Unfulfilled promise: radical discourses in South African educational historiography, 1970–2007

This paper examines the discourses and modes of representation embodied in educational historiography from the 1970s to the present and their implications for intellectual identity construction in SA. The paper shows how the theoretical foundations of the liberal and Afrikaner nationalist discourses, which vacillated between race and ethnicity, shifted to social class and gender in radical and neo‐Marxist discursive formations of the 1980s. It highlights how the decline of radical scholarship has resulted in a synthesis of constructivist and postmodernist discourses that privilege nation‐building, identity and cultural diversity after apartheid within a predominantly neo‐liberal paradigm. It argues that the transition to post‐apartheid education came to be thought about within a horizon of possibilities different from the rigid paradigmatic tradition of the short‐lived neo‐Marxist school of the 1970s and 1980s.     

Single‐sex Education for Girls: heterosexuality,gendered subjectivity and school choice

Single‐sex education for girls constitutes a focal point around which issues of gender, choice and educational decision‐making coalesce. My concern is not to enter the debate about the merits of single‐sex education for girls per se, but to examine the relationship between discourses of femininity and discourses around single‐sex schooling to see how they interact in the choice of single‐sex schools by girls and their parents. In this paper, I explore the ways in which aspects of feminist poststructuralist theory can be used to offer a more dynamic and complex account of the processes of school choice than that assumed by neo‐liberal theorists. The theory I develop is illuminated by interviews with three girls and their parents, from different social‐class backgrounds, at the point at which they were making decisions about which secondary school to apply for. A focus such as this enables me to do two things: firstly, to develop a more adequate understanding of the relationship between gender and educational decision‐making; and secondly, to critique the underlying theory of instrumental rationality, and its relationship to school choice, which has underwritten the marketisation of education in Aotearoa/New Zealand.     

Comparing Neo-liberal Projects and Inequality in Education

In this article, I pay particular attention to some of the most important dynamics surrounding globalisation in education—the increasingly powerful discourses and polices of neoliberalism concerning privatisation, marketisation, performativity, and the 'enterprising individual'. While I demonstrate the truly international effects of neo‐liberal policies—and the differential realities they tend to produce in real schools—I also suggest that we cannot simply read off the effects of these policies in the abstract. Their uses and effects are historically contingent. They are at least partly dependent on the balance of forces in each nation and on the histories of the ways progressive tendencies have already been instituted within the state. Yet, I also suggest that any analysis of these discourses and policies must critically examine their class and race and gender effects at the level of who benefits from their specific institutionalisations and from their contradictory functions within real terrains of social power.     

Men accessing education: masculinities,identifications and widening participation

Drawing on ESRC‐funded research (RES‐000–22–0832), this article examines the accounts of men participating in London access and foundation programmes in relation to their shifting masculine identifications. I consider how the men’s early memories of schooling shape their student masculinities. Their accounts are contextualised in relation to hegemonic discourses of widening participation and neo‐liberalism. Drawing on feminist critique, I pay attention to the men’s self‐regulating practices in their struggle to be recognised as deserving of higher education access and participation. The interconnections and contradictions within men’s identifications across a range of differences are considered in relation to their experiences and imaginaries of accessing higher education.     

On the making and taking of professionalism in the further education workplace

This paper examines the changing nature of professional practice in English further education. At a time when neo‐liberal reform has significantly impacted on this under‐researched and over‐market‐tested sector, little is known about who its practitioners are and how they construct meaning in their work. Sociological interest in the field has tended to focus on further education practitioners as either the subjects of market and managerial reform or as creative agents operating within the contradictions of audit and inspection cultures. In challenging such dualism, which is reflective of wider sociological thinking, the paper examines the ways in which agency and structure combine to produce a more transformative conception of the further education professional. The approach contrasts with a prevailing policy discourse that seeks to re‐professionalise and modernise further education practice without interrogating either the terms of its professionalism or the neo‐liberal practices in which it resides.     

Discourses of antagonism and desire: marketing for international students in neighbourhood schools

This paper explores the consequences of these discourses for the ways that international students are identified and positioned within school communities. My argument is developed in four sections. The first describes my ongoing exploration into the impact of international student programmes in Australia. The second exemplifies my argument: exploring the day‐to‐day experiences of vice principals in two Victorian government state secondary schools as they market their schools, and examining the systemic and ontological discourses played out within those conversations. The third interrogates discourses of identity and difference, neo‐liberalism and naïve cosmopolitanism which I find shape teacher conversations about international student programmes. In the final section, I argue that the impact of the discourse formations implicit in teacher talk about international student programmes has been the objectification of international students and their ambivalent inclusion within the school community.     

