Stories of reform in science education : commentary on opp(reg)ressive policies and tempered radicals

This response to the two papers (by Rodriguez and Carlone et al.) on science education reform acknowledges first the coherence of the arguments presented around four reform narratives; that of the process of becoming science-enthusiastic, the nature of beliefs of science reform teachers, the barriers to reform, and the institutional expressions of these barriers. In the commentary I first discuss the reform ‘problem’ in terms of two interacting issues—the purposes of school science and the value placed on it in an elementary school curriculum. The insights produced in these papers are then used to reflect on a range of experiences and current policy debates in Australia. Finally, in this commentary, I point out: (a) the relationship of the papers to the reform issue of opposition to Standards Based Science (SBS) from proponents’ traditional conceptions of science education, discussing how this more specific reform question relates to the two papers; and (b) the singular nature of the I-meanings characterised in the Carlone et al. paper, describing (using Australian examples) how the notions of tempered radicals and I-meanings might also be used to characterise complexities in the processes of school science reform.

Impacts of monetary policies on housing affordability in Australia

Housing affordability has become a major policy issue in many countries across the world since the rapid inflation of house prices. This paper empirically investigates how monetary policies affect housing affordability in Australia from 1998 to 2009. Three primary variables associated with the housing sector and monetary policy, which are money supply, interest rates and house prices, are studied for all eight capital cities in Australia in this research. Shocks of such variables are identified by a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model with restrictions that are consistent with economic theoretical framework. Based upon the analysis using the structural decomposition of impulse response on quarterly data, it can be discovered that the monetary policy plays an active role in housing affordability via adjustments of money supply and interest rates during the observed period in Australia. The empirical results from this research may be used for decision makers to determine money supply and interest rates from the perspective of housing affordability.

The ALP after 2004

In 2004, for the first time in the two decades for which Australian Election Study (AES) data has become available, more blue-collar workers cast their primary vote for the Coalition parties than for Labor. Blue-collar support for Labor had partially recovered under Beazley in 1998 and 2001 following its dramatic drop under Keating in 1996 but it dropped to even lower levels under Latham in 2004. This paper analyses AES survey data, the actual voting results in each federal electorate and the demographic characteristics of those electorates to discuss the nature of Labor’s latest national election defeat and the reasons for it. There is considerable disagreement among commentators as to whether Labor has lost the last four national elections because it has failed to reconnect with its traditional voter base; or because it has failed to go beyond that base. Much of the disagreement centres on how blue-collar workers are to be understood. Are they ‘battlers’ and victims of ‘globalisation’ or have they become prosperous, upwardly-mobile and ‘aspirational’? Related questions include whether the most salient issues for blue-collar voters are economic, or cultural; and whether the most important inequalities in Australian society should be measured in terms of income; or occupation; or geographic location (including degree of distance from the inner-city). This paper analyses the policies presented in the 2004 election and engages with informed journalistic analyses, and contributions from past and present politicians, in addition to the work of political scientists, to help make sense of precisely where and why Labor lost support in 2004 and the implications this has for future ALP policy and strategy. The paper also contributes to the longer-term debates about the reasons for Howard’s electoral ascendancy since 1996; and the role and constituency of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party.