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2. Refusing epigenetics: indigeneity and the colonial politics of trauma.
- Author
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Keaney J, Byrne H, Warin M, and Kowal E
- Subjects
- Humans, Anthropology, Cultural, Australia, Colonialism, Epigenomics, Politics, Indigenous Peoples
- Abstract
Environmental epigenetics is increasingly employed to understand the health outcomes of communities who have experienced historical trauma and structural violence. Epigenetics provides a way to think about traumatic events and sustained deprivation as biological "exposures" that contribute to ill-health across generations. In Australia, some Indigenous researchers and clinicians are embracing epigenetic science as a framework for theorising the slow violence of colonialism as it plays out in intergenerational legacies of trauma and illness. However, there is dispute, contention, and caution as well as enthusiasm among these research communities.In this article, we trace strategies of "refusal" (Simpson, 2014) in response to epigenetics in Indigenous contexts. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Australia with researchers and clinicians in Indigenous health, we explore how some construct epigenetics as useless knowledge and a distraction from implementing anti-colonial change, rather than a tool with which to enact change. Secondly, we explore how epigenetics narrows definitions of colonial harm through the optic of molecular trauma, reproducing conditions in which Indigenous people are made intelligible through a lens of "damaged" bodies. Faced with these two concerns, many turn away from epigenetics altogether, refusing its novelty and supposed benefit for Indigenous health equity and resisting the pull of postgenomics., (© 2023. Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)
- Published
- 2023
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3. PC: Philosophical Criticism or Petty Carping?
- Author
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Davison, Trevor
- Abstract
This paper presents two central themes: (1) communicative symbols teachers use are often inextricably linked with their personal politics; and (2) the present media obsession with "political correctness" (PC) offers a valuable opportunity for teachers to critically evaluate their practices and reflect on their own values, beliefs, assumptions, and ways of interpreting the world and acting in and on it. The paper examines the "political correctness" debate and offers an analytical continuum to suggest that much of this debate swings between philosophical criticism and "petty carping." Examples from the politically correct lexicon are analyzed with the researcher demonstrating much that is laudable in the PC debate, yet suggesting a philosophical and educational void in some areas of that same debate. The study focuses on particular implications of the debate for self-reflective teaching practice as a means for evaluation and improvement of teaching. (EH)
- Published
- 1994
4. Reflections on How Education Can Be for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century
- Author
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Aly, Anne, Blackmore, Jill, Bright, David, Hayes, Debra, Heffernan, Amanda, Lingard, Bob, Riddle, Stewart, Takayama, Keita, and Youdell, Deborah
- Abstract
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.
- Published
- 2022
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5. Demanding Dialogue in an Unsettled Settler State: Implications for Education and Justice
- Author
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Rudolph, Sophie
- Abstract
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the educational impulses and effects of Indigenous dialogue with the settler colonial state. Taking the "Uluru Statement from the Heart," devised in May 2017 by a convention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as a starting point, and contrasting this with the 1967 Referendum campaign for constitutional reform, the paper explores the role of multiple forms and contexts of education during these processes of First Nations dialogue with the settler state. Design/methodology/approach: This paper draws on historical accounts of the 1967 Referendum and the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart. Findings: The paper demonstrates how education provided by the state has been used by First Nations peoples to challenge education systems and to dialogue with the settler state for Indigenous recognition and rights. It also illuminates the range of views on what education is and should be, therefore, contesting the neat and settled conceptions of education that can dominate policy discourse. Finally the historical cases show the deficiencies of settler state education through its failure to truthfully represent Australian history and its failure to acknowledge and confront the entirety of the consequences of settler colonial practices. Originality/value: This paper seeks to bring issues of education, politics and justice together to illustrate how the settler state and its institutions -- specifically here, education -- are part of an ongoing project of negotiation, contestation and dialogue over questions of justice.
- Published
- 2021
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6. "Now we say Black Lives Matter but … the fact of the matter is, we just Black matter to them".
- Author
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Bond CJ, Whop LJ, Singh D, and Kajlich H
- Subjects
- Australia, Humans, Racism, Health Services, Indigenous, Healthcare Disparities, Politics, Social Justice
- Published
- 2020
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7. National Gender Equity and Schooling Policy in Australia: Struggles for a Non-Identitarian Feminist Politics
- Author
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Keddie, Amanda
- Abstract
This paper tracks the development of gender equity and schooling policy in Australia from the "National Policy on the Education of Girls in 1987", to current policy concerns with boys' educational underperformance. The paper's key focus is on the ways in which feminist informed equity policy has been undermined by broader imperatives of economic rationalism and anti-feminist discourses. Drawing on Nancy Fraser's understandings of distributive and cultural gender justice and her notion of a non-identitarian feminist politics, the paper critically examines the ways in which such imperatives have re-articulated equity and schooling concerns. Through these lenses, the limitations of the affirmative gender binary politics and remedies that have dominated gender and schooling reform in Australia are highlighted. The paper concludes with an illumination of the gender justice spaces currently being mobilised in Australian schools. Such spaces, it is argued, fostered within a context of increasing autonomy and self-management for schools, are providing avenues for creative and disruptive (pro)feminist activism. (Contains 2 endnotes.)
- Published
- 2009
8. Some Proposals for Change to the Role of the Catholic Sector in the Australian School Funding Policy Process
- Author
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Furtado, Michael
- Abstract
This paper is set against a history of school funding policies in Australia that begins with the first public policy recognition of the disadvantages experienced by government and non-government schools in the 1973 Schools in Australia (Karmel) Report. The paper traces a history of school funding policy linking it with the current backlash against public education and retaliatory backlash constructions of public schools as the new disadvantaged in an increasingly competitive and deregulated school funding policy environment. These backlashes, argued to be against the indiscriminate funding of independent schools policy by several protagonists of public education, are framed in terms equivalent to what Lingard and Douglas (1999) have called "recuperative" politics. From the kind of recuperative statist politics considered in this paper, construing the backlash effects of public and private schools as damaging and unproductive as those emerging from the gender wars in education policy, I propose a move to an Australian school funding arrangement in which all schools, both public and private, are integrated into one deregulated and equally funded sector, as typify diverse school provisions in several OECD polities (Caldwell 2004, FitzGerald 2004). While briefly tracing a school funding policy chronology, this paper also concentrates on the current policy moment in relation to school funding, that signals the end of distinctive public and private education sectors, and in the context of which it argues that private schools should be funded equally to state schools, a trend in evidence since 1996. The focus on the current policy moment entails an abbreviated analysis of the Fitzgerald Report ("Governments Working Together: A Better Future for All Australians" 2004), which makes a number of recommendations to the Victorian and other governments in relation to the public funding of all Australian schools. The paper addresses the impact of this trend especially on the funding of Australian Catholic schools. (Contains 4 endnotes.)
