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British Educational Research JournalPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713406264

Lost Generation? New strategies for youth and education, by PatrickAinley and Martin AllenDean Garrattaa University of Chester, UK

Online publication date: 08 December 2010

To cite this Article Garratt, Dean(2011) 'Lost Generation? New strategies for youth and education, by Patrick Ainley andMartin Allen', British Educational Research Journal, 37: 1, 191 192

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01411926.2011.541643URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411926.2011.541643

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British Educational Research Journal

Vol. 37, No. 1, February 2011, pp. 191195

ISSN 0141-1926 (print)/ISSN 1469-3518 (online)/11/010191-05

BOOK REVIEWSTaylor and FrancisCBER_A_541643.sgm10.1080/British Education Research Journal0141-1926 (print)/1469-3518 (online)Original Article2010Taylor & Francis3710000002010

Lost Generation? New strategies for youth and education

Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen, 2010

London, Continuum

186 pp.

ISBN: 978-1-4411-3470-7

This book presents a critical and provocative take on contemporary English education

policy and practice. It usefully examines the fix facing todays blighted youth, who,caught in transition between education and employment, are attempting to navigate

a path through a failed system that promised much but in the end delivered very little.

Through a well-written and mostly sophisticated analysis the book questions the

wisdom of New Labours education policy and its legacy upon the evolving and

pervasive context of social and economic globalisation, the conditions of an increas-

ingly changing and unpredictable world.

The book divides neatly into five sections: From jobs without Education to

Education without jobs; Overtested and Undereducated; Overqualified and

Underemployed; Lost in Transition or Transition Lost?; New Directions forYouth and Education. A notable strength is the way in which the authors carefully

and coherently guide the reader through the overlapping issues and themes chro-

nologically. Beginning first with an examination of key historical antecedents,

Ainley and Allen proceed with a critical analysis of policy and practice relating to

the experiences of learners, teachers and parents(through the middle chapters),

and conclude with a series of strategies for rethinking the future of education for

social justice and, with this, the salvation of modern society.

Throughout the analysis, the book questions the nature and purpose of education

policy against a backdrop of the perceived changing relationship between young

people, education and employment (p. 153). Such policy is presented as a largelynegative force and distorting influence upon the transition of youth, relations between

the generations, and their putative roles and identities within and across society. In

raising the question of a lost generation, the authors examine if this is more a case

of being lost in transition or, in fact, a transition lost? In my view, the authors char-

acterisation of the so-called Youth Questionthe enduring social problem of the long-

term integration of young people in education and societyis both a key strength and

inherent weakness of the book. On the one hand, it conveys a striking picture of reality,

both compelling and plausible, many aspects of which would be hard to deny or at a

minimum, at least tacitly acknowledge. Yet at the same time such unabashed critical

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192 Book reviews

realismsome might say utopianismhas the effect of blunting a more subtle and

nuanced analysis. For example, in places the authors appear confident and convinced

of their ability to know how to represent the real interests of young people (p. 153),

where, in particular, the final section is presented as a demystification of sorts, in which

layers of ideological distortion are peeled away to reveal reality as it actually is, or moreaccurately, what policy shouldbe. Indeed, if only the government and those charged

with responsibility for making social and education policy were able to put an end to

the political nonsense that serves to distort society and thus see reality for what it actu-

ally is(as apparently the authors do), then the problem of a lost generation would

be swiftly ameliorated and society usefully improved. In the spirit of the book itself

then, I end with this provocation as a means to encourage all students and scholars of

education, youth and social and community policy to embrace its concerns and radical

political messages, and further engage with them critically and enthusiastically.

Dean Garratt, University of Chester, UK

2011, Dean Garratt

DOI: 10.1080/01411926.2011.541643

Causation in educational research

Keith Morrison, 2009

London, Routledge

231 pp.

ISBN 978-0-415-49649-0

There are various ways of describing different kinds of research, but ultimately it

could be argued that all research has to settle for description (what is the way things

are?), or look for explanation (why are things that way?) So the notion of causation is

of central interest to all researchers who consider that they seek to go beyond descrip-

tion, and so offer insights into why things are as they are. That therefore includes all

those who undertake research because they want to bring about changes.

Keith Morrison, well known to students setting out on research in education for his

contribution to one of the best established general guides to educational research

(Cohen, Manion, & Morrisons [2000] Research methods in education), has therefore

produced a book that is potentially of wide interest.

Indeed, for a topic of such centrality to the research process it is notable that

although new volumes on educational research appear with great regularity, the topic

of causality is actually the focus of very few of these. Perhaps this is because causality

is such a problematic concept. Even in physics, once the paradigmatic context for

illustrating cause and effect, the idea of causality has been questioned. In the social

sciences, a multitude of practical difficulties can be added to the philosophical ques-

tions about the nature of causality.

Morrisons book illustrates this very well. I approached this book somewhat uncer-tain of what I might find. Indeed, I confess to have been somewhat suspicious that it