Sophie Rudolph

The Politics of Post-Qualitative Inquiry: History and Power

In this article, we offer a critical reading of the increasingly popular “post-qualitative” approach to research. We draw on insights from postcolonial theory to offer some provocations about the methodological and conceptual claims made by post-qualitative inquiry. The article considers how post-qualitative inquiry opens up possibilities for post-humanist social research. But, our critical reading of these “new” approaches argues that such research needs to attend to political and historical relations of social power, both in the worlds it constitutes and in the processes of its knowledge production. Without explicit attention to power and history, the (non)representational logics of post-qualitative inquiry risk operating less as “new” mechanisms for generative and subversive post-humanist research and more as processes of closure and erasure: closed-off from the worlds and people being researched.

Drawing out the value of the visual: children and young people theorizing time through art and narrative

This article examines the role that drawing can play in enabling children and young people to theorize concepts of time. In two, independent Australian research projects, children aged between 5 and 8 years were asked to respond to the question, ‘What might the future be like?’, while 12–14 year olds were asked, ‘What does history look like?’ There are points of connection and convergence in the analysis of the drawings and the ways in which the children articulate their visual representations of temporality to demonstrate deep and philosophical insights. This research illuminates possibilities for both the value of art practices in learning and the capacity for such approaches in schools. It disrupts narrow visions of neoliberal policy that privileges the teaching of literacy and numeracy in schools and seeks to transform children and youth into particular citizens for the future. We argue that expanding our view of the use and value of visual forms of learning and expression can contribute to a more layered and complex understanding of the capacities of children and young people. Further, this research contributes to better understanding of how students navigate challenging local curriculum and school terrain as they are increasingly posited as global citizens.

Teacher Responsibility: Shifting Care from Student to (Professional) Self?.

Abstract The professionalisation of teaching in Australia is a policy shift that transpires within broader policy dynamics which are increasingly influenced by neoliberal logics. In this article we examine teacher responsibility through analysis of a new measure introduced in Victoria. This requires teachers to prove professional development hours in the area of teaching students with special needs in order to maintain their professional registration. Through our analysis of this policy move we draw out some tensions that emerge in relation to teacher responsibility, accountability and autonomy to reveal that (often hidden) neoliberal governing logics can operate to shift teachers’ focus from care of the student towards care of the (professional) self. With the theoretical support of Nel Noddings’ ‘ethic of care’, we argue that teacher responsibility to care can be torn between market-based regulations and the care of the student, paradoxically de-professionalising teachers’ work in the act of attempting to professionalise.

On being included: racism and diversity in institutional life

focuses on childcare, a key element of the challenges faced by this group, which overlaps with time and financial issues. This chapter shows that, because of the specific childcare needs of this group (irregular and often ‘out of hours’), ‘traditional’ childcare provision is not always suitable. Yet, Hinton-Smith also shows how students’ needs for atypical childcare are compounded by university time regimes which still target, to some extent, the needs of the ‘Bachelor boy’. Chapter 7 goes back to some key issues and provides a framework conceptualising the experiences of lone parents. In there, the author highlights the interrelatedness of care, studying and paid work and shows the partiality of research looking at students’ educational trajectories in isolation of their other commitments. While this chapter looks at some of the difficulties lone student typically face, for example social isolation, stress or ill health, it also highlights the benefits associated with their dual status and how resourceful and agentic they are – a common thread throughout this book. The longitudinal dimension of this study proves most useful when exploring the more emotional aspects of participants’ experiences, the ebb and flow of their feelings, as well as the longer-term identity changes associated with being a lone parent and a student. The book concludes with Chapter 8, which includes some general discussion of lone parents’ needs and some recommendations for policymakers in the face of the continuing lack of awareness of this group’s needs. Overall, Lone Parents’ Experiences as Higher Education Students offers a highly readable and comprehensive account of lone mothers studying in UK HE. On the downside, the absence of lone fathers from this study, despite the author’s attempt to include them, is regrettable, as it may have produced further insights into the gendered dimension of being a student and a lone parent. On the upside, the author manages to highlight how policies and cultural norms contribute to shape the experiences of lone mothers who are HE students without denying them agency. Her methodological approach favours an understanding of the negotiations involved in the daily lives of lone students, as well as of the deeper changes and trends they go through in the longer term. The book will be of interest to academics whose work touches upon social justice issues in education, public policies and/or parenting, especially as, in many respects, the experiences of lone parents in HE seem to magnify the issues faced by other groups of non-traditional students, such as ‘mature’ students. The book will also be of interest to policy-makers, particularly as detailed recommendations accompany the findings. More generally, it represents a welcome addition to a scholarship linking the personal and public lives of HE students.

