconnected: a policy text may be
written so that its primary audience is not the practitioners to which it is directed but
those recontextualising bodies such as the written and spoken media which are more
likely to act as a bridgehead between policy-makers and practitioners. In short, media
reports about policy deliberations and policy initiatives are more likely to be read by
practitioners than the original documents themselves. Different types of educational text
are structured by different types of rules about how they can be read. These different
types of rules are constructed in terms of a number of dimensions: time, audience,
purpose, ideological framework, place, media, intertextuality, history,
knowledge/representation and resources:
• Texts are tempora lly framed. Media reports are immediately produced, written to
tight deadlines and impermanent. They do not involve deep reflection; as a result,
they are likely to be less coherent, both in themselves and in relation to other media
reports within the same newspaper; and they are likely to focus on the immediately
obvious, rather than take a long-term view. Research texts are usually constructed
over a long period of time and they therefore focus on processes rather than events,
that is they are more likely to make reference to relations between events rather
than single isolated events on their own. They are also likely to make claims which
are more permanent than media texts.
• Texts are produced with specific audiences in mind. These texts may be constructed
for multiple audiences, though it is possible to make the assumption that those
audiences are arranged in the minds of the authors in a hierarchical order. Producers
of texts have an audience in mind and furthermore have an idea of how that
audience will read their text; that is, they will deliberately construct the text so that
it conforms to how they think their audience will read it. This may comprise an
understanding about when they read it; at what level or depth they are likely to read
it; the awareness of context and intertextuality they bring to it; the critical resources
they have at their disposal; the intellectual resources they have to access the text;
the context(s) in which it will be read; and their capacity to be persuaded of its
authority and truth. It needs to be emphasised at this point that these impressions of
audience may be mistaken; indeed, one of the intentions of text producers is to
persuade the reader to read it in a certain way, so that it is not just an exercise in
meeting the needs, and fulfilling the expectations, of their audience, but of
reconstructing the tastes and ways of reading of both this audience and potentially
new recruits to it. It is therefore of course, an exercise in persuasion, manipulation
and power.
• Different types of texts have different purposes. Newspapers are concerned with
improving their audience circulation. They are more likely to adopt a popular
ideological line towards educational matters if it is believed that its adoption will
increase their readership. The broadcasting media are perhaps more concerned
about the reactions of their financial sponsors, especially those who are prepared to
pay for advertising on the television and radio. Policy-makers, as we have
suggested above, are concerned with practice and the capacity of the text to
influence and change that practice. They may also be concerned with influencing
other recontextualising bodies which are powerful influences on educational
practice. Educational researchers operate with a range of different motives;
however, one of their purposes is to satisfy the criteria for good practice as it is
understood by the academic community. Different purposes denote that the text will
be constructed in different ways.
• Different types of texts are underpinned by different ideological frameworks. These
may be concealed or overt, and indeed, if the former, it is more difficult for the
reader to decipher the messages implicit within the text itself. That is, the reading
has to become a skilled and reflective performance by the reader so that they are not
imprisoned within the textual framing of the document which is confronting them.
Educational texts always make assumptions about key educational issues. Examples
of these are: teaching and learning approaches, the nature of childhood and child
development, the aims and purposes of education, content and pedagogical
knowledge, management structures, and the professional status and role of the
teacher. Even in the most innocent of texts, assumptions about these issues are
made and the astute reader is able to identify the positions taken by the authors of
these texts. It also perhaps important to note at this point that authors may not be
aware of the ideological underpinnings of their own texts. This in no way alleviates
the powerful influence their texts might have.
• Different types of texts adopt different attitudes towards the dimension of place.
This can be understood in two ways. The first is that a text may refer to the local,
the particular and the specific, and thus have as its focus a part of an education
system. It therefore avoids reference to wider concerns and interests. For example,
the local Press may focus on comparing school results within the locality and not on
making national comparisons. Policy texts tend to be nationally-orientated and
ethnocentric because of this. The second way that place is important in any
discussion of texts is in terms of the different site positionings of the authors of
these texts. Thus, a policy-making site has different dimensions to a practitioner site
and these different contexts of construction and reading significantly influence the
form these texts take.
• Different types of texts use different media to put across thei r messages. The
broadcasting media is image-based with moving images at its core. The written
media is reliant on words and still photographs. Policy and research documents
generally are written texts. The medium of production frames the messages of the
producers of texts; indeed, the form the text takes determines the way the message
can be constructed and the way it can be read. Therefore in terms of impact or
influence, the form is as important as the content.
• Different types of texts may refer to other texts or not and furthermore may refer to
them in different ways. Intertextuality is a key dimension of reading texts because
the reader is made aware of other texts through for example, citation. Making
reference to other texts and practices may be achieved in a number of ways. It may
be achieved, as we have suggested above, through citation as in an academic
research report, or it may be achieved through reference in the text either to another
text (it may of course make reference to another article in the same newspaper or
another article in a previous edition of the newspaper), or to another
event/practice/happening. It may also refer to a range of
arguments/practices/discourses or make reference to none of these. Depending on
the extent and type of intertextuality within the document itself, this will influence
the way it can be read and the subsequent impact it has. If one doubts the
importance of this, then one only has to turn to the way OFSTED research reports
reference other works in ways which are distinctive from accepted academic
referencing procedures. This has involved a judgement by OFSTED that the
audience for such reports is a practitioner one and thus may not be familiar with
academic referencing, and its purpose is to persuade the reader to focus on the
ideological messages which underpin the text at hand.
• Different types of texts have histories which influence how they can be read .
Furthermore, readers of texts read them in terms of the conventions established by
the particular textual form. The dimensions of this form have been referred to above
and comprise citation, length, grammatical structure, syntactical structure and
positioning in relation to other parts of the wider text. For example, a newspaper
report is read in relation to the whole newspaper, that is, in relation to all the other
articles and parts of that same newspaper. Furthermore, the length of a newspaper
report is dictated by convention which restricts the type of message construction
which can be attempted. Research reports on the other hand are constructed in
different ways and though there are conventions about their length, these
conventions are not as rigidly adhered to. An academic book is conventionally
structured in terms of contents, an introduction, the main part of the book, a
conclusion, appendices and indexes. This denotes that the reader will use the
academic text in a different way from the way they would a newspaper article and
influences the way each different text will be read.
• Texts are underpinned by distinctive types of knowledge. We have already made
reference to time, place, purpose and audience. It is also perhaps important to stress
that different authors adopt different perspectives on what constitutes knowledge
and on what constitutes appropriate ways of representing the world. Within each
different form, authors and producers of texts may also differ as to how they
understand the nature of knowledge and how they understand that it can best be
represented in terms of their chosen media. However, it is possible to suggest that
given the other dimensions of textual production referred to above, our four forms
of textual production operate with a particular view of the world and how it can be
represented in textual form. A policy text, for example, is less concerned with
reliable and valid forms of knowledge established through rigorous processes of
research than with the construction of coherent and persuasive messages which
change practice at the classroom level in ways that are intended. A research text
seeks to conform to those criteria which underpin good research; indeed, it is the
faithful adherence to those criteria (whether they are accepted by everyone or not)
which gives these texts the authority they have.
• Texts are produced with different types of resources. For example, a research report
is constructed by a single researcher or a group of researchers in terms of how much
money is available. Issues of access, sampling, method and the like are to some
extent determined by resources of time and money. Again, we have already made
reference to the time element in the construction of media discourses.
• Finally we need to identify another importa nt dimension of textual production, that
of contingency. The rules which structure particular types of textual production are
never faithfully followed. In other words, it is not possible to examine every text
and see there absolute adherence to the appropriate rules and conventions. Chance,
serendipity, muddle, misidentification all play a part in the way texts are
constructed. More importantly, we should understand this process as changing,
evolving and continually subject to review as those central to particular practices
confront and attempt to provide solutions to particular problems they encounter in
situ.
Different types of educational text are structured by different types

of rules about how they can be read. These different types of rules
refer to the following dimensions: time, audience, purpose,

ideological framework, place, media, intertextuality, history,
knowledge/representation and resources.
FOUR EXAMPLES OF E DUCATIONA L TEXT S
Here are extracts from four different types of texts: a policy document; a newspaper
report, a television programme and a research report.
1 An extract from a research report
4.1 Foreign language short courses and services offered by higher

education take a number of forms: accredited non-degree courses,
extra-mural or adult liberal education programmes, leisure courses,
briefing courses, translating and interpreting services, language
training for commerce, industry, business and the professions, student
placements, open access staff and student courses and staff
recruitment.
4.2 Institutions of higher education organise their short language
provision in different ways. Control of short course work may be
located in a variety of centres within institutions: within the language
department itself; as a separate unit, sometimes called a short-course
unit or language centre attached and accountable to the language
department; or a separate department with informal links to language
departments. Such arrangements may be long established, of recent
origin, or presently evolving. Marketing strategies and organisational
arrangements for such courses may be made exclusively through
language-export centres, through institutional marketing units,
through language centres or language departments, or through a
combination of language-export centre, institution or department.
4.3 There has been a significant expansion of the provision of
language related services to business and industry to meet the
growing demand. A greater number of higher education providers
were entering the market, many of them having previously offered a
limited range of language courses and services.
4.4 The Language-Export Consortia Initiative was working in
different ways in different parts of the country, though the underlying
mechanism was the same throughout. The intention is twofold.
Firstly, to stimulate demand by the adoption of marketing strategies,
and secondly to ensure that providers are able to meet that increased
demand. The Language-Export Network, at the moment, is in the
process of reconstituting itself as a regulator of quality in foreign
language provision and setting up codes of practice to maintain and
improve standards of teaching in this field.
4.5 Language Centres were increasingly becoming an important
part of language departments’ provision of language services, though
they were performing different functions in different institutions.
4.6 Courses that institutions organised for business and industry
were shaped in the main by the needs of clients. Courses for other
parts of the market were less responsive to individual or group
concerns, since they were not generally tailor made for particular
language learners. Most of the language training that institutions were
required to do was at beginners or intermediate level. Courses were
being designed to operate on a regular and less intensive basis.
Source: Scott, Rigby and Burgess (1992) Language
Teaching in Higher Educa tion. Coventry:
The University of Warwick, pp. xi–xiii.
2 Two extracts from p olicy document s
A. Task Group on Assessment and Testing (TGAT)
The assessment process itself should not determine what is to be

taught and learned…. For the purposes of national assessment we
give priority to the following four criteria:
• the assessment results should give direct information about
pupils’ achievement in relation to objectives: they should be
criterion -referenced;
• the results should provide a basis for decisions about pupils’
further learning needs: they should be formative:
• the scales or grades should be capable of comparison across
classes and schools, if teachers, pupils and parents are to share a
common language and common standards: so the assessments
should be calibrated or modera ted;
• the ways in which criteria are set up and used should relate to
expected routes of educational development, giving some
continuity to a pupil’s assessment at different ages: the
assessments should relate to progress/on.
Source: Task Group on Assessment and Testing

(DES, 1987), paragraphs 4 and 5.
B. The Education Reform Act (ERA)
The Secretary of State may by order specify in relation to each of

the foundation subjects—
a) such attainment targets;
b) such programmes of study; and
c) such assessment arrangements,
as he [sic] considers appropriate for that subject.
Source: Education Reform Act (1988), p. 3.
3 Extract from newspa per report
WE WARNED MI NISTER OVER COM PUTER BUNGLE,

SAYS CO UNCIL
Students facing cash crisis in loans fiasco
by Graeme Wilson and Sonia Purnell
Almost half a million students are facing financial crisis this
autumn because ministers have bungled the introduction of new
computer software for paying out student loans.
The problem stems from Labour’s decision to sweep away the old
system of student grants—leaving undergraduates entirely dependent
on student loans or their parents to meet living expenses. However,
long delays in supplying local councils with the computer software
they need to assess how much students will receive led to predictions
last night of a Passport Agency-style fiasco.
Furious local government leaders revealed that they warned
Education Minister Baroness Blackstone in March about the
impending crisis. They repeated their fears in letters to her over the
past four months and called yesterday for emergency payments for
students if the system does collapse.
Student leaders also hit out at the Government after they were
assured by Whitehall officials only weeks ago that there was nothing
to worry about.
The scale of the crisis emerged at a recent conference in London
attended by education officials from more than 100 local councils.

