Development of deliberative democracy : a collection of the essays presented at the international conference on deliberative democracy and Chinese practice of participatory and deliberative institutions

Collection of the essays presented at the international conference on deliberative democray and Chinese practice of participatory and deliberative institutions

The rule of law as an Australian constitutionalist promise

The author poses the question whether the rule of law is a constitutionalist promise that protects all Australians or whether it is simply a juridical principle that may be balanced against certain social factors.  Constitutionalist promises involve the limiting and supporting of state power. The author examines several instances of state power exercised in Australia and concludes that we should not rely on the rule of law as an absolute means of achieving equality, human rights, justice, freedom and even democracy.

Making sense of law and disorder

This article tells the story of a cross-cultural encounter on a beach at King George's Sound in the south west of Australia in 1826, when Major Edmund Lockyer arrived to establish a British military garrison. The account we have of those early encounters come from the pen of Lockyer, and by taking a close reading of his journal this article attempts to reveal the meanings and context of Aboriginal actions. It also analyses how the Aborigines and the British made sense and subsequently responded to the encounter. Whilst this story is not given iconic status in Australian historiography, it is valuable in opening up a porthole into this contact zone at the moment when precarious relationships were being formed.

Clinical supervision and symmetrical communication : towards a critical practice of supervision

The central argument of the thesis is that the dominant modes of the supervision of teaching are in need of critique and reconstruction. From a critical perspective, supervision is viewed as a political and ideological process enacted through asymmetrical relations and structures of communication. It is underpinned by a discourse of technocratic rationality and control Clinical supervision, a currently popular model of teacher supervision, has (despite its emancipatory origins) been accommodated by the dominant ideology and is employed as a hegemonic mechanism of evaluation, control and even dismissal of teachers. However, historical analysis reveals that teachers have contested and resisted authoritarianism and centralized control in favour of developing more democratic and participatory forms of professional development. In these moves can be found a rationale for a reconstruction of the theory and practice of clinical supervision around the concepts of symmetrical communication and critical pedagogy. The researcher engaged in a self-reflective study with a group of supervisors and teachers in N.S.W. schools to explore the possibilities and limitations of a critical and counter-hegemonic practice of supervision. The outcomes, in the form of three case studies, are analysed in terms of a dialectic of reconstruction and maintenance of the status quo. The evidence reveals that some of the research participants sought to reconstruct their supervisory relationships in ways which challenged the bureaucratic structures of their workplace. Others, however, rejected the emancipatory possibilities and resolved to maintain their traditional hierarchical relationship.

Facts, threats and reds : common law constitutionalism and the rule of law

In a concurring judgment in Thomas v Mowbray, a High Court of Australia case turning on the Constitutional validity of terrorism-related control orders, Callinan J offers a re-evaluation of the Court’s earlier decision in the Australian Communist Party case to curtail executive power. According to Callinan J, factual matters knowable (but not known) at the time of the earlier decision might have given rise to a different outcome. In a dissenting judgment by Kirby J in the same case the Court’s reasoning in the Australian Communist Party case is robustly defended. These contested issues connect with the theoretical dispute between ‘common law constitutionalism’ and ‘constitutional positivism’ analysed by Dyzenhaus in the context of states of emergency where the limits of executive action and the role of supporting facts become particularly salient. They press the question of the status of the rule of law in the international as well as in the municipal sphere.

Material thinking : the theory and practice of creative research

This intimate account of how ideas get turned into artwork—including dance performance, film, sound installation, sculpture, and painting—looks at how the material thinking that art embodies produces new understandings about individuals, their histories, and the cultures they inhabit. Discussing the philosophy of signs (images, text, and their interaction), the psychology of visual perception, and the overarching notion of mythopoeic place-making, this intellectually wide-ranging and anecdotally narrated primer provides a fresh perspective to the concept of inventing. All active practitioners in the fields of performance, media, film, museum, painting, sculpture, and cultural studies will benefit from this look at how artists participate in the conceptual invention of their world.

Knowing practice in English teaching? Research challenges in representing the professional practice of English teachers

This article problematises representations of professional practice. It investigates assumptions behind received accounts of professional practice, including professional standards that purportedly capture what accomplished English teachers “should know and be able to do”, “scientific” studies that construct accounts of classrooms from the standpoint of academic researchers, and narratives written by teachers that claim to explore dimensions of classroom teaching that elude outside observers. Especially significant are attempts by practitioner researchers to develop accounts of their professional practice vis-a-vis constructions of their work from other standpoints. We argue that it is timely for practitioner researchers to reflexively examine the conditions for producing such accounts, and to address the question of the validity of their knowledge claims. Yet this is also – crucially – more than an epistemological issue, but one that requires acknowledging the primacy of practice for engaging with the complexities of classroom settings. This article gives an account of our ongoing efforts to develop forms of representation that might begin to do justice to the complexities of practice in comparison with accepted accounts of what English teachers know and do. We intend it to be read as a position paper which outlines a framework for research on English teaching as a dynamic culture practice.