- Published
- 2006
9. Towards a Theory and Practice of Policy Engagement: Higher Education Research Policy in the Making
- Author
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Gale, Trevor
- Abstract
Academic engagement with higher education research policy in Australia, and with education policy more generally, is in crisis. This time around, it is not just that our theoretical tools are blunt and irrelevant (Ball 1990), so are our politics. It seems our attention has been so consumed by "what is policy" (Ball 1994a) and with challenging its claims to authority, that we have missed or ignored imperatives to engage with its production. Even though some have attempted contributions, for the most part we have been "coerced into an era of cooperation". Getting ourselves out of this mess will take more than just better theories and new politics. It will require a degree of cooperation, to advance a theory and practice of policy engagement and to re-establish a field of education that resists the tendency to fragment and/or the temptation to defend itself "against" policy. In this paper I attempt an assessment of where we are theoretically and politically with regard to education policy and where we need to look to find new forms of policy engagement. By way of illustration, I draw on examples from AARE (the Australian Association for Research in Education) and the Australian RQF (Research Quality Framework) although the analysis is by no means restricted to these.
- Published
- 2006
10. 'Every single minute and hour is scrutinised': neoliberalism and Australian private mental health care.
- Author
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Dawson L, River J, McCloughen A, and Buus N
- Subjects
- Adolescent, Australia, Health Personnel psychology, Humans, Mental Disorders therapy, Qualitative Research, Mental Health Recovery economics, Mental Health Services economics, Mental Health Services organization & administration, Politics, Private Sector economics, Private Sector organization & administration
- Abstract
There is little understanding of how recovery-oriented approaches fit within contemporary mental healthcare systems, which emphasise biomedical approaches to care, increased efficiency and cost-cutting. This article examines the established models of service delivery in a private, youth, mental health service and the impacts of the current system on staff. It explores whether the service is prepared or capable of adopting recovery-oriented approaches to care. Qualitative interviews were undertaken with staff and thematically analysed to understand the everyday practices on the unit. Data suggest that economic efficiencies and biomedical dominance largely shaped how health care was organised and delivered, which was perceived by staff as inflexible to change. Additionally, findings suggest that market-oriented principles associated with neoliberalism restricted the capacity of individuals to transform services in line with alternative models of care and lowered staff morale. These finding suggest that, while neoliberal ideologies and biomedical approaches remain dominant in organisations, there will be challenges to adopting alternative recovery-oriented models of care and promoting healthcare systems that understand mental health issues in broader socio-political contexts and can flexibly respond to the needs of service users., (© 2019 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness.)
- Published
- 2020
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11. Unpacking the relationship between religiosity and conspiracy beliefs in Australia.
- Author
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Jasinskaja-Lahti I and Jetten J
- Subjects
- Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Australia, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Young Adult, Politics, Religion and Psychology, Social Perception, Thinking, Trust
- Abstract
We examined the interrelation between religiosity, anti-intellectualism, and political mistrust in predicting belief in conspiracy theories. Improving on previous psychological research on the link between religiosity and societal and political attitudes, we assessed the predictive power of religious self-categorization and the importance attached to one's own (non)religious worldview predicting belief in conspiracy theories separately. Applying quota sampling in a study in Australia (N = 515), the sample consisted of 48.9% believers (i.e., those who self-categorized as religious persons) and 51.1% non-believers (i.e., those who self-categorized as non-religious persons). The results showed that believers and non-believers did not differ in the belief in conspiracy theories. Unpacking this further though, we did find that the extent to which religious worldviews were endorsed predicted belief in conspiracy theories. Among believers, the importance attached to their religious worldview was directly associated with higher belief in conspiracy theories and this link was partly mediated by higher anti-intellectualism. Political trust, in turn, served as an inhibitor of the link between religiosity and conspiracy beliefs. Among non-believers, there was no direct association between the importance of non-religious worldview and belief in conspiracy theories. However, we found that higher trust in political institutions accounted for the negative association between non-religious worldview and lower belief in conspiracy theories. The results underline the importance of distinguishing religiosity as a self-categorization and religiosity as a worldview. We find that it is not the self-categorization as religious, but the extent to which religious worldviews are endorsed that could predict people's beliefs in conspiracy theories., (© 2019 The British Psychological Society.)
- Published
- 2019
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12. Climate change and health promotion in Australia: Navigating political, policy, advocacy and research challenges.
- Author
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Patrick R, Armstrong F, Hancock T, Capon A, and Smith JA
- Subjects
- Australia, Environment, Humans, Climate Change, Health Policy, Health Promotion organization & administration, Politics, Research organization & administration
- Published
- 2019
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13. Exploring Politics in Education: Some Barriers and Some Theoretical Considerations.
- Author
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Harman, Grant
- Abstract
Many members of the educational community today believe that political pressures have a major effect on education policy and institutions. This paper discusses four barriers that impede teachers and administrators who must cope with these new political pressures. The four barriers include the problem of meanings and definitions, the lack of perspective due to frustration over meanings, doubts about systematic investigation of political processes and behavior in education, and a sense of professional powerlessness among educators. The discussion draws from research in political science and sociology and from work by scholars in the area of the politics of education. The latter includes results from a team project concerned with exploring the education policy process at the state level in Australia and the United States. The paper concludes that the four barriers can be overcome: (1) by making meanings clearer; (2) by understanding how political and educational processes are interrelated; (3) by accepting the possibility of systematic exploration of political phenomena; and (4) by recognizing the critical role of professional expertise. (Author/LD)
- Published
- 1980
14. Dogma before Diversity: The Contradictory Rhetoric of Controversy and Diversity in the Politicisation of Australian Queer-Affirming Learning Materials
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Shannon, Barrie and Smith, Stephen J.
- Abstract
This paper discusses contradictory imperatives in contemporary Australian pedagogy--the notions of "controversy" and "diversity" as they relate the subjects of genders and sexualities. It is a common view that both gender and sexuality are important organising features of identity, society and politics. Consistent effort is made in the Australian educational context to combat discrimination, prejudice against sexually, and gender 'diverse' people. However, the state's commitment to diversity policies must be balanced with a secondary focus on appeasing those who are hostile to non-heteronormative expression, or who view such expression as inherently "political" in nature and therefore inappropriate for the school setting. Australia has arguably demonstrated this dilemma recently in two notable controversies: an intervention in planned school screenings of "Gayby" Baby, a documentary exploring the experience of children in same-sex families, and media furore over the trans-positive "All of Us" teaching kit. Using these case studies, this paper explores the competing imperatives of controversy and diversity, commenting on the tendency for the lives and experiences of LGBTIQ people becoming consequently politicised. To do so, is arguably detrimental to the meaningful participation of LGBTIQ people as social citizens.
