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.

Performative accountability and early childhood teaching

This paper reports on the findings from a PhD study that investigated influences affecting early childhood teacher decision making at the preschool level in Victoria, Australia. A critical discourse analysis of preschool teacher interviews and curricula related policies found that developmentally appropriate practice was a dominant discourse influencing teacher decision making and, despite no government-mandated curricula framework at the time, teachers were held accountable for their curricula practice. Critical theory was the underpinning framework used for the study and it enabled taken-for-granted understandings to be uncovered within early childhood policies and teacher interviews. The concepts of power, authority, and accountability were examined in policy and in interview transcripts, and subsequently, various forms of control and obligation were brought to the forefront.

New directions in education? A critique of contemporary policy reforms

This paper draws on facets of Foucault's theoretical resources to critique current education policy reform from within the Australian State of Victoria, namely the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development's (DEECD) discussion paper New directions for school leadership and the teaching profession. Implicit in the reform effort is decentralization, including penalties for “underperforming” classroom teachers and “ineffective” teacher education courses. Principals will hold a pre-eminent rank in the reforms proposed as they are charged with their oversight and implementation, including intervening in the education and preparation of pre-service teachers.

Spatial design 3.0

Spatial Design 3.0 forms a new dialogue between the artist and design artefacts, lens-based practice and the entanglements of contemporary critical theory. The artist was invited to exhibit at the Peninsula Art Gallery in Plymouth, UK at the Envelop Exhibition as part of the UK Festival of Design 2015. The artwork involves wire, photography, printing, mark making, typography and patterns negotiated and frozen within spatial arrangements. These elements are manipulated as a means to engage the traditional tools and instruments of art and design methodology in contemporary practice. The work was published and internationally distributed in the accompanying catalogue.

‘A cataclysm of truth from the crisis of falsehood’: reading Habermas on Calvino

Interest in the possibility of a Habermasian approach to literary criticism has recently been sparked by several book-length contributions from scholars working in the field of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. This article seeks to clarify the conceptual stakes in the current debate, which concern whether literature makes truth claims or merely imaginatively discloses new perceptions with a truth potential, by returning to Habermas’s most extended encounter with a literary work since the 1970s. Against the background of the philosophical issues, I re-read to Calvino’s highly self-reflexive If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller to show that in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas has managed to get everything backwards. Literature here reads philosophy alright, but not in the sense of the ludic deconstruction of rational argumentation into rhetorical play that Habermas supposes. Using the notion of an ontological poetics of self-reflexive literature, and with some help from Lacanian psychoanalysis, I interpret Calvino’s novel as a sustained meditation on the connection between authentic literature and the desire to read. In this light, it not only looks like Habermas has missed his polemical target, but, also, and more significantly, it becomes clear that abandonment of the link between literature and truth is misguided.

Introduction to the special issue on science fiction

This introduction to a special issue of Thesis Eleven devoted to science fiction begins by exploring the way the genre has been handled by German and French critical theory and their Anglophone equivalents. It proceeds to a discussion of the historical sociology of the genre and, thence, to an account of what it terms the dialectic of science fiction endangerment. Finally, it concludes with a brief overview of the various contributions to the issue.

Nationalism and ideology in an anticonsumption movement

In this research we examine the role of the nationalist ideology of swadeshi in a contemporary anticonsumption movement and show that its deployment is linked to the experiences of colonialism, modernity, and globalization in India. Specifically, we offer a postcolonial understanding of reflexivity and nationalism in an anticonsumption movement opposing Coca-Cola in India. This helps us offer an interpretation of this consumer movement involving spatial politics, temporal heterogeneity, appropriation of existing ideology, the use of consumption in ideology, and attempts to bring together a disparate set of actors in the movement.

Organizações não governamentais (ONGs) e mercado: estudo de campo de um inevitável choque de racionalidades

Aquilo que passamos a entender como racional e lógico a partir da era moderna, provê um esquema mental para tomada de ações que carrega um arcabouço de premissas e valores consigo. Essas regras visam a maximização utilitária das consequências, esvaziadas de qualquer valor subjetivo. Weber (1994) classificou acessoriamente esse esquema como “racionalidade instrumental”, que se caracteriza por ser orientada pelos fins, meios e consequências da ação. Em contraposição, definiu ainda a “racionalidade substantiva”, postulada nos valores do sujeito, que não se orienta por quaisquer consequências da ação. Muitos autores partiram dessas racionalidades para representar a dualidade que acomete o mundo a partir da centralidade do mercado e sua lógica instrumental, mas foi Guerreiro Ramos (1989) quem deu contundente contribuição ao estudo das organizações separando diferentes enclaves sociais, nos quais as racionalidades seriam mais adequadas em um ou outro espaço. Nesse contexto, o mercado é um enclave importante e legítimo, mas apartado de outros, nos quais as relações sociais existem para servir o sujeito. Esse trabalho, fundamentado na Teoria Crítica, reconhece que as ONGs (Organizações Não Governamentais) devem pertencer a um campo distinto daquele das empresas econômicas, por se basearem em racionalidades diferentes das mesmas. Foi realizada uma pesquisa de campo junto a cinco organizações sem fins lucrativos, com fins declarados de ação social (Harmonicanto, Reviverde, ACAM, Observatório de Favelas e Bola pra Frente), buscando identificar as influências desviacionistas que a adoção da racionalidade instrumental impõe sobre a realização dos objetivos previstos para essas organizações. Observou-se que existem contingências que favorecem o uso da instrumentalidade nessas organizações, como: necessidade de autossustentação, área de atuação, tamanho da organização, influência do líder, etc. Conclui-se que tais organizações, apesar de não serem espaços dedicados à atualização do sujeito (como define a Isonomia de Guerreiro Ramos), delatam o seu fim público e orientam-se pelas consequências sempre que absorvem de forma crua a dinâmica organizacional de uma empresa econômica.

