Cath Laws

The ambivalent practices of reflexivity

Reflexivity involves turning one’s reflexive gaze on discourse—turning language back on itself to see the work it does in constituting the world. The subject/researcher sees simultaneously the object of her or his gaze and the means by which the object (which may include oneself as subject) is being constituted. The consciousness of self that reflexive writing sometimes entails may be seen to slip inadvertently into constituting the very (real) self that seems to contradict a focus on the constitutive power of discourse. This article explores this site of slippage and of ambivalence. In a collective biography on the topic of reflexivity, the authors tell and write stories about reflexivity and in a doubled reflexive arc, examine themselves at work during the workshop. Examining their own memories and reflexive practices, they explore this place of slippage and provide theoretical and practical insight into “what is going on” in reflexive research and writing.

Becoming schoolgirls: the ambivalent project of subjectification

In this article, the authors examine the concept and practices of subjectification; that is, the processes through which we are subjected, and actively take up as our own the terms of our subjection. They use Judith Butlers theorising of subjection both as a starting point for working with their own memories of being subjected in school settings, and as the theoretical basis of their analysis of subjectification. Their method of working, which they refer to as collective biography, is derived from Haug et al. s methods developed in Female Sexualization . Their memories focus on aspects of the achievement of the individual, appropriate(d) schoolgirl subject who simultaneously constitutes herself and is constituted through discourse. They analyse the illusion of autonomy through which modern subjects are made possible, and the inevitable ambivalence that is experienced as schoolgirls take themselves up appropriately within the possibilities made available to them. Through re-membering their own pasts, and the embodied and emotional detail through which we became (and go on becoming) subjects, they open up for inspection the contradictory ground of the humanist subject, and in particular the feminine humanist subject, as it is achieved in educational settings.

Bullies, bullying and power in the contexts of schooling

In this paper the four authors explore the experience of school bullying, drawing on stories of bullying generated in a collective biography workshop and on fictional accounts of bullying. They counter the current trend of reading bullying as individual or family pathology with a post‐structuralist analysis of subjectification and power.

Bullying as Intra-active Process in Neoliberal Universities

The reformed neoliberal universities, with their micromanagement of ever-increasing productivity, competitiveness, and individualization, have recently been described as unhealthy institutions, creating conditions that incite incivility, workplace bullying, and other forms of employee abuse. In this article, the authors employ collective biography as a form of “diffractive methodology” in order to provide new, theoretically driven insights into workplace bullying in neoliberal universities. Drawing on the concepts of intra-activity and performativity, the authors examine bullying in universities as an intra-active process that informs and is informed by the desire of an individual to be recognized and to perform as a viable academic subject—one who is professional, flexible, and accountable within a neoliberal environment.

Neo-Liberal Subjectivities and the Limits of Social Change in University-Community Partnerships.

In this paper the authors analyse a university–school partnership that went awry. It was designed to develop a new set of philosophical principles to inform work with violent student behaviour in schools. The project brought together a team of researchers from the university and school sector with a strong record of examining and improving the management of behaviour in classrooms. The authors sought volunteer school‐based educators to work with them as co‐researchers. Despite the teams strong school‐based research background, the mutual interest in developing a new approach to work with violence, and the strong collaborative base, they found themselves, as the initiating research team, unable to progress in the ways they had anticipated. This paper analyses the dynamics at work in that lack of progress. The analysis is put forward with the hope of enlivening discussion about what makes for successful collaborative projects between schools and universities.

Poststructuralist writing at work

In this paper the author focuses on the processes of writing involved in using poststructuralist theory to analyse her work at a school for students categorized as ‘emotionally/behaviourally disordered’. While the work at the school is the crucial material for this exploration, the author turns her gaze on the detail of writing about this work beginning with the diary/notes she wrote on the detail of their daily lives at the school. She examines how, in the process of this writing, she begins to unfold the loops of reflexivity between the reading, the doing, the thinking, and the writing of a particular piece of poststructuralist work. She explores how binaries such as theory/practice, thought/word, and public/private were played out in writing about her work and makes more visible the ways writing and publishing worked to constitute both herself and the writing in powerful ways. She also explores the dangers and possibilities of working and writing differently at the margins and the ways formal academic writing came to constitute her differently—looping from one who was seen as an expert in the dominant discourses to one who was doing quirky work and back to one who was an expert.

Collaborative Partnership: Developing Pre-service Teachers as Inclusive Practitioners to Support Students with Disabilities

Abstract Since the introduction of anti-discrimination legislation including Australian Disability Discrimination Act, 1992 and the Disability Standards of Education, 2005, there is an increasing demand on all schools to cater effectively for more students with disabilities within an inclusive school community context. This investigation explored a proactive partnership model designed to equip pre-service teachers with deeper role understandings in teaching students with disabilities. This collaborative model involved sustained professional experiences in schools on four mornings each week over 38 weeks, offered in conjunction with their final-year teacher education studies in Diversity and Inclusive Education. A unique emphasis of this qualitative study was a focus on identifying conducive real-life experiences and ideal teacher qualities for undertaking challenging inclusive practitioner roles. Findings highlighted the perspectives of school leaders, special education mentors and pre-service teachers in improving inclusive learning outcomes for all students while developing an effective collaborative partnership model for teacher education.

Re-thinking ‘Pointiness’: Special Education Interrupted

In this chapter, I look at some of the ways in which psy-discourses and processes inform teachers and students’ understanding of persons, events, situations, and practices in an attempt to make the discursive practices of the special school more visible. The special school I work in is for those students who are read as unmanageable and too violent to be maintained in mainstream/regular schooling. I discuss how the works of Foucault and other poststructuralists, and the use of irony and humour, helped me to move towards counteracting dominant discourses and to bring about change.