When students are failed: 'love' as an alternative education discourse?

This article explores how classist education practices are constituted through education systems and structures and through the habitus of key agents. This school and classroom ethnography focuses on the education practices and habitus of the head teacher of a girls' secondary school, who is also a key agent in the Maltese national education policy community. Though structured through the discourses and institutional practices of the highly selective national system, Ms Sicura's habitus is also a response to the challenges the present conjuncture poses to her. This includes the biographies of her low socio-economic status students and the complex needs they bring to school, as well as the increasingly contradictory demands placed by the decentralisation process of the selective education system. Overwhelmed by these and struggling to offer a valid school experience for her low-achieving students, Ms Sicura responds with a discourse of 'love'. However, this replaces a programme for educational progress. It reproduces the global and national classist education discourses, in which low socio-economic status students are contained by 'care', while middle-class students are offered quality education in competitive market.     

The Care of the Self: poststructuralist questions about moral education and gender

Abstract

The relationship between poststructuralist theory and ethics or values in education is a complex and relatively unexplored one, yet in classrooms the ethical implications of theory are lived out daily in the relations between teachers and children. Teachers who are interested in bringing the insights of poststructuralist theory into their work with children still tend to refer back (consciously or otherwise) to the ethics of versions of liberal humanism in making value judgements. The incongruence which results can undermine changes that a teacher wants to bring about. One approach to this dilemma can be through narrative. Narrative, or story, is one of the “technologies of the self most available to teachers and children for the construction, regulation and care of selves (as knowers, as learners and as moral agents), including the ongoing construction of values associated with feminine and masculine gender identities. Deconstruction of children's classroom and lived narratives can make this process visible. This paper will explore the specific and differing values made visible in one story told by five children.     

Producing and practising social justice policy in education: A policy trajectory study from queensland,Australia

Recent philosophical debates have questioned the bases of identity politics in educational research and elsewhere, drawing attention to complexity and diversity of identity. These arguments will be briefly rehearsed, with reference to feminist theory. The criticism that one facet of identity (e.g. gender) cannot be analysed in isolation from others has sometimes been addressed via the study of the 'intersection' or 'interaction' of these various facets. However, others have attacked such approaches, maintaining that such aspects of identity are inseparably intermeshed, and beyond analysis. The poststructuralist account of the self and diversity appears to offer an analytical approach which can address such problems, yet poststructuralist theory also problematises many of the fundamental assumptions underlying emancipatory research in education and elsewhere. This article seeks to debate these various issues, with reference to research in schools. It argues the validity of research concerning specific aspects of identity. Drawing on concepts from feminist theory and reader response criticism, it outlines an approach to such work which rejects the dualisms of relativism/realism, similarity/diversity.     

Student Writing in Higher Education: Contemporary confusion,traditional concerns

In this paper, we focus on the 'problem' of student writing in higher education. We set out to explore this problem from two perspectives: first, from the perspective of 'non-traditional' student-writers as they attempt to engage in academic writing and, second, from the perspective of a cultural-historical tradition of scientific rationality. A common frame of reference for these perspectives we see as a 'discourse of transparency', whereby language is treated as ideally transparent and autonomous. We illustrate how this discourse of transparency is currently enacted and historically situated. We argue that current academic practices need to be located within a broader historical and epistemological framework both in order to reach a deeper understanding about what's involved in student writing and in order to inform meaningful pedagogies.     

Practice Theory: Viewing leadership as leading

Abstract

Inspired by Theodore Schatzki’s ‘societist’ approach—in which he advocates a notion of ‘site ontologies’—in this article, we outline our theory of practice architectures (a theory about what practices are composed of) and ecologies of practices (how practices relate to one another). Drawing on case studies of four Australian primary schools, we examine how practices of leading relate to other educational practices: professional learning, teaching, student learning, and researching and reflecting. We find ‘leading’ not only in the work of principals and other formal leadership positions, but also in the activities of teachers and students. We show that changing leading practices requires changing more than the professional practice knowledge of individuals; it also requires changing the practice architectures (cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements) in sites where leading and its interconnected practices are conducted. In order to study practices of leading, we adopt a philosophical-empirical enquiry approach, i.e. we conduct our research as a conversation between practice philosophy and theory and the empirical cases of leading we study. We study practices in the mode of research within practice traditions, sometimes described as ‘practical philosophy’, as a contribution to the self-reflective transformation of the practices we are studying.     

Engaging whiteness: How racial power gets reified in education

The central question addressed in this essay is how students engage in a class that focuses on the political and social power of whiteness. Specifically, it looks at how whiteness gets inscribed and reified in our education practices, even as we try to disrupt its normative influence. The essay is based upon an in-depth qualitative study of a graduate seminar dedicated to addressing diversity issues critically. We conclude that despite students' expressed intentions and efforts at disrupting whiteness, they draw upon a variety of discourses that actually serve to protect and secure whiteness's dominant position. Twelve different discourses that students cite are described, grouped into four broad appeals: to self, to progress, to authenticity, and to extremes. Understanding how students invoke these discourses as an implicit way of resisting critical engagements with whiteness can help us to problematize these practices as well as cultivate more productive and enabling interactions.     

