Stephen John Hay

‘Smart state’ for a knowledge economy: reconstituting creativity through student subjectivity

Rejecting notions of creativity as self‐realisation through free expression, this article argues that such discourses currently driving education policy comprise intellectual technologies for the production of student subjectivities required by neoliberal contexts. Using a governmentality framework, it locates the conditions of possibility for the creative subject within dominant policy articulations of the global knowledge economy and emerging rationalities of risk and uncertainty. The analysis focuses on an industry school partnership formed by a state education system in Queensland, Australia, and several multinational corporations. It examines how the partnership has emerged as a novel neoliberal space for the constitution of new education figures such as the enterprising teacher and the entrepreneurial student‐worker. These subjectivities are functional to the devolved governing strategy of social investment, which seeks to achieve a broad reconstitution of relationships between students, schools and industry in Queensland.

Constructing productive post‐school transitions: an analysis of Australian schooling policies

Not having clear pathways, or the social means and personal capacities to make a productive transition from schooling, can inhibit young people’s participation in social and economic life thereafter. This paper advances an analysis of how policy documents associated with senior schooling from across Australian states address the needs of students who are most at risk of not securing productive transitions. The review identifies that many of the goals emphasised the autonomy of students in taking control of their own transitions. However, such individualistic views downplay the importance of the mediating role that access to cultural, social and economic capital is likely to play in the negotiations involved in making a productive transition. Thus, the needs of ‘at‐risk’ students who may have limited access to the forms of capital offering the best support for these negotiations are not well acknowledged in the policies.

Industry school partnerships: reconstituting spaces of educational governance

Industry school partnerships have emerged recently in Australia as a policy solution for the management of problems associated with integration into the global economy. This paper draws on governmentality theory to examine a transnational partnership, the Gateways to the Aerospace Industry Project, which has been mobilised to manage transition risk for young people in the state education system of Queensland, Australia. It argues that globalisation emerges as an effect of knowledge producing practices and programmes that seek to reconfigure the governmental spaces and subjectivities in and around schools and communities.

TRANSFORMING SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL GOVERNANCE: TRADE TRAINING CENTRES AND THE TRANSITION TO SOCIAL INVESTMENT POLITICS IN AUSTRALIA

ABSTRACT: Prior to its election to office in 2007, the Australian Labor Party announced a commitment to introduce Trade Training Centres (TTCs) into all Australian secondary schools as an initiative of its Education Revolution. TTCs were proposed as a key element of Federal Labors education and training policy that aimed to manage future risks to Australias competitiveness in the emerging global economy and to support school-to-employment transitions for young people. This analysis adopts a governmentality framework to conceptualise the Federal Governments introduction of TTCs alternatively as a key strategy for nationalising social investment politics in Australia. The paper draws on recent Australian policy documents to argue that TTCs are social technologies that work to open up social spaces in and around schools for governing relationships between schools and other community stakeholders, particularly businesses and families. The paper concludes by examining policy implications, including those of social justice, for promoting school community partnerships through TTCs.

Can Competency-Based Training Fly?: An Overview of Key Issues for "Ab Initio" Pilot Training.

Abstract Competency-based training (CBT) for pilots was formally introduced in 1999 by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) for training leading to the issue of aeroplane private and commercial pilot licences. This initiative followed the Australian government’s introduction of CBT policy for vocational and workplace training in the late 1980’s. Since then CBT has been criticised for supporting the teaching and assessment of complex skills by breaking them down into sets of simple skills or sub-routines. This paper argues that in the case of aviation in Australia, codifying flying skills for the purpose of standardising and regulating flying instruction and assessment in early flying lessons has resulted in unintended consequences for pilot training policy and practice. It proposes that while CBT may be used appropriately for initial development of physical flying skills, its application is limited in areas of pilot training which require complex decision-making and critical judgement. The paper considers alternative approaches to pilot training that may be more suitable for teaching and assessing complex flying skills, whilst also addressing the identified limitations inherent in CBT.

School Education as Social and Economic Governance: Responsibilising communities through industry-school engagement

This article examines shifts in educational and social governance taking place in Queensland, Australia, through Education Queenslands Industry School Engagement Strategy and Gateway Schools program. This significant educational initiative is set within the context of Queenslands social investment agenda first articulated in its education policy framework, Queensland State Education‐2010. The article traces the historic extension of this overarching governmental strategy through establishment of the Gateway Schools concept, brokering state‐wide industry‐school partnerships with key global players in the Queensland economy. Industry sectors that have formed partnerships in Gateway projects include Minerals and Energy, Aerospace, Wine Tourism, Agribusiness, Manufacturing and Engineering, Building and Construction and ICT, with more industries and schools forecast to join the program. It is argued that this ‘post‐bureaucratic’ model of schooling represents a new social settlement of neoliberal governance, which seeks to align educational outcomes with economic objectives, thereby framing the conditions for community self‐governance in Queensland.

