Showing papers in "Discourse: Studies in The Cultural Politics of Education in 2013"
TL;DR: The authors examined national teacher professional standards from Australia and the UK to identify the extent to which reflexivity is embedded in key policy documents that are intended to guide the work of teachers in those countries.
Abstract: In the current climate of accountability, political manoeuvring, changing curriculum, increasingly diverse student cohorts and community expectations, teachers, more than ever, need to develop the skills and abilities to be reflective and reflexive practitioners. This study examines national teacher professional standards from Australia and the UK to identify the extent to which reflexivity is embedded in key policy documents that are intended to guide the work of teachers in those countries. Using Margaret Archer's theories of reflexivity and morphogenesis, and methods of critical discourse analysis, we argue that these blueprints for teachers’ work exclude reflexivity as an essential and overarching discourse of teacher professionalism.
105 citations
TL;DR: The Review of Funding for Schooling Final Report (2011), colloquially known as the Gonski Report, or simply "Gonski" as discussed by the authors, was the most recent policy attempt to address the intractable issue of inequality in Australian schools.
Abstract: In this paper I look at the most recent policy attempt to address the intractable issue of inequality in Australian schools, the Review of Funding for Schooling Final Report (2011), colloquially known as the ‘Gonski Report’, or simply ‘Gonski’. I highlight its important insights and some of its analytical limitations. I show how a fixation on sector-by-sector (government, Catholic and independent) analysis and disputation distracts from layers of disadvantage and advantage across all sectors, while also acknowledging that there is a disproportionate concentration of disadvantage in the government sector which must thus be properly funded. I illustrate how socio-educational advantage (SEA) and disadvantage are compounded and how the social segregation between schools on the top and bottom rungs is manifest and with associated problems. As implied throughout, systemic relational analysis, which recognises that educational advantage and disadvantage are mutually constituted is a diagnostic necessity which is...
98 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an engagement of methodology as an ideologico-racial practice through Critical Race Theory's practice of storytelling is presented. But it is not a discussion of the role of race in educational research.
Abstract: This article is an engagement of methodology as an ideologico-racial practice through Critical Race Theory's practice of storytelling. It is a conceptual extension of this practice as explained through Charles Mills' use of the ‘racial contract (RC) as methodology’ in order to explain the Herrenvolk Education – one standard for Whites, another for students of color – that is in place in the USA. At its most general, the article introduces the full offerings of Mills' RC methodology for a study of educational research. Once deployed, the RC as methodology unveils a school system's foundation as deeply racial rather than universal or race-neutral.
97 citations
TL;DR: The dominant market logic in contemporary education produces social inequalities in education, through new mechanisms as mentioned in this paper, such as NAPLAN testing and the MySchool website, and the idea of "pockets of poverty".
Abstract: The dominant market logic in contemporary education produces social inequalities in education, through new mechanisms. To create markets in education, services and resources have to be rationed, so inequality is built in. To motivate parents to buy privatised services, losers have to be created and publicised – this is the function of NAPLAN testing and the MySchool website. In neo-liberal rhetoric, the actual pattern of social inequality is misrepresented, e.g. the idea of ‘pockets of poverty’, while institutional restructuring embeds the new mechanisms. Neoliberalism seeks to close down arenas for debate and create a monopoly for the market perspective; it is important to sustain other agendas.
88 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore some alternate ways of approaching childhood and learning by taking three short forays into what Donna Haraway calls a post-human landscape, which relocates childhood within a world that is much bigger than us (humans) and about more than our (human) concerns.
Abstract: In this article, we explore some alternate ways of approaching childhood and learning by taking three short forays into what Donna Haraway calls a ‘post-human landscape’. This exploration takes us beyond the horizons of orthodox educational approaches, in which the individual child is typically seen to be developing and learning within his/her (exclusively human) sociocultural context. The post-human landscape relocates childhood within a world that is much bigger than us (humans) and about more than our (human) concerns. It allows us to reconsider the ways in which children are both constituted by and learn within this more-than-human world. Adopting Haraway's feminist narrative strategy, we offer three very different ‘bag lady’ stories that consider the ethics and politics of child/non-human animal cross-species encounters. Each of these stories gestures towards the ways in which we can learn to live with ‘companion species’ rather than only ever learn about them.
