Suchergebnisse

Since 1997 the New Labour Government have introduced a number of significant (and potentially far reaching) reforms to the governance of Britain. They include the creation of a parliament in Scotland, assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland, an elected mayor and assembly in Greater London and development agencies and assemblies in the English regions. At the same time reforms to the structure and decision-making at local authority level have been introduced. The changes to local government decision making with the option of directly elected mayors or cabinet style leadership have, to some extent, been overshadowed by the formation of Local Strategic Partnerships. The Government has announced its intention to legislate for referenda on the creation of directly elected regional assemblies. This article reflects upon the unresolved issues, which this latest proposal highlights. In particular, it examines the extent to which directly elected assemblies have the potential to redress the democratic deficit at local and regional levels. It suggests that the model on offer cannot be imposed without a significant renegotiation of the political, economic, organisational and social settlement at the local level. A regional level of decision-making leaves unanswered the complexities of arrangements at the local and sub-regional levels. The article draws upon the experience of the North East and North West where competing city regions and the needs of rural areas may conflict with the concept of a known and recognised region.

Research on race, social class, and parent involvement in education often implies that parents' educational orientations result directly from their social class or racial group backgrounds. In this article, the authors study the involvement of working-class and middle-class African American parents. They argue that these parents' educational orientations are informed by the educational environments they navigate, their resources for negotiating these environments, and their prior social class and race-based educational experiences. Middle-class African American parents studied were more likely to select their children's schools, assess them favorably, and adopt supportive orientations toward them. In contrast, working-class African American parents studied were assigned to schools, tended to assess them less favorably, and adopted more reform-based orientations toward them. The article extends prior work by studying social class and parent involvement within the African American community and by highlighting the interaction between parents' perceptions of school context and their educational orientations.

In this paper, we discuss the fundamental whiteness of educational spaces and detail the historical and contemporary mechanisms through which these spaces are created and perpetuate. We draw on Charles Tilly's concept of opportunity hoarding to detail how white racial actors and white-dominated institutions create and defend "white" spaces within education. We expand current educational scholarship in this area by theorizing connections between opportunity hoarding and sociological work on racial boundaries, institutional theory, and organizational routines and point the way toward more nuanced examinations of opportunity hoarding in education.