Barry Down

‘Coming to a place near you?’ The politics and possibilities of a critical pedagogy of place-based education

It may seem something of a paradox that in a globalised age where notions of interdependence, interconnectedness and common destinies abound, the ‘local’, with its diversity of cultures, languages, histories and geographies, continues to exercise a powerful grip on the human imagination. The ties that bind us have global connections but are anchored in a strong sense of locality. This paper explores the theoretical foundations of place-based education (PBE) and considers the merits and limitations of current approaches with particular reference to Australian studies. The authors argue that there is a place for PBE in schools but contend that it must be informed by a far more critical reading of the notions of ‘place’, ‘identity’ and ‘community’. The implications of pursuing a critical pedagogy of place-based education are discussed with reference to curriculum, pedagogy and teacher education.

Promoting early career teacher resilience: A framework for understanding and acting

In this paper, we undertake a brief review of the ‘conventional’ research into the problems of early career teachers to create a juxtaposed position from which to launch an alternative approach based on resilience theory. We outline four reasons why a new contextualised, social theory of resilience has the potential to open up the field of research into the professional lives of teachers and to produce new insights into the social, cultural and political dynamics at work within and beyond schools. We then move from these theoretical considerations to explain how we used them in a recent Australian research project that examined the experiences of 60 graduate teachers during their first year of teaching. This work led to the development of a Framework of Conditions Supporting Early Career Teacher Resilience which we outline, promote and advocate as the basis for action to better sustain our graduate teachers in their first few years of teaching. Finally, we reflect on the value of our work so far and outline our practical plans to ‘mobilise’ this knowledge in ways that will make it available to a variety of audiences concerned with the welfare of this group of teachers.

Schooling, Productivity and the Enterprising Self: Beyond Market Values.

This paper argues that under the influence of neoliberalism the role of schooling has been narrowly redefined as helping students to gain the knowledge and skills to ‘get a job’. Drawing on the recent policy pronouncements of the new Rudd Labor Government in Australia, the paper examines how the advocates of human capital theory have effectively articulated the linkage between productivity, education and global competitiveness. The paper problematizes the key assumptions informing these policy discourses, namely, greater emphasis on vocational education and training and the creation of an enterprise culture, will lead to more high tech, high skilled and well paid jobs. The paper concludes by advocating an alternative approach to schooling based on the values of ‘human sensibility’ and social justice to help guide educational conversations beyond market values.

Making Sense of Performance Management: official rhetoric and teachers’ reality

Abstract Performance management is one aspect of major reforms which have transformed the public sector workforce in Australia and other Western countries since the 1980s. Embedded in the discourse of managerialism, performance management represents an attempt by the state to make workers—in this case teachers—more efficient, more effective and more accountable. In this paper we want to explore and compare a number of perspectives on performance management. Firstly, we consider several evaluation studies which have been undertaken in various contexts over recent years. These studies tend to take for granted the assumptions behind performance management and to judge its effectiveness within the framework of managerial thinking itself. Secondly, we review the critical literature which locates performance management in a broader social and political context and considers the interests it might serve. Finally, we present the perspectives of a focus group of teachers who are currently ‘being performance manage...

Early Career Teachers: Stories of Resilience

This book addresses one of the most persistent issues confronting governments, educations systems and schools today: the attraction, preparation, and retention of early career teachers. It draws on the stories of sixty graduate teachers from Australia to identify the key barriers, interferences and obstacles to teacher resilience and what might be done about it. Based on these stories, five interrelated themes - policies and practices, school culture, teacher identity, teachers’ work, and relationships – provide a framework for dialogue around what kinds of conditions need to be created and sustained in order to promote early career teacher resilience. The book provides a set of resources – stories, discussion, comments, reflective questions and insights from the literature – to promote conversations among stakeholders rather than providing yet another ‘how to do’ list for improving the daily lives of early career teachers. Teaching is a complex, fragile and uncertain profession. It operates in an environment of unprecedented educational reforms designed to control, manage and manipulate pedagogical judgements. Teacher resilience must take account of both the context and circumstances of individual schools (especially those in economically disadvantaged communities) and the diversity of backgrounds and talents of early career teachers themselves. The book acknowledges that the substantial level of change required– cultural, structural, pedagogical and relational – to improve early career teacher resilience demands a great deal of cooperation and support from governments, education systems, schools, universities and communities: teachers cannot do it alone. This book is written to generate conversations amongst early career teachers, teacher colleagues, school leaders, education administrators, academics and community leaders about the kinds of pedagogical and relational conditions required to promote early career teacher resilience and wellbeing.

