44 results on '"Sellar, Sam"'
Search Results
2. Becoming information centric: the emergence of new cognitive infrastructures in education policy.
- Author
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Sellar, Sam and Gulson, Kalervo N.
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EDUCATION policy , *EDUCATIONAL planning , *DECISION making , *ARTIFICIAL intelligence in education , *DATA science - Abstract
New cognitive infrastructures are emerging as digital platforms and artificial intelligence enable new forms of automated thinking that shape human decision-making. This paper (a) offers a new theoretical perspective on automated thinking in education policy and (b) illustrates how automated thinking is emerging in one specific policy context. We report on a case study of a policy analysis unit ('The Centre') in an Australian state education department that has been implementing a BI strategy since 2013. The Centre is now focused on using BI to support complex decision making and improve learning outcomes, and their strategy describes this focus as becoming 'information centric'. The theoretical framework for our analysis draws on infrastructure studies and philosophy of technology, particularly Luciana Parisi's recent work on automated thinking. We analyse technical documentation and semi-structured interview data to describe the enactment of a BI strategy in The Centre, with a focus on how new approaches to data analytics are shaping decision-making. Our analysis shows that The Centre is developing a cognitive infrastructure that is already creating new conditions for education policy making, and we conclude with a call for research designs that enable pragmatic exploration of what these infrastructures can do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
3. Making network markets in education: the development of data infrastructure in Australian schooling.
- Author
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Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
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MULTILEVEL marketing , *EDUCATION , *DATA analysis , *EDUCATION policy , *EDUCATIONAL standards - Abstract
This paper examines the development of data infrastructure in Australian schooling with a specific focus on interoperability standards that help to make new markets for education data. The conceptual framework combines insights from studies of infrastructure, economic markets and digital data. The case of the Australian National Schools Interoperability Program is analysed, drawing on a corpus of web-based technical and promotional documents and supporting interviews. The paper shows that Australia has well-developed data infrastructure in schooling that is creating new relations between schools, school systems and commercial vendors within network markets for data-driven educational technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
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4. The rise of international large-scale assessments and rationales for participation.
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Addey, Camilla, Sellar, Sam, Steiner-Khamsi, Gita, Lingard, Bob, and Verger, Antoni
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LITERACY , *WEALTH , *EDUCATION - Abstract
The article presents a forum which discusses growth of international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) since the mid-1990s. Topics discussed include association between literacy, education and prosperity; impact of ILSAs over education system; and development of Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA).
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- 2017
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5. Leaving the future behind.
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Sellar, Sam
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EDUCATION , *OPTIMISM , *PESSIMISM , *THOUGHT & thinking - Abstract
This article puts forward the provocation that optimism has become a trap for educational research. It is argued that optimism underpins the implicit model of modern educational thought, which is oriented toward the future and wants it to be better. However, optimism can become a trap when it encourages investment in promises about the benefits of education that cannot be realized for all. As more and more people invest in education to 'get ahead' their optimism contributes to decreasing the value of credentials and thus undermines the promised benefits. Educational researchers contribute to this bind because the dominant model of modern educational thought is inherently optimistic. However, pessimism offers an inherently unpromising alternative. In a time of economic, environmental, and technological disruption, this article the concept of disaster might provoke lines of thought that go beyond the alternative between optimism or pessimism. The writings of Lauren Berlant, Maurice Blanchot, and Gilles Deleuze provide the theoretical framing for the argument. The article concludes that if optimism has lured educational thought and research into a trap, then it may be time to give up on 'the future' in order to get out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
6. Transparency and Opacity: Levinasian Reflections on Accountability in Australian Schooling.
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Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
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PHILOSOPHY of education , *EDUCATIONAL accountability , *EDUCATION ethics , *EDUCATION , *OTHER (Philosophy) - Abstract
This article draws on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to consider, from an ethical perspective, the current transparency and accountability agenda in Australian schooling. It focuses on the case of theMy Schoolwebsite and the argument that transparent publication of comparative performance data via the website provides a basis for making things better in schooling. The article argues that while technologies of accountability may have potential benefits, they cannot provide a basis for this ethical project. Instead, the ethical experience described by Levinas arises from an encounter with opacity in the face-to-face relation with the Other, who is harshly illuminated by the transparency promised through calculation and comparison. Such encounters with opacity hold the potential to disrupt the politics of visibility promoted by transparency agendas and provide an alternative to the growing practice of ‘accountability at a distance’ based on performance data. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
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- 2015
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7. The OECD and the expansion of PISA: new global modes of governance in education.
- Author
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Sellar, Sam and Lingard, Bob
- Subjects
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EDUCATION , *GLOBALIZATION , *EDUCATIONAL tests & measurements , *INTERNATIONAL cooperation on education - Abstract
This paper examines the expansion of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment ( PISA) and associated growth in the influence of the OECD's education work. PISA has become one of the OECD's most successful 'products' and has both strengthened the role of the Directorate for Education within the organization and enhanced the significance of the organization in education globally. We provide an overview of the OECD, including organizational changes in response to globalization and the changing place of the Directorate for Education within the organization, particularly with the development of PISA in the late 1990s. We show how the OECD is expanding PISA by broadening the scope of what is measured; increasing the scale of the assessment to cover more countries, systems and schools; and enhancing its explanatory power to provide policy-makers with better information. The OECD has also developed the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies ( PIAAC) and PISA-based Tests for Schools, which draw on the PISA template to extend the influence of its education work to new sites. The paper draws on data from 33 interviews with past and present personnel from the OECD, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement ( IEA) and the English and Australian education systems, as well as analysis of relevant OECD documents. We argue that PISA, and the OECD's education work more broadly, has facilitated new epistemological and infrastructural modes of global governance for the OECD in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2014
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8. Re-articulating social justice as equity in schooling policy: the effects of testing and data infrastructures.
- Author
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Lingard, Bob, Sellar, Sam, and Savage, Glenn C.
- Subjects
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EDUCATION , *SOCIAL justice , *EDUCATION policy , *EDUCATIONAL equalization , *EDUCATIONAL evaluation - Abstract
This paper examines the re-articulation of social justice as equity in schooling policy through national and global testing and data infrastructures. It focuses on the Australian National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We analyse the discursive reconstitution of social justice as equity in Australian and OECD policy, and analyse NAPLAN and PISA as technologies of governance that re-articulate equity as a measure of performance. These re-articulations are set against the extension of neo-social economistic rationalities to all domains of life and the topological production of new spaces of policy and power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
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9. Representing Your Country: Scotland, PISA and New Spatialities of Educational Governance.
