... A second and related focus is the range of emotional responses evoked by asking questions abo... more ... A second and related focus is the range of emotional responses evoked by asking questions about racism and about an Australian politician (Pauline Hanson), who has been prominent in race debates. ... Judgements about Racism and the Reception of Pauline Hanson ...
What does 'significance ' look like? Assessing the assessment process in competitive gr... more What does 'significance ' look like? Assessing the assessment process in competitive grants schemes Date:
Chapter 2 Gender. Ethnicity and the Inclusive Curriculum: An Episode in the Policy Framing of Aus... more Chapter 2 Gender. Ethnicity and the Inclusive Curriculum: An Episode in the Policy Framing of Australian Education Lvn Yates Typologies of policy research often set up dichotomous options for the policy researcher: the stance of an outside reporter or critic who writes about ...
Article has been published as:Yates, Lyn (2006) ‘What does “significance” look like? Assessing th... more Article has been published as:Yates, Lyn (2006) ‘What does “significance” look like? Assessing the assessment process in competitive grant schemes’, in J. Blackmore, J. Wright & V. Harwood (ed.) Review of Australian Research in Education 6: Counterpoints on the Quality and Impact of Educational Research, Australian Association for Research in Education, Lilydale, pp.57-68. ISBN 09585903461. Terms and Conditions: Copyright in works deposited in the University of Melbourne Eprints Repository (UMER) is retained by the copyright owner. The work may not be altered without permission from the copyright owner. Readers may only, download, print, and save electronic copies of whole works for their own personal non-commercial use. Any use that exceeds these limits requires permission from the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from these works.
Este artigo se baseia num estudo das mudancas curriculares australianas entre 1975 e 2005 para ab... more Este artigo se baseia num estudo das mudancas curriculares australianas entre 1975 e 2005 para abordar dois temas dessa questao em particular: quais as concepcoes de conhecimento que estao agora em voga e as influencias globais e as especificidades nacionais nas reformulacoes do curriculo. O artigo discute duas abordagens importantes para o curriculo na Australia nos ultimos anos: os “Parâmetros e Perfis” do inicio dos anos 1990 e as formulacoes “Aprendizagens Essenciais” da ultima decada. As tendencias globais que vemos em funcionamento nessas duas importantes abordagens sao, em primeiro lugar, o aumento da enfase sobre o gerenciamento externo e o progresso de alunos como direcionadores-chave de como as politicas curriculares estao sendo construidas e, em segundo lugar, uma enfase crescente em abordar Parâmetros curriculares em termos do que os alunos deveriam conseguir fazer em vez do que deveriam saber. Defendemos que, nos contextos que discutimos aqui, essas abordagens oferecera...
This article discusses issues of methodological warrant in a qualitative, longitudinal study that... more This article discusses issues of methodological warrant in a qualitative, longitudinal study that works with only a small number of subjects. The 12 to 18 Project was designed to contribute to research on gender, class and schooling. The rationale for a design using only 26 students spread between 4 schools is explained. It is argued that even with small number research issues of selection and comparison are important – but that emphasis on techniques of data-treatment and comparison is misplaced. It is argued that the meaningfulness and contribution of studies of this type lie in multiple acts of design, comparison, reflexive interpretation and dialogue with the broader field, and that the more that such studies emphasize technical analytic procedures, the more they undermine their warrant to be anything other than a report on a small sample. Illustrations of interpretations of the data and from the data are given.
