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.

Learning to be literate : issues of pedagogy for recently arrived refugee youth in Australia

This paper focuses on issues of access to productive literacy learning as part of socially just schooling for recently arrived refugee youth within Australia. It argues that a sole reliance on traditional ESL pedagogy is failing this vulnerable group of students, who differ significantly from past refugees who have settled in Australia. Many have been ‘placeless’ for some time, are likely to have received at best an interrupted education before arriving in Australia, and may have experienced signification trauma (Christie & Sidhu, 2006; Cottone, 2004; Miller, Mitchell, & Brown, 2005). Australian Government policy has resulted in spacialized settlement, leaving particular schools dealing with a large influx of refugee students who may be attending school for the first time (Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, 2004; Sidhu & Christie, 2002). While this has implications generally, it has particular consequences for secondary school students attempting to learn English literacy in short periods of time, without basic foundations in either English or print-based literacy in any first language (Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, 2006). Many of these students leave schools without the most basic early literacy practices, having endured several years of pedagogy pitched well beyond their needs. This paper suggests that schools must take up three key roles: to educate, to provide a site for the development of civic responsibility, and to act as a site for welfare with responsibility. As a system, our department needs to work out what can we do for 17-18 year olds that are coming into our school system in year 10 without more than 1-2 years of education. I don't think there is a policy about what to do. – (T2-ESL teacher)

Europe and the Media: Building a new kind of Europe; is mass media the key?

The book is a joint effort of eight academics and journalists, Europe specialists from six countries (Australia, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and the United States). They give sometimes divergent views on the future of the so-called “European Project”, for building a common European economy and society, but agree that cultural changes, especially changes experienced through mass media, are rapidly taking place. One of the central interests of the book is the operation of the large media centre located at the European Commission in Brussels – the world’s largest gallery of permanently accredited correspondents. Jacket notes: The Lisbon Treaty of December 2009 is the latest success of the European Union’s drive to restructure and expand; yet questions persist about how democratic this new Europe might be. Will Brussels’ promotion of the “European idea” produce a common European culture and society? The authors consider it might, as a culture of everyday shared experience, though old ways are cherished, citizens forever thinking twice about committing to an uncertain future. The book focuses on mass media , as a prime agent of change, sometimes used deliberately to promote a “European project”; sometimes acting more naturally as a medium for new agendas. It looks at proposed media models for Europe, ranging from not very successful pan-European television, to the potentials of media systems based on national markets, and new media based on digital formats. It also studies the Brussels media service, the centre operated by the European Commission, which is the world’s largest concentration of journalists; and ways that dominant national media may come to serve the interests of communities now extending across frontiers. Europe and the Media notes change especially as encountered by new EU member countries of central and eastern Europe.

Filled pauses

An installation of sculptural works that continues the artist's exploration of self-portraiture. Comprising a series of triadic structures (bust, socle and plaster residue) the works propose a formal and conceptual equivalence between the portrait bust and traces of its technical and historical origins. Arranged haphazardly in the space, the resultant works speak of the exhaustion of portraiture as a genre while simultaneously attesting to an autogenic notion of practice in which portraiture acts as a vital catalyst.

Comprehension as social and intellectual practice : rebuilding curriculum in low socioeconomic and cultural minority schools

This article reframes the concept of comprehension as a social and intellectual practice. It reviews current approaches to reading instruction for linguistically and culturally diverse and low socioeconomic students, noting an emphasis on comprehension as autonomous skills. The Four Resources model (Freebody & Luke, 1990) is used to make the case for the integration of comprehension instruction with an emphasis on student cultural and community knowledge, and substantive intellectual and sociocultural content in elementary school curricula. Illustrations are drawn from research underway on the teaching of literacy in primary schools in low SES communities.

