Andrea Milligan

Inclusion and mastery: variations on the theme of subjection

This article undertakes a discursive analysis of the concepts of ‘inclusion’ and ‘mastery’ using memory stories generated in a collective biography workshop. The five authors analysed their memories from childhood and adolescence on two separate and competing concepts that currently inform educational practice: inclusion and mastery. These stories of mastery/non‐mastery and inclusion/exclusion often exceeded or transgressed dominant normative discourses concerning the competent performance of autonomous selves. Drawing on the work of several theorists, they authors explored these transgressions. In so doing, their analysis extends Butler’s theorising of the human subject as constituted through processes of exclusion and differentiation.

Conceptual understandings as transition points: making sense of a complex social world

Teaching for conceptual understanding has been heralded as an effective approach within many curriculum frameworks internationally in an age of rapid and constant change around what counts as ‘knowledge’. Drawing from research and experience within the social studies curriculum, this paper reflects on some of the largely unstated and unexplored aspects of adopting concept‐based approaches to curriculum. The paper explores the historical and contemporary status and development of conceptual understandings that has led to teaching (at least within New Zealand social studies) that still remains largely focused on facts and topics. The nature of learning within the social sciences highlights a society which is not static and factual, but instead, complex and diverse. This paper presents a number of reasons why teaching conceptual understandings as inert facts or ‘end points’ fails to prepare learners to understand and engage in a complex and rapidly changing social world. Instead, conceptual understandings must be understood as changeable, contextual, and contested. The paper considers how conceptual fluidity might be accommodated in teacher planning, arguing that conceptual understandings may more usefully be regarded as transition points in learning, rather than irrefutable destinations.

The Embodied Experiences of Emerging Teachers: Exploring the Potential of Collective Biographical Memory Work

Collective biographical memory work attends to embodied experiences in relation to selected concepts. This article considers the concept of “the emerging teacher” to explore the relevance of collective biographical memory work for education practitioners. Six memories, written and shared in a series of writing workshops, collectively reveal that memories of emerging as a teacher are soaked in contradictions within vulnerability, chaos and order, and that, importantly, creativity emerges from the spaces in between. In reflecting on our work, we suggest that the approach offers emerging teachers an important liminal space and commonplace for exploring contradictions and allowing creativity.

Global Citizenship Education in Australasia

Peterson, Milligan and Wood examine global citizenship education in Australasia. Focusing on Australia and New Zealand, the chapter commences with relevant comments about the political, economic and social contexts which inform notions of citizenship/global citizenship. A critical analysis of current policy and curricular initiatives is presented, and it is suggested that global citizenship education in both nations are characterised by a piecemeal and under-defined approach. Drawing on empirical research it is argued that the patchy approach means that students’ experience of GCED is inconsistent and, at times, lacking a critical edge. The chapter concludes with some possible futures for GCED in Australasia.

Collaborative Research to Support Reflexive Feminist Professional Work.

Abstract Possibilities for postmodern emergence [Somerville, M. (2007). Postmodern emergence. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20(2), 225–243] in professional practice were explored by a group of tertiary educators working together on a collaborative memory project. This allowed new possibilities for informing and extending practice beyond taken-for-granted norms circumscribed by the neoliberal university environment. Each author branched off from an initial study to work further with their constituent professional groups: early childhood educators, teachers, counsellors and educational psychologists. The collaborative method involves theoretical provocations for analysing positionings within dominant discourses that shape contemporary educational practices, providing support for reflexive insight into professional work. Findings indicated the fruitfulness of collaborative support for theoretical explorations into diverse domains of inquiry relevant for practice. There were also challenges associated with collaborative theorising in the individualistic setting of the university, including difficulties in embracing group coherence without homogenising intra-group differences. This process could be used in other settings to renew the research, discoveries and future becomings of academic or professional selves.

Enriching Ethical Judgments in History Education

Abstract This article explores the relationship between the philosophy of ethics, history education, and young people’s historical ethical judgments. In the last two decades, “ethical judgments,” which focus on making decisions about the ethics of historical actions, has been acknowledged as a second-order historical thinking concept in history education. Despite the expectation that history students should make reasoned and critically thoughtful historical ethical judgments, this aspect of history education is under-emphasized and under-theorized. In addition, the limited research available indicates that history teachers’ and students’ ethical judgments are often oversimplified because they focus on the conclusion about the rightness or wrongness of an action over the thought processes involved in arriving at a justified position. Using refugee migration as an example of historical and contemporary controversy, we consider how the philosophy of ethics could enlarge the “ethical” in ethical judgment and offer history education a rich conceptual lens through which to explore making ethical judgments in, and about, the past. We argue that the kinds of questions, concepts, and lines of argument ethicists explore could better inform students’ historical ethical judgments by illuminating the contested landscape upon which ethical judgments rest.

Active learning: social justice education and participatory action research. By Dana E. Wright

tackles the issue of how to negotiate the diverse cultural and social contexts in which artworks sit. For a book about gallery education, it is a shame that there are no colour reproductions of the artworks that Hubard refers to in the text, and as a collection of previously published articles, it seems there was a missed opportunity to draw the narrative threads together in a forward-thinking conclusion. For example, the author does not consider how this particularly labour-intensive approach to gallery education might be sustained during a period of massive cuts to museum budgets. Hubard could also look more at how issues of power, privilege and elitism influence art gallery education – the author touches on this at the end of Chapter 3 and this issue could have made an effective conclusion if extended, particularly as constructivist approaches to learning are not universally accepted across museum and gallery learning and may sometimes even be in conflict with the need for museum educators to ensure that audiences get the ‘right’ information. To conclude, in the light of the barriers that continue to exist which excludemany audiences from art museums, starting from the perspective of audiences – their needs, expectations, prior knowledge and experiences – and using this to support them in understanding artworks, is what makes this work so vital and engaging. Audience-centred practice is embedded throughout, and the author speaks with a remarkable element of self-reflexiveness. Hubard has clearly thought throughmany of the issues she addresses in her own practice, and is open about how approaches to engagement might work differently in practice. For museum educators who are starting out, and who want to develop their approaches to facilitation, this book is a valuable addition to their bookshelf, encouraging them to think differently about their own practice and to develop a style of communication that not only works for them but which rightly puts audiences at the heart of what they do.