The Curriculum Policies Project (http://scpp.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/) dataset contains a series of 1... more The Curriculum Policies Project (http://scpp.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/) dataset contains a series of 17 transcripts of interviews with 19 state curriculum experts and education policymakers, as part of the ARC Discovery project 'School Knowledge, Working Knowledge and the Knowing Subject: A Review of State Curriculum Policies 1975–2005,' based at the University of Melbourne. <br> <br> Responding to a noted dearth of systematic scholarship about the development of state curriculum policies, the Curriculum Policies project aimed to produce a foundation picture of developments in curriculum policies across the nation over a thirty-year period. The project provided a wide overview of the last generation of state curricula, moving past previous projects that were limited in scope to individual government reports, Commonwealth developments, subject areas or political contexts. The overarching focus of the project was on charting continuities and changes in state curriculum policies, especially regarding changing approaches to knowledge, to students, and to the marking out of academic and vocational agendas. The focus was broadly on secondary schooling, and aimed at building up snapshots of curriculum changes at ten-year intervals. <br> <br> As part of this research project, 34 public servants and education department officials, curriculum academics and scholars were interviewed by Lyn Yates and Cherry Collins over 2007 and 2008. 19 interviewees gave consent for the transcripts of their interviews to appear in this archive. Interviewees were asked to give their personal reflections on the broad changes in curriculum policy over the thirty years from 1975 to 2005, and were invited to shed light on the reasoning and institutional factors that lay behind various policy decisions. The interviews were broad-ranging, informal and largely open-ended; research participants were asked to give a general assessment of their own involvement in curriculum over the thirty years in question, and to highlight any landmarks that were signifi [...]
This essay discusses a new book on the Australian Curriculum (AC), edited by Alan Reid and Debora... more This essay discusses a new book on the Australian Curriculum (AC), edited by Alan Reid and Deborah Price. The book included twenty-one different perspectives on the Australian Curriculum, including chapters on its various learning areas and its other cross-curriculum elements; chapters on its context and its political implications; and chapters assessing its adequacy in terms of various kinds of diversity and inclusiveness. The essay discusses the value and the difficulty of bringing together these different kinds of perspectives. It reflects on what they represent as an insight into the current forms of Australian curriculum inquiry.More broadly, it draws attention to questions of education purposes in a democracy; and of the complexity of interactions between national frameworks such as the AC; political purposes; and educational practices within schools. The conversation about whether a national framework is valuable is necessarily intertwined with issues concerning the kind of f...
In 1993 in Australia, a 7-year qualitative, longitudinal study called the 12 to 18 Project was be... more In 1993 in Australia, a 7-year qualitative, longitudinal study called the 12 to 18 Project was begun to study young people and the development of their gendered identity, as well as schooling's contribution to social inequalities. This paper considers in what sense "class" is a useful concept in pursuing the questions the study started with, and in the design, methodology, interpretation, and reporting of such a study. The paper presents a historical overview of the idea of "social class," describes the 12 to 18 Project, and delineates some of the interviews with the Project's participants. It suggests some of the questions the researchers found interesting both about young people in school today and what is happening to them, and about literature on class and where its contribution and problems lie. (Contains 6 notes and 20 references.) (BT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
The last 2 decades of curriculum rolicy in Australia are reviewed in this paper, with a focus on ... more The last 2 decades of curriculum rolicy in Australia are reviewed in this paper, with a focus on reforms concerned with females and schooling. Two general areas are examined: (1) the theoretical relationship between state power and feminist concerns about schooling; and (2) the progressive direction for schooling. The first section compares two policy frameworks of the mid-1970s and late 1980s, and the second part examines ways in which feminist demands in education are being integrated within Australian state policy. Three themes concerning the state and feminist action are discussed. First, state policy in liberal-democratic societies will continue to modify challenges to power, due to the inherently exclusive nature of conflicting discourse. Second, the state has used feminist discourse to increase funding of engineering, science, and technology. The field of gender and education is viewed by the government as a problem of women of nontraditioual careers. Third, the commitment to...
This book explains the debates that bedevil education research - for example that it is low quali... more This book explains the debates that bedevil education research - for example that it is low quality, or not scientific enough, or not useful enough - and shows how research in education must meet different demands in different places, times and conditions. A major part of the book provides detailed analyses and guidance to different areas in which educational research is judged - from academic theses to the press; from highest level competition for prestigious grants, to collaborative work with practitioners. In six different areas, it asks: who are the judges here? What expectations and networks do they bring to the task? What are the explicit and implicit criteria for good research in that area? What are the common failings? What does good research look like in that particular arena? The book is an indispensable companion to existing textbooks on research methodology, and a clear and provocative argument about the banalities and messiness in which educational researchers must oper...
