This article utilises recent Australian schooling policies and associated international education... more This article utilises recent Australian schooling policies and associated international educational policies as a stimulus to reflect on the extent to which schooling provides genuinely 'educational' opportunities for students. To do so, the article draws upon Gert Biesta's notion of the 'risk' of education to analyse the extent to which recent and current key federal government policies in Australia, and significant OECD and UNESCO policies, seem to enable more educationally-oriented schooling. The article reveals that while there are multiple discourses at play in relation to federal government policies, the way in which these policies have become more 'national' in orientation, and the attendant prescriptive attention to 'capturing' students' learning in more and more 'precise' ways, mitigate against the possibilities for more risk-responsive schooling opportunities for students. While educational policies are always open to contestation in their enactment, more economistic and managerial foci within these texts militate against more productive, 'risky', learning. As a consequence, Australian schooling policy is a 'risky proposition'-not because it places students 'at risk' of harm but because it does not draw sufficiently upon notions of risk as a resource to inform educational provision in preparation for living in an uncertain world.
This article examines the nature of neoliberal influences upon educational policy making in the F... more This article examines the nature of neoliberal influences upon educational policy making in the Finnish education system in recent times. The article draws upon key policy documents, government reports, journal articles and media articles about reforms in the early childhood, basic/compulsory school and vocational education and training sectors to evidence these processes. Analytically, these reforms are understood as instances of what has been referred to as ‘fast policy’. Methodologically, we draw upon principles of zeitgeist analysis to reveal the features and effects of these fast policy influences as they relate to educational provision in Finland. These features and effects include intensification and fragmentation of educational reform processes, increased individualisation and decontextualization of the educational reform agenda, and a trend towards increased instability, privatisation and reduction in funding for educational provision. The article foregrounds the features a...
Although language test-takers have been the focus of much theoretical and empirical work in recen... more Although language test-takers have been the focus of much theoretical and empirical work in recent years, this work has been mainly concerned with their attitudes to test preparation and test-taking strategies, giving insufficient attention to their views on broader socio-political and ethical issues. This article examines test-takers’ perceptions and evaluations of the fairness, justice and validity of global tests of English, with a particular focus upon the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Based on relevant literature and theorizing into such tests, and on self-reported test experience data gathered from test-takers (N = 430) from 49 countries, we demonstrate how test-takers experienced fairness and justice in complex ways that problematized the purported technical excellence and validity of IELTS. Even as there was some evidence of support for the test as a fair measure of students’ English capacity, the extent to which it actually reflected their language ...
The authors argue that the professional learning practices of teachers in precarious employment m... more The authors argue that the professional learning practices of teachers in precarious employment may have a significant impact upon their understandings of specific policy reforms. The analysis considers a teacher's understandings of learning about a new policy in light of the various 'epistemological resources' he brought to bear to his learning opportunities and the particular 'framing' which developed. The research reveals that enactment of policy reform is dependent upon opportunities for teachers in precarious employment circumstances having access to paid, professional learning opportunities on an ongoing basis. Such access may be reduced by the neoliberal challenge to historical employment relationships in education.
In this paper, we examine how Teach for Bangladesh (TfB) has utilised Facebook since 2012 in its ... more In this paper, we examine how Teach for Bangladesh (TfB) has utilised Facebook since 2012 in its effort to extend its policy influence and message to young Bangladeshi graduates and local population. We reveal this as an example of how Facebook has become a powerful new platform for policy mediatisation. This is also a developing worldexample of a [global] policy rewritten [locally] as audio-video bytes. Our analyses reveal three ways in which TfB sought to influence these graduates, but also the local government and public, via Facebook. First, it created opportunities for recurrent reading, hearing and seeing the policy in practice as animated by 'stars' , 'spectacles' , 'glamour' and 'statistics' , all of which regularise a sense of heroic bodily feeling-asvernacularisation. Secondly, it sought to inform and reshape the social imaginary and associated problem imagination of the graduates and locals to whom this message was directed. And thirdly, it involved what might be described as a 'post-truth' way of engagement via the excessive use of emotional stimulus, manifesting an understanding of the affective aspect of policy. We have used a combination of social network analysis, content analysis and videological analysis in establishing our argument. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty-psychic or physical.
h i g h l i g h t s Policy enactment can be understood as a form of professional/teacher learning... more h i g h l i g h t s Policy enactment can be understood as a form of professional/teacher learning. District educators' professional learning is important for enacting policy reform. District educators draw upon various 'epistemological resources' to make sense of reform. But these resources are always enacted within particular 'epistemological communities'. District educators' experiences of these communities are essential for fostering teacher learning.
