The university sector in Australia is particularly vulnerable to shifts in fed-eral government po... more The university sector in Australia is particularly vulnerable to shifts in fed-eral government policy and funding mechanisms. It is a largely public sys-tem and federally funded, requiring annual reports provided each year to the government on a range of measures such as student numbers, attrition
This paper draws on Zygmunt Bauman's Wasted Lives to explore the ways in which young people a... more This paper draws on Zygmunt Bauman's Wasted Lives to explore the ways in which young people are constructed in an alternative education site in a regional Queensland (Australian) city. It draws heavily on interview data collected from the school principal to document the ways in which the school resists constructions of the 'rubbish student'. This resistance, we suggest, provides an indication of how mainstream schools can better serve the needs of some of their most marginalised students.
code: ZIP98209 Originally titled: Concepts of `discourse' in critical educational research: S... more code: ZIP98209 Originally titled: Concepts of `discourse' in critical educational research: Some tensions and primrose paths Lew Zipin, University of Wisconsin-Madison Paper presented as a work in progress at the Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference Adelaide, South Australia 29th November 3rd December, 1998
This article argues that approaching social justice through school curriculum is a daunting prosp... more This article argues that approaching social justice through school curriculum is a daunting prospect that compels 'us' (educators who care for justice) to pursue contradictory imperatives. To 'do justice' with learners from power-marginalised communities, we are compelled to recognise and make use of knowledge that has cultural familiarity and meaning (use-value) in their lives. At the same time, following Bourdieu, we cannot ignore that, in a capitalist society, curriculum is bound up in high-stakes competition for life-chances, coded to select for those who inherit powerful cultural capital (exchange-value). This requires us to give serious curricular effort to redistributing the codes of 'winning' cultural capital to those who, by accident of birth, do not inherit it in their families. The article therefore argues for a both/and approach to curricular justice: both work with use-valued cultural knowledge, and redistribute exchange-valued knowledge (cultura...
Through performance criteria tied to funding mechanisms, the Australian federal government exerts... more Through performance criteria tied to funding mechanisms, the Australian federal government exerts unprecedented degrees of control over resource-starved universities, submitting them to accountability demands and ‘market’ logics. A result has been severe decline in the autonomy not only of universities from external governance, but of academic staff from internal university governance. Ascending modes of managerial governance – associated with corporatising trends in many public sector institutions – are especially pernicious in the Australian university sector. As senior executives become more muscular, there is concomitant weakening of traditional governance bodies, such as academic boards, and even some powers of councils to whom managers are accountable. In consequence – as analysed in this article – academic working lives are regulated increasingly less by ‘representative’ bodies and processes, and more through everyday regimes of practice and relation that induce subconscious ...
Institution-centric governance focusses on the university’s reputational capital as driven by qua... more Institution-centric governance focusses on the university’s reputational capital as driven by quasi markets, tied to the career advancement of an increasingly powerful managerial caste. Entrenching across the Australian university sector, this approach to governance has whittled away multiple democratic functions of the Australian university, leaving central senior management and Council able to remove core capacities of the university in teaching, research and community service. We argue in contrast for a de-centred institution, through a community-oriented and community-participatory research agenda on problems that matter for the community as a way to regenerate the social justice mission of the university. Drawing on the pragmatist philosophical resources of the activist scholar, Isabelle Stengers, our proposed focus suggests a way out of the “enterprise university” and its institution-centric, authoritarian governance.
This article envisions, and argues for, what I call a problematic-based curriculum approach (PBCA... more This article envisions, and argues for, what I call a problematic-based curriculum approach (PBCA) in which students work with/on knowledge in relation to local lifeworld problems that matter. In the process, students and teachers would extend curriculum work beyond school walls, engaging with diverse knowledgeable actors – ‘lay’ and ‘expert’ – in relation to mattering problems. In outlining PBCA, I draw significantly on Vygotskyan thought, including the Funds of Knowledge approach to curriculum design, and on Isabelle Stengers’ pragmatist arguments for a proactive politics of knowledge in which ‘expertise’ proliferates. The article also contrasts PBCA with the Social Realist approach to curriculum (SR) that underpins South Africa’s Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS). In this contrast, I argue that SR/CAPS is re-formative, whereas CPBA would be trans-formative in Nancy Fraser’s sense of “chang[ing] the deep grammar” that frames curriculum, towards robust and vitally ...