- Published
- 2017
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15. Rethinking the Subject of Higher Education: Subjectivity, Normativity and Desire in Student Equity Research
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Devos, Anita
- Abstract
In this paper, I reflect on three questions arising from my recent research on student equity in higher education and gender in education. These questions relate to the goals, focus and politics of student equity research in the context of a changing higher education landscape in Australia. The paper concludes with an argument for student equity scholarship cognisant of, yet independent from prevailing policy imperatives and discourses.
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- 2012
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16. 'If someone donates $1000, they support you. If they donate $100 000, they have bought you'. Mixed methods study of tobacco, alcohol and gambling industry donations to Australian political parties.
- Author
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Kypri K, McCambridge J, Robertson N, Martino F, Daube M, Adams P, and Miller P
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- Attitude to Health, Australia, Commerce economics, Commerce ethics, Gambling prevention & control, Gambling psychology, Humans, Lobbying, Public Health, Public Policy economics, Surveys and Questionnaires, Tobacco Industry legislation & jurisprudence, Commerce legislation & jurisprudence, Gambling economics, Interprofessional Relations ethics, Politics, Public Policy legislation & jurisprudence, Tobacco Industry economics
- Abstract
Background and Aims: Business corporations' use of political donations to garner political influence is especially troubling in relation to products that damage human health. We sought to investigate patterns of donations to Australian political parties from tobacco, alcohol and gambling industry actors and the experiences of key informants., Design and Methods: We analysed public data on federal and state donations for 10 years to June 2015. We conducted 28 semi-structured interviews with current and former politicians, ex-political staffers and other key informants, concerning the role played by political donations of tobacco, alcohol and gambling companies in Australian politics. We examined temporal associations in donations data, and thematically analysed interviews., Results: Australian political parties declared donations of A$14 million (US$11 M) from tobacco ($1.9 M), alcohol ($7.7 M), gambling ($2.9 M) and supermarket ($1.7 M) entities, excluding donations below the $12 800 reporting threshold. Donations to the governing party increased substantially during debates about an alcohol tax and gambling law reform. Alcohol industry donations to major parties spiked ahead of elections. Interviewees identified the function of donations in terms of: (i) buying immediate influence; (ii) building long-term relationships; (iii) exploiting a flawed political system; and (iv) the need to look beyond donations, for example, to favour exchange; and the public's right to know about corporate influence on policy-makers., Discussion and Conclusions: The alcohol and gambling industries make substantial donations to influence particular decisions in the short term and build relationships over the long term. Banning corporate donations and publicly funding political parties warrant consideration to safeguard the integrity of public policy-making., (© 2018 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs.)
- Published
- 2019
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17. Who Is My Neighbour? Unleashing Our Postcolonial Consciousness
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Fox, Christine
- Abstract
It is all too easy to be discouraged, indeed, outraged, by the continuing state of socio-economic inequality and the fragility of "the neighbourhood" (our world) in a deteriorating, conflict-ridden environment. As educators, we struggle with the perceived lack of educational quality, relevance, and ethics of policy and practice. Education systems tend to reflect the political ideologies of the day, many of which are socially and economically divisive and hostile to equitable change. It is crucial to condemn, in the strongest manner, current racist, separatist, and discriminatory views that tend to permeate our social media space, affecting public attitudes. Comparative and international education theorists and practitioners can play a crucial role in critiquing, through the lens of critical postcolonial awareness, such socio-political constructions of society and education. The observations made in this article refer in particular to comparativists in Oceania, a region containing both large economies such as Australia, and small Pacific island states. This paper sets out an argument for "unleashing our global postcolonial consciousnesses" to effect change, acting with non-violence and empathy in an intercultural, ethical, and actionable space (Ermine, 2007; Sharma-Brymer, 2008).
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- 2016
18. 'Can Art Save the World?' The Colonial Experience and Pedagogies of Display
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Grosvenor, Ian
- Abstract
The quote in the title of this paper is taken from the first line of Marc Depaepe's article "An Agenda for the History of Colonial Education", published in "The Colonial Experience in Education" (Ghent, 1995). This presentation takes as its focus the informal learning space of the museum and the art gallery, and the emergence in recent years of curatorial activism. It seeks to explore the changing discourse and politics around addressing through display the history of colonialism and its meaning in today's globalised world.
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- 2019
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19. Managing Oppositional Masculinity Politics: The Gendering of a Government-Commissioned Research Project
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Lingard, Bob, Martino, Wayne, and Mills, Martin
- Abstract
In this paper, we draw on pro-feminist, anti-essentialist espistemological and theoretical frameworks, in conjunction with adopting autoethnographic narratives, both to provide critical insight into and contextualize the particular testimony and witnessing of our own personal involvement in the gendering of a government-commissioned research project on boys' education. The research project was undertaken in a politically volatile environment, when the "what about the boys?" debate was at its zenith in Australia. As pro-feminist men attempting to ameliorate some of the negative impacts of the boys' debate, whilst contributing to the new sociology of masculinities field, we had to negotiate a complex gender politics operating within the bureaucracy, including aligning with allies, to undertake this research in ways that remained honest to our own politics and the research evidence we collected. Our experiences and negotiation of the gendered and politicized relationships between the bureaucrats who commissioned the research and us as researchers constitute the foci of this paper. The paper demonstrates the ways in which doing research produces a "set of findings" beyond those that are the subject of the research questions. The approach adopted in the research rejected "epistemological innocence" by making evident our own "positionalities" and in so doing demonstrates the ways in which this research was socially framed, managed and contested and tells us much about the topic of the research and about the gendering of research.
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- 2013
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20. Schooling for Self-Determination through a Justice Politics of Indigenous Representation
- Author
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Keddie, Amanda
- Abstract
This paper presents data from a study of secondary school for girls, the majority of whom identify as Indigenous Australian. "Gamarada" High School is located in a suburban area of Queensland (Australia) and was established to provide quality education for disadvantaged girls. The paper draws on student and teacher interview data from a broader study that was concerned with examining how the school addressed the economic, cultural and political dimensions of Indigenous girls' disadvantage. The focus here is on issues of political justice in relation to Indigenous representation and, more specifically, how such representation at the school supports the key Indigenous equity priority of self-determination. Feminist post-colonial theories are drawn on to argue the importance of educators engaging with a politics of representation that initiates theory from the social location of Indigenous experience, reflects an anti-racist/anti-colonial agenda and recognises and values the central role relationality plays in Indigenous lives. (Contains 2 notes.)
