This paper will argue that we are doing a disservice to disabled people and wider issues of disability by being reluctant to radically and culturally theorise impairment. Over recent years I have been interested in interrogating the cultural production and consumption of impairment labels, exploring their relationship to ideas of normal and examining the mundane cultural work they take on. I suggest here that a way of explaining the processes by which an impairment gains and maintains its 'cultural-usefulness' is to argue that far from being neutral, impairment is, and impairments are, constructed, produced and consumed through varied social, cultural, political and economic contingencies. I explore this through the contemporary example of autism.

This seminar will report on research on Free Schools in England. At the start of 2012, following 320 applications to Government, there were 24 free schools open and a further 70 with a proposal accepted. The research has identified 226 of these proposers and interviewed a sample of 50. The paper begins by locating Free Schools within both the Big Society agenda and the historical development of quasi markets. These are seen to interlink around ‘contestability’ over who actually delivers and runs state schools. Exploring this theme, the empirical analysis considers how Free School proposers seek to enter and position themselves within the state school system. Five main themes are considered: the geography of Free School proposers; their motivations; their educational aims; their marketing tactics; and their demography and expertise. The paper concludes by analysing the potential consequences of Free School policy.

Dr Rob Higham is a lecturer at the Institute of Education, University of London. His research interests include autonomy and markets in education, school leadership and improvement and system governance. Specific foci have included Academies and Free schools, collaboration, System Leadership and the responses of school leaders to policy. Rob also has research interests in South Africa and India and is part of a British Academy UK South Asia Partnership researching issues of social inequality and affirmative action in India and Nepal.

This paper discusses findings about pedagogical documentation drawn from a study in a range of English early childhood education and care settings which focused on children’s views of the early years curriculum (Garrick et al., 2010). The paper analyzes documentation in theoretical terms as: deciding, decentralizing, disciplining, didactic and dialogue and also considers accounts of practical strategies and the work of Rinaldi (2005) and Carr (2001; 2005 and 2011). The argument is illustrated with a selection of the data from the original study by Garrick et al. (2010) which the author co-directed. The paper contends that the purpose of pedagogical documentation should be to enable adult and child communicative cooperation, rather than to provide statements about children’s progress which feed into the ‘discourses of quality in early childhood’ (Dahlberg et al. 1999: 99).

This presentation focuses on students as authors. It brings together data from a recent research project in which students used creative writing to author a range of texts about their transitions to university, and reflections on a level 6 Education Studies and Sociology module in which students wrote academic articles based on a number of critical incidents in their learning journeys. As lecturers, we often ask students to write reflective accounts of their educational experiences for their PDPs or as part of module assessments. Drawing on data from the project and the module, this presentation discusses what can be gained from using autoethnography as an approach to enhance students' reflective writing. It considers how useful autoethnography is in engaging students in the production of knowledge about their subject discipline and as way of engaging students more broadly in research processes.

This presentation investigates the collaborative processes used by primary children to solve mapping problems in a digital mapping environment. It focuses on understanding both the content and form of children’s maps, and the communication between pairs of children engaged in digital map creation. Use of digital mapping technology in schools is now a popular activity, but there has been limited research into effective teaching and learning approaches that make the most of both newer technologies and established cartographic principles.

Eighty children worked in pairs to make a digital map of their school locality. The task required the children to use point, line, area and text symbols. Data collected included a pre-task interview, a video recording and transcript of the paired map-making session and a post-task interview. Analysis of the maps was carried out using a mapping classification scheme which identified the characteristics present in the content of the maps and the children’s use of geometric and symbolic representation. The results of the analysis revealed that the content of the maps did not vary greatly between age group or gender. However older children were more able to locate point and area data and map ordinal data using accepted cartographic conventions.

The presentation concludes with implications of the study for teachers, researchers and curriculum developers interested in children and environmental mapping. A socio-cultural explanation of children’s symbol choice is suggested as an alternative to teachers' existing ideas that may be based on stage of cognitive development, or progression between age-related curriculum expectations.