491 research outputs found
The owl spreads its wings: global and international education within the local from critical perspectives
Within an era of a New Knowledge Society, assumptions abound regarding the ‘goodness' and justice of global interconnections and distributions of knowledge through international educational organizations and structures worldwide. Just as George Bush Jr. in attempting to justify the invasion of Iraq made claim to the democratic goodness of the US ‘spreading their freedoms' in the interests of an all-encompassing democratization of the world, so the assumption that sharing educational knowledge, especially an ‘all-knowing North' with a ‘helpless South' is without question for the greater good of all humanity
Recognising Desire: A psychosocial approach to understanding education policy implementation and effect
It is argued that in order to understand the ways in which teachers experience their work - including the idiosyncratic ways in which they respond to and implement mandated education policy - it is necessary to take account both of sociological and of psychological issues. The paper draws on original research with practising and beginning teachers, and on theories of social and psychic induction, to illustrate the potential benefits of this bipartisan approach for both teachers and researchers. Recognising the significance of (but somewhat arbitrary distinction between) structure and agency in teachersâ practical and ideological positionings, it is suggested that teachersâ responses to local and central policy changes are governed by a mix of pragmatism, social determinism and often hidden desires. It is the often underacknowledged strength of desire that may tip teachers into accepting and implementing policies with which they are not ideologically comfortable
Subjectivation and performative politicsâButler thinking Althusser and Foucault: intelligibility, agency and the raced-nationed-religioned subjects of education
Judith Butler is perhaps best known for her take-up of the debate between Derrida and Austin over the function of the performative and her subsequent suggestion that the subject be understood as performatively constituted. Another important but less often noted move within Butlerâs consideration of the processes through which the subject is constituted is her thinking between Althusserâs notion of subjection and Foucaultâs notion of subjectivation. In this paper, I explore Butlerâs understanding of processes of subjectivation; examine the relationship between subjectivation and the performative suggested in and by Butlerâs work, and consider how the performative is implicated in processes of subjectivation â in =whoâ the subject is, or might be, subjectivated as. Finally, I examine the usefulness of understanding the subjectivating effects of discourse for education, in particular for educationalists concerned to make better sense of and interrupt educational inequalities. In doing this I offer a reading of an episode of ethnographic data generated in an Australian high School. I suggest that it is through subjectivating processes of the sort that Butler helps us to understand that some students are rendered subjects inside the educational endeavour, and others are rendered outside this endeavour or, indeed, outside student-hood
Emotions and ethics: A Foucauldian framework for becoming an ethical educator
This paper provides examples of how a teacher and a principal construct their âethical selvesâ. In doing so we demonstrate how Foucault's four-part ethical framework can be a scaffold with which to actively connect emotions to a personal ethical position. We argue that ethical work is and should be an ongoing and dynamic life long process rather than a more rigid adherence to a âcode of ethicsâ that may not meaningfully engage its adherents. We use Foucault's four-part framework of ethical practice as a framework through which an âethical selfâ can be purposely constructed. This is important work, as those who have authority over others must know how to monitor themselves against the misuse of the power of their positions
Factors that shape pedagogical practices in next generation learning spaces
International figures on university expenditure on the development of next generation learning spaces (NGLS) are not readily available but anecdote suggests that simply retrofitting an existing classroom as an NGLS conservatively costs $AUD200,000, while developing new buildings often cost in the region of 100 million dollars and over the last five years, many universities in Australia, Europe and North America have developed new buildings. Despite this considerable investment, it appears that the full potential of these spaces is not being realised. While researchers argue that a more student centred learning approach to teaching has inspired the design of next generation learning spaces (Tom, Voss, & Scheetz, 2008) and that changed spaces change practice (Joint Information Systems Committee, 2009) when 'confronted' with a next generation learning spaces for the first time, anecdotes suggest that many academics resort to teaching as they have always taught and as they were taught. This chapter highlights factors that influence teaching practices, showing that they are to be found in the external, organisational and personal domains. We argue that in order to fully realise significant improvements in student outcomes through the sector's investment in next generation learning spaces, universities need to provide holistic and systematic support across three domains - the external, the organisational and the personal domains, by changing policies, systems, procedures and localised practices to better facilitate changes in teaching practices that maximise the potential of next generation learning spaces
Be[com]ing a Teacher in Neoliberal Times: Visioning as Resistance in Teacher Education
Teacher education is under assault from the corporatization of public education. There is evidence that reductive, essentialized/ing discourses of standardization and compliance exert intense pressures on teacher education, and a market-based, audit culture constricts conceptions of the âgood teacherâ. Despite the pervasiveness of neoliberal discourses, little is known about how student teachers experience increased corporatization in education, or about how they act rather than are acted upon in this context. In examining these dynamics, we explore the following research questions: (a) How do student teachers make sense of neoliberal discourses in teaching? (b) How do student teachers experience the process of what Hammerness describes as âteacher visioningâ in the context of neoliberal discourses? (c) What, if any, effect does visioning have on their responses to these discourses? We draw on qualitative data including focus groups, interviews, and document analysis from a group of early childhood student teachers enrolled in a public teacher education program and placed in field sites around eastern Massachusetts. Based on our findings, we argue that teacher visioning can, under certain circumstances, serve as an impetus for student teacher resistance to neoliberal pressures
A queer politics of emotion: reimagining sexualities and schooling
peer-reviewedThis paper draws together Hochschildâs (1979; 1983) concepts of emotional labour and feeling rules with Ahmedâs affective economies (2004a, 2004b; 2008; 2010) and queer phenomenology (2006a, 2006b) as a way to address wider questions about sexuality and schooling. It highlights the value of the everyday politics of emotion for elucidating and clarifying the specificities, pertinence and complementarities of Hochschildâs and Ahmedâs work for reimagining the relationship between sexualities and schooling. The combination of their approaches allows for a focus on the individual, bodily management of emotions while demonstrating the connectedness of bodies and spaces. It enables disruption of âinclusiveâ and âprogressiveâ educational approaches that leave heterosexuality uninterrupted and provides insight into how power works in and across the bodies, discourses, practices, relations and spaces of schools to maintain a collective orientation towards heterosexuality. It also counters linear narratives of progressive change, elucidating how change is a hopeful but messy process of simultaneous constraint, transgression and transformation. Key moments from a three-year study with LGBT-Q teachers entering into civil partnerships (CP) in Ireland serve as exploratory examples of the theoretical ideas put forward in this paper.ACCEPTEDpeer-reviewe
Education then and now: making the case for ecol-agogy
The processes, settings and outcomes of human education have distinctive impact on the human and non-human world: this paper sets out to discuss what may have motivated the initiation of human education, how it has been maintained why the outcome has wide-ranging, and often negative, planetary impact.
The analysis offers a multi-disciplinary account of education, from pre-history to the present, noting that humans, past and present are born into an âopen worldâ that requires world building or, niche construction. As a result, cultural and genetic evolution are out of synchronisation instigating an existential threat and the anxious experience of âadaptive-lagâ leading to the motive for continued niche construction. Education is presented as a particular type of niche construction requiring teachers and the use of symbolic verbal language to help learners move from simplistic âsplitâ thinking to the more mature position where the needs of self and others can be met
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