- Published
- 2013
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21. Talkin' 'bout a Revolution: The Social, Political, and Fantasmatic Logics of Education Policy
- Author
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Clarke, Matthew
- Abstract
This paper provides a critical analysis of the Australian government's education revolution policy as promulgated in the media release document, "Quality Education: The Case for an Education Revolution in our Schools". It seeks to problematize the government's claim to marry quality and equity, via an analysis of the discursive strategies of the Australian government's revolution talk. My analysis draws on the work of political theorists Jason Glynos and David Howarth and their synthesis of key ideas from Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory into a framework of explanatory "logics." This framework provides conceptual tools for conducting critical policy analysis, including: characterizing a discursive regime on a synchronic plane; accounting for its constitution, reproduction, and/or subversion on a diachronic plane; and explaining the ways in which it grips or seduces subjects at a nonrational level. Overall, the analysis of the education revolution in this paper demonstrates the value of this framework of explanatory logics for education policy analysis, in the process shedding some new light on the Australian government's education revolution policy agenda. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table and 7 notes.)
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- 2012
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22. Policy as Numbers: Ac/Counting for Educational Research
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Lingard, Bob
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This paper provides an account and a critique of the rise of the contemporary policy as numbers phenomenon and considers its effects on policy and for educational research. Policy as numbers is located within the literatures on numbers in politics and the statistics/state relationship and, while recognising the longevity of the latter relationship, it is argued that the governance turn and neo-liberalism have strengthened the role of numbers in contemporary education policy. This phenomenon is situated in the contemporary "structure of feeling," which sees politics reduced to managing the everyday and the evisceration of a progressive imaginary. The paper then documents the impact within education, focusing both on the emergent global education policy field and on the national agenda in Australian schooling and the related rise of "gap talk," both globally and nationally. The paper concludes by drawing out some implications for educational research, suggesting that we as educational researchers are also being positioned by policy as numbers.
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- 2011
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23. Cultural Reductionism and the Media: Polarising Discourses around Schools, Violence and Masculinity in an Age of Terror
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Mills, Martin and Keddie, Amanda
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This paper provides a media analysis of three interrelated sets of newspaper articles dealing with youth, schooling and violence. Understanding the media as a dominant and powerful cultural text that creates the realities it describes, the paper takes a critical view of the 'standpoint' of recent media representations of the Cronulla (Sydney, Australia) riots, gang violence in schools, and issues of education amid broader concerns with security in an "age of terror". The paper draws attention to the polarising media discourses that demonise young Muslim men as the "other"--violent and dangerous--and advocate for "ethnic" integration of this "other" over "progressive education" or "multiculturalism". Such reductionist sociology is presented as highly problematic in its homogenising and inferiorising of minority cultures and in its silencing of particular issues imperative in understanding and addressing contemporary expressions of violence. The paper calls for a more nuanced interpretation of issues of culture and violence that, in particular, acknowledges how masculinity politics are implicated in current manifestations of violence. (Contains 2 notes.)
- Published
- 2010
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24. Bringing Cinderella to the Ball: Constructing a Federal System of Technical and Further Education in Australia, 1971-1975
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Rushbrook, Peter
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Australian vocational education has a history dating from the late eighteenth century. As Australian colonies and, later, federated states evolved each constructed its own version of vocational education provision. Generally the systems, consisting of community-based or state-controlled colleges for the training of operatives, apprenticeships and professional support personnel, were poorly resourced and lacked powerful sponsors to support and promote the education and training of their mostly working-class students. By the early 1970s Australian governments had developed commissions to supplement the funding of state-based elementary, secondary and university education systems, even though under the Australian Constitution education remained state-controlled matter. A reformist federal Labor government at the time consolidated elementary, secondary and university funding but neglected to consider, or even acknowledge, the 400,000 vocational education students not covered by these commissions. Following pressure from vocational education teacher unions, among others, the Labor government established the Australian Committee for Technical and Further Education (ACOTAFE) to address the needs of these students. At ACOTAFE's first meeting on 25 March 1973, the Minister for Education Kim E. Beazley said, "It will be a renaissance in education when technical and further education cease to be Cinderellas in education. It is the role of your committee to bring Cinderella to her rightful role as princess". ACOTAFE was to be chaired by Myer Kangan from the Department of Labour and National Service. The committee's published outcomes were referred to evermore as the iconic "Kangan Report" rather than "TAFE in Australia: Report on Needs in Technical and Further Education", its formal title. The report gave Australian vocational education a name (TAFE), a philosophy (access to all through lifelong learning) and much needed capital works and infrastructure funding. The paper will outline the circumstances leading to the formation of the committee, its work and its outcomes. Focus will be placed on the influential role of Chairman Kangan in shaping ACOTAFE's conclusions. A key theme within the paper is the intersection of biography, politics and the economy in shaping policy construction. (Contains 83 footnotes.)
- Published
- 2010
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25. Pragmatics, Politics and Moral Purpose: The Quest for an Authentic National Curriculum
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Bezzina, Michael, Starratt, Robert J., and Burford, Charles
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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate on the development of a national curriculum for Australia. The paper challenges stakeholders to interrogate the question of national curriculum, its purpose, values and potential for delivering the type of education Australia wants for its citizens in the twenty-first century. Design/methodology/approach: The paper provides a general review of the literature, research and opinion associated with the politics, purpose, leadership and potential for change associated with national curriculum innovation. Findings: The national curriculum looms as the largest educational change in Australia's history and requires a thorough examination by stakeholders of the purposes and values underpinning it and how such a centralised curriculum can build the learning capacity of the nation. Authentic engagement of teachers, "buy in", bottom-up and top-down strategies, extensive time for negotiations and the engagement of educational and political leaders are seen as important for community ownership of the product. Practical implications: The paper challenges political and educational leaders to conduct the national curriculum building dialogue at the local, state and national level and to open up previous "givens" to interrogation. It calls for a long-term process to protect the authenticity and moral purpose of the process and maximise its ownership and potential for change. Originality/value: The paper addresses the greatest challenge yet to face Australian education, to deliver a national curriculum that delivers authentic learning for the future needs of Australians and Australia. It presents a case for stakeholders to engage the challenge through a professionally informed and morally defensible approach.
- Published
- 2009
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26. Social Inclusion for South Australian Schooling? Trying to Reconcile the Promise and the Practice
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Gill, Judith
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This paper will trace the adoption of a policy of Social Inclusion in schools in one Australian state in terms of the way in which the policy direction, its discourses and adoption reflect a rhetoric of what Ball has labelled a "paradigm of convergence". The analysis will show that the policy discourse, especially in its focus on school retention, appears to endorse the vision of a neo-liberal entrepreneurial competitor as the educated product despite being initiated and implemented by a Labor state government within a rhetoric of community concern for social justice. The second part of the paper reports on the ways in which primary school leaders have responded to this policy which reflects some older educational discourses and is more in line with a prior version of a well-run school and an inclusive society.
