Conjunctions of power and comparative education

This paper develops the basis of a comparative sociological account of the present state and potential of Comparative Education (CE) as a field of study by examining the mechanisms and contexts generated by three ‘conjunctions’ of power and CE. The first of these concerns issues of power over the field, how it has been, and is being, framed by the operation of ‘power’ of various kinds. Power over what counts as CE emerges through three forms of strategic selectivity, based on: (1) its missions, locations and wider contexts; (2) its political, discursive, theoretical, methodological and valorisational opportunity structures; and (3) its institutional locations within the structures of university governance and national and international funding bodies, and the conditions of knowledge production that they frame. Next, it addresses issues of power in CE, how it is and has been conceived, by whom, and with what analytic and political consequences. Finally, the paper directs attention to the potential power of CE. It focuses on two contrasting forms taken by the outputs of CE, the production of expertise and of explanation, which together suggest something of the nature of the dilemmas of the relationships between power and CE. Expertise concerns the power of the field as a source of comment and advice on the development of educational policy, based on qualitative and quantitative comparisons of education systems and their performances. The second, by contrast, considers the potential of a comparative approach to the explanation of social phenomena.     

Editorial

Young adolescents in communities with high rates of early sexual initiation are at risk of multiple negative health outcomes. Although sex education programs for this age group are often controversial, surveys document that many mothers and fathers would appreciate guidance about how to discuss sexuality with their children. This paper presents an innovative strategy for reaching inner‐city parents and helping them communicate effectively with their preteen sons and daughters about the importance of delaying sexual initiation. Input from 38 focus groups with 109 youths and 64 parents was used to inform the development of an intervention, called Saving Sex for Later. This theoretically grounded intervention is designed for communities where adolescents are at high risk of initiating sex prior to or early in high school. It consists of three audio‐CDs that contain dramatic role‐model stories to help parents identify ‘teachable moments’ to talk with their sons and daughters about their values and expectations, set household rules and respond appropriately to both positive changes in their adolescents' development and warning signs of trouble. In addition to describing how community input informed the stories, a random sample of 133 parents from one school community was mailed the audio‐CDs. Feedback includes examples of how parents applied messages to talk with their children about changing bodies, changing relationships and reasons for delaying sexual initiation. The next steps include evaluating whether the intervention is effective in helping parents convey sexual abstinence messages and in supporting the delayed sexual initiation of their young adolescent children.     

Doing Diversity Work in Higher Education in Australia

This paper explores how diversity is used as a key term to describe the social and educational mission of universities in Australia. The paper suggests that we need to explore what diversity ‘does’ in specific contexts. Drawing on interviews with diversity and equal opportunities practitioners, the paper suggests that ‘diversity’ is used in the face of what has been called ‘equity fatigue’. Diversity is associated with what is new, and allows practitioners to align themselves and their units with the existing values of their universities. However, given this, diversity can mean potentially anything: and practitioners have to re‐attach the term ‘diversity’ to other more marked terms such as equality and justice if it is to ‘do anything’. The paper explores the appeal of diversity, the strategic nature of diversity work, and the role of commitment, leadership and training. It also offers some more general reflections on how language works within organisations by showing that words, although they do things, are not finished as forms of action: what they do depends not only on how they are used, but how they get taken up.     

Cripping sex education: lessons learned from a programme aimed at young people with mobility impairments

This paper analyses sexuality and relationship education (SRE) in a Swedish college programme aimed at young people with mobility impairments. Interviews and focus groups were conducted to explore students’ experiences of the structure, content and usefulness of SRE, and college personnel’s SRE practices. Results show that, although many of the issues covered are pertinent for all young people, being disabled raises additional concerns: for example how to handle de-sexualising attitudes, possible sexual practices, and how reliance on assistance impacts upon privacy. Crip theory is used as an analytical framework to identify, challenge and politicise sexual norms and practices. Students’ experiences of living in a disablist, heteronormative society can be used as resources for developing cripistemologies, which challenge the private/public binary that often de-legitimises learners’ experiences and separates them from teachers’ ‘proper’ knowledge production. Crip SRE would likely hold benefits for non-disabled pupils as well, through its use of more inclusive pedagogy and in work to expand sexual possibilities. Crip SRE has the potential to disrupt taken-for-granted dis/ability and sexuality divides as well as to politicise issues that many young people presently experience as ‘personal shortcomings’.     

