Scales of policy intervention : problematising high poverty contexts in South Australia.

Education policy intervention for schools in high poverty neighbourhoods has focused on the capacity of local schools to make a difference and on the kinds of co-ordinated human services provision that might support individual families with “high needs”. In this paper I suggest that a more detailed analysis of “the problem” represented in such schools might yield a richer and more integrated policy approach. I use the notion of “scale”, arbitrary and imperfect approximations of spheres of activity, and apply it to a specific context in Adelaide, South Australia, to demonstrate the connections between the local school and factors which impinge on its capacities to make a positive difference. I suggest that the implication of the analysis is a more holistic approach to policy.

Futures for teachers? Unravelling global agencies development agendas in education and training and lifelong learning

This 20-page paper was presented in June 2001 at an invitational conference hosted by the Education Policy Research Group at Keele University. The theme of the conference was “travelling policy/local spaces: globalisation, identities and education policy in Europe“. Linked from the events page at http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ed/events/conf papers.htm, this document is one of 22 papers from the conference that are presented in full text. The paper is organised in three sections, firstly examining the local impact of the application of a global development agenda on educational practices in Victoria, Australia, then analysing policy texts issued by the OECD, Unesco, and the Word Bank, and finally interpreting the data in the light of interagency politics and the authors‘ reading of the global-local dynamics of the educational restructuring in Victoria.

Mobility, aspiration, voice : a new structure of feeling for student equity in higher education

There is a changed ‘structure of feeling’ emerging in higher education systems, particularly in OECD nations, in response to changed social, cultural and economic arrangements. Taking a student equity perspective, the paper names this change in terms of ‘mobility’, ‘aspiration’ and ‘voice’. It argues that (1) new kinds and degrees of mobility are now a significant factor in sustaining unequal access to and experience of higher education for different student groups, (2) despite government and institutional aspirations to expand higher education, students' desires for university are not a given among new target populations and (3) while universities are seeking to enroll different students in greater numbers, the challenge now is how to give greater voice to this difference. Drawing on these themes of mobility, aspiration and voice and taking recent changes to higher education policy in Australia as the case, the paper presents a new conceptual framework for thinking about student equity in HE. The framework extends from established approaches that focus on barriers to accessing higher education in order to focus on people's capacities in relation to higher education participation.

Student equity's starring role in Australian higher education : not yet centre field

The field of Australian higher education has changed, is changing and is about to change, repositioned in relation to other ‘‘fields of power’’. It is a sector now well defined by its institutional groupings and by their relative claims to selectivity and exclusivity, with every suggestion of their differentiation growing. The potential of a ‘‘joined-up’’ tertiary education system, of vocational education and training (VET) and universities, has the potential to further rework these relations within Australian higher education, as will lifting the volume caps on university student enrolments. Moreover, Australian universities now compete within an international higher education marketplace, ranked by THES and Shanghai Jiao Tiong league tables. ‘‘Catchment areas’’ and knowledge production have become global. In sum, Australian universities (and agents within them) are positioned differently in the field. And being so variously and variably placed, institutions and agents have different stances available to them, including the positions they can take on student equity. In this paper I begin from the premise that our current stance on equity has been out-positioned, as much by a changing higher education field as by entrenched representations of social groups across regions, institutions, disciplines and degrees. In taking a new stance on equity, the paper is also concerned with the positioning in the field of a new national research centre with a focus on student equity in higher education. In particular, the paper asks what stance this new centre can take on student equity that will resonate on a national and even international scale. And, given a global field of higher education, what definitions of equity and propositions for policy and practice can it offer? What will work in the pursuit of equity?

Defining educational research : a perspective of/on presidential addresses and the Australian Association for Research in Education

This paper is concerned with the definition of the field of educational research and the changing and developing role of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) in representing and constituting this field. The evidence for the argument is derived from AARE Presidential Addresses across its 40-year history. The paper documents the enhanced complexity and diversity of the field over these 40 years, including the emergence of a global educational policy field, theoretical and methodological developments in the social sciences and new research accountabilities such as the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) measure. Specifically, the paper suggests that the evidence-based movement in public management and education policy, and the introduction of the ERA, potentially limit and redefine the field of educational research, reducing the usefulness and relevance of educational research to policy makers and practitioners. This arises from a failure to recognise that Education is both a field of research and a field of policy and practice. Located against both developments, the paper argues for a principled eclecticism framed by a reassessment of quality, which can be applied to the huge variety of methodologies, theories, epistemologies and topics legitimately utilised and addressed within the field of educational research. At the same time, the paper argues the need to globalise the educational research imagination and deparochialise educational research. This call is located within a broader argument suggesting the need for a new social imaginary (in a post-neoliberal context of the global financial crisis) to frame educational policy and practice and the contribution that educational theory and research might make to its constitution. In relation to this, the paper considers the difficulties that political representations of such a new imaginary might entail for the President and the Association, given the variety of its membership and huge diversity of its research interests.

