Puncturing notions of precarity through critical educational research on young lives in Australia: towards a critical ethnography of youth |
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Authors: | John Smyth |
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Institution: | 1. School of Education and Professional Development, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK j.smyth@hud.ac.uk |
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Abstract: | This papers deals in a polemical fashion with what is arguably one of the most contentious issues in education – the disengagement of increasing numbers of young people from schooling. It makes the argument that what is occurring is that global forces are conspiring to position young people as a form of ‘social waste’ and that allowing them to be unproblematically portrayed as constituting a precariat is an over-simplification if not a misrepresentation. In making the case for a different approach, conceived in terms of a critical ethnography of student disengagement, the paper invokes a political economy approach in which learning is seen as a political act engaged in by young people. The paper concludes with a series of propositions intended to provide a different and more critically ethnographic inflection on what is occurring. |
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Keywords: | disengagement critical ethnography student resistance learning as a political act |
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