To “uplift the Aborigine” or to “uphold” Aboriginal dignity and pride? Indigenous educational debates in 1960s Australia

Abstract The 1960s in Australia was a politically turbulent time with assimilation policies being questioned by moves in various spheres, including education, to address inequality. The late 1960s also saw the emergence of activist responses to racism as well as the groundbreaking 1967 Referendum, which called for the alteration of two clauses within the Australian Constitution that discriminated against the Indigenous population. A few months after the Referendum was held, a conference called Aborigines and Education was convened at Monash University. Education was seen to be vital in addressing what was described as “profound educational disadvantage” experienced by Indigenous people. The debates that ensued show how education was imagined to be able to solve the problems Indigenous students were encountering. In this article I confine my interest to a selection of papers and examine the features of two distinctive discourses that emerge: that of “uplifting the Aborigine” and that of “upholding” Aboriginal dignity and pride. In doing this, I demonstrate how particular “race logics” were employed and contested in these debates. I argue that the insights garnered through analysis of these discourses offer opportunities for education research and practices that are in solidarity with the emancipatory goals of marginalised communities.

Borders as the productive tension between the universal and the particular: challenges for education in a global era

Abstract For some scholars and commentators, the era of globalisation represented a new border-less age. However, the continuing legacy of colonial expansion through contemporary forms of imperialism and mass movement of migrants and refugees, has ensured that, in today’s globalised world, the relevance of the border is growing, not declining. Indeed, the question of the border seems more urgent than ever. It is this urgency that has driven us to pause, here, on the idea and problem of ‘the border’. We argue that borders are a ‘fact’ of social life and that the border represents the social and material manifestation of the political and ethical problems of the relationship between the universal and the particular. This relationship is an irresolvable but necessary tension for the pursuit of justice, which we suggest sociological and education work must confront and attend to.

Knowledge and racial violence: the shine and shadow of ‘powerful knowledge’

AbstractThis paper offers a critique of ‘powerful knowledge’ – a concept in Education Studies that has been presented as a just basis for school curricula. Powerful knowledge is disciplinary knowledge produced and refined through a process of ‘specialisation’ that usually occurs in universities. Drawing on postcolonial, decolonial and Indigenous studies, we show how powerful knowledge seems to focus on the progressive impulse of modernity (its ‘shine’) while overlooking the ruination of colonial racism (its ‘shadow’). We call on scholars and practitioners working with the powerful knowledge framework to address more fully the hegemonic relations of disciplinary specialisation and its historical connections to colonial-modernity. This, we argue, would enable curriculum knowledge that is ‘powerful’ in its interrogation of racial violence, rather than in its epistemic reproduction of it.

The relationality of race in education research

This edited collection examines the ways in which the local and global are key to understanding race and racism in the intersectional context of contemporary education. Analysing a broad range of examples, it highlights how race and racism is a relational phenomenon, that interconnects local, national and global contexts and ideas. The current educational climate is subject to global influences and the effects of conservative, hyper-nationalist politics and neoliberal economic rationalising in local settings that are creating new formations of race and racism. While focused predominantly on Australia and southern world or settler colonial contexts, the book aims to constructively contribute to broader emerging research and debates about race and education. Through the adoption of a relational framing, it draws the Australian context into the global conversation about race and racism in education in ways that challenge and test current understandings of the operation of race and racism in contemporary social and educational spaces. Importantly, it also pushes debates about race and racism in education and research to the foreground in Australia where such debates are typically dismissed or cursorily engaged. The book will guide readers as they navigate issues of race in education research and practice, and its chapters will serve as provocations designed to assist in critically understanding this challenging field. It reaches beyond education scholarship, as concerns to do with race remain intertwined with wider social justice issues such as access to housing, health, social/economic mobility, and political representation.