John Lidstone

International perspectives on natural disasters : occurrence, mitigation, and consequences.

Preface.- Acknowledgments.- Introduction by Joseph P. Stoltman, John Lidstone, and Lisa M. DeChano.- Chapter 1: Earthquakes by Walter Hays.- Chapter 2: Volcanoes by Raymundo S. Punongbayan.- Chapter 3: Windstorms by Tony Gibbs.- Chapter 4: Global Flooding by John Handmer.- Chapter 5: Wildfires by Steven Yool.- Chapter 6: Mass Movement by isa M. DeChano.- Chapter 7: Drought by D.A. Wilhite.- Chapter 8: Natural Hazards in Japan by Hiroshi Sasaki and Shuji Yamakawa.- Chapter 9: Natural Disasters in China by Yang Hua Ting.- Chapter 10: Natural Disasters in Oceania by George Pararas-Carayannis.- Chapter 11: Hazard Mitigation in South and Southeast Asia by Nehal Karim.- Chapter 12: Natural Disasters in Africa by Belinda Dodson.- Chapter 13: Natural Disasters in Russia by V.M. Kotlyakov.- Chapter 14: Natural Disasters in Europe by Lea Houtsonen and Arvo Peltonen.- Chapter 15: Natural Disasters and Their Impact in Latin America by James J. Biles and Daniel Cobos.- Chapter 16: Disaster Impacts on the Caribbean by Jeremy Collymore.- Chapter 17: A Perspective on North American Natural Disasters by Joseph Scanlon.- Chapter 18: Teaching and Learning to Live with the Environment by Kath Murdoch.- Chapter 19: Educational Aims and the Question of Priorities by Graham Haydon.- Chapter 20: The Experience of Natural Disasters: Psychological Perspectives and Understandings by Joseph P. Reser.- Chapter 21: Curriculum Innovation for Natural Disaster Reduction: Lessons from the Commonwealth Caribbean by Michael Morrissey.- Chapter 22: Curriculum Adaptation and Disaster Prevention in Colombia by Omar D. Cardona.-Chapter 23: Current Curriculum Initiatives and Perspectives in Education for Natural Disaster Reduction in India by R.B. Singh.- Chapter 24: Disaster Education in New Zealand by John Macaulay.- Chapter 25: Natural Disasters and the Role of Women by Jacqueline Sims.- Chapter 26: Natural Hazards and Disaster Information on the Internet by John A. Cross and Yasuyo Makido.- Chapter 27: Capacity Building, Education, and Technical Training by Joseph P. Stoltman, John Lidstone, and Lisa M. DeChano.- Index.- List of Figures on CD-ROM.- CD-ROM of All Figures by Chapter: Inside Back Cover

Powerful knowledge in geography: IRGEE editors interview professor David Lambert, London institute of education, October 2014

