Showing papers in "Australian Educational Researcher in 2009"

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.

Productive Pedagogies: A redefined methodology for analysing quality teacher practice

Abstract: This paper identifies the ways in which the Productive Pedagogies framework has been refined as a research tool for evaluating classroom practice within a current study into issues of school reform in Queensland. Initially emerging from the landmark Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (1998–2001), the Productive Pedagogies has been taken up widely in Australia and internationally as both a research tool and metalanguage to support teachers to critically reflect on their practice. In this paper, following a brief description of the model’s four dimensions, we detail how we have addressed some methodological concerns in using and modifying the framework for the present study. In response to critiques by other researchers and debates within our own research team, we justify our use of the framework. To these ends, we present a refined methodology that addresses the importance of pedagogical process, substantiates the inclusion of particular items within the framework, supports a critical approach to issues of difference, includes students’ perspectives and recognises the significance of content knowledge in the assessment of quality pedagogy.

Wellbeing and retention: A senior secondary student perspective

Abstract: Non-completion of senior secondary schooling continues to be a matter of concern for policy makers and practitioners in Australia today. Despite the efforts of governments to improve participation and retention rates, 30% of students drop out of school before completing Year 12. Further, some students remain at school, just biding their time until graduation. Within this context, we investigate whether the wellbeing of the students is a key factor in supporting senior students in deciding to continue at school. The article reports on the first phase of a two-year study of factors impacting on quality retention and participation of 250 Year 11 students from two school communities. This initial phase focuses on the senior students’ perspective of their wellbeing in Year 11, and includes our development of a suite of scales to measure the impact of students’ social connectedness and academic engagement on academic achievement and retention. Data from the survey of students are enriched through student focus groups. The article identifies critical dimensions of what students regard as a healthy senior school culture; that is, a culture conducive to a positive and productive experience in terms of their retention, participation and achievement. Implications for school and system policy and governance are proposed.

Children’s use of metacognition in solving everyday problems: An initial study from an Asian context

Abstract: The aim of this study is to understand the relationship between metacognition and students’ everyday problem solving. Specifically, we were interested to find out whether regulation of cognition and knowledge of cognition are related to everyday problem solving and whether students who perform better in the decision-making problem will better differentiate the various components of metacognition. Two hundred and fifty-four fifth grade students completed a survey. We found evidence to suggest the existence of two major components of metacognition. Our results also suggest that at a higher level of decision-making, knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition were differentiated in their use by participants.

Public Education Matters: Reclaiming Public Education for the Common Good in a Global Era.

Abstract: This article argues that public education needs to be reclaimed to fulfill its role as a “democratising force” to address social and economic inequality and to respect and recognise diversity and difference. By analysing historical developments in federal policy, funding and economic contexts a case is developed to demonstrate that the role of the state has been dismantled and the public nature of education has been reduced. The factors responsible are articulated and discussed with particular reference to the impact of neo-liberal policy, the “marketisation” of education and new public management. Measures such as those taken by Education Queensland that support the development of school leaders and teachers to engage in research, development and critical debate are supported. International examples of how systems have revitalised and supported the public nature of education are discussed. These include more intelligent accountability systems that respect the professionalism of teachers and collaborative curriculum development strategies that engage with all, including those who are least powerful such as the students.

Climate Change? When? Where?.

Abstract: Regional Australian students were surveyed to explore their understanding and knowledge of the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion and climate change. Results were compared with a parallel study undertaken in 1991 in a regional UK city. The comparison was conducted to investigate whether more awareness and understanding of these issues is demonstrated by students as a result of over 16 years’ accumulated knowledge, increased certainty among experts of greenhouse effects on climate, media publicity and inclusion of the greenhouse effect in the Australian school curriculum. Data obtained from a combined sample of 740 Year 8/10 secondary students examined the extent of student understanding and knowledge, models of explanation and sources of information of the phenomena. A path analytic, Structural Equation Model (SEM) tested links between student understanding of the greenhouse effect, knowledge of greenhouse gases and experience of being in a greenhouse, to conceptions of climate change. Results show similarities between the two groups, with knowledge and understanding of these important scientific literacy issues remaining unacceptably low in 2007. Sociocultural influences are proposed in relation to results and implications for practice are suggested.