This paper critically explores theoretical, conceptual, and methodological dimensions of three so... more This paper critically explores theoretical, conceptual, and methodological dimensions of three social-justice oriented educational approaches: Bourdieuian Analysis of Capital (BAC), Funds of Knowledge (FK), and Community Cultural Wealth (CCW). We surface convergences and divergences across these three frameworks, seeking to clarify them conceptually, draw out implications for educational praxis, illuminate importantly difficult tensions in-and-across them, and (re)imagine future directions for utilizing these frameworks to address intersecting structural inequalities in the pursuit of strengthened social-educational justice. We argue that putting BAC, FK, and CCW into mutual interrogation can deepen understanding of these inequalities and ways to approach them in education praxis.
Journal of Educational Administration and History, 2021
The history of Australian mass schooling has seen contestations over school and curriculum purpos... more The history of Australian mass schooling has seen contestations over school and curriculum purposes, zig-zagging across conservative and progressive directions. In this paper, we examine how possibilities for students to have ‘voice’, ‘participation’ and ‘leadership’ in their learning are currently limited in Australia. Policy framings, we argue, dampen potentials for connecting young people’s democratic and activist impulses – manifest, in our example, in the School Strike for Climate movement – with curriculum activity that responds to local-global challenges such as the viral-ecological crisis. We propose an activist curriculum praxis wherein young people undertake action-research – in collaboration with diverse community actors, teachers and academics – on problems that matter for local-global future life with others. Since local-global emergencies are emergent, curriculum must build citizen-capacities to work together, apprenticing to problems that matter for social futures, cr...
The university sector in Australia is particularly vulnerable to shifts in fed-eral government po... more The university sector in Australia is particularly vulnerable to shifts in fed-eral government policy and funding mechanisms. It is a largely public sys-tem and federally funded, requiring annual reports provided each year to the government on a range of measures such as student numbers, attrition
This paper draws on Zygmunt Bauman's Wasted Lives to explore the ways in which young people a... more This paper draws on Zygmunt Bauman's Wasted Lives to explore the ways in which young people are constructed in an alternative education site in a regional Queensland (Australian) city. It draws heavily on interview data collected from the school principal to document the ways in which the school resists constructions of the 'rubbish student'. This resistance, we suggest, provides an indication of how mainstream schools can better serve the needs of some of their most marginalised students.
code: ZIP98209 Originally titled: Concepts of `discourse' in critical educational research: S... more code: ZIP98209 Originally titled: Concepts of `discourse' in critical educational research: Some tensions and primrose paths Lew Zipin, University of Wisconsin-Madison Paper presented as a work in progress at the Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference Adelaide, South Australia 29th November 3rd December, 1998
This article argues that approaching social justice through school curriculum is a daunting prosp... more This article argues that approaching social justice through school curriculum is a daunting prospect that compels 'us' (educators who care for justice) to pursue contradictory imperatives. To 'do justice' with learners from power-marginalised communities, we are compelled to recognise and make use of knowledge that has cultural familiarity and meaning (use-value) in their lives. At the same time, following Bourdieu, we cannot ignore that, in a capitalist society, curriculum is bound up in high-stakes competition for life-chances, coded to select for those who inherit powerful cultural capital (exchange-value). This requires us to give serious curricular effort to redistributing the codes of 'winning' cultural capital to those who, by accident of birth, do not inherit it in their families. The article therefore argues for a both/and approach to curricular justice: both work with use-valued cultural knowledge, and redistribute exchange-valued knowledge (cultura...