83 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that most of the learning rules or guidelines reflect the white dominant culture values and practices, and that it is generally those who don't have the cultural match-ups that schooling requires for success, such as Indigenous and minority students, who face the most educational disadvantage.
Abstract: This paper engages with current educational literature in Australia and internationally, in exploring the implications of the hidden curriculum for Indigenous students. It argues that in schools, most of the learning rules or guidelines reflect the ‘white’ dominant culture values and practices, and that it is generally those who don't have the cultural match-ups that schooling requires for success, such as Indigenous and minority students, who face the most educational disadvantage. Howard and Perry argue that Indigenous students ‘… need to feel that schools belong to them as much as any child’ and that to ‘… move towards the achievement of potential of Aboriginal students, it is important that Aboriginal culture and language are accepted in the classroom’. This paper will also provide a discussion into school-based strategies that are considered effective for engaging Indigenous students with school.
77 citations
TL;DR: The MySchool.edu.au website, which ranks and compares schools on the basis of standardised literacy and numeracy tests, has been the subject of intense media coverage.
Abstract: Launched in January 2010, the MySchool.edu.au website, which ranks and compares schools on the basis of standardised literacy and numeracy tests, has been the subject of intense media coverage. This article examines 34 editorials focused on MySchool, published from October 2009 to August 2010, and identifies three key narratives in operation, those of distrust, choice and performance. It argues that these narratives work together to reinforce and promote neoliberal educational discourses at the heart of what Michael Apple has termed the ‘conservative modernisation’ of education and other social services. Together, the dominant narratives position MySchool and the ensuing newspaper-generated and published league tables as the solution to problems of poor performance, ‘bad’ schools and ‘bad’ teachers in the face of times characterised by self-interested teachers and governments keen to shirk their responsibility in the education arena.
72 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the question of how celebrity operates in young people's everyday lives, thus contributing to the urgent need to address celebrity's social function and illustrate how young people draw upon class and gender distinctions that circulate within celebrity discourses (proper/improper, deserving/undeserving, talented/talentless and respectable/tacky).
Abstract: In this article, we explore the question of how celebrity operates in young people's everyday lives, thus contributing to the urgent need to address celebrity's social function. Drawing on data from three studies in England on young people's perspectives on their educational and work futures, we show how celebrity operates as a classed and gendered discursive device within young people's identity work. We illustrate how young people draw upon class and gender distinctions that circulate within celebrity discourses (proper/improper, deserving/undeserving, talented/talentless and respectable/tacky) as they construct their own identities in relation to notions of work, aspiration and achievement. We argue that these distinctions operate as part of neoliberal demands to produce oneself as a ‘subject of value’. However, some participants produced readings that show ambivalence and even resistance to these dominant discourses. Young people's responses to celebrity are shown to relate to their own class and gend...
68 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a critical race analysis of contemporary suburban schooling in the US, the author challenges the ideology of color-blind racial contexts and employs the concepts of colorblindness, interest-convergence, racial realism, and white privilege to explain how federal mandates and common school policies and practices, such as tracking, traditional curricula, teacher classroom practices, and student surveillance, sustain a racially hostile environment for students of color in majority white suburban schools.
Abstract: Employing a critical race analysis of contemporary suburban schooling in the US, the author challenges the ideology of colorblind racial contexts. The concepts of colorblindness, interest-convergence, racial realism, and white privilege are used to explain how federal mandates and common school policies and practices, such as tracking, traditional curricula, teacher classroom practices, and student surveillance, sustain a racially hostile environment for students of color in majority white suburban schools. Critical multicultural education is offered as a means to openly address issue of race and racism in the curriculum, school policies, and teacher practices.