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- 2008
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27. Urban Accommodations: Policy, Education and a Politics of Place
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Gulson, Kalervo N.
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This paper examines the convergence of urban and education policy in inner Sydney, and posits a politics of place as a useful frame to both understand policy and undertake policy analyses. It reiterates calls for place to be taken seriously in education policy studies, but also proposes that it is equally important to strive for preciseness when using concepts such as space and place. The theoretical component of this paper concerns the intersection of relational notions of place and space with discursive concepts of the identity. The paper then applies these ideas to analyse urban and education policy in inner Sydney, and teases out possible understandings of how schooling may be implicated in a politics of the inner city. (Contains 3 notes.)
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- 2008
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28. Education for Organising in a Hot Climate: A Manufacturing Union's Experience
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Brown, Tony
- Abstract
This paper reports on research into a national education program within one of Australia's largest trade unions. The program was designed to assist the union's staff and elected officials respond to the rapidly changing industrial and political conditions in the manufacturing sector. It is ambitious in scope comprising sixteen modules that range from organising skills to union history and political consciousness. Participants are expected to complete formal work-related assessment in order to satisfy the module requirements, and thereby become eligible for an increase in pay. However, there has been a low number of assessment exercises completed and strong resistance to the idea of linking pay increases to course completion. The paper reports on research conducted with select groups of the union's staff focussing on the program's effectiveness, participant experience, assessment issues, and the challenges involved in meeting different learning needs. Finally it discusses possible improvements to the program arising from the research.
- Published
- 2006
29. Relevant, Challenging, Integrative and Exploratory Curriculum Design: Perspectives from Theory and Practice for Middle Level Schooling in Australia
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Dowden, Tony
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Integrative curriculum design promises much for middle level teachers who wish to develop classroom programmes that will encourage early adolescents to actively engage in their learning (Beane 1990, 1997). Beane's model is highly responsive to the educational and developmental needs of young people. In contrast, multidisciplinary curriculum design (Jacobs 1989) may result in significant but largely unrecognised drawbacks when it is implemented in the middle grades. This paper critically examines the theory of the integrative and the multidisciplinary models of curriculum integration with respect to middle level curriculum reform in Australian schools. It draws its data from a doctoral study (Dowden 2007) that traced a century of development of curriculum integration in the USA: from Dewey's Laboratory School a century ago through to contemporary middle schooling.
- Published
- 2007
30. Strategic Integration: The Practical Politics of Integrated Research in Context
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van Kerkhoff, Lorrae
- Abstract
Designing an integrative research program requires that research leaders negotiate a balance between the scientific interest of research and the practical interests of non-scientific partners. This paper examines the ways integrated research is formally categorised, and analyses the tangible expressions of the practical politics involved in reconciling scientific and practical interests. Drawing on a comparative study of two Australian Cooperative Research Centres, I argue that categories used by the research leaders to describe the research programs embody three different strategies for structuring the relationships between researchers and their partners. These include matching research program categories to partners' implementation program categories, reproducing existing integrative partnership models, and filling gaps in understanding with new technical approaches. These strategies offer different advantages and disadvantages. The cases suggest that the integrative approach favoured by each Centre depended on issues such as the geographic scope of policy arenas, sources of scientific credibility, and the political risks facing partners. The practical politics of research organisation offers a new lens for understanding both the practice and theory of integrated research. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)
- Published
- 2005
31. The Rise and Fall of Adult Education Institutions and Social Movements: Proceedings of the International Conference on the History of Adult Education (7th, Dundee, Scotland, July 12-16, 1998). Studies in Pedagogy, Andragogy, and Gerontagogy.
- Author
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Cooke, Anthony, MacSween, Ann, Cooke, Anthony, and MacSween, Ann
- Abstract
This book, which focuses on the relationship between adult education institutions and social movements, contains 31 papers originally presented at a 1998 conference on the history of adult education. Following an Introduction (Cooke), the papers are: Mobilisation, Popular Participation and Sustainable Development: Themes in the Recent History of Adult Education in Poor Countries" (Brown); "Social Movements and Adult Education in a Cross-Cultural Perspective" (Hake); "Historical Reasons for the Rise and Fall of European Adult Education Institutions and Social Movements" (Poggeler); "Adult Education Institutions Within the Context of Political Change" (Popovik); "The Challenge of Modernisation: Education and Adult Education Policy in Hungary, 1950 to the Present" (Petho); "People's Universities, University Extension and Folk High Schools in Slovenia" (Jug); "The Development of Adult Education in Croatia, 1820 to 1990" (Lavrnja, Klapan); "A Continuity of Purpose? Education and the South Wales Miners" (Francis, Trotman); "REVAG An Association for the Social and Cultural Education of Miners" (Paape, Putz); "Adult Education Movements in Finnish Universities from 1870 to the Present" (Sivonen); "Five Decades of Adult Education at University College Cork, 1948-1998: From Roman Catholic Social Reconstruction to Community Partnerships and Empowerment" (O'Fathaigh, O'Sullivan); "Alternative Living, Alternative Learning: The Grith Fyrd Movement in England in the 1930s" (Field); "Mediating an Institutional and Professional Identity between Reich and Region: The Thuringian Association of Folk High Schools in the Weimar Republic 1919-1933" (Haase); "The Legacy of Mansbridge Down Under: the WEA (Workers Educational Association) in New South Wales 1913-1953" (Dymock); "Education for Women in Late Victorian Dundee" (Spackman, Paul); "The Relationship Between Adult Education as a Social Movement and the Women's Movement with Particular Reference to South Wales" (Elliot); "Non Aligned Popular Education versus National Socialism: the Decline of The Thuringian Folk High School 1930-1933" (Meilhammer); "The Rise and Fall of the Community School Society in Poland 1891-1939" (Aleksander); "The Protestant Academy of Thuringia Idea and Reality in a Totalitarian Context" (Nagel); "The Relationship between Adult Education Movements and Existing Social, Political and Economic Systems: The University Workers' Movement in Sri Lanka" (Wijetunga); "The Rise and Fall of the Public Understanding of Science" (Counihan); "Scotland and the 1919 Report (Cooke); Technical and Vocational a Challenge to the Hegemony of Adult Liberal Education?" (Merricks); "Ivory Tower or Wasted Asset? Why did Residential Adult Education Fail to Take Root in Scotland?" (Ducklin, Wallace); "A Policy Initiative: the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education, 1977-1983" (Small); "The Australian Association of Adult and Community Education: The Evolution of an Adult Education Movement" (Stehlik); "The Development of Distance Education in Iran" (Alimohammadi); "Training Interventions for the Unemployed in Bremen, Germany, and Dundee, Scotland" (Sporing); "The Adult Education Movement for Literacy in South Korea Since 1945" (Lee); "Adult Education Development in Hong Kong Since the War" (Mok); "The Development of Adult Education and Its Training Institutions in Hungary Since 1989" (Nemeth). All of the papers contain bibliographies, some of them substantial. (AJ)
- Published
- 2000
32. 'Teaching up' at school and home: young people's contemporary gender perspectives.