‘Hot’, ‘Cold’ and ‘Warm’ supports: towards theorising where refugee students go for assistance at university

This paper contributes a rich picture of how students from refugee backgrounds navigate their way into and through undergraduate studies in a regional Australian university, paying particular attention to their access to and use of different forms of support. We draw on the conceptualisation of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ knowledge, offered by Ball and Vincent (1998. “‘I Heard it on the Grapevine’: ‘Hot’ Knowledge and School Choice.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 19 (3): 377–400), and the addition of ‘warm’ knowledge offered by Slack et al. (2014. “‘Hot’, ‘Cold’ and ‘Warm’ Information and Higher Education Decision Making.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 35 (2): 204–223), to develop an understanding of how students from refugee backgrounds make choices about how they locate, select and access support for their studies. The findings of this paper suggest that students from refugee backgrounds do not view the ‘cold’ (unfamiliar-formal) institutional support on offer as ‘for them’; instead they expressed a preference for the ‘warm’ (familiar-formal) support offered via ‘trusted’ people who act as literacy/sociocultural brokers or ‘hot’ (familiar-informal) support of their grapevine of other students (past and present) or experienced community members.     

Sexuality education: how children of lesbian mothers ‘learn’ about sex/uality

Sexuality is something that children experience from an early age. It may be a cause of individual concern and anxiety, but is seldom, if ever, deconstructed at any stage of a child's education. Institutionalized fear and misunderstandings of Section 28 (1988) have effectively removed discussion of sexuality, homosexual or otherwise, from the English school curriculum. This structural silence on sexuality is all too frequently repeated at home. In this article I interrogate how children from lesbian parent households ‘learn’ about sexuality, looking at the effects of their parents' (homo)sexual orientation on their ‘sexuality education’. I consider how sex education is taught in schools; what children traditionally ‘learn’ about sexuality. I then look at whether sexuality education is any different for children from lesbian parent families; whether these children have greater sexuality knowledge, and, if so, how this has been ‘learnt’. I suggest that it may be the ambient presence of sexuality—as both a topic of conversation and mothers' unspoken sexual identity—that means lesbian parent families offer a distinctive form of sexuality education. This article draws on empirical research on sexuality and lesbian parent families with lesbian parent families who lived in the Yorkshire region, UK.     

Transformative conversations about sexualities pedagogy and the experience of sexual knowing

One of the hallmarks of sex education traditionally has been its Cartesian endorsement of mind/body dualism; we have preferred to equate ‘self’ as synonymous with ‘mind’, and have invested heavily in believing in the valence of rationality‐based sexualities education. We generally do not consider the way ‘self’ negotiates, interprets and relates to sexual knowledge in all of our complexity, including our messy, embodied and emotional lives. In this paper I address what I think are several much‐needed conversations for a holistic pedagogy of sexualities to incorporate, including the falseness of the mind/body split, reconsidering what counts as sexual knowledge, the role of the performative in communicating our sexual knowing, and the importance of considering affect in learning about sexualities. The second part of the paper examines pedagogical considerations currently absent in dialogues of sexualities education, such as incorporating transformational learning strategies in teaching sexualities, and what it means to educate toward being a sexual citizen. Finally, I will outline how discussions of epistephenomenology (our relationship to and how we experience knowledge) can contribute to moving toward a vision of a critical, cultural sexualities education.     