Realising policy : the who and how of policy production

This paper identifies a number of strategies employed by policy actors in the production of Australian higher education entry policy during the period 1987 to 1996, with a particular focus on the production of Queensland higher education entry policy text in 1990 (Viviani, 1990, The Review of Tertiary Entrance in Queensland, 1990 , Department of Education, Queensland). The paper begins from the premise that while policy is often intended to be read as if spoken with a single voice, suggesting rational debate and (then) consensus among policy producers, it is more cogently understood as the product of struggle and conflict. Informed by 27 semi-structured interviews with politicians, political advisers, bureaucrats, academics, institutional administrators and independent authorities, the paper addresses the temporary settling of these actors' struggles and conflicts in contexts of policy making through strategies of negotiation. Rather than providing a sequential account of higher education policy that weaves its way through these negotiations, as grand narrative, the paper is more sporadic in its representations of strategies, identifying them in 'local' and specific knowledges and practices. Drawing on Foucault, what emerges is both an archaeology and genealogy of policy production (Gale, 2001, Journal of Education Policy , 16(5), pp. 379-393).

Critical policy sociology : historiography, archaeology and genealogy as methods of policy analysis

In recent times critical approaches to educational policy studies have been subject to increasing interrogation over methodological issues, often by critical policy researchers themselves. In the main, their reflexive posturings have been informed by critique which proceeds that beyond brief descriptions of research logis tics and a general commitment to the methodologies of a critical orientation, critical policy analyses offer few explicit accounts of the connections between the stories they tell about policy and the data used to tell them. As a way of addressing these silences, this paper proposes three methodological approaches within which to explore and explain matters of policy, each generating its own particular view of the (policy) issues worth looking for, where they can be found and how to look for them. Drawing on research into the production of Australian higher education policy during the late 1980s and early 1990s, the paper illustrates the characteristics of these approaches, referring to them as policy historiography, policy genealogy and policy archaeology. Without claiming absolute distinctions between their interests, the paper couples policy historiography with the substantive issues of policy at particular hegemonic moments, policy genealogy with social actors' engagement with policy, and policy archaeology with conditions that regulate policy formations.

Policy trajectories : treading the discursive path of policy analysis

This paper is concerned with theorising the nature of policy and its production. It takes as its starting point the work of Stephen Ball,1 particularly his writings within the pages of this journal (13(2), 1993)—later reprinted as Chapter 2 in Education Reform (1994a)—as well as his earlier writings in Politics and Policy Making in Education (1990) and Reforming Education and Changing Schools (Bowe, Ball & Gold, 1992). More broadly, the paper is located within a 'new' sociological interest in education policy often referred to as 'policy sociology'2 (Payne, Dingwall, Payne & Carter, 1981; Ozga, 1987, Ball, 1990; Bowe, Ball & Gold, 1992); a concern that is 'rooted in the social science tradition, historically informed and drawing on qualitative and illuminative techniques' (Ozga, 1987, p. 144) and 'united by the conviction that "things", especially policy discourse, must be pulled apart' (Troyna, 1994, p. 71) to determine whose interests they serve.

Beyond caricature : exploring theories of educational policy production and implementation

Since the mid 1980s there has been a growing interest amongst sociologists in the study of education policy, which has coincided with a decline within the tradition of educational administration - having been subsumed by educational management - of 'detailed historical work, or work concerned primarily with politics or policy content' (Olga 1987. p. 138). While in the past other traditions associated with social policy and social administration, government and politics. and the history of education have also been concerned with education policy. most recent and substantive work (for example. Olga 1987 1990. Dale 1989, 1992, Dale & Olga 1991, 1993. Ball 1990, 1993, Bowe, et al. 1992. Lingard 1991,1993)has come "from within the sociology of education. especially from those working within, or influenced by, the 'new' sociology of education, and, especially, those of a Marxist or neo-Marxist persuasion or at least concerned with the relationship of the state to education as a central problem (Olga 1987. p.139)".

Social justice in Australian education : rethinking what we know for contemporary times

In this paper I attempt two things. First I canvass the history of social justice policy in schooling and higher education in Australia, with a view to drawing out ten principles to inform a rejuvenated social justice agenda in education, facilitated at this political moment by the current Australian Government’s financial and education commitments to/for people in low socioeconomic status communities, schools and higher education. I draw primarily on what we have learned from the 1973 Karmel Report and the Disadvantaged Schools Program to which it gave rise, and on the 1990 higher education policy statement, A Fair Chance for All. I then propose three new concepts for rethinking social justice in education, which reflect a new ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams 1961) and new social capacities in contemporary times.

