Faculty of Education - Research Publications
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ItemCivil rights: how indigenous Australians won formal equality(University of Queensland Press, 2005)Australians know very little about how Indigenous Australians came to gain the civil rights that other Australians had long taken for granted. One of the key reasons for this is the entrenched belief that civil rights were handed to Indigenous people and not won by them.In this book John Chesterman draws on government and other archival material from around the country to make a compelling case that Indigenous people, together with non-Indigenous supporters, did effectively agitate for civil rights, and that this activism, in conjunction with international pressure, led to legal reforms. Chesterman argues that these struggles have laid important foundations for future dealings between Indigenous people and Australian governments.
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ItemAfter Copernicus: beyond the crisis in Australian universities(National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), 2007)There’s a received view of the troubles of academia which lays the blame on a new corporate culture of soulless managerialism. Geoff Sharrock isn’t convinced. He argues that critical scholars are often ill-placed to be able to understand their own predicament. And many of the problems of the sector lie in its incapacity to adjust to the changed world of knowledge-creation in which we live.
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ItemInternational dimensions of the Australian academic profession(Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, 2009)This paper provides insight into the international dimensions of the Australian academic profession. Australia has one of the most internationalised higher education student populations in the world, which leads us naturally to inquire into the international characteristics of its academic staff. It is important to consider, for instance, whether the academic workforce has internationalised in the same way as the student body, and how academic staff are responding educationally to various opportunities and challenges arising from internationalisation.
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ItemDiversity in Australian higher education: an empirical analysis(National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), 2009)The concept of diversity has been part of the Australian government’s higher education agenda for several years, but empirical studies on the actual state of diversity in the sector are limited. This situation raises questions regarding the factual basis for the policy claims made. With this in mind, this paper seeks to assess the degree of diversity within the Australian higher education sector through an analysis of the perceptions, aspirations and reported activities of Australian academics in terms of their teaching, research and community service. Using data collected in the 2007 international Changing Nature of the Academic Profession survey, we are able to cautiously conclude that some diversity appears to exist, however not to the extent one might expect given the importance placed on institutional groupings in the Australian higher education debate.
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ItemAustralia's casual approach to its academic teaching workforce(Monash University, 2009)Australian academics’ response to the Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey indicates that they are among the least satisfied academics in the world. This dissatisfaction has been expressed after two decades of rapid growth in the student body and structural changes in the academic workforce, particularly an expansion in the amount of teaching provided by casual staff. The growth in casual staff numbers is a factor which has simultaneously created a precariously employed but cheaper and more flexible workforce along with higher levels of stress among the full-time teachers responsible for managing and supervising casual teachers. The academic profession has an important role to play in creating a highly educated workforce for Australia and in generating export income by teaching international students. Careful attention needs to be paid to this situation especially in light of the need to replenish the ageing academic workforce.
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ItemThe Australian academic profession: A first overview(Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, 2008)
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ItemWhat kind of access does VET provide to higher education for low SES students?: not a lot(National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education, 2009)This paper addresses three questions: the first question explores the extent to which VET diplomas and advanced diplomas provide students with an educational ladder of opportunity. The second question explores the extent to which VET pathways provide students from low socio-economic backgrounds with access to higher education and thus provides a social ladder of opportunity. The third question explores the institutional destinations of VET students from low socio-economic backgrounds in higher education. The paper concludes by examining the implications for policy. Overall, the findings are that pathways from VET to higher education provide access to universities, but not to the elite universities. It also finds that VET pathways are not a mechanism for redressing socio-economic disadvantage in higher education more broadly, because the socio-economic profile of VET articulators is very similar to students already in higher education and within individual universities, with a few notable exceptions.
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ItemThe pedagogic device: the relevance of Bernstein's analysis for VET(Centre for Learning and Work Research, Faculty of Education, Griffith University: Australian Academic Press, 2005)This paper explores the relevance for VET of Basil Bernstein’s analysis of the structuring of knowledge and the framing of pedagogic practice. Bernstein argued that education was not a passive relay for external power relations. Pedagogic practice is an important structuring mechanism for power relations in the way in which knowledge is classified and framed. Towards the end of his life, Bernstein argued that the ‘official’ recontextualising principle in education was derived from ‘genericism’, itself based on new concepts of work and life. He says this is a socially empty concept, and results in identities constructed as market identities in which actors recognise themselves and others in the materialities of consumption. I apply Bernstein’s analysis to VET policy in Australia.
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ItemHow markets distort decisions to undertake education, vocational knowledge, provision and qualifications(University of Technology, Sydney, 2005)This paper argues that neo-liberal market-oriented reform to vocational education and training (and also other sectors of education) is much more than a tool for intensifying the work of VET teachers, through making them more 'responsive' and their institutions more 'effective and efficient'. The aim of these policies is the creation of the 'market citizen'. This leads to transformation of subjectivities and the way in which individuals develop and shape their sense of identity, their orientation to their vocation, their relationship to knowledge and practice, and the way in which they recognise themselves and others (Bernstein, 2000; Ball, 2003). The 'generic skills' sought by government and employers are market-oriented skills. This changes the focus of education and training from preparing students for a vocation to preparing them for markets. As a consequence, vocational knowledge is downplayed. Market reforms also distort the nature of provision, the structure and focus of qualifications, and the way in which employers decide to provide, and individuals to undertake, further education and training. This paper presents an alternative model, which argues that learning for work needs to go beyond work, that learning needs to be oriented to a vocation, and that learning needs to occur over a variety of contexts (and not just learning at work).