Academic temporalities: Apprehending micro-worlds of academic work through a photo-serial methodology

This article focuses on academic temporalities to consider the rhythms, repetitions and discontinuities of academic work. Using a photo-serial methodology which generated an archive of images taken at the same time of day for a fortnight, we take up material and affective theories to rethink academic work as assemblages or micro-worlds that emerge through happenstance at particular moments. Our nonrepresentational, new materialist approach shifts away from discursive analyses of accounts of academic labour, and from assumptions of visual methods as ‘documentary’ representations of the world. We adopt an emergent, processual and experimental mode of inquiry that works against linearity, and an analytical approach that attends to the ‘punctum’ of images through glimpses, tangents and elusive details. The contributions of this paper lie in its mobilisation of images to think differently about the ubiquity and ‘throwntogetherness’ of academic labour, and its theoretical reframing of academic temporalities as composed of affective and material entanglements of events, relations, doings, objects, and spaces of all kinds

Hailing love back into view: Working towards a feminist materialist theory-practice of entangled aimance in pandemic times

This chapter attempts to hail love back into view in pandemic times. In searching for how love appears and what love can do, it asks how enactments of love in learning and teaching, in our work as journal editors, and in our writing collaborations, might work as a potentially hope-full feminist materialist response to the desperate and damaging times we currently find ourselves in. Grounded in an acknowledgement of interspecies relationality, in an affirmative ethical commitment to zoe (Braidotti, 2013), and in an attentiveness to the mundane matterings of everyday life (Stewart, 2007), this chapter proposes love as a form of entangled aimance. In this, it brings together work by Barad (2007) on entanglement, and Zembylas (2017) on aimance to advance a line of feminist materialist and posthumanist theory to think and do higher education differently (Gannon et al., 2019; Taylor and Gannon, 2018) and to speak into the separation, solitariness and seclusion that the ongoing time of pandemic has forced on us. We elaborate entangled aimance as a relational condition which offers some resources of hope in a time of destruction, despair, coping and survival, and ponder how entangled aimance may sustain us in our everyday work as academics. The chapter threads personal examples through its theoretical elaboration. In these examples we write from our two different locations – one of us in the UK and one in Australia – to consider how entangled aimance can work as a minor but significant feminist materialist ethico-political practice of hope in utterly changed higher education times

Artefacts, practices and pedagogies : teaching writing in English in the NAPLAN era

In secondary schools, English teachers are often made responsible for writing results in national testing. Yet there have been few studies that focussed on this key group, or on how pedagogical practices have been impacted in the teaching of writing in their classrooms. This study investigated practices of English teachers in four secondary schools across different states, systems and regions. It developed a novel method of case study at a distance that required no classroom presence or school visits for the researchers and allowed a multi-sited and geographically dispersed design. Teachers were invited to select classroom artefacts pertaining to the teaching of writing in their English classes, compile individualised e-portfolios and reflect on these items in writing and in digitally conducted interviews, as well as elaborating on their broader philosophies and feelings about the teaching of writing. Despite and sometimes because of NAPLAN, these teachers held strong views on explicit teaching of elements of writing, but approached these in different ways. The artefacts that they created animated their teaching practices, connected them to their students and their subject, suggested both the pressure of externally driven homogenising approaches to writing and the creative individualised responses of skilled teachers within their unique contexts. In addition to providing granular detail about pedagogical practices in the teaching of writing in the NAPLAN era, the contribution of this paper lies in its methodological adaptation of case study at a distance through teacher-curated artefact portfolios that enabled a deep dive into individual teachers’ practices

Interesting times: a short introduction from the new editorial team of Gender and Education

Editoria

Poetry in Action: Understanding Experiences, Perceptions, and Impacts of PIA in Secondary Schools: Research Report. Part 2, Schools