Critically re-conceptualising early career teacher resilience

In this paper, we describe how and why we adopted a socially critical orientation to early career teacher resilience. In re-conceptualising early career teacher resilience, we expose the normative components of resilience by revealing the implicit values, beliefs and assumptions that underpin most traditional conceptions of resilience. We argue against the hyper-individualisation of the concept because it leads to a diminution of the influence of situational and structural forces on early career teachers’ experiences, and shifts primary responsibility for early career teacher well-being onto the individual. We lay the groundwork for a critical perspective on teacher resilience capable of illuminating the ‘problems’ of early career teachers within a broader social, cultural and political context. Our analysis is designed to promote further debate about new ways of seeing early career teacher resilience with the aim of creating and sustaining a spirit of optimism and human agency, as well as a sense of health and well-being among early career teachers.

Promoting Early Career Teacher Resilience : A socio-cultural and critical guide to action

In Promoting Early Career Teacher Resilience the stories of 60 graduate teachers are documented as they grapple with some of the most persistent and protracted personal and professional struggles facing teachers today. Narratives emerge detailing feelings of frustration, disillusionment and even outrage as they struggle with the complexity, intensity and immediacy of life in schools. Other stories also surface to show exhilarating experiences, documenting the wonder, joy and excitement of working with young people for the first time. This book makes sense of these experiences in ways that can assist education systems, schools, and faculties of teacher education, as well as early career teachers themselves to develop more powerful forms of critical teacher resilience. Rejecting psychological explanations of teacher resilience, it endorses an alternative socio-cultural and critical approach to understanding teacher resilience. The book crosses physical borders and represents experiences of teachers in similar circumstances across the globe, providing researchers and teachers with real-life examples of resilience promoting policies and practices. This book is not written as an account of the failures of an education system, but rather as a provocation to help generate ideas, policies and practices capable of illuminating the experiences of early career teachers in more critical and socially just ways at an international and national level.

FROM PATRIOTISM TO CRITICAL DEMOCRACY: SHIFTING DISCOURSES OF CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN SOCIAL STUDIES

The state of citizenship education in Australia continues to attract media attention as evidenced by two recent newspaper headlines, Students take apathetic view of democracy and Teach young about democracy. These headlines were reporting on the latest findings of the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) on school students understanding of democracy. As a part of a 28‐nation civics survey, the ACER found half of Australian students had no grasp of democracy (ranking them behind countries like Poland, Cyprus and the Slovak Republic); lacked clarity about the Constitution, elections, voting systems or the role of groups like trade unions; were unwilling to engage in politics; and believed politics was relatively unimportant

Arts practice and disconnected youth in Australia: Impact and domains of change

Background: This paper describes research conducted with Big hART, Australias most awarded participatory arts company. It considers three projects, LUCKY, GOLD and NGAPARTJI NGAPARTJI across separate sites in Tasmania, Western NSW and Northern Territory, respectively, in order to understand project impact from the perspective of project participants, Arts workers, community members and funders. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 29 respondents. The data were coded thematically and analysed using the constant comparative method of qualitative data analysis. Results: Seven broad domains of change were identified: psychosocial health; community; agency and behavioural change; the Art; economic effect; learning and identity. Conclusions: Experiences of participatory arts are interrelated in an ecology of practice that is iterative, relational, developmental, temporal and contextually bound. This means that questions of impact are contingent, and there is no one path that participants travel or single measure that can adequately capture the richness and diversity of experience. Consequently, it is the productive tensions between the domains of change that are important and the way they are animated through Arts practice that provides sign posts towards the impact of Big hART projects.

‘Getting a job’: vocationalism, identity formation, and critical ethnographic inquiry

This article examines the highly disputed policy nexus around what on the surface appears to be the helpful field of vocational education and training. Despite the promises of vocational education and training to deliver individual labour market success and global competitiveness, the reality is that it serves to residualise unacceptably large numbers of young people, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, by reinforcing the myth that it is acceptable to have the bifurcation in which some young people work with their hands and not their minds. Furthermore, vocational education and training by itself cannot resolve the fundamental causes of poverty, unemployment, and economic inequality. This article draws on Australian research to describe the insights from a critical ethnographic inquiry in which young people themselves are key informants in making sense of ‘getting a job’; how they regard the labour market; the kind of work they find desirable/undesirable; the spaces in which they can see themselves forging an identity as future citizens/workers – and how answers to these questions frame and shape viable, sustainable, and rewarding futures for all young people, not just the privileged few.