Search

This paper extends Steven Threadgold’s theorisation of the ‘figures’ of youth. Threadgold highlights that predominant representations cast young people as the focus of moral panic, revolution, consumption, ‘cool’, the future, nostalgia, cognitive risk and social risk. We extend these figurational categories to also include a conceptualisation of the young person as spatially figured. The consideration of spatiality as a key identifier of young people and characteristic of young peoples’ experiences identifies the importance of the spatial terrain in framing young peoples’ positionality. Drawing on data collected with a group of young people resident in a regional town in Southern Queensland, we consider the interplay of distance, access and sociality as markers of a spatial figuration of the young person. The imbrication of geography and spatiality with identity asserted implications for how these young people engaged as members of their community, and further, how they were received and encountered by others. We contend that close attention should be given to the interconnected effects of geography and spatiality on identity, particularly in terms of how the geo-spatial figuration of young people influences their engagement in wider community and social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a conceptual framework for enacting relational pedagogy. Commencing with a description of a relational ontology that can work to provide the foundation for engaged and participatory enactments of teaching and learning, the paper moves to consider the dynamics that support inclusive modes of education and the dimensions of relational pedagogical encounters. In particular, the pedagogical encounter is examined with a view to illuminating how the ontological and epistemological dynamics and dimensions of relational pedagogy open opportunities for inclusive and participatory modes of teaching and learning. In addition, the practical implications of pedagogical informality are considered, including the in-the-moment immediacy inherent to the relational encounter and concomitant enactments of the pedagogical exchange. In doing so, we argue for a relational pedagogy that widens the possibility for meaningful engagement with young people through pedagogical enactments that build upon the inter-relationality of teachers and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shares findings from a project that examined how schools serving marginalised communities facilitated students' substantive engagement. Through interviews with students, parents, teachers and school leaders, we determined that substantive engagement was supported by formal and informal strategies that enabled access to rich learning opportunities, the provision of welcoming school and classroom climates, and the enactment of pedagogies of care and school-wide programmes focused on substantive engagement. There were four key areas of substantive engagement: engaging curriculum and pedagogy, engaging school climate, engaging with learners, and engaging with communities. Strategies to support engagement included the removal of barriers to learning, such as assistance with breakfast or public transport, nurturing a positive school climate, providing support for ethnic groups and the delivery of alternative or flexible programmes. Drawing on the findings from five case studies, we propose four principles for substantive student engagement in complex contexts, which will be useful for school leaders and teachers who work in schools that serve marginalised communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is common for the media to cast young people as dangerous and delinquent, particularly when those young people derive from marginalized backgrounds. Moral panics are fuelled and sustained by the media in their role as agents of moral indignation. Additionally, the media represent a powerful source of moral regulation, often working against the interests of young people. In this paper, a recent media focus on the 'youth crime crisis' in Queensland, Australia is examined to consider potential ways in which public discourse might move beyond deficit tropes to develop more nuanced and productive conceptualizations of youth. We draw on emergent theorizations of the 'figurations' that define the ways in which 'youth' is understood in public discourse to consider how mediated social imaginaries work to produce representations of young people and frame possibilities for thinking about their place in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on findings from a wider project examining 'relational pedagogies' within Australian secondary schools. The paper considers the growing use of the 'relationships' concept as a descriptor of specific teaching practices. Normative descriptions of 'relationships' (and concordant descriptions of relational pedagogies) can be at odds with the empirical realities inherent to classroom practice. This paper suggests that accounts of the relational should consider the 'context' and the 'immediacy' of the relationships made possible in classroom settings. Arguing that designations of relational pedagogy require (i) consideration of the 'empirical realities' that contextualise pedagogical encounters and (ii) reflexive appraisals of teacher and student positionality, this paper draws on descriptions of relational pedagogy offered by a group of teacher–participants to illustrate the various ways that the 'relationships' concept gains form. The analysis outlined in this paper demonstrates that teachers define and enact relational pedagogies in idiosyncratic ways within their classrooms, rendering normative apriori conceptualisations of the 'relationships' concept incomplete and prone to irrelevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within neoliberal regimes of educational performativity, expectations of teachers’ work have become increasingly prescriptive, standardised and formulaic. To counter the reductive effects of this ‘exteriority’ of influence over teachers' work, we draw on three conceptual prompts—relational pedagogy, informality, and de Certeau’s theorisation of strategies and tactics—to examine empirical accounts of teachers who challenge the normative expectations of their work. We contend that teachers who seek to work beyond the restrictions of neoliberal educational managerialism engage in deliberate acts of tactical intervention, which involve the deployment of relational and informal modes of engagement with students and other educators. In doing so, teachers can more fully assert their professionalism and nurture important relational bonds with students in ways that respond to the contingent nature of classrooms in rich and contextually meaningful ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the utility of Campbell's narrative construction of 'the hero's journey' as a conceptual apparatus to understand how international students from Confucian heritage cultures