- Author
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Lingard, Bob and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
EDUCATION ,EDUCATIONAL leadership ,EDUCATION policy - Abstract
This paper focuses on the rescaling and re-spatialization of policy and governance in education, including the constitution of a global education policy field. It deals with the changing education policy work of the OECD, particularly the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We argue that PISA has become the most successful OECD 'product' and as such has become the prototype for other OECD developments, including PISA-Based tests for schools, PISA for development, PIACC and AHELO. These developments help constitute a global education policy field and contribute to the production of a global data infrastructure in education. At the same time, they also have impacts on other spatial relations, including sub-national and local effects in schooling. For example, the PISA-based test for schools programme can be used directly by schools and sub-national systems as part of the new policy spaces in education. In this paper, we document the role of the OECD's education work in respect of these matters. We focus specifically on a video, PISA 2012 - Representing Your Country, produced by the Scottish Department of Education and anchored by the Scottish National Party Minister for Education. The aim of the video is to inspire the participation and strong performance of Scottish students in the 2012 PISA sample. As we will show, using a 'videological analysis', this video demonstrates how Scottish independence and nationalism involve reaching out to draw on the expertise of supranational organisations such as the OECD, while at the same time the OECD is reaching in to nations to shape policy agendas in sub-national spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2014
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- View/download PDF
10. The OECD and global governance in education.
- Author
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Sellar, Sam and Lingard, Bob
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EDUCATION , *EDUCATION policy , *EDUCATIONAL evaluation , *INTERNATIONAL cooperation , *PROFESSIONAL peer review - Abstract
This review essay discusses the history, evolution and development of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and traces the growing impact of its education work. The essay is in four main sections. The first discusses Carrol and Kellow's The OECD: A Study of Organizational Adaptation (Edward Elgar) and provides a brief historical account of the Organisation. The second section reviews Woodward's The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (Routledge) and considers the different modes of governance employed by the OECD, particularly its exercise of soft power through peer review. The third section considers Tucker's edited book, Surpassing Shanghai." An Agenda for American Education Built on the World's Leading Systems (Harvard Education Press) and the effects that Shanghai-China's 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) success has had on education policy debates in the USA and globally. The final section engages with Sahlberg's Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland? (Teachers College Press) and describes factors that have contributed to the high quality and equity of schooling in Finland. The review essay thus moves from an examination of the role and function of the OECD in general terms to more specific discussion of the recent impact of its PISA, which has drawn attention to particular school systems and has influenced education policy-making in both member and non-member countries. We conclude by providing a framework for understanding the epistemological and infrastructural governance functions of the OECD in education globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013
- Full Text
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11. 'Catalyst data': perverse systemic effects of audit and accountability in Australian schooling.
- Author
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Lingard, Bob and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
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EDUCATIONAL accountability , *EDUCATION , *EDUCATION policy , *HIGH-stakes tests , *EDUCATIONAL tests & measurements - Abstract
This paper examines the perverse effects of the new accountability regime central to the Labor government's national reform agenda in schooling. The focus is on National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) results that now act as 'catalyst data' and are pivotal to school and system accountability. We offer a case study, with two embedded units of analysis, in which NAPLAN has become high stakes testing for systems. The first involves the relationships between the federal government and three States (Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland) in negotiating performance targets on NAPLAN for reward payments in respect of a national agreement to improve literacy and numeracy. We show how Victoria used 2009 data as baseline, set ambitious targets and failed to meet them, while Queensland set much less ambitious targets, met them and was rewarded. New South Wales created targets that combined literacy and numeracy scores, obfuscating the evidence, and met their targets. The second focuses specifically on Queensland and the ramifications of the poor performance of the State on the 2008 NAPLAN. This resulted in a review commissioned by the Premier, a Report on how to improve performance, and the introduction of Teaching and Learning Audits and State-wide targets for improvement on NAPLAN. This unit of analysis focuses on the perverse effects of this highly politicized agenda. This paper shows how States seek to protect their 'reputational capital' and as such, 'game' the system. The data for the analysis draw upon interviews with relevant senior policy-makers and on analysis of relevant documents and media coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2013
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12. ‘It's all about relationships’: Hesitation, friendship and pedagogical assemblage.
- Author
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Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
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FRIENDSHIP , *HESITATION , *EDUCATION , *SELF-confidence , *LEARNING - Abstract
This paper examines the relationships between hesitation, friendship and pedagogy. It develops three main arguments: (a) first, that feelings of hesitation can unsettle our self-assurance in what we know, activating new problematics; (b) second, that this unsettling may become pedagogical under certain conditions; and (c) third, that friendship provides such conditions, potentially spurring creative processes of thought and learning. In response to secondary school teachers’ claims about their teaching and relationships with students, the paper employs hesitation as a methodological strategy for thinking beyond established understandings about pedagogy. The concept of pedagogy as assemblage is elaborated, drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, and friendship is then conceived as a joyous encounter and mode of intellectual hospitality. These concepts enable description of the affective contexts in which the destabilisation of knowledge about ourselves and our worlds might provoke learning, in response to problems that are newly sensed in hesitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
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13. The responsible uncertainty of pedagogy.
- Author
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Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
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EDUCATION , *EMPIRICISM , *EDUCATIONAL outcomes , *TEACHER-student relationships , *EDUCATION policy , *SOCIAL policy , *EDUCATIONAL ideologies - Abstract
In our current moment there is a resurgence of interest in pedagogy as an object of research and policy. In this context the Redesigning Pedagogies in the North (RPiN) project sought to improve educational outcomes for students from low-socioeconomic status communities by researching teachers' efforts to develop more connected pedagogies. However, difficulties were encountered during collaborative theory building with teachers. Except for repeated suggestions that pedagogy is 'all about relationships', teachers struggled to develop theoretical accounts of their practice. Using data obtained within the RPiN project, I draw on Massumi's (2002) notion of expanded empiricism and Bauman's (1995) concept of being-for the other to analyze this difficulty. I argue that the condition for pedagogy becoming an ethical experience inheres in an affective dimension of the teacher-student relationship that cannot be translated into a stable object of discursive knowledge. However, this condition is substantive and requires further attention in research and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009
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14. Redesigning pedagogies in middle-years classrooms: challenges for teachers working with disadvantaged students.