This article reveals the multifaceted ways in which policy enactment was expressed as praxis in t... more This article reveals the multifaceted ways in which policy enactment was expressed as praxis in the context of assessment reform in Ontario, Canada. The research explores the way in which the Growing Success assessment policy was interpreted variously by different educators occupying senior roles within the district office in a single school district in northern Ontario. Drawing on neo-Aristotelian theorising, the research reveals how 'policy in practice' was expressed as a form of praxis, where such praxis is understood as morally committed and informed action oriented towards excellence in a field (in this case, education). While recognising the complexity of policy enactment, and how policy enactment can result in unforeseen and sometimes problematic outcomes, the research also reveals how policy enactment can have productive outcomes in relation to what are construed as the 'internal goods' of education. In the research presented, these productive outcomes included the capacity to facilitate teachers' learning within and across elementary and secondary school sites; a critical, constructive focus on standardised measures of student learning in relation to academic outcomes; and the enhancement of student learning opportunities via cultural inclusion, particularly in relation to First Nations, Métis and Inuit students. In this way, the research validates a conception of policy as praxis and foregrounds how policy enactment can be understood in ways that promote the intrinsic integrity of educational practice, and the need to draw on these 'internal goods' in such enactment.
Practice Theory Perspectives on Pedagogy and Education, 2017
This chapter provides a ‘societist’ (Schatzki in Philos Soc Sci 33(2):174–202, 2003) account of ‘... more This chapter provides a ‘societist’ (Schatzki in Philos Soc Sci 33(2):174–202, 2003) account of ‘learning’ using the theory of ‘practice architectures’ (Kemmis and Grootenboer in Situating praxis in practice: Practice architectures and the cultural, social and material conditions for practice. Enabling praxis: Challenges for education. Sense, Rotterdam, pp. 37–62, 2008; Kemmis et al. in Changing education, changing practices. Springer Education, Singapore, 2014). Drawing on observations of classrooms, schools and a school district, the authors argue, first, that people ‘learn’ practices , not only ‘knowledge ’, ‘concepts’ or ‘values’, for example. They suggest that learning a practice entails entering—joining in—the projects and the kinds of sayings , doings and relatings characteristic of different practices. The metaphor that learning involves being ‘stirred in’ to practices conveys the motion and dynamism of becoming a practitioner of a practice of one kind of another, like learning or teaching. Being stirred into practices suggests an account of ‘learning’ that elucidates the process, activity and sociality of learning as a practice.
Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 2016
The importance of leadership for improving educational outcomes in schools has been widely promot... more The importance of leadership for improving educational outcomes in schools has been widely promoted. However, the nature of leadership practices, in context, has received less attention in the educational leadership literature. In this article, we present a case study of the specific leadership practices that developed in one school site serving the learning needs of students in a complex, diverse, low socio-economic community in south-east Queensland, Australia. Rather than focusing on the person/role of ‘the leader’, or various leadership qualities/traits, we examine the nature and particularity of the leadership practices as praxis, across a variety of roles and dispositions, as developed within the school. To help make sense of the praxis and particularity of educational leadership practices, we draw upon recent neo-Aristotelian practice theory to reveal the specific actions (‘doings’), dialogue (‘sayings’) and relationships (‘relatings’), which constituted leadership-in-practic...