O estado como empregador de última instância: uma proposta de pleno emprego, estabilidade e condições dignas de trabalho para o Brasil

GOMES, Z. B. ; LOURENÇO, André Luís Cabral de . Atuação do Estado como empregador de última Instância: uma proposta para eliminar o desemprego estrutural do Brasil. In: Encontro Nacional de Economia Política, 13. 2008, João Pessoa/PB. Anais... João Pessoa: ENEP, 2008.

Indústria cultural e forró eletrônico no Rio Grande do Norte

The present study aimed to understand how and to what extent the electronic forró, currently hegemonic in the music market in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, establishes and maintains relations of domination in the social contexts in which it is produced, transmitted and received. Based, in significant form-content, on the writings of the first generation of theorists of the so-called Frankfurt School (Critical Theory), particularly with Theodor W. Adorno, and systematically using the contributions of the Cultural Studies (from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies of Birmingham) and of the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, this study aimed to perform, in the fertile intersection of these references, a critical possibility of interpretation of the electronic forró predominantly spread in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. To this end, aiming at a better apprehension of the so-called capital circuits/culture circuits , this study resulted from a qualitative investment of research, based on structured interviews with musicians, entrepreneurs of the sector and music consumers, as well as on the analysis of the themes contained in the official discography of the electronic forró band called Garota Safada (Shameless Girl). As a general empirical conclusion, it was possible to infer that far from the significant presence of domination or mere prevalence of oppositions, there is a relational pluralism of forms of domination and ways of resistances present in the production and consumption of electronic forró, regardless of gender, age, income, education or place of residence. However, the artifices of the cultural industry has been shown to be efficient: from large-scale businessmen to small producers enabled by the so-called open markets . The currentness of the concept of cultural industry is based on the idea that its products are offered systematically (the systematic insistence of everything to everyone) and on the notion that its production primarily meets the administrative criteria of control over the effects on the receiver (capacity of prescription of desires). Thus, the Adornian reflection on the pseudo-individualization leads to the inference that even in some of the most apparent ways of negotiation and/or refusal regarding the consumption of forró, certain behaviors of the cultural industry still prevail both in the very (re)interpretation of the forró and in the choice of other music genres also standardized, rationalized and massified. Therefore, despite the absence of cause-effect relation and the recognition of the popular capacity of re-elaboration and contestation of the media consumption, some world views prevailing in relation to the electronic forró establish or, at least, support some hegemonic ideologies, especially those concerning the life style, consumption and genre relations (fun by all means). Therefore, due the massification of certain songs, some ways of dissemination of values, beliefs and feelings are potentially experienced from the electronic forró. So, it is presumable that in the current advance of the process of semiformation (Halbbildung), the habitus of a part of the youth from the state of Rio Grande do Norte reinforces and is reinforced by the centrality of the trinomial fun, love and sex present in the songs, emphasized in some constructive practices of sense and in certain flows of social significance

Herdeiros do idealismo Alemão

Acompanha-se, aqui, a pertinência do lema de Engels, que concebe o marxismo como herdeiro do idealismo alemão nas teorias de Lukács, Horkheimer e Adorno. Enquanto Lukács assenta o método marxista na vertente da filosofia hegeliana e Horkheimer assume explicitamente o legado kantiano, Adorno não se propõe a ser herdeiro, mas sim crítico do idealismo alemão.

Política contemporânea e sociedade unidimensional

O tema principal deste trabalho é a análise de contradições da política brasileira contemporânea à luz da Teoria Crítica.

Herbert Marcuse - anticapitalismo e emancipação

Marcuse teve no Brasil na década de 1970 uma recepção unilateral, sendo visto unicamente como guru da contra-cultura. Contra esse equívoco o artigo mostra a relação intrínseca entre teoria e prática na filosofia de Marcuse, caracterizada como uma filosofia política cuja preocupação central é a transformação radical da sociedade capitalista.

Cubic interactions and quantum criticality in dimerized antiferromagnets

In certain Mott-insulating dimerized antiferromagnets, triplet excitations of the paramagnetic phase display both three-particle and four-particle interactions. When such a magnet undergoes a quantum phase transition into a magnetically ordered state, the three-particle interaction becomes part of the critical theory provided that the lattice ordering wave vector is zero. One microscopic example is the staggered-dimer antiferromagnet on the square lattice, for which deviations from O(3) universality have been reported in numerical studies. Using both symmetry arguments and microscopic calculations, we show that a nontrivial cubic term arises in the relevant order-parameter quantum field theory, and we assess its consequences using a combination of analytical and numerical methods. We also present finite-temperature quantum Monte Carlo data for the staggered-dimer antiferromagnet which complement recently published results. The data can be consistently interpreted in terms of critical exponents identical to that of the standard O(3) universality class, but with anomalously large corrections to scaling. We argue that the cubic interaction of critical triplons, although irrelevant in two spatial dimensions, is responsible for the leading corrections to scaling due to its small scaling dimension.