Changing the discourse of women’s work : challenges and future directions

Theoretical work on the career development of women has travelled a journey from critique to creation. Early work responded to and criticised a literature that focused on theorising male roles in a workplace that was conceptualised as providing vertical career paths primarily for middle class males. Theorists have criticised the limitations of this theorising on the basis of gender, ability and social class variables - to name just a few. More recently theorists are creating new constructions and frameworks to enable a more holistic understanding of career, applicable to both women and men. This book provides a history of theorising about women's careers, in addition to presenting a focus on current empirical and theoretical work which contributes to current understandings of women's working lives. It has both mapped the current discourse and suggests challenges for future work. This chapter will provide a synthesis of the key issues presented in the book and pose some challenges for future work.

The legacy of Ian Hunter's work on literature education and the history of reading practices : some preliminary remarks

Ian Hunter's early work on the history of literature education and the emergence of English as school subject issued a bold challenge to traditional accounts that have in the main focused on English either as knowledge of a particular field or as ideology. The alternative proposal put forward by Hunter and supported by detailed historical analysis is that English exists as a series of historically contingent techniques and practices for shaping the self-managing capacities of children. The challenge for the field is to advance this historical work and to examine possible implications for English teaching.

Producing and maintaining professional identities in early childhood

This study is an inquiry into early childhood teacher professional identities. In Australia, workforce reforms in early childhood include major shifts in qualification requirements that call for a university four-year degree-qualified teacher to be employed in child care. This marks a shift in the early years workforce, where previously there was no such requirement. At the same time as these reforms to quality measures are being implemented, and requiring a substantive up skilling of the workforce, there is a growing body of evidence through recent studies that suggests these same four-year degree-qualified early childhood teachers have an aversion to working in child care. Their preferred employment option is to work in the early years of more formal schooling, not in before-school contexts. This collision of agendas warrants investigation. This inquiry is designed to investigate the site at which advocacy for higher qualification requirements meets early childhood teachers who are reluctant to choose child care as a possible career pathway. The key research question for this study is: How are early childhood teachers’ professional identities currently produced? The work of this thesis is to problematise the early childhood teacher in child care through a particular method of discourse analysis. There are two sets of data. The first was a key early childhood political document that read as a "moment of arising" (Foucault, 1984a, p. 83). It is a political document which was selected for its current influence on the early childhood field, and in particular, workforce reforms that call for four-year degree-qualified teachers to work in before-school contexts, including child care. The second data set was generated through four focus group discussions conducted with preservice early childhood teachers. The document and transcripts of the focus groups were both analysed as text, as conceptualised by Foucault (1981). Foucault’s work spans a number of years and a range of philosophical matters. This thesis draws particularly on Foucault’s writings on discourse, power/knowledge, regimes of truth and resistance. In order to consider the production of early childhood teachers’ professional identities, the study is also informed by identity theorists, who have worked on gender, performativity and investment (Davies, 2004/2006; McNay, 1992; Osgood, 2012; Walkerdine, 1990; Weedon, 1997). The ways in which discourses intersect, compete and collide produce the subject (Foucault, 1981) and, in the case of this inquiry, there are a number of competing discourses at play, which produce the early childhood teacher. These particular theories turn particular lenses on the question of professional identities in early childhood, and such a study calls for the application of particular methodologies. Discourse analysis was used as the methodological framework, and the analysis was informed by Foucauldian concepts of discourse. While Foucault did not prescribe a form of discourse analysis as a method, his writings nonetheless provide a valuable framework for illuminating discursive practices and, in turn, how people are affected, through the shifts and distribution of power (Foucault, 1980a). The treatment used with both data sets involved redescription. For the policy document, a technique for reading document-as-text applied a genealogical approach (Foucault, 1984a). For the focus groups, the process of redescription (Rorty, 1989) involved reading talk-as-text. As a method, redescription involves describing "lots and lots of things in new ways until you have created a pattern of linguistic behaviour which will tempt the new generation to adopt it" (Rorty, 1989, p. 9). The development and application of categories (Davies, 2004/2006) built on a poststructuralist theoretical framework and the literature review informed the data analysis method of discourse analysis. Irony provided a rhetorical and playful tool (Haraway, 1991; Rorty, 1989), to look to how seemingly opposing discourses are held together. This opens a space to collapse binary thinking and consider seemingly contradictory terms in a way in which both terms are possible and both are true. Irony resists the choice of one or the other being right, and holds the opposites together in tension. The thesis concludes with proposals for new, ironic categories, which work to bring together seemingly opposing terms, located at sites in the field of early childhood where discourses compete, collide and intersect to produce and maintain early childhood teacher professional identities. The process of mapping these discourses goes some way to investigating the complexities about identities and career choices of early childhood teachers. The category of "the cost of loving" captures the collision between care/love, inherent in child care, and new discourses of investment/economics. Investment/economics has not completely replaced care/love, and these apparent opposites were not read as a binary because both are necessary and both are true (Haraway, 1991). They are held together in tension to produce early childhood teacher professional identities. The policy document under scrutiny was New Directions, released in 2007 by the then opposition ALP leader, Kevin Rudd. The claim was made strongly that the "economic prosperity" of Australia relies on investment in early childhood. The arguments to invest are compelling and the neuroscience/brain research/child development together with economic/investment discourses demand that early childhood is funding is increased. The intersection of these discourses produces professional identities of early childhood teachers as a necessary part of the country’s economy, and thus, worthy of high status. The child care sector and work in child care settings are necessary, with children and the early childhood teacher playing key roles in the economy of the nation. Through New Directions it becomes sayable (Foucault, 1972/1989) that the work the early childhood teacher performs is legitimated and valued. The children are produced as "economic units". A focus on what children are able to contribute to the future economy of the nation re-positions children and produces these "smart productive citizens", making future economic contribution. The early childhood teacher is produced through this image of a child and "the cost of loving" is emphasised. A number of these categories were produced through the readings of the document-as text and the talk-as-text. Two ironic categories were read in the analysis of the transcripts of the focus group discussions, when treated as talk-as-text data: the early childhood teacher as a "heroic victim"; and the early childhood teacher as a "glorified babysitter". This thesis raises new questions about professional identities in early childhood. These new questions might go some way to prompt re-thinking of some government policy, as well as some aspects of early childhood teacher education course design. The images of children and images of child care provide provocations to consider preservice teacher education course design. In particular, how child care, as one of the early childhood contexts, is located, conceptualised and spoken throughout the course. Consideration by course designers and teacher educators of what discourses are privileged in course content —what discourses are diminished or silenced—would go some way to reconceptualising child care within preservice teacher education and challenging dominant ways of speaking child care, and work in child care. This inquiry into early childhood teachers’ professional identities has gone some way to exploring the complexities around the early childhood teacher in child care. It is anticipated that the significance of this study will thus have immediate applicably and relevance for the Australian early childhood policy landscape. The early childhood field is in a state of rapid change, and this inquiry has examined some of the disconnects between policy and practice. Awareness of the discourses that are in play in the field will continue to allow space for conversations that challenge dominant assumptions about child care, work in child care and ways of being an early childhood teacher in child care.