Poetry in Action is an Australian touring theatre group that has worked for fifteen years delivering intense, high-energy performance-based programs to schools around Australia and beyond. Poetry in Action aims to evoke joy and wonder, bring poetry to life, inspire and complement the work of teachers. In its emphasis on the vocal elements and musicality of poetry, and on embodiment and physicality in poetic expression, Poetry in Action provides more dynamic entry points to poetic language and form than students usually experience in text-based study of poetry. This mixed method research evaluates the impact of PIA on artists, teachers and students in the diverse secondary schools that PIA reaches. Report 2: Schools draws on a national survey with teachers and interviews with PIA artists to explore what schools value most and identify those factors that are barriers to delivery and quality of impact. Clearer insights into PIA's value to schools informs recommendations based on how teachers currently incorporate PIA shows into teaching and learning in their schools and how this might be strengthened to further increase and diversify the impact of PIA in secondary schools

Poetry in Action: Understanding Experiences, Perceptions, and Impacts of PIA in Secondary Schools: Research Report. Part 1, Artists

Poetry in Action is a theatre in education (TIE) company that has worked with schools around Australia for more than fifteen years, and apart from repeat bookings and anecdotal responses, little is known about the impact of PIA on teaching and learning in the schools that it has reached. In the arts industry, PIA provides employment to a range of artists, ranging from new graduates from theatre courses to industry experts. The research investigates experiences, perceptions, and impacts of PIA in Australian schools and in the arts industry. Report 1: Artists focuses on the interviews held with artists, particularly the themes of artists' practices, artists' professional capacity-building and artists' career development

Understanding the Experience and Perceived Impact of the Ready Arrive Work Program

The Ready Arrive Work (RAW) program assists high school students from refugee backgrounds to explore vocational learning pathways in a supportive and positive environment. It aims to equip them with a better understanding of employment, workplaces, career planning and the pathways which can lead to a successful career after completing school. Designed by JobQuest and the NSW Department of Education the RAW program targets government high schools in metropolitan and regional NSW. It has been operating in NSW High schools since 2006. For students from refugee backgrounds, careers advice has been consistently identified in policy and research as a point of vulnerability and as an ideal opportunity for intervention. A recent Victorian inquiry into school-based career advising (Parliament of Victoria, 2018) identified numerous issues faced by refugee students including: unfamiliarity with systems of education and work, inadequate knowledge of career options and prerequisites, isolation, trauma, disruptions, lack of connections and mentors, parents’ limited knowledge and accompanying expectations. More than a decade after the RAW initiative and resources were developed, and after rapid expansion of the program beyond its original site, this research aimed to gather an understanding of the perceived impact, enablers and barriers of the RAW program. This qualitative research interviewed 58 stakeholders including school students, school staff, Job quest staff and Raw steering committee, industry and civic partners. Findings indicated that the Ready Arrive Work program was beneficial for students, schools, industry and civic partner organisations. All the ‘impacts’ reported by these stakeholders were positive. This indicates that participating RAW stakeholders hold the program in high regard and the continuation of the program should be prioritised by the NSW Department of Education. Specific impacts were reported by stakeholders for each of the participating groups

Arctic terns : writing and art-making our way through the pandemic

We call ourselves the Arctic terns after the birds that migrate between the northern and southern hemispheres. Three of us live in south-west Britain and three in south-east Australia. We tried to make sense of our lockdown lives and the ways we were imbricated in world events. We wrote and made art in response. We read our work to each other and showed each other our artworks. The material practices we developed helped make the pandemic endurable, and at times hilarious. Here we share some of our work and some of our thinking about why it matters

Grim tales: Meetings, matterings and moments of silencing and frustration in everyday academic life

Universities are dominated by marketisation, individualisation and competition, forces inimical to individual flourishing and collaborative endeavours. This article presents four stories from a collective biography workshop in which a group of women academics explored everyday moments in their university lives. The stories are grim tales of damage, silencing, frustration and cynicism, whose affects continue to reverberate. The article makes two contributions to higher education research. One, its focus on mundane moments offers insights into embodied dynamics of gender, power and affect within the neoliberal university. Two, it demonstrates how collective biography as a feminist methodology can mobilise increased awareness of shared experiences and, thereby, enable participants to work together to recognise and contest the affective grimness of their workplaces