Michael Crowhurst

‘So far multicultural that she is racist to Australians’: discomfort as a pedagogy for change

Critical discussion of the social conditions that shape educational thinking and practice is now embedded in accredited Australian teacher education programmes. Beneath beliefs that critique of educational inequality is desirable, however, lie more problematic questions around critical pedagogies, ethics and power. Emotional investments can work to protect habituated ways of thinking, despite attempts to move students beyond their comfort zone. This strategic process can shift attitudes and promote intellectual and emotional growth, but can also produce defensive reactions. This article, a self-reflexive study in relation to an incident in a tertiary Education programme, examines how formal student feedback on content and pedagogy positions a teacher. The study also frames and reframes ways in which learner feedback to critical approaches might be read. Such exploration articulates particular tensions and challenges inherent in critical teacher education pedagogies. The argument also examines the potential of disruptive teaching approaches for recontextualising, and driving forward, both learner and teacher response.

'I was made to feel very discriminated against as an Anglo-Saxon' Grappling with pedagogies of change

Purpose – Critical discussion of the social conditions that shape educational thinking and practice is now embedded in accredited teacher education programmes. Beneath beliefs that critique of educational inequality is desirable, however, lie more problematic questions around critical pedagogies, ethics and power. Emotional investments can work to protect habituated ways of thinking, despite attempts to move students beyond their comfort zone. This strategic process can shift attitudes and promote intellectual and emotional growth, but can also produce defensive reactions. This paper, a self-study in relation to an incident in a tertiary education programme, examines how student feedback on content and pedagogy positions teachers and learners. The purpose of this paper is to frame and reframe ways in which learner feedback to critical approaches might be read. The argument examines, through dialogue, the potential of disruptive teaching approaches for recontextualising both learner and teacher response. S...

More conversations with queer young people: To be read aloud

School settings are not always experienced as safe or welcoming places if you identify as a Queer Young Person. Making available the stories of Queer Young People, and asking people to read these aloud, is a very strategic way to generate change. This workbook aims to make a contribution to the expansion of this cultures acceptance and acknowledgment of sexual and gender diversity because the wellbeing of Queer Young People, of all young people, is always compromised in settings that are not fully affirming of sexual and gender diversity. This workbook is designed to be used as a professional development resource by teachers, youth workers and others who work with young people.

Beginning Teachers Reviewing Disastrous Lessons

I currently work in pre-service teacher education and I often share a coffee with a colleague, Dr. Barbara Chancellor. During one of these coffee breaks in 2007 we were discussing tutorial conversations that occurred after beginning teachers had returned to university after professional placements.

Counting Queers on Campus: Collecting Data on Queerly Identifying Students

Demographic data on students are now routinely collected in universities. However, these data do not include information on sexual orientation and gender identity. In Australia there has been public resistance to tracking the enrollment and retention of gay, lesbian, and transgender people in tertiary education. This article interrogates this absence and refusal. We suggest that not counting queerly identifying university students is an undesirable effect of “power knowledge” as well as a discriminatory practice unjustifiably supported by an assemblage of ideas, activities, systems, discourses, and affectivities. We make a case for collecting such data and argue that doing so is an equity innovation that aligns with diversity work and enhances social justice outcomes in higher education.

Critical incident sparks critical incident sparks critical incident: an ‘aresolutionist’ method

Abstract In this article the authors propose a concept of aresolutionism and outline an aresolutionist method/ology which emerged from reflective practice research. This research was prompted by an event that occurred during a tutorial and the outlined methodology is illustrated by an account of subsequent events and processes. The authors draw on poststructuralist theorizing and methods such as writing as inquiry to counter the resolutionism that permeates dominant approaches to research and reflective practice. In their own research, the authors’ aim shifted from solving a pedagogic problem to analyzing the event as a complex assemblage and exploring the discourses that circled their discussions about the event. A problem to solve had become an object of curiosity.

“This course made me feel guilty to be an Australian”: Exterior assemblages and continuing reflections

Purpose From one Graduate Diploma Secondary student taking a pro-diversity course that both authors had a connection with there was a very angry response, encapsulated by the statement “This course made me feel guilty to be an Australian”. We are aware that negative student evaluations can be part of the territory for tertiary teachers working in diversity courses. The purpose of this paper is to explore the students’ confronting comment which will be construed as a type of offer that is being extended to us – an offer that we are refusing. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “exterior assemblages”, and we shift our gaze to consider “what constitutes the territory” that is our response to the pre-service teacher’s evaluative claim. Design/methodology/approach The specific methods we deployed involved an eclectic appropriation of various tools. We embarked on this process of exploration by journaling, collective reflection and informal discussions with other colleagues. Our journals responded to the question: What constitutes the place that is the territory that is our refusal of the student’s offer? In order to explore this place we: kept a hand-written journal; used conventional text and arts based practice techniques in our journaling; discussed our journal entries periodically (face to face, via Skype and via e-mail); discussed this project with colleagues – giving them knowledge that we were doing this – and that we might write journal entries about these conversations; and read a variety of relevant texts We engaged in these processes for a three month period. At the end of this period we shared journals, and set about the task of analysing them. We engaged in a number of analyses and detailed our findings over the next month. Further, over a longer period of time we engaged with this incident and our journal entries and presented a series of in progress papers at a variety of conferences and seminars. The analysis of the data generated involved discourse analysis and dialogue. Findings A series of key discourses were identified and listed in the paper. Research limitations/implications The key identified ideas are briefly linked to a series of implications for practitioners. Practical implications One of the key practical implications is the suggestion that where disagreements surface in education that one response to such moments might be for the parties to consider where they are located. Social implications The paper outlines a way of thinking about disagreements that has useful implications when considering issues relating to pedagogical strategies aiming to work towards social justice. Originality/value The paper is an original response to a critical moment that occurred for two lecturers in pre-service teacher education.

Reading Aloud as Generative

In Chap. 6, we examine the generative potential of multiplicity for the reader of a story. This chapter offers a methodology that is not so much to do with interpretation of text as it is to do with the facilitation of connection and catharsis. In particular, we suggest ‘reading aloud’ as a strategy that may incite an experience of the awareness of multisubjectivity, and that in turn might support change. We argue that this reading-aloud strategy generates a space where subjects might stall identifications and foreclosures and may support change.

Analysis to Identify Contradictions

In Chap. 5, we explore the idea that multiplicity may not always be a comfortable experience. We pay particular attention here to the identification of moments of discursively produced contradictions, conflicts and resultant tensions.

Assemblage as Analysis

In Chap. 4, we explore the notion of assemblage, focusing on the idea that identities and contexts are complex—that they consist of a multiplicity of different elements. We also explore the idea that these complex entities are relational; that is, they are composed of a diverse range of interdependent elements, which in turn exist in relationship with ‘what they are not’.