Storylines in public news media about mathematics education and minoritized students

Educational Studies in Mathematics - Public media both reflects and shapes societal perceptions and attitudes. Teachers and others around students in mathematics classrooms have expectations for...     

Gender and age-appropriate enrolment in Uganda

Secondary school enrolment in Uganda has historically favoured males over females. Recently, however, researchers have reported that the secondary enrolment gender gap has significantly diminished, and perhaps even disappeared in Uganda. Even if gender parity is being achieved for enrolment broadly, there may be a gender gap concerning age-appropriate enrolment. This is an important next step in educational research concerning gender equity in education worldwide. There is little information about what individual, family and regional factors influence age-appropriate enrolment. Therefore, this study investigates a potential age-appropriate enrolment gender gap for secondary-aged youth, and examines the factors that influence gendered enrolment behaviours in Uganda. Implications for policy, practice, and further research are discussed.     

The proletarianisation of academic labour in Australia

Australian universities over the last 25 years have been unified, internationalised, corporatised and become mass educational providers. This process is replicated globally as a response to rapid mass enrolments and marketisation. In the light of these changes, a corporate and managerial model has been identified, which has been the subject of growing discontent within the academic workforce. However, from a political economy perspective there is a lack of understanding on how and by what means academic labour has been commodified in this process. This paper, using Australia as its case study, argues that the managerial culture has alienated academics from their labour. This has resulted in them losing control over their skills and thus becoming disassociated from the educational purposes of their work. Higher education has been subjected to systemic regulatory governance that has fundamentally transformed the nature of academic labour. We contend that the regulatory state has reached so deep down into the university that academics have effectively become a de-professionalised and proletarianised labour force.     

Getting inside the insider researcher: does race-symmetry help or hinder research?

This article engages with methodological concerns connected to insider education research and the ‘race-symmetry’ shared between the researcher and teacher participants. To do this, race critical reflexive strategies are utilized to show how and why this practice productively contributed to the knowledge about race making constructed in my study, a research process I describe as getting inside my insiderness. However, these reflexive practices also helped me to develop a deeper awareness of the potential for what I now describe as White shadows to infiltrate research of this type. The conceptualization of White shadows is a useful tool to describe research practices that silence or deflect attention away from issues connected to race, and hence, White shadows help expose concerns about the potential for Whiteness to remain protected by research. There are two interconnected aims of this paper. First, to illustrate the sort of race reflexive practices called for, and in doing so, to demonstrate why they are valuable and helpful in (educational) research. Second, I hope to encourage a rethink of the insider–outsider relationship that typifies ethnographic research by shifting attention to explore the inside of insider research.