In this paper we focus on the development of educational practice and praxis in the university co... more In this paper we focus on the development of educational practice and praxis in the university context. We utilize Schatzki’s (2002) notion that practices are ‘the site of the social’, and our own recent work on ‘site-based education development’ as a form of praxis (Kemmis, Wilkinson, Edwards-Groves, Hardy, Grootenboer & Bristol, 2014) to investigate university teaching practices in Australia. Drawing upon the presenters’ individual and collective inquiries into three instances of change in three Australian universities, and at three levels of inquiry (personally; faculty-wide; university-wide), we reveal how the praxis-focused activities of individuals, and collective reflective inquiry can help stimulate transformed educational practice in the university sector. The educational landscape in the university sector, like the other education sectors, is being dominated by a “performative audit culture” (Comber & Nixon, 2011, p. 168), and academics are having their teaching practices ...
This paper provides insights into non-Indigenous teachers' efforts to engage proactively and prod... more This paper provides insights into non-Indigenous teachers' efforts to engage proactively and productively with students to enhance their learning in a predominantly Indigenous community in northern Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon notions of 'funds of knowledge' , forms of capital as part of community cultural wealth, Critical Race Theory, and 'whiteness' studies, the research explores and challenges how white teachers draw upon community as a form of 'capital' to enable them to foster their students' learning. These efforts to 'capitalise' on community reveal the school as a site of struggle for genuinely inclusive educational practices. These struggles were evident in: teachers' and school administrators' ostensive care about their students but struggles to translate this into robust expectations as part of a genuinely inclusive curriculum; the cultivation of social and cultural capital to learn about the nature of the communities in which teachers worked but a tendency to deploy such knowledges for more instrumentalist reasons as part of their engagement with both the 'official' curriculum and Indigenous students; and, a desire and capacity to develop connections between community cultural capital and more dominant forms of capital but in ways which do not adequately foreground Indigenous epistemologies as curriculum. The research reveals teachers' efforts to develop understandings of community cultural wealth and the funds of knowledge within communities, but also how their understandings were partial and proximal, and how subsequent social and teaching practices tended to instrumentalise Indigenous perspectives and insights.
This article reveals the nature of actions, discussions and relationships which helped forge scho... more This article reveals the nature of actions, discussions and relationships which helped forge school-community partnerships for engaged student learning and wider community participation for students and families living under difficult socioeconomic circumstances. Specifically, the article draws upon interviews with key personnel and staff involved in the establishment and enactment of a 'Community Partnerships' programme to help improve the opportunities for students attending a primary school serving a low socioeconomic urban community in southeast Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon Kemmis et al.'s (2014) notion of educational practice as a product of ongoing interactions between particular actions ('doings'), discussions ('sayings') and relationships ('relatings'), which both constitute and are responsive to particular conditions or 'architectures' for practice, the article reveals how the conceptualisation, establishment and consolidation of the Community Partnerships programme was dependent upon specific 'relatings' between key district and school personnel, the actions/'doings' of these personnel, and ongoing 'sayings'/dialogue about their work. Collectively, these 'doings', 'sayings' and 'relatings' all helped to stimulate new conditions-'practice architectures'-for improved opportunities for students and their families. Teacher education informed by such theorising of communitypartnerships as the product of specific actions, dialogue and relationship-building is vital for developing improved understandings of such interactions and partnerships over time.
In this article, we highlight the specificity of teachers’ practices in an era of increased atten... more In this article, we highlight the specificity of teachers’ practices in an era of increased attention to reified measures of data as evidence of student learning. Drawing upon Kemmis et al.’s (2014) notion of educational practice as characterized by specific ‘sayings,’ ‘doings’ and ‘relatings,’ under particular ‘cultural-discursive,’ ‘material-economic’ and ‘socio-political’ conditions, we analyze teachers’ work practices in two public schools in south-east Queensland. We reveal granular details about how teachers’ engagement with reified forms of student evaluation data under broader neoliberal policy conditions influenced their personal and professional identity as teachers. We argue that engagement with such data processes under these conditions leads to not only their demoralization but also the devaluing of teachers’ work, and ultimately, what we claim to be the very ‘disappearance’ of the teacher – the expunging of relational, educative interactions that enable genuine student...