…
The student loans chaos follows the fiasco at the Passport Agency,
when over half a million people faced the prospect of ruined holidays
after computer problems. It was made worse by a new requirement
that children under 16 not already on one of their parents’ passports
should have their own document.
Extra staff had to be drafted in as huge queues built up outside
passport offices and the Home Secretary Jack Straw was forced to
make an abject apology.
Source: Daily Mail Monday 26 July, 1999, p. 6.
4 An extract from a media broadcast

The following exchange took place in a television studio.
Presenter: GCSE pupils have been celebrating record passes today.

So, are the exams getting easier? Eamon O’Kane is the Deputy
General Secretary of the teaching union, NASUWT, and he is in our
Westminster studio. Eamon O’Kane, a record number of A grades.
Have GCSEs become too easy?
O’K ane: No, I don’t think so. The passes this year are a tribute to the
pupils and their teachers. I do regret that every year they are subjected
to what appears to be a constant stream of denigration of the efforts
these youngsters have put into these examinations. I think that the
problem is that the people who talk about a deterioration in standards
at GCSE are comparing them with the former ‘O’ levels and this is
not comparing like with like. ‘O’ levels were intended for no more
than twenty or twenty-five per cent of the population when they
operated. GCSE is intended to cover a broader range of ability of
youngsters who attend secondary school. Of course, because of the
government’s insistence on league tables and the way they identify a
standard of As to Cs, and that is becoming very much the way
secondary schools are being judged, and the increasing emphasis on
that. Ironically, and I say ironically because GCSEs were intended to
cover the whole range, now there is a continuing emphasis on those
who are likely to get A to C passes.
Presenter: I am sorry to interrupt because you have raised all sorts of
interesting points there. Picking up on this point about GCSEs and
‘O’ levels, the argument is that GCSEs are much easier because of the
increased reliance on coursework.
O’K ane: I don’t think that this is true. If you look at some of the
papers.
…
Source: BBC 24 Hour News, 26.8.1999, 5.17–5.19 p.m.
In relation to these five extracts readers need to ask themselves a number of questions:
1 What is the purpose of the research extract and in what ways is it constructed to
achieve its ends? (Extract 1)
2 What are the purposes of the two policy extracts and in what way are they
constructed to achieve their ends? (Extracts 2A and 2B)
3 Are there significant differences between the two policy extracts? (Extracts 2A and
2B)
4 What is the purpose of the newspaper report and how does it attempt to persuade its
readership of the truthfulness of the events it is reporting? (Extract 3)
5 What is the interviewer attempting to do and what is the interviewee attempting to
do? (Extract 4)
6 In the broadcasting media extract how and in what way would you characterise the
exchanges which took place? (Extract 4)
7 What are the overt and covert messages conveyed by each type of text? (Extracts 1,
2A, 2B, 3 and 4)
8 What are the conventional ways each text could be read? (Extracts 1, 2A, 2B, 3 and
4)
9 What are the alternative ways each text could be read? (Extracts 1, 2A, 2B, 3 and 4)
SUMMARY
• This chapter has introduced the idea of educational literacy.
• Reading educational texts in a critical way allows the reader to
reposition themselves in relation to arguments, policy
prescriptions and directives in ways which are not intended by
the writers of these texts. The educationally literate teacher
therefore understands educational texts, whether they are policy
documents, Press reports or research reports, as constructed and
ideologically embedded artifacts.
• Five ways of understanding the theory-practice relationship have
been identified. The technical-rationality model seeks to
position teachers as technicians whose role is to implement
policy which has been decided upon at the policy level.
Educational literacy challenges the implicit assumptions
underpinning this view of practice.
• Different types of educational text are structured by different

types of rules about how they can be read. These different types
of rules refer to the following dimensions: time, audience,
purpose, ideological framework, place, media, intertextuality,
history, knowledge/ representation and resources.
A GUIDE TO FURTHER RE ADING
Brookfield, S. (1987) Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore

Alternat ive Ways of Thinking and Acting. New York: Teachers College Press. The author
of this book, as the title suggests, argues for critical thinking as a way of life. He suggests
that:
When we think critically, we come to our judgements, choices and decisions for
ourselves, instead of letting others do this on our behalf. We refuse to relinquish
the responsibility for making the choices that determine our individual and
collective futures to those who presume to know what is in our best interests.
We become actively engaged in creating our personal and social worlds. In
short, we take the reality of democracy seriously.
(Brookfield 1987, p. x)
2
Reading Policy Texts
This chapter identifies a number of alterna tive ways of rea ding policy
texts. Policy texts are characterise d as official texts which operate to
influence public perception of a policy agenda. They thus seek to
change the specific setting of pract ical act ion and in the process
change the way policy is received by practitioner s. Principally, they do
this by using various semantic, grammatical and positional devices to
suggest to the reader that they are authoritative. These devices include
the ascrip tion of their evidential base as inco ntrovertible, the
concealment of their ideological framework and the attempt to
convince the reader that the policy text which they are reading is not
merely polemic, opinion or political rhetoric, but the careful sifting of
evidence which compels the writer to develop one set of policy
prescri ptions over others.
This chapter focuses on the reading of policy texts and this is as important now as it has
ever been because of the amount and variety of policy texts being produced. However, it
is not just the quantity that should concern us but also the way policy texts are being
written so as to marginalise debate about educational issues. These policy texts may
include acts of parliament, government orders which are generated from them, reports by
influential quasi-governmental bodies such as The Office for Standards in Education
(OFSTED), and, lower down the policy chain, reports and directives from Local
Education Authorities or other bodies with responsibilities for schools, colleges or
universities. Policy texts are written in different ways and therefore can be understood in
terms of a number of continual
• Prescriptive/non-prescr iptive. The reader of a prescriptive policy text is allowed
little freedom to interpret it from their own perspective; a non-prescriptive policy
text, on the other hand, is constructed so that the reader is allowed a great deal of
latitude as to how they interpret its message(s). If the text is prescriptive, the reader
is directly enjoined to behave or think in certain ways (this may be reinforced by
sanctions or rewards which are given expression in the text itself); if the text is non-
prescriptive, the reader is not asked to behave or think in a certain way but is
offered a number of possibilities which they can then choose from.
• Wide focus/narrow focus. A text with a wide focus refers to educational issues such
as the aims and purposes of education; a text with a narrow focus refers to micro-
political issues usually at the classroom level, such as the most appropriate way to
teach reading. The focus of a policy text may signify more than simply what it
refers to; it may also indicate to the reader that they are expected to concentrate on
technical issues and that they should ignore the wider implications which have
already been decided upon. The decision to adopt a wide or narrow focus in the text
therefore may have a hidden ideological purpose, which is to position
readers/practitioners as technicians concerned with implementation of, and not with
deliberation about, educational ends.
• Open/concealed. An educational policy text is always underpinned by an
ideological framework; that is, the text itself, explicitly or implicitly, offers a
viewpoint about the nature of knowledge, forms of child development, teaching and
learning, and organisational issues which relate to these. In the first case these
messages are open to the reader—that is, open both in terms of content and form; in
the second case, they are concealed within the text itself. Concealing the ideological
agenda of a policy text may be unintentional, since the writer may not be aware of
the ideological underpinnings of their chosen policy prescriptions. However,
readers of policy texts need to be aware of the need to read between the lines and
understand that reading as framed by assumptions held by the writer(s) of the text.
Ultimately texts are located within ontological and epistemological frameworks;
that is, understandings about the nature of the world and how it can be known.
• Authoritative/non-authoritative. An authoritative document is constructed so that it
gives the impression that the author is representing the truth of the matter. This is
achieved through the use of specific syntactical, grammatical and diagrammatical
devices which empower the author and disempower the reader. A non-authoritative
text eschews such devices, though even then it is not possible for any text to give up
all attempts at being authoritative. A text always has a directive quality about it; but
some texts are more directive than others.
• Generic/directed. A generic text focuses on the concerns of a wide range of
educational actors; a directed text focuses on the concerns of one group of actors or
one part or level of the educational system. However, a policy text, as we will see in
the case of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools’ Annual Report, is intended to
influence the work of practitioners (downwards effect) as well as that of policy-
makers (upwards effect).
• Single-authored/multiple-authored. It is possible to understand the policy text both
as created by policy-makers who operate externally to the sites of implementation
to which the policy text is directed and as created by practitioners in the course of
their everyday working lives. In the latter case, if the policy text is understood as
continually being rewritten at every site, principally the site of implementation, then
any policy text has to be understood as multi-authored. Even if we restrict our
understanding of the text to the official document, this is rarely single-authored, but
produced by a number of policy-makers and administrators working together and
compromising their original intentions in order to construct a text which is
acceptable to a variety of interested parties.
• Visual or diagra mmatical/written text. Policy texts are constructed along this
Reading Policy Texts 19
continuum and the balance between words and visual representations chosen by the
author(s) constitutes one of the principal devices by which texts seek to
communicate with readers and persuade them to accept their messages. Policy texts
are written with a particular audience in mind and a particular understanding of how
that audience may be convinced by the truth of the text. Since policy-makers
frequently misinterpret the nature of their audience and furthermore may not be
able to construct a coherent and consistent message and approach, the policy text
may not be successful in achieving its purposes.
• Referenced to other texts/free of references to other texts. Citation may be made to
other research texts or even to practitioner accounts of practice. In addition, it is
important to consider the form the citation takes, as each has different effects.
Furthermore, a text may refer to a number of other policy texts and it is therefore
important to consider the idea and purpose of intertextuality, that is, how texts
relate to each other. Policy texts may imply knowledge of other policy texts,
educational activities or discourses or the assumption is made that the reader has
little awareness of these matters. Policy texts are written for particular audiences,
and are distinguished by the devices they use to allow specific types of readers to
gain access to their meanings. Writers of texts which eschew citation are also
suggesting that the truth of the matter resides wholly within the document itself.
• Coherent/fragmented. As we will see the policy text is never complete but always
in a state of flux and indeed may be multi-authored. It therefore may be an
accommodation to a number of authors with different perspectives and different
policy prescriptions. As a consequence, the text is fragmented or coherent. If it is
coherent, then the messages conveyed by the text are in tune with, and do not
contradict, each other; if they are fragmented, then the reader is compelled to make
choices between them. Indeed, most policy texts contain contradictions,
inconsistencies and unfinished arguments. As we will see, this contributes to the
fragmentation of the policy process.
A policy text may be: prescriptive or non-prescriptive,

