Robust hope,democracy and early childhood education

This paper discusses a recent Australian study of boys' education using case studies to determine successful practices. It focuses on an early childhood site where access to ‘discourses of power’ for students and parents and a valuing of students' ‘action knowledge’ created a particular democratic culture achieving improved outcomes for boys. The data are drawn from focus groups with families, interviews with educators, conversations with children and on‐site observations over two days. The findings are discussed in terms of those factors deriving from Henry Giroux's work on democracy and hope. In addition, we build on the work of Giroux by discussing the site as an exemplar of what we have come to call ‘robust hope’.     

The pedagogy of the impressed: how teachers become victims of technological vision

In Queensland, Australia, a beginning or probationary teacher can be appointed as either a permanent employee, or on a temporary engagement, or on 'contract'. Temporary engagements for beginning teachers represent an example of the trend towards the increasing casualisation of the teaching profession. There is a paucity of research on this topic. This paper reports on the results of a questionnaire administered to primary and secondary beginning teachers whose first appointment in 1997 was a temporary engagement. It reports on their feelings, opinions and perceptions towards such temporary engagements. The key finding was that the majority of beginning teachers on temporary engagement desired to be permanent employees, the main reason cited being that of job security. The majority of the participants found it extremely difficult to cope with the uncertainty surrounding the practice of temporary engagements. Identified also were a number of confusing perceptions perpetuated by a lack of understanding about obtaining a permanent position with Education Queensland. The findings suggest that lack of job security does need to be acknowledged as a critical factor for the beginning teacher, that the conflict between the need for job security and the changes in employment practices must be addressed, and that, under school-based management, the principal needs to take professional responsibility for the special needs of this beginning teacher group.     

Audit cultures and quality assurance mechanisms in England: a study of their perceived impact on the work of academics

Abstract

Acceptance of the legitimacy of post‐modern theories on education implies a need to reconceptualise the professional development of graduates in the area of educational leadership. This paper reports on the first year of an innovative professional doctorate programme focusing on educational leadership at the Queensland University of Technology. A problem‐based learning approach was integrated with and underpinned by post‐modern imperatives such as the valuing of the self‐empowerment of students, the acceptance of multiple realities as reality, and a view of knowledge as arising out of interdependence and contextualised by discontinuous change. The focus of this paper is on students’ and teachers’ views of the development of individual empowerment, processual competencies and interdependence in the first cohort of students.

     

The Importance of the act of going: towards gender inclusive education

Educators in all fields are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their familiarity with issues concerning gender equity, specifically in terms of how and what they choose to teach. In some cases this pressure is driven by an identification of economic or market advantages that are associated with a willingness and ability to respond to ‘women's’ perceived needs. In other cases, it is a more philosophical commitment to the ideas which underpin feminist projects that sparks off educational reform. Both positions are frequently accompanied by a consciousness that there is some ‘legitimate’ way in which to perform an equity agenda that is automatically and unproblematically better than other ways. This sensitivity to the perceived existence of ‘a’ feminist orthodoxy serves to paralyse many educational reform projects even before they begin.

In this paper I respond to this context by exploring some of the territory associated with gender and educational practice, without attempting to suggest a final, fixed and valid interpretation of that territory or the destinations to which it can lead. To this end, the paper has three principal goals: first, to provide an overview of some of the factors which have often generated the desire for a gender inclusive educational environment; second, to chart some common responses to this desire; and third, to explore some significant obstacles encountered by people in their own attempts to generate change. My aim throughout this paper is to highlight the need for feminist and pro‐feminist educators to recognise the multiple ways in which feminist consciousness can inform pedagogical practice.     

Becoming Ryan: lines of flight from majoritarian understandings of masculinity through a high school reading and mentoring program. A story of possibility

Within literature relating to the broad field of boys’ education attention is regularly drawn to the significant difference between essentialist and anti-essentialist accounts of “the boy problem” and the limitations of gender-based educational reforms which rely upon deterministic notions of what boys are ‘really’ like and, by extension, what they ‘really’ need. While these deterministic interventions have been widely critiqued in academic literature they nevertheless continue to dominate school and media based discussions about how to best support alienated, disengaged and at risk boys. This raises questions about the extent to which anti-essentialist approaches can be made more accessible and meaningful to teachers in schools. It further suggests the value of developing detailed accounts of real world interventions that have had a demonstrably positive impact upon the boys involved without reinforcing essentialist notions of masculinity. Adopting an attitude of “educated hope” (Giroux, http://www.units.muohio.edu/eduleadership/anthology/OA/OA03001.html, 2003) and drawing upon the resources of (Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987), this paper examines one such case of anti-essentialist reform involving three Australian schools. It explores one particular boy’s experience of an intervention known as Boys with Books and argues that Ryan’s journey can be conceptualised as a line of flight away from traditional forms of masculinity: a journey in progress that has impacted positively upon his relationships with peers and teachers and changed his beliefs about his possible future options. The paper, therefore, illustrates the capacity for teachers and schools to display anti-essentialist understandings about masculinity while responding in practical and ‘do-able’ ways to the needs of at risk, alienated and underperforming boys in schools.     

Stressful Life Events Experienced by Academically High-Achieving Females Before the Onset of Disordered Eating

Research on gifted and high-achieving students has shown that they experience some sources of stress that are different from those experienced by general students. This qualitative case study investigated the types of stressful life events experienced by academically high-achieving females before the onset of disordered eating in adolescence. Fourteen academically high-achieving females who had recovered from disordered eating were interviewed and completed a written survey. The results revealed that these high-achieving females reported stressful events in five areas before the onset of disordered eating symptoms. All participants reported stress related to academic issues, yet academic stress is rarely mentioned in the literature on stress and eating disorders. These findings have implications for both prevention and treatment of eating disorders among academically high-achieving females.     

Education for Australia's information future

Digital disruption and an increasingly networked society drive rapid change in many professions and a corresponding need for change in tertiary education. Across the world, information education has, to date, prepared graduates for employment in discrete professions, such as librarianship, records management, archives and teacher librarianship. However, contemporary information practices are less defined and are demanding of new professional skill-sets and understandings. This paper reports a study that consulted Australia's tertiary academics about the current circumstances of information education in the academy and elicited a vision and a concern for future directions in Australian information education.