Ethnography of housing : a conclusion

This paper is the final report of a research project spanning three years, exploring three field locations and capturing the stories of forty (plus) housing workers. Using an ethnographic research approach, this paper provides an account of how housing workers use language and stories to understand and make sense of their challenging and changing work. First hand accounts ('stories') about every day housing work frame the data in this paper, explaining how housing workers in Victoria have experienced and made sense of the shift from public housing as 'affordable housing for the working poor' to 'housing of last resort for the most vulnerable and needy members of the community'. Using a number of composite stories, this paper provides the reader with a glimpse into the work of public housing staff, transporting the leader from the relatively static world of policy and procedure to the more colorful world of tenants with 'high and complex' needs, 'wicked' problems, weary staff and the daily reality of organisational change.

A unique feature of this research is the comparison of how different workers use stories to build a range of 'socially constructed realities' around the housing work and its wicked problems. This paper compares and contrasts the socially constructed realities of frontline staff with the corresponding social realities of the managers at head office (and vice versa). This 'same problem, different perspective' approach allows the reader to better understand how the same problem is understood and approached in different ways, depending on the individual's organisational role, responsibly and authority. Using stories about 'working with problem tenants', 'collecting rental arrears from the poor and marginalised', 'maintaining old, neglected properties' and 'coping with organisational change', this paper illustrates how the shifting (and sometimes contradictory) construction of housing problems has meant that the organisation has long struggled to devise and implement sustainable remedies to these problems.

The following pages describe how the problems identified in the Housing Office Review (and experienced in the daily work of the 'modern day' housing worker) are simply a contemporary manifestation of 'age old public housing issues'. This paper describes and explains how housing staff have long used narrative to make sense of their often difficult work and ultimately, how they understand and experience a major process of operational policy change associated with the shift from 'public' housing to 'welfare' housing.

The influence of educational resources on superannuation investment choices

This paper reports on an investigation of whether educational resources supplied by a superannuation fund provide members with the required information to assist them in making informed choices regarding their superannuation investment funds. The data indicated that certain demographic groups are less likely to utilise the resources provided by their superannuation fund and other information sources. Females, younger individuals, those with low superannuation balances or limited knowledge of financial matters were the key groups identified as less likely to utilise the educational information offered to them.

The simplicity of educational reforms : defining globalization and reframing educational policies during the 1990s

Reviewing the trends in educational reforms from the last decade provides opportunity for policy makers to understand the issues from the past with a view to improving the educational planning in the future. In the 90s globalization emerged as a great impetus for educational reforms, however a central problem concerning globalization was its full meaning and implications were still emergent therefore educational planning and policy making reflected a great deal of uncertainty. This paper reviews and analyses how educational policies from the 90s constructed globalization and uncertainty and whether the lessons from the 90s have implications for current policy making. Using computer assisted text analysis, this paper explores how educational policies from OECD, UNESCO and the World Bank coalesced with certain notions of globalisation that strategically guided educational reforms. By focusing on textual evidence, in a range of education policy from the 90s, the paper discusses how policy consolidated particular ideas about globalization and presented ‘simple’ recipes for educational change. When reviewing the 90s, the relationship between education and global change the macro policy research shows a trend towards narrowing focus on managerial and financial issues, specifically the paper discusses how OECD policy emphasized education a social and individual payoff, World Bank policy focused on education enabling the free flow of capital and UNESCO policy problematised globalization but focused on the importance of teachers as a way to create stability in education during the paradoxical times.

Understanding quality and equity of schooling in Scotland : locating educational traditions globally

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the OECD’s (2007) national report on Scottish education, Quality and equity of schooling in Scotland, while also briefly considering the Scottish government’s Diagnostic Report, prepared for the review. The national report is situated against Scottish traditions of schooling, particularly the view that access to academic curricula for all is a democratic and egalitarian approach, and also set against the changing role of the OECD. On the latter, the paper argues that the OECD, in the context of globalisation, has become more of a policy actor in its own right, in addition to its more traditional think-tank function. The OECD is a now significant transnational policy actor in education, contributing to the emergent global education policy field. The overarching argument proffered is that debates provoked by the OECD’s report, for example the David Raffe/Richard Teese exchange in the Scottish Educational Review, 40(1), 2008, stem from tensions between the new supranational expression of political and policy authority as articulated in the OECD’s report and that located more traditionally within the nation. The academic curricula for all, the Scottish tradition, is challenged by the OECD report, which supports more diverse curricula provision, including more vocational education in schools, particularly at the post-compulsory phase. We note, drawing on theoretical and empirical insights of Bourdieu, that the success of the former demands pedagogies which scaffold for those students not possessing the requisite cultural capitals for success with academic curricula, while the latter demands a strategic effort to ensure parity of esteem between different curricular provisions.

