Interactions with Queensland show children: enhancing knowledge of educational contexts

This paper analyses one element of Shulman's (1987) categories of the teacher knowledge base - knowledge of educational contexts - in relation to the education of Queensland travelling show children. This knowledge includes three sets of interactions: the children's relationships on and off the show circuits, the children's interactions with their teachers, and the teachers' interactions with the children's parents and home tutors. The concepts of 'border crossing' (Giroux, 1990) and 'boundary maintenance' (Barth, 1969) underscore the importance of show children and their teachers being able to cross the boundaries between show life and formal schooling

The Principal as change leader and manager in and via the Queensland School for Travelling Show Children

Despite the extensive literature on the management of educational change (see for example Fullan, 2001, 2003), one constant in that literature is the consensus that such change is both complex and contextualised. A crucial consequence of that constant is the multiple fronts and levels on which school principals as change leaders and managers must engage with change, in order to bring about the most effective possible outcomes for students, families and communities. It is this link between change at the levels of school, community and society with which this paper is concerned. The first-named author of the paper is the Principal of the Queensland School for Travelling Show Children (QSTSC), and the paper outlines how she operates as a change leader and manager, as well as some of the challenges and opportunities that she meets in doing so. The paper begins by outlining the context of her work, then moves to discuss her multiple roles as change agent in the school, in the show community and in Australian society more broadly

Falls Assessment Clinical Trial (FACT): design, interventions, recruitment strategies and participant characteristics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Guidelines recommend multifactorial intervention programmes to prevent falls in older adults but there are few randomised controlled trials in a real life health care setting. We describe the rationale, intervention, study design, recruitment strategies and baseline characteristics of participants in a randomised controlled trial of a multifactorial falls prevention programme in primary health care.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Participants are patients from 19 primary care practices in Hutt Valley, New Zealand aged 75 years and over who have fallen in the past year and live independently. Two recruitment strategies were used – waiting room screening and practice mail-out. Intervention participants receive a community based nurse assessment of falls and fracture risk factors, home hazards, referral to appropriate community interventions, and strength and balance exercise programme. Control participants receive usual care and social visits. Outcome measures include number of falls and injuries over 12 months, balance, strength, falls efficacy, activities of daily living, quality of life, and physical activity levels.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>312 participants were recruited (69% women). Of those who had fallen, 58% of people screened in the practice waiting rooms and 40% when screened by practice letter were willing to participate. Characteristics of participants recruited using the two methods are similar (p > 0.05). Mean age of all participants was 81 years (SD 5). On average participants have 7 medical conditions, take 5.5 medications (29% on psychotropics) with a median of 2 falls (interquartile range 1, 3) in the previous year.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The two recruitment strategies and the community based intervention delivery were feasible and successful, identifying a high risk group with multiple falls. Recruitment in the waiting room gave higher response rates but was less efficient than practice mail-out. Testing the effectiveness of an evidence based intervention in a 'real life' setting is important.</p> <p>Trial registration</p> <p>Australian Clinical Trials Register ID 12605000054617.</p

Risks and dilemmas, virtues and vices: engaging with stakeholders and gatekeepers in Australian traveller education research

Scott and Usher (1999, pp. 129-134) have postulated three possible models of analysing the rights and responsibilities of researchers and researched: covert research; open democratic research; and open autocratic research. While we eschew characterising our research as 'covert', we are less definitive about whether and how it is 'democratic' and/or 'autocratic'. Partly this dilemma derives from uncertainties involved in identifying stakeholders with 'legitimate' involvement in the conduct and outcomes of a research project. Partly this dilemma also reflects the risks attendant on stakeholders becoming gatekeepers, and/or when stakeholders' expectations of the project diverge. We illustrate these risks and dilemmas by reference to an ongoing research project investigating the educational experiences and opportunities of Australian occupational Travellers – specifically, itinerant circus and fairground people. This critically reflexive illustration is informed by our deployment of selected elements of Pring's (2002) provocative delineation of the 'virtues' and 'vices' of educational researchers. We argue that Pring's depiction of 'the virtuous research community' (pp. 125-126), augmented by the principles of co-operative communities, provides a more contingent and nuanced basis than Scott and Usher’s (1999) 'democratic' versus 'autocratic' research for engaging with the multiple and sometimes conflicting interests of stakeholders and gatekeepers in Australian Traveller education research

Three pedagogies of mobility for Australian show people: teaching about, through and towards the questioning of sedentarism

