Peter McInerney

‘Coming to a place near you?’ The politics and possibilities of a critical pedagogy of place-based education

It may seem something of a paradox that in a globalised age where notions of interdependence, interconnectedness and common destinies abound, the ‘local’, with its diversity of cultures, languages, histories and geographies, continues to exercise a powerful grip on the human imagination. The ties that bind us have global connections but are anchored in a strong sense of locality. This paper explores the theoretical foundations of place-based education (PBE) and considers the merits and limitations of current approaches with particular reference to Australian studies. The authors argue that there is a place for PBE in schools but contend that it must be informed by a far more critical reading of the notions of ‘place’, ‘identity’ and ‘community’. The implications of pursuing a critical pedagogy of place-based education are discussed with reference to curriculum, pedagogy and teacher education.

Moving into Dangerous Territory? Educational Leadership in a Devolving Education System.

Not surprisingly, many studies affirm the pivotal role of school leaders in shaping the culture of schools and the quality of teaching and learning that occurs in classrooms (Barth 1990, Fullan 1992, Grace 1995a, Sergiovanni 1998). But over the past decade the work of principals in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand has undergone a major transformation in the wake of the restructuring of public education, a central element of which has involved a shift towards more devolved education systems. How is the work of principals being conceived today? What are the dilemmas and challenges confronting educational leadership in these new sets of arrangements? Drawing on recent empirical research from Australia, this article documents the impact of school-based management on educational leadership. It locates the emergence of new models of leadership within a corporate managerialist philosophy of a neo-liberal state that devalues the pedagogical attributes of school leadership and reinforces a growing divide between teachers and administrators. This analysis involves an overview of recent policy shifts between schools and the education centre and incorporates data from semistructured interviews with public school principals in Australian schools. After highlighting the tensions between the centre and schools in the exercise of educational leadership, the paper explores the possibilities of nurturing more distributive and educative forms of leadership in the current political climate.

Toward a critical pedagogy of engagement for alienated youth: insights from Freire and school‐based research

Although alienation is widely recognized as a barrier to educational success for many students, prevailing explanations tend to focus on psychological traits and individual deficits, rather than the oppressive economic and social structures bearing down on young people. This paper addresses the issues of youth alienation and student engagement from a critical/sociological perspective. Informed by Paulo Freires philosophy and praxis, I argue that any meaningful response to the phenomenon requires a critique of the dehumanizing forces that operate within and outside schools and the development of a renewed project for a critical pedagogy that is more attuned to the influences of globalization and popular culture on young peoples lives. The practical possibilities, limitations and potential development of such a pedagogy is discussed with reference to a cluster of Australian high schools serving low socioeconomic communities.

Whose Side Are You on? Advocacy Ethnography: Some Methodological Aspects of Narrative Portraits of Disadvantaged Young People, in Socially Critical Research.

This paper is primarily interested in opening up a strategy to counter the increasing silencing of perspectives resulting from the press towards “evidence-based” forms of research. We argue that all researchers have interests, declared or otherwise. What we advance in the paper is an approach to ethnography that is inclusive of the lives, perspective, experiences, and viewpoints of the least powerful. Methodologically we demonstrate something of how we have explored the intellectual craft and possibilities of portraiture as a way of advancing the notion of advocacy ethnography.

From Naive Optimism to Robust Hope: Sustaining a commitment to social justice in schools and teacher education in neoliberal times

Drawing on a school ethnography and the voices of graduate students, this paper explores the concept of robust hope with reference to the ideal of social justice in education policy and practice. Although the arguments to support a commitment to social justice in education systems, schools and teacher education programs, are often well‐articulated, the pedagogical and political strategies to achieve such goals often remain elusive. If we are to reclaim the utopian imagination of socially just schools and egalitarian society we need to move beyond naive optimism to cultivate a notion of robust hope that is praxis‐oriented and fully cognisant of the complexities, tensions and difficulties associated with the task. “Getting real” in this sense requires the development of conceptual ideas to critique existing social arrangements, a vision of an emancipatory alternative, and a set of political strategies and resources to affect progressive change. Notwithstanding the difficulties of contesting market‐driven approaches to education, this study reveals that there are “resources of hope” in schools, educational institutions and the broader community to guide teachers and teacher educators in pursuing a goal of socially just schooling.