From 1993 to 2000, the 12 to 18 Project followed young people through their secondary schooling i... more From 1993 to 2000, the 12 to 18 Project followed young people through their secondary schooling in Australia. Twenty-six students at four different kinds of schools were interviewed at some length twice a year. This paper discusses the meaning of those interview responses and the tensions between reporting what young people say and determining what they mean or how to analyze the interview data. The paper discusses both the dynamics of the research act and the need to see the interview as a construction, as something situated, the production of one human subject speaking to other subjects. These tensions are illustrated through three examples from the study. The first takes one set of questions to one student in one interview. The second example takes the themes of one girl over the whole course of the project, and the third takes some extracts from interviews in the final year of the project to discuss the meanings made in the researchers' interest in how educational inequaliti...
This paper examines young peoples' ideas and their dreams of the future. It is part of a long... more This paper examines young peoples' ideas and their dreams of the future. It is part of a longitudinal study in which students at four schools in Australia were interviewed twice a year during their time in secondary school. The paper claims that this long-term engagement with individuals heightened specificity of the dreams, though it was difficult to interpret this specificity in interactions with more general processes. The study draws attention to the types of questions researchers ask and self-reflectively questions how the research affects the students in the study, and whether the young people were making reflexive judgments about themselves and about the researchers. The first section of the report considers three male students of non-English backgrounds and illustrates the problem with "data-base" type representations of ethnicity as a single construct of advantage or disadvantage, as well as some issues relating to how the study may affect the students in it. ...
Since the 1970s, curriculum reforms in Australia and in the UK have faced a number of common chal... more Since the 1970s, curriculum reforms in Australia and in the UK have faced a number of common challenges, including drives to improve retention, concerns about unemployment and vocational preparation in a global economy, impact of international benchmarking and assessment programs, questions about how to deal with both the basics and the proliferating expansion of knowledge in the 21 st century, challenges in relation to difference and inequalities and student engagement, and highly visible and volatile press discussions about particular curriculum reforms. This paper is a discussion of findings from a project funded by the Australian Research Council that set out to examine commonalities and differences in how different Australian states developed curriculum agendas over that period, and more broadly to contribute to some more general thinking about how curriculum gets made as a public policy. The project examined policy documents for each of the Australian states at decade interval...
This is a publisher’s version of an article published in Change: Transformations in Education 200... more This is a publisher’s version of an article published in Change: Transformations in Education 2001, published by the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. This version is reproduced with permission. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/4245
This reflective essay on the papers in this special issue of EERJ on Northern European curriculum... more This reflective essay on the papers in this special issue of EERJ on Northern European curriculum analysis discusses issues of comparison and scale, and the significance of global and local specificities in curriculum research. Drawing on comparative examples from outside Europe, the essay draws attention to some commonalities of the European positioning from which these analyses begin, in particular the questions about governance, policy process and constructions of citizenship engendered today both by the formation of the EU and by the impact of OECD activities on it. The article argues the need to recognize different types of curriculum analyses and purposes, and particularly the salience of both big picture and closer-up detailed perspectives, and discusses the contribution these articles make to addressing both. It considers further issues about two matters raised by these contributions: the significance of moves to more competency and outcomes-centred curriculum forms, and the...
This publication examines adult learning for change through a number of diverse case studies and ... more This publication examines adult learning for change through a number of diverse case studies and theoretical perspectives to demonstrate that personal change is bound to broadenorganisational and social change. The authors investigate the implications of theorising education as a means of self-change for educational practice. Case studies focus on self-help books, work-based learning, corporate culture training, HIV/AIDS education, gender education, and sex offender education. The authors conclude with a study of how the experience of writing an academic text has contributed to their own identities.
... A second and related focus is the range of emotional responses evoked by asking questions abo... more ... A second and related focus is the range of emotional responses evoked by asking questions about racism and about an Australian politician (Pauline Hanson), who has been prominent in race debates. ... Judgements about Racism and the Reception of Pauline Hanson ...