The interview with Prof. David Lambert resulted from hearing presentations at national and international conferences on the topic of powerful knowledge, especially as the idea pertains to teaching and learning geography. The questions were submitted to Prof. Lambert and he responded in writing. His elaborations and clarifications of the conceptual and practical implications of powerful knowledge are contained in the following interview. What is the origin of powerful knowledge as an educational concern? This is probably quite a long story: perhaps John Morgan’s Foreword to Young, Lambert, Roberts, and Roberts’ (2014) Knowledge and the Future School: curriculum and social justice summarises the story usefully and succinctly! (see also Morgan, forthcoming). My version is as follows. In the early 1970s, Michael Young, a student of Basil Bernstein, published the book Knowledge and Control. This has been enormously influential, introducing the idea that the school curriculum was in the hands of, and served the interests of, the powerful. The school curriculum (the argument ran) excluded, or alienated, the working class kids, for example. It did not speak to them. The whole structure was aligned to make sure that middle-class kids succeeded in getting the qualifications required for the professions (etc.) and so power relations and the status quo were maintained. Schools delivered the knowledge of the powerful (and these days we would say, therefore, exclude various indigenous knowledge, for example). This analysis was appealing at the time and was in my view part of the zeitgeist. Although it is interesting to note that geography at the Institute of Education (IOE) (Bernstein and Young were at the IOE) remained somewhat immune to this: Graves was producing his curriculum planning models and Naish was leading the 16 19 project by the end of the decade. Meanwhile, Slater published Learning Through Geography in the early 1980s. Although brilliant in bringing modern pedagogic approaches to geography with explicit theoretical underpinnings, which was in some way a response to ‘knowledge and control’, this book, in retrospect, began to undermine serious interest in the educational significance of geographical knowledge itself (the clue is in the title). Therefore, more recently (and signalled by the publication of Bringing Knowledge Back in, in 2008), Michael Young has had something of a volte face. It is not simply that he ‘got it wrong’ in his early career, but more that he failed to take the arguments far enough. If we agreed, even partly, with the notion of the ‘knowledge of the powerful’, Young now points out that in fact this knowledge is also powerful in itself. And so, if for some reason we produced a ‘working class’ version of school, the kids experiencing this would be condemned not to advance themselves economically, politically, or even as informed citizens: they would remain ‘trapped’ in their experience, and excluded from the powerful knowledge of the disciplines. Schools have the sacred duty to induct all young people into the best knowledge we have available about how the world works. Better knowledge comes from the academic disciplines: this is what they are for (at least, I would like to hear an academic argue that they are not seeking better understandings! If they did, I guess there would be grounds for mass academic redundancies).

What is Plan B? Using Foucault's archaeology to enhance policy analysis

Many governments in Western democracies conduct the work of leading their societies forward through policy generation and implementation. Despite government attempts at extensive negotiation, collaboration and debate, the general populace in these same countries frequently express feelings of disempowerment and undue pressure to be compliant, often leading to disengagement. Here we outline Plan B: a process for examining how policies that emerge from good intentions are frequently interpreted as burdensome or irrelevant by those on whom they have an impact. Using a case study of professional standards for teachers in Australia, we describe how we distilled Foucaults notions of archaeology into a research approach centring on the creation of ‘polyhedrons of intelligibility’ as an alternative approach by which both policy-makers and those affected by their policies may understand how their respective causes are supported and adversely affected.

Teachers performing professionalism : a Foucauldian archaeology

Faced with the perceived need to redefine education for more economic utilitarian purposes, as well as to encourage compliance with government policies, Australia, like many other Anglophone nations, has engaged in numerous policy shifts resulting in performativity practices becoming commonplace in the educational landscape. A series of interviews with teachers from Queensland, Australia, in which they revealed their experiences of professionalism are examined archaeologically to reveal how they enact their roles in response to this performative agenda. Findings suggest that while there is some acceptance among teachers of the performative discourse, there is increasing resistance, which permits the construction of alternative or counter-discourses to the currently internationally pervasive performative climate.

Teachers’ cultural differences: case studies of geography teachers in Brisbane, Changchun and Hong Kong

The primary purpose of this exploratory study is to identify variations in the ways in which individual teachers in different educational contexts interpret their curriculum and plan their lessons and in particular to explore the possibility that cultural differences as identified by Hofstede (1991) may be a contributing factor to understanding how teachers understand their work. “Educational reform” has become a catchphrase in the Anglo-American world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and England and Wales, as well as in the Confucian Heritage Areas such as Mainland China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Across the world, the educational reform measures being implemented are surprisingly similar. This paper describes a study of how geography teachers in Queensland, Australia, Hong Kong, and Changchun, China, plan their lessons and curriculum. From classroom observations and interviews with the teachers involved, we confirmed marked differences in each location regarding their cultural traits of power distance, individualist and collectivist preference and uncertainty tolerance, and that these traits appear to be highly influential in their curriculum planning. Despite the small scale of this study, we contend that there are good reasons for caution before national education systems import policies and curriculum reform initiatives from other countries for unthinking adoption.