- Author
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Sellar, Sam and Cormack, Phil
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CLASSROOMS , *STUDENTS , *TEACHERS , *TEACHING , *RESEARCH institutes , *EDUCATION , *VOCABULARY , *LEXICOLOGY , *UNIVERSITIES & colleges - Abstract
This paper describes a heuristic framework developed to provide a common vocabulary with which to discuss pedagogy within a collaborative university-school research team studying pedagogical redesign in middle-years classrooms (Years 6-9) serving disadvantaged students. The framework was developed in response to discussions about teaching in such settings, during which teacher talk about pedagogy emphasised 'relationships' with students and left the detail of such relationships relatively opaque. In response, the pedagogical processes described in this framework have been developed to provide a vocabulary with which researchers and teachers can talk to each other - with increased conceptual purchase - about pedagogy at the micro-scale of relational interaction between student, teacher and the knowledge they together produce. The use of this framework to analyse teachers' descriptions of their work is suggestive of reasons why difficulties were encountered when trying to talk explicitly about pedagogy with teachers, and of productive pathways for further research about pedagogies as teachers' work. This framework may also be used as a supplement to other pedagogical frames which more strongly emphasise outcomes rather than process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009
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15. Science, art, learning and teaching: making connections.
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Whitney, John, Sellar, Sam, and Paige, Kathryn
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ART , *ART in education , *EDUCATION , *SCIENCE education , *TEACHING - Abstract
A common theme to resonate through the recent Australian Association of Environment Education Conference in Adelaide 2004 was the importance of a sense of place and people's well being. This article describes how a group of students attending Mintabie Area School in outback South Australia explored their sense of place through engaging in a range of visual arts experiences, Kety, Sansom, McClish and Clenie (1994) report that visual arts were an integral part of society in ancient times and we believe, should be an essential part of contemporary society. The materials used in the past came from the natural environment and were used to construct practical utensils and tools or to create images that related to a people's spirituality. In today's world visual arts are also being used the same practical sense as well or as a means of communication or a form or self expression and identity building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
16. Performative bilingual policy: an analysis of two Taiwanese White Papers on international education
- Author
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Yu-Chih Li, Sam Sellar, Bob Lingard, Vicente Reyes, Li, Yu-Chih, Lingard, Bob, Reyes, Vicente, and Sellar, Sam
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Internationalism (politics) ,05 social sciences ,Taiwan ,postcolonialism ,Media studies ,translation ,050301 education ,Performative utterance ,Geopolitics ,Lingua franca ,Education ,International education ,Political science ,Performativity ,international education ,performative ,Official language ,Education policy ,0503 education ,computer ,computer.programming_language - Abstract
In 2011, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education issued a policy on the internationalisation of schooling. The policy assumes that being ‘international’ has become necessary in order to maintain economic competitiveness in a globalising world. It was published in two languages: Mandarin, the official language in Taiwan, and English, presupposed as a lingua franca. Treating ‘policy as discourse’, the article analyses internationalism and its performativity through the publication and specific textual construction of this policy. The analysis considers the layout, target readerships, conceptual translation, and spatial representation and construction of ‘Chineseness’ in the two policy texts. This attempt at internationalisation is related to the very specific historical and geopolitical conditions of Taiwan and its liminal position in the globe. The significance of the article rests in expanding ideas of ‘translation’ in education policy studies and in the analysis of the specific geopolitics of East Asia. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2021
17. 1996: the OECD policy-making assemblage
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Ian Buchanan, Sam Sellar, Greg Thompson, Thompson, Greg, Sellar, Sam, and Buchanan, Ian
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education policy ,Policy making ,05 social sciences ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,Deleuze and Guattari ,Education ,Economic cooperation ,0504 sociology ,Work (electrical) ,assemblage ,Political science ,Political economy ,OECD ,Global policy ,Assemblage (archaeology) ,Education policy ,0503 education - Abstract
Recent analyses of education policy have used the concept of the assemblage to explain how the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s education work contributes to global policy convergence and new forms of policy mobility. These analyses often use Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of assemblage to designate relations between things (as actors) and people (as actors). In this paper, we argue that Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage thinking offers promising analytical insights that education policy studies have not fully explored. We propose that revisiting the problematics which animated Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory can broaden the conceptual apparatus at our disposal for analysing global education policy and the work of international policy actors. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2021
18. Collaborative augmentation and simplification of text (CoAST): pedagogical applications of natural language processing in digital learning environments
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Sam Sellar, David Rousell, Matthew Shardlow, Shardlow, Matthew, Sellar, Sam, and Rousell, David
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050101 languages & linguistics ,Higher education ,Interface (Java) ,computer.software_genre ,Education ,Software ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Digital learning ,natural language processing ,learning environments ,automation ,pedagogy ,business.industry ,Communication ,05 social sciences ,Educational technology ,050301 education ,Automation ,Raising (linguistics) ,collaboration ,text simplifcation ,Artificial intelligence ,Psychology ,business ,Sociology of Education ,0503 education ,computer ,Natural language processing - Abstract
The digitisation of higher education is raising significant questions about the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on teaching and learning environments, highlighting the need to investigate how teachers and students can work with new educational technologies in complementary ways. This paper reports results from a pilot study of the collaborative augmentation and simplification of text (CoAST) system, which is online software designed to facilitate the engagement of university students with theoretically-sophisticated academic texts. CoAST offers a digital learning interface that uses natural language processing algorithms to identify words that can be difficult to understand for readers at different ability levels. Course lecturers use their pedagogical content knowledge to add brief annotations to identified words. The software was trialed using a quasi-experimental design with (1) 23 undergraduate Education Studies students and (2) 23 digital and technology solutions students. Results suggest that CoAST offers a digital learning environment that can effectively mediate and enhance pedagogical relationships between teachers, students, and complex theoretical texts.
