Thomas O'Donoghue

Living in Chaos and Striving for Control : How adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder deal with their disorder

This article reports a Grounded Theory of “Living in Chaos and Striving for Control” developed in response to the central research question of how adults diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) deal with their disorder. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 10 males diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood. “Chaos” emerged as the basic social–psychological problem facing these participants. The basic social–psychological process employed by them to deal with the problem was identified as “The Double Life”. This process became the core category around which the theory was developed. The theory demonstrates that adults with ADHD live in a state of chaos (Category 1), while striving for control (Category 2). When the state of control is achieved (Category 3) it is never permanent, and loss of control (Category 4) is inevitable. The lives of these adults are constantly cycling through chaos and control, and this results in their leading a “double life” (Category 5).

Transforming university curriculum policies in a global knowledge era: mapping a “global case study” research agenda

Radical curriculum policy transformations are emerging as a key strategy of universities across different countries as they move to strengthen their competitive position in a global knowledge era. This paper puts forward a “global case study” research agenda in the under-researched area of university curriculum policy. The particular curriculum policies to be investigated point to potentially new forms of liberal education, and they resonate in varying degrees with contemporary patterns in Europe as well as longer standing patterns in the United States. This research agenda stands to make a unique contribution with its “whole curriculum” approach to: the examination of the relationship between curriculum content, pedagogy and assessment; the tracking of curriculum policy borrowing across different jurisdictions extending between global and local levels; and the investigation of historical antecedents of contemporary curriculum policy patterns. In particular, the proposed agenda features a rare combination of spatial and temporal dimensions of university curriculum policy flows. This research agenda will provide a strong empirical evidence base for extending theory building about university curriculum policy development, as well as policy “learning” for policy makers, practitioners and scholars – globally.

Global-local dynamics of curriculum policy development: a case-study from Singapore

Non-government education is often a highly emotive and frequently irrational area of educational debate, especially when it centres on the degree of government funding and support. Frequently people take fortified positions, being either for or against it, often on political grounds and often without taking into account the cultural contexts and complexities involved. The purpose of this article is to look beyond these confines. It is based on a research project focusing on ‘whole’ curriculum policy at the individual school level in non-government schools in a variety of English-speaking countries in the developed world. The article is in three parts. The first part outlines the conceptual framework employed to guide our research project on curriculum policy. The second part presents a case-study of Chinese High School (CHS) in Singapore. This is an exemplar of the type of case-study of curriculum policy in non-government schools being undertaken as part of our research. Also, it is an interesting case in its own right; while the school has developed a global orientation to its curriculum policy and has incorporated ‘the global’ into ‘the local’ extremely rapidly, this curriculum transition has not been without its tensions and costs. The third part of the article offers a discussion of the ‘bigger picture’ implications of the findings.

Researching the lives of Catholic teachers who were members of religious orders: historiographical considerations

Introduction When many of the parents of those currently attending Catholic schools throughout much of the English-speaking world were being educated, the Catholic teaching force was heavily influenced by the presence of the religious orders. Furthermore, this had been the situation for over a century. The turning point was the mid-1960s and the opening up of the Catholic Church (the Church) to the modern world as a result of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). Amongst the related developments were large numbers leaving the orders, a major drop off in new recruits and a consequent need to employ ever-greater numbers of lay teachers. Consequently, young people being educated nowadays in Catholic schools are usually taught by lay teachers, the principals in their schools are lay men and women, and lay people predominate on their school boards. Equally, the presence of nuns, religious brothers and priests as teachers and administrators in the schools is minimal. The demise of the teachers who were members of religious orders (the teaching religious) has been accompanied by a fading of memory regarding their presence. There has been a flowering of hagiographic work on those who founded the orders and particularly on what Catholic historians in various parts of the English-speaking world have termed the ‘struggle’ for state aid. This work, however, has not been accompanied by a major corpus of serious scholarship on the social history of the lives of the ‘religious’. In other words, while religious historians have devoted considerable time to portraying the work of their members as heroic, as undertaken with saintly zeal and as a response to a divine call, secular historians have not been as active in examining the political, social and economic motivations underlying the actions of the religious teaching orders and in trying to understand how their members were socialized into opting for the religious way of life by a variety of institutions, including Catholic schools. This paper raises some historiographical issues regarding the development of the history of Catholic religious teachers, and particularly of their lives. The first part is aimed at locating the small body of research on the history of the lives of the teaching religious within the context of the more general field of the history of teachers. A brief account then follows highlighting a much neglected perspective, namely, that the growth of Catholic orders of teaching religious can be viewed as an outcome of political, social and economic action on the part of the institutional Church. The third part of the paper problematizes the

