Marginalised identities, communications technologies and the politics of research: issues in interpreting the educational opportunities of the children of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia

This paper examines the link between language and power as it relates to program evaluation of the Brisbane School of Distance Education. This program was developed in 1989 to meet the educational needs of children who are part of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia. Guild members and their families travel from town to town putting on agricultural and equestrian shows. As part of program evaluation, interviews were conducted with parents, children, home tutors, and itinerant teachers. Interpretation of interview data was affected by relationships between the Showmen's Guild and the School of Distance Education, between the Guild and the researchers, and between the School and the researchers. It was found that in each relationship, language was used in an attempt to exercise power, by way of controlling the constructed identities that represent each group to 'the public'. Other noteworthy factors in these relationships include difficulties establishing communication among the three groups due to the mobility of Guild members, the ambiguous status of individuals within each group, and the coinciding and competing aspirations of researchers. Based on communication theories, this paper suggests that language reinforces the power to control responses of readers or listeners, that power is differentiated and mediated through language, and that all three groups involved in the study attempted to enhance their cultural capital and thereby become less marginalized in the wider community. (LP

Conceptualising itinerancy: lessons from an educational program designed for the Children of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia

This paper examines itinerancy, particularly educational itinerancy, and the appropriateness of various labels applied to the life style of members of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia. Guild members and their families travel from town to town providing agricultural and equestrian shows. An ongoing study is examining the effectiveness of a distance education program established in 1989 for show children. Researchers interviewed children, parents, and home tutors about curriculum, participant roles, social networks, and work and play. It was found that most respondents referred to Guild members' caravans (i.e. house trailers) as their 'homes', and children talked about coming 'home' from school to their caravans. On the other hand, most responses to the question, 'Where is home for you?', referred to a particular town, rather than to 'my caravan'. Some blurring of the home/school distinction was also revealed, in that school work (rather than homework) was described as being completed both at the local schools and in the caravans. These varying responses indicate the wide range of experience and understandings that make up the particular form of itinerancy in which show people engage. Additionally, the lifestyle of show members cannot be stereotyped as nomadic, as their lives have definite frontiers and boundaries and some show people are very successful in material terms. This paper concludes that an attempt to characterize educational itinerancy as conforming rigidly to a single and simplistic conceptualization fails to gain credence. Instead, itinerancy emerges as a multilayered, contextualized, and negotiated phenomenon. (LP

Lessons from the carnival: the implications for Australian teacher education of a distance education program designed for the children of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia.

This paper examines implications for teacher education derived from the evaluation of a distance education program for the Showmen's Guild of Australasia. The program was established in 1989 to meet the educational needs of Guild members who travel from town to town providing agricultural and equestrian shows. A review of the literature reveals that there are numerous difficulties faced by highly mobile students and by rural students and teachers. Interviews conducted with children, parents, home tutors, and itinerant teachers focused on their perceptions of their lives and their general views on education. Data from the interviews revealed the existence of extended and intensive social networks that sustain the itinerant lifestyle. Respondents evaluated the distance education program positively as meeting the educational needs of show children. Work and the work ethic played an important role in the development of children's distinctive identity, while sport and play were associated with local schools and socializing with local children. This study points out the importance of teacher graduates being acquainted with the increasing variety of educational experiences, implications of distance education for children, and benefits and limitations of distance education programs. (LP

Margins within margins?: voices Speaking through a study of the provision of an educational program for the children of one Australian show circuit

This paper examines the tactics used by the Showmen's Guild of Australasia in successfully lobbying for the development of a distance education program for their children. The Guild is considered to be a 'marginalized' group, meaning members have less access to wealth, power, and status. Since 1930, members of the Showmen's Guild and their families have traveled from town to town providing agricultural and equestrian shows. Despite the diversity of backgrounds and experiences among people connected with the show circuit, the Guild is highly organized and has been politically active. Informal sanctions have been effective in enforcing group discipline and in presenting the image of a single body of opinion. In addition, investment in sophisticated machinery and technology has resulted in show people having the financial resources to buy homes and have a political voice via more 'normalized channels'. Although members learn early that they are a marginalized group and are perceived as different from the mainstream, the group maintains close ties and often celebrates its difference. Implications for educational program development center on the goals of educational programs designed for disadvantaged groups, and the status of other marginalized groups and their efforts to contest their marginalized status. (LP

Telling tales: metanarratives, counternarratives and other stories in lifelong learning successes and futures [Keynote]

Lifelong learning attracts various stories to tell the tales of its successes and futures. These stories include marginalising metanarratives, resistant counternarratives and other accounts. This paper illustrates these stories by referring to information literacy, critical theory and informal learning as gleaned from the refereed proceedings of the first four conferences