- Author
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Smith, Erika K. and Robinson, Kerry H.
- Subjects
YOUNG adults ,BINARY gender system ,GENDER ,GENDER nonconformity ,HOME schooling ,FOCUS groups ,GENDER inequality ,STEREOTYPES - Abstract
This paper explores young people's understandings of gender and investigates their gender-based experiences in high schools in Australia. The discussion is based on qualitative research including focus groups and interviews with 47 recent high school leavers from diverse linguistic, socioeconomic, religious, ethnic, gender and sexuality backgrounds, who attended a broad range of high school types in New South Wales (NSW). We found that young people are critically engaging in gender issues and are often challenging binary gender and associated inequitable practices in schools and beyond. They are taking a leading role in educating adults about gender—that is, they are 'teaching up', as young people conceptualised it, to their families and teachers about gender, gender-related issues and doing gender differently in contemporary times. Their views on gender are often in contrast to those institutional views that currently prevail in NSW schools, which often still reflect stereotypes that perpetuate gender inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
33. Education and the Political System.
- Author
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Harman, G. S.
- Abstract
This paper considers the recent development within political science of an interest in education problems and in the political functions and political aspects of education processes and institutions in societies. The paper further provides an exploratory account of some of the connections between formal education and political life in Australia. (Author)
- Published
- 1970
34. Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of the Australian Association of Adult Education (Australian National University, August 22-26, 1969). Volume 1. The Political Education of Australians.
- Author
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Australian Association of Adult Education.
- Abstract
The papers presented in this volume were prepared for the ninth national conference of the Australian Association of Adult Education. The Conference was mainly a gathering of professional adult educators from Australian departments and institutions created for the purposes of adult education. The education of adults on a voluntary basis and without provision of qualifications is as yet a very minor social institution within Australian society. It is an institution which responds to a wide range of other more dominant social institutions, such as the political system. It is particularly in the political sense that all the papers which are included have relevance for teachers in whatever setting they work. (Author/CK)
- Published
- 1969
35. Searching for the Public: School Funding and Shifting Meanings of 'The Public' in Australian Education
- Author
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Gerrard, Jessica, Savage, Glenn C., and O'Connor, Kate
- Abstract
School funding is a principal site of policy reform and contestation in the context of broad global shifts towards private- and market-based funding models. These shifts are transforming not only how schools are funded but also the meanings and practices of public education: that is, shifts in what is "public" about schooling. In this paper, we examine the ways in which different articulations of "the public" are brought to bear in contemporary debates surrounding school funding. Taking the Australian "Review of Funding for Schooling" (the Gonski Report) as our case, we analyse the policy report and its subsequent media coverage to consider what meanings are made concerning the "publicness" of schooling. Our analysis reveals three broad themes of debate in the report and related media coverage: (1) the primacy of "procedural politics" (i.e. the political imperatives and processes associated with public policy negotiations in the Australian federation); (2) changing relations between what is considered public and private; and (3) a connection of government schooling to concerns surrounding equity and a "public in need." We suggest these three themes contour the debates and understandings that surround the "publicness" of education generally, and school funding more specifically.
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
36. Sustainable Development and Social Learning: Re-Contextualising the Space of Orientation
- Author
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Seddon, Terri
- Abstract
In the lead-up to the 2007 Australian federal election, Labor candidate Kevin Rudd described climate change as the "great moral challenge of our generation". In the years since then, the heat in Australia has been rising--in terms of both temperature and climate politics--, but government action has slowed down. Endorsement of economic growth is prioritised, with only intermittent recognition of environmental costs. At grassroots level, citizens' attitudes are influenced by social norms. This kind of social learning is a major constraint on sustainability. Therefore, it seems useful to consider how educators might help build sustainable futures. To understand how historical context entangles social learning in ways that complicate policies associated with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and practices of Education for Sustainability (EfS), the author of this paper draws on the concept of "space of orientation". Focusing on adult education, she traces the contradiction between "globalisation" and "sustainability" through policy logics, relational practices in Australian adult education and the "necessary utopia" which provides a point of reference for making futures. She argues that spaces of orientation are a critical resource in this era of intensifying conflicts of interest between economic priorities of globalisation and environmental priorities intended to slow global warming, because they mediate context and orient learning in ways that clear a path towards sustainability through the entangled histories of this present.
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
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37. The Power Dynamics and Politics of Survey Design: Measuring Workload Associated with Teaching, Administering and Supporting Work-Integrated Learning Courses
- Author
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Clark, Lindie, Rowe, Anna, Cantori, Alex, Bilgin, Ayse, and Mukuria, Valentine
- Abstract
Work-integrated learning (WIL) courses can be more time consuming and resource intensive to design, teach, administer and support than classroom-based courses, as they generally require different curricula and pedagogical approaches as well as additional administrative and pastoral responsibilities. Workload and resourcing issues are reported as key challenges to the implementation of WIL, but most of the evidence to date is anecdotal. Accurately quantifying workload associated with WIL is difficult, because teaching and administrative roles can be so interconnected. To address this gap in the literature and inform institutional practice, a study was initiated at an Australian university to collect empirical data on the type and amount of work involved in delivering WIL courses. This paper describes the process of survey development, including literature review, extensive consultation phase and pilot study, all of which had to take account of the inherent power dynamics, politics and sensitivities around measuring staff workload.
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
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38. Accountability in Education.
- Author
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Chippendale, P. R. and Wilkes, Paula V.
