Classing schools

School prospectuses and promotional videos appeal to parents by presenting idealised images of the education a school provides. These educational idealisations visually realise the form of discipline a school is expected to provide, depending on the social habitus of the parents. This paper presents a content analysis of the images used in 33 sets of marketing materials from a maximally diverse sample of schools from the state of Victoria. These images are interpreted using the lenses of Bernstein's control and Bourdieu's habitus and cultural capital. The promotional images are found to vary systematically in terms of content and form depending on the perceived social class of the students which the schools attract.     

Calculating student aspiration: Bourdieu,spatiality and the politics of recognition

This paper reports on a recent study of aspirations for higher education by secondary school students from disadvantaged backgrounds in regional Australia. At the same time, it goes in search of explanations that transcend a Bourdieuian account of aspirations as produced by and reproductive of cultural histories and dominance, given the apparent inadequacy of these accounts in redressing disadvantage. To this end the authors distinguish between historicising and spatialising aspirations, taking up Appadurai’s notion of navigational capacity as a way of advancing greater agency for disadvantaged groups. Data from the research inform the analysis, including the mediation of students’ desired futures by their perception of what is possible given their differentiated locations and access to resources. It is concluded that while this spatial turn in theorising aspiration has potential for changing the terms of recognition internal to disadvantaged communities, there remain structural limits on change ‘from below’.     

Understanding Christianity: exploring a hermeneutical pedagogy for teaching Christianity

ABSTRACT

Disagreements about how Christianity should be taught in state-funded school RE have a long history. In this article we take England as a case study and examine the debates that have arisen about the legitimacy of a theologically based pedagogy following the publication of Understanding Christianity, a resource inspired by recent developments in academic theological hermeneutics. We particularly focus on the question whether or not pupils should be treated as insiders or outsiders. Drawing on Anthony Thiselton’s notion of responsible hermeneutics, we argue that this offers a robust model for an academically rigorous approach to teaching Christianity in schools that enables pupils to be both insiders and outsiders in the hermeneutical process. We then illustrate how Understanding Christianity has attempted to embody this aspiration.     

Issues in development of the test battery for Australian sign language morphology and syntax

In this article, we outline the initial stages in development of an assessment instrument for Australian Sign Language and explore issues involved in the development of such a test. We first briefly describe the instruments currently available for assessing grammatical skills in Australian Sign Language and discuss the need for a more objective measure. We then describe our adaptation of an existing American Sign Language test, the Test Battery for American Sign Language Morphology and Syntax. Finally, this article presents some of the data collected from a group of deaf native signers. These data are used to demonstrate the range of variability in key grammatical features of Australian Sign Language and to raise methodological issues associated with signed language test design.     

Surveying gender differences in Canadian school literacy

Student survey results from Canada's first, national, large-scale assessment of school literacy are analysed for explanations of gender differences in reading and writing skills found in this and other recent Canadian large-scale assessments. Using findings from the 1994 Council of Ministers of Education, Canada School Achievement Indicators Programme, we explore English-Canadian adolescents' literacy preferences, attitudes and practices. Five models derived from recent literacy education and related educational research are posited as potential explanations for female superiority in literacy test results: 'division of family labour', 'character-personification', 'classroom interaction', 'assessment bias' and 'identification with genre'. The assumptions underlying these models are examined in light of the Council of Ministers of Education's study.     

Student equity’s starring role in Australian higher education: not yet centre field

The field of Australian higher education has changed, is changing and is about to change, repositioned in relation to other “fields of power”. It is a sector now well defined by its institutional groupings and by their relative claims to selectivity and exclusivity, with every suggestion of their differentiation growing. The potential of a “joined-up” tertiary education system, of vocational education and training (VET) and universities, has the potential to further rework these relations within Australian higher education, as will lifting the volume caps on university student enrolments. Moreover, Australian universities now compete within an international higher education marketplace, ranked by THES and Shanghai Jiao Tiong league tables. “Catchment areas” and knowledge production have become global. In sum, Australian universities (and agents within them) are positioned differently in the field. And being so variously and variably placed, institutions and agents have different stances available to them, including the positions they can take on student equity. In this paper I begin from the premise that our current stance on equity has been out-positioned, as much by a changing higher education field as by entrenched representations of social groups across regions, institutions, disciplines and degrees. In taking a new stance on equity, the paper is also concerned with the positioning in the field of a new national research centre with a focus on student equity in higher education. In particular, the paper asks what stance this new centre can take on student equity that will resonate on a national and even international scale. And, given a global field of higher education, what definitions of equity and propositions for policy and practice can it offer? What will work in the pursuit of equity?     

Improving and Maintaining Torque Accuracy in Aerospace Manufacturing: A Case Study

Needs assessment is a systematic and systemic process intended to identify and define gaps between current performance and desired performance. Needs assessments are most beneficial if they address issues that affect successful accomplishment of operational or tactical processes as well as outcomes that allow an organization to meet its overall strategic goals. A team of graduate students took on a needs assessment project to ascertain the causes of declining accuracy in a key task in an aerospace manufacturing process. The project encountered numerous barriers within the client organization, but the team systematically applied human performance technology methods in multiple stages to gather and analyze the available data. The end result was a set of identified root causes and recommended interventions focused on improving performance.