Presents a provocatively anthropocentric analysis of the way forward for green politics and environmental movements, exposing the deficiencies and contradictions of green approaches to post-modern politics and deep ecology. This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information . Visit our eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.

Research has consistently shown ‘ability’ grouping (tracking) to be prey to poor practice, and to perpetuate inequity. A feature of these problems is inequitable and inaccurate practice in allocation to groups or ‘tracks’. Yet little research has examined whether such practices might be improved. Here, we examine survey and interview findings from a large-scale intervention study of grouping practices in 126 English secondary schools. We find that when schools are encouraged to allocate students and move them between groups according to (...) equitable principles by participation in a ‘best practice’ intervention, there is some increased equity of practice (i.e. a reduction in non-attainment factors used in allocation). However, the majority of schools continue to use subjective and potentially biased information to group students. Furthermore, some schools that claim to be using attainment setting appear to be using the inequitable practice of streaming. Our findings show that improvements in equity are constrained by operational and strategic factors, including timetabling, finance, and teachers’ values and beliefs relating to student ability and progression. We suggest strategies for encouraging schools to change their grouping practices, drawing on approaches for working with complex organisations. (shrink)

This paper examines some of many tensions associated with the Utopian propensity that underlies much thinking and action in radical environmentalism. They include the tensions inherent within ecotopianism's approach to social change, its desire to embrace ecological universals, its general propensity to face Janus-like in the direction of both modernity and post-modernity, and its tendency towards a polarised stance on scale, and local and global issues. These tensions create dilemmas that are not merely of academic interest: they have practical, tactical (...) and strategic implications, affecting the environmental movement's 'transgressive' potential in the search for ecotopia. (shrink)