Catherine Hartung

Global citizenship incorporated: competing responsibilities in the education of global citizens

ABSTRACT Interest in the education of young people to be ‘responsible global citizens’ has grown exponentially since the turn of the century, led by increasingly diverse networks of sectors, including government, community, business and philanthropy. These networks now have a significant influence on education policy and practice, indicative of wider changes in governance and processes of globalisation. Yet little of the academic literature on global citizenship education specifically examines the impact of these networks on the production of knowledge about young global citizens. This paper addresses this gap by analysing the discourses of global citizenship that underpin recent work by a youth organisation that works closely with a network of sectors in Australia. The paper finds that a particular kind of entrepreneurial global citizen is favoured, one that is simultaneously responsible for themselves, for the rights of others and for ensuring Australias future economic prosperity.

Australian mothers’ notions of risk and uncertainty in relation to their pre-teen children

In this article we examine the ways discourses of risk manifested and played out within and across two groups of Australian mothers living in two large urban centres in Australia: the first comprised of mothers who had a pre-teen child diagnosed with an eating disorder (n = 13); the second of mothers who had a pre-teen child without the symptoms or diagnosis of an eating disorder (n = 13). In 2011 and 2012, we conducted in-depth interviews with the mothers in their homes on their ideas about health and their relationships with their children. An analysis of the data collected from these interviews indicated that having a pre-teen child diagnosed with an eating disorder had a decisive impact on how the mothers constituted and responded to risk. For mothers, who had a pre-teen child with an eating disorder, risk was intensified by bio-medical discourses. The particular intensifications of risk limited the ways in which mothers could act and often threatened to undermine their abilities as competent carers. By contrast, the mothers who did not have a pre-teen child with an eating disorder spoke about risk less directly, and with less sense of immediacy. Where these mothers acknowledged risk discourses particularly in regard to health, they were in a stronger position to negotiate them. Our analysis indicates that the ways in which mothers responded to risk is contingent on circumstances and contexts. Mothers’ responses to risk were related to the calculability of the risk and their perceived capacity to manage it.

Beyond the academic precariat: a collective biography of poetic subjectivities in the neoliberal university

The ‘neoliberal turn’ in the higher education sector has received significant intellectual scrutiny in recent times. This scrutiny, led by many established academics working within the sector, has highlighted the negative repercussions for teaching and research staff, often referred to as the ‘academic precariat’ due to their tenuous employment prospects within an increasingly market-driven system. This critique of the modern university can also inadvertently position academics as either resisting or complying with neoliberal governance. This does not adequately account for the nuanced and poetic ways in which professional, personal and gendered subjectivities are formulated, intertwined and negotiated. In this paper we draw on the six overlapping yet distinct narratives of the six female authors, all early-career academics from Australia. We capture and analyse these narratives through collective biography, a qualitative methodology underpinned by the work of Davies and Gannon and others, that helps us to move beyond the ‘good vs. bad’, ‘resistance vs. compliance’ debates about academic life. We identify aspects of our lived subjectivities that offer rupture through poetic and hopeful ways of understanding how academics construct and negotiate their lives.

The Shine and Shadow of Global Citizenship: Insights from Teacher Education in Remote Indigenous Communities in Australia

Discourses of global citizenship are increasingly embedded in the education policies of higher education institutions in Australia. Programmes that involve students working in culturally diverse communities are seen as pivotal to producing graduates who are ethical and productive global citizens. In this chapter, we focus on a global experience programme based at a metropolitan university in Australia where pre-service teachers (PSTs) undertake placements in remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory. We draw on data from interviews with PSTs that centred on their motivations for participating in the programme and their subsequent reflections. Utilizing postcolonial scholarship to examine this data, we highlight the “shine” and “shadow” of global citizenship education as PSTs make meaning of their experiences and position themselves as becoming-teachers.

