Julie Matthews

Schooling and settlement: refugee education in Australia

Schools are a stabilising feature in the unsettled lives of refugee students. They provide safe spaces for new encounters, interactions and learning opportunities. They also deliver literacy, the key to educational success, post‐school options, life choices, social participation and settlement. Currently Australian schools are poorly funded and ill‐equipped to provide effective English as a Second Language teaching and support. A new cohort of refugee students mainly from Africa and the Middle East are struggling. This article discusses the importance of educational interventions that keep in mind both the immediacy of ‘what is happening now’ and broader post‐colonial conditions. It identifies the limits of piecemeal partnership interventions and the domination of psychological approaches that individualise the issues and overemphasise pre‐displacement conditions of trauma. Such approaches disregard the socio‐political conditions of post‐displacement and issues of racialisation, acculturation and resilience. The article argues for good practice approaches to schooling and settlement that involve whole‐school accounting for organisational processes and structures, policy, procedure, pedagogy and curricula.

Desperately seeking the global subject: international education, citizenship and cosmopolitanism

This article takes the case of international education and Australian state schools to argue that the economic, political and cultural changes associated with globalisation do not automatically give rise to globally oriented and supra‐territorial forms of subjectivity. The tendency of educational institutions such as schools to privilege narrowly instrumental cultural capital perpetuates and sustains normative national, cultural and ethnic identities. In the absence of concerted efforts on the part of educational institutions to sponsor new forms of global subjectivity, flows and exchanges like those that constitute international education are more likely to produce a neo‐liberal variant of global subjectivity.

Bayesian belief modeling of climate change impacts for informing regional adaptation options

A sequential approach to combining two established modeling techniques (systems thinking and Bayesian Belief Networks; BBNs) was developed and applied to climate change adaptation research within the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative (SEQ-CARI). Six participatory workshops involving 66 stakeholders based within SEQ produced six system conceptualizations and 22 alpha-level BBNs. The outcomes of the initial systems modeling exercise successfully allowed the selection of critical determinants of key response variables for in depth analysis within more homogeneous, sector-based groups of participants. Using two cases, this article focuses on the processes and methodological issues relating to the use of the BBN modeling technique when the data are based on expert opinion. The study expected to find both generic and specific determinants of adaptive capacity based on the perceptions of the stakeholders involved. While generic determinants were found (e.g. funding and awareness levels), sensitivity analysis identified the importance of pragmatic, context-based determinants, which also had methodological implications. The article raises questions about the most appropriate scale at which the methodology applied can be used to identify useful generic determinants of adaptive capacity when, at the scale used, the most useful determinants were sector-specific. Comparisons between individual BBN conditional probabilities identified diverging and converging beliefs, and that the sensitivity of response variables to direct descendant nodes was not always perceived consistently. It was often the accompanying narrative that provided important contextual information that explained observed differences, highlighting the benefits of using critical narrative with modeling tools.

International Education and Internationalisation are not the Same as Globalisation: Emerging Issues for Secondary Schools

Based on an account of the internationalisation of education in Australian government schools, this article challenges the enthusiastic recruitment of full-fee-paying students in the state sector. The author argues that a major problem for state schooling is the implementation of policies and practices arising from the context of higher education such as the idea that internationalisation invariably strengthens international and intercultural relationships and the idea that the competitive market-driven approach is an inevitable effect of globalisation. The author contends that issues raised in the context of state schools highlight existing orthodoxies and the need to move beyond the neoliberal priorities of international education to explore strategic and innovative new directions.

Racialised schooling, 'ethnic success' and Asian-Australian students

Based on discussions with Asian-Australian young women at a mixed-sex, Australia State high school, this article argues that the pro-school conformity of Asian-Australian young women sets them in a problematic and precarious relationship to the material and symbolic and processes of racialisation. The first part of the article identifies the limitations of research into the pro-school/anti-school orientations of minority students, arguing that most accounts are based on theories of culture, acculturation, class and gender, and class and race that neglect an analysis of race and sex. I then argue that practices of racialisation and sexualisation actually sustain pro-school culture and Asian female group associations. While these formations are effective in securing Asian female educational success, they are also problematic because they limit the educational possibilities and employment opportunities of Asian young women in Australia.

Visual Culture and Critical Pedagogy in “Terrorist Times”

Instant access to visual images and emotional accounts of terrorism have secured them a vivid place in our memory and reinforced the idea that “we” have been targeted and are under immediate threat. Fear and the sense of belonging to an innocent, victimized, and threatened group, under attack from irrational, malevolent, and uncontrollable “others”, is a significant feature of “terrorist times” in Western nations. These identities and feelings are reinforced though visual images and the circulation of recurrent statements, polemics, rationalities, and representations. This article explores a discourse analytic approach to critical pedagogy. Such an approach engages with multiple forms of visuality to explore the discourses though which identities and truths about ourselves and others are established, challenged, and resisted. Discourse analysis exposes how knowledges and understandings come to be taken up as history, politics, justice, and the “truth”, while a critical approach to pedagogy highlights the hegemonic role of ideology and discourses in furthering dominant interests and knowledges. One might expect the new literacies approach undertaken in “multiliteracies” to assist in this task, this article identifies several key limitations, including the focus on design-based pedagogy.

