Long-term impacts of two secondary school environmental studies programs on environmental behaviour: the shadows of patriarchy and neoliberalism

Abstract

A survey of alumni of two longstanding interdisciplinary secondary school environmental studies programs revealed that the vast majority of alumni reported being engaged in pro-environmental behaviours, which they attributed to participation in the programs five to twenty-three years prior. That finding in itself is worth sharing. Digging deeper, however, revealed that most reported behaviours were in the private rather than public sphere. Women alumni reported engaging in more household and marketplace-oriented behaviours. Further, a small number of men from the rural school expressed hostility towards environmental concerns using aggressively sexist and homophobic discourse. A feminist analysis takes into account structural forces such as patriarchy and neoliberalism to interpret the findings and illuminates gendered dimensions of pro- and anti-environmental behaviours.     

新自由主义的本质界定及其发展历程

新自由主义由古典自由主义发展而来,并且随着“华盛顿共识”的出台,逐渐成为国际垄断资本向全球扩张的主要思想武器。文中以梳理为主,主要介绍新自由主义的本质及发展脉络,通过梳理,对新自由主义的本质做出客观、全面的界定。     

Communists,Humboldtians, neoliberals and dissidents: or the path to a post-communist homo oeconomicus

The neoliberalisation of higher education in post-communist central and eastern Europe, the new EU member states, is not seen as being distinct. Implementation of the Bologna Process and Lisbon Strategy means it has become part of the competitive global sphere of higher education. The transformation of post-communist higher education has attracted little attention, but it is in fact an example of an unprecedented radical 25 year-long transformation: from centralised non-research-orientated communist policy to the radical autonomous Humboldtian environment that emerged after the fall of communism to a strong European neoliberalisation. This article highlights not only the gradual and unique nature of these processes but also shows how they have merged to form the current neoliberalist hybrid. Focusing primarily on former Czecho-Slovakia and the subsequent Slovak and Czech Republics, it details the education policy strategies and initiatives that have contributed to this process. By examining the new educational policy framework at a Slovak university, it shows how Humboldtian culture encountered neoliberal culture: a distinct feature of post-communist neoliberalisation. It is suggested that the Slovak and Czech implementation of neoliberalism has not proved immune to forms of governance similar to those found under communism; rather the two have fused together.     

Education for transformation: an evaluative framework to guide student voice work in schools

In the context of neoliberal and neoconservative educational reforms, student voice work is faced with a number of potential difficulties in creating the conditions, skills and dispositions necessary for student empowerment. One of the key challenges is evaluating whether student voice initiatives are effective, relevant and transformative. Through a systematic literature review of contemporary student voice literature from the past 10 years, the article proposes an evaluative framework to measure the extent to which student voice contributes to socially transformative educational practices in primary and secondary schools This framework suggests that transformative voice work should be dialogic, intergenerational, collective and inclusive, and transgressive. It argues that the interaction of these four themes forms a set of principles or building blocks which collectively underpin transformative student voice work. The purpose of such an evaluative framework is not to provide a normative benchmarking tool, but rather, to serve as a reflective dialogical tool that could guide teachers and students towards genuine transformation of institutional structures and individual practices as well as informing policy makers, practitioners and researchers.     

Racism as Policy: A Critical Race Analysis of Education Reforms in the United States and England

Abstract

Critical race theory (CRT) views education as one of the principal means by which white supremacy is maintained and presented as normal in society. The article applies CRT to two real-world case studies: changes to education statutes in the state of Arizona (USA) and the introduction of a new measure of educational success in England, the English baccalaureate. The analysis highlights the globalized nature of neoliberal education reform and its fundamentally raced and racist character.     

The sublime objects of education policy: quality,equity and ideology

Quality and equity are touchstones of education policy in the twenty-first century in a range of global contexts. On the surface, this seems fitting: after all, who could object to more quality and greater equity in education? Yet what do we mean by quality and equity, and how are they related? This paper draws on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to argue that not only are quality and equity far more complex than education policy formulations typically imply, but also that despite their elevated place in policy debates they remain elusive, serving as sublime objects that function as sites for the investment of desire, while simultaneously covering over and compensating for the ultimate impossibility of a complete and harmonious society. The paper argues that it is a result of their occupying this empty place, and through their holding out the (illusive) promise of enjoyment, rather than as a consequence of their specific or intrinsic content, that sublime objects such as equity and quality exert their particular ideological force.     

The neoliberal regime in English higher education: charters,consumers and the erosion of the public good

The restructuring of higher education (HE) according to neoliberal market principles has constructed the student consumer as a social category, thereby altering the nature, purpose and values of HE. In England, a key government attempt to champion the rights of the student consumer has taken the form of institutional charters which indicate the level of services students can expect to receive and what they will be expected to do in return. Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual framework is applied to analyse the dynamics of practice in the context of the intensification of marketisation in English universities. The impact on student identities and learning processes, on the curriculum and on the academic practices of faculty is explored. By studying the production of institutional information related to charters, a particular image of the ‘good’ student is promoted to prospective students, which simultaneously regulates current student expectations. We argue that the marketisation of learning may result in passive and instrumental learners, a reduction in the range of disciplinary knowledge and a deterrence of innovation in teaching practices, all of which impact on the public good functions of universities.     

Diversity’s discontents: in search of an archive of the oppressed

ABSTRACT

Australian and US-based archivists have recently begun to confront their complicity in a documentary landscape that excludes and erases the voices and views of minority, oppressed and poor communities. Archival professional organisations in both countries attempt to confront this issue by focusing on the homogeneity of the profession, specifically through using the discourse of diversity. Thus, this keynote address, delivered at the 2017 conference of the Australian Society of Archivists in Melbourne, explores the following question: how, if at all, does diversity form part of the solution for dismantling the white supremacy of archives? It begins this inquiry by recounting the author’s participation and experience with diversity projects of the Society of American Archivists, before speculating how archivists might transition away from the language of diversity and towards the language of liberation through the concept of an archive of the oppressed. The central argument of the address is that dismantling white supremacy in archives requires archivists abandon the neoliberal discourse of diversity and adopt an archive of the oppressed, or a cooperative approach in which oppressed peoples are positioned as subjects in our own liberation.     

The third sector and the governance of education

This article explores the nature, scope and form of third-sector involvement in education in New Zealand as demonstrated through a comparison of its relationship with the state in two distinct periods of state and educational development. It begins with an analysis of the period of state expansion from crown colony to centralised administration in the mid-1870s. It then examines the relationship in the decade following the restructuring of education in 1989, as the neoliberal state negotiated economic changes at the national and supranational levels, and challenges to the existing educational organisation from both the political left and the political right. Although an almost mirror image of nineteenth-century arrangements is identified, the nature of the state/third-sector relationship was vastly different as a smaller, but nonetheless stronger, state retained control over the governance of education and, with it, possibilities and limitations for third-sector involvement.     

Like a Version: playing with online identities

The paper offers a neo‐Marxist framework of interculturalisation to accommodate the increasing cultural diversity in the internationalisation of higher education with specific reference to Chinese students in New Zealand. At present, there are few official strategies in place to provide for the needs of international students in New Zealand universities. Tolerance is often promoted to cope with differences in general, but this notion is not sufficient to embrace and encourage cultural diversity in higher education. The paper reviews neoliberal and neo‐Marxist perspectives of interculturalism/interculturalisation. In order to move beyond mere tolerance of cultural diversity, which is seen as a problem to be overcome, the paper concludes that a national and institutional policy for internationalisation in higher education should be underpinned by neo‐Marxist principles of interculturalism.