The Role of Social Capital in Sustaining Partnership

Partnership is a dominant theme in education policy and practice in England and in other western countries but remains relatively under-researched, especially with respect to what sustains a partnership. This article draws on a study of partnership working in the field of post-16 learning that revealed the role of dimensions of social capital in supporting and sustaining the case study partnership. The research adopted a grounded approach and used multiple methods of data gathering including observations of partnership meetings, semi-structured interviews and documentary research. The findings reported here focus on aspects of partnership working and facets of social capital that support and sustain partnership, including multiple layers of collaboration, networks and networking, high levels of trust and shared norms and values amongst key participants. The analysis suggests that the contested concept of social capital provides a useful theoretical frame for understanding the basis of sustainability in education partnerships.

Replicating the Networking, Mentoring and Venture Creation Benefits of Entrepreneurship Centres on a Shoestring: A Student-centred Approach to Entrepreneurship Education and Venture Creation

As support for both university-level entrepreneurial education and the use of experiential learning methods to foster student entrepreneurs increases, so too have the number of university-established or affiliated entrepreneurship centers. The activity at the center of this study aimed to combine experiential learning methods with assets associated with entrepreneurship centers, including venture creation, networking, and mentoring. Students were invited to participate in a competition wherein they were guided through the business creation process and pitched their ideas to investor judges who chose the winner and provided capital start-up funding and consulting. This research puts forth that university faculty at institutions without entrepreneurship centers can organize experiences to provide the benefits of entrepreneurship centers. The study used interviews to find that many of the benefits of entrepreneurship centers were able to be replicated using this method. The project is outlined, outcomes are analyzed, and the results and lessons learned are discussed.

Still Playing Together(?): A Recall to Physical Education and Sport History Intersections.

As academic disciplines, Physical Education and Sport History share interests in performance, participation, physique and the politics of corporeal praxis. Engendering unity between the two disciplines, however, has not been without concern. Scholars working within (and across) both fields have highlighted how the potential for shared knowledge production and meaning making has been, to a degree, stymied by epistemological and methodological criticism and trepidation. Issues over contextualization, rigour, narrative schemas, conceptualizations of the body, and notions of agency and power still, in particular, constrain our current educational and historical readings and renderings of physical culture(s). Scholarly schisms and methodological differences can be overcome, however, and need not prohibit disciplinary collaborations that might better address prevailing ethical questions and affect political cause; vis-à-vis the body, the physical and sport. This brief piece is, consequently, recourse to the scholarly symbiosis between Physical Education and Sport History and echoes the encouragement of our earlier colleagues to play, inquire, create and produce together.

The Professionalisation of Non-Denominational Religious Education in England: Politics, Organisation and Knowledge

In response to contemporary concerns, and using neglected primary sources, this article explores the professionalisation of teachers of Religious Education (RI/RE) in non-denominational, state-maintained schools in England. It does so from the launch of Religion in Education (1934) and the Institute for Christian Education at Home and Abroad (1935) to the founding of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales (1973) and the British Journal of Religious Education (1978). Professionalisation is defined as a collective historical process in terms of three inter-related concepts: (1) professional self-organisation and professional politics, (2) professional knowledge, and (3) initial and continuing professional development. The article sketches the history of non-denominational religious education prior to the focus period, to contextualise the emergence of the professionalising processes under scrutiny. Professional self-organisation and professional politics are explored by reconstructing the origins and history of the Institute of Christian Education at Home and Abroad, which became the principal body offering professional development provision for RI/RE teachers for some fifty years. Professional knowledge is discussed in relation to the content of Religion in Education which was oriented around Christian Idealism and interdenominational networking. Changes in journal name in the 1960s and 1970s reflected uncertainties about the orientation of the subject and shifts in understanding over the nature and character of professional knowledge. The article also explores a particular case of resistance, in the late 1960s, to the prevailing consensus surrounding the nature and purpose of RI/RE, and the representativeness and authority of the pre-eminent professional body of the time. In conclusion, the article examines some implications which may be drawn from this history for the prospects and problems of the professionalisation of RE today.