Feathers in the nest: establishing a supportive environment for women researchers

Abstract: This paper discusses research examining the attitudes and behaviours of researching women in academia and considers the effect of these factors on successful researching outcomes. The results of this exploratory research highlight in particular, a number of interesting environmental influencers which contribute to enhancing successful work outcomes for academic women researchers. Specifically, personal factors such as, marital status, partner support, age, cultural background and level of organisation (in life) coupled with, research defined factors such as incentive for conducting the research and the existence of research partnerships and/or groups are identified as significant performance influencers. These dimensions appear to facilitate the level of research productivity for women academics based on key performance indicators such as journal/conference paper submissions and successful research funding applications. The potential benefits of this exploratory research are that any correlation between specific self-supporting attitudes or behaviours of successful women academics and effective research outcomes could provide important clues to both emerging and continuing researchers for career development and promotion.

Teenage technological experts’ views of schooling

Abstract: Utilising Pierre Bourdieu’s formula for studying social practice, this study explored the construction of technological expertise amongst a heterogenous group of New Zealand teenagers. The qualitative study employed observations and interviews with five boys and three girls aged 13–17, who considered themselves to be technological experts; their peers and/or their family also considered them to be technological experts. For seven of the eight participants, their primary site of leisure was their home computer use. This article gives some examples about how the participants’ understand schooling and its relevance to them. It engages with ideas concerning the performance of school, and argues that the participants’ practice in this field of home computer use for leisure tends to be misrecognised. The article concludes by discussing the implications this misrecognition has for the structures of formal schooling.

National Gender Equity and Schooling Policy in Australia: Struggles for a Non-identitarian Feminist Politics

Abstract: This paper tracks the development of gender equity and schooling policy in Australia from theNational 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 nonidentitarian 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.

U.S. College Student Activism during an Era of Neoliberalism: A Qualitative Study of Students Against Sweatshops.

Abstract: This article sets out to examine the experiences of college student activists involved in Students Against Sweatshops on the Beautiful River University campus. Based on observation and interview fieldwork, the paper explores how students negotiate and understand their activism against the backdrop of neoliberalism. The paper concludes that being a contemporary student activist requires advanced time management skills and the capacity to ascribe multiple meanings to activities (for example, hanging out and doing activism simultaneously). This emphasis on using one’s time wisely resonates with students who are surrounded by the language of neoliberal reform. By analysing how students prioritise activism, outreach to new members and develop friendships, and position themselves as part of an international network, I show that student activism is influenced by the neoliberal environment at Beautiful River University at the same time that student activists are working to resist and counter such practices.

Selling education through “culture”: responses to the market by new, non-government schools

Abstract: The move to a market model of schooling has seen a radical restructuring of the ways schooling is “done” in recent times in Western countries. Although there has been a great deal of work to examine the effects of a market model on local school management (LSM), teachers’ work and university systems, relatively little has been done to examine its effect on parents’ choice of school in the non-government sector in Australia. This study examines the reasons parents give for choosing a nongovernment school in the outer suburbs of one large city in Australia. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu specifically his ideas on “cultural capital” (1977), this study revealed that parents were choosing the non-government school over the government school to ensure that their children would be provided, through the school’s emphasis on cultural capital, access to a perceived “better life” thus enhancing the potential to facilitate “extraordinary children”, one of the school’s marketing claims.