66 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that UK universities are at risk of becoming institutions with no distinctive social role and no ethical raison d'etre, and that this is a process which undermines the possibilities for meaningful institutional and academic identities.
Abstract: This article argues that UK universities are at risk from a process of ‘hollowing out’ – that is, of becoming institutions with no distinctive social role and no ethical raison d'etre – and that this is a process which undermines the possibilities for meaningful institutional and academic identities. It begins with a condensed, and necessarily partial, review of recent UK higher education policy trends to indicate the historical context and direction of change and to highlight the growing separation of management and academic agendas and the linked rise in gloss and spin compared to academic substance. In the remainder of this article we focus on the normative dimension of these changes and unpack their implications for the nature of the university and of academic work. In so doing, we illustrate the breadth and depth of the threat posed by ‘hollowed-out’ universities, indicate alternative, more positive currents and call for a ‘re-valuation’ of the UK university.
63 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that the making of human kinds embodies particular historically generated modes of representing the possibilities of life; and these modes function to divide, differentiate and abject particular qualities of people and populations into unlivable spaces.
Abstract: The paper explores the fabrications of human kinds in pedagogical research. It examines the social and psychological sciences of education as producing independent spaces for the study of people in order to act on them and as a cultural thesis for people to act for themselves. Further, it explores the principles generated about who the child is and should be. It is argued that the making of human kinds embodies particular historically generated modes of representing the possibilities of life; and these modes function to divide, differentiate and abject particular qualities of people and populations into unlivable spaces. This comparativeness produces inequality as it strives for equality. The analysis engages educational studies in a conversation with history, philosophy, political and cultural studies that draw on particular European studies brought into the US to challenge its philosophical, analytical and social/psychological traditions.
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TL;DR: The authors argue that these translations were also, simultaneously, the processes by which the Australian education space was further'marketised' by homogenisation, whereby schools were rendered comparable through the development of common evaluation and common metrics.
Abstract: Australia's Education Revolution, launched in 2008, emphasised equity as a key reason for reforms. It identified ‘pockets of disadvantage’ as one of the main problems that needed to be addressed through its reforms. Through a series of translations, the problem of ‘pockets of disadvantage’ was converted to one of a lack of information, a lack of comparable metrics and the absence of an informed public, leading to a number of solutions such as the development of a national assessment scheme and the My School website. In this paper, using the theoretical and methodological resources of actor-network theory, I argue that these translations were also, simultaneously, the processes by which the Australian education space was further ‘marketised’. These marketisation processes involved homogenisation, whereby schools were rendered comparable through the development of common evaluation and common metrics; the development of informational resources that enabled parents to function as economic agents and exert ‘m...
TL;DR: The authors examine how equity is being drawn into new policy assemblages and how, in the context of marketisation, equity is evolving and being enacted in new ways across education sectors.
Abstract: The conjunction of equity and market logics in contemporary education has created new and different conditions of possibility for equity, both as conceived in policy discourses and as a related set of educational practices. In this editorial introduction, we examine how equity is being drawn into new policy assemblages and how, in the context of marketisation, equity is evolving and being enacted in new ways across education sectors. Different conceptions of equity are considered, including the increasingly influential human capital perspective promoted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We argue that, separate from critiques of neoliberalism and its deleterious effects on equity in education, it is necessary to analyse carefully the increasing rationalisation of equity agendas in economic terms, the associated effects on education governance and policy-making, as well as on the work of educational institutions and educators. Providing an overview of the contributions to this Special Issue, we direct particular attention to the multiple, complex and often contradictory effects of the current education reform agenda in Australia, which has prioritised equity objectives and intensified performance measurement, comparison and accountability as means to drive educational improvement and reduce disadvantage.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide a critical discussion of contemporary policy agendas to raise aspirations for university study among students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds, and identify a tension in aspiration-raising logics between human capital promises of economic...