[Abstract]: Questions concerning the education of mobile groups help to highlight the lived experiences of people otherwise rendered invisible by policy actors. This includes the diverse communities of occupational Travellers – those people who regularly move in order to earn their livelihood. While the category ‘occupational Travellers’ encompasses groups as varied as defence force personnel, specialist teachers and seasonal fruit pickers, the focus here is on the people who travel the agricultural show circuits of Australia to provide the entertainment of ‘sideshow alley’. Drawing on qualitative research with the Australian show people since 1992, this paper deploys the concept of ‘sedentarism’ to highlight the ambivalently valorised lived experiences and educational opportunities of the show people. In particular, the paper explores the pedagogical and policy implications of efforts to disrupt and transform the marginalising impact of sedentarism, which constructs mobility as the other in relation to fixed residence. Specifically, it is argued that anti-sedentarism makes possible the identification and interrogation of three distinct pedagogies of mobility pertaining to the show people, revealing differing stances on intersections of mobility and education. The first is teaching about anti-sedentarism, which involves demonstrating the value of the informal learning that takes place on the show circuits so that the show people’s mobility does not throw a negative light on their learning on the run. The second is teaching through anti-sedentarism, which centres on informing non-show people about the lives of show people and their contributions to cultural, economic and social life in Australia. The third is teaching towards anti-sedentarism, entailing the mapping and valuing of multiple forms of mobility. The paper considers implications for policy actions of these three pedagogies of mobility about and for the Australian show people. These implications are identified through the lens of assumptions underpinning the current Commonwealth Government policy statement on student mobility. The argument is that the evidence from the show people’s experiences suggests that pedagogies of mobility represent one among several possible ways forward in pursuing anti-sedentarism and in imagining anew traditional education for contemporary mobile learners

A team approach to researching Australian traveller education: three perspectives on integrating theory, method and writing

[Abstract]: The intersection of theory, method and writing is a contentious and crucial site in which educational researchers can and must reflect self-critically on the effectiveness and significance of their research endeavours. Both the need for, and the potential benefits of, conducting such reflection are magnified when a team of researchers is involved. This paper discusses the deployment of three different but complementary approaches – dialogism, co-operative community and performance space –to integrating theory, method and writing in an ongoing study of Australian Traveller education. A team approach to achieving and reflecting on that integration encourages cross-fertilisation among the selected approaches, and contributes to their ongoing theorisation; it also constitutes a useful strategy for ongoing reflective practice and for promoting continuing professional learning in the authors’ contemporary workplaces

Situating and interrogating contemporary Australian rural education research

This opening article in this special issue about Australian rural education research develops three key points. First, the Australian literature reflects the complexities of defining the terms regional, rural, and remote, with many definitions deriving from a fixed and disabling urban-rural binary. That literature also contains a number of success stories of educational innovations in rural Australia. Second, the conceptual and methodological resources underpinning the Australian literature need to be interrogated to ensure that they avoid deficit constructions of rural Australia in favor of more productive understandings that recognize and value rural educational innovations. Third, the articles in this collection provide points of potential dialogue between American and Australia rural education researchers committed to mapping and celebrating diversity and innovation

Challenging heterotopic space: a study of the Queensland school for travelling show children

Michel Foucault’s (1995) work on the distribution of people, discourses and objects within geographical and institutional spaces has provided an important insight into our understanding of the emergence of contemporary society. Foucault’s substantive studies of prisons and medical and psychiatric institutions have been acutely attuned to the ways in which spaces are negotiated and lived through. Rather than conceive of relations of power or abstract ideas about social organisations as being imposed from above upon certain institutional and geographical spaces, Foucault was instead interested in ‘spaces of dispersion’ where different bodies, social forces and ways of life come into contact with one another. In particular, Foucault’s concept of heterotopia (Faubion, 1998) is geared towards considering the effects of radically different social spaces coming into contact with one another. This paper applies Foucault’s (1995) thinking about space to the experiences of the Queensland School for Travelling Show Children. While the movement of the agricultural show circuits throughout metropolitan and regional Australia has historically been significant in fostering relationships between town and country and between residential and mobile communities, the establishment in 2000 of a dedicated school to accompany these circuits has added another dimension to that relationship. Some of the authors’ qualitative data gathered in 2003 from semi-structured interviews with teachers, educational officials, parents and students are deployed to delineate the complex ways in which the school challenges received understandings of both geographical and social space

Pedagogies and learning in cooperative and symbolic communities of practice: implications for and from the education of Australian show people

[Abstract]: Groups and organisations are not automatically sites of effective and transformative pedagogy and learning; such outcomes are most likely to occur when entities become communities of practice (Wenger, McDermott & Snyder, 2002). One conception of community focused explicitly on the facilitation of pedagogy and learning is cooperative community, centred on five principles (Johnson & Johnson, 1998). Another productive notion of community is as a symbolic construction, centred on members' shared consciousness and boundary maintenance (Cohen, 1985). One community that demonstrates the pedagogical and learning potential of cooperative and symbolic communities of practice is the Australian show people (Danaher, 1998, 2001). Following generations of educational marginalisation, this community participated in a specialised program within the Brisbane School of Distance Education between 1989 and 1999, and since 2000 its members have benefited from having their own Queensland School for Travelling Show Children, established under Education Queensland' auspices. This paper maps and portrays enactments of the cooperative and symbolic communities of practice in the school and on the show circuits. It identifies specific strategies that underpin the pedagogies and learning made possible in those communities of practice, and it considers possible implications of such pedagogies and learning for other educational contexts and groups