I still wanna be an engineer! Women,education and the engineering profession

Women's low enrolment in post-school engineering degrees continues to be a problem for engineering faculties and the profession generally. A qualitative interview-based study of Australian women engineers across the range of engineering disciplines showed the relevance of success in math and science at school to their enrolling in engineering at university. However, for a significant number of the women the positive self-image connected with school success was not maintained by their workplace experience. Using a mixed methods approach, further investigations of the attitudes and experiences of working engineers at three large firms suggest that engineering workplaces continue to be uneasy environments for professional women. Particular issues for women working as professional engineers are identified in this paper and some educational strategies are suggested in order to better prepare engineers for an inclusive and participatory professional life.     

Educational research that has an impact: ‘Be realistic,demand the impossible’

This AARE Presidential Address examines what it means to be an educational researcher in the current Australian, and global, political climate. The presentation draws heavily on the work of Levitas (Utopia as Method 2013). The address, using her notions of Utopia as archaeology, as ontology and as architecture, suggests that in the process of promoting a more socially just agenda there is no alternative but to look for alternative ways of doing educational research and being an educational researcher. It concludes by suggesting that associations such as AARE provide opportunities to envisage what academic life could look like for educational researchers in a ‘Realistic Utopia’—one in which they are realistic and demand the impossible.     

Treatment for abused children: when is a partial solution acceptable?

Physically maltreated children display a range of serious psychological problems. Despite the availability of effective treatment of similar problems in other populations of children, direct psychological treatment of abused children has rarely been reported. It is argued that such direct treatment, while constituting only a "partial solution" to the problem of child abuse, needs to be addressed through research and application.     

Globalization, uncertainty and changes in early life courses

Summary Increasing uncertainty about economic and social developments is a definitive feature of globalization in advanced economies. However, increasing uncertainty does not impact all regions, states, organizations or individuals in the same way. There are institutional settings and social structures, historically grown and country-specific, that determine the degree to which people are affected by rising uncertainty. This paper develops a multilevel theoretical framework and summarizes the main empirical results from the first phase of the international research project GLOBALIFE. There is empirical evidence that youth in all countries are clearly exposed to more uncertainty in the course of globalization. Yet uncertainty is unequal, with risk accumulating in certain groups, generally those at the bottom. Uncertainty impacts family formation, with those in more precarious positions more likely to postpone or forgo partnership and parenthood. Youth develop rational responses to this uncertainty, which we identified in the form of diverse behavioral strategies. A notable result is that young men and women are affected and respond differently to uncertainty, resulting in an unmistakable gender-specific strategy, particularly in the male-breadwinner societies. We show overwhelming support for the expectation that nation-specific institutions serve to shield or funnel this uncertainty in unique ways and to particular groups of youth.

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Globalisierung, Ungewissheit und Wandel in Lebensl?ufen Jugendlicher und junger Erwachsener

Zusammenfassung Globalisierung, Ungewissheit und Wandel in Lebensl?ufen Jugendlicher und junger Erwachsener Zunehmende Flexibilit?tserfordemisse und wachsende Unsicherheiten bezüglich ?konomischer und sozialer Entwicklungen sind ein wesentliches Merkmal des Globalisierungsprozesses in modernen Gesellschaften. Diese Unsicherheiten betreffen aber nicht alle Regionen, Staaten, Organisationen und Individuen in derselben Weise. Historisch gewachsene, l?nderspezifische Institutionen und soziale Strukturen kanalisieren diese Prozesse und bestimmen die Intensit?t, in der die Individuen den wachsenden globalen Unsicherheiten ausgesetzt sind. Der vorliegende Beitrag entwickelt eine Mehrebenen-Theorie für diese Prozesse und fasst die ersten empirischen Ergebnisse des GLOBALIFE-Projekts, das sich zun?chst mit den Effekten der Globalisierung auf den übergang vom Jugendlichen zum Erwachsenen besch?ftigt hat, kurz zusammen. Die international vergleichende Studie liefert insbesondere Belege dafür, dass vor allem Jugendliche und junge Erwachsene den Ver?nderungen durch den Globalisierungsprozess besonders stark ausgesetzt sind. Wachsende Unsicherheiten werden vor allem auf sie abgew?lzt und Flexibilisierungsbestrebungen gehen insbesondere zu ihren Lasten. Dabei kumulieren diese Risiken bei den benachteiligten Gruppen, die sich am wenigsten wehren k?nnen. Vermittelt über die wachsenden Unsicherheiten in den Besch?ftigungsverh?ltnissen ergeben sich auch indirekte Wirkungen für die Familienbildung. Junge Leute mit befristeten Besch?ftigungsverh?ltnissen, Teilzeitarbeit oder anderen prek?ren Arbeitsverh?ltnissen entwickeln neue Strategien, schieben ihre Familienbildung deutlich auf, optieren vermehrt für nicht-eheliche und damit flexiblere Partnerschaften oder verzichten sogar ganz auf Kinder. In diesem Zusammenhang zeigen sich auch deutliche geschlechtsspezifische Unterschiede, vor allem in den L?ndern mit eher traditionellem Familiensystem.