- Published
- 2022
19. Anticipating education: governing habits, memories and policy-futures
- Author
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Sam Sellar, Kalervo N. Gulson, P. Taylor Webb, Webb, P Taylor, Sellar, Sam, and Gulson, Kalervo N
- Subjects
education policy ,Knowledge management ,business.industry ,Knowledge economy ,Corporate governance ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,050801 communication & media studies ,Temporality ,artificial intelligence ,Anticipatory governance ,Education ,0508 media and communications ,Media Technology ,Sociology ,Tracking (education) ,Education policy ,business ,0503 education ,Futures contract ,anticipatory governance ,time ,temporality - Abstract
The use of data to govern education is increasingly supported by the use of knowledge-based technologies, including algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI), and tracking technologies [Fenwick, T., E. Mangez, and J. Ozga. 2014. Governing Knowledge: Comparison, Knowledge-Based Technologies and Expertise in the Regulation of Education. New York, NY: Routledge]. New forms of datafication and automation enable governments and other powerful stakeholders to draw from the past to construct images of educational futures in order to steer the present. This paper examines the competing conceptions of time and temporality that AI posits for policy and practice when used to anticipate educational futures. We argue that most educational futures are already delineated, and machinic expressions of time are the chronologies, habits, and memories that the educated subject inhabits rather than produces. If resetting educational habits and memories can be an alternative to algorithmic anticipations of education then we believe, paradoxically, that machines may help to reset them by accelerating them. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2019
20. Enriching educational accountabilities through collaborative public conversations: conceptual and methodological insights from the Learning Commission approach
- Author
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Aspa Baroutsis, Bob Lingard, Sam Sellar, Lingard, Bob, Baroutsis, Aspa, and Sellar, Sam
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Relation (database) ,Process (engineering) ,business.industry ,05 social sciences ,rich accountabilities ,050301 education ,Commission ,learning commission ,Regional area ,Public relations ,collaboration ,Education ,Test (assessment) ,communities ,0502 economics and business ,Accountability ,education accountability ,Narrative ,Sociology ,050207 economics ,competency group ,business ,0503 education - Abstract
This article describes the use of a Learning Commission to experiment with conceptualising and implementing richer modes of educational accountability. A Learning Commission is a form for collaborative thinking that brings different kinds of knowledge and expertise to bear in relation to a common matter of concern: the role of schools in relation to the communities they serve. As part of a broader research project, we used a Learning Commission to co-produce knowledge about community expectations of schools in a regional area of Queensland, Australia. We analysed data generated through this process using a narrative approach and synthesised the findings in a conceptualisation of rich accountabilities that offers an alternative to top-down, test-based modes of accountability. Rich accountabilities raise anew the questions of who should be accountable, what counts and whose practices should be changed by accountability systems. The article thus describes (a) an alternative model of accountability in education and (b) an alternative theorisation of accountability informed by the implementation of this model as a method for co-producing research about schools and communities. The article provides significant conceptual and methodological resources for further experiments in enriching educational accountability. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2021
21. A new chapter for Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education
- Author
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David Rutkowski, Sam Sellar, Keita Takayama, Radhika Gorur, Sellar, Sam, Gorur, Radhika, Rutkowski, David, and Takayama, Keita
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Linguistics and Language ,education ,business.industry ,Statement (logic) ,educational research ,Discourse analysis ,05 social sciences ,0507 social and economic geography ,Media studies ,050301 education ,Cultural politics ,Education ,Editorial team ,discourse ,Sociology ,business ,cultural politics ,050703 geography ,0503 education ,Publication ,social sciences ,Social Sciences (miscellaneous) - Abstract
January 2021As the new editorial team of Discourse, we are very pleased to publish our first statement concerning the direction of the journal. We feel honoured that the previous Editors – Professo...
- Published
- 2021
22. Becoming information centric: the emergence of new cognitive infrastructures in education policy
- Author
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Sam Sellar, Kalervo N. Gulson, Sellar, Sam, and Gulson, Kalervo N
- Subjects
education ,business.industry ,05 social sciences ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,Cognition ,infrastructure ,Policy analysis ,artificial intelligence ,Data science ,Automation ,Education ,0504 sociology ,Education policy ,data science ,business ,0503 education ,automation ,policy - Abstract
New cognitive infrastructures are emerging as digital platforms and artificial intelligence enable new forms of automated thinking that shape human decision-making. This paper (a) offers a new theoretical perspective on automated thinking in education policy and (b) illustrates how automated thinking is emerging in one specific policy context. We report on a case study of a policy analysis unit (‘The Centre’) in an Australian state education department that has been implementing a BI strategy since 2013. The Centre is now focused on using BI to support complex decision making and improve learning outcomes, and their strategy describes this focus as becoming ‘information centric’. The theoretical framework for our analysis draws on infrastructure studies and philosophy of technology, particularly Luciana Parisi’s recent work on automated thinking. We analyse technical documentation and semi-structured interview data to describe the enactment of a BI strategy in The Centre, with a focus on how new approaches to data analytics are shaping decision-making. Our analysis shows that The Centre is developing a cognitive infrastructure that is already creating new conditions for education policy making, and we conclude with a call for research designs that enable pragmatic exploration of what these infrastructures can do. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2021
23. Young people pursuing futures: making identity labors curricular
- Author
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Lew Zipin, Sam Sellar, Marie Brennan, Zipin, Lew, Brennan, Marie, and Sellar, Sam
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Cultural Studies ,student ,Social Psychology ,Cognitive Neuroscience ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Refugee ,Immigration ,curriculum ,Identity (social science) ,050109 social psychology ,young people ,Language and Linguistics ,Education ,Optimism ,Ethnography ,Developmental and Educational Psychology ,0501 psychology and cognitive sciences ,Sociology ,Curriculum ,media_common ,4. Education ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,Gender studies ,identities ,Feeling ,Anthropology ,academic potential ,0503 education ,Futures contract - Abstract
© 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Young people’s processes of forming identities, linked to the work of anticipating futures, involve significant labors of thought, feeling, ethics and imagination. These labors proceed across both life-worlds and school-worlds, often in tension, especially for those from marginalized positions in social-structural power relations. This paper explores such identity labors, drawing on rich ethnographic data from research, during 2013–2014, that engaged students in Years 9 and 10, from working-class, immigrant and refugee backgrounds, who attended an inner-suburban school in Melbourne, Australia. We investigate two student groupings: (a) selected by the school for “accelerated” curriculum paths; and (b) the “others” we label written off by the school in terms of academic potential (a division we diagnose as driven by policy measures of institutional “performance”). In different ways among students in each grouping, we find their identity labors to reflect historical conditions for what Berlant calls “cruel optimism” about futures. Yet their identity dynamics also draw on rich funds of knowledge from their life-worlds that our research shows to offer resources–funds of identity–for more viable future imaginaries. We argue for curriculum and pedagogy that supports young people in their identity labors to live from their present into emergent, new-generational futures.
