Editorial introduction [to Strategic uncertainties: ethics, politics and risk in contemporary educational research]

Strategic Uncertainties: Ethics, Politics and Risk in Contemporary Educational Research offers new perspectives on contemporary educational research in a wide range of contexts and settings. The authors provide fresh insights into the ethics, politics and risks of educational research through their deployment of up-to-date concepts and methods. They also bring educational research ‘to life’ as a series of meaningful and significant issues and dilemmas, and by drawing on the voices of ‘real-life’ research participants and practitioners. In 2001, a theme issue of the Queensland Journal of Educational Research (Coombes & Danaher, 2001) was published under the title Cui Bono?: Investigating Benefits and Interests in Educational Research. In that issue, a group of authors from a range of academic disciplines explored the notion of who benefits from educational research and how such benefits might be identified, evaluated and weighed against potential costs to the research participants. The purpose of the contributors was not to view the intentions and results of research through rose-coloured glasses (‘everyone benefits and everyone is happy’) but to establish, as honestly as possible, whether the perceived benefits of a particular research project would actually occur without some cost to those involved. The key concepts, which were the focus of each article, were therefore the benefits and costs of educational research. In Strategic Uncertainties, the focus of attention shifts to the potential risks of educational research and to the strategies that researchers might employ to minimise or from some perspectives try to eliminate these risks (and from other perspectives to embrace and celebrate such risks). Educational research, by its very nature, is concerned with people; it cannot function in a sterile vacuum. Where people are concerned, complete agreement among the participants can never be guaranteed. Thus stakeholders may compete for powerful speaking positions. Research projects, though conceived with the best of intentions, may serve to highlight the gap between researcher and researched by reinforcing the socioeconomic and educational inequities of their relationships with one another. These particular risks, among many others, emphasise the ethical and political dimensions of relationships among the participants and subject to critical scrutiny claims that research projects confer particular kinds of benefits. Educational research is indeed a ‘risky business’, but this should not deter researchers from engaging in the practice. It is the purpose of Strategic Uncertainties to apply theoretically informed, methodologically rigorous and experientially grounded critique to the ‘murky shadows’ and ‘no-go areas’ of contemporary educational research. The title of this book, Strategic Uncertainties, is taken from the text of Ian Stronach and Maggie MacLure (1997), Educational Research Undone: The Postmodern embrace. The authors focused on postmodern researchers’ efforts to avoid being caught in the snares of: the binary oppositions that have traditionally promised the comforts of certainty in philosophical thinking – between reality and appearance, reason and superstition, causes and effects, meaning and language, identity and imposture, local and universal etc. – they choose not to choose between them, not to work to transcend them, nor, importantly, to ignore them, but instead to complicate the relations between them. (p. 5; emphasis in original) According to Stronach and MacLure (1997): The kind of opening which such work attempts is that of the rupture – or interruption and disruption – in the (uncertain) hope that this will generate possibilities for things to happen that are closed off by the epistemologies of certainty….These are uncanny openings, then. They rupture things, not in order to let the light pour in, but to make it harder to see clearly. They open spaces which turn out not to be spaces, but knots, complications, folds and partial connections. It is impossible even to tell for sure whether they are openings or closings, since they are also blocking manoeuvres, which would prevent escape routes to happy endings…We try to practise this kind of strategic uncertainty throughout, and within this book. Our aim is to mobilise meaning…rather than to fix it. (p, 5; emphasis in original; emphasis added) Elaborating and expanding on these propositions by Stronach and MacLure (1997), the content of Strategic Uncertainties is a set of accounts by contemporary educational researchers of the ethics, politics and risk of their own research projects. While those accounts draw on a multiplicity of theoretical, methodological and empirical resources to frame and inform their respective engagements with educational research, they have in common a general commitment to, and at the same time an ongoing interrogation of, the ideas encapsulated in the term ‘strategic uncertainties’

Section one section introduction [to Strategic uncertainties: ethics, politics and risk in contemporary educational research]

It is hardly surprising that five of the book’s 14 chapters – more than one third of them – are concerned with engaging with the strategic uncertainties of researching language and literacies. This proportion reflects the centrality of language in meaning-making in all societies, as well as the multiple ways – implicit as well as explicit, covert as much as overt – in which literacies empower some individuals and groups and disenfranchise others. As the authors represented in this section of the book ably demonstrate, researching language and literacies is a strategically uncertain enterprise – or a ‘risky business’, as several of the authors in this book term it – imbued with ethical and political responsibilities and imbricated with risks connected directly with people’s life chances and lifeworlds

Introduction [to Doctrina perpetua: brokering change, promoting innovation and transforming marginalisation in university learning and teaching]

