A socially just rationale for an Australian curriculum? : a critical thematic policy analysis of political speeches in education (2007-2010)

In late 2007, newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd placed education reform on centre stage as a key policy in the Labor Party's agenda for social reform in Australia. A major policy strategy within this 'Education Revolution' was the development of a national curriculum, the Australian Curriculum Within this political context, this study is an investigation into how social justice and equity have been used in political speeches to justify the need for, and the nature of, Australia's first official national curriculum. The aim is to provide understandings into what is said or not said; who is included or excluded, represented or misrepresented; for what purpose; and for whose benefit. The study investigates political speeches made by Education Ministers between 2008 and 201 0; that is, from the inception of the Australian Curriculum to the release of the Phase 1 F - 10 draft curriculum documents in English, mathematics, science and history. Curriculum development is defined here as an ongoing process of complex conversations. To contextualise the process of curriculum development within Australia, the thesis commences with an initial review of curriculum development in this nation over the past three decades. It then frames this review within contemporary curriculum theory; in particular it calls upon the work of William Pinar and the key notions of currere and reconceptualised curriculum. This contextualisation work is then used as a foundation to examine how social justice and equity have been represented in political speeches delivered by the respective Education Ministers Julia Gillard and Peter Garrett at key junctures of Australian Curriculum document releases. A critical thematic policy analysis is the approach used to examine selected official speech transcripts released by the ministerial media centre through the DEEWR website. This approach provides a way to enable insights and understandings of representations of social justice and equity issues in the policy agenda. Broader social implications are also discussed. The project develops an analytic framework that enables an investigation into the framing of social justice and equity issues such as inclusion, equality, quality education, sharing of resources and access to learning opportunities in political speeches aligned with the development of the Australian Curriculum Through this analysis, the study adopts a focus on constructions of educationally disadvantaged students and how the solutions of 'fixing' teachers and providing the 'right' curriculum are presented as resolutions to the perceived problem. In this way, it aims to work towards offering insights into political justifications for a national curriculum in Australia from a social justice perspective.

An exploration of the roles of nurses working in emergency care services in general hospitals in West Java, Indonesia : a grounded theory study

A review of literature on the role of emergency nurses in Indonesia revealed a dearth of research. Anecdotal evidence suggests a lack of clarity in role definition which has led to uncertainty and role ambiguity. Despite advances in the development of specialist nursing roles in Indonesia, that of the emergency nurse remains unclear. This study explored the role of nurses working in emergency care services in three general hospitals in West Java, Indonesia. The theoretical framework is grounded in Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory. Data collection methods were observation, in-depth interviews and interrogation of related documents. Phase one of data collection involved 74 h of observation and nterviews with 35 nurses working in the three ED settings. For the purposes of theoretical sampling, a second phase of data collection was conducted. This involved a second nterview with eight participants from the three EDs. nterviews were also undertaken with the three key informants of nursing management of three related hospitals; key informants from the Indonesian Nurses Association; the Directorate of Nursing, Ministry of Health; and from the organization for ED nurses. Data analysis drew on Charmaz’s constructivist approach and the concepts of simultaneous data collection and analysis, constant comparison, coding, and theoretical sampling. The analysis generated four theoretical concepts that characterized the role of the emergency nurse: An arbitrary scope of practice, Struggling for recognition, Learning on the job and Looking to better practice. These concepts provided analytical direction for an exploration of the clinical and political dimensions of the role of the emergency nurse in Indonesia.

‘Crack in the pavement’ : pedagogy as political and moral practice for educating culturally competent professionals

This paper explores the reception of Indigenous perspectives and knowledges in university curricula and educators’ social responsibility to demonstrate cultural competency through their teaching and learning practices. Drawing on tenets of critical race theory, Indigenous standpoint theory and critical pedagogies, this paper argues that the existence of Indigenous knowledges in Australian university curricula and pedagogy demands personal and political activism (Dei, 2008) as it requires educators to critique both personal and discipline-based knowledge systems. The paper interrogates the experiences of non-Indigenous educators involved in this contested epistemological space (Nakata, 2002), and concludes by arguing for a political and ethical commitment by educators towards embedding Indigenous knowledges towards educating culturally competent professionals.

Towards an Australian Indigenous women's standpoint theory : a methodological tool

In this article I outline an Australian Indigenous women's standpoint theory. I argue that an Indigenous women's standpoint generates problematics informed by our knowledges and experiences. Acknowledging that Indigenous women's individual experiences will differ due to intersecting oppressions produced under social, political, historical and material conditions that we share consciously or unconsciously. These conditions and the sets of complex relations that discursively constitute us in the everyday are also complicated by our respective cultural differences and the simultaneity of our compliance and resistance as Indigenous sovereign female subjects.