Abstract: This paper provides a critical discussion of contemporary policy agendas to raise aspirations for university study among students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. It traces the politics of aspiration from the working class ‘poverty of desire’ thesis propounded by British socialists at the turn of the twentieth century to recent concerns about the educational aspirations of low SES groups. These concerns are manifest in the current aspiration-raising agenda in Australian higher education, which aims to realise equity objectives by cultivating market-rational behaviour and dispositions to maximise self-investment in human capital. However, changes in contemporary global education and labour markets present significant obstacles to the ‘good life’ promises made by advocates of human capital theory, and even when these promises are realised, deficit constructions of aspirations persist. The paper identifies a tension in aspiration-raising logics between (1) human capital promises of economic ...
TL;DR: In this article, the hidden racist dimension to contemporary education reforms and argues that this is a predictable and recurrent theme at times of economic crisis, drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and illustrating with examples from the English system.
Abstract: Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and illustrating with examples from the English system, the paper addresses the hidden racist dimension to contemporary education reforms and argues that this is a predictable and recurrent theme at times of economic crisis. Derrick Bell's concept of ‘interest-convergence’ argues that moments of racial progress are won when White power-holders perceive self-interest in accommodating the demands of minoritised groups; such moments are unusual and often short-lived. Presently, we are witnessing the reverse of this process; a period of pronounced interest-divergence, when White power-holders imagine that a direct advantage will accrue from the further exclusion and oppression of Black groups in society. Behind rhetoric that proclaims the need to improve educational standards for all and celebrates a commitment to closing the existing achievement gaps; in reality education reforms are being enacted that systematically disadvantage Black students and demonstrably widen edu...
TL;DR: The authors argue that secondary schools are capable of being equitable, whilst simultaneously acting as adaptive service providers, tailoring education to different students and local markets, and that the dilemma here is whether or not schools should "tailor equity" or whether tailoring equity is indeed antithetical to equity in so far as it implies unequal provision.
Abstract: The term equity is ubiquitous in Australian education policy and evolves amidst ongoing debates about what it means to be fair in education. Over the past three decades, meanings and practices associated with equity have reflected broader shifts in advanced liberal governance, with equity being reframed as a ‘market-enhancing’ mechanism and melted into economic productivity agendas. In this paper, I argue that an emerging, yet, under-examined policy tension is the view that secondary schools are capable of being equitable, whilst simultaneously acting as adaptive service providers, tailoring education to different students and local markets. A dilemma here is whether or not schools should ‘tailor equity’ or whether tailoring equity is indeed antithetical to equity in so far as it implies unequal provision. To explore this tension, I draw upon fieldwork from ethnographic research in two socially and economically disparate government secondary schools in suburban Melbourne, Australia. In doing so, I explore...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated how healthism and ideal body discourses were (re)produced, negotiated, taken up and resisted by pupils and PE teachers in one Scottish secondary school.
Abstract: Teachers and pupils are increasingly inundated with power laden ‘truths’ regarding health and the body as they attempt to construct their subjectivities. Drawing on insights from the works of Foucault, namely technologies of power and technologies of the self, this study investigated how healthism and ideal body discourses were (re)produced, negotiated, taken up and resisted by pupils and Physical Education (PE) teachers in one Scottish secondary school. Using semi-structured interviews, we found that pupil and teacher discourses varied in the way they influenced their thoughts and practices. Analysis of the data indicated that discourses can be resisted and (re)interpreted. In many cases, this was not without the creation of internal tension for pupils. Teachers demonstrated an understanding of the salience of these discourses, and their increased responsibility for health issues, but also internalised ‘truth’ differently. The study concludes by recommending the introduction of a critical enquiry focus a...
TL;DR: The authors explored constructions of teacher identities at a time of significant changes to public service professionalism, drawing on different discourses of professionalism, contrasting "organisational" and "occupational" professionalism, with discourse of personal and critical professionalism, to explore changing meanings and enactments of teacher professionalism.
