Emma E. Rowe

The Australian Middle Class and Education: A Small-Scale Study of the School Choice Experience as Framed by "My School" within Inner City Families

With the launch of the ‘My School’ website in 2010, Australia became a relative latecomer to the publication of national school performance comparisons. This paper primarily seeks to explore the school choice experience as framed by ‘My School’ website, for participating middle-class families. We will draw on Bourdieusian theory of cultural capital and relationship networks and Australian-based school choice research in order to contribute to understandings regarding the application of ‘My School’ data within participating families. Data collection consisted of qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with five families, each based within inner-city suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria. The findings of this small-scale study indicate that participating middle-class families possessed highly developed strategies for locating and achieving enrolment in school-of-choice and therefore did not seek to apply available data on ‘My School’ to decision-making, despite each participant reviewing the available data.

Theorising geo-identity and David Harvey’s space: school choices of the geographically bound middle-class

This paper draws on David Harvey’s theories of absolute and relational space in order to critique geographically bound school choices of the gentrified middle-class in the City of Melbourne, Australia. The paper relies on interviews with inner-city school choosers as generated by a longitudinal ethnographic school choice study. I argue that the participants construct their class-identity in relation to their geographical (or residential) positioning and this influences their schooling choices. In the light of this argument, I theorise geo-identity in thinking about how geographies inform and instruct identity and choice. This paper contributes by offering a focused analysis of Harvey’s spatial theories and class-identity in processes of choice.

Shopping for schools or shopping for peers: public schools and catchment area segregation

Abstract Market theory positions the consumer as a rational choice actor, making informed schooling choices on the basis of ‘hard’ evidence of relative school effectiveness. Yet there are concerns that parents simply choose schools based on socio-demographic characteristics, thus leading to greater social segregation and undercutting the potential of choice to drive quality improvements. In this paper, we explore segregation by examining catchment areas for a range of public high schools in a specific middle-class urban area. We focus on socio-demographic characteristics, including levels of income, country of birth and religion affiliation, in order to explore residential segregation according to public high school catchment areas. Our data suggest distinct residential segregation between catchment areas for each public school within our data-set, particularly for the schools deemed to be popular and rejected, that may pose risks for broader equity concerns. We argue that, in contrast to market theory, even more affluent and active choosers are not equipped with information on the programmatic quality of their different school options, but instead may be relying on socio-demographic characteristics of schools – through surrogate information about the urban spaces that the schools occupy – in order to choose peer groups, if not programmes, for their children.

Politics, religion and morals: the symbolism of public schooling for the urban middle-class identity

Abstract Research points to sections of the middle-class repopulating the ‘ordinary’ urban public school and whilst there are key differences in how they are navigating public school choices, from ‘seeking a critical mass’ to resisting traditional methods of choice and going ‘against-the-grain’, or collectively campaigning for a brand new public school, the urban middle-class are developing contemporary methods to challenge the existing ways of thinking about middle-class choice. Drawing on this literature, this paper explores the symbolism of public schooling for relatively affluent choosers in the city of Melbourne, Australia. The positioning of public schooling as essentially secular and liberal indicates how the public school is valorised within the contemporary market place. Within a market that tends to undersell the public school, the perceived lack of organised religion and progressivism may be the unique selling point for the cosmopolitan, globalised consumer.

Calling for ‘urgent national action to improve the quality of initial teacher education’: the reification of evidence and accountability in reform agendas

Abstract In early 2015, the Australian Government and an associated Ministerial Group called for ‘urgent national action to improve the quality of initial teacher education’. Following this call for action, the Australian Government launched a series of reforms into initial teacher education, targeting ‘teacher quality’ and ‘classroom readiness’. The reforms are based on a logic of deficiency within initial teacher education, mandating new accreditation processes, standardized assessments and the National Literacy and Numeracy Test for pre-service teachers. In this paper we set out to explore these reforms, considering the policy trajectories, technologies and technicist network in which they are operationalized. We propose the concept of reification and objectification to examine the institutionalization of auditing, standardization, and accountability. These reforms aim to intervene in both the content and delivery of initial teacher education. We argue that reforms such as these recondition our conceptions of professionalism and teacher quality. There is a contraction in scope for progressive or experiential teacher education, and moreover, the ongoing de-professionalism of teachers and teacher educators, whom are subjected to constant surveillance.

