Terri Seddon

Education: Deprofessionalised? or Reregulated, Reorganised and Reauthorised?

THIS paper considers recent claims that education is being deprofessionalised. It argues that judgements about the deprofessionalisation, or reprofessionalisation, of education are made relative to different theories of professionalism and discusses the way different theories of professionalism encourage particular focuses on, and readings of, empirical data. The paper suggests that recent theoretical developments which see professionalism as discourse offer a way of rethinking professionalism and educational change as part of an ongoing politics of knowledge, power and social groups which plays out in relationships between state and civil society. The challenge is to see deprofessionalisation and reprofessionalisation as part of an ongoing politics of knowledge, power and social organisation, and to consider the character and parameters of preferred reprofessionalisation that might be pursued through contemporary processes of educational change.

Markets and the English: rethinking educational restructuring as institutional design

Abstract This paper analyses the concerns, parameters and silences emerging in the field of English research on contemporary educational restructuring. The research effort oriented to the investigation of Thatcherism and the marketisation of education is documented. Its strong emphasis on markets and processes of marketisation and its neglect of alternatives to Thatcherism is noted. This pattern of emphases and silences in research seems to have arisen as a result of changes in the research‐policy context, and because of the way Thatcherism has been conceptualised in educational research. I argue that these developments have encouraged a narrowing of both research and political horizons in education. I suggest that a more comprehensive framework for analysing educational restructuring can be developed by recontextualising Thatcherism and drawing on recent social science research on institutional design. Such a framework would appear to offer a basis for tackling the empirical and normative work of assessi...

Building Community through Social Partnerships around Vocational Education and Training.

Abstract Social partnerships that respond to and address local needs are becoming an increasingly significant feature of public policy, particularly in Europe and more recently Australia. The trend is also being actively promoted through the development planning agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, UNESCO and World Bank. The common policy intent is to devolve decision-making to the local level where action consequences are more immediate and more readily realised than in more centralised forms of governance. Working to secure mutuality of interests and reconciliation of conflicting interests among client groups then becomes the hallmark of mature service delivery. This article sets out the conceptual terrain for ‘new’ social partnerships in terms of their prospect of building communities through participation in vocational education and training (VET). It initially identifies some of the qualities and characteristics of ‘new’ social partnerships being enacted in VET, their achievements and contributions to community building. In doing so, it highlights some bases for judging the successes and threats to these social partnerships, and to appraise the extent to which they have shifted conceptions of learning beyond traditional institutional spaces occupied by centralised policy formulation and provision of VET through education institutions. A principal concern is to identify strategies for making social partnerships work better in supporting localised decision-making and opportunities for VET to be enacted in ways to support both communities and individuals.

Changing Research Contexts in Teacher Education in Australia: Charting New Directions.

This paper examines research into initial teacher education in light of current Australian policy initiatives concerned with both the quality of research conducted in higher education and the quality of teacher education programs. The purpose of the paper is to explore some ways in which the research is, and can be, positioned in the current policy context. The paper begins with a brief overview of some of the main characteristics of the research concerned with initial (pre‐service) teacher education in Australia over the last decade. In terms of scope, scale and methodology, the research can be characterised in the following way: typically small‐scale; many one‐off studies; localised in nature; and a growing application of qualitative research methods. An obvious strength of this type of research is that it is closely tied to practice and to the day‐to‐day workings of initial teacher education programs. An equally obvious weakness is that the research does not necessarily have so called ‘impact’ in relation to policy debates and/or other measures of success in the wider research community. The paper charts some possible new directions for teacher education research in ways that build on the strengths and address the weaknesses. The directions can be characterised as follows: a ‘big funding’ approach; an ‘institutional aggregation’ approach; and a ‘platforms and protocols’ approach.