ideologically explicit or opaque, generic or directed, single-authored
or multiple-authored, diagrammatic or written, referenced to other
texts or free of such references, coherent or fragmented, and have a
wide or narrow focus.
In order to critically read a policy text, the reader or practitioner needs to understand their
reading as constructed by these various devices. They also need to locate their reading
within the policy process itself and it is to this that we now turn.
MODELLING THE POLICY PROCESS

Model A—Centrally controlle d

The policy process may be understood as centrally-controlled. Policy-makers given a
democratic mandate construct a set of policy recommendations which are then put out for
consultation. After they have considered the points made by respondents, they write
orders which are binding on practitioners. Practitioners carry out these orders and
implement the policy prescriptions of those who have been elected to office. The process
is one-way, directive and, depending on the intentions and motivations of the policy-
makers, designed to support a particular set of values, i.e. a Marxist would argue that they
are designed to further the interests of capital.
Model B— Plura list

The centrally-controlled model of the policy process can be compared with one which
emphasises the way a variety of interests are taken into consideration at every stage of the
policy process; those stages being policy-making, policy-presentation, and policy-
implementation. Policy itself is represented as a continuous process of the making and
remaking of the original intentions of the policy-maker. The process is multifaceted and
pluralist; indeed, the policy text cannot be said to be authored as such because it is the
combined work of a large number of people operating at different levels of the system
and at different sites. However, it has democratic legitimacy as a variety of interested
parties are involved in its construction. These interests are identified, and their
representations are considered and incorporated into the policy itself. Those interest
groups in the United Kingdom context may be practitioners, politicians, representatives
from the Local Education Authority, parents, members of pressure groups, indeed anyone
with an interest in educational activities. The relay between policy-making and policy-
implementation is understood as unilinear, though this model comprises a more
sophisticated understanding of the way policy is constructed.
A number of problems with this model have been identified. The first of these is that
the model separates out policy-making from policy-implementation. The thrust of this
argument is that policies are made and then implemented and these two processes are
understood as distinct but sequentially related activities. The second objection to this
model is that it fails to identify the unequal way different interests are identified and
represented in the initial stages of policy-making. For example, it fails to recognise the
power of the central authority to impose its will, not by acting to exclude representations
from the various competing parties which have an interest in the activities being
considered, but by manipulating the process so that only those interests which the central
authority considers to be closely aligned with their own preferred way of understanding
are allowed to influence the process of policy-making. This can be achieved relatively
easily. For example, the central authority can control appointments to the various
advisory bodies which are set up to feed into the policy-making process the views of a
diverse range of interested parties and this control mechanism is used to eliminate and
marginalise some views, and prioritise others. Furthermore, the central authority can
control the agenda for discussion, thus excluding some views and promoting others.
Thirdly, this view of policy suggests that policy-makers always have a clear idea of what
they want and how it can be achieved. It therefore ignores the serendipitous and muddled
nature of the policy process.
Model C—Fragmented and multidirected

If we are to develop a model of how policy works, we therefore need to take account of
the following three factors. Any useful model needs to attend to the type of flow or relay
between the various constituent parts of the process, needs to understand how powerful
people can manipulate the process itself, and needs to attend to the unforeseen
consequences of decisions made by policy-makers because they do not understand or do
not have the foresight to imagine what will happen to their policy prescriptions during
implementation. The evidence, for example, from the introduction of the Technical and
Vocational Educational Initiative (TVEI) would support this. The United Kingdom
government in the 1980s devised a technological initiative which they believed would be
taught and delivered in a certain way, but all too quickly lost control of it, when teachers
chose to implement it in ways never intended by the original policy-makers. Saunders
(1985) suggests that schools broadly responded in three ways:
1 Adaptive extension. This comprised an enthusiastic interpretation of the policy and
was used to change their whole curriculum, even going further than the original
intentions of the policy-makers.
2 Accommodation. The initiative was adapted to fit the existing curriculum structure
and was therefore implemented but never had a decisive or radical impact.
3 Containment. The initiative was absorbed into the existing teaching and learning
routines of the school and was therefore to some extent marginalised.
Subsequent United Kingdom government initiatives such as the introduction of a
National Curriculum and the extension of the National Assessment System were likewise
implemented in different ways by the schools. However, governments have responded to
these blocking devices in a number of ways:
• Writing policy documents so that they are more prescriptive and less open to
interpretation; in other words, they sought to close off opportunities for
practitioners to resist government policy.
• Reallocating control within the system so that educational bodies such as Local
Education Authorities are stripped of some of their powers and other bodies such as
the DfEE are given greater authority and power.
• Creating new regulatory bodies such as The Office for Standards in Education
(OFSTED) which has the power and resources both to inspect schools and to
compel schools to change their practice if it does not conform to what is expected
by government.
• Changing the financial settlement for education so that the overall amount of
resources is increased or decreased and at the same time reallocating the control of
these funds to different players and organisations within the system.

Despite these powers, the policy process should never be characterised as top-down.
Indeed, we should understand the policy process as fragmented, nonlinear, contested and
as a place where original intentions are rarely fulfilled in practice. We can understand
these various models diagrammatically (see Figure 2.1, over the page).
The arrows in Model C do not operate in a linear way but indicate feedback into the
policy-making process. Policy is always in a state of flux as policy texts are continually
being interpreted at every point in the relay. Furthermore, powerful actors at the various
sites of influence respond to what they would consider to be the unintended consequences
of the implementation of their policies and in the process rewrite or reconfigure both
those policies and the means of their implementation. This they never fully achieve
because the policy setting is always so complex that policy-makers, however hard they
try, are never in a position to control events. In addition, they frequently operate with
both misunderstandings of the policy process and faulty information about the effects of
their policies. This is because the political process demands that they justify their actions
to various scrutinising
Figure 2.1 Three models of policy-making
bodies and the means for doing this are rarely in their control. As a result, they
commission evaluations which tell them what they want to hear or they marginalise
evaluations of their policies which conflict with their prior view of what they are trying to
achieve. Paul Black, who acted as the chairperson of the TGAT (Task Group on
Assessment Testing) group in 1988 suggested four years later that government always
sought to control the flow of information about the effects of policy implementation:
The changes might be defended if they were to be accompanied by thorough

and independent evaluation so that the programmes could be monitored and
lessons learnt from the only experience that matters, that of pupils in
classrooms. My own experience in the National Curriculum Council was that
comprehensive programmes for monitoring were cut back by Ministers, who
have retained to themselves direct control over any research or evaluation
activities of that Council. All that were allowed were programmes with modest
budgets aimed to explore tightly defined questions. In consequence, evidence
that the reforms as a whole might contain serious flaws cannot be forthcoming.
(Black 1993, p. 423)
Each of the policy sites has its own set of rules about how truth is constructed. Actors at
each of these sites may or may not be aware of this and indeed in following those rules
change and amend them in various ways. Furthermore, those different sets of rules at the
various sites are frequently in conflict, so for example, the rules which underpin media
reporting of educational issues are at odds with the way teachers understand their set of
rules at the site of implementation, i.e. schools. This of course contributes to the
fragmentation which is a part of the policy process. However, we should not
underestimate the way that the different policy actors are more powerful or less powerful
in relation to each other, and that more powerful actors can exert pressure in various ways
on those that are less powerful. One way of doing this is to position the reader of
influential policy texts within a binary divide of normality/abnormality as to how they
think and act.
There are broadly three theories about how policy works. These
are: a centrally controlled model, a pluralist model and a fragmented
multi-directional model. The first two have been shown to be flawed
and the last, it is argued, incorporates more of the features of how
policy works in the educational arena.
THE CONSTRUC TION OF A COMMON SENSE DISCOURSE
It is useful at this point to distinguish between three types of constraints on the reader of
policy texts. Fairclough (1989) suggests that these constraints comprise:
• contents—the claim made about what has happened and what this implies for what
will happen;
• relations—the way social relations are inscribed in the policy text itself and the way
the reader is encouraged to understand these as ‘normal’;
• subjects—the positions that various players in the policy game are allowed to
occupy.
We also perhaps need to say something at this stage about the construction of a
commonsense discourse which has the effect of normalising these contents, relations and
subject positionings.
For example, Foucault’s work on examinations in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of
the Prison (Foucault 1979) is intended to surface the commonsense discourse which
surrounds examinations by showing how they could be understood in a different way.
Previously, the examination was thought of as a progressive mechanism for combating
nepotism, favouritism and arbitrariness, and for contributing to the more efficient
workings of society. The examination was considered to be a reliable and valid way for
choosing the appropriate members of a population for the most important roles in society.
As part of the procedure a whole apparatus or technology was constructed which was
intended to legitimise it. This psychometric framework, though continually in a state of
flux, has served as a means of support for significant educational programmes in the
twentieth century, i.e. the establishment of the tripartite system in the United Kingdom
after the Second World War, and continues to underpin educational reforms since 1979.
Though purporting to be a scientific discourse, the theory itself is buttressed by a number
of unexamined principles. These are: a particular view of competence; a notion of
hierarchy; a way of understanding human nature and a correspondence idea of truth.
Furthermore, the idea of the examination is firmly located within a discourse of
progression: society is progressively becoming a better place because scientific
understanding gives us a more accurate picture of how the world works.
On the other hand, for Foucault (1979, p. 184) the examination: ‘combines the
techniques of an observing hierarchy and those of a normalising judgement. It is a
normalising gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify and to
punish. It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differentiates them
and judges them.’ The examination therefore does not just describe what is, but allows
society to construct individuals in certain ways and in the process organise itself.
Knowledge of persons is thus created in particular ways which has the effect of binding
individuals to each other, embedding those individuals in networks of power and
sustaining mechanisms of surveillance which are all the more powerful because they
work by allowing individuals to police themselves. The examination, according to
Foucault, introduced a whole new mechanism which both contributed to a new type of
knowledge formation and constructed a new network of power, all the more persuasive
once it had become established throughout society.
This mechanism worked in three ways:
i) by transforming ‘the economy of visibility into the exercise of power’ (ibid., p.
187);
ii) by introducing ‘individuality into the field of documentation’ (ibid., p. 189); and
iii) by making ‘each individual a “case”’ (ibid., p. 191).
In the first instance, disciplinary power is exercised invisibly and this contrasts with the
way power networks in the past operated visibly, through perhaps the naked exercise of
force. This invisibility works by imposing on subjects a notion of objectivity which acts
to bind examined persons to a truth about that examination, a truth which is hard to resist.
The examined person understands him or herself in terms of criteria which underpin that
process, not least that they are successful or unsuccessful. The examination therefore
works by ‘arranging objects’ (ibid., p. 187) or people in society. In the second instance,
the examination allows the individual to be archived by being inscribed in a variety of
documents which fixes and captures them. Furthermore, it is possible to understand this
process even when the rhetoric of what is being implemented is progressive and benign.
Over the last fifteen years in United Kingdom schools, the proliferation and extension of
assessment through such devices as key stage tests, records of achievement, examined
course work, education certificates, and school reports and evaluation through such
devices as school inspection, teacher appraisal, profiles and the like means that teachers
and students are increasingly subject to disciplinary regimes of individual measurement
and assessment which has the further effect of fixing them as cases. The third of
Foucault’s modalities then is when the individual becomes an object for a branch of
knowledge:
The case is no longer, as in casuistry or jurisprudence, a set of circumstances,