Exploring alternatives to the ‘neoliberalism’ critique: New language for contemporary global reform

As scholars, we have a legacy of critiquing the epistemological or theoretical frameworks we utilize in our research, such as the debates surrounding class and the socalled ‘death of class’ (Clark & Lipset, 1991; Pakulski & Waters, 1996; Reay, 1998). In this Special Issue, we focus our attention on neoliberalism as a theoretical, epistemological and analytical tool in our research. The concept of neoliberalism, whether it is used as a social, political, or economic concept, retains a strong presence within educational research. It is frequently utilized as theoretical grounding to critique education reform and education policy (Rowlands & Rawolle, 2013). Consequentially, theories or epistemologies surrounding neoliberalism are, at times, rendered as assumed or shared knowledge. Ball (1995) argues that theories need to be examined, reflexive and ‘the absence of theory leaves the researcher prey to... preconceptions and dangerously naïve ontological and epistemological a prioris’ (p. 265). In this Special Issue, we focus attention to neoliberalism in order to explore alternatives to the neoliberal critique. Hursh (2017) suggests different strands of neoliberalism, such as corporate neoliberalism and theoretical neoliberalism. This lends itself to Apple’s (2017) description of neoliberalism as a ‘movement’, accurately pointing out that ‘neoliberalism does not stand alone, and it takes on different forms in different contexts. It is also not a unitary movement, since it has contradictory tendencies within it’ (p. 148). Brenner and Fraser (2017) debate the end of ‘progressive neoliberalism’, whereas other scholars suggest we are moving into the post-capitalist, ‘post-truth’ or post-democratic era, with a changing relationship between capital and democracy, corporate wealth and inequality (Robertson, 2016; Streeck, 2014). Taking up these timely discussions, we ask: Are we living in the post-neoliberal? Or, are we simply moving beyond theoretical neoliberalism and towards corporate neoliberalism? If so, what does this mean for education policy critique? In this Special Issue, we aim to explore these questions and generate vocabularies, frameworks and measurements for thinking about the ‘edu-nomic’ – the entanglement of economics and the political with education. The issue sets out to critique the ‘neoliberal policy paradigm’ (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 3), in order to pose critical, provocative questions and suggest alternative ways of measuring, analysing and exploring global education reform. It will be a timely opportunity for scholars to scrutinize neoliberalism as a theoretical framework and generate possible alternatives to advance critiques.

Breaking from the field: participant observation and Bourdieu’s participant objectivation

In this chapter, I will explore participant observation as a method within the academy, through a framework of Bourdieu’s field theory. This methodology is of interest to Bourdieu, who refers to it as ‘participant objectivation’ and ‘the highest form of the sociological art’ (Bourdieu 1992, p. 259). Despite Bourdieu’s enduring interest in ethnographic fieldwork and participant objectivation, over many decades of his work, there has been relatively little take-up or exploration of how he practises fieldwork, especially in comparison with the attention paid to many of his other contributions. In this chapter, I focus on three central concepts—the notions of objectivity for the sociologist, ‘objectivation’ and epistemic reflexivity. The central motif is the critique of power and the (in)visible mechanics of power which are produced, structured and constructed within the research field.

Middle-Class School Choice in the Urban: Educational Campaigning for a Public School

The neighbourhood may merely represent a locality within a larger city environment, and in the global sense, these are miniscule spaces, but this points to the paradox of urban space in hyperglobalist terrain. Urban spaces are reduced and magnified in equal measure, in the demand for public resources. They are reduced to the more romanticized sense of space (community and village) and yet they are magnified in the sense that certain surrounding neighbourhoods represent intractable distances for certain school choosers. This resonates with Robertson’s (1995) original thesis regarding ‘glocalization’ and the differentiation of consumption goods for the modern consumer. In this chapter, I explore the paradox of urban space as teased out via educational campaigning for public schooling.