The Affective Dimensions of Resilience: Rethinking its Role in Working with Students of Refugee Backgrounds. Emotions and Society., 2024
Resilience is a term often applied to students of refugee backgrounds having survived traumatic e... more Resilience is a term often applied to students of refugee backgrounds having survived traumatic experiences of war, displacement and resettlement; but how is it acquired? To many, it is a function of some inner strength, a perspective that tends to ignore the considerable labour involved in acquiring the skills and capacities to be resilient. This article examines these differing understandings and their implications in working with students of refugee backgrounds in schools in New South Wales, Australia. In particular, it considers the different approaches they elicit and the affective dimensions of these, proffering a view that resilience is reliant on the accumulation of certain affects that sediment into dispositions ensuring a sound foundation for learning.
Early policies of multiculturalism were premised on notions of distinct and cohesive ethnic commu... more Early policies of multiculturalism were premised on notions of distinct and cohesive ethnic communities, a view that has similarly influenced their application within schooling. Intergenerational change, cultural adaptation, increasing globalization, and mass migration, however, have led to a questioning of such bounded and static notions of culture and for the need to consider, not only more hybrid forms of identity but multiple senses of belonging that are no longer so narrowly aligned with that of the nation. Teachers, therefore, require the necessary resources to make sense of this complexity to allow them to move beyond the cultural essentialism so characteristic of much policy and practice in this area (Tellez 2007; Watkins 2015a). Drawing on recent research which involved training teachers to undertake this task in the form of site-specific action research, this chapter explores their receptiveness toward rethinking categories of culture and identity and engaging with the intellectual skepticism that cultural studies promotes—a pedagogic mode designed to encourage a questioning of the normative assumptions that can frame our view of the social world. While examining the responses of teachers in a number of schools, it focuses on those two in particular and the degree to which they were able to apply these understandings in the process of reimagining how multicultural education is practiced in their schools
is a resource and instruction book firmly grounded within a genre-based pedagogy and systemic fun... more is a resource and instruction book firmly grounded within a genre-based pedagogy and systemic functional linguistics methodology. This book was written to help educators become familiar not only with a genre-based approach to writing, but also the five areas often associated with high-stakes assessment: describing, explaining, instructing, arguing, and narrating. It is a comprehensive guide for preparing English Language Learners (ELLs) to succeed as writers and to compete with mainstream classrooms and high-stakes writing assessments. In this book, we are reminded that learning to write is "a complex series of processes that require a range of explicit teaching methodologies…" (p. 14). Therefore, as readers, we must be aware that perspectives on language as social process allow us to situate each of the five areas within functional and social requirements. Subsequently, genre as pedagogy allows us to teach writing with purpose; the pedagogy explained in this text clearly illustrates a methodology that is coherent and practical, making it easy to read and synthesize in a classroom environment.
References 137 iv Cultural Practices and Learning: Diversity, discipline and dispositions in scho... more References 137 iv Cultural Practices and Learning: Diversity, discipline and dispositions in schooling Acknowledgements This Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project was only possible through the involvement of a large number of people. Firstly we would like to thank all those who, for purposes of confidentiality, can't be named: the staff, parents, students and community representatives we interviewed. In particular we would like to thank the teachers who allowed us into their classrooms to observe their practice and were happy to assist us in obtaining the data we required. Thanks also to the staff in each of the homework centres we visited. We have worked closely with a number of staff at Multicultural Programs Unit (MPU), NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) during the course of this Linkage Project: Hanya Stefaniuk, Amanda Bourke and Nell Lynes provided invaluable support, guidance and advice during each stage of the project. They were terrific partners to work with, and their input was critical at all stages of the research and the preparation of this report. We would also like to acknowledge other NSW DET personnel-Greg Maguire, Seini Afeaki, Soo Humphries and Mary Binder-who each contributed at early stages of the project. Dr Inga Brasche worked as a research assistant during part of the project, conducting many of the interviews with parents and students, observing classrooms, undertaking the SPSS analysis and sections of the NVivo analysis. She also prepared and wrote an early draft of Chapter 2. Thanks also to: Cristyn Davies for her assistance with literature searches on several topics relevant to the project; Neil Hopkins who provided additional assistance with the SPSS analysis; and Dr Pat Bazeley who gave some timely advice regarding NVivo. Professor Parlo Singh provided advice during the design of the initial research proposal and Associate Professor Mike Horsley some useful information regarding homework centres for Pasifika students. Thanks also to Mary Corkhill and her team for their speed, patience and accuracy in transcribing over 100 interviews. Maree O'Neil from the Centre for Cultural Research (CCR) provided much needed administrative support, and thanks also to Yolande Cailly from the NSW Department of Education and Training's MPU for the layout and design of the report. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Research Council, the NSW Department of Education and Training and the University of Western Sydney. The public funding of research is essential to the ongoing task of redressing educational inequalities and achieving educational excellence in schools. We feel this project has made some contribution towards developing a greater understanding of key issues in meeting these goals.