This article utilises recent Australian schooling policies and associated international education... more This article utilises recent Australian schooling policies and associated international educational policies as a stimulus to reflect on the extent to which schooling provides genuinely 'educational' opportunities for students. To do so, the article draws upon Gert Biesta's notion of the 'risk' of education to analyse the extent to which recent and current key federal government policies in Australia, and significant OECD and UNESCO policies, seem to enable more educationally-oriented schooling. The article reveals that while there are multiple discourses at play in relation to federal government policies, the way in which these policies have become more 'national' in orientation, and the attendant prescriptive attention to 'capturing' students' learning in more and more 'precise' ways, mitigate against the possibilities for more risk-responsive schooling opportunities for students. While educational policies are always open to contestation in their enactment, more economistic and managerial foci within these texts militate against more productive, 'risky', learning. As a consequence, Australian schooling policy is a 'risky proposition'-not because it places students 'at risk' of harm but because it does not draw sufficiently upon notions of risk as a resource to inform educational provision in preparation for living in an uncertain world.
This article examines the nature of neoliberal influences upon educational policy making in the F... more This article examines the nature of neoliberal influences upon educational policy making in the Finnish education system in recent times. The article draws upon key policy documents, government reports, journal articles and media articles about reforms in the early childhood, basic/compulsory school and vocational education and training sectors to evidence these processes. Analytically, these reforms are understood as instances of what has been referred to as ‘fast policy’. Methodologically, we draw upon principles of zeitgeist analysis to reveal the features and effects of these fast policy influences as they relate to educational provision in Finland. These features and effects include intensification and fragmentation of educational reform processes, increased individualisation and decontextualization of the educational reform agenda, and a trend towards increased instability, privatisation and reduction in funding for educational provision. The article foregrounds the features a...
Although language test-takers have been the focus of much theoretical and empirical work in recen... more Although language test-takers have been the focus of much theoretical and empirical work in recent years, this work has been mainly concerned with their attitudes to test preparation and test-taking strategies, giving insufficient attention to their views on broader socio-political and ethical issues. This article examines test-takers’ perceptions and evaluations of the fairness, justice and validity of global tests of English, with a particular focus upon the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). Based on relevant literature and theorizing into such tests, and on self-reported test experience data gathered from test-takers (N = 430) from 49 countries, we demonstrate how test-takers experienced fairness and justice in complex ways that problematized the purported technical excellence and validity of IELTS. Even as there was some evidence of support for the test as a fair measure of students’ English capacity, the extent to which it actually reflected their language ...
The authors argue that the professional learning practices of teachers in precarious employment m... more The authors argue that the professional learning practices of teachers in precarious employment may have a significant impact upon their understandings of specific policy reforms. The analysis considers a teacher's understandings of learning about a new policy in light of the various 'epistemological resources' he brought to bear to his learning opportunities and the particular 'framing' which developed. The research reveals that enactment of policy reform is dependent upon opportunities for teachers in precarious employment circumstances having access to paid, professional learning opportunities on an ongoing basis. Such access may be reduced by the neoliberal challenge to historical employment relationships in education.
In this paper, we examine how Teach for Bangladesh (TfB) has utilised Facebook since 2012 in its ... more In this paper, we examine how Teach for Bangladesh (TfB) has utilised Facebook since 2012 in its effort to extend its policy influence and message to young Bangladeshi graduates and local population. We reveal this as an example of how Facebook has become a powerful new platform for policy mediatisation. This is also a developing worldexample of a [global] policy rewritten [locally] as audio-video bytes. Our analyses reveal three ways in which TfB sought to influence these graduates, but also the local government and public, via Facebook. First, it created opportunities for recurrent reading, hearing and seeing the policy in practice as animated by 'stars' , 'spectacles' , 'glamour' and 'statistics' , all of which regularise a sense of heroic bodily feeling-asvernacularisation. Secondly, it sought to inform and reshape the social imaginary and associated problem imagination of the graduates and locals to whom this message was directed. And thirdly, it involved what might be described as a 'post-truth' way of engagement via the excessive use of emotional stimulus, manifesting an understanding of the affective aspect of policy. We have used a combination of social network analysis, content analysis and videological analysis in establishing our argument. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty-psychic or physical.
h i g h l i g h t s Policy enactment can be understood as a form of professional/teacher learning... more h i g h l i g h t s Policy enactment can be understood as a form of professional/teacher learning. District educators' professional learning is important for enacting policy reform. District educators draw upon various 'epistemological resources' to make sense of reform. But these resources are always enacted within particular 'epistemological communities'. District educators' experiences of these communities are essential for fostering teacher learning.
