Ongoing colonial legacy : contemporary education beliefs and practices in Papua New Guinea

In the late 1980ˇ¦s, a realisation that the western education system bequeathed to Papua New Guinea at the time of Independence had functioned to devalue and marginalise many of the traditional beliefs, knowledge and skills students brought with them to education, led to a period of significant education reform. The Reform was premised on the report of a Ministerial Review Committee called A Philosophy of Education. This report made recommendations about how education in Papua New Guinea could respond to the issues and challenges this nation faced as it sought to chart a course to serve the needs of its citizens on its own terms. The issues associated with managing and implementing institutionalised educational change premised on importing western values and practices are a central theme of this thesis. The impact of importing foreign curriculum and associated curriculum officers and consultants to assist with curriculum change and development in the former Language and Literacy unit of the Curriculum Development Division, is considered in three related sections of this report: „P a critical review of the imported educational system and related practices and related issues since Independence „P narrative report of the experience of two colleagues in western education „P evidential research based on curriculum Reform in the Language and Literacy Unit. How Papua New Guinea has sought to come to terms with the issues and challenges that arose in response to a practice of importing western curriculum both at the time of Independence and currently through the Reform, are explored throughout the thesis. The findings issues reveal much about the capacity of individuals and institutions to respond to a post-colonial world particularly associated with an ongoing colonial legacy in the principle researcherˇ¦s work context. The thesis argues that the challenges Papua New Guinea curriculum officers face today, as they manage and implement changes associated with another imported curriculum are caught up in existing power relations. These power relations function to stifle creative thinking at a time when it is most needed. Further, these power relations are not well understood by the curriculum officers and remained hidden and unquestioned throughout the research project. The thesis also argues that in the researcherˇ¦s work context, techniques of surveillance were brought to bear and functioned to curtail critical thinking about how the reformed curriculum could be sensitive and respectful of those beliefs and traditions that had sustained life in Papua New Guinea for thousands of years. Consequently, many outmoded beliefs and practices associated with an uncritical and ongoing acceptance of the superiority of western imports have been retained, thereby effectively denying the collective voices of Paua New Guineans in the current curriculum Reform.

International ‘benchmarking’ studies and the identification of ‘education best practice’: a focus on classroom teachers and their practices

 Abstract:The disproportionate focus on classroom teachers and their instruction—teacher effectiveness—in order to confront and address under-achievement and disadvantage appears as a contemporary education policy theme in Australia. Phrases such as ‘high performing schooling systems’, ‘the best teachers’, ‘high performing countries’, ‘quality teaching’, ‘under-performing schools’, ‘the right change’, ‘operationally feasible’, ‘targeting of reforms’, ‘degrees of under-performance’, ‘educational drivers’, ‘teacher quality and improved teaching’ and ‘external standards and governance’ are constantly mentioned and given continual attention and prominence by policy-makers. The paper questions and critiques a policy-making direction that uses teacher effectiveness research to force and steer reform in education. The distinctive and narrow concern with teacher effectiveness works to the specific exclusion of breadth and scope concerning debate about broader education related issues and questions, for example, matters of student achievement, exclusion and disadvantage. This article uses a qualitative research approach informed by critical theory to examine three influential private sector reports on education and schooling: The McKinsey Report ( 2007 )—How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top, The Nous Group ( 2011 )—Schooling Challenges and Opportunities and The Grattan Institute ( 2012 )—Catching up: Learning from the best school systems in East Asia. The article subjects the reports to close critical scrutiny and examination and finds that classroom teachers are positioned so that their specific and explicit instruction becomes the differentiating ‘variable’ in matters of student achievement and success.

Producing calculable worlds: education at a glance

 The OECD’s international education indicators have become very influential in contemporary education policies. Although these indicators are now routinely, annually published in the form of Education at a Glance, the calculability upon which the indicators depend was an achievement that involved the mobilisation of a huge machinery of expertise, trust, pragmatism and other resources. This paper traces the ways in which varied constraints were addressed, interests translated, categories defined, classifications negotiated, frameworks agreed upon, choices made, methodologies established and protocols developed, as the indicators exercise moved from being nearly impossible to becoming routinely produced. Using resources from Science and Technology Studies (STS), it demonstrates that the work of making such assemblages is both instrumentalist and performative, and argues for an undertaking of critique as a moral enterprise.

Equity and marketisation: emerging policies and practices in Australian education

The conjunction of equity and market logics in contemporary education has created new and different conditions of possibility for equity, both as conceived in policy discourses and as a related set of educational practices. In this editorial introduction, we examine how equity is being drawn into new policy assemblages and how, in the context of marketisation, equity is evolving and being enacted in new ways across education sectors. Different conceptions of equity are considered, including the increasingly influential human capital perspective promoted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We argue that, separate from critiques of neoliberalism and its deleterious effects on equity in education, it is necessary to analyse carefully the increasing rationalisation of equity agendas in economic terms, the associated effects on education governance and policy-making, as well as on the work of educational institutions and educators. Providing an overview of the contributions to this Special Issue, we direct particular attention to the multiple, complex and often contradictory effects of the current education reform agenda in Australia, which has prioritised equity objectives and intensified performance measurement, comparison and accountability as means to drive educational improvement and reduce disadvantage.