Pedagogic discourse and sex education: myths,science and subversion

This paper elaborates possibilities and limitations for sex education in schools by mapping the consequence of introducing the topic ‘sex’ within a range of scientific and informal discursive settings. The organising and regulating structures of the school maintain the boundaries between common‐sense and scientific discourses. Bernstein made a distinction between vertical discourse and horizontal discourses. Vertical discourses characterise scientific discourses that are coherent, explicit and systematically principled structures. Horizontal discourses characterise common‐sense discourses that are local, segmented and context‐dependent. The implications for teaching sex education through vertical discourses such as science, English and art as opposed to personal and social education, which is a horizontal discourse, are discussed. Yet, all discourses are unstable, and the notion of a ‘tipping point’ is introduced to demonstrate the potential for sex education when vertical discourses collapse.     

Childhood,neo‐liberalism and the feminization of education

This paper brings together analyses from childhood and gender studies with macro‐economic analysis to offer new perspectives on current educational debates, including the current role of education within broader discussions. Girls’ recent (supposed) educational success is situated within economic and cultural contexts to explore how discussions of gender, childhood and development both express and, paradoxically, obscure these. Analysis of popular discourses surrounding children and childhood is used to suggest that the sentimentalized (girl) child has come to represent a new neo‐liberal subject, such that contemporary discourses of childhood and feminization typically distract attention from more meaningful structural analyses ‐ that would crucially include further analyses of gender and childhood.     

Social Welfare,the Neo‐conservative Turn and Educational Opportunity

This essay examines the educational opportunities of people in poverty who receive social welfare assistance. The dominant political theory underlying social policy (including education policy) in the United States has evolved from 1960s and 1970s welfare liberalism into 1980s and 1990s style neo‐conservatism—a theory that embraces principles of the market and individual liberty as paramount social values. Against this backdrop, I review two recent books that provide compelling evidence for this turn and I call for increased understanding of the relationship between social welfare policies and higher education opportunities for those in poverty.     

Politics of social partnerships: a framework for theorizing

This paper considers the politics of neo‐liberal reform of education and training in the specific context of social partnerships. Social partnerships are hybrid social spaces formed when a range of interests/partners work together for mutual benefit. Partnerships are one of a series of hybridized social spaces which have been formed as a consequence of the trend to neo‐liberal governance. The paper begins by situating the study of social partnerships in wider concerns about neo‐liberal reform and politics. It reviews literature on social partnerships as a way of identifying the different approaches to the conceptualization of conflict or practical politics. These are role conflict, interest conflict, and regime conflict. It also draws on a series of empirical research projects on social partnerships in Australia which have identified persistent points of tension within partnership formation and maintenance. Drawing these conceptualizations and persistent points of tension together provides a framework which can guide systematic inquiry of social partnerships. The paper suggests that this framework facilitates research by naming different types of political action. It encourages a multi‐dimensional analysis of partnership politics rather than presenting partnerships as either a celebratory or categorical expression of neo‐liberal political rationality.     

Gender,toys and learning

In spite of continuing patterning of curriculum subject preference and choice by gender, there has been little recent attention to the argument developed in the 1970s that children play with different toys according to their gender, and that these provide girls and boys with (different) curriculum‐related skills. The article describes a small‐scale empirical study that asked parents of 3–5 year old children to identify their child’s favourite toys and viewing material, and analysed responses according to children’s gender. The most frequently identified toys and viewing materials were subjected to content and discourse analysis, with the intention of identifying both educative aspects of content, and the gender discourses reflected. The article explores conceptual issues around categorisations of ‘education’ within toys and entertainment resources, positing the notion of ‘didactic information’ to delineate between overtly educational content and other social discourses. Analysis reveals toy preferences to be highly gendered, with boys’ toys and resources concentrated on technology and action, and girls’ on care and stereotypically feminine interests. Didactic information, and aspects developing construction and literacy skills, were identified in the selected toys and resources for boys, and were lacking in those for girls. All the toys and resources could be read as implicated in ‘gendering’: the various gender discourses, and other discourses around aspects of social identity reflected in the toys and resources are identified and analysed. The analysis presented suggests the value of reinvigorated attention to children’s toys and entertainment resources in terms both of the education they afford, and their role in the production of social identities.     

Media/ting change: the print media's role in mediating education policy in a period of radical reform in Victoria,Australia

This paper draws upon critical discourse analysis, cultural studies and communication theory, studies on media and educational reform, and the work of Bernstein, Bourdieu and Luhmann in particular, to explore how the print and media ‘mediated’ a period of educational change marked by moves to self‐management in schools in Victoria, Australia. It considers how the media was mobilized by various education stakeholders, and in turn informed relations between schools and government, through policy discourses and texts. It considers why and how particular themes became media ‘issues’, how schools and teachers responded to these issues, and how the media was used by various stakeholders in education to shape policy debates. It is based on a year‐long qualitative study that explored critical incidents and representations about education in the print media over a year in the daily press. It illustrates the ways in which a neo‐liberal Victorian government mobilized the media to gain strategic advantage to promote radical education reform policies, considers the media effects of this media/tion process on schools and teachers, and conceptualizes how school and system performance is fed from and into media representations, public perceptions and community understandings of schools and teachers' work.     