- Published
- 2020
24. Leaving the future behind
- Author
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Sam Sellar and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
future ,education ,Education theory ,media_common.quotation_subject ,05 social sciences ,0507 social and economic geography ,050301 education ,Pessimism ,optimism ,Education ,Educational research ,Optimism ,Framing (social sciences) ,affect ,disaster ,Criticism ,Sociology ,Positive economics ,Philosophy of education ,Natural disaster ,050703 geography ,0503 education ,thought ,media_common - Abstract
This article puts forward the provocation that optimism has become a trap for educational research. It is argued that optimism underpins the implicit model of modern educational thought, which is oriented toward the future and wants it to be better. However, optimism can become a trap when it encourages investment in promises about the benefits of education that cannot be realized for all. As more and more people invest in education to ‘get ahead’ their optimism contributes to decreasing the value of credentials and thus undermines the promised benefits. Educational researchers contribute to this bind because the dominant model of modern educational thought is inherently optimistic. However, pessimism offers an inherently unpromising alternative. In a time of economic, environmental, and technological disruption, this article the concept of disaster might provoke lines of thought that go beyond the alternative between optimism or pessimism. The writings of Lauren Berlant, Maurice Blanchot, and Gilles Deleuze provide the theoretical framing for the argument. The article concludes that if optimism has lured educational thought and research into a trap, then it may be time to give up on ‘the future’ in order to get out. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2016
25. Access to languages other than English in Australian universities: an educational pipeline of privilege
- Author
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Tebeje Molla, Andrew Harvey, Sam Sellar, Molla, Tebeje, Harvey, Andrew, and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
inequality ,Higher education ,Intercultural competence ,business.industry ,05 social sciences ,Foreign language ,Australia ,050301 education ,Context (language use) ,globalisation ,language learning ,Education ,Disadvantaged ,Political science ,higher education ,0502 economics and business ,Pedagogy ,Language proficiency ,business ,0503 education ,Curriculum ,Cultural competence ,050203 business & management ,policy - Abstract
© 2018, © 2018 HERDSA. This article explores factors contributing to unequal patterns of access to languages other than English (LOTE) in Australian universities. A critical analysis of qualitative and quantitative data generated through interviews, surveys and document analysis reveals that underrepresentation in LOTE courses in Australian universities is attributable to: (a) unequal access to LOTE learning areas at the school level; (b) low tertiary entrance scores that do not grant access to elite universities that offer broad LOTE course options; (c) differential prior international learning experiences that inform dispositions towards intercultural competence, including proficiency in LOTE; and (d) limited provision of LOTE courses in regional university campuses. We conclude that access to foreign language courses in Australian universities is not equitable, and in the context of globalisation opportunities, this poses a risk of reproducing social disadvantage alongside other structural factors such as socio-economic status and regional background.
- Published
- 2018
26. PISA for Schools: Topological Rationality and New Spaces of the OECD’s Global Educational Governance
- Author
-
Steven Lewis, Bob Lingard, Sam Sellar, Lewis, Steven, Sellar, Sam, and Lingard, Bob
- Subjects
education work ,Corporate governance ,05 social sciences ,PISA ,050301 education ,Rationality ,Topology ,0506 political science ,Education ,Test (assessment) ,Globalization ,Work (electrical) ,OECDs ,050602 political science & public administration ,educational practices ,Achievement test ,Sociology ,Comparative education ,0503 education ,Global education - Abstract
This article examines the OECD’s new PISA-based Test for Schools (“PISA for Schools”) program. PISA for Schools is part of the expanding education work of the OECD, building upon main PISA to enable school-to-schooling system comparisons. We examine the development of PISA for Schools, the nature of the instrument, and some initial effects of its introduction. Our theoretical framework focuses on new spatialities associated with globalization and the emergence of topological rationalities and heterarchical modes of governance. We analyze 33 interviews with personnel at the OECD and relevant edubusinesses, not-for-profit organizations, and philanthropic foundations. Pertinent documents and web-based media are also analyzed. We suggest that PISA for Schools provides an exemplary demonstration of heterarchical governance, in which vertical policy mechanisms open up horizontal spaces for new policy actors. It also creates commensurate spaces of comparison and governance, enabling the OECD to “reach into” school-level spaces and directly influence local educational practices Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2016
27. International large-scale assessments, affective worlds and policy impacts in education
- Author
-
Bob Lingard, Sam Sellar, Sellar, Sam, and Lingard, Bob
- Subjects
business.industry ,05 social sciences ,0507 social and economic geography ,PISA ,050301 education ,globalisation ,Affect (psychology) ,Education & Educational Research ,Education ,Globalization ,Politics ,data ,affect ,Scale (social sciences) ,OECD ,National Policy ,Cross-cultural ,Narrative ,Social science ,business ,050703 geography ,0503 education ,Mass media - Abstract
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This paper examines the impact of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in two national policy contexts: Canada and Australia. Drawing on theories of globalisation and affect, the paper explores ‘catalyst data’ and its effects in these contexts to show how affective responses to mediations of PISA performance have become important levers for policy change. Two empirical cases of the role of data in the globalisation of schooling are discussed. The first case examines responses in Canada to the PISA 2012 results, which generated senses of anxiety among parents that coalesced into a view that Albertan schools faced a mathematics crisis. The second case interrogates how, since PISA 2009, a narrative about the declining quality of Australian schooling has become dominant in political discourse and in media representations. The paper compares and contrasts the affective effects of data across both contexts.
- Published
- 2018
28. Datafication, testing events and the outside of thought
- Author
-
Greg Thompson, Sam Sellar, Thompson, Greg, and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
educational testing ,Educational data ,050801 communication & media studies ,Standardized test ,Education ,information ,0508 media and communications ,Argument ,Evaluation methods ,Media Technology ,Sociology ,Data collection ,Datafication ,business.industry ,05 social sciences ,Educational technology ,050301 education ,the outside ,Deleuze ,Education & Educational Research ,Epistemology ,Educational testing ,data ,technology ,business ,0503 education - Abstract
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Education is undergoing various transformations due to new data-driven educational technologies and the management of educational data through data infrastructures. These technologies are frequently promoted to parents and the profession as being ‘revolutionary’ because they represent a new generation of learning. While computer adaptive tests may arguably improve various efficiencies, the argument that they will revolutionise education requires evaluation. In this paper we draw on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to theorise (a) the desire for data amongst policymakers and (b) the effects of data infrastructures as systems that coordinate educational thought. We argue that, rather than revolutionising learning as promised, datafication in computer-based modes merely offers more intense expressions of longstanding possibilities for learning. We describe three types of events—breaks, cracks and ruptures—and argue that data-events translate cracks (imperceptible changes that constitute learning) into breaks (information), but either cannot generate rupture (difference) or represent rupture as error. However, the intensification of learning through datafication may, we suggest, rupture educational thought more broadly.