navigate their experiences in Western schooling systems like Australia. The hero's journey framework was used to investigate the commonalities and differences in international students' beliefs and behaviours, which led to the development of three different students 'hero' models: the self-determined hero, the hesitant hero, and the wounded hero. These models were used to represent the students' beliefs, behaviours and perceptions of support and to describe the experiences and motivations of students in different contexts during their secondary schooling in Australia. The hero's journey provides a potentially useful framework from which to engage schools, systems, and policymakers in productive dialogue regarding the support and engagement of international students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a conceptualisation of relational pedagogy in which informality is proposed as a pedagogical modality to activate inclusive, socially just learning and teaching encounters. Findings from two ethnographic studies conducted in alternative learning contexts are examined, which demonstrated that informality was crucial to the formation of pedagogical 'activations' that marked the conduct of each learning context and the interactions between teachers, students and learning. The formation of close bonds between students and teachers extended to renegotiated associations with the practices of schooling and reformulated relationships with learning experienced by students and their teachers. It was at the 'interface' between students, teachers and learning that these activations of relationality materialised, in which informality was a central dynamic. From these findings, a set of propositions are generated to centre relational pedagogy as being key to the engagement of young people in meaningful education across schooling and other learning contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An editorial is presented on democracy facing significant challenges in global and local contexts. Topics include addressing the challenges posed by climate change, a global pandemic, increasing political instability, social unrest, and rapidly widening economic inequality; and national values of democracy, equity and justice participating in Australia's civic life by connecting with the community.

Curricular justice, achieved through a counter-hegemonic curriculum that serves the needs of the least rather than most advantaged members of society, plays a central role in providing more equitable access to meaningful education for all young people. We contend that the defining features of the contemporary schooling context in many parts of the globe, including Australia, are growing inequality and increasing disparity between students who have access to educational opportunities and outcomes, and those who do not. We take Connell's claims—made in Schools and Social Justice, published in 1993—of the centrality of social justice in schooling and consider its relevance nearly 30 years later. In particular, we argue that curricular justice must sit at the heart of schooling that fosters democratic participation and meaningful opportunities for civic participation and belonging within society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the implications of the current landscape of education policy reform in Australian schooling. We argue that the decontextualisation of education policy enactments and the eschewing of concerns relevant at the local level of the school over the past two decades have prompted various reform agendas to fail. We contend that recognition of the deep contextualisation of schools is paramount in any attempt at renewal. Therefore, it is at the local school-level that reform agendas can and should be directed by the pedagogical and innovative work of educators. We focus on 'relational pedagogy' because it offers opportunities to enact school-wide reform and enhance the professional capacities of educators as pedagogical innovators. Contemporary education reform agendas are best situated and registered within school sites and relational pedagogy stands as a deeply contextualised provocation for enacting school renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of contemporary education policy levers that seek to standardise and measure teaching quality through the deployment of professional standards and increased surveillance of teachers' work. These policy frameworks—with a focus in this paper on the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers—are contrasted against the experiences of five Australian primary school teachers, using interpretative case study analysis to demonstrate the contradictions, tensions and fragile discursive construction of the idealised 'good' teacher. Implications for teacher agency and autonomy are considered, and propositions are generated for policy frameworks that support and enhance quality teaching, rather than reducing the complexities of teaching to a set of standardised metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people who graduate from high school are more likely to transition into further study or training, get a job and earn higher wages. However, many young people with the highest needs leave or become excluded from mainstream school settings and some complete their education in alternative education contexts. This paper shares reflections from Flexi School graduates on their experiences of alternative education, demonstrating their commitment to employment and integration into their communities, because their alternative education enabled them to gain a sense of belonging. Graduates assert the significance of their alternative schooling experiences in improving their outcomes and helping them overcome disadvantage and marginalisation. We contend that alternative schooling can help marginalised young people attain the skills and qualifications required for further study or training by giving them proficiencies, confidence and attitudes that help to generate positive opportunities and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we deploy the concept of aporia to consider the ways in which enactments of policy become ‘stuck’ as policy flows between national and sub-national education systems. We illustrate the overlapping political, governmental and bureaucratic spheres of influence that mediate how national school reform agendas are received and enacted by schooling systems. Our analysis is based on interviews with senior bureaucrats from an Australian non-government sector’s national and state peak bodies representing Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Drawing on conceptualisations of aporia as an impasse and more deliberatively, Lather’s interpretation of aporia as ‘moments of possibility’, we argue that aporias created by bureaucratic barriers, government timelines, government evaluation processes and the placement of accountability measures over schooling prevents the meaningful enactment