Abstract: This article explores constructions of teacher identities at a time of significant changes to public service professionalism. The article draws on different discourses of professionalism, contrasting ‘organisational’ and ‘occupational’ professionalism, with discourses of ‘personal’ and ‘critical’ professionalism, to explore changing meanings and enactments of teacher professionalism in the 2000s. Narratives of three novice teachers, followed over eight years, are used to consider the impact of dominant discourses of ‘organisational’ professionalism in English further education, resulting in inbound, outbound and peripheral trajectories. In response, the article considers how practitioners might engage critically with current changes, arguing that it is necessary to work with what matters to teachers, such as their relations with students, teaching and learning and subject specialism. Such work might create, at least temporarily and locally, spaces in which more favourable conditions towards socially just ...
TL;DR: The authors argue against the hyper-individualisation of the concept because it leads to a diminution of the influence of situational and structural forces on early career teachers' experiences, and shifts primary responsibility for early career teacher well-being onto the individual.
Abstract: In this paper, we describe how and why we adopted a socially critical orientation to early career teacher resilience. In re-conceptualising early career teacher resilience, we expose the normative components of resilience by revealing the implicit values, beliefs and assumptions that underpin most traditional conceptions of resilience. We argue against the hyper-individualisation of the concept because it leads to a diminution of the influence of situational and structural forces on early career teachers’ experiences, and shifts primary responsibility for early career teacher well-being onto the individual. We lay the groundwork for a critical perspective on teacher resilience capable of illuminating the ‘problems’ of early career teachers within a broader social, cultural and political context. Our analysis is designed to promote further debate about new ways of seeing early career teacher resilience with the aim of creating and sustaining a spirit of optimism and human agency, as well as a sense of heal...
TL;DR: The authors examines the controversial "Too Asian?" article published by Canada's premiere news magazine in 2010 as a case study of media and education in order to produce a sharper analytical grammar of race in liberal, multicultural societies.
Abstract: This essay examines the controversial ‘Too Asian?’ article published by Canada's premiere news magazine in 2010 as a case study of media and education in order to produce a sharper analytical grammar of race in liberal, multicultural societies. I argue that the article recycles racial stereotypes, perpetuates the normalization of whiteness and the mythology of meritocracy, and enacts irresponsible journalism. I situate its representation of Asians within a historical context, and delineate their paradoxical subjectivity as an un/wanted racialized minority group. Asians are desired as immigrants, workers and students when they benefit Canada's economic imperatives, but are disavowed when they challenge the sociocultural status quo. I also develop the concept of ethno-nationalism as a form of anti-racist resistance when racialized minorities identify with the White-dominant nation-state in their claim for inclusion. However, I raise concerns regarding ethno-nationalism's limitation for pan-Asian solidarity ...
TL;DR: The authors argue that black subjects are understood as "sympathetic" only to the extent that they accept individual "responsibility" and move toward neoliberal school choices as a corrective for their own past cultural and educational shortcomings.
Abstract: The author argues that the documentary, Waiting for Superman, effectively employs bodies and texts in ways that reproduce hegemonic constructions of race, and more specifically, offers an image and imagination of black engagement in education that reinforces neoliberal-multicultural narratives about black disinterest in, and responsibility for their own lack of educational attainment. Black subjects are understood as sympathetic primarily because, and only to the extent that they accept individual ‘responsibility’ and move toward neoliberal school ‘choices’ as a corrective for their own past cultural and educational shortcomings. The author also uses his analysis to encourage a (re-)commitment to critical cultural analysis of racial signification in educational policy discourse.
TL;DR: In this paper, a more systematic critique of school effectiveness and school improvement as paradigms is presented, and the implications of their hegemony, their rootedness in a neoliberal policy environment, and their limitations as theories and methodologies of school evaluation and change.