Desire is a crucial aspect of the pedagogic process. For too long, however, there has been a dich... more Desire is a crucial aspect of the pedagogic process. For too long, however, there has been a dichotomous relationship between understandings of teacher and student desire. The former is often configured as a pedagogic anachronism, problematised and needing to be contained. Conversely, the latter is essentialised as a force that should not be restrained by the processes of institutionalised education. Neither of these ideas is useful for thinking through complex issues around pedagogy. Overall, desire in education requires greater theoretical exploration. Within mainstream education it is rarely raised as an issue. Poststructuralist theorising, on the other hand, particularly in its use of psychoanalysis, tends to simply sexualise desire, which obscures more productive interpretations of its role in learning. There needs to be a reconceptualisation of the role of desire in the pedagogic process that moves beyond these formulations. The intention of this article is to rethink the nature and function of pedagogic desire. Drawing on a range of sources it considers current conceptions of both teacher and student desire and theorisations of desire and the body in education. Finally, it proposes an alternate model drawing upon Bourdieu's notion of habitus and the philosophical insights of Spinoza's monist logic.
The Affective Dimensions of Resilience: Rethinking its Role in Working with Students of Refugee Backgrounds. Emotions and Society., 2024
Resilience is a term often applied to students of refugee backgrounds having survived traumatic e... more Resilience is a term often applied to students of refugee backgrounds having survived traumatic experiences of war, displacement and resettlement; but how is it acquired? To many, it is a function of some inner strength, a perspective that tends to ignore the considerable labour involved in acquiring the skills and capacities to be resilient. This article examines these differing understandings and their implications in working with students of refugee backgrounds in schools in New South Wales, Australia. In particular, it considers the different approaches they elicit and the affective dimensions of these, proffering a view that resilience is reliant on the accumulation of certain affects that sediment into dispositions ensuring a sound foundation for learning.
Early policies of multiculturalism were premised on notions of distinct and cohesive ethnic commu... more Early policies of multiculturalism were premised on notions of distinct and cohesive ethnic communities, a view that has similarly influenced their application within schooling. Intergenerational change, cultural adaptation, increasing globalization, and mass migration, however, have led to a questioning of such bounded and static notions of culture and for the need to consider, not only more hybrid forms of identity but multiple senses of belonging that are no longer so narrowly aligned with that of the nation. Teachers, therefore, require the necessary resources to make sense of this complexity to allow them to move beyond the cultural essentialism so characteristic of much policy and practice in this area (Tellez 2007; Watkins 2015a). Drawing on recent research which involved training teachers to undertake this task in the form of site-specific action research, this chapter explores their receptiveness toward rethinking categories of culture and identity and engaging with the intellectual skepticism that cultural studies promotes—a pedagogic mode designed to encourage a questioning of the normative assumptions that can frame our view of the social world. While examining the responses of teachers in a number of schools, it focuses on those two in particular and the degree to which they were able to apply these understandings in the process of reimagining how multicultural education is practiced in their schools
is a resource and instruction book firmly grounded within a genre-based pedagogy and systemic fun... more is a resource and instruction book firmly grounded within a genre-based pedagogy and systemic functional linguistics methodology. This book was written to help educators become familiar not only with a genre-based approach to writing, but also the five areas often associated with high-stakes assessment: describing, explaining, instructing, arguing, and narrating. It is a comprehensive guide for preparing English Language Learners (ELLs) to succeed as writers and to compete with mainstream classrooms and high-stakes writing assessments. In this book, we are reminded that learning to write is "a complex series of processes that require a range of explicit teaching methodologies…" (p. 14). Therefore, as readers, we must be aware that perspectives on language as social process allow us to situate each of the five areas within functional and social requirements. Subsequently, genre as pedagogy allows us to teach writing with purpose; the pedagogy explained in this text clearly illustrates a methodology that is coherent and practical, making it easy to read and synthesize in a classroom environment.
