The intra-active production of normativity and difference

Drawing on memory stories told in a collective biography workshop about children’s encounters with schooling, this paper experiments with re-imagining the child-student-subject as an ‘emergent intracorporeal multiplicity’ [Fritsch, K. 2015. “Desiring Disability Differently: Neoliberalism, Heterotopic Imagination and Intra-Corporeal Configurations.” Foucault Studies 19: 43–66, 51]. From the feminist new materialist perspective that the authors work with, the child is configured not as an entity prior to, or separate from, encounters with education systems, but emergent with-in them. This paper focuses on difference in human relations, and in particular on the intersections of disability and gender. It does so not in terms of essential characteristics of individuals, but as emergent, in-the-moment, with others. In focussing on the detail of lives-in-their-making, the authors ask, with Barad [2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press], if we are interested in justice, how we are to ‘understand our role in helping constitute who and what come to matter?’     

An Analysis of Primary School Children's Accounts of Classroom Interaction

The ethogenic paradigm refocuses the attention of researchers on the capacity people have to make an account of their actions, their thinking and their experience. This capacity is deemed to be essentially human and therefore at the heart of research endeavours which seek to understand the nature of man. The process of accounting, then, becomes a central concern both in terms of an analysis of the process itself, and in terms of the knowledge people have of the social worlds of which they are members.

This paper is about the social world of childhood, as told to me by a group of primary school children with particular reference to their accounts of life in the classroom. The children reveal a complex knowledge of the rules of social interaction. They are aware of rules relating to their membership in the culture of childhood, the rules of adult culture, in which they experience partial membership, and the rules relating to interaction between these ‘cultures’. Their dual membership in childhood and adult cultures influences their interpretation of teacher behaviour and their interpretation of the process of education. Much of their talk revolved around interactions which explored and confirmed the existence of these various sets of rules. Knowing how to be competent members of the classroom (in terms of both the teacher's agenda and their own agenda) was a primary concern of these children, and teachers who prevented such competence by changing or breaking the rules were treated to reciprocal disruptive behaviour. At the same time the children were capable of playing with and merging these rule sets to create humourous and aesthetic moments in the classroom. Furthermore, because they constantly explored the dimensions of the rules operating in any one situation, they were able to cope with a variety of teachers who had different conceptions of the rules of teacher‐pupil interactions and of the educational process.     

In‐Text Questions: A Note on an Experiment in Instructional Design

The use of instructional design is increasingly being discussed in the distance education and higher education literature. This paper reports an experiment in which self study questions are inserted in the text of lecture note material for external students. An evaluation revealed that students who received notes with in‐text questions were no different from those who received the standard lecture notes as judged by both performance and attitudinal criteria. Possible reasons for the perverse findings are given and it is concluded that professional instructional design assistance would be of value to subject matter experts.     

A Lesson on Sex Roles

This paper analyses a lesson on sex roles which took place in a seventh‐grade classroom (12–13 year olds) as part of a humanities course in an Australian coeducational secondary school. It shows how routine instructional practices can combine with conventional knowledge and theorising to confirm notions of inequality rather than challenge them. The use of sex role theory, with its embedded biological assumptions, and the initiation‐reply‐evaluation format which ensures that the teacher is in control of the lesson topic and procedure, combine to produce a lesson in which what the pupils hear is a confirmation of the fact that women and men are not equal. The teacher's intention to teach a lesson about equality is thus undermined by his own theorising and his teaching technology. The analysis is undertaken to show the ways in which unwary teachers can sustain inequitable gender relations even when this is contrary to their intentions.     

Influences of the learning environment of a Regional University Campus on its international graduates

Staff and students at small regional campuses often consider them to be a learning environment with many advantages. Students can benefit from the opportunities for enhanced access to staff provided by factors such as small classes and a compact campus. International students from non-English-speaking backgrounds are one group for whom these factors can be particularly helpful in their adjustment to a new society as well as in their continuing study program. This belief is tested in the study described in this paper. Factors identified by international students as influencing their learning at a small campus situated a considerable distance from the state capital indicate strengths to be built on and celebrated and areas that call for the development of strategies to improve the quality of that learning environment. Former international student graduates were surveyed concerning their perceptions of their regional Australian university experience and the professional preparation it provided. Other Australian higher education institutions, particularly those with regional campuses, can make use of the insights gained through the study: as well as having implications for the provision of a quality learning experience and environment for all students, not only international students, they also have a bearing on international marketing strategies.     

Impact attenuation provided by shin guards for field hockey

Low-energy impact testing of hockey shin guards was carried out using a drop test impact rig and a new physical setup protocol. Two brands of shin guards were impacted once (2.6 J, 3.3 J; without and with a sock), and impacted three times (3.3 J; with a sock). The peak force and impulse of a single impact increased with increasing impact energy (by approximately 30 and 7%, respectively) whilst repeated impacts increased the peak force and decreased the impulse (by approximately 70 and 3–9%, respectively, between one and three impact events). The presence of a sock attenuated impact force to a greater extent than the guards alone, at both impact energies. As a sock is usually worn over hockey shin guards, its presence contributes to enhanced protection to the lower limb.