Abstract: The purpose of this article is to contribute to progressive school change by developing a more systematic critique of school effectiveness (SE) and school improvement (SI) as paradigms. Diverse examples of paradigms and paradigm change in non-educational fields are used to create a model of paradigms for application to SE and SI, and to explore the implications of their hegemony, their rootedness in a neoliberal policy environment, and their limitations as theories and methodologies of school evaluation and change. The article seeks to identify reasons for the inadequacy of orthodox SI in helping schools face contemporary challenges, including schools serving populations burdened by poverty, and finally identifies some alternative approaches to educational change. The article draws examples from an English context, but with international resonances.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe the distinctive ideological shift from a social democratic to a market conception of equity in education over the past three decades, accompanied by changes in the techniques of educational governance, from the collaborative approach of the Participation and Equity Program (PEP) which emphasised the importance of trust in teachers as professionals, to new managerialism focused on efficiency and accountability.
Abstract: Beginning with a reflection on the Participation and Equity Program (PEP) in Australia in the 1980s, this response describes the distinctive ideological shift from a social democratic to a market conception of equity in education over the past three decades. This shift has been accompanied by changes in the techniques of educational governance, from the collaborative approach of the PEP, which emphasised the importance of trust in teachers as professionals, to new managerialism focused on efficiency and accountability. Market reforms in education have continued to use such traditionally socially democratic notions as equity, but have been enormously successful in re-articulating their meaning. A commentary is provided on the papers in this Special Issue and their collective analysis of governmental strategies that have led to this re-articulation of equity; the extent to which these strategies have been successful; the consequences they have had on students and school communities, and for the work of teac...
TL;DR: The authors used narrative analysis to explore some of the meaning-making processes that are implicated in the stalemate of inequities in education, and illustrated how blame and sequestration are used as rhetorical strategies to silence equity critics.
Abstract: Despite the ongoing production of statistics about inequities in education, national policy agendas seem incapable of getting traction on the everyday realities of the schooling which re/produces them. This paper is a think-piece which uses narrative analysis to explore some of the meaning-making processes that are implicated in this stalemate. Mobilising Lyotard's notion of a performative master narrative, that of the globalised economy with its attendant trope of the market, equity policy is conceived as a parallel story of distribution of knowledge-as-a-thing, where outcomes are privileged over purposes and processes, and learning is assumed to proceed in the same way for all. The ways in which this equity story supports the master narrative – through the display of test results for example – are signposted, and illustrations are presented to show how blame and sequestration are used as rhetorical strategies to silence equity critics. This kind of deconstructive critique of course has its limitations: ...
TL;DR: In this article, the role of race and racism in the research process of a two-year ESRC-funded study into the educational strategies of the black middle classes is examined, where the authors explore how my political positioning and experiences of racism, as a black female scholar, shaped not only my engagement with the research but also how I was perceived and positioned by others.
Abstract: This paper draws upon a two-year Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded study into the educational strategies of the black middle classes to examine the role of race and racism in the research process. Specifically, it explores how my political positioning and experiences of racism, as a black female scholar, shaped not only my engagement with the research but also how I was perceived and positioned by others. This is analysed in terms of three areas: the recruitment and identification of research participants, the interview process and the dissemination of the project findings. While consideration of the researcher's race and racial politics tended to run parallel to or quietly intersect with the project development, fieldwork and analysis, it is argued that these factors, in actuality, play a significant and highly informative role in shaping a broader, nuanced conceptualisation of race and racism that is too often silenced and neglected in race research and the academy as a whole. Informed ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that ethical consumption has become a key model for both schools as providers and parents as consumers to engage with issues of equity, and identify how the phenomenon of ethical consumption is reflected in the promotional strategies of elite private schools, and how this framing of equity occludes a clear vision of inequalities in the distribution of resources and access across different educational sites.
