David Zyngier

Listening to teachers–listening to students: substantive conversations about resistance, empowerment and engagement

This article examines contemporary research and debates about pedagogies of engagement that challenge the traditional assumptions and understandings of engagement. Three contesting epistemological constructions of student engagement are identified and examined through the contesting and resisting voices of teachers and students. The articles research suggests that an empowering and resistant pedagogy can (re)conceive student engagement so that it achieves the twin goals of social justice and academic achievement.

“I Am Working-Class”: Subjective Self-Definition as a Missing Measure of Social Class and Socioeconomic Status in Higher Education Research

This review provides a critical appraisal of the measurement of students’ social class and socioeconomic status (SES) in the context of widening higher education participation. Most assessments of social class and SES in higher education have focused on objective measurements based on the income, occupation, and education of students’ parents, and they have tended to overlook diversity among students based on factors such as age, ethnicity, indigeneity, and rurality. However, recent research in psychology and sociology has stressed the more subjective and intersectional nature of social class. The authors argue that it is important to consider subjective self-definitions of social class and SES alongside more traditional objective measures. The implications of this dual measurement approach for higher education research are discussed.

(Re)conceptualising Risk: Left Numb and Unengaged and Lost in a No-Man's-Land or What (Seems to) Work for At-Risk Students.

This review of current research into at‐risk programmes serves to categorise and characterise existing programmes and to evaluate the contribution of these programmes to assisting students at risk from marginalised backgrounds. This characterisation questions the (sometimes) implicit assumptions and the consequences of those assumptions inherent in and behind these various accounts. Using as a lens the (various and varied) understandings of social justice and the goals of education, the author identifies three sometimes overlapping and sometimes contesting standpoints in relation to at‐risk students, characterised as instrumentalist or rational technical, social constructivist or individualist, and critical transformative or empowering. It is argued that a critical transformative understanding of risk may deliver improved outcomes for young people by challenging ‘the school context in which the young people are located’.

Class size and academic results, with a focus on children from culturally, linguistically and economically disenfranchised communities

The question of class size continues to attract the attention of educational policymakers and researchers alike. Australian politicians and their...

What future teachers believe about democracy and why it is important

Abstract This paper analyses pre-service education student perceptions and perspectives related to education for democracy in Australia. Using a critical pedagogical framework datum from an online survey, it presents both quantitative and qualitative responses of contrasting understandings of democracy. It begins by outlining the concepts of thick and thin democracy and why this is important in relation to contemporary debates about the state of civics and citizenship education, and then explains the conceptual framework of critical pedagogy and methodology. The datum analysed is discussed in relation to neoliberalism and indicates that the pre-service teachers in this study view democracy in a narrow or thin way that may impact on their classroom practice where they would be teaching about but not for democracy. A more critical and thicker understanding of democracy is suggested as essential if we desire our students to become active and transformative citizens.

Harnessing student voice and leadership: a study of one Australian Indigenous leadership program

ABSTRACT Despite growing scholarly interest in student voice and leadership over the past two decades, both terms continue to be used with little consensus about their meaning. They are also often evoked without much clarity or agreement as to how they should be enabled or enacted, for what purposes they should be fostered, or what conditions are necessary for them to take place. This article asks: ‘what are student voice and leadership, and how can they best be fostered in schools to enable disengaged or marginalized students?’ Drawing on the evaluation of a successful Indigenous leadership program in Australia, which works with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people, this discussion unpacks certain constituent parts of student voice and leadership, and explores how they can successfully be strengthened through an educational program, and the challenges arising at the interface of the program and school life.

`Democracy will not fall from the sky.' A comparative study of teacher education students' perceptions of democracy in two neo-liberal societies: Argentina and Australia

This paper compares and contrasts pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) beliefs about democracy in Argentina and Australia. While there are many important studies of how school students understand democracy and democratic participation, few have studied what teachers, and especially pre-service teachers, think about democracy. This paper uses a mixed methods approach to present quantitative and qualitative responses to the contrasting understandings of democracy from an established and a newly emerging democracy. Determining the linkage between education and democracy is important as it has implications for how our children will relate to democracy both in the classroom and in society as future citizens.