What does 'significance ' look like? Assessing the assessment process in competitive gr... more What does 'significance ' look like? Assessing the assessment process in competitive grants schemes Date:
Chapter 2 Gender. Ethnicity and the Inclusive Curriculum: An Episode in the Policy Framing of Aus... more Chapter 2 Gender. Ethnicity and the Inclusive Curriculum: An Episode in the Policy Framing of Australian Education Lvn Yates Typologies of policy research often set up dichotomous options for the policy researcher: the stance of an outside reporter or critic who writes about ...
Article has been published as:Yates, Lyn (2006) ‘What does “significance” look like? Assessing th... more Article has been published as:Yates, Lyn (2006) ‘What does “significance” look like? Assessing the assessment process in competitive grant schemes’, in J. Blackmore, J. Wright & V. Harwood (ed.) Review of Australian Research in Education 6: Counterpoints on the Quality and Impact of Educational Research, Australian Association for Research in Education, Lilydale, pp.57-68. ISBN 09585903461. Terms and Conditions: Copyright in works deposited in the University of Melbourne Eprints Repository (UMER) is retained by the copyright owner. The work may not be altered without permission from the copyright owner. Readers may only, download, print, and save electronic copies of whole works for their own personal non-commercial use. Any use that exceeds these limits requires permission from the copyright owner. Attribution is essential when quoting or paraphrasing from these works.
Este artigo se baseia num estudo das mudancas curriculares australianas entre 1975 e 2005 para ab... more Este artigo se baseia num estudo das mudancas curriculares australianas entre 1975 e 2005 para abordar dois temas dessa questao em particular: quais as concepcoes de conhecimento que estao agora em voga e as influencias globais e as especificidades nacionais nas reformulacoes do curriculo. O artigo discute duas abordagens importantes para o curriculo na Australia nos ultimos anos: os “Parâmetros e Perfis” do inicio dos anos 1990 e as formulacoes “Aprendizagens Essenciais” da ultima decada. As tendencias globais que vemos em funcionamento nessas duas importantes abordagens sao, em primeiro lugar, o aumento da enfase sobre o gerenciamento externo e o progresso de alunos como direcionadores-chave de como as politicas curriculares estao sendo construidas e, em segundo lugar, uma enfase crescente em abordar Parâmetros curriculares em termos do que os alunos deveriam conseguir fazer em vez do que deveriam saber. Defendemos que, nos contextos que discutimos aqui, essas abordagens oferecera...
This article discusses issues of methodological warrant in a qualitative, longitudinal study that... more This article discusses issues of methodological warrant in a qualitative, longitudinal study that works with only a small number of subjects. The 12 to 18 Project was designed to contribute to research on gender, class and schooling. The rationale for a design using only 26 students spread between 4 schools is explained. It is argued that even with small number research issues of selection and comparison are important – but that emphasis on techniques of data-treatment and comparison is misplaced. It is argued that the meaningfulness and contribution of studies of this type lie in multiple acts of design, comparison, reflexive interpretation and dialogue with the broader field, and that the more that such studies emphasize technical analytic procedures, the more they undermine their warrant to be anything other than a report on a small sample. Illustrations of interpretations of the data and from the data are given.
The Curriculum Policies Project (http://scpp.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/) dataset contains a series of 1... more The Curriculum Policies Project (http://scpp.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/) dataset contains a series of 17 transcripts of interviews with 19 state curriculum experts and education policymakers, as part of the ARC Discovery project 'School Knowledge, Working Knowledge and the Knowing Subject: A Review of State Curriculum Policies 1975–2005,' based at the University of Melbourne. <br> <br> Responding to a noted dearth of systematic scholarship about the development of state curriculum policies, the Curriculum Policies project aimed to produce a foundation picture of developments in curriculum policies across the nation over a thirty-year period. The project provided a wide overview of the last generation of state curricula, moving past previous projects that were limited in scope to individual government reports, Commonwealth developments, subject areas or political contexts. The overarching focus of the project was on charting continuities and changes in state curriculum policies, especially regarding changing approaches to knowledge, to students, and to the marking out of academic and vocational agendas. The focus was broadly on secondary schooling, and aimed at building up snapshots of curriculum changes at ten-year intervals. <br> <br> As part of this research project, 34 public servants and education department officials, curriculum academics and scholars were interviewed by Lyn Yates and Cherry Collins over 2007 and 2008. 19 interviewees gave consent for the transcripts of their interviews to appear in this archive. Interviewees were asked to give their personal reflections on the broad changes in curriculum policy over the thirty years from 1975 to 2005, and were invited to shed light on the reasoning and institutional factors that lay behind various policy decisions. The interviews were broad-ranging, informal and largely open-ended; research participants were asked to give a general assessment of their own involvement in curriculum over the thirty years in question, and to highlight any landmarks that were signifi [...]