Understanding the mediatisation of educational policy as practice

The main argument presented in this paper is that the mediatisation of education should be viewed as forms of practice linked to specific practice effects. Drawing on Bourdieu's conceptualisation of practice - as elements of practice, practice games and field effects - the paper argues that viewing mediatisation as practice provides a set of methodological starting points for research involving media interactions with education. Taking the mediatisation of education policy as an empirical case for the argument, the contribution of the paper is to raise questions about how the term is utilised in educational research and to suggest that the practice is more open and complex than some accounts suggest. A secondary argument presented in this paper is that Bourdieu's account of practice provides resources suitable to developing research on mediatisation as an addition to social field theorising of processes.

Advanced virtual engineering educational program for engineering research and teaching excellence

In this paper, an advanced virtual engineering educational program developed at University of South Australia for both on-campus and off-shore students will be studied. This extensive training program is based on a comprehensive online tutorial and comprises both face-to-face and online learning. The program provides a tailored evaluation format to ensure that all postgraduate students, including course work and research students, will have appropriate exposure to updated learning skills and research resources. Although the internet (WWW) is the primary resource being used in this educational program, other resources such as video conference, video taping, and face-to-face lecturing have also played a role in promoting engineering teaching and research excellence. The feedback from students in recent years has been very encouraging, showing increased information literacy skills and improved researching abilities. As off campus class numbers have increased, further development of the program to meet their requirement has been a priority.

An advanced virtual engineering educational program for engineering research and teaching excellence.

In this paper, an advanced virtual program in engineering education developed at the University of South Australia for both on-campus and offshore students is described. This extensive training program is based on a comprehensive online tutorial and comprises both face-to-face and online learning. The program provides a tailored evaluation format to ensure that all postgraduate students, including those doing coursework and research, will have appropriate exposure to updated learning skills and research resources. Although the internet is the primary resource used in this educational program, other resources, such as videoconferencing, video-taping and face-to-face lecturing, have also played a role in promoting engineering teaching and research excellence. The feedback from students in recent years has been very encouraging, and students have shown increased information literacy skills and improved researching abilities. As off-campus class numbers have increased, further development of the program to meet their requirements has been a priority.

Optimal redistribution when educational background matters

Higher education plays an important role in determining individuals lifetime
earnings. In turn, the decision to become educated depends to a large extent on innate ability and on family characteristics, including both family
wealth and educational background. In this paper, we abstract from family
income differences to concentrate on the effects of fiscal policies on the
decision to undertake higher education when the educational background
matters. In a dynamic framework, where successive generations are linked by educational background, we consider a government that uses both linear income taxation and a lump-sum subsidy to education. Conditions for
optimality of each policy are derived. The factors that determine the sign
and magnitude of the tax rate and the subsidy are identified and include
concerns for redistribution, efficiency and the educational externality on
future generations

Creative tensions? Creativity and basic skills in recent educational policy.

Recently, in response to sustained criticism about the standards driven curriculum, UK government agencies have been promoting creativity in schools. In this article we explore how creativity is being defined in current national educational policy statements; how these definitions relate to other theoretical work on creativity, and the implications for the curriculum and pedagogies.

Educational reform in North Cyprus : towards the making of a nation/state?

The Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC) aspires to take its place in Europe and the global ‘knowledge economy’. In order to do so, it needs not only to be politically recognised as legitimate and to develop the kinds of economic and governance structures that signify a functional state, but also to produce a cultural imaginary of itself as a nation. In this paper, we mobilise Appadurai’s theorisation of deterritorialisation, flows and context generation in order to examine the ways in which the implementation of educational reforms inTRNC might contribute to this ambition.We show that the ethnoscape and financescape combine to make education reform difficult, with specific challenges arising from the mixed commitment of the workforce, the capacity of the education bureaucracy to align support with policy mandates, and the ‘fit’ between the policy and local needs. We conclude by suggesting that TRNC faces the dilemma of working with cultural heterogeneity: Appadurai identifies this as a key ideoscape challenge for all nation/states.

Theorizing change in the educational 'field' : re-readings of 'student participation' projects

There is a burgeoning literature on educational change – how to make it and how to understand its failures in order that the causes can be remedied next time. Much of this literature implies that when free and autonomous policy agents know what they are doing, they can shift institutional structures and habituated ways of doing and being. In this article we mobilize Bourdieu, who rejected this binary of structure and agency, in favour of the notion of ‘field’, ‘habitus’ and ‘capitals’, to theorize one case of change. We describe the shifting policy-scape in Australia in the latter part of the twentieth century which created some opportunities for students to act as educational leaders and participate in making decisions about their learning and schooling. We then develop a specific and situated theorization of change in a contested and hierarchical educational ‘field’. We argue that the continued press from the political field and the wider field of power to increase levels of mass schooling produced a ‘principal opposition’ in the schooling field between democratization and hierarchization. This opposition, we propose, is now in policies, institutional changes and
the varying actions of educators, making the field not only contested but also unstable: this produces further spaces and opportunities for both hierarchic and democratic changes.