The politics of being an educational researcher: minimising the harm done by research.

Researchers have an obligation to reflect on the politics of their research and of whose interests it serves in order to take steps to minimise it being used in damaging ways. This article uses the problem of the "politics of blame"-- the way governments attempt to construct student or institutional "underperformance" or "failure" as the clear responsibility of schools and teachers--to illustrate the importance of researchers stepping back from specific research agendas to consider the overall positioning of their research. The case of the politics of blame illustrates the importance of researchers taking an independent stance rather than being steered too much by what is fashionable to research or what has political support from government. The article makes some suggestions about how researchers can take steps to pre-empt their research being used in damaging ways

Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) Project. Second Report: Understanding New Zealand’s Very Local National Standards

This is the second report of the Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) project, a three-year study of the introduction of National Standards into New Zealand primary and intermediate schools

Education ‘inconvenient truth’: Part one- Persistent middle class advantage

As a policy sociologist I have long been drawn to uncomfortable questions about whose interests are really being served in and through education (Thrupp, 1999a). I’ve been interested in how developments in education policy and practice can lead to greater social inequalities and how seemingly worthwhile policies and practices can be undone by other developments (Thrupp, 1999b). In recent years I’ve also increasingly turned the spotlight back on us as academics and researchers, to consider the politics of our own work and ask awkward questions about whether we are part of the problem too (Thrupp & Willmott, 2003). And, to some extent, I’ve begun to take up that difficult challenge which is always being put to critical scholars, you know, ‘so what’s the alternative?’ (Thrupp, 2005)

Education's 'inconvenient truth': persistent middle class advantage.

This Inaugural Professorial Address explores how schooling is geared to the concerns and interests of the middle classes. It begins by discussing the likely advantages provided by predominantly middle class school settings and examines how the middle classes target such schools for their children. It goes on to consider how those who work in the education sector help to perpetuate middle class advantage in education: how teachers and principals collude with the middle classes as they seek out advantaged settings for their children; how policymakers and politicians fail to challenge the middle class for electoral reason, and how some academics provide support for these inequitable stances. The article concludes with suggestions for reducing middle class advantage in education including the need for more public debate about the costs and ethics of a highly segregated schooling system

Some inconvenient truths about education in Aotearoa-New Zealand

How does poverty affect New Zealand children’s schooling? Answers to this question generally revolve around three perspectives. First, it is argued that the children of families in poverty in New Zealand are disadvantaged in schools because of the level and nature of their family resources. Such resources can be both material and cultural: ill health, poor nutrition, overcrowding and transience, fewer curriculum relevant experiences, limited literacy and little early childhood education all reduce the ability of children to progress at school (Biddulph, J, & Biddulph, 2003; Nash, 1993). Second, it is argued that schools serving poorer areas are under-resourced. This applies more to places such as the USA, where school funding depends on the tax-base of local districts (Kozol, 1991), than to New Zealand, where schools are funded nationally and extra funding is provided for low socio-economic “low-decile” schools. Nevertheless underfunding, or the method of funding, of low-decile schools remains an issue in New Zealand, both because of relatively low parent and community contributions in such schools, and because of the sheer scale of their students’ needs. A third perspective is that poor teaching and ineffective schools are the problem, rather than poverty. Yet quality teaching and school improvement cannot be divorced from the social context. Low socio-economic schools often find it difficult to recruit permanent, long-term teaching staff. Teachers at low-socio-economic schools struggle more to meet the learning needs of children and spend a lot more time on pastoral care than in those middle class settings (Thrupp, 1999)

At the eye of the storm: Researching schools and their communities enacting National Standards. 2013 Herbison Lecture

It is with enormous pleasure that I deliver the 24th Herbison Lecture. I thank the NZARE Council for inviting me and I acknowledge those in the audience who have previously given the Herbison. Today I'm talking about my research and academic activism around National Standards and there's a nice circularity about giving this lecture in the South Island. It was at the NZARE conference in Christchurch back in 2007 that I gave my first conference paper on the National Standards, little knowing that responding to this policy would consume me for the next six years. But the RAINS project has been a high point of my career and as they say down here in the Mainland - "good things take time”. The paper I gave back in 2007 was called "The proposed National Standards for New Zealand's primary and intermediate pupils: Any better than national testing?" (Thrupp, 2007). It's a question we now have a few answers to I think. In my lecture today I'm interested in developing the metaphor of the "eye of the storm" as a kind of refuge, a quiet place where you can get on and do some good work despite the academic and political storm that swirls around. So I offer a case study of someone trying to muddle through various academic issues and dealing with the difficult politics of doing policy-relevant research. I also want to get to the substantive findings of the final RAINS report that we are launching after my lecture today

Education’s ‘inconvenient truth’: Part two- The middle classes have too many friends in education

This is the second part of an article about how schooling, long geared to the concerns and interests of the middle classes, remains so, and is becoming increasingly so in some ways. In Part One, published in the last issue, I drew a parallel with Al Gore’s well-known film about climate change to argue for middle class advantage as education’s ‘inconvenient truth’. This is because while it is now pretty clear that education policies of recent decades have benefited the middle classes rather than the poor, there is at various points public, practitioner and policy denial of the problem. This denial reflects the self-interest of the middle classes and those who serve them. I focussed in Part One on the likely advantages provided by predominantly middle class school settings and how the middle classes have long targeted such schools for their children. This problem continues: indeed Part One showed how the New Zealand middle classes have been able to secure and in some ways improve their access to schools with a predominantly middle class mix under the zoning policies introduced in 2000

Uncovering meanings: The discourses of New Zealand secondary teachers in context

Recent official policy discourses on student achievement have stressed the importance of teachers and the impact that effective teaching can have on student life chances and on national economic performance. There is also a body of research on the way teaching and learning are affected by school context. This article discusses research designed to investigate how and to what extent the contextual features of schools impacted on the beliefs New Zealand secondary teachers and principals held about teaching and learning, the extent to which they believed their agency could influence outcomes for their students, and the aspirations and goals they pursued. We interviewed principals and teachers in six secondary schools, two each in high, mid and low socio-economic areas. The findings show considerable commonality in teachers' pedagogical discourses and that the rhetoric of formal policy discourses is pervasive and normalized in schools. All the teachers believed they could make a difference to student achievement and life chances, tried to address diversity among their student bodies, and saw success as much wider than academic achievement. Concurrently we found that the institutional habitus of each school largely determined how discourses were enacted and that relationships, confidence, student-centredness and success were interpreted differently between schools. We argue that these differences must be taken into account if school policies and interventions are to be successful

Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) Project Final Report: National Standards and the Damage Done

This is the final report of the Research Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) project, a three-year study of the enactment of the National Standards policy in six diverse primary and intermediate schools. This report provides an overview discussion of the pros and cons of the National Standards policy as experienced by staff, children and parents in the RAINS schools. It summarises the policy and methodological background to the research and the findings of the two previous RAINS reports. The report is also being accompanied by online case studies and other data files

Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) Project. First Report: Researching Schools’ Enactments of New Zealand’s National Standards Policy

This is the first report of the Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards (RAINS) project, one year into a three-year study of the introduction of National Standards into New Zealand primary and intermediate schools