Anna Clark

Grounding: Sharing Information in Social Interaction

This chapter spotlights communication accommodation theory (CAT: see Giles, Coupland & Coupland, 1991) -- a longstanding framework (Gallois, Ogay & Giles, 2005: Giles, 1973) that has been heralded as one of the most prominent in the social psychology of language (Tracy & Haspel, 2004) and one that has captured cross-disciplinary imaginations (Coupland & Jaworski, 1997). The theory has had a hsitory of application to an array of organizational contexts (e.g. Bourhis, 1991) and, herein, we add another exciting possibility, namely its relevance for a more incisive appreciation of understanding police-civilian relations. After a brief discussion about what images people hold of police officers, we introduce CAT with particular attention to its face and identity concerns, whilst we distil the theoretical essence of CAT down to four key principles, underscoring its potential for developing not only an innovative reserach agenda for the future, but also for suggesting new theoretical propositions to test in this applied domain.anguage is the currency of most human social processes. We use words toconvey our emotions and thoughts, to tell stories, and to understand theworld. It is somewhat odd, then, that so few investigations in the socialsciences actually focus on natural language use among people in the real world.There are many legitimate reasons for not studying what people say or write.Historically, the analysis of text was slow, complex, and costly. The purpose of thischapter is to suggest that social scientists in general and social psychologists inparticular should reconsider the value of language studies. With recent advancesin computer text analysis methods, we are now able to explore basic social processesin new and rich ways that could not have been done even a decade ago.When language has been studied at all within social psychology, it has usuallyrelied on fairly rigorous experimental methods using an assortment of standardizedhuman coding procedures. These works are helping researchers to understandsocial attribution (Fiedler & Semin, 1992), intercultural communication (Hajek G Winter & McClelland, 1978)Over the last decade, a small group of researchers have adopted a somewhatdifferent strategy. Their goal has been to understand how the words people use intheir daily interactions reflect who they are and what they are doing. As detailedbelow, this strategy has also been method-driven. With the development ofincreasingly versatile computer programs and the availability of natural languageIn K. Fiedler (Ed.)(2007). Social Communication (pp. 343-359). New York: Psychology Press.

Teaching the nation’s story: comparing public debates and classroom perspectives on history education in Australia and Canada

Teaching national history in school generates significant public anxiety and political debate—as the various ‘history wars’ around the world reveal. For many school students, however, studying their nation’s past is dull and repetitive. Such lack of interest has been confirmed by surveys and research reports that reveal alarmingly low levels of national historical knowledge among young people, and there is growing popular concern that their ignorance of the past endangers the nation’s future. Yet preoccupation with students’ apparent national illiteracy tends to overlook how they connect with history in the first place. This paper draws on findings from a comparative Australian and Canadian research project that interviewed students and teachers about the ways they learned and taught history. It argues that any return to ‘the facts’ at the expense of critical historical engagement in class could turn students away from the subject.

History in black and white: A critical analysis of the black armband debate

Black armband history came to define a growing reappraisal of Australias past, demonstrated through public remembrances like Sorry Day. It was a label of derision, a blanket term designed to dismiss increasingly critical approaches to Australian history as unnecessarily bleak and overly emotional. This black armband tag was a strategic conservative swipe at histories that revealed Australias past as racist and violent. Its application served to present critical history as unbalanced, a misrepresentation of our national heritage. Such a view held that, in spite of its historical blemishes, to deny Australia its rightful national story was at best recklessly naïve, at worst unAustralian. Critical Australian histories had long provoked significant conservative disapproval. In 1984, Geoffrey Blaineys Warrnambool speech sparked a national controversy and debate. Directed at Australian immigration policy, he questioned whether multiculturalism, and in particular Asian immigration, was in the national interest. As the debate wore on, however, it became clear that his comments were part of a wider appraisal of contemporary Australian society, identity and history:

Whose history? Teaching Australia's contested past

Anna Clark is a doctoral student in the History Department, University of Melbourne, VIC 3010, Australia; e-mail: a.clark2@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au. This op-ed essay is based on her thesis, ‘The politics and pedagogy of history education’, which looks at debates about teaching Australian history in schools. With Stuart Macintyre, she has recently co-authored The History Wars (Carlton, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 2003). JCS invites comments on this paper for publication on the journal’s web site. Address comments to Ian Westbury, General editor of JCS, at westbury@uiuc.edu. All such comments on this paper, and on other papers in the journal, can be accessed at http:/ /www.ed.uiuc.edu/jcs/ OP-ED

History Teaching, Historiography, and the Politics of Pedagogy in Australia

Abstract This article examines debates over teaching Australian history in schools and notes a pervasive anxiety about what ‘our children’ should know. The article sketches some of these debates, and while noting the politics of history teaching both in Australia and abroad, argues that its heavily politicized discourse has been further intensified by an increasingly pedagogical invocation. As a sense of investment and ownership in the teaching of Australian history in school becomes more widespread, the contest over the past, paradoxically, has focused increasingly upon the image of the child as a generic symbol of the future.

Ordinary People's History

The history wars are far from over: the question is, do they resonate beyond the limited public sphere in which they play out? What do Australians think of their history in light of these politicised historical debates? By way of answer, this article examines the enduring public contest over the past and then investigates more elusive, but no less significant, everyday conversations about Australian history around the country. By proposing a method of ‘oral historiography’ to gauge contemporary historical understandings in Australia, it brings a critical new perspective to these ongoing debates. It offers ordinary people a chance to contribute to national discussions about Australian history and it challenges some of the more simplistic and troubling assumptions of the history wars. This article has been peer-reviewed.

Testing the Boundaries: Reflections on Transnationalism in Australian History

Transnational historical approaches have become prominent in recent years, generating significant scholarship in Australia and beyond. Increasingly, however, this academic interest in global methodologies sits uneasily alongside much historical discourse and scholarship, where concepts of fluidity and movement have been increasingly critiqued by historians internationally, and where the “Australian story” remains central to discussions in national media, politics, education and among the public itself (as consumers of these historical narratives). This chapter considers the impact of the turn towards transnationalism on Australian history. It examines how the transnational lens has complicated and challenged conventional understandings of the national narrative, and the limits of such international perspectives in national historiographical debate.

Family History and Transnational Historical Consciousness

Many western nations seem to be living a paradox of historical consciousness, as John Tosh describes it: “a society which is immersed in the past yet detached from its history”. While historical interest is booming at a community level, there’s a powerful public anxiety that “ordinary people” don’t know enough about the past, that their national futures are being jeopardized by a grave historical ignorance that begins in school and extends into their lives as citizens. Drawing on recent research projects by the authors, the authors read this international paradox—of perceived historical disinterest amidst booming intimate histories—and explore what might be termed a transnational “vernacular moment”. In doing so, they ponder what historical approaches (national, transnational, comparative) can be used to understand this phenomenon.

Introduction: Epistemology of Rival Histories

Elmersjo, Clark, and Vinterek establish the framework of the book in this introductory chapter. They introduce the different approaches to teaching history introduced by Peter Seixas in 2000: the best story approach enhancing collective memory, the disciplinary approach, and the postmodern approach. By linking these approaches to different genre positions taken by historians and described by Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow (the reconstructionist, constructionist, and deconstructionist positions), Elmersjo, Clark, and Vinterek frame the book’s general theme of teaching rival histories in an epistemological question regarding what history is and what it can be.

International perspectives on teaching rival histories : pedagogical responses to contested narratives and the history wars

Contested narratives and disputed histories have long been an important issue in history teaching all over the world, and has been described as history or culture wars. In this book, authors fr ...