- Published
- 2018
29. Teachers' and school leaders' perceptions of commercialisation in Australian public schools
- Author
-
Greg Thompson, Bob Lingard, Sam Sellar, Anna Hogan, Hogan, Anna, Thompson, Greg, Sellar, Sam, and Lingard, Bob
- Subjects
Australia policy ,media_common.quotation_subject ,principals ,Exploratory research ,Commercialization ,Education ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Goods and services ,Political science ,Pedagogy ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,Digital learning ,Remedial education ,Curriculum ,media_common ,teachers ,business.industry ,05 social sciences ,Professional development ,commercialisation ,Australia ,050301 education ,030229 sport sciences ,Public relations ,public schooling ,Education & Educational Research ,business ,0503 education ,Autonomy ,policy - Abstract
© 2017, The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc. This paper explores teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of commercialisation in Australian public schools, reporting on findings from an open-ended survey question from an exploratory study that sought to investigate teacher and school leader perceptions and experiences of commercialisation. Commercialisation, for the purposes of this paper, is understood as the creation, marketing and sale of education goods and services to schools by for-profit providers and often includes (but is not limited to) the provision of curriculum content, assessment services, data infrastructures, digital learning, remedial instruction, professional development and school administration support. Our account highlights that commercialisation is prevalent in the day-to-day practice of Australian public schools. The perceptions of teachers and leaders suggest that commercialisation is complex, with both affordances and challenges. Respondents acknowledged that aspects of commercialisation are necessary for successfully running schools and classrooms in the 21st century, but also noted that there is a fine line beyond which these seemingly innocuous services become perilous. Concerns focused on how particular services are leading to the deprofessionalisation of teachers as they have less autonomy over what to teach and how to teach it. Moreover, teachers and school leaders reported being perturbed by the idea that commercial providers and services might work to replace teachers in the future. Drawing on these data we argue that growing commercialisation in Australian public schools clearly requires an ethical debate that schools, education professionals, policy makers and interested publics are yet to have.
- Published
- 2018
30. Accelerationism: a timely provocation for the critical sociology of education
- Author
-
David R. Cole, Sam Sellar, Sellar, Sam, and Cole, David R
- Subjects
capital ,Sociology and Political Science ,0507 social and economic geography ,Temporality ,Education ,Politics ,Sociology ,Social science ,time ,algorithm ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,acceleration ,Capitalism ,Education & Educational Research ,data ,Critical theory ,Social system ,technology ,Criticism ,Engineering ethics ,Sociology of Education ,050703 geography ,0503 education ,Social theory - Abstract
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Accelerationism is a theoretical movement that seeks to mobilise reason and technological development as a strategy for moving beyond capitalism. The first wave of accelerationism took the effects of capitalism at their most pernicious and suggested that they have not gone far enough. More recent work has complicated this project and explored political, epistemic and aesthetic accelerations. The central push to accelerate, and therefore to manifestly alter time, has consequences in terms of how one understands temporality in education. This article outlines the development of accelerationism and examines whether this theoretical movement can aid critical analysis of the growing presence in education of commercial technology providers, new modes of data analytics, and the application of machine learning algorithms to analyse data. These developments provide a useful example in relation to which a critical question can be asked: is it possible to accelerate technological development in education separate from its capitalist development?
- Published
- 2017
31. The global education race: taking the measure of PISA and international testing
- Author
-
Sellar, Sam, Thompson, Greg, and Rutkowski, David
- Subjects
education ,PISA ,international testing - Published
- 2017
32. Making network markets in education: the development of data infrastructure in Australian schooling
- Author
-
Sam Sellar and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
education policy ,Focus (computing) ,4. Education ,05 social sciences ,Interoperability ,0507 social and economic geography ,050301 education ,interoperability ,infrastructure ,Education & Educational Research ,Education ,data ,markets ,Economics ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,standards ,Cross-domain interoperability ,Education policy ,Marketing ,050703 geography ,0503 education - Abstract
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This paper examines the development of data infrastructure in Australian schooling with a specific focus on interoperability standards that help to make new markets for education data. The conceptual framework combines insights from studies of infrastructure, economic markets and digital data. The case of the Australian National Schools Interoperability Program is analysed, drawing on a corpus of web-based technical and promotional documents and supporting interviews. The paper shows that Australia has well-developed data infrastructure in schooling that is creating new relations between schools, school systems and commercial vendors within network markets for data-driven educational technologies.
- Published
- 2017
33. Transparency and Opacity: Levinasian Reflections on Accountability in Australian Schooling
- Author
-
Sam Sellar and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
Perspective (graphical) ,other ,Education & Educational Research ,Transparency (behavior) ,Education ,Politics ,accountability ,History and Philosophy of Science ,Argument ,Law ,Accountability ,Sociology ,My School ,Comparative education ,Philosophy of education ,Relation (history of concept) ,Levinas ,Law and economics - Abstract
This article draws on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to consider, from an ethical perspective, the current transparency and accountability agenda in Australian schooling. It focuses on the case of the My School website and the argument that transparent publication of comparative performance data via the website provides a basis for making things better in schooling. The article argues that while technologies of accountability may have potential benefits, they cannot provide a basis for this ethical project. Instead, the ethical experience described by Levinas arises from an encounter with opacity in the face-to-face relation with the Other, who is harshly illuminated by the transparency promised through calculation and comparison. Such encounters with opacity hold the potential to disrupt the politics of visibility promoted by transparency agendas and provide an alternative to the growing practice of 'accountability at a distance' based on performance data. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2013
34. Commercialising comparison: Pearson puts the TLC in soft capitalism
- Author
-
Bob Lingard, Anna Hogan, Sam Sellar, Hogan, Anna, Sellar, Sam, and Lingard, Bob
- Subjects
Pearson ,Education ,network ethnography ,0504 sociology ,Global network ,Sociology ,Education policy ,business.industry ,05 social sciences ,neo-social ,050401 social sciences methods ,050301 education ,Public relations ,Policy analysis ,Education & Educational Research ,accountability ,data ,comparison ,Accountability ,Corporate social responsibility ,Strategic management ,Comparative education ,business ,0503 education ,Social responsibility ,policy - Abstract
This paper provides a critical policy analysis of The Learning Curve (TLC) (2012), an initiative developed by the multinational edu-business, Pearson, in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit. TLC exemplifies the commercialising of comparison and the efforts of edu-businesses to strategically position themselves in education policy processes globally. In analysing TLC, our account seeks to proffer a critical analysis of this emerging policy genre, and the way it functions as part of the new 'soft capitalism'. We analyse TLC in relation to Pearson's new business strategy, which emphasises corporate social responsibility and accountability to consumers for the efficacy of its products and services. We argue that Pearson is now generating and appropriating various data to legitimise its products and services according to a 'neo-social' mode of accountability. Network ethnography is employed to document the global networks of both people and data associated with TLC and we reflect on the emergence of Pearson as a potential education policy actor. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2016
35. Argumentation in educational policy disputes: competing visions of quality and equity
- Author
-
Sam Sellar, Bob Lingard, Dorothea Anagnostopoulos, Anagnostopoulos, Dorothea, Lingard, Bob, and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
Educational equity ,Vision ,Equity (economics) ,business.industry ,05 social sciences ,050301 education ,Standardized test ,Public relations ,Education & Educational Research ,0506 political science ,Education ,Argumentation theory ,educational policy ,Accountability ,050602 political science & public administration ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,Achievement test ,Sociology ,business ,0503 education ,News media - Abstract
© 2016, Copyright © The College of Education and Human Ecology, The Ohio State University. Current debates about test-based accountability policies revolve around questions of how to ensure that all students have access to high-quality schools and teachers. Whether and how one can meet this goal depend, in part, on the nature of the arguments that policy proponents and opponents mobilize in these debates. This article examines these arguments, focusing specifically on how policymakers and educators justify and critique prominent test-based accountability policies, the OECD's PISA, and enhanced teacher evaluation. Drawing on pragmatic sociology and our research on these policies, we show how policy proponents mobilize industrial, market, and civic arguments to define both quality and equity as the efficient production of standardized test scores. In contrast, educators more often employ civic and domestic arguments that expand the definition of educational quality, but do not engage issues of educational equity. We explore how educators can mobilize arguments and the news media to expand the definition of educational quality and equity to enrich both our vision of education and our debates about it.