Yet to be known

TBA: Triptych: Digital Print, PVC Text, Acrylic Sheet Total Size: 252cm x 119cm---------- The work employs text based representations of indigenous plants (3500 species names) and quotations from an eminent botanist. This information is spatialised to represent the geographic area within which the plants where recorded (by others-Gov’t database).---------- The work was exhibited at Eyes wide open (curators K Bradby and A Brandenberg) which was held at Gorepani Gallery, Albany WA to coincide with the first national screening on SBS Television of the Western Australian documentary A Million Acres a Year (Rijavec, F, Harrison, N & Bradby K (directors), Snakewood Films & Film Australia, c2003).

Many Mount Barrens

Cibachrome photographic prints, Digital print, Acrylic Sheet , wire & card.--------- Total size: 170cm x 119cm x 15cm---------- The work employs a terrestrial photography and cartographic technique to represent a diversity of landscape types surrounding West Mt Barren in Western Australia. Sixteen views of West Mt Barren were captured over a two week period from map grid coordinates in the surround landscape. These images are configured in Many Mount Barrens in a manner which corresponds to the position from which they were recorded.---------- The work was exhibited at Eyes wide open (curators K Bradby and A Brandenberg) which was held at Gorepani Gallery, Albany WA to coincide with the first national screening on SBS Television of the Western Australian documentary A Million Acres a Year (Rijavec, F, Harrison, N & Bradby K (directors), Snakewood Films & Film Australia, c2003).

Sandplain

Triptych: Digital print, Acrylic Sheet--------- Total size: 252 cm x 119cm---------- The work employs text based representations of agricultural plants (26 species names). This information is spatialised to represent the geographic area within which the plant species are harvested.---------- The work was exhibited at Eyes wide open (curators K Bradby and A Brandenberg) which was held at Gorepani Gallery, Albany WA to coincide with the first national screening on SBS Television of the Western Australian documentary A Million Acres a Year (Rijavec, F, Harrison, N & Bradby K (directors), Snakewood Films & Film Australia, c2003).

Using virtual reality modelling in cultural management, archiving and research

This paper outlines how the Ortelia project’s 3D virtual reality models have the capacity to assist our understanding of sites of cultural heritage. The VR investigation of such spaces can be a valuable tool in 'real world' empirical research in theatre and spatiality. Through a demonstration of two of Ortelia's VR models (an art gallery and a theatre), we suggest how we might consider interpreting cultural space and sites as contributing significantly to cultural capital. We also introduce the potential for human interaction in such venues through motion-capture to discuss the potential for assessing how humans interact in such contexts.

Protrusion I

Protrusion I is a self-portrait bust, rendered with a high degree of naturalism. The work depicts a male subject with a bulbous white form projecting from it nasal and oral orifices. The work forms part of the artist’s ongoing self-portraiture project, in which the tensions between objectivity and subjectivity that pervade the self-portrait as a genre are cross referenced with the notions of materiality and interiority integral to the language of sculpture. The iconography of the work parodies the connection between amorphous form and artistic subjectivity in the history of sculpture. The dough-like forms that emerge from the figure thus refer to a sense of ‘inner life’ while also operating as more analytical projections of the cavities of the bust – areas of the where the mimetic program are necessarily suspended. The result is a figure that appears to be in a state of resigned suffocation. The work was selected for the 2005 National Sculpture Prize and Exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. The work was later included in the group show Crash (and other earthy pleasures) at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at the University of Western Australia in Perth.