Interrogating the promise of a whole school approach to intercultural education: an Australian Investigation

Intercultural education (ICE) is a priority for schools and schooling systems worldwide. While extensive policy and academic literature exists that describes how ICE should be done in schools, relatively little has been published about the pragmatics of implementing and enacting ICE, despite evidence that principals, teachers and schools feel ill equipped to teach and engage in ICE. This article investigates how schools implementing ICE are confronted with distinctive challenges. Engaging methodological tools of social constructivism (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005) and an analytical lens supported by social cultural theories of identity and representation (Hall, 1997; Gee, 2004), we argue that the everyday experiences and practices of teachers need be explored, but also interrogated and understood otherwise (Lather, 1991). We draw on qualitative data from a large-scale study conducted in schools in Victoria, Australia. We present three vignettes that elucidate how ICE was enacted at the principal, curriculum and teacher levels. Each vignette is based upon a key challenge confronted by schools and illustrates the processes different schools used to tackle these issues and to embed ICE into the daily schooling practice.

The Young Citizen in New Times

This chapter traces the emergence of children and young people’s participation as a field within larger processes of New Times, namely globalisation, individualisation and democratisation. The chapter argues that the success of campaigns for children and young people’s participation can be attributed to this context; a context receptive to social justice, democratically-inspired language, and the political desire to recognise children and young people as politically active and capable of self-government. The chapter outlines a provocative case for the need to move beyond the ‘honeymoon period’ of children and young people’s participation.

A Sense of Autonomy: Rethinking Children and Young People’s ‘Agency’

This chapter shifts the focus from the broad analyses of the previous three chapters to a more detailed interrogation of the word ‘agency’ as it is popularly understood within the field of children and young people’s participation. The chapter argues that the word is often used to emphasise children and young people’s competence and empowerment while downplaying the role of context. In examining this popular and often unquestioned use of agency, the chapter draws on five international examples of situations where popular notions of children and young people’s agency were not useful. More specifically, the chapter draws on examples of children and young people experiencing trauma in the Philippines, seeking refugee status in Canada, living in violent climates in Latin America, exhibiting violent behaviours in Bangladesh, and negotiating physical and intellectual disabilities in the United Kingdom.

The UN, the NGO, the State, and the Academy: Key Sites Governing Children and Young People’s Participation

This chapter identifies and interrogates the work of four key institutions that operate ‘behind the scenes’ to promote and reproduce popular notions of children and young people’s participation. More specifically, the chapter examines how the United Nations, government and non-governmental organisations, and the academy both enable and exclude particular discourses about children and young people. The chapter argues that these institutions can inadvertently support neoliberal agendas of managerialism and accountability that downplay the contextual complexities of children and young people’s participation.

Selfies for/of Nepal: Acts of Global Citizenship and Bearing Witness

This chapter examines two very different ways that selfies were used to bear witness to the earthquake that devastated Nepal in 2015: selfies taken by locals ‘on the ground’ and selfies taken by those overseas wanting to show solidarity with the Nepalese. The chapter argues that these selfies and their differing public receptions function as acts of citizenship, highlighting the underlying discourses of nationalism and global citizenship that dictate what is deemed a morally appropriate response to such devastation. Ultimately, the chapter contends that the selfies that are intended to promote global solidarity and connectedness may inadvertently reinforce nationalistic borders and inequalities, while the globally controversial selfies taken by locals to bear witness to the devastation challenge what is institutionally recognised as ‘legitimate’ journalism.

Selective Hearing: Rethinking Children and Young People’s ‘Voice’

This chapter examines how the notion of children and young people’s ‘voice’ is reiterated in the field of children and young people’s participation. The chapter argues that the word is often used to emphasise children and young people’s voice as pure , fixed and conveniently in line with what is ‘right’ for society. In examining these assumptions, the chapter draws on five examples of situations where children and young people’s voices did not comply with these assumptions or were more ambiguous. More specifically, the chapter draws on examples of children and young people’s voices ‘we don’t want to hear’ in Australia, children and young people’s voices in legal proceedings in Europe, children and young people with special communication needs in England, children and young people’s silences in New Zealand, and children and young people’s voice, and resistances to voice, in schools in the United States.