References 137 iv Cultural Practices and Learning: Diversity, discipline and dispositions in scho... more References 137 iv Cultural Practices and Learning: Diversity, discipline and dispositions in schooling Acknowledgements This Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project was only possible through the involvement of a large number of people. Firstly we would like to thank all those who, for purposes of confidentiality, can't be named: the staff, parents, students and community representatives we interviewed. In particular we would like to thank the teachers who allowed us into their classrooms to observe their practice and were happy to assist us in obtaining the data we required. Thanks also to the staff in each of the homework centres we visited. We have worked closely with a number of staff at Multicultural Programs Unit (MPU), NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) during the course of this Linkage Project: Hanya Stefaniuk, Amanda Bourke and Nell Lynes provided invaluable support, guidance and advice during each stage of the project. They were terrific partners to work with, and their input was critical at all stages of the research and the preparation of this report. We would also like to acknowledge other NSW DET personnel-Greg Maguire, Seini Afeaki, Soo Humphries and Mary Binder-who each contributed at early stages of the project. Dr Inga Brasche worked as a research assistant during part of the project, conducting many of the interviews with parents and students, observing classrooms, undertaking the SPSS analysis and sections of the NVivo analysis. She also prepared and wrote an early draft of Chapter 2. Thanks also to: Cristyn Davies for her assistance with literature searches on several topics relevant to the project; Neil Hopkins who provided additional assistance with the SPSS analysis; and Dr Pat Bazeley who gave some timely advice regarding NVivo. Professor Parlo Singh provided advice during the design of the initial research proposal and Associate Professor Mike Horsley some useful information regarding homework centres for Pasifika students. Thanks also to Mary Corkhill and her team for their speed, patience and accuracy in transcribing over 100 interviews. Maree O'Neil from the Centre for Cultural Research (CCR) provided much needed administrative support, and thanks also to Yolande Cailly from the NSW Department of Education and Training's MPU for the layout and design of the report. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Research Council, the NSW Department of Education and Training and the University of Western Sydney. The public funding of research is essential to the ongoing task of redressing educational inequalities and achieving educational excellence in schools. We feel this project has made some contribution towards developing a greater understanding of key issues in meeting these goals.
Desire is a crucial aspect of the pedagogic process. For too long, however, there has been a dich... more Desire is a crucial aspect of the pedagogic process. For too long, however, there has been a dichotomous relationship between understandings of teacher and student desire. The former is often configured as a pedagogic anachronism, problematised and needing to be contained. Conversely, the latter is essentialised as a force that should not be restrained by the processes of institutionalised education. Neither of these ideas is useful for thinking through complex issues around pedagogy. Overall, desire in education requires greater theoretical exploration. Within mainstream education it is rarely raised as an issue. Poststructuralist theorising, on the other hand, particularly in its use of psychoanalysis, tends to simply sexualise desire, which obscures more productive interpretations of its role in learning. There needs to be a reconceptualisation of the role of desire in the pedagogic process that moves beyond these formulations. The intention of this article is to rethink the nature and function of pedagogic desire. Drawing on a range of sources it considers current conceptions of both teacher and student desire and theorisations of desire and the body in education. Finally, it proposes an alternate model drawing upon Bourdieu's notion of habitus and the philosophical insights of Spinoza's monist logic.
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