It is arguable that, in addition to brokering change and promoting innovation, contemporary universities have a responsibility to direct their teaching and learning activities at transforming marginalisation. This contention derives from the fundamental and enduring ambivalence attending discussions of the purpose and significance of universities. On the one hand, they can be seen as “ivory towers” and hence as the bastions of privilege and the repositories of “high culture”, overseeing the maintenance of what the elite determines is the best of a nation’s heritage. On the other hand, and by contrast, they can be viewed as the vehicles for progressive social change and as the sites for interrogating current issues in terms of whose voices are heard and whose are silenced in relation to those issues. Given this ambivalence, it is clearly incumbent on universities to find ways of confirming that they contribute to disrupting and subverting sociocultural inequities rather than replicating them. In keeping with the emphasis on diversity and heterogeneity evident throughout this book, the authors of the chapters in this section have been encouraged to deploy a number of conceptual and methodological resources in engaging with the theme of transforming marginalisation in preference to the section editor predetermining a single, fixed definition of “marginalisation” and its “transformation”. At the same time, each chapter identifies particular attributes of groups of learners that might potentially render them at greater risk than other groups of not attaining their educational goals and links those attributes with specific strategies that have been demonstrated through evidencebased practice to reduce that risk—at least for some learners in those groups. What emerges is a picture of considerable complexity, with some strategies proving effective for large numbers of students and conforming to the features of current best practice in university learning and teaching, yet also with some elements of marginalisation remaining remarkably resistant to amelioration and transformation. Understanding this complex and somewhat contradictory picture is crucial to taking up the challenges and opportunities that mark the intersection between doctrina perpetua and transforming marginalisation

Mobilising spatial risks: reflections on researching Venezuelan and Australian fairground people's educational experiences

[Abstract]: One approach to conducting educational research is to strive for ‘risk minimisation’. This is presumably on the assumption that risk is always and inevitably dangerous and harmful (see also McDougall, Jarzabkowski, Mills & Gale, Moore, Danaher and Walker-Gibbs, this volume), and to be avoided at all costs. Following the theme of celebrating ‘strategic uncertainties’ (Stronach & MacLure, 1997), we prefer a different approach, one grounded in the recognition of risk as the prerequisite of new conceptual, methodological and empirical understandings. Rather than being minimised or avoided, risk should be mobilised and enthusiastically pursued – carpe diem transposed to an educational research framework. Our conviction of the utility, even the necessity, of mobilising risk derives in part from our ongoing research into the educational experiences of Venezuelan and Australian fairground people (Anteliz & Danaher, 2000; Anteliz, Danaher & Danaher, 2001). In multiple ways, the fairground people routinely enter the spaces of permanently resident communities, and in so doing they challenge the stereotypes attached to mobile groups (McVeigh, 1997). From this perspective, their physical mobility becomes allied with their mobilisation of spatial risks in order to earn their living and to sustain their cultural heritage. We see this process of mobilising spatial risks as potentially both a template and a metaphor for educational researchers. Space can be conceptualised as the site of multiple and often conflicting beliefs, discourses and values. In the context of an educational research project, space can indeed be risky and unpredictable, yet it can also become the place in which transformational educational practices are conceived and developed. This is precisely why spatial risks need to be mobilised – and why ‘strategic uncertainties’ need to be celebrated

Student performance standards and Queensland teacher education

This paper considers the implementation of Student Performance Standards (SPS) in Queensland, Australia, and their implications for teacher education. Student testing procedures in various Australian states and territories are described. A theoretical framework, grounded in Australian educational history, is elaborated for understanding the political ramifications of SPS. S. J. Ball's explication of market, management and, particularly, curriculum controls over public education is applied to show how explicit emphasis on student performance is linked to wider forces promoting an instrumentalist and managerialist view of schooling. The emergence of statewide testing is seen as: a quality control measure designed to ensure that schools are producing human resources tailored to the needs of a post-fordist economy; an attempt to shape the quality, character, and content of classroom practice; and a potential step toward monitoring the performance of teachers and schools, making comparisons among them, and linking these comparisons to performance-related pay awards. The paper concludes that SPS constitutes a not entirely desirable response to a series of complex educational and political changes within and outside Australia. SPS represents in microcosm what is a broader challenge to the celebration of diversity and the recognition of heterogeneity that ought to underpin any teacher education program. (Contains 16 references.

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

Towards a new settlement in Australian teacher education : a review of shifting sensibilities

This essay reviews and provides a critical introduction to the papers found within these Refereed Proceedings of the Australian Teacher Education Association (ATEA) Conference held in Yeppoon, Queensland, 5-8 July, 1997. It argues that within Australia, and to a lesser extent the Asia Pacific region, there is evidence of a new settlement in teacher education, the parameters and particulars of which are characterised by significant changes in its political economy, social and knowledge bases. While it is evident that particular features of previous settlements in Australian teacher education remain, in recent times many of these features have acquired different emphases and meanings; in part due to their conjoining with and (re)positioning amongst other elements previously illegitimated or `held at bay\u27. Each of the themes of change is examined in turn and, at relevant junctures, references are made to papers within the volume that provide further illustration and explanation

The teacher educator as (re)negotiated professional: critical incidents in steering between state and market in Australia

[Abstract]: A dominant discourse in western higher education circles is currently concerned – even obsessed – with the marketisation of knowledge as a commodity to be purchased and traded (Healy, 1998; Poole, 1998; Richardson, 1998). These developments are broadly allied with managerial changes that some have called ‘steering at a distance’ (Kickert, 1991; Marceau, 1993), whereby the impact of the state on individual higher education workers is maintained and intensified at the same time that pressure is applied to ‘wean’ universities from government funding. This paper explores a different kind of ‘steering’, the kind that is being engaged by Australian teacher educators confronted by developing competitiveness in higher education. We argue that these changes compel teacher educators to (re)negotiate their professionalisms; to re-examine their attitudes towards, and values within, education and its practices as they (individually and collectively) steer new courses through the state and the market. We illustrate our argument by referring to three critical incidents in the professional lives of teacher educators located within a globalised, multi-campus and provincial Australian university, yet with important implications also for teacher educators outside Australia. We posit the (re)negotiated professionalisms manifested in those incidents as a few among several potential kinds of steering by Australian teacher educators