This essay discusses a new book on the Australian Curriculum (AC), edited by Alan Reid and Debora... more This essay discusses a new book on the Australian Curriculum (AC), edited by Alan Reid and Deborah Price. The book included twenty-one different perspectives on the Australian Curriculum, including chapters on its various learning areas and its other cross-curriculum elements; chapters on its context and its political implications; and chapters assessing its adequacy in terms of various kinds of diversity and inclusiveness. The essay discusses the value and the difficulty of bringing together these different kinds of perspectives. It reflects on what they represent as an insight into the current forms of Australian curriculum inquiry.More broadly, it draws attention to questions of education purposes in a democracy; and of the complexity of interactions between national frameworks such as the AC; political purposes; and educational practices within schools. The conversation about whether a national framework is valuable is necessarily intertwined with issues concerning the kind of f...
In 1993 in Australia, a 7-year qualitative, longitudinal study called the 12 to 18 Project was be... more In 1993 in Australia, a 7-year qualitative, longitudinal study called the 12 to 18 Project was begun to study young people and the development of their gendered identity, as well as schooling's contribution to social inequalities. This paper considers in what sense "class" is a useful concept in pursuing the questions the study started with, and in the design, methodology, interpretation, and reporting of such a study. The paper presents a historical overview of the idea of "social class," describes the 12 to 18 Project, and delineates some of the interviews with the Project's participants. It suggests some of the questions the researchers found interesting both about young people in school today and what is happening to them, and about literature on class and where its contribution and problems lie. (Contains 6 notes and 20 references.) (BT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
The last 2 decades of curriculum rolicy in Australia are reviewed in this paper, with a focus on ... more The last 2 decades of curriculum rolicy in Australia are reviewed in this paper, with a focus on reforms concerned with females and schooling. Two general areas are examined: (1) the theoretical relationship between state power and feminist concerns about schooling; and (2) the progressive direction for schooling. The first section compares two policy frameworks of the mid-1970s and late 1980s, and the second part examines ways in which feminist demands in education are being integrated within Australian state policy. Three themes concerning the state and feminist action are discussed. First, state policy in liberal-democratic societies will continue to modify challenges to power, due to the inherently exclusive nature of conflicting discourse. Second, the state has used feminist discourse to increase funding of engineering, science, and technology. The field of gender and education is viewed by the government as a problem of women of nontraditioual careers. Third, the commitment to...
This book explains the debates that bedevil education research - for example that it is low quali... more This book explains the debates that bedevil education research - for example that it is low quality, or not scientific enough, or not useful enough - and shows how research in education must meet different demands in different places, times and conditions. A major part of the book provides detailed analyses and guidance to different areas in which educational research is judged - from academic theses to the press; from highest level competition for prestigious grants, to collaborative work with practitioners. In six different areas, it asks: who are the judges here? What expectations and networks do they bring to the task? What are the explicit and implicit criteria for good research in that area? What are the common failings? What does good research look like in that particular arena? The book is an indispensable companion to existing textbooks on research methodology, and a clear and provocative argument about the banalities and messiness in which educational researchers must oper...