defining an act and capable of modifying the application of a rule; it is the
individual as he (sic) may be described, judged, measured, compared with
others, in his very individuality; and it is also the individual who has to be
trained or corrected, classified, normalized, excluded, etc.
(ibid., p. 191)
One final point needs to be made about the examination, as Foucault understands it, and
this is that for the first time the individual can be scientifically and objectively
categorised and characterised through a modality of power where difference becomes the
most relevant factor.
Hierarchical normalisation becomes the dominant way of organising society. Foucault
is suggesting here that the examination itself, a seemingly neutral device, acts to position
the person being examined in a discourse of normality, so that for them to understand
themselves in any other way is to understand themselves as abnormal and even as
unnatural. This positioning works to close off the possibility for the examinee of seeing
themselves in any other way. Policy texts work in the same way. The reader is not just
presented with an argument and then asked to make up their mind about its merits or
demerits, but positioned within a discourse—a way of understanding relations within the
world—which, if it is successful, restricts and constrains the reader from understanding
the world in any other way. This discourse is characterised as common sense, whereas in
fact it is merely one way of viewing the world and is therefore ideological.
Policy texts seek to persuade their readership of the truthfulness

and credibility of the arguments which they are deploying. The
principal way they do this is by suggesting that there is only one way
of representing the world and this way resonates with commonsense
views of representation. The ideological element is thus suppressed.
An example of a policy text which seeks to position the reader in this way is the Annual
Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools produced in 1998 but referring back
to 1997.
Case 1: Th e Annual Report of th e Chief I nspect or

This is an expensively-produced policy document which is sent to every maintained
school in England. It is the Chief Inspector’s personal evaluation of the state of education
and is produced annually. What is important here is to understand how a document such
as this acts to construct a particular truth about education and how official texts such as
these play a part in the way the policy process works. This document works at the
discursive level by persuading its readership that it offers a truthful, indeed the truthful,
version of events. Its primary purpose is to reassert OFSTED’s mission statement. This is
that the new policy on inspection, despite its imperfections, will necessarily lead to
improvements in the quality of education in the various institutions which come under the
Chief Inspector’s remit. It does this in a number of ways.
• First, it excludes arguments, data and research which contradict the thesis being
argued for. It is not just that there are few references made to these, there is no
attempt to discuss the various other options and other ways of understanding
educational activities.
• Second, it seeks to ridicule opponents’ arguments by personal innuendo and by
deploying a number of devices which have the effect of marginalising their
contribution. Opponents are characterised as: old-fashioned or out-of-date,
immoral, or out of touch with well informed opinion.
• Third, it seeks to give its pronouncements authority by: making frequent references
to definitive and unequivocally correct research findings; concealing its ideological
base and its purpose as part of the policy cycle; making supportive references to
government policies; constructing an aura of importance around its presentation;
using syntactical and grammatical devices which allow the reader little opportunity
to interpret its messages in ways that are not intended.
However, a number of caveats need to be made. First, though this document attempts to
influence the policy agenda both upwards (to policy-makers) and downwards (to
practitioners), it is only one part of the mosaic which makes up the ideological apparatus
deployed by government to convince practitioners of the worthwhileness of its policies.
Though each head teacher of a maintained school in England receives a copy, and those
head teachers may allow their staff the opportunity to read the document, it is unlikely
that it will be read widely. The document itself of course is made available to
practitioners and policy-makers in other ways, principally through Press reports, and the
report itself is as much concerned to influence the way it is represented by such
recontextualising bodies as the Press as it is to influence its primary readership. The
second caveat is perhaps more important. Though the document uses devices which are
specifically aimed at closing off the way it can be read—in other words, it attempts to be
as ‘readerly’ (Barthes 1975) as possible—it is unlikely to succeed. As Cherryholmes
(1988, p. 12) argues, ‘prior understandings, experiences, codes, beliefs and knowledge
brought to a text necessarily condition and mediate what one makes of it’. The ‘one’
refers here to the reader and we should perhaps add that the contexts in which a document
such as this is read also exert a significant influence.
An official text such as this then has a history and is part of a complex web of power
relations which it seeks to influence and change. ‘The specific setting of practical
action’ (Maw 1998) in which this document is constructed and disseminated can only be
hinted at, and furthermore is only likely to be partially understood by the writers of the
document. The Chief HMI Annual Report has a history, refers to other documents and
other educational discourses and policy moves, and ultimately can only be understood in
its entirety by reference to its intertextuality. However, there is some evidence that the
particular style of this report and previous reports by the same Chief Inspector have
departed radically from the style of his predecessors’ reports, not least in the bold
assertiveness of its pronouncements and in its clear referencing to a set of policy
prescriptions. Official texts of all types then subscribe to what Maw (1998, p. 146) has
characterised as ‘a particular style of official writing’ which presents itself as ‘impartial,
authoritative assertion, in which facts and judgements-presented-as-facts are asserted
without support or qualification, as though incontrovertible. The impression conveyed is
that the writer is a neutral arbiter, above the fray which he reports, rather than part of it.’
Though this particular Chief Inspector’s Annual Report is more overtly partisan than its
predecessors, it still makes use of a number of devices which give the impression of
neutrality.
We now need to examine in some detail the document itself This is a glossy, well-
produced document which at the beginning sets out to present its credentials. The front
cover has a deep blue background with the OFSTED logo at the top and two significant
headings. The first is a reminder to the reader that this report has the imprimatur of
authority—the Chief Inspector is not just an ordinary civil servant, but Her Majesty’s
Chief Inspector of Schools. This refers back to the role itself and the way that role has
been constructed in the past (with reference to the authority of the monarchy), though it
may be argued that such conferment in the 1990s has less significance than it used to.
The second important heading is the title of the report: ‘Standards and Quality in
Education’ which sets out the thrust of the report’s message and function. Page 3
comprises a letter from The Chief Inspector to The Secretary of State at the Department
for Education and Employment which is designed to give the report an authority
conferred on it by government, since no new information is conveyed by the letter’s
inclusion. The preface on page 6 includes an official picture of the Chief Inspector and a
brief discussion of the evidence-base of the report itself:
This report draws on three sources of evidence:
• Section 10 inspections carried out by registered inspectors;
• inspections carried out by Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools (HMI);
• research reviews commissioned by OFSTED (OFSTED, 1998, p. 8).
The first line is in blue and the three types of evidence are emboldened. It is perhaps
important here to point to the way that the chief HMI distinguishes between inspection
evidence and research evidence, though there is no proper discussion of the differences
between the two, or even of what the Chief HMI considers to be proper evidence or
research. The words ‘research’ and indeed ‘inspection evidence’ are used here to give an
authority to the conclusions drawn in the report itself. Let us imagine that the Chief
Inspector had simply described his report as a set of opinions, albeit opinions based on
the experiences of a group of inspectors, or even as a political tract, then the whole effect
of the report and the way it could be subsequently read would be different. Indeed, the
extensive use of statistics in Annex 1 and his assertion on page 7 that ‘The statistics this
year speak for themselves’ (the use of ‘this year’ in this sentence is not meant to convey
the impression that statistics in previous years did not speak for themselves, but is used as
a pointing or referring device—it indicates that it is the set of statistics in this report
which are being commented on) shows a desire to close off any possible debate about the
reliability and validity of different types of research evidence. The statistics, he is telling
us, can only be read in one way and point unequivocally to a certain type of truth. We
should of course not be surprised by this.
The preface is followed by a number of important lists, which name particular types of
schools:
• Improving secondary schools—defined as a selection from those schools which
‘have improved the quality of education and the standards achieved by pupils
since’ (ibid., 1998, p. 9) they were previously inspected.
• Secondary schools which are outstanding—defined as having received outstanding
inspection reports and as having achieved excellent GCSE results in absolute terms
or as having achieved good GCSE results in the context of difficult socio-economic
circumstances.
• Successful primary, middle and nursery schools—defined as having achieved high
standards in numeracy and literacy.
• Highly effective special schools—defined using the same criteria as the above
category.
• Schools that have been removed from special measures —defined as those schools
which have shown a substantial improvement.
The message conveyed by these lists is an upbeat one and as we will see later is designed
as the essential context for the skilful deployment of an argument which runs through the
whole report. This argument is that a successful mechanism has been deployed by
government, and the report is designed to give credence to the causal relationship the
report seeks to establish between inspection and raising school standards. The important
point to note, and again we should not be surprised at this, is that no attempt is made to
argue for this point of view; the thesis is simply made both by simple assertion and by the
inclusion of a certain type of evidence which is treated as unproblematic.
What follows is a commentary section by the Chief Inspector and it is this which is
likely to be read most closely by practitioners, the media and other policy-makers. We
have already suggested that the report is both an account of what has been happening in
the school and college sector in England over the last year and an attempt to justify the
methods and approaches adopted by HMI since the Chief Inspector took office. The best
way of doing this is to assert that the policy, despite the difficulties of implementation
(this is acknowledged later), has been a success and that this success resonates with
common sense and acceptable political and educational agendas. To think otherwise or
even to have doubts about the reliability and validity of the conclusions that the Chief
Inspector comes to is to place oneself outside these agendas. What should also be noted is
the way the past is constructed: as a time of crisis in education with poor standards and a
poor quality of education: ‘The first is that the performance of teachers and pupils stands
in sharp contrast to that of four years ago. Teachers are now teaching better and pupils as
a consequence are learning more.’ (ibid., p. 16). Furthermore, deliberately exaggerated
language is used to characterise the past: ‘Standards had spiralled downwards’ (ibid., p.
18). By exaggerating the depth and scale of the problem, it is possible to give the
impression that what is now being achieved by the education service is a result of the
successful implementation of the policy of inspection. Again, the point of doing this is
clear: the inspection mechanism referred to above must be understood as incontrovertible
and unproblematic and furthermore as the only possible way of achieving the political
objectives of the government. However, the Chief Inspector is also concerned to provide
a salutary warning that the project which he is engaged on is not yet complete: there is
still a ‘gap in achievement between schools serving similar communities’ (ibid., p. 17).
There is a delicate balance to be maintained between praise for the achievements of the
policy and the exhortation that the education service could do even better. What is being
deployed here is rhetoric and polemic under the guise of careful argument and empirical
research. Again we should not be surprised at this. An official document such as this is
part of the political machinery which has the twin purposes of driving particular agendas
forward and of reconstituting the policy process itself so that those ideological messages
are more effectively received.
As we have suggested above, official discourse represents ‘a technology of ideological
closure’ (Burton and Carlen 1979, p. 13). Another way this can be achieved is to
represent the agenda as the only possible one that sensible and rational people could
pursue. Those who oppose it are characterised as:
• making excuses for their past performan ce and not being open and honest about
mistakes they made in the past: ‘The rich do not have a monopoly on intelligence
and poverty can never be an excuse for school failure’ (OFSTED 1998, p. 21)—this
refers to the argument that has frequently been made against comparing schools
with each other, which is that it is unfair because socio-economic differences in
pupil intakes have an influence on pupil achievement. It is also perhaps important
to note here how those who hold different views to the Chief Inspector are
characterised as having a personal agenda which they are trying to protect.
• marginal to the real debate about educational standards. This includes typical
bêtes noires of the Chief Inspector, such as educational researchers. For instance, in
his report he closes off the debate by suggesting that: ‘It is not therefore research
into the nature of teaching and school leadership that is needed, so much as new
thinking about how we can use our current knowledge better’ (ibid., p. 22). As we
noted above, the thrust of the messages that are included in this report is directed
not just at practitioners but also at policy-makers, so that here we have a call for
funds to be diverted to practitioners and away from educational researchers. What
should also be noted is the way an unsupported assertion about the current state of
educational knowledge is used to suggest that changes should be made to the
various policy arrangements now in existence, the effect of which would be to