An intervention to discourage Australian mothers from unnecessarily exposing their babies to the sun for therapeutic reasons

Parents play a key role in children’s sun-protective behaviour, with good sun-protective habits established early tending to be sustained. We designed a maternity hospital-based educational intervention to reduce myths that could result in mothers intentionally sunning their babies. Interviews were conducted with two cross-sections of healthy post-partum inpatients in the maternity ward of a large regional public hospital. The first group (n¼106) was recruited before the commencement of educational in-services for maternity nursing staff; the second group (n¼203) was interviewed after the last staff in-service session. More pre-intervention than post-intervention women reported they would expose their baby to sunlight to: treat suspected jaundice (28.8% vs. 13.3%; p<0.001) or help their baby’s skin adapt to sunlight (10.5% vs. 2.5%; p¼0.003). Fewer post-intervention women indicated they would sun themselves to treat breastfeeding-associated sore/cracked nipples (7.6% vs. 2%; p¼0.026). This educational intervention should be used to educate parents, health professionals and students

A combinatorial approach to anonymous membership broadcast

A set system (X, F ) with X= {x 1,...,x m}) and F = {B1...,B n }, where B i ⊆ X, is called an (n, m) cover-free set system (or CF set system) if for any 1 ≤ i, j, k ≤ n and j ≠ k, |B i >2 |B j ∩ B k | +1. In this paper, we show that CF set systems can be used to construct anonymous membership broadcast schemes (or AMB schemes), allowing a center to broadcast a secret identity among a set of users in a such way that the users can verify whether or not the broadcast message contains their valid identity. Our goal is to construct (n, m) CF set systems in which for given m the value n is as large as possible. We give two constructions for CF set systems, the first one from error-correcting codes and the other from combinatorial designs. We link CF set systems to the concept of cover-free family studied by Erdös et al in early 80’s to derive bounds on parameters of CF set systems. We also discuss some possible extensions of the current work, motivated by different application.