Young Nunga males at play and playing up: the look and the talk

This paper explores how Foucault's concept of the panopticon, power and knowledge impacts on the identity of young Nunga males in a secondary educational institution. I argue that the regulation of the Nunga body in schools is embedded in the discursive formations of knowledge about Indigenous people and the workings of power that are tied up in discipline, surveillance and management of bodies in schools. Through the Indigenous concepts of ‘play’, ‘playing up’/‘stylin’ up’, I draw attention to Nunga males' resistance to surveillance and management in the schooling environment through understanding themselves as Nungas and their performance of identity through the popular culture of rap to turn the surveillance gaze back upon itself. For young Nunga males turning the gaze back on itself is an act of constructive defiance that allows them a space to explore their own identities through performance rather than through the knowledge production constructed by the hegemonic racialised institution of the school.     

Recognition,inclusion and democracy: learning from action research with young people

ABSTRACT

This paper draws upon learning from three action research projects conducted as part of a Europe-wide project exploring young people’s social and political participation. Challenging dominant discourses about what ‘counts’ as participation and what does not, the paper explores how, through the action research projects, young people engaged in knowledge democracy in ‘new democratic arenas’. Building upon experiential knowing and creating knowledge and learning through practice, the young people explored their own democratic knowledge production, communication and engagement within a context of shifting discourses of participation, democratic engagement and active citizenship. The increasing preference of young people for more informal forms of participation as lived practice reflects a shift to young people constructing their own modes of participation and ‘remaking democracy’ in their own vision and according to their own needs. By working outside of the confines of normative assumptions of democratic practice and participation, young people exercised their own ‘political’ agency in response to their own priorities, interests and concerns and, in doing so, illustrated that new forms, understandings and practices of knowledge democracy can emerge that reflect the promise of inclusive democratic societies more meaningfully.     

Teachers' views of teenage sexual morality

This paper examines the discourses of morality drawn on by secondary school teachers in England to describe their attitudes to pupils' developing sexual identities. Although teachers recognized their own formative role in the sexual socialization of pupils and identified homophobic attitudes among boys, they were ambivalent about how far they could intervene in homophobic bulling in school. However, they failed even to recognize the widespread misogynistic bullying of girls by boys as a problem. Teachers expressed anxieties about girls' ownership of sexual knowledge and sexual agency while perceiving boys to be sexually immature and less ‘responsible’. We explore possible reasons for teachers' neglect of misogynistic bullying and their labelling of girls as sexually precocious. We argue that the discourses shaping teachers' attitudes to sexual morality and sex education were largely embedded in a form of liberal individualism that impeded them from confronting the structurally reproduced relations of gender domination.     

Sexuality,marriage and parenthood of mentally retarded people

Issues relating to sexuality, marriage, and parenthood of mentally retarded people are discussed in the context of normalization. Negative attitudes towards the manifestation of sexuality by mentally retarded people are considered, along with studies which demonstrate that many such individuals are capable of meaning ful sexual behavior, and meaningful interpersonal relationships that may culminate in marriage and child rearing. It is urged that counselors have an important role in assisting mentally retarded individuals attain their rights to sexual activity, marriage, and parenthood. Attention is drawn to teaching techniques for use in sex education programs for mentally retarded people, and examples are presented of programs which deal with psycho-sexual development, marriage, parenthood, and sexual problems and dysfunctions.     