The vernacular terrain : Songzhang Art Museum, Beijing, China

The field was the curation of cross-cultural new media/ digital media practices within large-scale exhibition practices in China. The context was improved understandings of the intertwining of the natural and the artificial with respect to landscape and culture, and their consequent effect on our contemporary globalised society. The research highlighted new languages of media art with respect to landscape and their particular underpinning dialects. The methodology was principally practice-led. --------- The research brought together over 60 practitioners from both local and diasporic Asian, European and Australian cultures for the first time within a Chinese exhibition context. Through pursuing a strong response to both cultural displacement and re-identification the research forged and documented an enduring commonality within difference – an agenda further concentrated through sensitivities surrounding that year’s Beijing’s Olympics. In contrast to the severe threats posed to the local dialects of many of the world’s spoken and written languages the ‘Vernacular Terrain’ project evidenced that many local creative ‘dialects’ of the environment-media art continuum had indeed survived and flourished. --------- The project was co-funded by the Beijing Film Academy, QUT Precincts, IDAProjects and Platform China Art Institute. A broad range of peer-reviewed grants was won including from the Australia China Council and the Australian Embassy in China. Through invitations from external curators much of the work then traveled to other venues including the Block Gallery at QUT and the outdoor screens at Federation Square, Melbourne. The Vernacular Terrain catalogue featured a comprehensive history of the IDA project from 2000 to 2008 alongside several major essays. Due to the reputation IDA Projects had established, the team were invited to curate a major exhibition showcasing fifty new media artists: The Vernacular Terrain, at the prestigious Songzhang Art Museum, Beijing in Dec 07-Jan 2008. The exhibition was designed for an extensive, newly opened gallery owned by one of China's most important art historians Li Xian Ting. This exhibition was not only this gallery’s inaugural non-Chinese curated show but also the Gallery’s first new media exhibition. It included important works by artists such as Peter Greenway, Michael Roulier, Maleonn and Cui Xuiwen. --------- Each artist was chosen both for a focus upon their own local environmental concerns as well as their specific forms of practice - that included virtual world design, interactive design, video art, real time and manipulated multiplayer gaming platforms and web 2.0 practices. This exhibition examined the interconnectivities of cultural dialogue on both a micro and macro scale; incorporating the local and the global, through display methods and design approaches that stitched these diverse practices into a spatial map of meanings and conversations. By examining the contexts of each artist’s practice in relationship to the specificity of their own local place and prevailing global contexts the exhibition sought to uncover a global vernacular. Through pursuing this concentrated anthropological direction the research identified key themes and concerns of a contextual language that was clearly underpinned by distinctive local ‘dialects’ thereby contributing to a profound sense of cross-cultural association. Through augmentation of existing discourse the exhibition confirmed the enduring relevance and influence of both localized and globalised languages of the landscape-technology continuum.

2006 International digital art awards : Beijing film academy galleries, China

The field was the curation of new media within large-scale exhibition practice for Chinese audiences. The context was improved understandings of the intertwining cultures and concerns of Chinese and Western contemporary practitioners. The research uncovered a range of connective and dialogical concerns around cultural displacement and re-identification, germane to the chosen group of media artists. The methodology was principally practice-led. The research brought together 31 practitioners from Asian, European and Australasian cultures within a major highly visible Chinese exhibition context. By identifying and promoting a distinct commonality within difference amongst the diverse practitioners the exhibition successfully activated a global dialogue that incorporated environmental and cultural identity agendas within a major Chinese educational and public context - thereby promulgating cross-cultural understanding, despite the often oppressive shadowing of domestic political processes. The project was developed under the international aegis of IDA Projects (established since 1999) and was substantially supported by the Fine Art Department of the Beijing Film Academy, QUT Precincts and Platform China Art Institute. It built upon IDA’s 2005 inaugural new media exhibition at the ‘Today Art’ Museum in Beijing – now recognised as one of the leading art spaces in China. Numerous peer-reviewed grants won included the Australian Embassy in China and the Australia China Council. Through subsequent invitations from external curators the work then traveled in a range of reconfigured formats to other major venues including the Block Gallery at QUT, Brisbane and ZAIM Artspace, Yokohama Japan. A major catalogue with authoritative essays was also printed.

Critical literacies in schools : a primer

A review of theoretical principals and practice of school-based approaches to critical literacy, with a specific focus on the middle years of schooling.

Place makers : contemporary Queensland architects

This article reviews Place Makers: Contemporary Queensland Architects held in the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane, Queensland.