Lynsey Martin: A case study in 1970s Australian experimental animation

Lynsey Martin’s short experimental Animations remain largely unknown internationally. His graphic 16mm films Approximately Water (4 minutes 1972), Whitewash (1973, 4 minutes), Interview (25 minutes 1973) and Leading Ladies (1975 5 minutes) are analysed for their technique and cultural position, artifacts of a productive if marginalized period of artist made films. These graphic films stand as critical works at the heart experimental filmmaking in Australia and speak through their design and production method to current trends in digital media. Martin’s work includes the use of collage and its erasure, the grain of the photographic image and handpainting and drawing imagery directly on the film surface. Martin deals with the graphic and material elements of the filmstrip, the nature of filmic movement and the nature of photography in public space. For martin his films deal with films deal abstraction and illusionism, elements of chance, the deconstruction of film language, the diary film and process as content. These films stand as historic aesthetic traces of an immediate hands-on approach to image making that came into crisis in Australia through the disappearance of technical education in the 1980s when Martin taught graphic design in technical schools.

Technology and teachers in rural schools : diversity and similarity

This paper reports on a project situated in regional areas of Victoria in which 16 primary and secondary teachers participated in an intensive professional development program designed to assist them in embedding Information Communications Technology (ICT) into their classroom practice. The project provides some insight into the availability and use of current technological resources in the rural schools and examines the impact of an intensive professional development program on the implementation of ICT into the curriculum.

The results identified a large diversity of circumstances experienced by the schools in the project, not only in terms of ICT availability and use, and teacher experience, but also in more general issues of cultures of curriculum planning and integration, size, communication, and pedagogical presumptions. The successful integration of ICT into their pedagogical practice was influenced by a complex of factors including the availability of ICT resources, the teachers’ ICT skill level, the teachers’ ability and opportunity to integrate ICT in classroom, the level of support provided, both technical and pedagogical, and the curriculum requirements.

The results of the project have been positive with evidence of increased networking among the teachers, changes in teaching practice and increased teacher proficiency and awareness of ICT resources. The project has highlighted common difficulties that teachers experienced including frustrations with the unreliability of technology and a lack of time for necessary training and preparation. In response to the constraints, teachers have been resourceful and inventive in developing pedagogical strategies to aid the integration of ICT into their classroom practice.

How schooling, and particular schools, make a difference: values, identities and futures in longitudinal study

Just over a decade ago the authors set out to select and follow a range of young people from the age of 12 and their end of primary or first days in secondary school, to the age of 18 when most of them had embarked on the first steps of the post-school lives. Students from four different types of schools were chosen: a Melbourne high school, a high school in a Victorian regional city, a large non-government school, and a secondary school that had once been a technical school. The students were interviewed twice a year about their views of self, of school, of the future. In this article the authors discuss two aspects of the study: what sense did they get of schools and their effects on the subjectivities being formed by young people today? And, what sense did the authors get of how gender is working in young lives now? The article outlines some of the findings in relation to these two issues.

Arts curriculum reform : social and cultural reproduction in Victorian schools

This thesis examines the implementation of the government educational policy document The Curriculum and Standards Framework. I examined the historical and political motivation behind the development of this document and how it introduced a pervasive new initiative of outcomes based education and accountability based on economic rationalism. In particular I examined the implications this new approach had for visual arts education and the subsequent changes to the arts curriculum. This has entailed the introduction of the aesthetic appreciation of the arts as an outcome of the CSF: The Arts. I applied Bourdieu's theory of cultural reproduction in education which draws predominantly on a Weberian view and a theory of practice. Bourdieu discusses differential educational achievement according to cultural capital stating education requires certain forms of cultural capital that are not equally distributed among the classes. This therefore impedes or enhances life chances according to social class i.e. educational qualifications become a commodity in the labour market and other social fields. I examined how aesthetic appreciation of the arts has evolved historically as a form of social distinction. This entails an abstract element of arts discourse, which demands a certain linguistic competence, and familiarisation, which Bourdieu claims, is developed in the family, as 'cultural capital' this is further perpetuated in schools. The likely outcome is that the introduction of aesthetic appreciation in arts education i.e the demand to 'write about' and 'talk about' art, will perpetuate class inequality due to social and cultural difference. The study has been to examine the practices of arts education in four schools and the extent to which aesthetic appreciation was implemented in the visual arts. Data was collected by case study methods of observation, questionnaire and interview and was interpretive in both quantitative and qualitative methods. I analysed the data based on class differentiation by socioeconomic divisions and examined the school ethos and attitude towards the Arts along with differentiation in cultural capital between student population. I also found teacher and student habitus played a vital role in the implementation of the CSF. This is because habitus can cause resistance to change due to the division between the formulation of the curriculum in the bureaucratic order and the practice of teachers in classrooms. My thesis interprets education as a form of social reproduction, perpetuating the existing social order. However, as Bourdieu asserts and I agree education is a form of symbolic power as it conceals its social function under the guise of neutrality and the technical functional premise. Therefore, this thesis aims to make transparent how the education system serves the interests of the dominant group through curriculum policy. Consequently, it becomes clear how education has far reaching social implications where the distinctions of class are perpetuated through cultural reproduction.

