Towards a Normative Defence of Provocation in England and Ireland

This article compares, in the light of the House of Lords’ decision in R v Smith (Morgan James), the English and Irish approaches to the objective test in provocation. Though the law on this point has developed in radically different directions as between England and Ireland, both jurisdictions demonstrate a profound dissatisfaction with the objective test in its traditional formulation combined with a reluctance to dispense with it altogether. It is suggested that Lord Hoffmann’s approach in Morgan Smith, by drawing out the essentially normative function of the objective test, provides a useful way forward for the law on both sides of the Irish Sea.

The Effects of Social Class and Ethnicity on Gender Differences in GCSE Attainment: A Secondary Analysis of the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales 1997-2001

This article is based upon a secondary analysis of the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales 1998 and examines the effects of social class and ethnicity on gender differences in GCSE attainment for those who left school in 1997 (n = 14,662). The article shows that both social class and ethnicity exert a far greater influence on the GCSE performance of boys and girls than gender. Moreover, the article also shows that an interaction effect is present between social class and gender and also between ethnicity and gender in relation to their impact upon GCSE attainment. More specifically, the findings suggest that a strong correlation exists such that the lower the overall levels of educational attainment for any group (whether that group is defined in terms of social class or ethnicity), the higher the gender differences that exist between those within that group.

Developing Creative Solutions to the Problems of Children and their Families: Communicative Reason and the use fo Forum Theatre

Building on Habermas’s conceptualisation of modes of reasoning, the authors proposed that an application of critical theory to the present bureaucratised nature of communication between state representatives and welfare recipients (Howe 1992) might open up ways in which social workers could reconceptualise their practice. In a subsequent edition of this journal, three of the present authors introduced the radical theatre of Augusto Boal as a methodology which might provide an expressive route for social workers seeking to build a practice combining the intellectual analysis of critical theory with new ways of working (Spratt et al. 2000). Boal’s method recognises the oppressed status of groups who come to the attention of agents of the state and, through the use of a range of theatrical techniques, introduces strategies to facilitate the conscious recognition of such collective oppressions and develop dialogical ways to address them. In the last paper, the authors presented one such technique, ‘image theatre’, and demonstrated its use with social workers in consciousness raising and developing strategies for collective action.