Bridging the gap: Early warning, gender and the responsibility to protect

Women, Peace and Security (WPS) scholars and practitioners have expressed reservations about the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle because of its popular use as a synonym for armed humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, R2P’s early failure to engage with and advance WPS efforts such as United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1325 (2000) has seen the perpetuation of limited roles ascribed to women in implementing the R2P principle. As a result, there has been a knowledge and practice gap between the R2P and WPS agendas, despite the fact that their advocates share common goals in relation to the prevention of atrocities and protection of populations. In this article we propose to examine just one of the potential avenues for aligning the WPS agenda and R2P principle in a way that is beneficial to both and strengthens the pursuit of a shared goal – prevention. We argue that the development and inclusion of gender-specific indicators – particularly economic, social and political discriminatory practices against women – has the potential to improve the capacity of early warning frameworks to forecast future mass atrocities.

Exploring how adults who work with young children conceptualise sustainability and describe their practice initiatives

The development of early Childhood Education for Sustainability (ECEfS) practices with young children from birth to eight years is an emerging area in academic and professional literature. ECEfS practices reflect growing awareness of the imperative for twenty-first century societies to respond to the pressures of unsustainable patterns of living. This article contributes to the growing area of ECEfS research by exploring sustainability conceptualisations and practice initiatives as reported by early childhood teachers, educators, pre-service educators and parents in Tasmania. We do this by analysing data collected from participants who attended ECEfS professional learning workshops, entitled Living and learning about sustainability in the early years. Findings show that environmental (nature/natural) aspects of sustainability dominate these adults' practice initiatives and understandings. While many of the reported educational initiatives are to be celebrated, the authors contend that there is much work to be done to extend thinking and practice beyond the natural/environmental dimension in order to embrace holistic notions of sustainability incorporating social, economic and political dimensions.

“Heroic victims”: Discursive constructions of preservice early childhood teacher professional identities

Government policies in Australia and in many other parts of the world, are calling for degree-qualified teachers to work in prior to formal school settings (center-based care, preschool). Yet, many preservice early childhood teachers assume they will end up teaching in primary schools. This paper examines the professional identities preservice early childhood teachers take up and speak into action while participating in classes focused on teaching in child care. Employing poststructural social theory, data drawn from focus groups with preservice early childhood teachers was examined through a Foucauldian-informed discourse analysis. Particular ways in which the preservice teachers talked about images of children and quality in early childhood are scrutinized for how discourses work to constitute the professional identities of preservice early childhood teachers. It was found that the participants drew on a range of competing discourses available to them, through their degree, and from elsewhere to describe the work of teaching young children and teaching in child care. These competing and colliding discourses, it is argued produce an identity of preservice teachers as ‘heroic victims.’ The paper raises questions about the discourses in circulation in preservice early childhood teacher education, and considers the implications this has for professional identities and career pathways—particularly work in child care.

Impediments to Cosmopolitan Engagement: Technology and Late-Modern Cosmopolitanism

What characterises late modern variety of cosmopolitanism from its classical predecessors is the inherent connection between cosmopolitanism and technology. Technology enables a vital dimension of the cosmopolitan experience – to move beyond the cosmopolitan imagination to enable active, direct engagement with other cultures. Different types of technologies contribute to cosmopolitan practice but in this paper we focus on a specific set of these enabling technologies: technologies which play a crucial role in regulating the free movement of people and populations. We briefly examine how three of the great surveillance states of the 20th century – Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and the German Democratic Republic – used hightech solutions in pursuing an anti-cosmopolitanism. We suggest that in the period from 2001 to the present, important elements of the cosmopolitan ethos are being closed down, and once again high-tech is intimately connected to this moment. The increasing (and proposed) use of identity cards, biometric identification systems, ITS and GIS all work to make the globalised world much harder to traverse and inhibit the full expression and experience of cosmopolitanism. The result of these trends may be that the type of cosmopolitan sentiment exhibited in western countries is an ersatz, emptied out variety with little political-ethical robustness.

Advertising education in Australia: Looking back to the future

In Australia, advertising is a $13 billion industry which needs a supply of suitably skilled employees. Over the years, advertising education has developed from vocational based courses to degree courses across the country. This paper uses diffusion theory and various secondary sources and interviews to observe the development of advertising education in Australia from its early past, to its current day tertiary offerings, to discussing the issues that are arising in the near future. Six critical issues are identified, along with observations about the challenges and opportunities within Australia advertising education. By looking back to the future, it is hoped that this historical review provides lessons for other countries of similar educational structure or background, or even other marketing communication disciplines on a similar evolutionary path.

Why cybersafety tips don’t work for cyberbullying

Research into cyberbullying in Australia has been slow. This is partly because rigorous research takes time, both to conduct, to analyse and to publish. In addition, Australian governments and other decision makers did not realise that cyberbullying was happening until there was greater media attention to the problem in the last few years. This meant that there was no serious research money allocated to cyberbullying research in Australia until about two years ago. In addition, initial research has mainly looked at how many students have been cyberbullied and what were the consequences. As far as I know there is only one large research project which is looking at what programs actually work to prevent and/or intervene in cyberbullying in Australia and that will take time to ascertain. However, our society wants quick fixes and they want a quick fix for cyberbullying.

