Christina Gowlett

Differentiated learning: from policy to classroom

This paper explores the impact of a Teaching and Learning Audit of all government schools in Queensland, Australia. This audit has a concern with the extent to which schools ‘differentiate classroom learning’. We note that in England, since September 2012, one of the standards that teachers have been expected to demonstrate is an ability to ‘differentiate appropriately’, and thus the lessons of how this particular audit was implemented in Queensland have relevance outside of Australia. The paper draws on data collected from Red Point High School, one of the State’s 1257 schools and education centres audited in 2010. We suggest that this requirement to differentiate classroom learning was implemented without appropriate clarity or support, and that it increased teacher surveillance in this school. However, we also argue that some spaces were opened up by this audit, and its concern with differentiation, to articulate a social justice agenda within the school. We conclude that differentiation is a complex concept which is not easy to shift from a policy to a classroom context, and requires more careful explication at policy level and more support for teachers to enact.

The cultural politics of queer theory in education research

This special issue was born from the idea that there are certain habits of thought and boundaries drawn around the use and perceived place of queer theory in education research. Our intention in this special issue is to disrupt these habits of thinking by opening up dialogue about (1) the objects and subjects of queer research; (2) the forms of politics incited by the use of queer theory in education; and (3), the methodological approaches used by scholars when queer(y)ing/queering. As editors, we invited contributions from those who found queer theory problematic, and/or past its use-by date, as well as from those who continue to see a productive place for queer research in education, however that may be defined. The first paper in this issue is an interview we conducted with Raewyn Connell, a recipient of the American Sociological Association’s award for her distinguished contribution to the study of sex and gender. She is also on record as being a critic of queer politics and theory. For instance, in the article entitled Kartini’s Children (2010), she writes:

Queer(y)ing and recrafting agency: moving away from a model of coercion versus escape

This paper applies a Butlerian-inspired ‘queer(y)ing’ methodology to disrupt the utility of agency being framed within the binary of escape and coercion. In particular, it uses Butlers concept of performative resignification to analyse how Simon, a 16-year-old white male student, maneouvres his way through the social conventions of senior subject selection at his secondary school which is located in an outer-metropolitan suburb of Queensland in Australia. Queer theory is often caught up in a habit of thinking that positions it predominantly within the field of gender and sexualities research, thus limiting and constraining what it can do and where it can be used. By using a queer(y)ing methodology to explore senior schooling subject selection and participation, this paper also disrupts and expands the parameters of association with queer theory.

Queer(y)ing New Schooling Accountabilities through "My School": Using Butlerian Tools to Think Differently about Policy Performativity.

Abstract This article takes the role of provocateur to ‘queer(y)’ the rules of intelligibility surrounding new schooling accountabilities. Butler’s work is seldom used outside the arena of gender and sexualities research. A ‘queer(y)ing’ methodology is subsequently applied in a context very different to where it is frequently associated. Empirical data from a case study secondary school in Australia are used to contextualise the use of queer theory in thinking differently about new schooling accountabilities and how they can unfold in ways that are unforeseen and unexpected. By applying Butlerian theory in a manner very different to what is commonly expected, the author also destabilises the use of queer theory as well.

Using Butler to understand the multiplicity and variability of policy reception

Understanding how teachers make sense of education policy is important. We argue that an exploration of teacher reactions to policy requires an engagement with theory focused on the formation of ‘the subject’ since this form of theorisation addresses the creation of a seemingly coherent identity and attitude while acknowledging variation across different places and people. In this paper, we propose the utility of Butlerian ideas because of the focus on subjectivity that her work entails and the account she gives for social norms regulating people’s actions and attitudes. We use Butler’s stance on how ‘cultural intelligibility’ is formed to account for the complex, messy and sometimes contradictory ‘take up’ of curriculum policy by 10 teachers at a secondary school case study in Queensland, Australia. We use the phrase ‘policy reception’ to signify a particular theoretical line of thought we are forming with our application of Butlerian theory to the analysis of teacher attitudes toward curriculum policy, and to distinguish it from ‘policy interpretation’, ‘policy translation’ and ‘policy enactment’.

