Australian Educational Researcher 

About: Australian Educational Researcher is an academic journal published by Springer Nature. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Educational psychology & Educational research. It has an ISSN identifier of 0311-6999. Over the lifetime, 1132 publications have been published receiving 19220 citations. The journal is also known as: AER.

Performativities and fabrications in the education economy: towards the performative society? [Paper presented as the Frank Tate memorial lecture and keynote address to the AARE Conference (1999: Melbourne).]

Abstract: This paper 'joins in' and contributes to an emerging stream of ideas and conversations related to 'performativity' in education and social policyuwhich includes, among others, Jill Blackmore, Judyth Sachs, Erica McWilliam, John Elliott, Tricia Broadfoot and Bob Lingard. The paper attempts to look at both the capillary detail and 'the bigger picture' of performativity i,n .[.he public sector. Ideally it should be read in relation to the multitude of 'performative texts' and 'texts of performativity' with which we are continually confronted and which increasingly inform and deform our practice 2. The paper is intended to be both very theoretical and very practical, very abstract and very immediate 3. Let me begin by offering a working definition of performativity. Performativity is a technology, a culture and a mode of regulation, or a system of 'terror' in Lyotard's words, that employs judgements, comparisons and displays as means of control, attrition and change. The performances (of individual subjects or organisations) serve as measures of productivity or output, or displays of 'quality', or 'moments' of promotion (there is a felicititous ambiguity around this word) or inspection. They stand for, encapsulate or represent the worth, quality or value of an individual or organisation within a field of judgement. 'An equation between wealth, efficiency, and truth is thus established' (Lyotard 1984, p. 46). The issue of who controls the field of judgement is crucial. 'Accountability' and 'competition' are the lingua franca of this new discourse of power as Lyotard describes it. A discourse which is the emerging form of legitimation in post-industrial societies for both the production of knowledge and

Performativities and fabrications in the education economy: Towards the performative society?

Abstract: This paper 'joins in' and contributes to an emerging stream of ideas and conversations related to 'performativity' in education and social policyuwhich includes, among others, Jill Blackmore, Judyth Sachs, Erica McWilliam, John Elliott, Tricia Broadfoot and Bob Lingard. The paper attempts to look at both the capillary detail and 'the bigger picture' of performativity i,n .[.he public sector. Ideally it should be read in relation to the multitude of 'performative texts' and 'texts of performativity' with which we are continually confronted and which increasingly inform and deform our practice 2. The paper is intended to be both very theoretical and very practical, very abstract and very immediate 3. Let me begin by offering a working definition of performativity. Performativity is a technology, a culture and a mode of regulation, or a system of 'terror' in Lyotard's words, that employs judgements, comparisons and displays as means of control, attrition and change. The performances (of individual subjects or organisations) serve as measures of productivity or output, or displays of 'quality', or 'moments' of promotion (there is a felicititous ambiguity around this word) or inspection. They stand for, encapsulate or represent the worth, quality or value of an individual or organisation within a field of judgement. 'An equation between wealth, efficiency, and truth is thus established' (Lyotard 1984, p. 46). The issue of who controls the field of judgement is crucial. 'Accountability' and 'competition' are the lingua franca of this new discourse of power as Lyotard describes it. A discourse which is the emerging form of legitimation in post-industrial societies for both the production of knowledge and

Policy as numbers: ac/counting for educational research

Abstract: 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.

A Phenomenographic Investigation of Teacher Conceptions of Student Engagement in Learning

Abstract: Internationally, educational stakeholders are concerned with the high levels of student disengagement, evidenced by early school leaving, poor student behaviour, and low levels of academic achievement. The solution, student engagement, is a contested concept, theorised in a variety of different ways within academic literature. To further understand this concept, a phenomenographic study was conducted to map secondary school teachers’ conceptions of student engagement. Six qualitatively different ways of understanding student engagement were found. This research indicates that teachers do not hold similar understandings of what student engagement means. If the concept of engagement is to become educationally fruitful, the term must be more explicitly defined in educational research and government policy documents to promote shared understandings amongst stakeholder groups.

Reclaiming aboriginal knowledge at the cultural interface

Abstract: Many studies and papers have explored and critiqued the “what” and the “why” of working at the cultural interface of mainstream curricula and local Indigenous knowledge, but this project sought to understand the “how”. Participants went beyond explorations of “cultural items” and worked in the overlap between the New South Wales Department’s Quality Teaching Framework and Indigenous Pedagogies drawn from local lore, language and the sentient landscape. Indigenous knowledge was used not merely as content, but to provide innovative ways of thinking and problem solving in the field of design and technology. The methodology for the study was based on a significant site in the local river system. The focus of the action research study shifted in the early stages from the students to the teachers, who required a radical shift in their thinking in order to set aside deficit logic, or stimulus-response approaches to teaching and learning, to embrace sophisticated Indigenous ways of knowing.