Could do better? Media depictions of UK educational assessment results

Warmington, Paul; Murphy, Roger

doi:10.1080/0268093042000207629

Cited by 34 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…School exam results are now an annual newsworthy item in Britain (for example, see Joint Council for Qualifications 2012 ;Chalabi 2013;Lim 2013). Every summer the British media transmit live broadcasts of groups of young people receiving their grades (Warmington and Murphy 2004). This recurrent event illustrates, and reinforces, the importance of school level qualifications in Britain.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The concealed middle? An exploration of ordinary young people and school GCSE subject area attainment

Playford

Gayle

2015

Journal of Youth Studies

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In Britain school examination results are now an annual newsworthy item. This recurrent event illustrates, and reinforces, the importance of school level qualifications. The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is the standard qualification undertaken by pupils at the end of year 11 (age 15-16). GCSEs continue to play an important and central role in young people's educational and employment pathways. Within the sociology of youth there has been recent interest in documenting the lives and educational experiences of 'ordinary' young people.There are many analyses of agglomerate (i.e. overall) school GCSE attainment. More recently attention has been focused on individual GCSE subjects. In this paper we analyse school GCSE attainment at the subject area level. This is an innovative approach and our motivation is to explore substantively interesting patterns of attainment that might be concealed in analyses of overall attainment, or attainment within individual subjects.We analyse data from the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales using a latent variable approach. The modelling process uncovered four distinctive latent educational groups. One latent group is characterised by high levels of overall attainment, whereas another latent group is characterised by poor GCSE performance. There are two latent groups with moderate or 'middle' levels of GCSE attainment. These two latent groups have similar levels of agglomerate attainment, but one group performs better in science and the other performs better in arts GCSEs. Pupils study for multiple GCSEs which are drawn from a wide menu of choices. There is a large array of possible GCSE subject combinations, and results in individual GCSE subjects are highly correlated. The adoption of a latent variable approach is attractive because it handles the messy nature of the data whilst not trivialising its complexity. The paper demonstrates that a latent variable approach is practicable with large-scale social survey data, and is appealing for the analysis of more contemporaneous cohorts.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The concealed middle? An exploration of ordinary young people and school GCSE subject area attainment

Playford

Gayle

2015

Journal of Youth Studies

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“…This relationship calls for attention, especially considering that the affiliation between the media and education is scarcely investigated (Warmington & Murphy, 2004;Thomas, 2004). In this paper, the questions asked are: (1) how can theories on structural violence contribute to an understanding of the systematic simplifications of teachers and educational researchers presented in the media?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes: exploring stereotypes of teachers and education in media as a question of structural violence

Edling¹

2014

Journal of Curriculum Studies

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Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes: exploring stereotypes of teachers and education in media as a question of structural violence SILVIA EDLING The paper highlights four tendencies in the media reporting of teachers and education: (a) recurring patterns of defining education in crisis, (b) mantling responsibility as exterior spokespersons for education and teachers, (c) excluding teachers' and educational researchers' knowledge and experiences in the media and (d) simplifying the notion of a good and bad teacher through stereotypes and dualistic frameworks that overlook task and relational complexity. In this paper, I explore how the simplifications of teachers and education that are often presented in the media can be interpreted as structural violence. In the light of these tendencies, research on structural violence helps to remind us that: (a) teachers are unwillingly forced into a paradoxical (in)visibility, (b) they are squeezed in-between two pressuring external demands, namely the complexities in their professional assignment that are politically steered and stereotypes of the good and bad teacher produced by, in this case, the media, (c) they risk wasting time and energy on addressing prejudices that have nothing to do with the specific work they are expected to do and (d) the logic of binary stereotypes is a power issue that brands teachers into a position of permanent failure.

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“…The culture of placing too much emphasis upon assessments which focus pupils' interest on the qualification (Stobart 2003;Warmington and Murphy 2004) rather than emphasising the value of what they are learning is detrimental to education. There has, argues Jerome (2002), long been concern within the teaching profession that such attitudes would affect citizenship because it has been recognised as a subject which is perceived as 'difficult' to assess (Richardson 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Assessing the assessment of citizenship

Richardson

2010

Research Papers in Education

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This paper draws on some of the findings from a research study which examined the current structure of assessment for citizenship in secondary education in England and considers the rationale for the assessment of citizenship. The research included an empirical evaluation of citizenship assessment from the perspective of the key user groups, teachers and pupils and comprised a mixed-method approach. A questionnaire survey was sent to teachers and pupils in secondary schools across England and interviews were conducted with pupils (Years 9-11) and teachers in 18 schools around England. The data were analysed using both quantitative (descriptive and univariate statistics) and qualitative methodologies. The findings suggest that the way in which citizenship is delivered has an effect upon the means by which it is assessed and has some impact upon the way that the subject is valued. Some teachers were reluctant to use unfamiliar modes of assessment, particularly formative methods which did not result in a grade, because pupils were sceptical of the value of any subject which does not provide a 'final' mark. The creation of ideal-type teachers facilitated a deeper investigation of the way in which teachers assess citizenship and how they perceive their pupils' attitudes towards the subject. Teachers and pupils demonstrated generally positive attitudes towards citizenship education. However, their responses suggest a pervading educational ethos which values only the things that can be measured and some reluctance to believe that it is worthwhile to develop skills or abilities which do not generate a 'grade'.

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Could do better? Media depictions of UK educational assessment results

Cited by 34 publications

References 8 publications

The concealed middle? An exploration of ordinary young people and school GCSE subject area attainment

The concealed middle? An exploration of ordinary young people and school GCSE subject area attainment

Between curriculum complexity and stereotypes: exploring stereotypes of teachers and education in media as a question of structural violence

Assessing the assessment of citizenship

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