Sean Brawley

Learning Outcomes Assessment and History: TEQSA, the after Standards Project and the QA/QI Challenge in Australia.

Higher education in Australia is currently in a state of flux, with the Federal Government’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency commencing operations in January 2012. The ‘After Standards Project’ has been working with Australian university history departments and the Australian Historical Association, educating and empowering the discipline to act as a united community and assert ownership of a standards process. This article provides a stocktake of the achievements and challenges the After Standards Project has faced in coming to terms with the new environment and resultant new demands around compliance and accountability. It discusses the After Standards Project’s work in terms of both quality assurance and quality improvement, with reference to the establishment of a set of discipline standards and the trial of an accreditation scheme.

SoTL and National Difference: Musings from Three Historians from Three Countries.

What role does/should national difference play in our understanding of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) as a concept and a practice? Three historians from Australia, the UK and the USA muse on this important issue. Informed by their engagement with the literature and the field, they argue that national difference is an observable phenomenon within SoTL but that each national response has been shaped by the broader transnational/international engagements of recent years.

APPLYING STANDARDS TO TERTIARY-LEVEL HISTORY: POLICY, CHALLENGES AND THE AFTER STANDARDS PROJECT

This paper discusses the challenges of applying standards to the teaching of tertiary-level history. It gives a critical overview of the emerging standards process in Australia, re-emphasising the importance of disciplinary input in producing a workable and acceptable regulatory framework under the aegis of Australia’s recently-established Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). To this end, it argues for the importance of building capacity within the history discipline both to engage with policy makers in coming months, and to take an active role in defining and implementing national standards for tertiary history. It suggests the potential of grassroots initiatives such as the After Standards project to assist historians in meeting this challenge. This article has been peer-reviewed

The internationalisation of the scholarship of teaching and learning: The formation of HistorySOTL

In November 2006 a group of historians met in Washington DC and formed HistorySOTL: the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in History. This paper explores the antecedents to this event by first briefly defining and outlining the recent educational phenomena known as the ‘scholarship of teaching and learning’ (SOTL). With its discipline-based focus, SOTL encourages historians to do more to think about, share and improve their practice. The emergence of disciplined-based ‘communities of practice’ amongst British and American historians and the current Australian state of play is then discussed before the paper examines the origins, formation and planned activities of HistorySOTL. The international-isation of discipline-specific ‘communities of practice’ is an idea whose time has come and historians are at the forefront of such developments. This article has been peer-reviewed.

A forum on assessment, accountability and the humanities Introduction: Minding – and managing – the gap

It’s one of those words that doesn’t travel particularly well. ‘Assessment’ means different things to different people in different places. In the English-speaking world it is another example of the common language that divides us in the scholarship of teaching and learning community. And finding mutual understanding is even more complicated, when discussions around the term are particularly volatile, as they are right now. In some contexts, ‘assessment’ refers to the way student learning is judged in the classroom: the assignments and exams that make student learning visible, the grading and feedback students receive on their work, and the criteria by which their performance is evaluated. This is part and parcel of pedagogy, and while it can be done well or poorly, and as a joy or a burden, it is seldom seen as a threat to instructors’ professional standing or the disciplinary integrity of their teaching. Indeed, just the reverse. Designing good assignments or examinations, providing helpful feedback, and using appropriate criteria for judgment are widely accepted as key aspects of professional academic work. In most, if not all, higher education settings, instructors have the freedom – and obligation – of performing these tasks on their own, subject only to institutional norms of pedagogical propriety and their own discipline’s traditions of grading/assessment. However, when an external accountability movement captures ‘assessment’, both the term and the activities are in danger of losing whatever innocence they may once or otherwise have enjoyed. No longer concerned with the work of

‘Can You Imagine the Shire Without the Sharks!?’: Building the Community Capital of the Cronulla-Sutherland Rugby League Club – From 1967 to the Eve of Super League in 1996

The relationships between sporting clubs and their geographical communities are far from straightforward. Using the Australian National Rugby League team the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks as a case study, this article explores such relationships through the notion of ‘community capital’. Central to building such capital is the construction of ‘legends’ that connect the club to the community. Accordingly, an examination of the local media and publicity produced by the club, and the way in which the Sharks sought to first build and then utilise this capital, is provided.