marginalise those with an interest in education who do not share the ideological and
political agenda of the Chief Inspector.
• old-fashioned and out of date. What is essentially a clash of values about the aims
and purposes of education is transformed into a dispute between those who hold up-
to-date and progressive agendas about education and those who are locked into the
past and who cannot free themselves from these discourses. For example, in the
Chief Inspector’s report, we find the folio wing: ‘The overwhelming majority of
teachers involved with the Literacy and Numeracy projects have welcomed the way
in which the Frameworks for Literacy and Numeracy have brought together up-to-
date knowledge of what needs to be taught and the best methods for teaching
it’ (ibid., p. 24). Again, at the end of the commentary section, the Chief Inspector,
employing the device of underplaying his true thoughts and feelings, argues that:
‘Most of the profession accept that the beliefs about education and teaching which
have dominated practice for the last forty years must be, at least, questioned.’ (ibid.,
p. 25). The purpose is clear: to characterise those who do not share the Chief
Inspector’s opinions as not fitted to take part in the argument, not, it should be
noted, because of the quality of ideas they hold, but because their ideas are old-
fashioned. The agenda being supported in this report promotes a particular set of
ideas, which as it happens are contested, and it is clear from the way the report is
constructed that alternative views are not to be argued for or against, but
marginalised by referring to them as anachronistic.
Given the remarks above, we need to examine the evidential basis of the claims made in
the report. In Annex 2 of the report we find a brief explanation of the evidence used by
the Chief Inspector. The sources of this evidence were:
• judgements on individual lessons—graded on a seven-point scale;
• judgements on features of the school such as the progress made by pupils—also
graded on a seven-point scale;
• written evidence supporting these judgements;
• published reports;
• information on the schools provided by the head teacher (ibid., p. 82).
The first of these refers to judgements about the quality of teaching. Each lesson or
partial lesson attended by an inspector is graded on a seven-point scale. Readers of this
report therefore need to ask themselves questions about the validity and reliability of the
judgements made. Though inspectors work to a set of criteria, it is doubtful if their
interpretations of those criteria correspond to each other. Inspectors are much more likely
to make these judgements in terms of their own experience of what a good lesson should
look like. Only rarely is a check made on the reliability of the grade awarded for a lesson
by double marking with another inspector. No attempt is made to understand the way the
presence of the inspector may have affected the quality of teaching being evaluated.
Indeed, no account is taken of the way a school prepares for an inspection, including
teachers spending more time than they normally would on the preparation of their
lessons, or teachers framing their lesson plans to fit better the criteria as they understand
them of what the inspectorate consider to be a good lesson, or teachers in a school
preparing lessons which minimise the possibility of mistakes being made, or even
students being primed by the school to behave in acceptable ways to the inspectorate.
There is also some evidence to the effect that difficult and disruptive students are
withdrawn from lessons or even withdrawn temporarily from the school for the duration
of the inspectors’ visit. In other words, inspectors are likely to be seeing the school as it is
presented to them, and not as it normally operates.
What therefore is the status of the evidence they have collected? The inspectors may be
able to see through this presentation to the real state of teaching and learning within the
school; but what this implies is that the evidence which they have gathered is not direct
evidence but evidence inferred from an artifact. However, this is defended by the
assertion that since schools have had time to prepare for the inspectors’ visit, what is
being judged is better than normal and thus the school is advantaged. Two points need to
be made here. The first is that they are necessarily adjusting their grades in relation to a
judgement they make about the degree to which the practice they actually observe
corresponds to what goes on in the school when they are not there. And each inspector
will make a different judgement about this based on their experience of schools and what
they think they are like. In other words, the judgements that they make are likely to be
subjective and unreliable. Good qualitative judgements based on observational evidence
build a picture of life in schools and classrooms. However, since these judgements have
to be quantified, then contextual factors which relate to the act of observation itself have
to be ignored and issues of reliability and validity glossed over. Secondly, we are told in
the report that the seven-point scale represents a continuum from very good teaching to
poor teaching and that this judgement is made in relation to a lesson or part of a lesson.
This points to the difficulties of determining the boundaries between grades. Again these
problems of reliability are screened out at the analysis stage, so that each grade given is
deemed accurately to represent the quality of teaching within the classroom. The same
points that are being made here apply to the second form of evidence collected which is a
measure of progress for the pupils within the school being inspected. No mention of these
difficulties is made in the report itself.
Indeed, the reader is provided with evidence of the quantity of inspections made, but
little discussion of the quality of evidence produced from them in order to allow the Chief
Inspector to draw conclusions about the education service and how it performed last year.
It would not perhaps be perverse to suggest that lists which show the extent of activity act
to conceal from the reader the way those data were actually collected:
‘The Section 10 Inspections of primary, secondary and special schools were

carried out by registered inspectors. There were 7,284 such inspections: 6,218
of primary or nursery schools, 645 of secondary schools, 317 of special schools
and 104 of Pupil Referral Units’ (ibid., p. 75).
And again:
During the year HMI made over 3,300 visits to schools. These included more
than 1,400 inspection visits to schools with serious weaknesses or requiring
special measures and over 400 inspection visits to independent schools. They
also included investigations of, amongst other things, the teaching of the
National Literacy Project in primary schools, good practice in schools for pupils
with emotional and behavioural learning difficulties, and modular GCE A levels.
(ibid., p. 75)
Impressive as this is, the reader of this report is still confronted with the need to make a
proper judgement about the evidence-based claims of the report, and the brief discussion
of the methodology serves to conceal such information rather than act to produce an open
and potentially useful account.
The main part of the report is an account of the findings in the various sectors which
make up the system: primary schools, secondary schools, sixth forms in schools, special
schools, schools requiring special measures and schools with serious weaknesses, the
education of young people who have disengaged from mainstream education, youth work
and adult education, independent schools, teacher education and training, and local
education authority support for school improvement. These accounts are written in an
etiolated and banal style and are quantitative judgements made by inspectors about what
they observed. For example:
Attendance is generally good with over seven in ten schools achieving over 90
per cent. The average attendance is 91 per cent. Most schools work hard to
ensure regular attendance. Two thirds of schools have effective procedures for
monitoring and promoting good attendance, but in one in ten schools this is
unsatisfactory.
(ibid., p. 37)
Or, to take another example:
Section 10 inspections show that there has been a significant overall

improvement in sixth-form teaching over the last year. The proportion of lessons
judged very good or excellent has risen from 15 per cent to 22 per cent whilst
the proportion judged unsatisfactory has fallen from 5 per cent to 3 per cent. The
quality of teaching improves markedly from Year 11 to Year 12 and is better
again in Year 13.
(ibid., p. 47)
The language used here, and this is generally representative of the language used in the
body of the report, may be contrasted with the language used by the Chief Inspector in his
initial comments and analysis. In the first case, the language is general, non-specific, open
to interpretation, bland and unhelpful to the school if it wants to make improvements to
what it offers its students. In the second case, the language used is sharp, judgemental,
definitive, specific and framed in terms of the way other reconceptualising bodies such as
the Press will read the report. We should also not forget that the blandness of the
language used by the Inspectorate goes hand in hand with the potential powers they have
to force schools to change their practice, if their practice does not conform to what is
acceptable. Reports such as these are not intended to be research reports whose principal
audience is the research community itself. The Chief Inspector’s Report is designed as a
policy document which has the three-fold function of influencing the construction of
future policy texts produced by policy-makers, framing the way recontextualising bodies
such as the Press deliver their educational messages, and persuading practitioners and
implementors to think and act in ways which conform to the policy prescriptions
favoured by the Chief Inspector.
Policy texts use different devices to convince their readership that

they are authoritative. Case 1 is an example of an important policy
text which is intended to influence the policy debate both at the level
of policy-making and at the level of classroom interaction.
Case 2 provides an example of a different policy text, although its writers’ intentions are
similar to those of the Chief Inspector.
Case 2: The right res ponses: mana ging and mak ing policy for drug- r elated
incidents in schools
SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS
Section 1: Setting the scene