Bodies and affect in non-traditional learning spaces

Abstract

This paper considers the ‘knowledge economy’ as it is used in education rhetoric to establish social and educational consent for significant changes both to the spatial organisation of classrooms and their affective economies. We draw on ethnographic data from a study of ‘non-traditional classroom spaces’, where the spatial organisation of schooling emerged as a potential fulcrum through which the imaginary of the conventional primary classroom was being reconceptualised. Traditionally configured classroom spaces and the learning that takes place within them were being challenged and replaced by notions of twenty-first century learning in ‘agile’ learning environments. In the context of this reform agenda, these open-plan spaces were seen as offering new prospects for participation in a globally connected and competitive economic world that requires students to continuously adapt, innovate and respond creatively to a range of different problems. We consider how these everyday moments function as conceptual encounters between affective, embodied experiences and educational reform discourses that rationalise the implementation of non-traditional classroom spaces in ways that have very little to do with children and their futures. This cultural approach takes a step aside from numerous, and necessary, critiques of recent educational policies per se, in order to consider what might be learned from the uncanny spectres of child bodies that haunt them. The paper draws attention to examples of children’s affect in non-traditional classrooms and what that may tell us about current educational reform when sacrifice forms part of the missing account of educational reorganisation for the knowledge economy.     

Assessment at the boundaries: Service learning as case study

This article explores the value systems which inform assessment practices in higher education, specifically how particular forms of knowledge valued in the curriculum shape and constrain assessment practices. The data for this article is drawn from two courses which participated in a service learning research and development project at the University of Cape Town. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein, the article argues that the location of these courses—within the field of higher education and a particular kind of institution, faculty and department—shapes their assessment systems, practices and outcomes in certain ways. What is valued in this field (Bourdieu) is a form of knowledge production which requires students ‘to step out of the particularities’. This form of knowledge operates as a regulative discourse, constituting what counts as legitimate. Using the assessment system as a ‘window’, this article explores how these service learning courses constitute and are constituted by the regulative discourse of the field. While the constraints of the field are powerful, this project offers some hopeful signs of forms of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment that, at the very least, name and challenge these underlying value systems.     

Between tradition and modernity: girls’ talk about sexual relationships and violence in Kenya,Ghana and Mozambique

This paper interrogates the influence of a tradition-modernity dichotomy on perspectives and practices on sexual violence and sexual relationships involving girls in three districts of Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique. Through deploying an analytical framework of positioning within multiple discursive sites, we argue that although the dichotomy misrepresents the complexity of contemporary communities, it is nonetheless deployed by girls, educational initiatives and researchers in their reflections on girls’ sexual practices and sexual violence. The analysis examines variations between communities in patterns of and perspectives about sexual relationships, transactional sex and sexual violence. It illuminates ways in which features of ‘modernisation’ and ‘tradition’ both exacerbate and protect girls from violence. Across contexts, girls actively positioned themselves between tradition and modernity, while positioning others at the extreme poles. Education initiatives also invoked bipolar positions in their attempts to protect girls’ rights to education and freedom from violence. The paper concludes by considering the implications for educational intervention and the potential for the analytical framing to generate richer, more contextualised understandings about girls’ perspectives, experiences and ways of resisting sexual violence.     

Introducing Sex Education in the Formal Education System in Nigeria

Abstract

Evidence exists about the increasing rate of sexual involvement, decrease in age of first sexual experience and the existence of different forms of sexual aberration such as prostitution, sexual exploitation and rape among Nigerian youth. In spite of these problems sex education has not been included in the framework of the formal education system in Nigeria. The introduction of sex education in our formal school system is now necessary not only to provide adolescents with valuable knowledge about sex, but also as a means of averting risks associated with unplanned coital sex such as teenage pregnancy, illegitimacy and other medical and psychological risks. This paper attempts to answer questions related to such issues as who should teach sex education, whether sex education should be taught as a subject or integrated into some or all school subjects, the content of sex education and how sex education materials should be presented. It is anticipated that the introduction of sex education in the formal school system is likely to lead to some conflicts with cultural and religious norms and with existing sex knowledge which youths have from their peers, magazines, pictures and pornography.     