Living in the NOW: young people from refugee backgrounds pursuing respect, risk and fun

Narrating Our World (NOW) was an arts-based project that attempted to understand the educational experience of refugee young people. This article reflects on understandings generated during the course of the project. Rather than seeking a direct and explicit means of discussing young peoples experience, the project made a deliberate effort to create a flexible and open space for activity and discussion led by the interests and enthusiasm of participants. Researchers found that, when given the choice, young people did not express negative experiences but preferred instead to present their interests, endeavours and hopes for the future in a positive light. They did not dwell in the past but used the programme to make the most of the opportunity to have fun and create connections. These connections were an unexpected and valuable outcome of the project. Young people were found to be actively negotiating and engaging with their new home, they appreciated the respect we showed them, they took risks and had fun. They are not dwelling or living in the past but are very much part of the present.

Eurasian Persuasions: Mixed Race, Performativity and Cosmopolitanism

Eurasians are ‘in’. We are the poster children of globalisation. In Asia, and increasingly in the West, mixed-race Eurasian models charm us with their cosmopolitan chic. Terms previously used to demarcate impure outsiders such as Eurasian mixed-race, hybridity, mestiza, hapa, haafu, Euro-Asian and Anglo-Asian have recently been given an affirmative spin. This essay argues that the appeal, allure and persuasions of Eurasian/mixed-race are as much an effect of its commodified production as a cosmopolitan figure with automatic racial, cultural and national border crossing attributes, as its capacity and potential to claim for itself a location and space of visibility. Framed as a performative, the visual aesthetics and cosmopolitan attributes of Eurasian/mixed-race are explored in relation to postcolonial practices of racialisation and sexualisation under globalisation. Factors evoked in the constitution of Eurasian/mixed race delimit rather than preclude its promise of an expansive transnational/transcultural cosmopolitan future.

Museum, memorial and mall: postcolonialism, pedagogies, racism and reconciliation

Through museum and shopping mall and the possibilities, subtleties, banalities and disparities of reconciliation in South Africa and Australia, this paper immerses itself in the question of pedagogies and in particular the pedagogies of reconciliation, public spaces and postcolonialism. In both Australia and South Africa postcolonialism as theory and pedagogy is ambiguously positioned especially in relation to issues of reconciliation which in turn is arguably also ambiguously located. Reconciliation is or has variously been state‐sanctioned policy, project and agenda which, in part, is a process and practice of recognising and addressing histories of racism and its effects. Projects in both nations have included public, educational and schooling spheres and range, for instance, from the building of large‐scale museums to self‐initiated school and community projects. All of these involve ways of knowing and knowledge of the colonial past and a postcolonial present. Not insignificantly, they all involve the ways in which race, racism and postcolonialism are understood and represented. Central to this, the authors contend, is a necessity to bring into question the discursive practices of both racism and anti‐racism particularly as they influence and shape new emerging modalities of anti‐racism within postcolonial contexts and practices. The authors argue that an ability to analyse and deconstruct everyday spaces such as shopping malls is as integral to pedagogy as is a class excursion to a museum such as the Hector Pieterson or the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. Still further, they argue that postcolonial pedagogy is itself an artefact of fraught histories deeply informed by colonial origins, local specificities and contemporary strategies of remembrance. This ought not to have happened … Something happened there to which we cannot reconcile ourselves. None of us ever can. (Arendt, 1993, pp. 13–14, 3 emphasis in original) Whatever your age, wherever you are in life’s journey—parent or child, single or coupled, gay or straight, young or old, regular worshipper or visitor … You are included in our worship and invited to join in our fellowship and witness. (Order of Service Sheet, Cathedral Church of St George, Cape Town, Die Sint George‐Katedraal, Kaapstad, Icaehtedral ka George Ongcwele, Yasekapa, November 2005) Reconciliation is a matter that takes place on different levels, if it takes place at all. (Dodson, 2000, p. 265)

Hybrid pedagogies for sustainability education

In the pseudo-documentary The Age of Stupid (Armstrong 2009), a historian from 2055 scans the remnants of civilization and asks why, in the early twenty-first century, we didn’t save ourselves when we had the chance: ‘‘what state of mind were we in, to face extinction and simply shrug it off’’ (http://www.spannerfilms. net/films/ageofstupid). The film serves as a motif for issues raised in this article. Why do we continue to believe that education plays an important role in our attempt to transition toward more sustainable ways of living when it already appears to have failed? The role of education in transmitting values, beliefs, and cultural practices, in expanding knowledge and understanding, and in socializing future generations can hardly be deemed successful if it has not managed to establish the basic values and practices necessary to sustain life on the planet. Indeed, it appears that everyday cultural pedagogies are an extremely efficient means of educating for unsustainability; we most effectively learn ways of living that threaten to destroy ourselves and other life forms. However, instead of abandoning the idea that education for sustainability can serve as an agent of change, I argue that changing everyday cultural practices requires a reconsideration of the very concept of pedagogy. ‘‘Praxis’’ in critical pedagogy refers to reflection about the effects of ‘‘power, politics, and history’’ (Giroux 1991, 5). In critical pedagogy, praxis draws attention to the power dynamics in processes of cultural production and asks ‘‘how individuals learn, how knowledge is produced, and how subject positions are constructed’’ The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 33:260–277, 2011 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1071-4413 print=1556-3022 online DOI: 10.1080/10714413.2011.585288