Examining the development of the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning and its implications for schools and teacher education in Australia

The Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) is a very successful senior secondary school qualification introduced in the Australian state of Victoria in 2002. Applied learning in the VCAL engages senior students in a combination of work-based learning, service-learning, and project-based learning and aims to provide them with the skills, knowledge, and attitudes to make informed choices regarding pathways to work and further education. The program has enjoyed rapid growth and its system-wide adoption by Victorian secondary schools, Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutions, Registered Training Organizations (RTOs), and Adult and Community Education (ACE) providers has broadened significantly the range of senior schooling pathway options for young people. This paper will examine reasons for developing an applied learning senior secondary certificate and its rapid growth in Victoria since 2002. The authors draw on a number of case studies to profile the unique nature of applied learning in the VCAL, including its dimensions of service learning, work-based learning, and project-based learning. These case studies are also used to discuss a number of implications that have emerged from the use of applied learning in the VCAL, including approaches to teaching and assessment that will support applied learning and the development of new partnerships between VCAL providers and community partners. Finally, the paper considers significant implications the VCAL has created for teacher education in Victoria by discussing the new Graduate Diploma of Education (Applied Learning) developed by Deakin University.

Problematizing 'risk' and the principalship : the risky business of managing risk in schools

Over the past two decades, risk in education has stimulated increasing attention and prominence, with principals bearing responsibility and liability for ‘managing’ risk in schools. As a consequence, compulsory risk compliance régimes have become increasingly complex, technical and time-consuming. This article focuses on the responses of principals to issues surrounding ‘risk’ and suggests that some risk processes themselves may be inherently risky. Principals fear that risk management régimes can incur professional and personal danger while ignoring some commonly known, politically sensitive, ‘risky’ areas. The article considers the scope of risk in schools before turning to ‘undiscussables’: how risk management puts principals at risk, and issues surrounding leaders as risk. Principals’ concerns about marginalization from systemic risk decision-making, the individuation of risk management responsibility and suggestions for action are discussed, along with areas for future research.

Student preferences for bachelor degrees at TAFE: the socio-spatial influence of schools

This report on Student Preferences for Bachelor Degrees at TAFE (Technical and Further Education) institutions is derived from research commissioned by Australia’s National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) hosted at Curtin University and conducted by researchers at Deakin University’s Strategic Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation (CREFI). The report focuses on the influence of schools on their students’ higher education (HE) preferences – particularly their preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees – as recorded by the Victorian and South Australian Tertiary Admissions Centres (VTAC and SATAC). Influence is researched in terms of a school’s socioeconomic status, geographical location and sector. The SATAC data set is considerably smaller, at around 8 per cent of the VTAC data set.Bachelor degrees offered by TAFEs are relatively small in number but a growing higher education option for students in Australia (Gale et al. 2013). The Australian Government’s proposal to extend Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs) to include Australian higher education not delivered by the nation’s public universities (Department of Education 2014b), is likely to fuel further growth in TAFE bachelor degree offerings. The recent Report of the Review of the Demand Driven Funding System in Australian higher education (Kemp & Norton 2014), which recommended this change, also makes special mention of non-university degree options as something that would be of particular benefit to students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds.The research reported herein is informed by a review of the international research literature, which indicates three main influences on students’ HE preferences: (1) students’ families and communities; (2) the socio-spatial location of their schools; and (3) school practices. This report contributes to understandings on the second of these: the influence of school context (their socio-spatial location) on students’ preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees.The research found that the annual rate of student preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees was relatively stable (at around 1,500 per annum) from 2009 to 2012 but rose significantly (by 30%) in 2013. Students from high socioeconomic status schools (and with an average ATAR of 56.9) were the group that registered the largest number of preferences. The number of preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees lodged by students from metropolitan schools exceeded the preferences of students from schools located in all other regions combined. This might reflect the fact that TAFE institutions offering bachelor degrees tend to be located in metropolitan areas.The research also found that students’ preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees increased after announcement of their Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR), by between 25 and 30 per cent each year. The post-ATAR increase was most noticeable in the Health and Education fields of study and among students from high socioeconomic status schools. The report concludes that while the public perception of TAFE is that it is a sector primarily for students from low SES backgrounds, this is not reflected in students’ preferences for TAFE bachelor degrees. Instead, the preferences of students from high socioeconomic schools outnumber other SES groups in almost every TAFE-degree field of study. This includes the fields of Health and Education, which are often seen to be typical low SES student choices in universities (Gale & Parker 2013).

The subjectivities of ‘included’ students with disabilities in schools

The contextual precept of this paper is to re-theorise inclusive education beyond technical rational solutions to the ‘problem’ of disability. Drawing on Foucauldian and critical disability theories, I make the case for the analysis of inclusive schooling through the lens of students’ ‘included’ subjectivities – notwithstanding the presence of diagnosed special educational needs. I contend that there is a theoretical mismatch between humanist inclusive schooling and the posthumanist position of disability: an epistemic fissure that impedes inclusive development. Through analysis of the voices of students with disabilities from two different schooling contexts in Australia and Spain, I demonstrate how fragmented virtues of normalcy suffused their subjectivities. I conclude the paper with a discussion of the roles that DisHuman disability studies might play in recasting inclusive schooling by troubling normative discourse.