Marxist history and schooling: Beyond economism

Marxist history emphasises the linkage between economic production, social institutions and everyday life. Critics of Marxism claim that its analysis of schooling is simplistic, functional and deterministic The first part of this paper examines whether Marxist historical practice was in fact deterministic. It offers a non-reductionist and non-economistic reading of Marx's historical methodology. The second section moves on to consider some of the ways in which post-structuralist theorising can 'loosen-up' and revitalise mechanistic Marxist interpretations of the history of schooling

A critical pedagogy of vocational education and training in schools and communities struggling with shifts in the global economy

This article argues that if students in disadvantaged schools and communities are going to receive a fair go then we must begin to interrupt existing conceptions of vocational education and training, in particular the ways in which they perpetuate established social hierarchies based on class, race and gender. Listening to the experiences of over 125 teachers, students and parents from four disadvantaged schools in the outer metropolitan suburbs of Perth, Western Australia (Smyth & Down, 2005) it soon becomes apparent that the new realities of the global economy fuelled by the increasingly successful educational policies and practices of the New Right are (re)shaping schools to better fit the narrow sectional interests of the economy. As politicians, business and corporate interests continue their sustained attacks on public schooling we are witnessing the emergence of what Apple (2001) describes as "conservative modernization" whereby educational commonsense is redefined around a set of neo-liberal and neo-conservative values: ... we are told to "free" our school by placing them into the competitive market, restore "our" traditional common culture and stress discipline and character, return God to our classrooms as a guide to all our conduct inside and outside the school, and tighten central control through more rigorous and tough-minded standards and tests. This is all supposed to be done at the same time. It is all supposed to guarantee an education that benefits everyone. Well, maybe not (p.5)

Relational pedagogy for student engagement and success at university

The Australian Government's policy to transform higher education by 2020 includes plans to significantly raise the levels of undergraduate enrolment by people of low socio-economic status. In light of this policy direction, this article examines how a group of undergraduate students of low socio-economic status work to maintain their desire for learning and to remain included in the university system despite experiencing cultural processes of exclusion. As the students reflect on the cultural and pedagogical conditions that promote, support and enhance their participation and engagement in higher education, a picture emerges of the importance of students' relationships with academics. Whilst positive relationships help students to remain engaged, negative experiences work against continuing participation and engagement. Given the desire of the Australian government to increase participation in higher education by students from under-represented groups, this research identifies some challenges and possibilities for both universities and academics

Craft as a Liberal Education: A Response

It is important to correct some of the impressions that may have been created by Mr. Allen in his last issue of Studies in Design Education and Craft 9.1. Specifically I want to examine the Peters' analysis of education and the Hirst account of liberal education with reference to the place of craft education in the curriculum. I will maintain that an acceptance of the Peters-Hirst theses is perfectly consistent with an emphasis on craft education

Big Picture Education Australia: Experiences of students, parents/carers & teachers

Too many young Australians, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, are not benefiting from the rewards of education and training. For others, there is a growing sense of frustration and alienation about the kind of education they receive, and from their point of view school is boring, irrelevant and disconnected from the world they know. For many, there is a lack of personal connectedness and meaning as their own needs, desires, aspirations and interests are denied in large high school settings where the focus is on subjects, timetables, discipline, didactic teaching, examinations, and classroom-based learning. These historically persistent and protracted problems have preoccupied policymakers, researchers and school reformers for the past sixty years or more. Whilst hardly new, the issue of student (dis)engagement is an increasingly urgent public policy matter not only in terms of economics - cost, productivity, global competitiveness, innovation and human capital, but also social cohesion, mental health and wellbeing, social justice, and democracy itself. At a time when young people face an increasingly volatile and uncertain future due to the impact of globalisation, deindustrialisation, technology, and job insecurity, schools are under pressure to resolve some complex social, economic and political problems not always of their own making. Ironically, schools are often perceived to be a part of the problem and also the solution. Against this broader backdrop, this report attempts to identify, map and describe the experiences of students, their parents/carers and teachers attending schools in a range of sites across Australia adopting an interest-based approach to learning. The intent is to illuminate the experiences of these participants and, from their vantage point, better understand how this approach might address questions of student engagement, school reform, school leadership, curriculum, organisation, assessment and school-community relationships