Colonialism, education and social change in the British Empire: the cases of Australia, Papua New Guinea and Ireland

This paper focuses on the history of relations between colonialism, schooling and social change in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Ireland, countries that were once part of the British Empire. It indicates that responses to schooling ranged from acceptance and tolerance, to modification and rejection, depending on the country, the issue, and the historical period. There were also differences in the historical connections in schooling between Britain itself and each country: regarding Australia, the relationship was predominantly unidirectional, from the centre to the Antipodes; in PNG British educational ideas which arrived were filtered through the Australian administration; while in Ireland, British initiatives in schooling contributed not only to social change there, but also helped produce loyal personnel to work in Britain and the colonies. Attention is also given to areas of interdependence and interconnectedness, and to illustrating how conducting such case studies is important in order to help counter alternative interpretations promoted by powerful sectors in society in the interest of reproducing their social privilege.

School Development Planning and the Classroom Teacher: A Western Australian Case-Study.

ABSTRACT This paper reports a study aimed at understanding teachers’ perceptions of the school development planning process at one school site in Western Australia (WA). Firstly, it considers the general background to school development planning in WA. Secondly, it outlines the methodology of the study. Three major interrelated propositions with regard to the teachers’ perceptions of the process are then discussed. First, the teachers in the school perceive that the introduction of school development planning is part of a wider agenda by the Government to devolve as much responsibility for administration as possible to schools, and particularly to teachers, with the primary aim being to reduce the cost of the central administration. Secondly, they perceive that the WA Education Department intends to continue its strong control over the direction and operation of schools and, as a consequence, they feel restrained from engaging enthusiastically in school development planning. Thirdly, they perceive that sc...

The Principal's Contribution to School Restructuring Initiatives Aimed at Improving Teaching and Learning Exploring the Potential of the Edited Topical Life History Research Approach

Studies on principal ship the world over have largely failed to keep pace with the changing contexts in which principals now operate. This paper advocates an edited topical life history approach to bridge this gap. This claim is illustrated using research conducted within Western Australia which sought to understand why certain school principals are more successful than others in guiding restructuring initiatives designed to improve teaching and learning. It is suggested that as a body of such studies builds up it will be possible to develop nomothetic explanations of the role which principals can play in enabling such restructuring.

The need for educational reform and the role of teacher training: An alternative perspective

Abstract This is a rejoinder to a paper in the International Journal of Educational Development relating to the proposals of the 1991 Education Sector Review in Papua New Guinea. It contends that the paper presents an accurate picture of the Reviews portrayal of the current problems of educational provision in the country but draws attention to the uncritical manner in which the Reviews proposals are considered. A number of critical questions are raised with regard to three aspects of the Review highlighted in the paper.

Teacher Representation in News Reporting on Standardised Testing: A Case Study from Western Australia.

News media coverage on education plays a “uniquely important role in shaping public opinion”, can influence educational policy, and can affect and concern teachers. Yet, research examining how teachers have been represented in the news is scarce. What is particularly scarce are investigations with a historical dimension. The study reported in this paper is offered as a contribution towards rectifying the deficit and pointing the way towards one of a number of avenues of research that other scholars in the field could take for various contexts (including different countries) and time periods. It is part of a much larger study whose aim was to provide a historical analysis of The West Australian newspaper’s representation of teachers in its reporting of five major educational developments in the State of Western Australia that were the subject of sustained coverage at various times between 1987 and 2007. The specific topic which is the focus of the analysis presented in this paper is “standardized testing”.

Harm Minimisation Strategies Utilised by Incarcerated Aboriginal Volatile Substance Users

Semi-structured interviews with 12 incarcerated Aboriginal volatile substance users (VSUs) resulted in the generation of six propositions on the harm minimisation strategies used. Specifically, VSUs were aware of the dangers of their substance use and consequently “sniffed” in groups and in public. Individuals, who from the earliest stages of VSU had been faced with choice of substance tended to reject those substances and implements for sniffing which were potentially the most dangerous. Other harm minimisation factors in VSU included contact with the family, being a social user, taking exercise and witnessing other sniffers suffering major injuries, sickness or death because of certain activities associated with their VSU.