From 1993 to 2000, the 12 to 18 Project followed young people through their secondary schooling i... more From 1993 to 2000, the 12 to 18 Project followed young people through their secondary schooling in Australia. Twenty-six students at four different kinds of schools were interviewed at some length twice a year. This paper discusses the meaning of those interview responses and the tensions between reporting what young people say and determining what they mean or how to analyze the interview data. The paper discusses both the dynamics of the research act and the need to see the interview as a construction, as something situated, the production of one human subject speaking to other subjects. These tensions are illustrated through three examples from the study. The first takes one set of questions to one student in one interview. The second example takes the themes of one girl over the whole course of the project, and the third takes some extracts from interviews in the final year of the project to discuss the meanings made in the researchers' interest in how educational inequaliti...
This paper examines young peoples' ideas and their dreams of the future. It is part of a long... more This paper examines young peoples' ideas and their dreams of the future. It is part of a longitudinal study in which students at four schools in Australia were interviewed twice a year during their time in secondary school. The paper claims that this long-term engagement with individuals heightened specificity of the dreams, though it was difficult to interpret this specificity in interactions with more general processes. The study draws attention to the types of questions researchers ask and self-reflectively questions how the research affects the students in the study, and whether the young people were making reflexive judgments about themselves and about the researchers. The first section of the report considers three male students of non-English backgrounds and illustrates the problem with "data-base" type representations of ethnicity as a single construct of advantage or disadvantage, as well as some issues relating to how the study may affect the students in it. ...
Since the 1970s, curriculum reforms in Australia and in the UK have faced a number of common chal... more Since the 1970s, curriculum reforms in Australia and in the UK have faced a number of common challenges, including drives to improve retention, concerns about unemployment and vocational preparation in a global economy, impact of international benchmarking and assessment programs, questions about how to deal with both the basics and the proliferating expansion of knowledge in the 21 st century, challenges in relation to difference and inequalities and student engagement, and highly visible and volatile press discussions about particular curriculum reforms. This paper is a discussion of findings from a project funded by the Australian Research Council that set out to examine commonalities and differences in how different Australian states developed curriculum agendas over that period, and more broadly to contribute to some more general thinking about how curriculum gets made as a public policy. The project examined policy documents for each of the Australian states at decade interval...
This is a publisher’s version of an article published in Change: Transformations in Education 200... more This is a publisher’s version of an article published in Change: Transformations in Education 2001, published by the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney. This version is reproduced with permission. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/4245
This reflective essay on the papers in this special issue of EERJ on Northern European curriculum... more This reflective essay on the papers in this special issue of EERJ on Northern European curriculum analysis discusses issues of comparison and scale, and the significance of global and local specificities in curriculum research. Drawing on comparative examples from outside Europe, the essay draws attention to some commonalities of the European positioning from which these analyses begin, in particular the questions about governance, policy process and constructions of citizenship engendered today both by the formation of the EU and by the impact of OECD activities on it. The article argues the need to recognize different types of curriculum analyses and purposes, and particularly the salience of both big picture and closer-up detailed perspectives, and discusses the contribution these articles make to addressing both. It considers further issues about two matters raised by these contributions: the significance of moves to more competency and outcomes-centred curriculum forms, and the...
This publication examines adult learning for change through a number of diverse case studies and ... more This publication examines adult learning for change through a number of diverse case studies and theoretical perspectives to demonstrate that personal change is bound to broadenorganisational and social change. The authors investigate the implications of theorising education as a means of self-change for educational practice. Case studies focus on self-help books, work-based learning, corporate culture training, HIV/AIDS education, gender education, and sex offender education. The authors conclude with a study of how the experience of writing an academic text has contributed to their own identities.
Abstract: This paper focuses on the development of relevant vocational education and training (VE... more Abstract: This paper focuses on the development of relevant vocational education and training (VET) programs in schools across Australia. Using research from case studies, the paper discusses various issues relevant to the progress of VET in schools. Both teachers ...
It develops out of three diverse but interrelated sets of theorizations of change that have signi... more It develops out of three diverse but interrelated sets of theorizations of change that have significant implications for Australia. These include the rise of new economy discourses and the emergence of new vocationalism in education and training; new forms of identity and new interests in the construction of self; and the contemporary re-conceptualization of knowledge that is now occurring both inside and outside of educational institutions. These three areas of research, theory and public debate have significant implications for contemporary educational policies and practices. Yet no previous research has embarked
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