Promising practices: What students, parents and teachers say about learning in a Big Picture context

This report identifies the key findings from a research project into the early implementation (the first 20 months) of the Big Picture Education (BPE) design for learning and school 1 in five different schools in Western Australia. The aim was to understand better how student engagement for learning and aspirations develop in a Big Picture context. These findings are reported more extensively in a series of Research Briefs, Combined Reports and papers. 2 Our goal in this document is to bring the findings together into the one summary report

Regulatory Informality Across Olympic Event Zones

Olympic event zones are characterised as being intensely formally regulated during live staging periods, producing exclusionary environments blamed for side-lining host community interests. Yet, our findings contradict what scholars perceive to be inflexible formal regulations, and, the regulator’s ability to take informal action. By interviewing and drawing on the experience of 17 regulators during London 2012 we identify how regulators simultaneously oscillate between modes of regulatory formality and informality, straddling what is referred to as the ‘formality-informality span’. Our application and theorisation of these concepts critiques existing explanations of how regulation is enacted in mega-sporting events, providing new insights into the way organisers balance regulatory demands and potentially opening up new emancipatory policies and more equitable outcomes for host communities

Foresight and action learning supporting transition: An account of practice

Integrating foresight into corporations has proved to be challenging. This account of practice reports on the introduction of futures and foresight (FF) teaching content into an executive Masters programme. The FF contentwas further linked to and provided a background for action learning sets. The purpose was to identify how introducing distant time horizons would help participants to adapt and change their perspectives in problem solving and professional development. The report describes how FF was incorporated across the programme and used to develop insightful conversations in the action learning sets. Citing two case examples, the authors reflect on how participants responded to these new elements and offer insights into the value of introducing FF as an interdisciplinary element in a programme

Creativity in savant artists with autism

Background: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display impairments in creativity, yet savant artists with ASD can produce highly novel and original artistic outputs. To date, there have been no systematic attempts to explore creativity in savant artists with ASD. Methods: Nine savant artists with ASD were compared with nine talented artists, nine non-artistically talented individuals with ASD, and nine individuals with moderate learning difficulties (MLD), on tasks in and out of their domain of expertise. This was to ascertain whether the performance of the savant artists was related to their artistic ability, their diagnosis of ASD or their level of intellectual functioning. Results: On a drawing task (the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking; Torrance, 1974), the responses of the art students were more creative (scoring higher on measures of fluency, originality, elaboration and flexibility) than the savant, ASD and MLD groups. However, the savants did produce more elaborative responses than the ASD and MLD groups. On a non-drawing construction task (figural synthesis; Finke & Slayton, 1988), the savants produced more original outputs than the ASD and MLD groups (scoring similarly to the art students). No group differences were found regarding fluency on this task. Conclusions: On standardised creativity tasks, savant artists with ASD display high levels of elaboration (on drawing tasks) and originality (on non-drawing construction tasks), relative to groups with ASD or MLD. High elaboration and originality may result from a local processing bias, coupled with artistic talent, in this group

ARK: Autonomous mobile robot in an industrial environment

This paper describes research on the ARK (Autonomous Mobile Robot in a Known Environment) project. The technical objective of the project is to build a robot that can navigate in a complex industrial environment using maps with permanent structures. The environment is not altered in any way by adding easily identifiable beacons and the robot relies on naturally occurring objects to use as visual landmarks for navigation. The robot is equipped with various sensors that can detect unmapped obstacles, landmarks and objects. In this paper we describe the robot's industrial environment, it's architecture, a novel combined range and vision sensor and our recent results in controlling the robot in the real-time detection of objects using their color and in the processing of the robot's range and vision sensor data for navigation