Through performance criteria tied to funding mechanisms, the Australian federal government exerts... more Through performance criteria tied to funding mechanisms, the Australian federal government exerts unprecedented degrees of control over resource-starved universities, submitting them to accountability demands and ‘market’ logics. A result has been severe decline in the autonomy not only of universities from external governance, but of academic staff from internal university governance. Ascending modes of managerial governance – associated with corporatising trends in many public sector institutions – are especially pernicious in the Australian university sector. As senior executives become more muscular, there is concomitant weakening of traditional governance bodies, such as academic boards, and even some powers of councils to whom managers are accountable. In consequence – as analysed in this article – academic working lives are regulated increasingly less by ‘representative’ bodies and processes, and more through everyday regimes of practice and relation that induce subconscious ...
Institution-centric governance focusses on the university’s reputational capital as driven by qua... more Institution-centric governance focusses on the university’s reputational capital as driven by quasi markets, tied to the career advancement of an increasingly powerful managerial caste. Entrenching across the Australian university sector, this approach to governance has whittled away multiple democratic functions of the Australian university, leaving central senior management and Council able to remove core capacities of the university in teaching, research and community service. We argue in contrast for a de-centred institution, through a community-oriented and community-participatory research agenda on problems that matter for the community as a way to regenerate the social justice mission of the university. Drawing on the pragmatist philosophical resources of the activist scholar, Isabelle Stengers, our proposed focus suggests a way out of the “enterprise university” and its institution-centric, authoritarian governance.
This article envisions, and argues for, what I call a problematic-based curriculum approach (PBCA... more This article envisions, and argues for, what I call a problematic-based curriculum approach (PBCA) in which students work with/on knowledge in relation to local lifeworld problems that matter. In the process, students and teachers would extend curriculum work beyond school walls, engaging with diverse knowledgeable actors – ‘lay’ and ‘expert’ – in relation to mattering problems. In outlining PBCA, I draw significantly on Vygotskyan thought, including the Funds of Knowledge approach to curriculum design, and on Isabelle Stengers’ pragmatist arguments for a proactive politics of knowledge in which ‘expertise’ proliferates. The article also contrasts PBCA with the Social Realist approach to curriculum (SR) that underpins South Africa’s Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS). In this contrast, I argue that SR/CAPS is re-formative, whereas CPBA would be trans-formative in Nancy Fraser’s sense of “chang[ing] the deep grammar” that frames curriculum, towards robust and vitally ...
This paper critically explores theoretical, conceptual, and methodological dimensions of three so... more This paper critically explores theoretical, conceptual, and methodological dimensions of three social-justice oriented educational approaches: Bourdieuian Analysis of Capital (BAC), Funds of Knowledge (FK), and Community Cultural Wealth (CCW). We surface convergences and divergences across these three frameworks, seeking to clarify them conceptually, draw out implications for educational praxis, illuminate importantly difficult tensions in-and-across them, and (re)imagine future directions for utilizing these frameworks to address intersecting structural inequalities in the pursuit of strengthened social-educational justice. We argue that putting BAC, FK, and CCW into mutual interrogation can deepen understanding of these inequalities and ways to approach them in education praxis.
Journal of Educational Administration and History, 2021
The history of Australian mass schooling has seen contestations over school and curriculum purpos... more The history of Australian mass schooling has seen contestations over school and curriculum purposes, zig-zagging across conservative and progressive directions. In this paper, we examine how possibilities for students to have ‘voice’, ‘participation’ and ‘leadership’ in their learning are currently limited in Australia. Policy framings, we argue, dampen potentials for connecting young people’s democratic and activist impulses – manifest, in our example, in the School Strike for Climate movement – with curriculum activity that responds to local-global challenges such as the viral-ecological crisis. We propose an activist curriculum praxis wherein young people undertake action-research – in collaboration with diverse community actors, teachers and academics – on problems that matter for local-global future life with others. Since local-global emergencies are emergent, curriculum must build citizen-capacities to work together, apprenticing to problems that matter for social futures, cr...
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