Philip Roberts

Researching Rural Places On Social Justice and Rural Education

This paper explores some of the political and methodological challenges involved in researching rural education. It begins by outlining the situation in Australia regarding the relationship between social justice and rural education. It first describes the disadvantages experienced by many rural communities and presents an analysis of rural educational achievement in Australia. The paper then argues the limitations of traditional and established notions of social justice and, in this context, presents Soja’s proposal that spatiality is a third way of understanding the world. The paper is organized and informed by the principle that what matters, first and foremost, is the nature of the research problem, with decisions about methodology following, and shaped accordingly.

Performers and postulates: the role of evolving socio-historical contexts in shaping new teacher professional identities

In this article we investigate the generative causes of variation in the professional identity of new teachers. Building on previous work that has shown a link between professional identity and socio-political context, we argue that the context experienced in late adolescence and early adulthood is particularly significant in shaping how beginning teachers think of themselves as teachers. This finding suggests that the linear response to neoliberal education reform described in much of the critical literature may be too simple to account for the range of ways teachers interact with the system. There is, therefore, a need for greater diversity in research approaches to work with the complexity of social systems in and around schools. To support this call for methodological diversity, we borrow the life story model of identity as a theoretical framework and use a computer-assisted phenomenographic analysis technique to find new ways into the research data.

Conflicting messages: sustainability and education for rural-regional sustainability

This article brings together the fields of rural education research and other rural social sciences and humanities to advance the notion of rural-regional sustainability. Literature suggests rural schooling may at times work against the interests of rural communities because of the different knowledge and value systems in operation. Through survey analysis of community understandings of sustainability in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, and a content analysis of sustainability in the curriculum documents of educational justifications servicing the same bio-region, the article outlines how conflicting meanings are often in use. These meanings, it is suggested, can work against the sustainable futures of rural communities and potentially put the missions of schools and communities in conflict. Recognizing that sustainability is a broad term used in often competing ways, the article suggests the idea of rural-regional sustainability is a positive, future-orientated term that can connect schools and communities working together to sustain rural regions.

No time to think: policy, pedagogy and professional learning

In this study, we seek to illuminate the effects of the global policy convergence in education through a close study of its enactment within an Australian Teacher Education course. Building on an examination of the changing priorities of a cohort of pre-service teachers over a short space of time, we argue that the enactment of New Public Management approaches to the governance of teaching in Australia is having adverse effects on the professional learning of new teachers, defeating the policy goals. Previous studies have investigated the affective impact of current global policy formations on teachers. Building on that work, this study considers the impacts that the teacher policy emphasis on ‘performance’ has had on professional learning processes, which are understood with reference to Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory. The study is undertaken using an interpretative phenomenographic approach and informed by the related methods of discursive psychology, which positions discourse as a discursive practice to achieve specific goals in specific contexts.

Re-visiting Historical Literacy: Towards a disciplinary pedagogy

The inclusion of History in the first phase of the Australian Curriculum rollout illustrates the importance placed on the subject in the national conversation. However, there remains much debate about just what the role of history is in the curriculum, and exactly what it means to teach history. Recognising that these issues may be unfamiliar to many middle years teachers, this paper introduces the ideas of Historical Literacy, Historical Thinking and Historical Consciousness. It then looks at how each of these concepts helps teachers understand the disciplinary characteristics of history in order to introduce the idea of a disciplinary approach to teaching history. Finally, the characteristics of a disciplinary literacy are explored through the example of two recent research projects, one using technology and the second using historical documents.