Competition or collaboration: policies and practices in international higher education

Universities in the twenty-first century experience numerous competing drivers that shape their sense of purpose and role in society, their perspectives of knowledge and its production and their overall sense of being in the world. One major force is marketplace discourse, in particular neo-liberalism and competition, which is discordant with the discourse of academic collaboration and collegial sharing. This review essay examines what it means to ‘be’ a university in light of these overarching discourses and what is envisioned for universities of the future.

Deliberative educational planning : including educators’ deliberations in educational policy making.

The objective of this chapter is to argue a case for the need to include teachers and professional educators in the policy making and implementation processes of the World Bank's Education Sector Strategy 2020. By drawing on evidence from the Consultation Plan, the chapter investigates how communicative practices about teachers are embedded in the discourse of the plan and how these influence the rationalisation of the policy. In doing so, the chapter will examine the relationships between social actions, systems rationalisation and life world rationalisation. Much like commercial and entrepreneurial organisations focus on the voice of the customer (VOC), that is on satisfying the stakeholders and end users in their processes, in this chapter, the voice of the teacher (VOT) is highlighted. The skills and knowledge of key stakeholders need to be leveraged and engaged in order to ensure that the policy achieves its desired aims. In order to frame this argument, notions of Habermas’ communicative action theory is used to show how policy engages in systems steering. Rather than understanding education strategy and reform as a process of engaging only government and policy makers, this chapter suggests that by engaging the practitioners and listening to the practical discourse around reform, teachers can be leaders of reforms rather than obfuscated agents.

Bilingual education and the language of news

This paper presents evidence that shows for the first time that news media influence was a significant factor in the decision to dismantle the Northern Territory’s bilingual education policy in 2008. It identifies and discusses five media-related overlays that have affected public discussion and policymaking during the life of the policy. They include the media’s role in informing public understanding of the policy; media representation of Indigenous peoples and issues; the relationship between policymaking and journalism in general; neo-liberal discourses about education, especially literacy; and the reporting practices of journalists who have covered the issue. It draws on relevant literature, the history of the policy and interviews conducted for the Australian News Media and Indigenous Policymaking 1988-2008 ARC Discovery Project to interpret some of the connections and disconnections between these overlays and bilingual education policy. This analysis suggests that the news media exerted a complex and uneven range of influences on the 2008 decision to dismantle Australia’s first and most enduring policy of Indigenous self-determination.

Coastal planning, education and the Australian context

The Victorian Planning Minister’s response to the ‘Coastal Climate Change Advisor Report’, initiated by the Baillieu government in 2010, identified the need to “initiate ! a skills audit with the view to developing a range of professional development courses to meet the shortfall of professionals with the capability to assess coastal climate change impacts” (Victoria 2012). The following paper addresses this deficiency by examining how Australia’s higher education and further education sectors currently attend to the issue of coastal planning.

A detailed review of a large number of national and international planning programs was undertaken to highlight the subject matter contained in each program with a specific focus on any coastal planning courses. Working from a theoretical perspective, the first part of the paper addresses why a dedicated subject on Coastal Planning is required in the present Australian planning school syllabus, and how such a program would be positioned within the intent of PIA’s Education Policy.

Utilising the benefits of Problem Based learning and Student Centred Learning in relating to delivering a Coastal planning course, the second part of the paper provides a theoretical overview of the types of competencies which students may be expected to attain when undertaking such a course. The third part of the paper proposes a series of 12 lectures to underpin a unit titled “Coastal Planning: The Australian Context” which includes a draft lecture relating to the monitoring of Coastal Erosion in Adelaide.

Understanding equity as an asset to national interest: developing a social contract analysis of policy

Alongside the influence of market-based reforms in education policy has been the growth of policy that has largely been overlooked – those that outline social contracts. This paper draws on policies that connect with equity as a way of illustrating this social contract turn in policy and develops a conceptualisation of social contracts as they apply to education policy. The argument provides three principles that underpin social contracts, including informed consent, negotiation and accountability. This paper applies these principles to three levels of social contract. At the first level are broad social contracts, which are associated with debates about the kinds of things that states should expect from its citizens, and the things that citizens could expect from governments and the state. The second level of social contract is an institutional or field-based social contract, which spells out the obligations and connections between a specific field and other fields. This level names a kind of social contract that is often exemplified in policies or statements by specific institutions. The third level of social contract deals with contract-like mechanisms embedded in fields that make tangible the obligations and expectations of citizens in fulfilling the expectations of fields.