Restructuring Teacher Education in Australia

Debate on teacher quality and quality in teaching and teacher education has been as vigorous in Australia as it has been in the UK and the USA. In Australia, however, reform in teacher education has been subsumed within a national metapolicy of corporate federalism which is an amalgam of beliefs or discourses including neo‐corporatism, economic rationalism, corporate managerialism and human capital. The paper analyses the most recent document on reform of teacher education in Australia (the Ebbeck Report) and shows how its policy formulation is influenced by the discourse of corporate federalism. It also shows how micro‐economic reform in this sector is related to reforms in other sectors of education.     

Education,Democracy and the Economy

This paper provides a critique of neo‐liberal political economy of education. It is argued that neo‐liberal ideology trades off democracy against ‘economic efficiency’. However, the consequence of the application of neo‐liberal principles to education is that overall standards of education are likely to decline, thereby creating the conditions for a low skilled, low morale workforce. It is suggested that this outcome is consistent with the Neo‐liberal creation of a low wage low technology economy. On the basis of the critique, an alternative education system concerned with meeting the aims of an education for a democratic, economically sophisticated, society is sketched.     

Intersections of race and sexuality in a teacher education course

This paper examines the ways that one group of US pre‐service teachers, enrolled in an alternate route teacher education class, expressed and challenged each other’s contradictory discourses about teaching for social justice. Particularly significant are the many ways that this group of students enacted subject positions around race and sexuality as various combinations of African American, White, gay, straight, lesbian, Christian, and as members of this class. Epiphanic moments about race and sexual orientation are examined to illuminate the ways that subject positions were contested, reified, or renegotiated in order to preserve a sense of community within the class. This research demonstrates the ways that social justice teacher education differentially positions people who have been historically marginalized and how it can at times reify a hierarchy of marginality.     

Equity,justice and standards: assessment decision making in higher education

Recent concerns about ‘fairness’ in university entrance have highlighted the need to review existing practices in admissions processes. The agendas for equity and social inclusion, however, must also apply to the processes and outcomes of higher education, where considerations of ‘standards’ are additionally crucial. As principles underpinning the assessment process, ‘equity’ and ‘justice’ and ‘academic standards’ are part of taken‐for‐granted cultures and practices which impact on decisions about progression, eligibility for awards and degree classification for individual students. Changing discourses of academic standards have given rise to contrasting decision‐making processes rooted in the role and operation of assessment boards. Contrasting models of assessment board cultures are developed to highlight how practices are beset by conceptual confusions about what is being assessed and the basis for judgements about success and failure in higher education. There is a strong case, not only for critical review of assessment processes, but also for monitoring outcomes for different social groups.     

‘Economic rewards are the driving factor’: neo‐liberalism,globalisation and work attitudes of young graduates in Australia

Successive Australian governments have adopted neo‐liberal ideological imperatives of engaging with globalisation. This has been particularly noticeable in the policy areas of employment and higher education. Frame analysis and sensemaking are deployed to examine the ways in which neo‐liberalism has influenced the perspectives young people graduating from two Australian universities have towards work and education. Our findings show that the ways in which students made sense of their environment reflected neo‐liberal conceptions in that their attitudes to work and education were framed in mainly instrumental, economic terms. It is concluded that although neo‐liberalism is ascendant, it is not all pervasive.     

Social Inclusion for South Australian schooling? Trying to reconcile the promise and the practice

This paper will trace the adoption of a policy of Social Inclusion in schools in one Australian state in terms of the way in which the policy direction, its discourses and adoption reflect a rhetoric of what Ball has labelled a ‘paradigm of convergence’. The analysis will show that the policy discourse, especially in its focus on school retention, appears to endorse the vision of a neo‐liberal entrepreneurial competitor as the educated product despite being initiated and implemented by a Labor state government within a rhetoric of community concern for social justice. The second part of the paper reports on the ways in which primary school leaders have responded to this policy which reflects some older educational discourses and is more in line with a prior version of a well‐run school and an inclusive society.     

Orphans of Our Common Worlds

In this article, Therese Lindgren and Magdalena Sjöstrand Öhrfelt compare two discourses that have been influential in the field of early education: the social‐economic and the posthumanist. Studying how the young educable child is articulated in these seemingly contradictory discourses, Lindgren and Sjöstrand Öhrfelt have found that the discourses not only overlap, but, to some extent, they also reinforce each other. Both discourses depict the future as precarious, and along with identifying deficiencies of our time, they seek to justify the need for early intervention in terms of education. The young child is portrayed, on the one hand, as not‐yet‐realized human capital and, on the other, as a site for change and new beginnings. That is, the child figures as the key to a better and more sustainable world. In both discourses, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is depicted as an emancipating project, detaching the child from the child's social and cultural contexts and historical past, making the young educable child an “orphan.”