Blurring the boundaries: from relational learning towards a critical pedagogy of engagement for disengaged disadvantaged young people

This paper tackles what is arguably the most pervasive and pressing educational issue confronting affluent Western countries – the disengagement, disconnection and tragic displacement from schooling of increasing numbers of young people, mostly those from backgrounds of disadvantage. Despite enormous policy efforts, this ‘problem’ is proving impossible to dislodge from within the existing educational policy paradigm that appears to be exacerbating the problem. This paper explores theoretically and practically what alternative attempts might look like that start from within the lives and experiences of those most affected, young people as well as their teachers, and it explores what some research ‘portraits’ look like from ‘inside’ the existential realities of these complexities. Employing the heuristics of ‘new mobilities’, the paper looks at some alternative ways of locating ‘new social spaces’ from which to re-engage and re-connect these young people with learning, and with some effect. The paper is sanguine about the extensive work yet to be done, and in this regard it proffers some thoughts on the unfinished business of what it terms a ‘critical pedagogy of engagement’.

Making ‘space’: young people put at a disadvantage re-engaging with learning

Young people who disengage or disconnect from school are often demonised within the media and the wider public imagination, from a largely individualized and pathological positioning. Policy explanations and responses are often unhelpful in their focus on a range of ‘deficit’ attributes – poverty, poor parenting, dysfunctional families, low familial achievement, aspiration and motivation, and other ‘at risk’ categories. This paper offers a different explanatory framework that foregrounds the experiences of some young people who had disengaged from school and resumed learning under a very different set of conditions to the ones that had exiled them from schools in the first place. Using a socio-spatial framework, the paper explores the notion of ‘relational space’ as it was appropriated and reclaimed by these young people, in explaining how they saw themselves as constructing viable and sustainable learning identities for themselves.

Teacher Learning: The Way Out of the School Restructuring Miasma.

The rightful role of teachers in the current wave of educational restructuring around the world reveals that teachers have had less than a prominent role in that. This paper argues that teachers exercise important pedagogical leadership in schools through the way they shape, enact and live the vision and culture of their schools. A particular instance in Australia is described in which sustaining a culture of debate around teaching and learning, and the indigenous structures that support a more politicized view of teacher learning, constitute a crucial expression of how teachers live out an entitlement to speak.

Re-engagement to where? Low SES students in alternative-education programmes on the path to low-status destinations?

This paper poses a rarely asked question – Re-engagement to where? Or to what valued social purpose for the young people concerned? Drawing from a larger project funded by the Australian Research Council, the paper analyses the ‘portraits’ of two young people whose lives were seemingly better within a re-engagement programme, but whose lives were severely circumscribed by the narrow vocationalism offered in the programme. More concerning was the fact that the considerable natural talents and skills of these young people were neither acknowledged nor used as the basis to improve their life chances or opportunities.

Sculpting a ‘social space’ for re-engaging disengaged ‘disadvantaged’ young people with learning

This paper examines the complex constellation of conditions that turn many young people into ‘exiles’ from schooling. From the vantage point of young people, the paper traces out a profile of the conditions that need to be brought into existence for these young people to find a way back into learning. The paper argues that current educational policies are deeply hostile to young people in the ways they position them as ‘silent witnesses’ and exclude them from having a voice in the important decisions about what they learn, how, with whom, and with what effects. In contrast, the paper explores six alternative programmes in Australia, warehoused from within the same systems that ‘damaged’ these young people. Paradoxically these programmes are seen as providing these damaged young people with the spaces in which they can become powerful ‘active agents’ in re-forming an educational identity for themselves. Where these alternatives depart from the damaging policy regime is in the highly context-sensitive way they enable young learners and local policy advocates who work with them, to effectively contest exclusionary and undemocratic neoliberal policies.