‘Let your data tell a story:’ climate change experts and students navigating disciplinary argumentation in the classroom

ABSTRACT

Science education trends promote student engagement in authentic knowledge in practice to tackle personally consequential problems. This study explored how partnering scientists and students on a social media platform supported students’ development of disciplinary practice knowledge through practice-based learning with experts during two pilot enactments of a project-based curriculum focusing on the ecological impacts of climate change. Through the online platform, scientists provided feedback on students' infographics, visual argumentation artifacts that use data to communicate about climate change science. We conceptualize the infographics and professional data sets as boundary objects that supported authentic argumentation practices across classroom and professional contexts, but found that student generated data was not robust enough to cross these boundaries. Analysis of the structure and content of the scientists’ feedback revealed that when critiquing argumentation, scientists initiated engagement in multiple scientific practices, supporting a holistic rather than discrete model of practice-based learning. While traditional classroom inquiry has emphasized student experimentation, we found that engagement with existing professional data sets provided students with a platform for developing expertise in systemic scientific practices during argument construction. We further found that many students increased the complexity and improved the visual presentation of their arguments after feedback.     

Person and Context in Becoming a New Teacher

The influence of, and the interplay between biographical and contextual factors in new teachers' professional learning and development during their first years of teaching are examined. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire. Findings suggest the powerful influence of prior experiences as students, the low impact of Initial Teacher Education on new teachers' socialisation and the strong effect of workplace conditions in shaping beginning teachers' practices and attitudes towards teaching. It is argued that more importance needs to be given to the structural and organisational factors of the workplace if a 'learning culture' is to be fostered in schools. Implications for Teacher Education and Induction are discussed.     

Research methodology,education, and theoretical fashions: Constructing a methodology course in an era of deconstruction

In this article a case is made both for the utility of deconstructive questions and also for the danger of taking such questions as a sole or overriding methodological agenda in education. The discussion is mounted by attention to grounded contexts and dilemmas rather than by a commitment to abstract concerns about ''power'' or ''Other'' or ''polyphony of voices.'' The framing dilemma is how one might construct a research methodology course that is not based on positivism, relativism, or a reification of current theory as an enduring answer for students. The article takes two substantive fields of inquiry in education- (1) inequality and access in education and (2) gender and education- to argue that following through some substantive issues for educational research can provide ways of thinking about the relative merits, power, pertinence, and relationships among quantitative, qualitative, and deconstructive agendas. Finally, the article outlines a research methodology course constructed by the author to attempt to put into practical form the assumptionsabout education and research methodology that are argued in this article.     

“We do investigate ourselves”: figurative assessment practices as meaning-making in English education

ABSTRACT

In this study of microteaching in a secondary English methods course, we intentionally stray from normative assessment practice, instead asking pre-service teachers to provide feedback on their peers’ microteaching using assessment practices designed to orient them figuratively. The term ‘figurative’ refers to ‘figurative language’: the bringing together of multiple, seemingly unrelated things, through associative configurations, and placing them side-by-side in order to reorient thought towards new or unexpected meanings. This study reframes assessment, not as a means of collecting data on what students have learned from a given lesson in order to evaluate and augment learning, but instead figuratively, as providing opportunities to expand and imagine ways of meaning-making through and with assessment. We examine in detail four modes of figurative assessment practices through which we sought to surprise and disorient students, producing new and different kinds of responses to microteaching that went beyond normative feedback practices.     

Toward theories of partnership praxis: an analysis of interpretive framing in literature on students as partners in teaching and learning

ABSTRACT

A body of literature on students as partners (SaP) in higher education has emerged over the last decade that documents, shares, and evaluates SaP approaches. As is typical in emerging fields of inquiry, scholars differ regarding how they see the relationship between the developments in SaP practices and the theoretical explanations that guide, illuminate, and situate such practices. In this article we explore the relationship between theory and practice in SaP work through an analysis of interpretive framing employed in scholarship of SaP in teaching and learning in higher education. Through a conceptual review of selected publications, we describe three ways of framing partnership that represent distinct but related analytical approaches: building on concepts; drawing on constructs; and imagining through metaphors. We both affirm the expansive and creative theorising in scholarship of SaP in university teaching and learning and encourage further deliberate use and thoughtful development of interpretive framings that take seriously the disruptive ethos and messy human relational processes of partnership. We argue that these developmental processes move us toward formulating theories of partnership praxis.     

Pushing boundaries: An ethnographic study of life in and beyond a feminist classroom

This paper reports on part of an 18-month ethnographic study of students' participation in a residential college. It chronicles sophomores' rites of passage through a seminar entitled, ''Women and Theatre: the Politics of Representation.'' The five narratives vividly present a process whereby an innovative and feminist pedagogy is negotiated and implemented by faculty and students alike. Using a strategy of participant observation coupled with in-depth unstructured interviews and document review, the author examined group members' beliefs and practices and ways in which they conceptualized, lived, and induced their notions of feminism inside and beyond the classroom. Thompson Tetreault's (1989) scholarship focusing on integrating content about women and gender into college curriculum is the primary theoretical lens used to analyze the narratives.     