This article reveals the multifaceted ways in which policy enactment was expressed as praxis in t... more This article reveals the multifaceted ways in which policy enactment was expressed as praxis in the context of assessment reform in Ontario, Canada. The research explores the way in which the Growing Success assessment policy was interpreted variously by different educators occupying senior roles within the district office in a single school district in northern Ontario. Drawing on neo-Aristotelian theorising, the research reveals how 'policy in practice' was expressed as a form of praxis, where such praxis is understood as morally committed and informed action oriented towards excellence in a field (in this case, education). While recognising the complexity of policy enactment, and how policy enactment can result in unforeseen and sometimes problematic outcomes, the research also reveals how policy enactment can have productive outcomes in relation to what are construed as the 'internal goods' of education. In the research presented, these productive outcomes included the capacity to facilitate teachers' learning within and across elementary and secondary school sites; a critical, constructive focus on standardised measures of student learning in relation to academic outcomes; and the enhancement of student learning opportunities via cultural inclusion, particularly in relation to First Nations, Métis and Inuit students. In this way, the research validates a conception of policy as praxis and foregrounds how policy enactment can be understood in ways that promote the intrinsic integrity of educational practice, and the need to draw on these 'internal goods' in such enactment.
Practice Theory Perspectives on Pedagogy and Education, 2017
This chapter provides a ‘societist’ (Schatzki in Philos Soc Sci 33(2):174–202, 2003) account of ‘... more This chapter provides a ‘societist’ (Schatzki in Philos Soc Sci 33(2):174–202, 2003) account of ‘learning’ using the theory of ‘practice architectures’ (Kemmis and Grootenboer in Situating praxis in practice: Practice architectures and the cultural, social and material conditions for practice. Enabling praxis: Challenges for education. Sense, Rotterdam, pp. 37–62, 2008; Kemmis et al. in Changing education, changing practices. Springer Education, Singapore, 2014). Drawing on observations of classrooms, schools and a school district, the authors argue, first, that people ‘learn’ practices , not only ‘knowledge ’, ‘concepts’ or ‘values’, for example. They suggest that learning a practice entails entering—joining in—the projects and the kinds of sayings , doings and relatings characteristic of different practices. The metaphor that learning involves being ‘stirred in’ to practices conveys the motion and dynamism of becoming a practitioner of a practice of one kind of another, like learning or teaching. Being stirred into practices suggests an account of ‘learning’ that elucidates the process, activity and sociality of learning as a practice.
Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 2016
The importance of leadership for improving educational outcomes in schools has been widely promot... more The importance of leadership for improving educational outcomes in schools has been widely promoted. However, the nature of leadership practices, in context, has received less attention in the educational leadership literature. In this article, we present a case study of the specific leadership practices that developed in one school site serving the learning needs of students in a complex, diverse, low socio-economic community in south-east Queensland, Australia. Rather than focusing on the person/role of ‘the leader’, or various leadership qualities/traits, we examine the nature and particularity of the leadership practices as praxis, across a variety of roles and dispositions, as developed within the school. To help make sense of the praxis and particularity of educational leadership practices, we draw upon recent neo-Aristotelian practice theory to reveal the specific actions (‘doings’), dialogue (‘sayings’) and relationships (‘relatings’), which constituted leadership-in-practic...
In this paper we focus on the development of educational practice and praxis in the university co... more In this paper we focus on the development of educational practice and praxis in the university context. We utilize Schatzki’s (2002) notion that practices are ‘the site of the social’, and our own recent work on ‘site-based education development’ as a form of praxis (Kemmis, Wilkinson, Edwards-Groves, Hardy, Grootenboer & Bristol, 2014) to investigate university teaching practices in Australia. Drawing upon the presenters’ individual and collective inquiries into three instances of change in three Australian universities, and at three levels of inquiry (personally; faculty-wide; university-wide), we reveal how the praxis-focused activities of individuals, and collective reflective inquiry can help stimulate transformed educational practice in the university sector. The educational landscape in the university sector, like the other education sectors, is being dominated by a “performative audit culture” (Comber & Nixon, 2011, p. 168), and academics are having their teaching practices ...