of policy within school settings. We argue that there is a need to consider the generative possibilities that exist within this situation of policy aporia, and demarcate where possibilities to move beyond ‘stuck’ policy might arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research investigating elite schools has highlighted how students within these learning environments embody and naturalise their privilege through discourses of merit, hard work, and innate talent and skill. However, relatively little is known about how privilege, and its associated discourses, moves with students beyond the school gate and into adulthood. In this paper we present accounts from elite boys' school alumni to interrogate how they mediate representations of Self as morally 'good and sincere'. The active disavowal of the elite education experience, and deferral of culpability from the cultural practices of these institutions feature in these accounts. In particular, the paper explores the strategies used to reconcile aspects of the elite boys' school experience. We argue that these practices of disavowal and deferred culpability provide a degree of personal and professional mobility, from which the cultivation of a positive sense of self as a 'good' man emerges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the call for this special issue to begin our inquiries with concepts rather than methods, the DeleuzeoGuattarian notion of the diagram is taken up in this article as part of a musical experiment with educational inquiry. In doing so, two musical sound creatures are created through the use of music as a molecular and imperceptible image of thought that is different from language and its semiotic modes of representation. This article asks how music might be plugged into the world and what a musical onto-epistemology could produce as a result. Perhaps educational inquiry would open up to new explorations and different configurations, discursive and non-semantic, through music as diagram. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the ways that teachers in one alternative school blur the boundaries of the political, personal, and philosophical in their efforts to re-engage marginalised and disenfranchised young people. The labours of the school staff at Harmony High offer an intriguing narrative of working both within and against the grain of policy mandates, curriculum narrowing, and the pervasive effects of neoliberalism. Through the physical and social spatiality, critical pedagogical and affective engagement of learners, new schooling assemblages might be formed. The work being done by teachers in alternative schooling contexts such as that of Harmony High – while situated, meaningful and deeply contextualised – offers hope for reconstituting mainstream education in more socially just ways that serve the needs and interests of everybody. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents the story of one school principal’s journey from mainstream to alternative schooling. Drawn from a larger project at the school where themes of commitment, community and culture and curriculum connectedness were apparent, this paper focuses on the philosophies and lived experiences of the principal via a narrative method drawing from narrative methodologies, feminist and poststructuralist perspectives. School leadership is a significant factor in school success. In this case, the principal plays a crucial role in the growing story of successful alternative schooling models, and as such, the philosophies and motivations of such leaders need to be more fully examined. Given the current neoliberal climate within many developed countries driving an agenda of high-stakes testing regimes and centralized curricula, it becomes more important than ever to highlight alternative ways of approaching school leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological categories of youth widely used in political rhetoric and educational policy making are limited by the neoliberal discourses and humanist tradition within which they are constructed. Utilising a Deleuzian approach in order to trouble the very concept of youth itself affords opportunities to rethink youth as rhizome; unlinked from the traditional categories of age, class, race and gender. Instead, youth becomes an assemblage of multiplicities combining in radical and different ways to form a becoming-youth that is particular to this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-quality children’s literature, including picturebooks, are important resources in the classroom for students to engage with complex and sometimes concerning contemporary issues. One strategy to involve students in learning about such issues is through the use of metaficitive devices, which are literary stratagems that draw readers into knowing more about a topic and helping them understand and interpret them safely. In this paper, we analyse three selected texts that contain important and deliberate metaficitive devices used by award-winning authors/illustrators. First, we share brief synopses of each book and then provide detailed analyses of the literary tools used by the authors, including how they support students’ meaning-making practices through language and image. Then we consider how these works were used in a primary school classroom to improve children’s critical multimodal literacies so that they became more discerning readers who could effectively cope and engage with complex and troubling world issues through literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is one of two that bring together a range of education scholars to consider how education might be for democracy in a time of complex challenges facing twenty-first century societies. In this paper, scholars from Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom consider how sites of formal and informal education can respond to multiple unfolding crises, including the COVID-19 global pandemic, catastrophic climate change and ecological collapse, political upheaval, and growing social and economic inequality. What emerges is a wide-ranging set of reflections that engage with these complexities and challenges in a considered and hopeful way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is one of two which bring together leading educational researchers to consider some of the key challenges facing democracy and education during the twenty-first century, including rising social and economic inequality, political instability, and the existential threats of global pandemics and climate change. In this paper, key educational scholar–activists respond to the challenges and possibilities for democracy and education, with consideration of the importance of reimagining education as being for democracy. The questions asked in this paper have particular salience for educational leaders, who must be at the centre of any commitment to democratic education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]