Governing the Stressed Self: teacher "health and well-being" and "effective schools"

In diverse arenas there is much discussion about the dangerousness of contemporary lifestyles, including the stressful nature of work. These stresses associated with contemporary lifestyles and work are dangerous in so far as they are conceived as placing at risk the emotional, physical and psychic health and well-being of large populations. In this paper we engage with debates about the stressful nature of teachers' work, and the ways in which teacher health and well-being are constructed as being central to the task of delivering more effective schools. In this article we are not so much concerned with the nature of teacher stress as an indication of individual physical, emotional or psychic health and well-being, as with understanding how it is that at this particular historical juncture the self can be so widely conceived in terms of stress. Moreover, what processes make it possible at this moment to link the success or otherwise of a massive institutional process of state-regulated schooling to the health and well-being of teachers and the management of this health and well-being by school managers? We argue that in a policy context that devolves various responsibilities to self-managing schools, the government of the stressed self emerges as an ethical concern for teachers and those who manage them (Foucault, The Use of Pleasure , New York, Pantheon, 1985). Our purpose is to problematise these processes so that responsibilities for delivering on the promise of effective schools might be differently framed and debated.

Regulation and autonomy in teacher education: government, community or democracy?

Current attempts in industrialised countries to regulate teacher education in increasingly prescriptive ways raise profound social, ethical and pedagogical issues. This paper looks at the challenge such prescriptions pose and suggests that such regulation serves the democratic state less well than a more autonomous form of education. The implications of this alternative for teacher education are explored.

The new English teacher: redesigning pedagogies

We want to take you with us for the next hour on a journey – across times, across spaces, across the professional histories of English teaching and across geographical terrains within Australia, from South Australia to Victoria. But most importantly we want to move across generations – across generations of older teachers and younger teachers who are the focus of our current research and our keynote address: those early and first year teachers who are just beginning their careers at the start of the 21st century and those English and literacy teachers who have been committed professionals for around 30 years. In a sense the two groups of teachers we are referring to today can be roughly thought of as the graduating class of 1970 and the graduating class of 2000.

Teacher subject specialisms and their relationships to learning styles, psychological types and multiple intelligences: implications for course development

This study explores issues in teacher education that increase our understanding of, and response to, the individual differences displayed by learners. A large undergraduate teacher education cohort provided evidence of the range and distribution of preferences in learning styles, psychological types and multiple intelligences. This information revealed that distributions of scores on the Kolb Learning Style Inventory, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and the Multiple Intelligences Checklist for Adults provide evidence about the scope and range of differences between four teacher subject specialisms. This rich information about those participating in teacher education courses provides some guidance for educating those with their own clear preferences to the range of different preferences expressed by many other learners and highlights the existence of four sets of major differences in approaches to teaching and learning in prospective teachers.

Flexible learning in teacher education: myths, muddles and models

While there has been widespread take-up of the concept 'flexible learning' within various educational environments—and equally frequent references to the flexible 'natures' of the computer and communication technologies that often underpin flexible learning initiatives—the relationship between technologies and flexibility is not a simple one. In this paper we examine some of the more persistent myths about technologies that are intertwined with discourses of flexibility. We highlight some of the more common 'muddles' that these myths can lead us in to and argue that the 'mess' that so often results from well-intentioned moves to 'be more flexible' is largely a result of the ways that CCTs, or indeed any new educational technology or strategy, is theorized. Drawing on a recent study of online teaching and learning in higher education, we outline a new framework for examining these and related issues as they apply to teacher education.

Travelling drum with different beats: experiencing African music and culture in Australian teacher education

This article reports on a study that examined the effectiveness of introducing African music and culture to Australian non-specialist primary teacher education students at Deakin University in Melbourne (Australia). The study demonstrates that African music enhanced the generic musical experiences, learning, motivation, interest, confidence and competence of students in their fourth year of teacher education. The research also addressed the significance and contribution of African music and culture as a cross-cultural experience for these beginning teachers who in turn could provide similar experiences for their own students. This study highlighted the author's role and cultural identity as a South African music educator in transmitting the music and culture represented in 'the travelling drum' to a cohort of students with a predominantly Eurocentric orientation. By extension, this curriculum initiative broadened students' understanding and application of indigenous methods of teaching and learning as part of a global experience. Such a curriculum represents a pathway to many other forms of non-Western indigenous knowledge of music, culture and pedagogy that can be mapped out as a journey along a multicultural route towards 'internationalising the curriculum'.

On the future of teacher education: challenges, context and content

This article focuses on a discussion paper, which presents an analysis of context under four headings before turning to issues of what kind of teachers, teacher education and education services are required for 2020. There are three issues to be faced in the twenty-first century. The first issue is how to deal with the reconstitution of the natural environment so as to avoid imminent disaster. The second issue is how to overcome the xenophobia, learn to live with difference and construct institutions capable of accommodating difference. The third is how to mitigate gross disadvantages within and between societies.

Troubling identities: teacher education students` constructions of class and ethnicity

Working with diverse student populations productively depends on teachers and teacher educators recognizing and valuing difference. Too often, in teacher education programs, when markers of identity such as gender, ethnicity, 'race', or social class are examined, the focus is on developing student teachers' understandings of how these discourses shape learner identities and rarely on how these also shape teachers' identities. This article reports on a research project that explored how student teachers understand ethnicity and socio-economic status. In a preliminary stage of the research, we asked eight Year 3 teacher education students who had attended mainly Anglo-Australian, middle class schools as students and as student teachers, to explore their own ethnic and classed identities. The complexities of identity are foregrounded in both the assumptions we made in selecting particular students for the project and in the ways they constructed their own identities around ethnicity and social class. In this article we draw on these findings to interrogate how categories of identity are fluid, shifting and ongoing processes of negotiation, troubling and complex. We also consider the implications for teacher education.

`A bit of a chameleon act`: a case study of one teacher`s understandings of diversity

While for political, economic and social justice reasons, there is now an emphasis on ensuring that all children achieve educationally, including those whose ethnicity, 'race' or socio-economic status are different from the dominant culture, multiple and often contradictory discourses operate concerning how teachers should work with diversity. Within post-structural theories, 'race', socio-economic status, gender and ethnicity are theorised as fluid, dynamic and interconnected categories of identity. In this article, working with post-structuralist concepts including notions of 'discourse', 'subjectivities', and 'investments', I briefly review a number of discourses around identities and difference that play out within education, particularly in Australia, but with reference to research in North America, and the United Kingdom as well. I then draw on research data to present a case study of one teacher's perspective on diversity. Using his childhood experiences of being both an 'insider' and 'outsider' in mainstream culture, I speculate on how his subjectivities shape and are shaped by his professional identity and relations with students. I discuss his understanding of diversity and of socially just pedagogies in light of current discourses and consider some implications for how teacher education might develop richer, more complex understandings of diversity.

A teacher`s attempts at change in a science classroom

This paper reports on a range of issues that arose when one teacher attempted to introduce change in a science classroom. A case study approach was used to identify and investigate the effects of change on student attitudes and responsiveness to science through the change process. Using strategies informed by a Victorian Government initiative, the Science in Schools Project (SIS), the teacher implemented a range of teaching ideas. Students' and the teacher's responses were tracked and highlighted some of the issues for a practising teacher. Data were gathered from surveys, interviews and observation of, and participation in, classroom sessions. Despite intense effort, student attitudes to science remained essentially unchanged. However, one of the most revealing aspects of the research was the isolation felt by the teacher in attempting to implement change