The role of course development and design in an itinerant schooling program: the perceptions of staff members of the School of Distance Education in Brisbane, Queensland

This paper examines the perceptions of teachers associated with the Brisbane School of Distance Education (Queensland, Australia), concerning their role in the establishment and implementation of a primary education program for children of the Showmen's Guild of Australasia. Interviews with five itinerant teachers revealed that their responsibilities include assessing correspondence papers from students and maintaining telephone contact with students, home tutors, and parents, as well as working in selected towns on a short-term basis to teach 'face-to-face' lessons to itinerant students. Each teacher worked with between 15 and 20 children, usually in family groups across grade levels. Teachers expressed concerns about the show children's lifestyle and how this has affected their educational and social development. However, all teachers felt that the distance education program had improved the children's educational opportunities and adequately addressed their educational needs. Disadvantages of the children's itinerant lifestyle that the program was unable to address were lack of routine, lack of continuity, dependence on the support of the home tutor, role conflicts of local teachers, and insufficient program funding. Implications for other itinerant education projects include recognizing the importance of teacher attitudes when implementing an educational program for a marginalized group. Contains 20 references. (LP

Engineering an education research field for sustainable rural futures: research priorities and outcomes for enhancing agricultural, digital and regional futures

Engineering education is crucial to developing and graduating successful engineers whose work spans the sustainability of agricultural, digital and regional communities and hence contributes directly to the futures of those communities. Consequently it is vital that the field of engineering education research is as current and comprehensive as possible, in order to maximise the quality of engineering teaching and learning programs. This paper deploys a recent evaluative framework for analysing the engineering education research field (Borrego & Bernhard, 2011) to interrogate selected elements of that field as they pertain to Australian undergraduate and postgraduate engineering education. In particular, the paper explores current themes in the literature related to curriculum, teaching and assessment practices; the acquisition of professional skills and graduate attributes; and issues of graduate employability and continuing professional development. This account highlights the engineering education research field as diverse, multifaceted, increasingly politicised and subject to the interplay of competing interests and multiple demands. More widely, the authors argue that the themes elicited from the contemporary engineering education research field reflect significant research priorities and outcomes that are central to enhancing Australian and international agricultural, digital and regional communities. This is because successful graduates from engineering programs are integrally involved in envisaging, devising, testing and evaluating the technologies that underpin these varied domains of human activity. The sustainable and potentially transformative futures of these communities depends in large part on the effectiveness of the engineering programs and the research that informs them

Mobilising the global significance of multidisciplinary discourses of performativity: lessons from an Australian major league baseballer in the United States and Australian circus performers

The discursive construction and expression of multiple forms of identities (self and other; individual, group and community; local, national and international) continue to exercise scholars across a wide range of disciplines, who in turn sometimes seek to exorcise less constructive and enabling representations of certain kinds of marginalised identities. This multi-valenced character of identity discourses is illustrated starkly in the very different status and forms of capital of two occupationally mobile communities with whom this paper is concerned. One group is the highly successful internationally mobile major league baseball players – specifically in this case an Australian player who spent many years travelling the baseball circuits in the United States. The other group is the circuses who travel from place to place in Australia providing public entertainment based on equally specialised skill sets. The paper presents a critically engaged and theoretically informed discourse analysis of empirical data collected with the two groups. The analysis is framed by selected aspects of Judith Butler’s notion of performativity, augmented with more recent theorisation in the field and taking note of the critiques of the concept. The analysis interrogates the discourses of mobility and performativity across the three disciplines of sports biography, life course studies and the sociology of education, in the process distilling areas of potential convergence while acknowledging the appropriate aspects of disciplinary specificity. The analysis is clustered around the emergent organising themes of constructions of home, selfhood and otherness, and multiple identities created and communicated through repeated performances of evolving skills. The paper concludes by examining possible implications of this analysis for contemporary debates about global discourses related to in/equality, discrimination and marginalisation, with particular reference to current and possible future developments in the European polity and society

Feeding back and enhancing authentic learning in quality course assessment design : locating information systems education in rigorous educational research

Locating information systems education foursquare within rigorous and substantial educational research is crucial if the discipline is to receive the scholarly attention that it warrants. One way to do that is to highlight how current information systems course design in Australian undergraduate and postgraduate programs exhibits the strongest possible elements of contemporary learning theories. This paper analyses selected features of the design of an information systems postgraduate course in an Australian university, including the use of peer review of journal entries and writing professional reports to enhance authentic learning and maximise quality assessment design. The analysis is framed by the principles of instructional design theory (Snyder 2009). The authors argue that, by demonstrating theoretically grounded and effective educational practice, the course highlights the value of being located in wider educational research, and of bringing the two fields more closely together.<br /