     

Alternative education and social justice: considering issues of affective and contributive justice

This article considers the ways in which three alternative education sites in Australia support socially just education for their students and how injustice is addressed within these schools. The article begins with recognition of the importance of Nancy Fraser’s work to understandings of social justice. It then goes on to argue that her framework is insufficient for understanding the particularly complex set of injustices that are faced by many highly marginalised young people who have rejected or been rejected by mainstream education systems. We argue here for the need to consider the importance of ‘affective’ and ‘contributive’ aspects of justice in schools. Using interview data from the alternative schools, we highlight issues of affective justice raised by students in relation to their educational journeys, as well as foregrounding teachers’ affective work in schools. We also consider curricular choices and pedagogical practices in respect of matters of contributive justice. Our contention is that the affective and contributive fields are central to the achievement of social justice for the young people attending these sites. Whilst mainstream schools are not the focus of this article, we suggest that the lessons here have salience for all forms of schooling.     

Sacrificial girls: a case study of the impact of streaming and setting on gender reform

This article reports on research funded by the Australian Research Council to investigate school responses to gender equity. It addresses the efforts of a disadvantaged school to tackle what they perceived to be gender inequalities, but in the process of constructing a top‐set and bottom‐set/stream class they are developing new forms of old inequalities and new forms of inequalities. This research indicates that despite popular assertions that girls' education has become the priority of schools and education systems, girls are being further disadvantaged through attempts to implement market strategies coupled with gender reform agendas grounded in liberal notions of equity and relying on unsophisticated notions of affirmative action. In addition, this study highlights the extent to which a media‐driven debate about boys' education has influenced the constitution of boys as the ‘new disadvantaged’ with the capacity to determine the nature of gender reform agendas and programmes in schools.     

Characteristics of a cognitive tool that helps students learn diagnostic problem solving

Three related studies replicated and extended previous work (J.A. Danielson et al. (2003), Educational Technology Research and Development, 51(3), 63–81) involving the Diagnostic Pathfinder (dP) (previously Problem List Generator [PLG]), a cognitive tool for learning diagnostic problem solving. In studies 1 and 2, groups of 126 and 113 veterinary students, respectively, used the dP to complete case-based homework; groups of 120 and 199, respectively, used an alternative method. Students in the dP groups scored significantly higher (p = .000 and .003, respectively) on final exams than those in control groups. In the third study, 552 veterinary students responding to a questionnaire indicated that the dP’s gating and data synthesis activities aided learning. The dP’s feedback and requirement of completeness appear to aid learning most.     

Punishing kids: the rise of the ‘boot camp’

This paper is concerned with the rise of ‘the boot camp’ as a means of addressing ‘the problem’ of troubled youth’ in contemporary industrialised nations such as Australia and the UK. Drawing on a corpus of publicly available material including press releases and policy documents, media reports, and programme websites, the paper explores the legitimating discourses surrounding boot camps and suggests that they are a symptom of what Giroux [2011. “Youth in the Suspect Society and the Politics of Disposability.” Power Play: A Journal of Educational Justice 3 (1): 3–21] calls the ‘punishing state’. Such discourses work to construct young people as an escalating and uncontrollable problem, to frame this problem as individual rather than structural, and to suggest that state responses to problematic youth have been inadequate. Furthermore, we suggest, as the rationale for these boot camps indicate, that within this ‘punishing state', the militarisation of schooling is deemed to be an appropriate solution to this problem.     

An attitude study of teachers involved in a Primary Mentoring Programme

The study pertains to students currently finishing the second year of their B.A.(Ed) degree, and who are the pioneering group for the Mentorship programme. It seeks to identify the attitudes held by host teachers, non‐host teachers and headteachers in the Mentor‐ ship schools about the programme, following a four week school experience by second year students.