Why Weren’t We Taught? Exploring Frontier Conflict Through the Lens of Anzac

ABSTRACT This article examines public understandings of two key strands of Australian history that sit at opposite ends of a spectrum of remembrance: frontier conflict and Anzac. The former, W. E. H. Stanner argued in 1968, was subsumed in a vacuum of silence, lost to popular consciousness in a wilful act of forgetting. Despite a wealth of subsequent scholarship documenting the violence and dispossession that characterised European colonisation, considerable gaps in public awareness about these foundational events remain. Anzac, in contrast, has become a defining narrative of Australian history for large segments of the general population and the political class. Recent scholarship suggests that this prominence has served to mask other, important histories of the continent, including frontier conflict. In this article, we argue that this is neither a necessary nor essential binary, and further, that one can inform the other. The written reflections of 320 tertiary students enrolled in a course about Australian military history provide insights into the ways that frontier conflict is popularly understood and how the fascination with Anzac can be leveraged to raise awareness of the violent historical dimensions of colonisation.

Sydney Beaches: A History

century photography was produced and the frontier zones where Europeans sought “authentic” Aborigines for their cameras. There are thus additional inter-colonial histories (including beyond Australia’s boundaries) which are downplayed by the framework adopted here and might be given more attention. Another significant area of inquiry introduced here is twentieth-century amateur photography. Much more remains to be said about the relationship between such image-making practices and the personal and political struggles of Aboriginal people through the twentieth century, though the chapter by Karen Hughes and Aunty Ellen Trevorrow is exemplary in how such an informal archive—with its affecting and significant absences and gaps—might be approached. It is only through the positive contribution of this volume in sketching out a field of inquiry that these and other areas for additional research emerge. If there is a substantive criticism I would make of Calling the Shots it is that reproduction of photographs does not always do justice to the significance of these images. The approach of printing photos in black and white onto stark white benefits some images better than others: several lose detail and texture becoming washed out by the over-bright white backing. Others show signs of poor digital reproduction, including pixelation. Given the obvious care taken in observing representational protocols, it is reasonable to assume that the low quality of some images here reflects the economies of Australian academic publishing—especially for Aboriginal subject matter—rather than the intentions of the editor and contributors, who have brought their considerable talents and insights to bear on this field.

THE ‘SPIRIT OF BERRINGTON HOUSE’

During the Pacific War prominent ‘neo-ethicals’ H.J. van Mook, Ch.O. van der Plas and F.D. Holleman established a civil service school in Melbourne, Australia, to train a new generation of Indies administrators who would realise their vision for a post-war Indonesia. Reflecting the ambitions of this post-war future, the schools students would be both Dutch and Indonesian. This study explores the neglected Bestuursschool at Berrington House as a first step in wartime efforts to realise a neo-ethical future for Indonesia. A focus of the study is the experience of two of the schools students; the Ambonese war heroes Julius Tahija and Samuel Jacob. The neo-ethical future for Indonesia would not be realised. The ‘Spirit of Berrington House’ could not successfully negotiate the changes to Indonesian society brought on by the Pacific War.

Compliance: Built to Fail, Negotiating the Compliance Paradox

Why does a student choose to study history in their first year at University? Is it because they want to engage with the signature pedagogy of the history discipline or simply because they hold an interest in learning more about American history? This chapter explores the consequences (existing and potential) that have confronted the study of history in higher education within a sector now focussed on standards and compliance. After outlining the new regulatory environment and the current sector landscape and players, the threats to the history major provided by the current compliance agenda are explored. The structural limitations associated with the major when placed beside its international comparators, especially in England and Wales, are also examined within the context of the attainment of standards. What are the consequences of designing units for a history major when the vast majority of the students are actually not completing the major? The chapter concludes by suggesting a way that Australia’s history majors can escape the compliance paradox.