Character education has enjoyed renewed interest both in the United Kingdom and in other parts of the world. However, to date, few studies have examined how character education is enacted 'in situ'. Drawing on data from a study in three English secondary schools, this paper traces how political and scientific discourses on character are mobilised…

There has been a growing interest in gender and language in recent decades. This study examines how women control their language facing specific, especially when angry. Minangkabau women are a subject in this research. The gap that underlies this study is that a Minangkabau woman, popular with polite language as a medium for language, is required…

This article examines episodes of potential student conflict in a Swedish special support classroom in which teachers deploy a particular type of directive in the form of a negative imperative: "bry dig inte" (Eng. "don't mind …; don't bother …"). The analyses of three such extended episodes, by use of a conversation analytic…

The question of physical interaction is especially relevant in school physical education, where a lot of the teaching and activities are based on body movements. However, the issue of "touching" has been questioned in recent years. This paper takes its starting point in the discourse of child protection and the growing anxiety around…

This paper reports on a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the New Labour (1997-2010) discourse of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in schools, and how it was understood and enacted by policymakers in England and in Wales within the context of devolved government across the UK. By SEL I mean universal school-based programs, located in the…

Central values promoted in a national curricula are often uncontested (Arnot, Hopman, & Molander, 2007; Colnerud, 2004; Popkewitz, 2009). Therefore, a critical understanding of these values is crucial, as is an understanding of how students are affected by interpretations of certain values as fundamental. The aim of this study is to cast light…

We examined whether parents' content and style when discussing past positive and negative emotional experiences with their children were concurrently and predictively linked to prekindergarteners' social skills. Sixty-five low-income Spanish-speaking parent-child dyads discussed a past positive and negative emotional experience at the beginning of…

This article studies discourses within the accreditation of Norwegian higher education conducted by the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT), using one concrete case (the accreditation of bachelor programs in nursing). Analysis of policy documents and accreditation reports are influenced by two of Foucault's concepts of…

This paper takes the vigorous political debate unleashed in Germany by the results of the PISA study as a stimulus to take a closer look at the strategic aims and effects of the current education reforms, of which the PISA study is only one example. It shows that the reform measures underpin a powerful process of normalisation. In this context,…

A study analyzed the multiple purposes of songs in which children in early childhood classrooms sing and move their bodies to the lyrics, the discourses the songs mobilize, and the gendered positions the songs accomplish. Subjects, 28 students entering their first year in a suburban primary school in a large regional center in southern Victoria,…