Emotions and Teacher Identity: A poststructural perspective

This article illustrates the significance of teachers' emotions in the construction of teacher identity by invoking a poststructuralist lens in discussing the place of emotion in identity formation. In suggesting a poststructuralist perspective of emotions and teacher identity, it is argued that teacher identity is constantly becoming in a context embedded in power relations, ideology, and culture. In theorizing about teacher identity two ideas are developed: first, that the construction of teacher identity is at bottom affective, and is dependent upon power and agency, i.e., power is understood as forming the identity and providing the very condition of its trajectory; and second, that an investigation of the emotional components of teacher identity yields a richer understanding of the teacher self. This discussion is motivated by a desire to develop analyses that investigate how teachers' emotions can become sites of resistance and self-transformation. The emphasis on understanding the teacher-self through an exploration of emotion opens possibilities for the care and the self-knowledge of teachers and provides spaces for their transformation.     

Cultural capital,habitus and reading futures: middle-class adolescent students’ cultivation of reading dispositions in Singapore

Abstract

The acquisition of cultural capital can only be understood in the light of the formation of habitus, including the socialisation process, and in the context of the field in which any such capital has value. Yet, the relation between cultural capital and habitus is seldom discussed in research. Drawing on the data from focus groups with 96 students and a survey of 5,779 students from six Singapore secondary schools, we analyze how reading as a form of cultural capital is distributed among High-SES, Mid-SES and Low-SES students in Singapore. We show how middle-class practices of intensive immersion in school-valued reading practices is a form of habitus that prepare some students better than others for engaged reading. The findings highlight how reading as a form of cultural capital is operationalized through students’ familial habitus and argues that making visible familial habitus provides insights for transforming institutional habitus for students’ reading futures.     

Scientific explanations: Characterizing and evaluating the effects of teachers' instructional practices on student learning

Teacher practices are essential for supporting students in scientific inquiry practices, such as the construction of scientific explanations. In this study, we examine what instructional practices teachers engage in when they introduce scientific explanation and whether these practices influence students' ability to construct scientific explanations during a middle school chemistry unit. Thirteen teachers enacted a project‐based chemistry unit, How can I make new stuff from old stuff?, with 1197 seventh grade students. We videotaped each teacher's enactment of the focal lesson on scientific explanation and then coded the videotape for four different instructional practices: modeling scientific explanation, making the rationale of scientific explanation explicit, defining scientific explanation, and connecting scientific explanation to everyday explanation. Our results suggest that when teachers introduce scientific explanation, they vary in the practices they engage in as well as the quality of their use of these practices. We also found that teachers' use of instructional practices can influence student learning of scientific explanation and that the effect of these instructional practices depends on the context in terms of what other instructional practices the teacher uses. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 53–78, 2008     

Interrupting Discourses Around Gender Through Collective Memory Work and Collaborative Curriculum Research in Middle School

Many schools in recent years have implemented curricular projects to 'deal with' homophobia and sexism as problems that affect adolescent students and make schools unsafe. The ways in which we, as teachers and researchers, confront such problems, however, depends upon how we view their power within schools. When viewed as discursive elements of a generally heteronormative school environment, gender and sexuality norms become more complicated and subtle, as they are a part of systems of language, actions, and expectations that can be difficult to problematize with students and teachers. Drawing on feminist post-structuralist theory related to normativity and discourse analysis, our research looks at two middle-school projects aimed at interrupting heteronormative thinking by including students in the process of analyzing and re-creating school discourse. In one project, a whole class looks at gender identity formation through analyzing collective memory works collaboratively with the teacher. In the second project, a smaller group of girls works to re-think ways that the science/math curriculum could be more responsive to girls, in the end also analyzing the work that comes out of the collaboration. Together, the projects raise important questions about the effectiveness of such curricular projects, the power of school language around 'adolescence', and the potential for addressing gender normativity on the level of discourse, especially in the face of such powerful ideas of gender/sexuality in the middle grades.     

WhatsApp use among African international distance education (IDE) students: transferring,translating and transforming educational experiences

ABSTRACT

Much of the research on how social media is embedded into the educational practices of higher education students has a Western orientation. In concentrating on a case study of the varied ways in which African International Distance Education (IDE) students actively use social media to shape their learning experiences, we discuss an under-researched group. The paper draws on analysis of 1295 online questionnaires and 165 in-depth interviews with IDE students at UNISA, South Africa, one of the largest providers of IDE globally. WhatsApp emerges as ‘the’ key social media tool that opens up opportunities for IDE students to transfer, translate and transform their educational journey when studying ‘at a distance’. Although WhatsApp does provide a ‘space of opportunity’ for some students, this is framed through socio-technical marginalisation, itself a reflection of demographic legacies of inequality. Exploring social media practices though the case of African IDE students places these students centre stage and adds to the awareness of the multiple centres from which international education is practiced.