- Abstract
This collection of papers delivered at a conference on accountability held at Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education in Australia examines the meaning of accountability in education for teachers, lecturers, government, parents, administrators, education authorities, and the society at large. In Part 1, W. G. Walker attempts to answer the question: "What on Earth Is Accountability?" In Part 2, J. W. Peach offers "Accountability in Education: A North American Viewpoint," J. L. Ewing provides "Accountability in Education: A New Zealand Viewpoint," and J. R. Joyce investigates "Accountability and an Educational System in Australia." In Part 3, R. Johnson offers "Accountability: Society's Viewpoint," K. N. Jones discusses "Accountability in Education: A National Viewpoint," and P. Wood explains "What Accountability Means to Governments." In Part 4, W. A. White addresses "Accountability and the Teacher," J. Riddell describes "Accountability: A Parent's Viewpoint," E. C. Buckle analyzes "Accountability and the High School Administrator," C. Crain explores both "Accountability and the Primary School Administrator," and "What Accountability Means to the School Administrator: Four Case Studies," and Mary Ryan examines "Accountability and the Catholic School Administrator." In Part 5, A. E. Guymer provides "Educational Accountability: An Overview," and J. V. D'Cruz concludes with ideas "Towards an Inclusive Notion of Accountability." (Author/JM)
- Published
- 1977
39. Education Policy Making in Australia.
- Author
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Australian Coll. of Education, Carlton, Victoria., Broadbent, R. F., Broadbent, R. F., and Australian Coll. of Education, Carlton, Victoria.
- Abstract
Thirteen papers and a speech address the theme of who makes education policy in Australia. Kwong Lee Dow's address assesses national planning in uncertain times and urges flexibility. John Steinle outlines the operation of Australian policy-making and recommends developing think tanks. Edward Holdaway analyzes the complex relationship between research and policy, concluding that research has a long term indirect impact. Alan Lindsay argues that broad social, political, and economic factors determine policy in higher education, and A. James Gaite and William Young consider the lack of influence of professional educators. Gareth Williams analyzes British educational policy. Four papers consider broader participation in making policy: Lady Anna Cowen discusses improving parent involvement, K. J. Austin Asche treats the role of the community, Brian Caldwell recommends a framework for effective school councils, and Margaret Bearlin probes the low participation of women in policy-making. The concluding reports discuss specific programs: Shirley Randell analyzes the policy-making process of the Schools Commission's Disadvantaged County Areas Program. Alan Randell reviews the application of Paulo Freire's theories to an Aboriginal education project. Kevin Smith chronicles the influences behind shelving the Wyndham Report, a major policy initiative, and Anna Alderson offers a case history of policy-making and implementation. (MJL)
- Published
- 1982
40. Calculating Student Aspiration: Bourdieu, Spatiality and the Politics of Recognition
- Author
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Gale, Trevor and Parker, Stephen
- Abstract
This paper reports on a recent study of aspirations for higher education by secondary school students from disadvantaged backgrounds in regional Australia. At the same time, it goes in search of explanations that transcend a Bourdieuian account of aspirations as produced by and reproductive of cultural histories and dominance, given the apparent inadequacy of these accounts in redressing disadvantage. To this end the authors distinguish between historicising and spatialising aspirations, taking up Appadurai's notion of navigational capacity as a way of advancing greater agency for disadvantaged groups. Data from the research inform the analysis, including the mediation of students' desired futures by their perception of what is possible given their differentiated locations and access to resources. It is concluded that while this spatial turn in theorising aspiration has potential for changing the terms of recognition "internal" to disadvantaged communities, there remain structural limits on change "from below."
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
41. Population policies in Southeast Asia and Australia: the international relevance of domestic affairs.
- Author
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Jones GW
- Subjects
- Asia, Asia, Southeastern, Australia, Contraception Behavior, Culture, Developed Countries, Developing Countries, Education, Family Planning Policy, Indonesia, Malaysia, Motivation, Pacific Islands, Philippines, Sexual Behavior, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Demography, Emigration and Immigration, Ethnicity, Fertility, International Cooperation, Politics, Population, Population Characteristics, Population Dynamics, Population Growth, Public Policy, Students
- Published
- 1984
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
42. From the Frozen Wilderness to the Moody Sea: Rural Space, Girlhood and Popular Pedagogy
- Author
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Gottschall, Kristina
- Abstract
This paper turns to debates in post-critical public pedagogy to focus on how a small body of films might potentially work as vehicles for teaching and learning about youth, gender and space. It is argued that representations of the rural shape what is possible for girlhood, being both enabling and constraining for the subject. Framed by discourses around the politics of representing the rural, a range of popular Australian films will be analysed to think about how popular film might use representations of the rural to educate spectators about girls as "successful", "in crisis" and/or as girls asserting "girlpower". The films include four key Australian "coming of age" films about girls growing up in rural/rural coastal locales: Peaches set in a sleepy town on the banks of the Murray River, Somersault set in the frozen wilderness of Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains, Caterpillar Wish set in the coastal town full of secrets and lies, and in Indigenous film maker Ivan Sen's Beneath Clouds, showing the Country passed through during a rural New South Wales road trip.
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
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43. Framing GM Crops as a Food Security Solution
- Author
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Dibden, Jacqui, Gibbs, David, and Cocklin, Chris
- Abstract
The spectre of a food security crisis has raised important questions about future directions for agriculture and given fresh impetus to a long-standing debate about the potential contribution of agricultural biotechnology to food security. This paper considers the discursive foundations for promotion of agricultural biotechnology, arguing that notions of progress and "science-based" risk assessment act as "anti-political" strategies to remove consideration of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from the cut and thrust of politics, while the concept of "food security" reconstitutes agricultural biotechnology as a moral imperative. We argue that a debate ostensibly focussed on developing countries in fact largely arises from discordant views about the future of farming and rural areas in the developed countries where these arguments are taking place. These debates are examined through a comparative study of the UK and Australia. Whereas acceptance of GM crops and foods at government and industry level has not led to commercial adoption in the UK due to consumer resistance and the influence of EU regulations, Australian governments at federal and state level have increasingly embraced GM crops, potentially locking Australia into a food and farming trajectory based on agricultural biotechnology. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)
- Published
- 2013
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
44. Networking the 'Bush'--Is There Anyone out There?
- Author
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Franklin, Janice
- Abstract
Local rural communities and individuals are increasingly disarmed by the socially transforming processes of post modern times including the globalisation of rural production systems and trade. There is a new climate "in the bush" that is imbued with a deep suspicion that globalisation processes will continue to threaten the sustainability of agrarian practices and continue to impose relentless "restructuring" of both rural customs and industrial capacities. Networks between rural communities of widely separated social and cultural landscapes are as challenging to achieve as the possibilities of networking across the cultural, political and economic divide that stands between local rural jurisdictions and empowered and enriched national and global spheres. These "higher" jurisdictions more closely reflect metropolitan social, economic and environmental needs and aspirations, and tend to overlook the validity and value of the local social and cultural places "below", even as these might mysteriously maintain vital landscape and industrial assets. How then do we connect the multiplicity and variety of increasingly disabled local places when the networks between these local places have been weakened by both social and physical disconnections, leaving them sporadic and incomplete? Rural networks are dependent not only on an equal and equitable access to the infrastructure of interpersonal connections--communication, transport and education--but also on the human capacities and perceptions that motivate (or reject) the seeking out and maintenance of such networks. In attempting to network more widely and deeply between local rural communities and national and global spheres, educators must address the reality that the shallow and incomplete networks that lie across and between rural landscapes must first be re aligned and interconnected. The recognition that an inter community network is largely missing might also illuminate the need for rural education advocates and practitioners to take a more courageous stand in the facilitation of relationships between separate rural locales by employing education practices that connect locally relevant issues and teach for the intellectual re arming of potential rural leaders and their communities. The deployment of sympathetic and appropriate actions by educators to disarm the persistent and pervasive deficit paradigm in rural schooling, and the development of a critical rural education paradigm focused on excellence, equality and equity is urgently needed. Transformative practices in education and a political commitment to funding crucial communication and transport networks and a rural education "revolution", are the precursors to building networks to connect local, national and global spheres.
