Faculty of Education - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 10
-
Item[Review of the book Knowing women: origins of women's education in nineteenth-century Australia](Cambridge University Press, 1997)The article reviews the book "Knowing Women: Origins of Women's Education in Nineteenth-Century Australia" by Marjorie Theobald.
-
ItemConstructing and deconstructing 'girls' as a category of concern in education - reflections on two decades of research and reform(Falmer Press, 1998)In the 1970s, many countries began to initiate projects of reform for girls and women in education. In the decades that followed, a large and diverse body of feminist research on education was developed. And, at the turn of the century, the media and education policy-makers are raising new questions about what has taken place: have the aims of reform now been achieved? have feminist agendas 'gone too far'? is it boys who now deserve special attention? should economic agendas replace social concerns in constructions of education policy? This chapter reviews some of the ways of thinking and types of initiatives that have taken place in Australia since the early 1970s.
-
ItemResearch methodology, education and theoretical fashions: constructing a methodology course in an era of deconstruction(Taylor & Francis, 1997)In this article a case is made both for the utility of deconstructive questions, and also for the danger of taking such questions as a sole or over-riding methodological agenda in education. The discussion is mounted by attention to grounded contexts and dilemmas rather than by a commitment to abstract concerns about ‘power’ or ‘Other’ or ‘polyphony of voices’. The framing dilemma is how one might construct a research methodology course that is neither positivist, relativist, nor reifying of current theory as an enduring answer for students. The article takes two substantive fields of inquiry in education (inequality and access in education, and research on gender and education) to argue that following through some substantive issues for educational research can provide ways of thinking about the relative merits, power, pertinence and relationships between quantitative, qualitative and deconstructive agendas. Finally, the article outlines a research methodology course constructed by the author to attempt to put in practical form the assumptions about education and research methodology which are argued in this article.
-
ItemTransitions and the year 7 experience: a report from the 12 to 18 Project( 1999)This article discusses students' comments about the experience of shifting from primary to secondary schooling, and of their first year of secondary school. The material was gathered from research carried out in three Victorian primary schools and four Victorian secondary schools in 1993 and 1994 as part of an ongoing qualitative, longitudinal study which is following students through each year of their secondary schooling. This article discusses the meanings students give to their experience of transition against earlier research and policy documents which use different methodologies and which talk of different cultures of primary and secondary schools. It argues that student reactions are more complex than are indicated by methodologies which take comments at face value and that their concerns challenge some common assumptions about the problem of disruption in the break between primary and secondary. The article also notes widespread changes in students' lunchtime activities compared with primary school and discusses ways students assess the new curriculum and teaching styles of the secondary school.
-
ItemHow do young people think about self, work and futures(Australian Institute of Family Studies, 1998)The 12 to 18 Educational Research Project, commenced in 1993, is a longitudinal study that is following a number of young people at four different Victorian schools through each year of their secondary schooling. Twice each year, interviews are conducted with 24 students (six students at each of the schools), either alone or with their friends, the interviews are video- and audiotaped. The aim of the study is to follow qualitatively the thinking of these young people, and their pathways as they go through schooling and then enter life beyond this.In this article, we discuss some findings from this work in progress looking in particular at how young people in the early and middle years of secondary schooling are thinking about self, work and futures, and we consider in what ways gender is an issue in their approach.
-
ItemEffectiveness, difference and sociological research(Routledge, UK, 2002-12)For Australian sociology of education, Making the Difference (Connell, Ashenden, Kessler and Dowsett 1982) was not just a major argument, and a ‘classic’ point of reference. It was also an event, an intervention in ways of doing research and speaking to practice, a methodology, a textual style. In some respects its influence on the latter dimensions has been even more pervasive and long-lasting than its influence as argument or theory. It seemed, simultaneously, to mark the high point of Reproduction theories of schooling (though its authors did not see it in this way) and also a thoughtful and orchestrated attempt to intervene in the processes. For a considerable time both before and after the publication of the book itself, the research team was a prominent roadshow in Australia, speaking to and writing for many specific audiences: teachers, teacher unions, parents, press. The book itself was designed to be read by a much wider audience than the standard sociological texts, and it succeeded in this aim. Subsequently it has become more commonplace to see research and writing as constructing and powerful practices, not just neutral paths to knowledge or communication, but Making the Difference helped to show other researchers what different ways of embarking on this might look like.
