Bøker av Stephen J. Ball

Is the privatisation of state education defendable? Did the public sector ever provide a fair education for all learners? This work provides a comprehensive, analytic and empirical account of the privatisation of education. It is aimed at those researching and studying in the fields of social policy, policy analysis, and others.

Presenting an in-depth study of childcare policy and practice, this book examines middle class parents' choice of childcare within the wider contexts of social class and class fractions, social reproduction, gendered responsibilities and conceptions of 'good' parenting.

This book studies a group of young people as they move through their final year of mandatory schooling and into their first year of post-16 experience. It suggests ways forward for a more inclusive post-16 education and training system.

This book brings together in one place Stephen Ball's key writings. Drawing on over 20 years' work, Professor Ball has selected his most seminal work - from education policy and sociology to his work on education and social class.

The middle classes skilfully, assiduously and strategically use the sphere of education to their advantage in processes of class formation and maintenance. Ball asks what are the skills, attitudes, perspectives and aspirations at work here.

The public sector is going through a period of fundamental change. Service delivery, policy making and policy processes are being carried out by new actors and organisations with new interests, methods and discourses, related to the emergence of new forms of governance. This timely book from bestselling author Stephen Ball and Carolina Junemann uses network analysis and interviews with key actors to address these changes, with a particular focus on education and the increasingly important role of new philanthropy. Critically engaging with the burgeoning literature on new governance, they present a new method for researching governance - network ethnography- which allows identification of the increasing influence of finance capital and education businesses in policy and public service delivery. In a highly original and very topical analysis of the practical workings of the Third Way and the Big Society, the book will be useful to practicing social and education policy analysts and theorists and ideal supplementary reading for students and researchers of social and education policy.

Education is a key political issue and seen as a crucial factor in ensuring economic productivity and competitiveness. In this enthralling book, Stephen J. Ball offers an analysis of the flood of government initiatives and policies that have been introduced over the past 20 years, including Beacon Schools, the Academies programme, parental choice, Foundation Schools, faith schools and teaching standards. He looks at the politics of these policy interventions and how they have changed the face of education. This bestselling book makes essential reading for student-teachers, other students of politics and social policy courses and for the general reader who wants to get beyond the simplistic analyses of the newspapers.

This important account of the experiences of schooling of the pupils in a single comprehensive school is based on three years' field work which Stephen J. Ball spent as participant observer at 'Beachside Comprehensive'.

This book considers Foucault as educator in three main ways. That is, education as a form of what Allen (2014) calls benign violence - which operates through mundane, quotidian disciplinary technologies and expert knowledges which together construct a 'pedagogical machine'.