National curriculum in Australia? A matter of politics, powerful knowledge and the regulation of learning

Abstract This article maps the contentious question of ‘national curriculum’ in Australia. It explains both why there is no national (i.e. Australian) curriculum, and analyses the history of curriculum formation with a view to documenting the changing significance and status of ‘national’ (i.e. nation-building) curriculum. The analysis is informed by an historical sociology perspective which begins by considering curriculum in relation to the national question in Australia and then moves on to examine the role of curriculum in the contemporary re-design of education as a social institution and a regulatory device within the Australian national jurisdiction.

Defining the real: context and beyond

This paper draws attention to the trend to consider context in educational discourse. It documents the increasing use of “context” in everyday educational talk and in educational research and begins to consider the implications of this trend for the theory and practice of education. The paper considers different ways that context is used and suggests that over the last 5‐10 years conceptions of context have shifted. As well as being understood spatially as the outside or backdrop relative to a phenomenon of interest, context is increasingly being considered in a more ephemeral figure and ground relationship. I argue that this shift marks a significant reframing of education and its implications in the practice and politics of education and educational research.

Decentred Education: Suggestions for Framing a Socio-Spatial Research Agenda.

This paper explores the trend towards a decentred social organization of learning that has become evident over the last 30–40 years. This is illustrated by the shifting imagery of education, from the red brick school to dispersed learning networks, or ‘learning bubbles’, that constitute new learning spaces. In the context of our large funded research project that aims to assess new learning spaces, we problematize this decentring of education and consider theoretical social and spatial resources that help us to understand this shift in the social organization of learning. We draw these insights together as suggestions for framing a socio‐spatial research agenda and the key themes that help us to interrogate decentring and the emergence of new learning spaces, how these trends are manifest in educational practices, and the implications for affective learning, learners and their life chances.

Steering futures: practices and possibilities of institutional redesign in Australian education and training

This paper reports findings from an enthographic study of educational restructuring in an Institute of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) in Victoria Australia. Educational restructuring is analysed as a process of institutional redesign and theorized in relation to recent debates in institutional theory concerning the nature of institutional change. The review distinguishes between hyperrational approaches to institutional redesign based upon assumptions about rational actors and their motivations and behaviours, and social and cultural perspectives on institutional redesign that sees purposeful institutional change achieved through processes of ‘institutional gardening’. The paper documents the way Australian governments have adopted hyperrational strategies aimed at changing education and training by reworking institutional rules that frame the day-to-day practices within particular organizations. Reworking these practices of organizing serves to steer change by restructuring and rearticulating rel...

Framing justice: challenges for research

This paper raises questions about the apparent research commonsense that has developed in much English and Australian policy sociology in relation to neo-liberal or ‘post-welfarist’, education reform. These questions arise out of an interrogation of two evaluations of social justice in neo-liberal education contexts: Gewirtzs social justice audit which is reported in The Managerial School and an analysis of social justice in the context of training reform in Victoria, Australia. By exploring the dissonances in these two evaluations, the paper problematizes social justice within post-welfarism, the way these developments are being theorized and what counts as decisive information which serves as evidence of justice.

Renewing Sociology of Education? Knowledge Spaces, Situated Enactments, and Sociological Practice in a World on the Move

Sociology of education is caught in a dilemma. The study of education and society that unfolded through the twentieth century produced educational vocabularies that spoke into education policy and practice about inequality and social justice. Now that sociologically informed educational discourse is marginalised by individualistic economic-psychological vocabularies that read inequality as individual deficits and aspirations. The question is, how can sociology of education speak into contemporary educational knowledge and construct vocabularies that re-open dialogue about social justice? In this article, the concept of ‘knowledge space’ is used to understand the situated enactment of sociological practice that disciplines sociological knowledge about education. A mobile methodology is used to report on three knowledge spaces that locate sociological practice and frame sociological knowledge. The article argues that global transitions have re-scaled and re-ordered the relation between the sovereign and governmental spatial powers that previously centred education. These shifts trouble education and its perceived applications, and also divide national from supra-national sociologies of education. Reconciling these sociologies requires studies of intersecting spaces, scales and the mobilities that fabricate educations and societies. It demands explicit attention to methodological choices, but also offers spaces of possibilities for renewing sociology of education as a powerful discourse.