• Schools need clear, written policies on drug education and the
management of drug-related incidents;
• Informed identification of the causes of drug misuse helps in the
planning of interventions that are consistent and constructive;
• Drug education is more effective when delivered within a broad
PSHE programme that actively promotes healthy lifestyles;
• Drug information and support should begin early—in the
primary school—and involve parents/carers;
• All staff have a role in responding to drug-related incidents, and
relevant training is essential;
• Excluded pupils are more vulnerable to further drug misuse and
other illegal activity; therefore this sanction should be used only
as a last resort.
Section 2: Prevention and intervention

• Effective strategies can reduce drug misuse;
• Co-ordination between organisations helps to promote
consistency of approach;
• The most vulnerable groups should be identified for appropriate
early intervention;
• The risk factors of drug misuse are often interrelated and are
more significant in combination.
Section 3: Guid ance on manag ing drug -related incidents
• Management of drug-related incidents should normally be co-
ordinated through the school drugs co-ordinator named in the
drugs policy;
• It is the school’s responsibility to ensure the health, care and
well-being of young people in their charge;
• It is not appropriate for schools to take disciplinary action
harsher than that which would be imposed by law;
• Schools should carefully assess the needs of any young person
involved in a drug-related incident;
• It is useful for schools to develop a proactive relationship with
the local media;
• Schools should develop common responses to drug-related
incidents within their local area;
• Staff must call for medical help if they are in any doubt about
how to proceed.
Section 4: Developing a range of responses
• Schools need an agreed definition of what constitutes a drug-
related incident;
• Clear boundaries should be known to pupils and parents and
they should be acted on consistently;
• The aim of all interventions is to promote pupils’ understanding
and minimise harm;
• Over-reacting to incidents, and especially labelling pupils as
drug misusers, can actually lead to an escalation in drug misuse;
• Constructive strategies that help pupils re-invest in their own
education are preferable to exclusion;
• Counselling-based options need the active consent of pupils if
they are to be effective and should not be used as a sanction;
• The welfare of the pupil is paramount.
Section 5: Key criteria for developing an effective drugs policy
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
PLAN OF THE HIPPODROME.
FROM GROSVENOR’S “CONSTANTINOPLE.”
In the middle of the arena stood the spina, a marble wall, four feet
high and six hundred feet long, with the Goal of the Blues at the
northern end facing the throne, and that of the Greens facing the
sphendone. The spina was decorated with the choicest statuary,
including the three surviving monuments. Of these the Egyptian
obelisk, belonging to the reign of Thotmes III., had already stood for
more centuries in Egypt than have elapsed since Constantine
transported it to his new capital. When it arrived, the engineers could
not raise it into position and it remained prone until, in 381, one
Proclus, a præfect of the city, succeeded in erecting it upon copper
cubes. The shattered column belongs to a much later epoch than
that of Constantine. It was set up by Constantine VIII.
Porphyrogenitus, and once glittered in the sun, for it was covered
with plates of burnished brass. The third, and by far the most
interesting monument of the three, is the famous column of twisted
serpents from Delphi. Its romantic history never grows dull by
repetition. For this is that serpent column of Corinthian brass which
was dedicated to Apollo by the thankful and exultant Greeks after the
battle of Platæa, when the hosts of the Persian Xerxes were thrust
back from the soil of Greece never to return. It bears upon its coils
the names of the thirty-one Greek cities which fought for freedom,
and there is still to be seen, inscribed in slightly larger characters
than the rest, the name of the Tenians, who, as Herodotus tells us,
succeeded in proving to the satisfaction of their sister states that
they deserved inclusion in so honourable a memorial. The history of
this column from the fifth century before the Christian era down to
the present time is to be read in a long succession of Greek, Roman,
mediæval, and modern historians; and as late as the beginning of
the eighteenth century the three heads of the serpents were still in
their place. But even in its mutilated state there is perhaps no relic of
antiquity which can vie in interest with this column, associated as it
was in the day of its fashioning with Pausanias and Themistocles,
with Xerxes and with Mardonius. We have then to think of it standing
for seven centuries in the holiest place of all Hellas, the shrine of
Apollo at Delphi. There it was surmounted by a golden tripod, on
which sat the priestess who uttered the oracles which, in important
crises, prompted the policy and guided the development of the cities
of Greece. The column is hollow, and it is possible that the mephitic
exhalations, which are supposed to have stupefied the priestess
when she was possessed by the god, mounted up the interior of the
spiral. The golden tripod was stolen during the wars with Philip of
Macedon; Constantine replaced it by another when he brought the
column from Delphi to Constantinople. And there, surviving all the
vicissitudes through which the city has passed, still stands the
column, still fixed to the pedestal upon which Constantine mounted
it, many feet below the present level of the Atmeidan, still an object
of superstition to Christian as well as to the Turk, and owing, no
doubt, its marvellous preservation to the indefinable awe which
clings, even in ruin, to the sacred relics of a discredited religion.
THE SERPENT OF DELPHI.

FROM GROSVENOR’S “CONSTANTINOPLE.”
To the Hippodrome itself there were four principal entrances. The

gate of the Blues was close by the Carceres or Mangana, on the
western side, with the gate of the Greens facing it. At the other end,
just where the long straight line was broken and the building began
to curve into the sphendone, was a gate on the eastern side which
bore the ill-omened name of the Gate of the Dead, opposite another,
the name of which is not known. The gate of the Blues—the royal
faction—was the grand entrance for all state processions.
Such was the outward form of the famous Hippodrome, and Mr.
Grosvenor justly dwells on the imposing vastness and beauty of its
external appearance.
“The walls were of brick, laid in arches and faced by a row of

Corinthian pillars. What confronted the spectator’s eye was a wall in
superposed and continuous arches, seen through an endless
colonnade. Seventeen columns were still erect upon their bases in
1529. Gyllius, who saw them, says that their diameter was three and
eleven-twelfths feet. Each was twenty-eight feet high, and pedestal
and capital added seven feet more. They stood eleven feet apart.
Hence, deducting for the gates, towers, and palace, at least two
hundred and sixty columns would be required in the circuit. If one,
with the curiosity of a traveller, wished to journey round the entire
perimeter, he must continue on through a distance of three thousand
and fifteen feet, before his pilgrimage ended at the spot where it had
begun; and ever, as he toiled along, there loomed into the air that
prodigious mass, forty feet above his head. No wonder that there
remained, even in the time of the Sultan Souleiman, enough to
construct that most superb of mosques, the Souleimanieh, from the
fallen columns, the splintered marbles, the brick and stone of the
Hippodrome.”
But it was not merely the shell of the Hippodrome that was
imposing by reason of its size and magnificence. It was filled with the
choicest art treasures of the ancient world. Constantine stole
masterpieces with the catholicity of taste, the excellence of artistic
judgment, and the callous indifference to the rights of ownership
which characterised Napoleon. He stripped the world naked of its
treasures, as St. Jerome neatly remarked.[121] Rome and its
conquering proconsuls and proprætors had done the same.
Constantine now robbed Rome and took whatever Rome had left.
Greece was still a fruitful quarry. We have already spoken of the
Serpent Column, which was torn from Delphi. The historians have
preserved for us the names of a number of other famous works of art
which adorned the spina and the promenade of the Hippodrome.
There was a Brazen Eagle, clutching a withing snake in its talons
and rising in the air with wings outspread; the Hercules of Lysippus,
of a size so heroic that it measured six feet from the foot to the knee;
the Brazen Ass and its driver, a mere copy of which Augustus had
offered to his own city of Nicopolis founded on the shores of Actium;
the Poisoned Bull; the Angry Elephant; the gigantic figure of a
woman holding in her hand a horse and its rider of life size; the
Calydonian Boar; eight Sphinxes, and last, but by no means least,
the Horses of Lysippus. These horses have a history with which no
other specimens of equine statuary can compare. They first adorned
a temple at Corinth. Taken to Rome by Memmius when he laid
Corinth in ashes, they were placed before the Senate House. Nero
removed them that they might grace his triumphal arch; Trajan, with
juster excuse, did the same. Constantine had them sent to
Constantinople. Then, after nearly nine centuries had passed, they
were again packed up and transported back to Italy. The aged
Dandolo had claimed them as part of his share of the booty and sent
them to Venice. There they remained for almost six centuries more
until Napoleon cast covetous eyes upon them and had them taken to
Paris to adorn his Arc de Triomphe. On his downfall Paris was
compelled to restore them to Venice and the horses of Lysippus paw
the air once more above the roof of St. Mark’s Cathedral.
We have thus briefly enumerated the most magnificent public
buildings with which Constantine adorned his new capital, and the
choicest works of art with which these were further embellished. The
Emperor pressed on the work with extraordinary activity. No one
believes the story of Codinus that only nine months elapsed between
the laying of the first stone and the formal dedication which took
place in the Hippodrome on May 11th, 330, but it is only less
wonderful that so much should have been done in four years. The
same untrustworthy author also tells a strange story of how
Constantine took advantage of the absence of some of his officers
on public business to build exact models of their Roman mansions in
Constantinople, and transport all their household belongings,
families, and households to be ready for them on their return as a
pleasant surprise. What is beyond doubt is that the Emperor did offer
the very greatest inducements to the leading men of Rome to leave
Rome for good and make Constantinople their home. He even
published an edict that no one dwelling in Asia Minor should be
allowed to enter the Imperial service unless he built himself a house
in Constantinople. Peter the Great issued a like order when he
founded St. Petersburg and opened a window looking on Europe.
The Emperor changed the destination of the corn ships of Egypt
from Rome to Constantinople, established a lavish system of
distributions of wheat and oil and even of money and wine, and
created at the cost of the treasury an idle and corrupt proletariate.
He thus transported to his new capital all the luxuries and vices of
the old.
CHAPTER XIV
ARIUS AND ATHANASIUS
We have seen how, at the conclusion of the Council of Nicæa, it