Injurious assumptions: Butler, subjectification and gen(d)erational poverty

Using Judith Butlers theory of performative subjection, this paper examines the injurious attitudes of three staff members at an outer-metropolitan high school who are heavily involved in the enactment and monitoring of Senior Education and Training (SET) Plan interviews for the Queensland Certificate of Education. It is argued that teachers at the case study school have inscripted students to the category of ‘underprivileged’, which in this context is labelled as ‘generational poverty’. Membership to this category has, in my view, positioned students as ‘backward’ and behind in schooling capability, thus placing them on a storyline trajectory associated with low paid labour market participation, reliance on government welfare and/or unemployment. I draw on teacher comments referring to students as possessing ‘deficit skills’ to form this argument. In order to help ‘break’ this cycle of poverty, staff involved in the SET Plan interviews have subsequently positioned themselves as ‘helpers’ by attempting to give curriculum pathway advice which they see as ‘appropriate’ for the students at the school. This advice and help with subject selection and curriculum pathway planning, while seemingly well intentioned, reinscribes gendered stereotypes and thus aids in the reproduction of schooling and post-schooling inequality for both sexes, but especially for girls.

Deterritorialising the dominant assemblage of social justice research

This review is premised on the idea that poststructuralist theorising, particularly deconstructive conceptual ideas, is often seen as incongruent with research focused on social justice (Youdell, 2006). Poststructuralism if one can risk homogenising it into the one singular category given the variety of nuances (Peters & Humes, 2003) is considered anti-foundationalist. Generally speaking, the paradigm questions ‘truths’ and explores, through the relationship between knowledge and power, how popular ‘truths’ come to be, thus recasting many long-standing ideas into a different frame of understanding. There have been many debates about the merit of poststructuralism in education focused on social inequality (see Caughlan, 2005; Cole, 2003; Constas, 1998; McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2000; Pillow, 2000; Schutz, 2004, 2005; St Pierre, 2000). This article feeds into these discussions but also pushes forward the debate by providing examples of poststructuralist work disrupting normative understandings, hence showing how it is useful in the ‘real’ and everyday world of schooling. The utility of poststructuralist thinking(s) within the realm of social justice research is often focused around the usefulness of it to instigate (macro)change. To be more succinct, how can a paradigm that sets out to ‘undo’ foundational ideas belong within a body of research aimed at improving social inequalities and injustices? How can one ‘improve’ a situation without putting forth a series of suggested practices? How can ‘undoing’ be seen as a political practice when it is perceived as being grounded in the abstract, not the material? This article takes these questions as its general point of departure and attempts to facilitate the intelligibility of poststructuralism within the realm of social justice research by advocating for a reconceptualisation of what ‘social justice’ means. The ideas and methods contained within both School Trouble and Rethinking Gendered Regulations and Resistances

Advocating a Post-structuralist Politics for Educational Leadership

Abstract Post-structuralist discourses have usually been associated with forms of critique and deconstruction of social, cultural and philosophical phenomena. However, this article attempts to provide a generative approach to understanding educational leadership through Michel Foucault’s notions of power and subjectification, and Judith Butler’s notions of performativity and discursive agency through re-signification. We argue that leadership is not simply a list of traits, characteristics or behaviours to be implemented. Rather, we argue that leaders are performatively constituted through everyday practices and discourses. The aim is to interrupt prevailing discourses that often re-inscribe certain forms of meaning and understanding in educational leadership. This disruption subsequently provides possibility for putting forward otherwise silenced ideas about what leadership is and how leadership ‘identity’ (subjectivity) is formed, thus expanding the methodological tools scholars can use to talk about leadership.

Interview with Raewyn Connell: the cultural politics of queer theory in education research

Raewyn Connell (RC): Well, firstly the women’s movement of the 1970s, and secondly the women’s movement of the 1970s, and thirdly, the women’s movement of the 1970s. That was the context in which I began to work intellectually on gender issues. Because I was living as a man I wasn’t actually part of the mobilisation. I think the first Women’s Liberation movement meeting in Sydney was just at the end of 1969. And then – When was the first issue of Refractory Girl? I was certainly involved in thinking and writing about gender difference by 1974. I think it was that year that Madge Dawson – 2

Investigating ‘moments’ for student agency through a differentiated music curriculum

Abstract Research provides compelling evidence linking music-making to academic achievement and increased wellbeing for disengaged students. However, in the Australian context, education policy has narrowed its focus to literacy and numeracy, with an associated ‘accountability’ framework of mandated assessment and reporting practices. Within this context teachers are being asked to demonstrate how, through their pedagogical practices, they meet the needs of all their students. As a result of this, differentiation has become the lens through which student learning and engagement are being monitored. Drawing on data from a large state secondary school, this paper examines how a differentiated music curriculum is being implemented to support student agency. We demonstrate that, through a range of formal and informal music programs, agency is enhanced through the development of self-reflexive and self-referential learning practices. However, we suggest that differentiation, alone, does not unmask the reasons behind students’ different learning experiences nor does it necessarily redress entrenched educational inequalities. We also suggest that the ‘moments’ for student agency, created by these music programs, may have as much to do with the ‘fragile’ position of music within the broader school curriculum where the spotlight of high-stakes testing is directed elsewhere.