Cheryl Rae Sim

Imagining a profession: a beginning teacher's story of isolation

Policy documents informing the profession of teaching in Australia and elsewhere explicitly recommend nurturing those new to the profession working collaboratively with colleagues. Key to the development and growth of beginning teachers is the informal exchange of ideas and knowledge between colleagues – essentially through the functioning of a community of practice. In practice there are beginning teachers who do not experience productive professional collaborations. In this article we use positioning theory and discourse analysis as a methodological “hearing aid” to listen to the story of a beginning teacher, a global English speaker, as she tells of her personal experiences of being excluded by her colleagues as she begins teaching at her first school. Speakers of global English are defined, for this research, as those for whom English is not their first language but may be one of many spoken languages. This story reflects similar accounts gathered during a larger research study conducted by the authors that focused on the early career experiences of global English speaking teachers. We conclude with suggestions for ways forward through awareness and practical reforms.

A dialogic about using Facebook status updates for education research: a PhD student's journey

Facebook status updates provided the data for a study about the transition learning experiences of 1st-year university students. Strict ethical guidelines were proposed by the PhD researcher from the outset of the study. Anonymity was considered important for the approved ethical clearance for both the university and the participants. Phenomenography was adopted and adapted for the study because it both conceptually and methodologically managed anonymity as well as questions of authenticity. An ethical dilemma arose during the research because the archival parameters were expanded by the researcher to allow the collection of data from the participants’ network. Questions of consent in an online space and how to report findings, which included data from people unaware of their involvement in the research, needed to be considered.

The Translation of Transitions Policies into School Enactment

This chapter presents a synthesis of the themes and issues emerging from the contributions across this section, each of which focused on the transition to post-school life for young people in Queensland, Australia. In particular, it applies a curriculum enactment perspective to this synthesis. The enactment of education policy is held to involve ‘interpretation because implementers must figure out what a policy means and whether and how it applies to their school to decide whether and how to ignore, adapt, or adopt policy locally’ (Spillane J, Diamond J, Burch P, Hallett T, Loyiso L, Zoltners J, Educ Policy 16(5):733, 2002). As a consequence, beyond the policy prescriptions provided earlier in this book, here the consideration turns to issues of enactment and an appraisal of nexus between intentions and enactments. In doing so, the chapter is presented in three parts. It commences by revisiting the policies relating to post-school transitions in Queensland and Australia and locating policy prescriptions in turn within the international context. The second part draws on the case study evidence to identify the characteristics and consequences of the curriculum decision-making associated with the implementation of transition policies, as discussed in the case studies. This section draws out similarities and differences amongst the various approaches to managing transitions across the three case study schools. In the third section, conclusions are identified from the study’s findings for informing productive transition policy and enactment more widely. In all, it is concluded that factors extending from global sentiment, federal schooling funding priorities, state government policies and local preference and requirements shaped what is done in three Queensland schools to facilitate student’s post certification transitions from school to further learning or work.

Excluded from the Game: A Case Study of Transitions for non-Tertiary-Bound Students in a Queensland Private School

This chapter presents a case study of post-school transition arrangements as revealed through interviews with teachers, parents and students at Southside College, a coeducational private school in Brisbane, southeast Queensland. This chapter begins by outlining the policy context relating to the management of transitions for young people in Queensland. It then places the case study in context by reviewing the role played by selective schooling in helping middle-class families secure competitive advantage in the academic curriculum in Australia and hence, desirable transition pathways leading to university. This chapter then draws on interview data from administrators, teachers and students to overview arrangements implemented at Southside to support students’ transitions. It shows how the range of transition options available to students was influenced by the views of key administrators about what constituted ‘appropriate’ transition pathways for students at the school. This chapter uses membership categorisation analysis to demonstrate how the privileging of traditional academic pathways over vocational education and training was articulated as part of the school’s moral order by administrators who associated those pathways with distinct categories of students undertaking them. This chapter concludes that the school’s focus on traditional pathways supported successful transitions for a majority of its students; however, these arrangements worked as a constraint for a number of non-tertiary-bound students attempting to engage their preferred transition pathway. For these young people, the experience was one of being ‘stuck in school’ but excluded from the advantages and social protection that selective schooling is thought to afford.