Moving and dancing towards decolonisation in education: An example from an Indigenous Australian performance classroom

This paper explores the special type of thinking, moving and dancing place which is opened up for decolonisaton when students engage in an embodied pedagogical practice in Indigenous education. The author examines what decolonisation means in this context by describing the ways in which the curriculum, the students and teacher, and more generally the discipline of ethnomusicology itself, undergo a process to question, critique, and move aside the pedagogical script of colonialism in order to allow Indigenous ways of understanding music and dance to be presented, privileged and empowered. Key questions are: What is the relationship between embodiment and disembodiment and decolonisation and colonisation? In what ways is embodiment more than, or other than, the presence of moving bodies? In what ways is performativity an aspect of power/knowledge/subject formations? How can it be theorised? What could the pedagogical scripts of decolonisation look like?

Charlatan philosopher and wise enchantress: Seduction and authority in eighteenth-century French discourses on happiness

In late 1757 Rousseau wrote a series of moral letters on happiness to Mme Sophie d'Houdetot. He distinguished himself and his teaching from the empty babble and hypocrisy prevalent in 'the century of philosophy and reason'. Philosophers were charlatans peddling happiness. This paper shows how Rousseau's critique of philosophy reworks the standard image of charlatans in the public square. It highlights a questioning and a gendering of reason implicit in the issue of credentials for teaching happiness. Against the dubious authority of the philosopher, Rousseau casts Sophie as the wise enchantress whose gentle influence inspires her tutor. He places moral authority outside the public square in a private, feminine domain. Rousseau's ideal woman cannot be a tainted charlatan like him. Yet the very opposition puts her in her place. (Author abstract)

Student expectations of TESOL programs: Student and teacher perspectives

Most practitioners teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) will agree that students come with some expectations about course content and teaching methodology and that these expectations play a vital role in student motivation and learning. However, the study of student expectations has been a surprising omission from Second Language Acquisition research. In the studies reported here, the authors develop a model of student expectations by adapting the Expectation Disconfirmation paradigm, widely used in consumer psychology. Student and teacher perspectives on student expectations were gathered by interviews. Responses shed light on the nature of expectations, factors causing expectations and effects of expectation fulfilment (or lack of it). The findings provide new avenues for research on affective factors as well as clarify some ambiguities in motivational research in second language acquisition. The model presented here can be used by teachers or institutions to conduct classroom-based research, thus optimising students' learning and performance, and enhancing student morale.

Art after 9/11

This article examines ways in which art can help broaden understandings of contemporary security challenges, especially in view of the limits of conventional forms of strategic and policy analysis. The article focuses especially on responses to 9/11 in literature, the visual arts, architecture, and music, and considers some epistemological questions about the status of art as a way of knowing political events, like those of 9/11, that escape state-based forms of security analysis.

The Populist Message of Australian Country Music

Australian country music is influenced by American country music and Australian bush ballads. This music idealises genuine true blue inhabitants of an idealised rural heartland and fuses nationalism with agrarian mythology. The lyrics of a number of country songs contain a populist political message, which is frequently nationalistic but is a form of nationalism.