Teacher Enquiry as a Tool for Professional Development: Investigating Pupils' Effective Talk While Learning

Abstract: The Learning to Learn in Schools Phase 3 Evaluation was a four year project across England exploring the concept of Learning to Learn in 33 primary and secondary schools. The project was funded through the UK based Campaign for Learning. One of the key aims of the project was to ensure that the locus of control in terms of development remains with the schools, who decided on the focus of innovation relevant to them under the umbrella heading of Learning to Learn. A team from the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching at Newcastle University then supported and facilitated the teachers in the systematic evaluation of their experiences. As a result we believe that this process supported meaningful professional development about teaching and learning. This paper exemplifies this process through two professional enquiries into pupil talk in the classroom and how it supported learning. The projects were carried out by teachers in two schools, one secondary (11–18 years) and one primary (4–11 years). Both schools decided that encouraging pupil talk about learning best fit with their priorities and the project aims of exploring Learning to Learn. The paper describes the different research methods and findings of the teachers’ research, focusing on the decision making which occurred and how the process of the research has impacted on their professional development. Conclusions are drawn about how the philosophy of Learning to Learn can be as easily applied to the process of professional enquiry through action research and teachers’ learning, as to the more traditional domain of students’ learning and how this might contribute to the development of a successful Learning to Learn school culture.

A tale of two women leaders: Diversity policies and practices in enterprise universities

Abstract: This paper explores the ways in which senior female academics’ leadership practices are informed and negotiated in relation to a multiplicity of fields. As part of the shift in the logics of practice underpinning the Australian academic terrain, there has been a movement from the implementation of equity policies to that of diversity in relation to the employment of academic staff, characterised by neoliberal discourses of new public management which favour the production of the individualistic, entrepreneurial academic identity as opposed to notions of collectivity and the public good. However, diversity policies are not the sole texts that inform the ways in which many women leaders operate, nor the most important in guiding the practices they produce. Drawing on a larger study of representations of women’s leadership in the media and academia, this paper examines how two leading female academics drew upon a range of logics of practices within the different fields of academia, feminism and Indigenous rights to inform their leadership practices. In so doing, the women contested the emergent logic of practice underpinning the contemporary Australian academic field. Such contestation can be considered one of the “subaltern” consequences of policy regimes and forms an integral part of policy fields.

The production of Australian professional development policy texts as a site of contest: The case of the federal quality teacher programme

Abstract: This paper reveals how the provision of teacher professional development is conceptualised within the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme (AGQTP) policy text and its predecessors, and uses these texts to infer the nature of the production practices associated with the development of these policies. The paper argues that multiple tensions within these texts gesture towards support for complex and contested approaches to professional development during the policy production process. To make sense of this contestation, the paper draws suggestively upon Bourdieu’s field theory, which conceptualises the social world as consisting of social spaces or “fields”, and extensions of his theory, which reveal fields as exerting considerable influence upon one another. The paper argues that “Quality Teacher Programme” texts infer support for more progressive, social democratic approaches to the provision of teacher professional development within the educational policy field, as well as more economistic and neoliberal approaches.

Under pressure I fall back to being a teacher

Abstract: This article examines a Victorian high school's implementation of a new Year 9 program which was intended to interrupt a traditional academic curriculum and to create an imagined oasis of care and personal development for students. It explores ways in which: (1) the existing culture and context of the school continues to frame the subjectivities of teachers, students and parents in relation to the new program, (2) the attempt to preserve a competitive academic traditional orientation alongside an alternative approach is a central dilemma for this school, and (3) the new relationships between teachers and students are experienced by them as an interplay of pleasure and surveillance, connection and discipline. The article argues that the conflicts and pressures experienced by the teachers and students are not simply local and contingent ones but indicative of wider tensions in current Australian education policy.

“Under pressure I fall back to being a teacher…” confronting contending desires for schooling and teaching in a middle school reform project

Abstract: This article examines a Victorian high school’s implementation of a new Year 9 program which was intended to interrupt a traditional academic curriculum and to create an imagined oasis of care and personal development for students. It explores ways in which (1) the existing culture and context of the school continues to frame the subjectivities of teachers, students and parents in relation to the new program, (2) the attempt to preserve a competitive academic traditional orientation alongside an alternative approach is a central dilemma for this school, and (3) the new relationships between teachers and students are experienced by them as an interplay of pleasure and surveillance, connection and discipline. The article argues that the conflicts and pressures experienced by the teachers and students are not simply local and contingent ones but indicative of wider tensions in current Australian education policy.