School nurses and health education: The classroom experience

Objective: The aim of the study is to explore school nurses’ experience of health education. Design: A qualitative approach, phenomenology was used to answer the question. Method: Sixteen participants were recruited through purposeful and snowball sampling. Participants undertook an audio-recorded interview which was transcribed and analysed. Results: Five themes represent school nurses’ experience of health education. Within these five themes, three issues were identified by the participants as having a negative impact on their experience of health education. These were: (1) feeling unwanted by the school; (2) not supported by the school hierarchy; and (3) a lack of role definition. Conclusion: These three issues provide important insight into school nurses’ experience of health education and have implications for other school nurses and professionals in the school environment.

International perspectives on teaching about hazards and disasters

Disaster education - where we are and we should be, John Lidstone natural hazards education - a question of implementation strategies, Paul Whitehead geographical education in Germany on natural disasters, Dieter L. Boehn natural hazards and disasters in French secondary schools, Mayse Clary the elemental natural phenomena in the geography teaching in Bulgarian schools, Dimitar Kanchev and Lyusila Tsankova studying natural hazards in South African schools, Norman Tait the teaching of natural hazards in Hong Kong secondary schools, Yee-wang Fung, John C.K. Lee and Chi-chung Lam hazard education in Finland, Lea Houstonen and Arvo Peltonen the treatment of natural hazards in geography textbooks for senior schools in Nigeria, Julie Okpala natural hazards education in New Zealand, John Macaulay and June Logie.

Schooling Teachers: Professionalism or disciplinary power?

Abstract Since public schooling was introduced in the nineteenth century, teachers in many western countries have endeavoured to achieve professional recognition. For a short period in the latter part of the twentieth century, professionalism was seen as a discourse of resistance or the ‘enemy’ of economic rationalism and performativity. However, more recently, governments have responded by ‘colonizing’ professionalism and imposing ‘standards’ whereby the concept is redefined. In this study, we analyse transcripts of interviews with 20 Queensland teachers and conclude that teachers’ notions of professionalism in this second decade of the twenty-first century are effectively reiterations of nineteenth century disciplinary technologies (as proposed by Michel Foucault) yet are enacted in new ways.

Reflexive professionalism: reclaiming the voice of authority in shaping the discourses of education policy

The nature and value of “professionalism” has long been contested by both producers and consumers of policy. Most recently, governments have rewritten and redefined professionalism as compliance with externally imposed “standards.” This has been achieved by silencing the voices of those who inhabit the professional field of education. This article uses Foucauldian archaeology to excavate the enunciative field of professionalism by digging through the academic and institutional (political) archive, and in doing so identifies two key policy documents for further analysis. The excavation shows that while the voices of (academic) authority speak of competing discourses emerging, with professional standards promulgated as the mechanism to enhance professionalism, an alternative regime of truth identifies the privileged use of (managerial) voices from outside the field of education to create a discourse of compliance. There has long been a mismatch between the voices of authority on discourses around professionalism from the academic archive and those that count in contemporary and emerging Australian educational policy. In this article, we counter this mismatch and argue that reflexive educators’ regimes of truth are worthy of attention and should be heard and amplified.

Relevant Knowledge, Skills and Values in Geographical Education

In a world of uncertainty that some have termed post-structural, in which the search for grand theory or metanarrative becomes ever increasingly difficult, or for some, impossible, the title of this chapter appears to be wonderfully ambiguous. I use the word “wonderfully” because it is a great source of wonder that so many people, with such a wide range of expertise and interests, and most, if not all, with high levels of personal and professional integrity, can expend so much effort in debating the nature of the school curriculum. It is indeed wonderful that the ways in which we educate our children are treated as of such importance throughout most of the world. It is also wonderful in a different sense that there is so much disagreement about how this task is to be accomplished. The ambiguity implied by this disagreement, comes from the ways in which the title can be interpreted. Does the reference to relevant knowledge, skills and values in geographical education indicate that there may be irrelevant knowledge skills and values as well, and could it be that only some of this irrelevancy occurs in the context of geographical education, or does the title question the relevance of geographical education at all? Finally, I can’t help wondering if the terms relevant, knowledge, skills, values, geographical and education are not themselves ambiguous, admitting of a wide range of meanings, perhaps depending on context.