Education in Spite of Policy

A national system of education cannot function without policy. But the path to practice is seldom smooth, especially when ideology overrules evidence or when ministers seek to micromanage what is best left to teachers. And once the media join the fray the mixture becomes downright combustible. Drawing on his long experience as teacher, researcher, government adviser, campaigner and international consultant, and on over 600 published sources, Robin Alexander expertly illustrates and illuminates these processes. This selection from his recent writing, some hitherto unpublished, opens windows onto cases and issues that concern every teacher. Part 1 tackles system-level reform. It revisits the Cambridge Primary Review, an evidence-rich enquiry into the condition and future of primary education in England, which challenged the UK government’s policies on curriculum, testing, standards and more besides. Here the reform narratives and strategies of successive governments are confronted and dissected. Part 2 follows the development of England’s current National Curriculum, exposing its narrow vision and questionable use of evidence and offering a more generous aims-driven alternative. This section also investigates the expertise and leadership needed if children are to experience a curriculum of the highest quality in all its aspects. Part 3 reaches the heart of the matter: securing the place in effective pedagogy of well-founded classroom talk, a mission repeatedly frustrated by political intervention. The centrepiece is dialogic teaching, a proven tool for advancing students’ speaking, thinking, learning and arguing, and an essential response to the corrosion of democracy and the nihilism of ‘post-truth’. Part 4 goes global. It investigates governments’ PISA-fuelled flirtations with what they think can be adapted or copied from education elsewhere, examines the benefits and pitfalls of international comparison, and ends with the ultimate policy initiative: the United Nations mission to ensure ‘inclusive and equitable quality education’ for all the world’s children. Education in Spite of Policy is for all those teachers, students, school leaders and researchers who value the conversation of policy, evidence and practice, and who wish to explore the parts of education that policy cannot reach.

Introduction PART 1 – ABOVE THE PARAPET A tale of two reviews Health of a nation Success, amnesia and collateral damage Triumph of the eristic What works and what matters Evidence, mediation and narrative PART 2 – CURRICULUM CONVOLUTIONS Reform, retrench or recycle? Epistemic imbroglio Entitlement, freedom and minimalism Neither national nor a curriculum Beyond the reach of art True grit Curriculum capacity and leadership PART 3 – SPEAKING BUT NOT LISTENING Promise and politics of talk Evaluating dialogic teaching The unquestioned answer Dialogic pedagogy in a post-truth world PART 4 – EDUCATION FOR ALL Towards a comparative pedagogy World beating or world sustaining? Moral panic and miracle cures In pursuit of quality Bibliography

Robin Alexander is Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Cambridge, Professor of Education Emeritus at the University of Warwick, and Fellow of the British Academy. His five-nation Culture and Pedagogy (2001) won the Outstanding Book Award of the American Educational Research Association, while Children, their World, their Education (2010), and his work as director of the Cambridge Primary Review, won the SES Book Awards First Prize and the BERA/Sage Public Impact and Engagement Award. His most recent book, A Dialogic Teaching Companion (2020), is a summation of many years of work on the quality of talk in teaching and learning.