looked as if the Church had entered into her rest. The day of
persecution was over; Christianity had found in the Emperor an
ardent and impetuous champion; a creed had been framed which
seemed to establish upon a sure foundation the deepest mysteries
of the faith; heresy not only lay under anathema, but had been
reduced to silence. Throughout the East—the West had remained
practically untroubled—the feeling was one of confidence and joy.
Constantine rejoiced as though he had won a personal victory; his
subjects, we are told,[122] thought the kingdom of Christ had already
begun. When Gregory, the Illuminator of Armenia, met his son,
Aristaces, returning from Nicæa and heard from his lips the text of
the new creed, he at once exclaimed: “Yea, we glorify Him who was
before the ages, by adoring the Holy Trinity and the one Godhead of
the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, now and for ever,
through ages and ages.”
Moreover, the Emperor’s violent edicts against the Arians, and the
banishment of Eusebius and Theognis, all indicated a settled and
rooted conviction which nothing could shake, while the death of the
Patriarch Alexander of Alexandria and the election of Athanasius in
his stead must have strengthened enormously the Catholic party in
Egypt and, indeed, throughout the East. Alexander had died within a
few months of his return from Nicæa, in the early part of 326. He is
said, when on his death-bed, to have foretold the elevation of
Athanasius and the trials which lay before him. He had called for
Athanasius—who at the moment was away from Egypt—and
another Athanasius, who was present in the room, answered for the
absent one. The dying man, however, was not deceived and said:
“Athanasius, you think you have escaped, but you will not; you
cannot.” We need not recount the stories which the malignity of his
enemies invented in order to cast discredit upon Athanasius’
election. There is no reason to doubt either its validity or its
overwhelming popularity in Alexandria, where, while the Egyptian
bishops were in session, the Catholics outside the building kept up
the unceasing cry: “Give us Athanasius, the good, the holy, the
ascetic.” The election was not unanimous. Evidently some thought
the situation required a conciliatory demeanour towards the beaten
Arians. But that was not the view of the majority, who, by choosing
Athanasius, set the best fighting man on their side upon the throne of
St. Mark. They did wisely. Tolerance was not properly understood in
the fourth century.
The outward peace lasted little more than two years.
Unfortunately, we are almost entirely in the dark as to what took
place during that time, beyond the certain fact of the recall of Arius,
Eusebius, and Theognis. Arius had been banished to Galatia; then
we read of the sentence being partially revoked, and the only
embargo placed upon his freedom of movement was that he was
forbidden to return to Alexandria. Did this take place before the recall
of Eusebius and Theognis? Socrates gives the text of a strange
letter written by these two prelates to the principal bishops of the
Church, in which they definitely say that, inasmuch as Arius has
been recalled from exile, they hope the bishops will use their
influence with the Emperor on their behalf.
“After closely studying the question of the Homoousion,” they say,

“we are wholly intent on preserving peace and we have been
seduced by no heresy. We subscribed to the Creed, after suggesting
what we thought best for the Church, but we refused to sign the
anathema, not because we had any fault to find with the Creed, but
because we did not consider Arius to be what he was represented as
being. The letters we had received from him and the discourses we
had heard him deliver compelled us to form a totally different
estimate of his character.”
The authenticity of this letter has been sharply called in question,
for there is no other scrap of evidence confirming the statement that
Arius was recalled before Eusebius and Theognis—in itself a most
improbable step. Constantine had issued an edict that any one
concealing a copy of the writings of Arius and not instantly handing it
over to the authorities to be burnt, should be put to death, and it is
much more probable that Arius was recalled after, rather than before,
Eusebius of Nicomedia. The “History” of Socrates contains many
letters of doubtful authenticity and some which are, beyond dispute,
forgeries. Among the latter we may certainly include the portentously
long document in which Constantine is represented as making a
grossly personal attack on the banished Arius. We will content
ourselves with quoting the most vituperative passage:
“Look! Look all of you! See what wretched cries he utters, writhing
in pain from the bite of the serpent’s tooth! See how his veins and
flesh are poison-tainted and what agonised convulsions they excite!
See how his body is wasted away with disease and squalor, with dirt
and lamentation, with pallor and horror! See how he is withered up
with a thousand evils! See how horrible to look upon is his filthy
tangled head of hair; how he is half dead from top to toe; how
languid is the aspect of his haggard, bloodless face; how madness,
fury, and vanity, swooping down upon him together, have reduced
him to what he is—a savage and wild beast! He does not even
recognise the horrible situation he is in. ‘I am beside myself with joy’;
he says, ‘I dance and leap with glee; I fly; I am a happy boy again.’”
ST. ATHANASIUS.
FROM THE BRITISH MUSEUM PRINT ROOM.
Assuredly this raving production never came from the pen of

Constantine, and it bears no resemblance to his ordinary style. The
resounding platitude with which it opens, “An evil interpreter is really
the image and counterpart of the Devil,” leads us confidently to
acquit the Emperor of its authorship and ascribe it to some
anonymous and unknown ecclesiastic desirous at once of edifying
and terrifying the faithful.
We can only surmise the circumstances which worked upon the
Emperor’s mind and caused his complete change of front with
respect to Arianism and its exponents. Sozomen, indeed, attributes it
wholly to the influence of his sister, Constantia. According to an Arian
legend quoted by that historian, it was revealed to the Princess in “a
vision from God” that it was the exiled bishops who held the true
orthodox doctrine and, therefore, that they had been unjustly
banished. She worked upon the impressionable mind of her brother,
and the two bishops were recalled. When Constantine asked
whether they still held the Nicene doctrines to which they had
subscribed, they replied that they had assented, not from conviction,
but from the fear lest the Emperor should be disgusted at the
dissensions among the Christians, and revert to paganism. This
curious story certainly tends to confirm the tradition that it was
Constantia who was the court patroness of the Arians. She had been
for years Empress in the palace of Nicomedia, and it is easy to
suppose that the very able Bishop of that city had established a
strong ascendency over her mind, long before the Arian controversy
arose.
The upshot of the whole matter—however the change was brought
about—was that in the year 329, the Arian and Eusebian party was
paramount at the Imperial Court. They had persuaded the Emperor
that theirs was the party of reason, and that those who persisted in
troubling the peace of the Church by holding extreme views and
seeking to impose rigorous tests were the followers of the new
Patriarch of Alexandria. They had subscribed to the Nicene Creed or
to a Creed which—so they persuaded the Emperor—was practically
indistinguishable from it, and they now plotted, with great skill and
adroitness, to undermine the position of Athanasius. How they
conducted the intrigue we do not know, but it is significant that after
the break up of the Council of Nicæa we hear no more, during
Constantine’s lifetime, of his long-trusted adviser Hosius, Bishop of
Cordova. The dreadful tragedies in the Imperial Family had taken
place at Rome in the summer of 326. It is possible that Hosius made
no secret of his horror at these monstrous crimes and retired to his
Spanish bishopric, and that Eusebius of Nicomedia, when brought
into communication with Constantine, was not so exacting in his
demand for a show of penitence and proved more skilful in allaying
the Emperor’s remorse. Be that as it may, as soon as Eusebius felt
assured of his position, he lost no time in prosecuting a vigorous
campaign against those who had triumphed over him at Nicæa. The
first blow was directed against Eustathius, the Bishop of Antioch,
who was charged with heresy, profligacy, and tyranny by the two
Eusebii and a number of other bishops, then on their way to
Jerusalem. Whether the charges were well founded or not, the
tribunal was a prejudiced one and the sentence of deprivation and
banishment passed upon Eustathius was bitterly resented in Antioch.
After certain other bishops had met with a like fate, the Eusebii
flew at higher game and attacked Athanasius. They had already
entered into an understanding with the Meletian faction in Egypt,
who carefully kept alive the charges against Athanasius, and now
they again took up the cudgels on behalf of Arius. Eusebius wrote to
the Patriarch asking him to restore Arius to communion on the
ground that he had been grievously misrepresented. Athanasius
bluntly refused. Arius, he said, had started a deadly heresy: he had
been anathematised by an Œcumenical Council: how, then, could he
be restored to communion? Eusebius and Arius appealed to the
Emperor. Constantine, who had previously ordered Arius to attend at
court and promised him signal proof of his regard and permission to
return to Alexandria, sent a peremptory message to Athanasius
bidding him admit Arius. When Athanasius, on the score of
conscience, returned a steady refusal, the Emperor angrily
threatened that, if he did not throw open his church doors to all who
desired to enter, he would send an officer to turn him out of his
church and expel him from Alexandria. “Now that you have full
knowledge of my will,” he added, “see that you provide uninterrupted
entry to all who wish to enter the church. If I hear that you have
prevented any one from joining the services, or have shut the doors
in their faces, I will at once despatch some one to deport you from
Alexandria.” The threat did not terrify Athanasius, who declared that
there could be no fellowship between heretics and true believers.
Nor was the Imperial officer sent.
Then began an extraordinary campaign of calumny against the
Patriarch, who was accused of taxing Egypt in order to buy a supply
of linen garments, called “sticharia,” for his church; of instigating one
Macarius to upset a communion table and break a sacred chalice; of
murdering a Meletian bishop named Arsenius, who was presently
found alive and well; and of other crimes equally preposterous and
unfounded. It was the Meletian irreconcilables in Egypt who brought
these calumnies forward, but Athanasius had no doubt that the
moving spirit was none other than Eusebius himself. And his
enemies, whoever they were, were untiring and implacable. As soon
as one calumny was refuted, they were ready with another, and all
this time there was Eusebius at the Emperor’s side, continually
suggesting that with so much smoke there needs must be some fire,
and that Athanasius ought to be called upon to clear himself, lest the
scandal should do injury to the Church. Constantine summoned a
council to try Athanasius in 333, and fixed the place of meeting in
Cæsarea,—a tolerably certain proof that the two Eusebii were acting
in concert. For some reason not stated the bishops did not assemble
until the following year, and then Athanasius refused to attend. Not
until 335 did Athanasius stand before his episcopal judges at Tyre.
Accompanied by some fifty of his suffragans, Athanasius had
made the journey, only to find himself confronted by a packed
council. All his bitterest enemies were there; all the old
unsubstantiated charges were resuscitated. His election was said to
be uncanonical; he was charged with personal unchastity and with
cruelty towards certain Meletian bishops and priests; and, most
curious of all, the ancient calumnies of “The Broken Chalice” and
“The Dead Man’s Hand” were revived and pressed, as though they
had never been confuted. With respect to the latter charge,
Athanasius enjoyed one moment of signal triumph. After his
accusers had caused a thrill of horror to pass through the Council by
producing a blackened and withered hand, which they declared to
belong to the missing Bishop Arsenius, who was supposed to have
suffered foul play, Athanasius asked whether any of those present
had known Arsenius personally. A number of bishops claimed
acquaintance, and then Athanasius gave the signal for a man, who
was standing by closely muffled in a cloak, to come forward. “Lift up
your head!” said Athanasius. The unknown did so, and lo! it was
none other than Arsenius himself. Athanasius drew aside the cloak,
first from one hand and then from the other. “Has God given to any
man,” he asked quietly, “more hands than two?” His enemies were
silenced, but only for the moment. One of them, cleverer than the
rest, immediately exclaimed that this was mere sorcery and devil’s
work; the man was not Arsenius; in fact, he was not even a man at
all, but a mere counterfeit, an illusion of the senses produced by
Athanasius’ horrible proficiency in the black art. And we are told that
this ingenious explanation proved so convincing to the assembly,
and created such a fury of resentment against Athanasius, that
Dionysius, the Imperial officer who had been deputed by Constantine
to represent him at the Council, had to hurry Athanasius on
shipboard to save him from personal violence.
There was clearly so little corroborative evidence against
Athanasius that the Council dared not convict him. But, as they were
equally determined not to acquit him, they appointed a commission
of enquiry to collect testimony on the spot in the Mareotis district of
Egypt with respect to the story of the Broken Chalice. The six
commissioners were chosen in secret session by the anti-
Athanasian faction. Athanasius protested without avail against the
selection: they were all, he said, his private enemies. The
commission sailed for Egypt, and Athanasius determined, with
characteristic boldness, to go to Constantinople, confront the
Emperor, and appeal for justice and a fair trial at the fountainhead.
Athanasius met the Emperor as he was riding into the city, and stood
before him in his path. What followed is best told by Constantine
himself in a letter which he wrote to the Bishop of Tyre.[123] Here are
his own words:
“As I was returning on horseback to the city which bears my name,