Peer regulation of teenage sexual identities

This article examines the teenage policing of heterosexuality in schools and contributes to debates about teenage sexual moralities and heterosexual male agency. It reports on a qualitative study in England of the collective sexual values of 12‐ to 13‐year‐olds and 14‐ to 15‐year‐olds. Focus group interviews indicated that pupils developed a consensual sexual morality through collusive sex talk. Homophobic and misogynistic views and verbal abuse were found to be key instruments of teenage peer regulation of sexual identities crossing class and ethnic boundaries. We found that the ‘official’ discourse of sex education did not relate to teenage lives. Anxieties about heterosexual masculinity and girls' sexual agency were conveyed by some boys through verbal sexual harassment—a form of behaviour regarded as intimidating yet normal. While white and Asian boys were more conservative in their views about marriage than girls, white and Asian girls struggled to resist heterosexual masculine power through career aspirations, by questioning marriage and being informed about sexual issues.     

‘That happened to me too’: young people’s informal knowledge of diverse genders and sexualities

Abstract

This paper explores how young people of diverse genders and sexualities share information about sex, sexualities and genders. Formal approaches to education often fail to consider young people’s communication and information exchange practices, including the circulation of peer knowledge through social media. In the wake of recent Australian backlash against the Safe Schools Coalition, we can observe how homophobia and queerphobia in the broader community can impact upon young peoples’ ability to learn about themselves and their bodies through formal education. Yet young people of diverse genders and sexualities can be observed to support each other in peer spaces, utilising their knowledge networks. This paper explores young people’s informal learning practices, the capacity of peer networks to support and educate young people, and the challenges of recognising such networks in a culture in which health and education discourses present them as ‘risk subjects’ rather than ‘health agents’. These issues are discussed in relation to our own experiences in research and health promotion, including one author’s role as a youth peer educator. Drawing on our workplace experiences, we provide a number of anecdotal examples which highlight the complexities of informal knowledge practice and information circulation, and the ways these can challenge and reform professional health, education, and research approaches.     

Research capacity and dissemination among academics in Tanzania: examining knowledge production and the perceived binary of ‘local’ and ‘international’ journals

This article explores two distinct strategies suggested by academics in Tanzania for publishing and disseminating their research amidst immense higher education expansion. It draws on Arjun Appadurai’s notions of ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ internationalisation to analyse the perceived binary between ‘international’ and ‘local’ academic journals and their concomitant differences in status. In an attempt to examine critically how the status quo regarding knowledge production in higher education is maintained and reproduced, the article explores interactions between a Tanzanian academic and an educational researcher from the global North, including the ways in which research collaborations between academics from different contexts and material conditions in their institutions may both advance and inhibit professional development of academics and comparative education research, writ large. The article concludes with a call for comparative education researchers to carefully consider the future of educational research in sub-Saharan Africa and the complexities of continued involvement in knowledge production processes.     

When ‘Muslim‐ness’ is pedagogised. ‘Religion’ and ‘culture’ as knowledge and social classification in the classroom

The article presents a curriculum‐sociological study of ‘religion’ in the classroom. More specifically, it is a study, inspired by Bernstein, Foucault and Bourdieu, that examines various forms of identity politics tied to ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ as these concepts unfold in the classroom in relation to knowledge production and social classification. Categories such as ‘Muslim’ and ‘Danish’ are tentatively broken down in a study of the classroom as a locus for knowledge production and the production of social difference. What knowledge of religion is produced? What spaces for subjects? What ways to be a pupil? And in what ways do ‘Muslim‐ness’ and ‘Danishness’/‘Christian‐ness’ figure in the social economy of the class? The classroom is studied as a micro‐political arena for relations and politics concerning minorities and majority. In this sense, ‘religion’/‘culture’ may be seen partly as knowledge clusters and partly as subject‐producing technologies colouring and shaping bodies. These knowledge clusters, in turn, are coloured by the social economy associated with the agents’ bodies, making it a productive and potent part of social classification. Categories such as ‘Muslim’ and ‘Danish’/‘Christian’ are in themselves to be understood as processes of social classification and distribution. Hence, ‘religion’ may be understood as a class‐producing practice as the latter is transformed and produced in the pedagogical field of practice.