Abstract: The promotion of equity in Australian education has come to present itself to parents in ways which are shaped by the marketisation and internationalisation of schooling. This paper argues that, as in other markets, ethical consumption has become a key model for both schools as providers and parents as consumers to engage with issues of equity. We identify how the phenomenon of ethical consumption is reflected in the promotional strategies of elite private schools, and how this framing of equity occludes a clear vision of inequalities in the distribution of resources and access across different educational sites. We reflect on the extent to which outreach and service programmes in elite schools fulfil their stated goals or are self-serving.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe a community's attempt to interrupt the popularly shared notion that low-income/working-class communities of color do not deserve quality education by staging a 19-day hunger strike to secure a school for 1600 students.
Abstract: Because the dynamics of race are wrongly ignored in a current shroud of post-racialism (i.e. re-election of Barack Obama as president of the USA, shifting racial demographics in the USA, etc.), there are still communities in the USA and throughout the world that experience the damaging effects of racism entangled with the realities of class. Many still do not live in a post-racial utopia where ‘things are getting better’. Instead, for some, things are getting worse. In light of these realities, this article is an account of a community's attempt to interrupt the popularly shared notion that low-income/working-class communities of color do not deserve quality education. The title has particular significance in that the 14 is reflective of the 14 community members that endured a 19-day hunger strike to secure a school for 1600 students. It should be considered on the ‘edge’ of race in that it recognizes that race is often placed on the periphery of urban education, allowing policies to continually marginali...
TL;DR: The authors argue that race and religion constitute contestations of urban space around the establishment of government-funded Islamic schools and that these particular contestations arise from the changing nature of, and historical continuities between, urban politics, education, Islamophobia and racialisation.
Abstract: Over the past 30 years, there has been virulent urban politics surrounding the provision of government-funded Islamic K-12 schooling in suburban south-western Sydney, Australia. In this paper, drawing on examples of local government opposition to Islamic schools, we argue that race and religion constitute contestations of urban space around the establishment of government-funded Islamic schools. We argue that these particular contestations arise from the changing nature of, and historical continuities between, urban politics, education, Islamophobia and racialisation, in pre-9/11 and post-9/11 Australia. The politics surrounding Islamic schools reveals a coded urban politics that can be understood by paying attention to the ambiance of racialised-religious fears produced – in part – by the policies of government-funding of non-secular education.
TL;DR: The authors explored the effects of audit cultures on school education through a highly personal reading of the My School website, launched in Australia in 2010, and argued that these are reductionist and insufficient for understanding the complexities of pedagogical spaces and the teachers and learners within them.
Abstract: This paper explores the effects of audit cultures on school education through a highly personal reading of the My School website, launched in Australia in 2010. It situates two personal narratives, from the points of view of student and teacher, alongside the other stories available about two of the secondary schools listed on the website. Although statistics such as those generated through the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy tests, school comparisons and post-school destinations present certain kinds of stories about these schools, I argue that these are reductionist and insufficient for understanding the complexities of pedagogical spaces and the teachers and learners within them. Whilst arguments for hard data to address educational inequity can be marshalled to support My School, I suggest that it also inadvertently disguises other elements of schooling and risks increasing inequity. Rather, the statistical stories might be recognised as partial and supplemented and disrupted by ri...
TL;DR: The authors examine how racist hate speech, occurring in a non-education context of a police-related tragedy, and benevolent liberal race talk on school equity issues mutually reinforce the logic of white racial dominance.
Abstract: This article examines how a progressive, rural/small city community in the USA wrestles with race, racism, and school equity in the public arena of print media. It inquires into the tensions, limitations, and possibilities for race-conscious discourse in the face of both explicit racist hate speech and benevolent liberal race talk. Based on ethnographic and cultural discourse analyses of local print media, this article draws from critical race and whiteness theories to examine how racist hate speech, occurring in a non-education context of a police-related tragedy, and benevolent liberal race talk on school equity issues mutually reinforce the logic of white racial dominance. It also locates the possibilities of race-conscious talk as generative speech that demands a response.