Lyn Yates

Reconstructing the lifelong learner: Pedagogy and identity in individual, organisational and social change

This publication examines adult learning for change through a number of diverse case studies and theoretical perspectives to demonstrate that personal change is bound to broadenorganisational and social change. The authors investigate the implications of theorising education as a means of self-change for educational practice. Case studies focus on self-help books, work-based learning, corporate culture training, HIV/AIDS education, gender education, and sex offender education. The authors conclude with a study of how the experience of writing an academic text has contributed to their own identities.

Knowledge in action: doctoral programmes forging new identities

Pressures to link higher education to the workplace and industry environment have created a radically different climate for postgraduate research education, and, as universities struggle to accommodate new ways of structuring doctoral degrees and new ways of producing knowledge, there are indications that many traditional structures and management processes are under pressure to change. There are also suggestions that the emergence of new degrees could provide opportunities for innovative practices in the design of new curricula, new assessment methods and new types of supervision. As part of an empirical study, this paper will report on two doctoral programmes that explicitly link the theory and scholarship of the academy with the practice and professional knowledge of the workplace and community environment. The paper will explore strategies for managing research in this new environment for doctoral education, investigate the claims about new practice and discuss three aspects pertaining to the development of knowledge and new doctoral identities in these two programmes: context, supervision and pedagogy, and knowledge production.

From curriculum to pedagogy and back again: knowledge, the person and the changing world

This paper reflects on some changing contexts of the discussion of curriculum and pedagogy since the late 1960s, and it draws on three research projects in which the author has been involved to illustrate why pedagogy and curriculum have again become issues of evident public and political concern and to show some particular points of tension in moving forward today. Issues of curriculum and pedagogy came under challenge in association with new social movements of the 1960s and beyond, and the new emphasis on whose knowledge was being privileged in schooling, and what identities and social patterns were being perpetuated through schooling. Today, in the context of global auditing and benchmarking, and of competitive economic policies and anxieties about migration and citizenship, education is seen by governments as a prominent part of their economic and social policy. But keeping strong attention to both curriculum (or ‘the what’) and the pedagogical relationships (or the process) is rarely attained simultaneously.

The story they want to tell, and the visual story as evidence: young people, research authority and research purposes in the education and health domains

The decision to use participatory visual methods with young people in education, health or public policy research is linked to a desire to allow them to have some greater voice in the research and the professional activities that impact on their lives. But how that ‘voice’ is produced, whose voice it represents, and how the product of that research is used and interpreted are all contentious issues for researchers. This article analyses some of these conceptual, methodological, political and pragmatic issues from the perspective of a current Australian Research Council-funded project working with young people across education and health domains. It is argued that allowing or not allowing visual accounts to speak for themselves is not simply a political decision but one related to epistemological understandings about meaning, and also to different purposes of different visual projects, in particular their relative emphasis on voice as a window to the world of the young people, compared with voice as a window to ‘who I am’. The project discussed is one which aims to give greater authority and centrality to the visual accounts and voices of young people, but also one where researchers understand both the visual and voice as constructed rather than given. Case studies from the project are used to illustrate the way in which these commitments frame decisions about technology and methodology, and also to show and argue for an approach which treats the meaning of the visual evidence as something to be constructed ethnographically and reflexively over time.

Interpretive claims and methodological warrant in small-number qualitative, longitudinal research

This article discusses issues of methodological warrant in a qualitative, longitudinal study with only a small number of subjects. The 12 to 18 Project was designed to contribute to research on gender, class and schooling. The rationale for a design using only 26 students spread between four schools is explained. It is argued that even with small-number research, issues of selection and comparison are important--but emphasis on techniques of data-treatment and comparison is misplaced. The meaningfulness and contribution of studies of this type lie in multiple acts of design, comparison, reflexive interpretation and dialogue with the broader field, and the more that such studies emphasize technical analytic procedures, the more they undermine their warrant to be anything other than a report on a small sample. Illustrations of interpretations of the data and from the data are given.

Can we find out about girls and boys today – or must we settle for just talking about ourselves?: dilemmas of a feminist, qualitative, longitudinal research project

ConclusionIn this paper, we have outlined some of the methodological dilemmas we have encountered in conducting a qualitative, longitudinal study of secondary students. These dilemmas have ethical, epistemological and pragmatic implications, and they were discussed in terms of both macro or foundational methodological issues, as well as questions and problems specific to our project. We argued, however, that being sensitive to these various dilemmas, acknowledging their validity and cautions, and integrating them within the design, carrying out and interpretation of the research does not preclude the possibility of conducting empirical research that builds new knowledge and understandings, about, in this instance, young girls and boys and schooling today. The second half of the paper elaborated some of our concerns about the strategies for investigating processes of gender construction, and provided some examples of how we have begun to read our findings about the way in which girls and boys are working out and enacting the construction of gender.

Revisiting curriculum, the numbers game and the inequality problem

This essay reflects on Daniel Tanner’s ‘Race to the top and leave the children behind’ by attention to the way our particular national histories impact on our thinking about what is valuable, the kinds of curriculum pressures and commonsenses that are now at work internationally at government and policy level, the specific forms these are taking in Australia, and the ways they are impacting positively and negatively on concerns about equity and difference. The article argues that neither testing nor lack of testing will solve the issue of schooling and difference and social inequalities. The Program for International Student Assessment agenda has influenced the language and rationale through which differences in schooling outcomes are made visible, and it also contributes to an overarching political and public sense of education as a competitive race, and as an economic vehicle. In Australia, this is underpinning some support for better funding of disadvantaged students, but also building a climate of competitive anxiety that embeds parental concerns about maintaining differential advantage. Beyond the testing arena, the substance of the curriculum is also being reshaped and this essay discusses the ways this too is important in relation to concerns about difference and social equity.

Too little and too much trust: performance measurement in Australian higher education

A striking feature of contemporary Australian higher education governance is the strong emphasis on centralized, template style, metric-based, and consequential forms of performance measurement. Such emphasis is indicative of a low degree of political trust among the central authorities in Australia in the intrinsic capacity of universities and academics to do their work efficiently and effectively. At the same time, it is indicative of a deep-seated political trust in highly centralized and top–down forms of performance measurement, and their capacity to effectively control and coordinate the work of universities and academics. In this article, we argue with regard to performance measurement that these patterns of trust and mistrust embody contradictory assumptions regarding the agency and motivations of universities and academics and prevent adequately coming to terms with the unintended effects that the current performance measurement regime has on universities and the academics working in them.

Social justice and the middle

This is a post-print of an article published in Australian Educational Researcher v.27(3) 2000 published by The Australian Association for Research in Education. This version is reproduced with permission from AARE. http://www.aare.edu.au/aer/contents.htm

Gender and Learning

This article provides an overview of shifts in thinking about gender and learning over the last four decades, emphasizing in particular the social contexts, interactions, and impacts of learning arrangements. It outlines the impact of moves from debunking deficit assumptions of sex differences in the 1970s, through a broad concern with girl-friendly and inclusive approaches in the 1980s, to a new kind of concern with boys’ learning in the 1990s. It maps key themes and dilemmas addressed in research on gender and learning, The relation of gender and learning to school organization, teacher and peer interactions, and social and identity background factors is examined. Debates regarding the effects of single-sex and coeducational schooling on gender and learning are discussed, and some current directions and emerging issues noted, such as gender and digital learning.