- Published
- 2013
45. Reflections: Continuing the Conversation
- Author
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Stephenson, Maxine
- Abstract
An overarching methodological focus in this issue of the "Journal of Educational Administration and History" has been to engage Michel Foucault's concern with "a history of the present". In this article, the author begins her overview of the collection in the present--specifically, and in keeping with the topic for this special issue, with a comment on the way the "education, youth, nation" nexus is expressed in this historical moment, that is, in education for global citizenship. The contributions to the issue provide important insights into how, within particular historical periods, and reflecting the socio-political circumstances peculiar to those periods, these specific modes of understanding young people and the nature, form and function of schooling were linked to meanings of citizenship and the ideal citizen. These historically contingent meanings continue to resonate today. (Contains 3 notes.)
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
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46. Pre-Service Teachers' Pedagogical Relationships and Experiences of Embedding Indigenous Australian Knowledge in Teaching Practicum
- Author
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Hart, Victor, Whatman, Susan, McLaughlin, Juliana, and Sharma-Brymer, Vinathe
- Abstract
This paper argues from the standpoint that embedding Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in Australian curricula occurs within a space of tension, "the cultural interface", in negotiation and contestation with other dominant knowledge systems. In this interface, Indigenous knowledge is in a state of constancy and flux, invisible and simultaneously pronounced depending on the teaching and learning contexts. More often than not, Indigenous knowledge competes for validity and is vexed by questions of racial and cultural authenticity and, therefore, struggles to be located centrally in educational systems, curricula and pedagogies. Interrogating normative western notions of what constitutes authentic or legitimate knowledge is critical to teaching Indigenous studies and embedding Indigenous knowledge. The inclusion (and exclusion) of Indigenous knowledge at the interface is central to developing curriculum that allows teachers to test and prod and create new knowledge and teaching approaches. From this perspective, we explore Indigenous Australian pre-service teachers' experiences of pedagogical relationships within the teaching habitus of Australian classrooms. Our study is engaged with the strategic transgressions of praxis. We contend that tensions that participant Indigenous Australian pre-service teachers experience mirror the broader (and unresolved) political status of Indigenous people and, thus, where and why Indigenous knowledge is strategically deployed as "new" or "old" knowledge within Australian liberal democratic systems of curriculum and schooling. It is significant to discuss the formation and transformation of the pedagogical cultural identity of the teaching profession within which Indigenous and non-Indigenous pre-service teachers are employed. (Contains 1 figure.)
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
47. Afrikaans Language Maintenance in Australia
- Author
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Hatoss, Aniko, Starks, Donna, and van Rensburg, Henriette Janse
- Abstract
Changes in the political climate in the home country have resulted in the emigration of South Africans to English speaking countries such as Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Despite the scale of movement of the South African population, language maintenance in these diasporic contexts has received little consideration. This paper presents a description of an Australian Afrikaans-speaking community in the small Queensland city of Toowoomba. The study shows a high degree of bilingualism amongst the first generation Afrikaans community but also shows incipient signs of language shift within the home and a weak connection between language and identity. (Contains 4 tables.)
- Published
- 2011
48. Dark Matter: The 'Gravitational Pull' of Maternalist Discourses on Politicians' Decision Making for Early Childhood Policy in Australia
- Author
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Bown, Kathryn, Sumsion, Jennifer, and Press, Frances
- Abstract
The article reports on a study investigating influences on Australian politicians' decision making for early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy. The astronomical concept of dark matter is utilised as a metaphor for considering normalising, and therefore frequently difficult to detect and disrupt, influences implicated in politicians' decision making for ECEC policy. The concept of dark matter connects with and extends Foucauldian conceptualisations of knowledge, power and discourse. The paper argues that maternalist discourses continue to shape the policy landscape for ECEC, though these are largely unacknowledged. (Contains 1 figure, 2 tables and 2 notes.)
- Published
- 2011
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
49. The Contradictory Managerialism of University Quality Assurance
- Author
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Reid, Ian C.
- Abstract
This paper investigates how Australian universities are being disciplined to behave as commercial enterprises by the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA). The manual produced by AUQA, for the purpose of conducting audits of Australian universities, is analysed. I use an analytical framework that provides a means by which a text from the "manual" genre can be analysed with respect to social and political contexts, using Critical Discourse Analysis. I analyse changes in the language used in subsequent editions of the manual, drawing inferences about how the AUQA manual constructs universities to behave as particular kinds of business entities. Depictions of the globalised and virtualised university are silenced in the texts. Contrary to the rhetoric of the university being a flexible, globalised enterprise, I find that universities are constructed as localised businesses appearing to be independent of direct government control but nevertheless constrained in the scope of their operation. (Contains 1 figure.)
- Published
- 2009
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
50. Guilt and migrant experience in Australia: narratives of happiness and hatred.
- Author
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Brami, Thomas
- Subjects
GUILT (Psychology) ,IMMIGRANTS ,EMOTIONS ,EMIGRATION & immigration - Abstract
This paper investigates the role that guilt plays in Australia's construction of its outsiders by focusing on contemporary migrant experience. I build upon Sarah Ahmed's work on the politics of emotion to read migrant interviews in relation to media: films, political speeches, and other discursive structures that facilitate social organization in Australia. In the first part of this paper, I argue that a 'multicultural narrative' positions the nation as a 'happy home,' and examine how this can displace feelings of guilt in the migrant by rendering possible social transgressions positive steps towards attaining a greater social good. In the second section of this paper, I discuss Australia's 'hatred narratives.' I do not define hatred as a necessarily aggressive emotion, but instead, demonstrate the way particular words can be affectively charged because of the histories they invoke, and show how this affect can be mobilized to create outsiders who are not welcome in the national imaginary and Australian society. These narratives however, are not fixed: political parties can appeal to tropes that have accumulated in affective value – such as the 'home' – in order to achieve different political goals, and to organize social groups by aligning individuals with or against affectively charged objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
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