Interrogating Creative Theory and Creative Work: Inside the Games Studio

The expansion of creative and cultural industries has provided a rich source for theoretical claims and commentary. Much of this reproduces and extends the idea that autonomy is the defining feature of both enterprises and workers. Drawing on evidence from research into Australian development studios in the global digital games industry, the article interrogates claims concerning autonomy and related issues of insecurity and intensity, skill and specialisation, work–play boundaries, identity and attachments. In seeking to reconnect changes in creative labour to the wider production environment and political economy, an argument is advanced that autonomy is deeply contextual and contested as a dimension of the processes of capturing value for firms and workers.

“It’s in the syllabus”: Identifying information literacy and data information literacy opportunities using a grounded theory approach

Developing innovative library services requires a real world understanding of faculty members' desired curricular goals. This study aimed to develop a comprehensive and deeper understanding of Purdue's nutrition science and political science faculties' expectations for student learning related to information and data information literacies. Course syllabi were examined using grounded theory techniques that allowed us to identify how faculty were addressing information and data information literacies in their courses, but it also enabled us to understand the interconnectedness of these literacies to other departmental intentions for student learning, such as developing a professional identity or learning to conduct original research. The holistic understanding developed through this research provides the necessary information for designing and suggesting information literacy and data information literacy services to departmental faculty in ways supportive of curricular learning outcomes.

Self-love and self-liking in the moral and political philosophy of Bernard Mandeville and David Hume

This work offers a novel interpretation of David Hume’s (1711–1776) conception of the conjectural development of civil society and artificial moral institutions. It focuses on the social elements of Hume’s Treatise of human nature (1739–40) and the necessary connection between science of man and politeness, civilised monarchies, social distance and hierarchical structure of civil society. The study incorporates aspects of intellectual history, history of philosophy and book history. In order to understand David Hume’s thinking, the intellectual development of Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733) needs to be accounted for. When put into a historical perspective, the moral, political and social components of Treatise of human nature can be read in the context of a philosophical tradition, in which Mandeville plays a pivotal role. A distinctive character of Mandeville and Hume’s account of human nature and moral institutions was the introduction of a simple distinction between self-love and self-liking. The symmetric passions of self-interest and pride can only be controlled by the corresponding moral institutions. This is also the way in which we can say that moral institutions are drawn from human nature. In the case of self-love or self-interest, the corresponding moral institution is justice. Respectively, concerning self-liking or pride the moral institution is politeness. There is an explicit analogy between these moral institutions. If we do not understand this analogy, we do not understand the nature of either justice or politeness. The present work is divided into two parts. In the first part, ‘Intellectual development of Bernard Mandeville’, it is argued that the relevance of the paradigmatic change in Mandeville’s thinking has been missed. It draws a picture of Mandeville turning from the Hobbism of The Fable of the Bees to an original theory of civil society put forward in his later works. In order to make this change more apparent, Mandeville’s career and the publishing history of The Fable of the Bees are examined comprehensively. This interpretation, based partly on previously unknown sources, challenges F. B. Kaye’s influential decision to publish the two parts of The Fable of the Bees as a uniform work of two volumes. The main relevance, however, of the ‘Intellectual development of Mandeville’ is to function as the context for the young Hume. The second part of the work, ‘David Hume and Greatness of mind’, explores in philosophical detail the social theory of the Treatise and politics and the science of man in his Essays. This part will also reveal the relevance of Greatness of mind as a general concept for David Hume’s moral and political philosophy.

Governance theory as a framework for empirical research : a case study on local environmental policy-making in Helsinki, Finland

Governance has been one of the most popular buzzwords in recent political science. As with any term shared by numerous fields of research, as well as everyday language, governance is encumbered by a jungle of definitions and applications. This work elaborates on the concept of network governance. Network governance refers to complex policy-making situations, where a variety of public and private actors collaborate in order to produce and define policy. Governance is processes of autonomous, self-organizing networks of organizations exchanging information and deliberating. Network governance is a theoretical concept that corresponds to an empirical phenomenon. Often, this phenomenon is used to descirbe a historical development: governance is often used to describe changes in political processes of Western societies since the 1980s. In this work, empirical governance networks are used as an organizing framework, and the concepts of autonomy, self-organization and network structure are developed as tools for empirical analysis of any complex decision-making process. This work develops this framework and explores the governance networks in the case of environmental policy-making in the City of Helsinki, Finland. The crafting of a local ecological sustainability programme required support and knowledge from all sectors of administration, a number of entrepreneurs and companies and the inhabitants of Helsinki. The policy process relied explicitly on networking, with public and private actors collaborating to design policy instruments. Communication between individual organizations led to the development of network structures and patterns. This research analyses these patterns and their effects on policy choice, by applying the methods of social network analysis. A variety of social network analysis methods are used to uncover different features of the networked process. Links between individual network positions, network subgroup structures and macro-level network patterns are compared to the types of organizations involved and final policy instruments chosen. By using governance concepts to depict a policy process, the work aims to assess whether they contribute to models of policy-making. The conclusion is that the governance literature sheds light on events that would otherwise go unnoticed, or whose conceptualization would remain atheoretical. The framework of network governance should be in the toolkit of the policy analyst.