Governing Schooling, People and Practices: Australian Policies on Transitions

This chapter analysed Australian State and Territory policies on the transition from school to post-school life. The chapter used two lenses to give multiple understandings of transition. The first lens, a content analysis of the policies using Leximancer software, identified five themes that were significant across all State policies. These themes were students, school, young people, assessment and skills. This analysis showed that the school was depicted in these documents as a bridge between students and young people, and between school and work. The second lens, a fine-grained critical discourse analysis of selected extracts from the documents, traced discourses on transition in the policies and related these discourses to the wider social context. The analysis showed that the policy discourses defined transitions in terms of the problem of economic productivity, which in turn was defined by school retention and completion rates. Increased economic prosperity was to be gained through policies that mandated participation in, and engagement with, schooling, indicating a view of young people as a problem requiring government intervention. The policies sought to regulate young people and schooling through policy discourses that steered changes in the practices of senior secondary schooling. That is, the policy discourses realised spaces for the governance of schooling and young people as they constructed frameworks for actions aimed at increasing school retention and completion rates in order to build a skilled workforce to ensure economic prosperity. The analysis found that this heavy emphasis on economic productivity was mitigated by a focus on social inclusion resulting from the governing rationality of social investment. This rationality constrained the practices available to young people, placing a heavy emphasis on linear progressions from school to post-school life. However, the presence of alternative discourses, such as those that discussed social inclusion in human terms, attested to the inherently unstable nature of the policy process and to possibilities for challenges to, and contestation of, policy discourses as they are enacted in local sites.

The Creativity Imperative: Implications for Education Research

Arguing for the importance of understanding the conditions under which certain forms of the social subject become visible and viable, this chapter conceptualises the current educational focus on ‘creativity’ as a technology of governmentality that has arisen from the perceived need for governing authorities to manage and responsibilise populations for the pervasive uncertainties of the global economy. With reference to the document, Tough Choices or Tough Times, a publication of the National Center on Education and the Economy in the United States, we show how creativity has been reframed as a programmable capacity of the modern student, citizen and worker primarily because it is considered an indispensible source of enterprise and innovation. Education and family life are an integral part of this bio-politics and the ongoing ‘economisation’ of social life. Our concern is that this reductionist understanding of creativity precludes other transgressive and culturally enriching creativities that represent the infinite range of subjectivities associated with imaginative human capacity and activity. It is vital therefore that educational research renders this historical process transparent and opens spaces for more socially inclusive, sustainable and productive ways of being such as those indicated by the three respondees.

The communication “Roundabout”: Intimate relationships of adults with Asperger’s syndrome

Abstract Reciprocal communication between couples is central to sustaining strong intimate relationships. Given that Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) affects communication and social reciprocity, adults with this disorder are vulnerable to experiencing difficulties in relating to their “neurotypical” (NT) partner. As reported in a previous paper, prompt dependency was found to be a compensatory mechanism for some of the communication difficulties within AS-NT relationships. This paper draws on the same data-set to describe the impact of prompt dependency on AS-NT relationships. The research reported here is also used to derive a theoretical model that illustrates how a cycle of prompt dependency results in a communication “roundabout” for partners. Implications for practice and further research are discussed.

The Translation of Transitions Policies into School Enactment

This chapter presents a synthesis of the themes and issues emerging from the contributions across this section, each of which focused on the transition to post-school life for young people in Queensland, Australia. In particular, it applies a curriculum enactment perspective to this synthesis. The enactment of education policy is held to involve ‘interpretation because implementers must figure out what a policy means and whether and how it applies to their school to decide whether and how to ignore, adapt, or adopt policy locally’ (Spillane J, Diamond J, Burch P, Hallett T, Loyiso L, Zoltners J, Educ Policy 16(5):733, 2002). As a consequence, beyond the policy prescriptions provided earlier in this book, here the consideration turns to issues of enactment and an appraisal of nexus between intentions and enactments. In doing so, the chapter is presented in three parts. It commences by revisiting the policies relating to post-school transitions in Queensland and Australia and locating policy prescriptions in turn within the international context. The second part draws on the case study evidence to identify the characteristics and consequences of the curriculum decision-making associated with the implementation of transition policies, as discussed in the case studies. This section draws out similarities and differences amongst the various approaches to managing transitions across the three case study schools. In the third section, conclusions are identified from the study’s findings for informing productive transition policy and enactment more widely. In all, it is concluded that factors extending from global sentiment, federal schooling funding priorities, state government policies and local preference and requirements shaped what is done in three Queensland schools to facilitate student’s post certification transitions from school to further learning or work.