- Published
- 2016
36. A feel for numbers: affect, data and education policy
- Author
-
Sam Sellar and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
education policy ,commensuration ,topology ,business.industry ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Corporate governance ,PISA ,Public relations ,Policy analysis ,Affect (psychology) ,Education & Educational Research ,Education ,Feeling ,data ,affect ,Accountability ,Sanctions ,Education policy ,Psychology ,business ,media_common ,Social theory - Abstract
This article explores the relationship between commensuration and affect in various contexts of education policy. Commensuration is the process through which disparate qualities are transformed into a common metric and is central to the production of performance data. The rise of governance through numbers in education has resulted in a proliferation of performance data, comparisons and rankings that influence political debate and policymaking. The efficacy of data as a governance mechanism depends on their usage to shift perceptions of performance, and this involves both conscious interpretation and affective sense-making of data and their representation in multiple forms. For example, performance data used within accountability systems in education are linked to sanctions and rewards, and their effects are partially due to the feelings that are provoked. The relationship between affect and data is also important in the mobility of policy ideas, which spread via meetings that enable affective proximity between participants. This article draws on a philosophical concept of affect, defined as the feeling of transition in bodily states, and topological concepts that are being taken up in social theory, to consider new perspectives on education policy research that these thinking tools may afford. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2015
37. 'Unleashing aspiration': the concept of potential in education policy
- Author
-
Sam Sellar and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
education policy ,Economic growth ,Equity (economics) ,potential ,Higher education ,aspiration ,business.industry ,Knowledge economy ,Educational psychology ,Public relations ,computer.software_genre ,Social mobility ,Human capital ,Education & Educational Research ,Education ,affect ,Educational assessment ,human capital ,Sociology ,Education policy ,business ,computer ,opportunity bargain - Abstract
This paper examines the promises made in education policy regarding people's future education, employment and social mobility. Specifically, the paper analyses how the term 'potential' functions in education policy texts and discourses to make tacit promises at an affective level. Contemporary education policies often invoke the need to realise personal and national economic potential, and speak of the risk of 'wasted potential', when justifying reform agendas directed at both increasing human capital investment and reducing educational inequity. Drawing on the work of Gilles Deleuze, the paper develops a philosophical concept of potential that provides a theoretical framework for the analysis. The aim of the paper is to analyse how the term 'potential' functions in policy to: (a) couple economic and equity purposes for education; and (b) imply a relationship between talent, opportunity and aspiration, and particular a distribution of responsibility between governments and citizens for 'realising potential'. While primarily theoretical, the paper is informed by analyses of interview data and documents in two research projects: (1) a small pilot study of higher education equity policy in England and Australia since the mid-1990s and (2) a study of the expansion of human capital theory and large-scale educational assessments to include non-cognitive skills. The paper diagnoses the potential of 'potential' as a key word in policy and raises questions about the risks of becoming invested in the promises of education to 'realise potential'. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2015
38. Researching the habitus of global policy actors in education
- Author
-
Aspa Baroutsis, Sam Sellar, Bob Lingard, Lingard, Bob, Sellar, Sam, and Baroutsis, Aspa
- Subjects
Semi-structured interview ,commensuration ,Field (Bourdieu) ,policy technicians ,global field ,Cultural capital ,Education & Educational Research ,Education ,Content analysis ,Argument ,Pedagogy ,Habitus ,policy-makers ,Sociology ,Global education ,Social capital ,habitus - Abstract
This paper reprises the argument for the emergence of a global education policy field and then focuses on the shared habitus of global and national policy actors and technicians. It is argued that this shared habitus is constituted as a reflection of and a contribution to the creation of the global education policy field. Bourdieu's approach to habitus as both methodological tool and concept is used and the significance of the interview encounter to understanding habitus is argued. The authors also draw on the content of interviews with five elite policy-makers and technicians. It was found that the policy actors and technicians shared a similar middle-class embodied habitus; in terms of schemes of perception, they identified with a high-modernist confidence in both science and technology; they identified with a cosmopolitan outlook and sensibility; and demonstrated scientistic approaches that held real confidence in understanding the social through quantitative social science methods. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2015
39. Texturing space-times in the Australian curriculum: cross-curriculum priorities
- Author
-
Sam Sellar, David Peacock, Robert Lingard, Peacock, David, Lingard, Robert, and Sellar, Sam
- Subjects
curriculum development ,business.industry ,Australian Curriculum ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Neoliberalism ,Curriculum studies ,Public relations ,Education & Educational Research ,Indigenous ,Literacy ,Education ,educational policy ,curriculum studies ,critical theory ,Pedagogy ,Curriculum development ,Pacific islanders ,Sociology ,business ,Curriculum ,media_common - Abstract
The Australian curriculum, as a policy imagining what learning should take place in schools, and what that learning should achieve, involves the imagining and rescaling of social relations amongst students, their schools, the nation-state and the globe. Following David Harvey's theorisations of space-time and Norman Fairclough's operationalisation of these theories in the texturing of spatio-temporalities within policy texts, we seek to critically explore the cross-curriculum priorities of the Australian curriculum. These priorities - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, Asia and Australia's Engagement with Asia, and sustainability - collectively provide a futures orientation to the curriculum. They also mediate and assemble conflicting spatio-temporalities, aligning the purposes of Australian schooling with an instrumentalist concern for Asia literacy, whilst simultaneously recasting the space-times of neoliberal capitalism within sustainable social, cultural and environmental constraints. We suggest these conflicting space-time constructions come to an uneasy resolution with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures priority, where Indigenous peoples are represented as anchoring a reconciled nation-state in a particular place, while it is re-mapped within an Asian economic region. Such curricula constructions potentially diminish student recognition of Indigenous peoples' ongoing struggles for self-determination and steer student knowledge of Asia towards the acquisition of a set of skills to exploit future economic opportunity. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2015