Visual impact assessment of small dock & piers: Theory and practice

From a manager’s perspective, oftentimes the publicly held concerns related to small docks and piers are not really related to the environment. They may be more related to visual impacts and aesthetic concerns, a sense of over-development of the shore, or simply change. While individuals may hold personal aesthetic values related to small docks in general or an individual structure in particular, techniques have evolved that appear to provide reproducible, predictive assessments of the visual impacts and aesthetic values of an area and how those might change with development, including an increase in numbers of small docks. These assessments may be used to develop regulatory or non-regulatory methods for the management of small docks based on state or community standards. Visual impact assessments are increasingly used in the regulatory review of proposed development—although this process is still in its infancy as regards small docks and piers. Some political jurisdictions have established visual impact or aesthetic standards as relate to docks and others are in the process of investigating how to go about such an effort. (PDF contains 42 pages)

Applying Habermas's critical theory to public administration and policy: A case study of Florida Everglades restoration program

The foundation of Habermas's argument, a leading critical theorist, lies in the unequal distribution of wealth across society. He states that in an advanced capitalist society, the possibility of a crisis has shifted from the economic and political spheres to the legitimation system. Legitimation crises increase the more government intervenes into the economy (market) and the "simultaneous political enfranchisement of almost the entire adult population" (Holub, 1991, p. 88). The reason for this increase is because policymakers in advanced capitalist democracies are caught between conflicting imperatives: they are expected to serve the interests of their nation as a whole, but they must prop up an economic system that benefits the wealthy at the expense of most workers and the environment. Habermas argues that the driving force in history is an expectation, built into the nature of language, that norms, laws, and institutions will serve the interests of the entire population and not just those of a special group. In his view, policy makers in capitalist societies are having to fend off this expectation by simultaneously correcting some of the inequities of the market, denying that they have control over people's economic circumstances, and defending the market as an equitable allocator of income. (deHaven-Smith, 1988, p. 14). Critical theory suggests that this contradiction will be reflected in Everglades policy by communicative narratives that suppress and conceal tensions between environmental and economic priorities. Habermas’ Legitimation Crisis states that political actors use various symbols, ideologies, narratives, and language to engage the public and avoid a legitimation crisis. These influences not only manipulate the general population into desiring what has been manufactured for them, but also leave them feeling unfulfilled and alienated. Also known as false reconciliation, the public's view of society as rational, and "conductive to human freedom and happiness" is altered to become deeply irrational and an obstacle to the desired freedom and happiness (Finlayson, 2005, p. 5). These obstacles and irrationalities give rise to potential crises in the society. Government's increasing involvement in Everglades under advanced capitalism leads to Habermas's four crises: economic/environmental, rationality, legitimation, and motivation. These crises are occurring simultaneously, work in conjunction with each other, and arise when a principle of organization is challenged by increased production needs (deHaven-Smith, 1988). Habermas states that governments use narratives in an attempt to rationalize, legitimize, obscure, and conceal its actions under advanced capitalism. Although there have been many narratives told throughout the history of the Everglades (such as the Everglades was a wilderness that was valued as a wasteland in its natural state), the most recent narrative, “Everglades Restoration”, is the focus of this paper.(PDF contains 4 pages)

Implementing Integrated Water Resources Management in the Ebro River Basin: From Theory to Facts

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From social to political. New forms of mobilization and democratization. Conference proceedings

In the recent evolution of contemporary social movements three phases can be identified. The first phase is marked by the labour movement and the systemic importance attributed to the labour conflict in industrial societies. This conflict has been interpreted as a consequence of the shortcoming of social integration mechanisms by Emile Durkheim, as a rational conflict by entrepreneurs’ and workers’ interests by Max Wener, and as a central class struggle for the transformation of society by Karl Marx. The second phase in this development was led by the new social movements of the post-industrial society of the 1960s and 1970s’ students, women and environmentalist movements. Two new analytical perspectives have explained these movements’ meaning and actions. Resource mobilization theory (McAdam and Tilly) has focuses on rational attitudes and conflicts. Actionalist sociology, in turn, has identified the new protagonists of social conflicts that replaced the labour movement in postindustrial societies. The third phase emerges in a world characterized by the ascendance of markets, the increasingly prominent role of financial capital flows, the closure of communities, and fundamentalism. In this context, human rights and pro-democratization movements constitute alternatives to global domination and the systemic conditioning of individual and groups.

Getting Constitutional Theory into Proportion: A Matter of Interpretation?

Gibbs, N., Getting Constitutional Theory into Proportion: A Matter of Interpretation?, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 27 (1), 175-191. RAE2008

One Order, Two Laws: Recovering the 'Normative' in English School Theory

Bain, William, 'One Order, Two Laws: Recovering the 'Normative' in English School Theory', Review of International Studies, (2007) 33(4) pp.557-575 RAE2008

The Study of Intelligence in Theory and Practice

Scott, Len, and Peter Jackson, 'The Study of Intelligence in Theory and Practice', Intelligence and National Security, (2004) 19(2) pp.139-169 RAE2008