The struggle to technicise in education policy

In contemporary education policy, simplified technical accounts of policy problems and solutions are being produced with the use of numeric calculations. These calculations are seen as clear and unbiased, capable of revealing ‘‘what works’’ and identifying ‘‘best practices.’’ In this piece, the authors use resources from the materialsemiotic approach of actor-network theory to discuss how calculations have begun to serve as a subtle infrastructure underpinning the way we understand and organise our world. They demonstrate the usefulness of the approach in tracing the technicisation of policy by deploying it to qualitative studies of like-school comparisons in the two unexpectedly linked locations—New York City and Australia. The authors reveal how technical accounts are precarious and need constant maintenance to endure, even as they increasingly becoming routine, curtailing the policy imagination and limiting the spaces of contestation. It is for this reason, they argue, that a deeper understanding and sustained critique of such accounts is of pressing importance.

Narrative and portfolio approaches to teacher professional standards

This paper analyses various uses of narrative in the exploration of teacher identity. It highlights the way many contemporary education writers use terminology such as ‘storying lives’ and ‘storied landscapes’ to describe teacher processes of reflection on practice. In this paper the authors discuss some recent approaches to narrative that incorporate or suggest systematic uses of narrative theory (Conle 2003, Kamler, 2001, Richardson, 2003). Consideration is also given to the links between critical ethnography and narrative in order to critique the use of teacher portfolios, as in a recent Australian initiative for the appraisal of beginning teachers. The authors conclude with an argument for the rehabilitation and refinement of narrative theory in the ‘writing’ of teacher identity.

Through the looking glass : immersive interfaces for participant engagement in blended e-learning environments

This chapter outlines current research profiling students and educators participating in and constructing immersive interfaces in blended e-learning settings. Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) and real world settings augmented with virtual information can generate problem-solving communities where participants gain greater technical knowledge and skills through meaningful and frequent interaction. MUVEs can also generate technical innovation amongst students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds provided students are encouraged to help each other and learn together. After detailing some false assumptions about computer literacy that can stifle meaningful exploration with new technologies in contemporary education, this chapter documents an exemplar involving extensive collaboration between students from different educational backgrounds with diverse technical competencies. The success of this initiative hinges on the willingness of educators to provide a shared learning experience where technology is used to facilitate increased student communication and offers a site for invention, informed critique, industry participation, and a sense of community.

Motivation, responsibility and anxiety : parenting dispositions of Chinese mothers

One of the key principles in the ideology which underpins education is the value of children’s family experience. Central to this idea is the view of parents as important. Parenting has become a vital dimension in contemporary education. Parenting discourses traditionally focus on such concepts as parenting style, approach, attitude or practice. The main consideration behind these concepts is what parents appear to be doing at a single point of time, referring to parenting per se. This paper takes on the notion of disposition in order to understand urban Chinese mothers’ habitual and characteristic ways of child rearing. It presents evidence to show that a group of Chinese mothers had parenting dispositions of motivation, responsibility and anxiety. Data came from a series of conversations between 50 Chinese mothers of preschool children and five early childhood teachers through a synchronous online text chat. In the process of consulting the early childhood teachers, the parents expressed many concerns, questions and views of childrearing and early childhood education, thereby providing evidence about their thinking and behaviour. Drawing on the concept of ‘disposition’, the study provides insights into the common thinking threads that characterized Chinese parenting and the ways those threads were woven into their disposed approaches to child rearing and early education.

Contemporary learning environments: designing e-learning for education in the professions

Designing e-learning environments for quality professional education is a challenge for education designers, as the continuing practice of simply moving courses online can be surprisingly disabling. We argue that as universities strive to educate for excellence in professional practice, design approaches for the e-learning components must be conceptualized in a broader view of a contemporary learning environment involving integrated virtual and physical dimensions. These are comprehensively considered in an integrated way to facilitate learning experiences providing an emphasis on grounded practice. Our paper considers learning environments in the service of a broader understanding of a professional "practicum." In providing the more flexible, immediate and evolving virtual experiences, e-learning as a feature must take account of a range of education design considerations we model in a framework of elements. These are outlined, and broader issues are illuminated through a comparative case analysis of educational technology developments at Deakin University in the two professional fields of teaching and journalism. The Education Studies Online (ESO) project and the HOTcopy newsroom simulation project exemplify elements of the approach recommended in addressing the challenges of quality professional education. We highlight the generative role of the education designer in adopting an integrative and strategic stance, when creating such environments. Implications for the selection and use of various e-learning resources and corporate e-learning systems become evident as we highlight the dangers of a returning "instructional industrialism" as we risk allowing courses to "move online", rather than moving towards proposed features of contemporary learning environments.

Multicultural education and racism: the case of Arab-Australian students in contemporary Australia

This paper discusses the social and cultural dimensions of the educational experiences of Arab-Australian students. It seeks to explore the cultural attitudes and the social experiences of Arab-Australian secondary school students from two schools situated in Melbourne's northern region. The paper seeks to examine how Arab-Australian students and their families understand and construct their own social and educational experiences in relation to schools' initiatives as well as wider social discourses. The empirical findings presented in this paper suggest that there are critical links between Arab-Australian students' perceptions of belonging, identity and citizenship on the one hand, and their attitudes to schooling and educational experiences on the other. The study's findings show the need for current patterns of multicultural education research and practice to incorporate more systematically socio-political dynamics beyond the confines of school and family factors.

Becoming a physical education teacher : contemporary and enduring issues

The only current Australia/New Zealand text designed for students studying in this secondary Key Learning Area. This title offers a contemporary approach to the subject by combining a strong focus on issues of practice with an accessible theoretical perspective.

Becoming a physical education teacher : contemporary and enduring issues

The only current Australia/New Zealand text designed for students studying in this secondary Key Learning Area. This title offers a contemporary approach to the subject by combining a strong focus on issues of practice with an accessible theoretical perspective.