40. Educating for futures in marginalized regions: a sociological framework for rethinking and researching aspirations
- Author
-
Sam Sellar, Lew Zipin, Marie Brennan, Trevor Gale, Zipin, Lew, Sellar, Sam, Brennan, Marie, and Gale, Trevor
- Subjects
community study ,Education theory ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Bourdieu ,funds of knowledge ,Cultural capital ,Human capital ,Education & Educational Research ,Education ,Globalization ,History and Philosophy of Science ,aspirations ,Political economy ,Habitus ,curriculum and pedagogy ,Sociology ,Ideology ,Social science ,Sociology of Education ,appadurai ,Social theory ,media_common - Abstract
'Raising aspirations' for education among young people in low socioeconomic regions has become a widespread policy prescription for increasing human capital investment and economic competitiveness in so-called 'knowledge economies'. However, policy tends not to address difficult social, cultural, economic and political conditions for aspiring, based in structural changes associated with globalization. Drawing conceptually on the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams, Arjun Appadurai and authors in the Funds of Knowledge tradition, this article theorizes two logics for aspiring that are recognizable in research with young people and families: a doxic logic, grounded in populist-ideological mediations; and a habituated logic, grounded in biographic-historical legacies and embodied as habitus. A less tangible third 'logic' is also theorized: emergent senses of future potential, grounded in lived cultures, which hold possibility for imagining and pursuing alternative futures. The article offers a sociological framework for understanding aspirations as complex social-cultural phenomena, and for capacitating emergent and hopeful aspirations through school- and community-based research and dialogue. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2015
41. Appreciating aspirations in Australian higher education
- Author
-
Stephen Parker, Trevor Gale, Sam Sellar, Sellar, Sam R, Gale, Trevor C, and Parker, Stephen M
- Subjects
Government ,Economic growth ,student equity ,Equity (economics) ,Higher education ,aspiration ,business.industry ,Knowledge economy ,widening participation ,Human capital ,Education ,Social integration ,higher education ,Position (finance) ,Sociology ,business ,Futures contract ,policy - Abstract
Aspiration for higher education (HE) is no longer a matter solely for students and their families. With OECD nations seeking to position themselves more competitively in the global knowledge economy, the need for more knowledge workers has led to plans to expand their HE systems to near universal levels. In Australia, this has required the government and institutions to enlist students who traditionally have not seen university as contributing to their imagined and desired futures. However, this paper suggests that failing to appreciate the aspirations of different groups, understood as a collective cultural capacity, casts doubt over the ability of institutions to deliver increased numbers of knowledge workers. Moreover, inciting subscription to the current norms of HE is a weak form of social inclusion. Stronger forms of equity strategy are possible when HE is repositioned as a resource for different groups and communities to access in the pursuit of their aspirations. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2011
42. The responsible uncertainty of pedagogy
- Author
-
Sam Sellar and Sellar, Sam Richard
- Subjects
Linguistics and Language ,Theory building ,pedagogy ,Teaching method ,Context (language use) ,emotions ,Object (philosophy) ,Education ,teacher ethics ,affect ,Pedagogy ,Affect (linguistics) ,Sociology ,relationships ,Affective dimension ,Empiricism ,Social Sciences (miscellaneous) - Abstract
In our current moment there is a resurgence of interest in pedagogy as an object of research and policy. In this context the Redesigning Pedagogies in the North (RPiN) project sought to improve educational outcomes for students from low-socioeconomic status communities by researching teachers' efforts to develop more connected pedagogies. However, difficulties were encountered during collaborative theory building with teachers. Except for repeated suggestions that pedagogy is 'all about relationships', teachers struggled to develop theoretical accounts of their practice. Using data obtained within the RPiN project, I draw on Massumi's (2002) notion of expanded empiricism and Bauman's (1995) concept of being-for the other to analyze this difficulty. I argue that the condition for pedagogy becoming an ethical experience inheres in an affective dimension of the teacher-student relationship that cannot be translated into a stable object of discursive knowledge. However, this condition is substantive and requires further attention in research and policy. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2009
43. Pedagogies of critique: struggling with what and how to think
- Author
-
Trevor Gale, Sam Sellar, Sellar, Sam Richard, and Gale, Trevor Charles
- Subjects
Cultural Studies ,Pedagogy ,Media studies ,Sociology ,Education - Abstract
edited by Peter McLaren and Joe Kincheloe, New York, Peter Lang, 2007, 411 pp., $44.95 (paperback), ISBN 978‐0‐8204‐8147‐0 One of the enduring issues in schooling is the way in which it reproduces ...
- Published
- 2009
44. Redesigning pedagogies in middle-years classrooms : challenges for teachers working with disadvantaged students
- Author
-
Sam Sellar, Phil Cormack, Sellar, Sam Richard, and Cormack, Phillip
- Subjects
Cultural Studies ,Vocabulary ,middle-years ,pedagogy ,Heuristic ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Education ,Disadvantaged ,Educational research ,Work (electrical) ,Pedagogy ,ComputingMilieux_COMPUTERSANDEDUCATION ,teachers' work ,collaborative research ,Sociology ,media_common - Abstract
This paper describes a heuristic framework developed to provide a common vocabulary with which to discuss pedagogy within a collaborative university-school research team studying pedagogical redesign in middle-years classrooms (Years 6-9) serving disadvantaged students. The framework was developed in response to discussions about teaching in such settings, during which teacher talk about pedagogy emphasised 'relationships' with students and left the detail of such relationships relatively opaque. In response, the pedagogical processes described in this framework have been developed to provide a vocabulary with which researchers and teachers can talk to each other - with increased conceptual purchase - about pedagogy at the micro-scale of relational interaction between student, teacher and the knowledge they together produce. The use of this framework to analyse teachers' descriptions of their work is suggestive of reasons why difficulties were encountered when trying to talk explicitly about pedagogy with teachers, and of productive pathways for further research about pedagogies as teachers' work. This framework may also be used as a supplement to other pedagogical frames which more strongly emphasise outcomes rather than process. Refereed/Peer-reviewed
- Published
- 2009
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