This paper provides insights into non-Indigenous teachers' efforts to engage proactively and prod... more This paper provides insights into non-Indigenous teachers' efforts to engage proactively and productively with students to enhance their learning in a predominantly Indigenous community in northern Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon notions of 'funds of knowledge' , forms of capital as part of community cultural wealth, Critical Race Theory, and 'whiteness' studies, the research explores and challenges how white teachers draw upon community as a form of 'capital' to enable them to foster their students' learning. These efforts to 'capitalise' on community reveal the school as a site of struggle for genuinely inclusive educational practices. These struggles were evident in: teachers' and school administrators' ostensive care about their students but struggles to translate this into robust expectations as part of a genuinely inclusive curriculum; the cultivation of social and cultural capital to learn about the nature of the communities in which teachers worked but a tendency to deploy such knowledges for more instrumentalist reasons as part of their engagement with both the 'official' curriculum and Indigenous students; and, a desire and capacity to develop connections between community cultural capital and more dominant forms of capital but in ways which do not adequately foreground Indigenous epistemologies as curriculum. The research reveals teachers' efforts to develop understandings of community cultural wealth and the funds of knowledge within communities, but also how their understandings were partial and proximal, and how subsequent social and teaching practices tended to instrumentalise Indigenous perspectives and insights.
This article reveals the nature of actions, discussions and relationships which helped forge scho... more This article reveals the nature of actions, discussions and relationships which helped forge school-community partnerships for engaged student learning and wider community participation for students and families living under difficult socioeconomic circumstances. Specifically, the article draws upon interviews with key personnel and staff involved in the establishment and enactment of a 'Community Partnerships' programme to help improve the opportunities for students attending a primary school serving a low socioeconomic urban community in southeast Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon Kemmis et al.'s (2014) notion of educational practice as a product of ongoing interactions between particular actions ('doings'), discussions ('sayings') and relationships ('relatings'), which both constitute and are responsive to particular conditions or 'architectures' for practice, the article reveals how the conceptualisation, establishment and consolidation of the Community Partnerships programme was dependent upon specific 'relatings' between key district and school personnel, the actions/'doings' of these personnel, and ongoing 'sayings'/dialogue about their work. Collectively, these 'doings', 'sayings' and 'relatings' all helped to stimulate new conditions-'practice architectures'-for improved opportunities for students and their families. Teacher education informed by such theorising of communitypartnerships as the product of specific actions, dialogue and relationship-building is vital for developing improved understandings of such interactions and partnerships over time.
In this article, we highlight the specificity of teachers’ practices in an era of increased atten... more In this article, we highlight the specificity of teachers’ practices in an era of increased attention to reified measures of data as evidence of student learning. Drawing upon Kemmis et al.’s (2014) notion of educational practice as characterized by specific ‘sayings,’ ‘doings’ and ‘relatings,’ under particular ‘cultural-discursive,’ ‘material-economic’ and ‘socio-political’ conditions, we analyze teachers’ work practices in two public schools in south-east Queensland. We reveal granular details about how teachers’ engagement with reified forms of student evaluation data under broader neoliberal policy conditions influenced their personal and professional identity as teachers. We argue that engagement with such data processes under these conditions leads to not only their demoralization but also the devaluing of teachers’ work, and ultimately, what we claim to be the very ‘disappearance’ of the teacher – the expunging of relational, educative interactions that enable genuine student...
This article draws upon recent theorising of the 'becoming topo-logical' of space– specifically, ... more This article draws upon recent theorising of the 'becoming topo-logical' of space– specifically, how new social spaces are constituted through relations rather than physical locations – to explore how standardised data, and specifically test data, have influenced teachers' work and learning. We outline the varied ways in which teacher practices at a primary school in Queensland, Australia, were actively constituted through processes of 'tracking data' and 'keeping data on-track', and how teachers were simultaneously being disciplined , or 'tracked', by these very same data. Our analyses suggest that what appear to be more 'technical' activities and tasks of 'using' data are, in fact, actively constituted modes of governance, enabled through and deployed by ongoing practices of comparison and topological respatialisation.
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