-
ItemRepresenting class in qualitative research(Australian Clearinghouse for Youth Studies, 2000)In 1993, with Julie McLeod, I began a seven-year qualitative, longitudinal study of young people in Australia. The 12 to 18 Project1 was intended as a longitudinal study to investigate (i) the development of young people’s gendered identity in Australia now, and (ii) schooling’s contribution to social inequalities: the way in which different schools interact with and produce differentiated outcomes for different types of young people. It was a project inspired by the fact that we had both spent many years studying education, gender formation, inequalities, changing cultural and policy discourse and wanting to design a new type of study to take us further with these interests. It was also a study whose design was influenced by two film series, both of them also concerned, in different ways, with representing social differences and development of individual identity and outcomes over time.
-
ItemDoes curriculum matter?: revisiting access and women's rights to education in the context of the UN Millenium Development Targets(Sage, 2006-03)This article discusses the relevance of curriculum to current UN Millenium targets to extend access to education and equality in education for women. It argues firstly, that it is contradictory to be concerned about women’s access to education but leave curriculum out of the discussion; secondly, that curriculum is not adequately seen as a choice between imposing new universal values or leaving cultural traditions untouched, but is about choices within a situation where cultural traditions are neither untouched nor monolithic; and thirdly that attention to who speaks and who is heard in developing and assessing new practices remains important in any initiatives to extend education rights for women.This article has been published in Theory and Research in Education, Vol. 4, No. 1, 85-99 (2006) ) and is available to subscribers in both print and online formats.
-
ItemDoes education need the concept of class like a fish needs a bicycle, or is class more like water in the fish-in-water problem?( 2006)Class is not only a dated concept that derives from 19th century industrialization and from old world social formations, but is one that is most at home in attempts to do theory and research in particular ways: to build models, identify causal factors, pin down truths, identify lynch-pins of change. In more recent times, theories and models of class have been troubled by social movements of women and race, by changes to the forms of work and the relationships of labour, and by theories more ready to show how research categories do violence than what they might effect for good. This paper takes the case of Australia in the early 21st century and a longitudinal qualitative study of young Australian students going through different school experiences to revisit the value of working with class and gender and class/gender as conceptual lenses in qualitative research, and specifically in relation to longitudinal identity-making in the context of school. The paper argues that in the light of feminist theories, and of major social and work changes in countries like Australia, there is no way to have a model of class that is adequate, and that there are multiple issues rather than a single question which theorists concerned with class work on. Nevertheless, it is argued, that to omit some concept of class in our discussions and research is to deprive research of categories and a history of discussions that can usefully feed what is noticed and attended to and taken as sources of concern. The paper illustrates a perspective on education research which argues against reducing research debates to searches for one perfect model, and for attending to the effects that particular and imperfect ways of doing research can have in particular situations and times.The paper takes up two aspects of the use of ‘class’ in education research and policy. The first concerns class as a tool of policy analysis, where it illustrates some problems of working without or with this concept,
-
ItemSelves, social factors, school sites and the tricky issue of 'school effects'( 2001)Schooling policy is heavily driven by data-base evidence of inputs and outputs of different schools and of results for different ‘social categories’ of student. Good schools are seen as those with high retention rates and good year 12 results; the outcomes of ‘girls’ as a category are compared with those of ‘boys’ as a category. This article discusses some evidence from a qualitative, longitudinal project, based in four different school sites, and the more complicated perspective this throws on what different types of schools are doing and achieving in relation to different types of young people. The article discusses the methodological usefulness, even for policy purposes, of a research focus on particular students in particular school sites; the relevance of seeing schools and students as socially and culturally positioned, not simply as amalgams of ‘factors’ or as sites of ‘effective techniques’; and it draws particular attention to what is learnt in schools as an ‘effect’ we need to consider both in relation to individual life-chances, and to broad social formation.