No Country for young people? Anxieties in Australian society and education

Abstract: Australia is often portrayed as a place in which young people are in jeopardy. In 19th century literature and art, the recurring motif of a child lost in “the bush” became an increasingly significant dimension of European settlers’ experiences of Australia, whereas during the latter half of the 20th century analogous cultural narratives shifted towards urban environments and the plight of young people endangered by their parents’ generation. In contemporary popular culture, Australia’s cities and suburbs are places where children are aborted, abandoned, exploited, murdered or never conceived. Like the bush-lost children before them, these “at risk” young people symbolise adult fears of self, society, and the future. My concern is that the most common public policy response to these persistent fears and insecurities is to retreat to a politics of complexity reduction. Many politicians and public opinion leaders see teachers and schools as being in the vanguard of people and institutions dedicated to Australian children’s educational ruin, and simplistically seek to “protect” them with blunt instruments such as back-to-phonics literacy and a national curriculum. I argue that Australia’s young people are much more seriously endangered by the symbolic violence of those who position them as docile receptors of whatever schools and teachers serve up to them, and who treat them as passive screens upon which to project their own anxieties.

Alternative Organisational Learning Therapy: An Empirical Case Study Using Behaviour and U Theory.

Abstract: This paper draws on the concept and process of deeper learning, namely the U theory (Senge, Scharmer, Jaworski, & Flowers, 2004a). As a driver to get a deeper exploration of organisational change process, the theory of U goes beyond the interpersonal aspects of learning, instead focusing on a deeper personal generative learning that emphasizes seven capacities along the deep learning process. Corporations in Taiwan have been striving in a globalised world economy for market competitiveness through organisational learning and change and this study seeks to understand adult workers’ engagement with deep learing. Based on the theory of planned behaviour, the study investigated how personal backgrounds, attitude, perceived subject norm and perceived behavioural control affected adult workers’ intention of deeper learning using Pearson correlation and stepwise regression analysis. Data were collected from working adults (N=512) in a high tech company located in Taipei. Results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between the independent variables, namely adult workers’ attitudes, perceived social pressure, and behavioural control, and the dependent variables (i.e., the seven capacities within U theory). In addition, among three independent variables, subjective norm had the strongest predictive power on the successful diffusion of the U theory.

Educational Research and Strategies of World-Forming: The Globe, the Unconscious, and the Child.

Abstract: The passion to eradicate alterity from the earth is also the passion for the home, the country, the dwelling, that authorizes this desire and rewards it. In its nationalism, parochialism and racism it constitutes a public and private neurosis. So, unwinding the rigid understanding of place that apparently permits me to speak, that guarantees my voice, my power, is not simply to disperse my locality within the wider coordinates of an ultimate planetary context. That would merely absolve me of responsibility in the name of an abstract and generic globalism, permitting my inheritance to continue uninterrupted in the vagaries of a new configuration. There is something altogether more precise and more urgent involved. For in the horror of the unhomely pulses the dread for the dispersal of Western humankind: the dread of a rationality confronted with what exceeds and slips its grasp. (Chambers, 2001, p. 196)

The tribulations of reusing and repackaging data: A review of “how has school productivity changed in australia?”

Abstract: In their paper,How has school productivity changed in Australia? social economists Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan (2008)1 attempt to show that Australian (government) schools and their teachers’ productivity has declined by some 73 per cent between 1964 and 2003 compared to an overall increase of 64 per cent across the Australian economy. In response I contend that Leigh and Ryan use an inappropriate statistical device to "decompose" student demographics to arrive at conclusions that contradict the original positive assessment of student standards by independent authorities (Rothman, 2007). Their work, which for many years seemed to be the foundation stone for Howard government education policy has by their own admission (A. Leigh & C. Ryan, personal communication, February 14, 2008), never been put to the test of peer review prior to publication. This paper critically analyses and contests their research by placing their claims within a social policy context that has subtly changed from one where teachers can make a difference to teachers are the difference.