High quality/high equity systems of education: Curriculum, teachers and reform in the search for equitable outcomes for all students

The issue of what an effective high quality / high equity education system might look like remains contested. Indeed there is more educational commentary on those systems that do not achieve this goal (see for example Luke & Woods, 2009 for a detailed review of the No Child Left Behind policy initiatives put forward in the United States under the Bush Administration) than there is detailed consideration of what such a system might enact and represent. A long held critique of socio cultural and critical perspectives in education has been their focus on deconstruction to the supposed detriment of reconstructive work. This critique is less warranted in recent times based on work in the field, especially the plethora of qualitative research focusing on case studies of ‘best practice’. However it certainly remains the case that there is more work to be done in investigating the characteristics of a socially just system. This issue of Point and Counterpoint aims to progress such a discussion. Several of the authors call for a reconfiguration of the use of large scale comparative assessment measures and all suggest new ways of thinking about quality and equity for school systems. Each of the papers tackles different aspects of the problematic of how to achieve high equity without compromising quality within a large education system. They each take a reconstructive focus, highlighting ways forward for education systems in Australia and beyond. While each paper investigates different aspects of the issue, the clearly stated objective of seeking to delineate and articulate characteristics of socially just education is consistent throughout the issue.

The moment of exchange : risk, vulnerability, responsibility

Any cycle of production and exchange – be it economic, cultural or aesthetic – involves an element of risk. It involves uncertainty, unpredictability, and a potential for new insight and innovation (the boom) as well as blockages, crises and breakdown (the bust). In performance, the risks are plentiful – economic, political, social, physical and psychological. The risks people are willing to take depend on their position in the exchange (performer, producer, venue manager or spectator), and their aesthetic preferences. This paper considers the often uncertain, confronting or ‘risky’ moment of exchange between performer, spectator and culture in Live Art practices. Encompassing body art, autobiographical art, site-specific art and other sorts of performative intervention in the public sphere, Live Art eschews the artifice of theatre, breaking down barriers between art and life, artist and spectator, to speak back to the public sphere, and challenge assumptions about bodies, identities, memories, relationships and histories. In the process, Live Art frequently privileges an uncertain, confrontational or ‘risky’ mode of exchange between performer, spectator and culture, as a way of challenging power structures. This paper examines the moment of exchange in terms of risk, vulnerability, responsibility and ethics. Why the romance with ‘risky’ behaviours and exchanges? Who is really taking a risk? What risk? With whose permission (or lack thereof)? What potential does a ‘risky’ exchange hold to destabilise aesthetic, social or political norms? Where lies the fine line between subversive intervention in the public sphere and sheer self-indulgence? What are the social and ethical implications of a moment of exchange that puts bodies, beliefs or social boundaries at ‘risk’? In this paper, these questions are addressed with reference to historical and contemporary practices under the broadly defined banner of Live Art, from the early work of Abrovamic and Burden, through to contemporary Australian practitioners like Fiona McGregor.

Selling education through “culture” : responses to the market by new, non-government schools

The move to a market model of schooling has seen a radical restructuring of the ways schooling is “done” in recent times in Western countries. Although there has been a great deal of work to examine the effects of a market model on local school management (LSM), teachers’ work and university systems, relatively little has been done to examine its effect on parents’ choice of school in the non-government sector in Australia. This study examines the reasons parents give for choosing a non-government school in the outer suburbs of one large city in Australia. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu specifically his ideas on “cultural capital” (1977), this study revealed that parents were choosing the non-government school over the government school to ensure that their children would be provided, through the school’s emphasis on cultural capital, access to a perceived “better life” thus enhancing the potential to facilitate “extraordinary children”, one of the school’s marketing claims.

Automated road pavement marking detection from high resolution aerial images based on Multi-resolution image analysis and anisotropic Gaussian filtering

Road features extraction from remote sensed imagery has been a long-term topic of great interest within the photogrammetry and remote sensing communities for over three decades. The majority of the early work only focused on linear feature detection approaches, with restrictive assumption on image resolution and road appearance. The widely available of high resolution digital aerial images makes it possible to extract sub-road features, e.g. road pavement markings. In this paper, we will focus on the automatic extraction of road lane markings, which are required by various lane-based vehicle applications, such as, autonomous vehicle navigation, and lane departure warning. The proposed approach consists of three phases: i) road centerline extraction from low resolution image, ii) road surface detection in the original image, and iii) pavement marking extraction on the generated road surface. The proposed method was tested on the aerial imagery dataset of the Bruce Highway, Queensland, and the results demonstrate the efficiency of our approach.