Athanasius, the Bishop, presented himself so unexpectedly in the
middle of the highway, with certain individuals who accompanied
him, that I felt exceedingly surprised on beholding him. God, who
sees all, is my witness that at first I did not know who he was, but
some of my attendants, having ascertained this and the subject of
his complaint, gave me the necessary information. I did not accord
him an interview, but he persevered in requesting an audience, and,
although I refused him and was on the point of ordering that he
should be removed from my presence, he told me, with greater
boldness than he had previously manifested, that he sought no other
favour of me than that I should summon you hither, in order that he
might, in your presence, complain of the injustice that had been done
to him.”
Such boldness had the success it deserved. Constantine evidently

made enquires from Count Dionysius, and, discovering that the
Council at Tyre was a mere travesty of justice, ordered the bishops
to come forthwith to Constantinople. But before these instructions
reached them they had received the report of the Egyptian
commissioners, and, on the strength of it, had condemned
Athanasius by a majority of votes, recognised the Meletians as
orthodox, and, adjourning to Jerusalem for the dedication of the new
church, had there pronounced Arius to be a true Catholic and in full
communion with the Church. The Emperor’s letter, which began with
a reference to the “tumults and disorders” which had marked their
sessions, was a plain intimation that he disapproved of their
proceedings, and only six bishops, the two Eusebii and four others,
travelled up to Constantinople. Arrived there, they changed their
tactics, and recognising that the old charges against Athanasius had
fallen helplessly to the ground, they invented another which was
much more likely to have weight with the Emperor. They accused
him of seeking to prevent the Alexandrian corn ships from sailing to
Constantinople. Egypt was the granary of the new Rome as well as
of the old, and upon the regular arrival of the Egyptian wheat
cargoes the tranquillity of Constantinople largely depended.
Athanasius protested that he had entertained no such designs. He
was, he said, simply a bishop of the Church, a poor man with no
political ambition or taste for intrigue. His enemies retorted that he
was not poor, but wealthy, and that he had gained a dangerous
ascendency over the turbulent people of Alexandria. Constantine
abruptly ended the dispute by banishing Athanasius to Treves, and
the Patriarch had no choice but to obey. He arrived at his city of exile
in 336, and was received with all honour by the Emperor’s son
Constantine, then installed in the Gallic capital as the Cæsar of the
West. This is tolerably certain proof that the Emperor did not regard
him as a very dangerous political opponent, but banished him rather
for the sake of religious peace. Constantine was weary of such
interminable disputations and such intractable disputants.
The exile of Athanasius was of course a signal victory for the
Eusebians and for Arius. With the Patriarch of Alexandria thus safely
out of the way, they might look forward with confidence to gaining the
entire court over to their side and still further consolidating their
position in the East. Arius returned in triumph to Alexandria, where
he had not set foot for many years. But his presence was the signal
for renewed popular disturbance. The Catholics remained faithful to
their Bishop in exile—St. Antony repeatedly wrote to Constantine,
praying for Athanasius’ recall—and Alexandria was in tumult.
Constantine refused to reconsider the sentence of banishment on
Athanasius, but he checked the violence of the Meletian schismatics
by banishing John Arcaph from Alexandria, and he hurriedly recalled
Arius to Constantinople. The heresiarch was summoned into the
presence of the Emperor, who by this time was once more uneasy in
his mind. Constantine asked him point blank whether he held the
Faith of the Catholic Church. “Can I trust you?” he said; “are you
really of the true Faith?” Arius solemnly affirmed that he was and
recited his profession of belief. “Have you abjured the errors you
used to hold in Alexandria?” continued the Emperor; “will you swear
it before God?” Arius took the required oath, and the Emperor was
satisfied. “Go,” said he, “and if your Faith be not sound, may God
punish you for your perjury.”
This strange scene is described by Athanasius himself, who had
been told the details by an eyewitness, a priest called Macarius.
According to Socrates, Arius subscribed the declaration of the Faith
in Constantine’s presence, and the historian goes on to recount the
foolish legend that Arius wrote down his real opinions on paper,
which he carried under his arm, and so could truly swear that he
“held” the sentiments he had written. Arius then demanded to be
admitted to communion with the Church at Constantinople, as public
testimony to his orthodoxy, and the Patriarch Alexander was ordered
to receive him. Alexander was a feeble old man of ninety-eight but
he did not lack moral courage. He told the Emperor that his
conscience would not allow him to offer the sacraments to one
whom, in spite of the recent declarations of the bishops at
Jerusalem, he still regarded as an arch-heretic. He was not troubled,
says Socrates,[124] at the thought of his own deposition; what he
feared was the subversion of the principles of the Faith, of which he
regarded himself as the constituted guardian. Locking himself up
within his church—the Church of St. Eirene—he lay prostrate before
the high altar and remained there in earnest supplication for many
days and nights. And the burden of his prayer was that if Arius’s
opinions were right he (Alexander) might not live to see him enter the
church to receive the sacrament, but that, if he himself held the true
Faith, Arius the impious might be punished for his impiety.
The aged Bishop was still calling upon Heaven to judge between
Arius and himself and declare the truth by some manifest sign, when
the time appointed for Arius to be received into communion was at
hand. Arius was on his way to St. Eirene. He had quitted the palace
—says Socrates—attended by a crowd of Eusebian partisans, and
was passing through the centre of the city, the observed of all
observers.[125] He was in high spirits—as well he might be, for it was
the hour of his supreme triumph. Then the blow fell. As he drew near
the Porphyry Pillar in the Forum of Constantine he was suddenly
taken ill. There was a public lavatory close by and he withdrew to it.
When he did not return his friends became alarmed. Entering the
place, they found him dead of a violent hæmorrhage, with bowels
protruding and burst asunder, like the traitor Judas in the Field of
Blood. One can imagine the extraordinary sensation which the news
must have caused in Constantinople as it flew from mouth to mouth.
Not only the Patriarch Alexander, but all the orthodox, attributed
Arius’ sudden and awful end to the direct interposition of Providence
in answer to their prayers. In an instant, we are told, the churches
were crowded with excited worshippers and were ablaze with lights
as for some happy festival.
On the superstitious mind of the Emperor so tragic a death
naturally made a deep impression. He was, says Athanasius,
amazed. Doubtless he believed that Arius had deceived him and that
God had answered his prayer to punish the perjurer. The Eusebians
were “greatly confounded.” Some hinted at poison, others at magic;
others were content to look no further than natural causes. The
general verdict of antiquity, however, was almost unanimous in
ascribing the death of Arius to the anger of an offended Deity. It is a
view which still finds adherents. Cardinal Newman, for example,
declares:
“Under the circumstances a thoughtful mind cannot but account

this as one of those remarkable interpositions of power by which
Divine Providence urges on the consciences of men in the natural
course of things, what their reason from the first acknowledges, that
He is not indifferent to human conduct. To say that these do not fall
within the ordinary course of His governance is merely to say that
they are judgments, which in the common meaning of the word stand
for events extraordinary and unexpected.”
But that is a matter which need not be discussed here. What is

more important to our purpose is to point out that the death of Arius
does not seem to have affected the state of religious parties at
Constantinople. It did not shake the position of Eusebius of
Nicomedia, who continued to enjoy the confidence of the Emperor
and to act as the keeper of his conscience.

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The SAGE Handbook of Learning 1st Edition David Scott

Informed Design of Educational Technologies in Higher

Educational Outcomes for the Canadian Workplace New

Using Secondary Data in Educational and Social Research

Learning and Teaching Research Based Methods MyLabSchool

Educational Research 1st Edition J. Schreiber

Teaching and Learning English Literature Teaching and

The Learning Works Prefixes and Suffixes Grades 4 8

Teaching and Learn ing: Ped agogy, Curriculum an d Cultu r e

Reading Educat ional Res earch and P olicy

Understanding Assessment: Pu rposes, Perceptions, Practice

Und erstanding S chools and Schooling

London and New York

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

RoutledgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

British Library Catalogui ng in Publication Data

Library of Congress Catal oging in Publication Data

ISBN 0-203-48752-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-79576-8 (Adobe eReader Format)

List of Figures and Tables vi

2.1 Three models of policy-making 23

4.1 Summary of the interim report 89

THE KEY ISSU ES IN TEAC HIN G AND LEA RNIN G SERIES

TEACHING AND THEORISI NG

There is currently no shortage of books designed to support teachers and beginner-

REA DING EDU CAT IONA L RESEA RCH AN D POLIC Y

STRUCTU RE AND CO NTENT OF TH E BOOK

…knowledge about what is involved in participating in some discourse(s). It is

It empowers in three ways:

When we become critical thinkers we develop an awareness of the assumptions

He identifies four dimensions of critical thinking:

Reading educational texts in a critical way allows the reader to

THE THEORY-PRACTICE REL ATIONSHI P

Furthermore, teachers are now being positioned within a discourse of competence in

which can be deduced from that knowledge. Practitioner knowledge therefore is

…the solving of technical problems through rational decision-making based on

deliberation in the strict sense of weighing alternatives and prescribing action in

Five ways of understanding the theory-practice relationship have

Different types of educational text are structured by different types

refer to the following dimensions: time, audience, purpose,

FOUR EXAMPLES OF E DUCATIONA L TEXT S

1 An extract from a research report

4.1 Foreign language short courses and services offered by higher

2 Two extracts from p olicy document s

A. Task Group on Assessment and Testing (TGAT)

The assessment process itself should not determine what is to be

Source: Task Group on Assessment and Testing

B. The Education Reform Act (ERA)

The Secretary of State may by order specify in relation to each of

3 Extract from newspa per report

WE WARNED MI NISTER OVER COM PUTER BUNGLE,

attended by education officials from more than 100 local councils.

4 An extract from a media broadcast

Presenter: GCSE pupils have been celebrating record passes today.

• Different types of educational text are structured by different

A GUIDE TO FURTHER RE ADING