Knowing schooling, identity and pedagogy visually

This research produced in one region in Ghana examines the production of educational practices, relations of power and student experiences within teaching and non-teaching spaces in junior secondary settings. The strength of the visual approach in interrogating school cultural norms and the problematising of the tangled complexities of knowing about schooling, identity and pedagogy are outlined. An important aspect of the study is the foregrounding of educational practice as a social act occurring in response to historical circumstances and changing social contexts (Brown & Jones, 2001). We see this work as an important step towards democratization of the research relationship and empowerment of students to contribute to the way they are educated. But also we are wary of how representation through visual methods also can 'frame' participants and the researchers. We recognise that one way to uncover how school practices are exemplified in Ghana is to put students in the middle of researching their experiences. In this way, our research moved from constructing students as simply consumers of adult designed and managed products to practices based on democratic participation (Thomson & Gunter, 2007). Throughout the research journey we were guided by the fact that knowledge is not neutral or to be discovered. Culture and communicative processes are essential determinants of reality. In this study the students as researchers, produced photographs that trigger dialectical conversations of students’ perspectives that foreground their experiences at school. This enabled us to digress from dominant positivistic empiricism to a more legitimate ethical practice, and understanding of the intricacies of educational practice, the norms and structures that underpin everyday actions in schools.

Paper 4 : Schooling, identity and social connectivity

This paper will report on the progress of a large three year Australian Research Council (ARC) grant awarded to a multidisciplinary team of researchers in Victoria, Australia. The research, A multi-disciplinary investigation of how trauma and chronic illness impact on schooling, identity and social connectivity commenced in 2007 and is known as Keeping Connected (2007). The research is a collaborative grant in partnership with the Royal Children’s Hospital Education Institute, in association with the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne and the Centre for Adolescent Health, Royal Children’s Hospital. The research aims to investigate qualitatively, longitudinally and through multiple perspectives how young people construct/reconstruct identity and relationships with schooling following disruption associated with chronic illness. Using a mixed methodology, but with a central focus on longitudinal qualitative studies from the perspective of the young people, the study aims to identify key elements of disruption or continued connection, and will illuminate identity issues of people facing this disruption at different age and schooling points. The research outcomes will support education and health practices and provide a differently focused empirical contribution to the literature on education and social connection. The paper works at mixing methods qualitatively, rather than focusing on the overall mixed method design of the study. Assemblages of social capital theory and sociomateriality may be a useful standpoint for the development of our empirical contribution.

Inclusive schooling : representation and textual practice

This paper reports on a larger study carried out in the island state of Tasmania, Australia, between 1996 and 1998. The research reviewed the impact of the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities Policy (ISDP) within the government school system. The qualitative study describes the interpretations of five key informants: a parent; two teachers—a support teacher and a class teacher—a policy-maker and a university academic, during the early period of the implementation of the ISDP. The visual and literary ‘data stories’ of the research are woven together to narrate inclusive schooling in the Tasmanian context as a ‘detective story’ of the special education knowledge tradition. Drawing from poststructuralist methodology and narrative theory the multi-voiced text is a deliberate attempt to enter into conversations with the reader rather than tell the story. Researching inclusive schooling policy through representation and textual practice, I question dominant research practices in the special education field and populist slogans of ‘inclusion’.

Inclusive schooling policy : an educational detective story?

Since the publication of the Salamanca statement (UNESCO 1994), inclusive schooling has formed a growing part of the deliberations of the special education community. Inclusive schooling research in Australia in the main continues to reproduce traditions of the special education field, emphasising the dominant psychological perspectives that have been superimposed on inclusive education discourses. At the fifth International Congress of Special Education (ISEC 2000) held in Manchester, ‘the death knell of the concept of special education’ (ISEC 2000) was announced. The concept proposed by Mike Oliver, Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Greenwich, asserts an end to understandings of diversity dependent on medical, psychological and charity-based discourses. From a recent study of inclusive schooling policy, and drawing from poststructuralist methodology, I suggest an approach to research, policy development and practice that questions traditionalist theorising in the special education field. Reflecting on the implementation of the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities Policy (DECCD 1995) in the Tasmanian government school system, I outline my alignment with Oliver’s view and highlight how questions of epistemology and reconstructions of research methodologies are central to rethinking understandings of difference. I also illustrate a methodological orientation that offers possibilities for a different science to take place, thereby understanding diversity as multiple and contradictory – and beyond the single ‘detective story’ (Gough 1998) of the medical, psychological and charity-based discourses that circulate in schools as the populist conceptions of ‘inclusion’.

Associations between parental concern for adolescent weight and the home food environment and dietary intake

Objective: Examine associations between parental concern about adolescent weight and adolescent perceptions of their dietary intake, home food availability, family mealtime environment, and parents' feeding practices.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Adolescents, aged 12-15 years from 37 secondary schools in Victoria, Australia, and their parents completed surveys in 2004-2005.

Participants: 1,448 adolescent–parent pairs.

Main Outcome Measures: Parental concern about adolescent weight; adolescent perceptions of their food intake and home food environment.

Analysis: Chi-square tests, exploratory factor analysis, independent t tests (P < .01).

Results: Although 12% of parents perceived their adolescent as overweight, 27% were concerned about their adolescent's weight (under- or overweight). Adolescents of concerned parents reported lower intakes of energy-dense snacks and less home availability of these food items, and they perceived that their parents less often listened to and considered their food preferences when shopping and cooking, than did adolescents of unconcerned parents. Concerned parents were no more likely to provide fruits and vegetables in the home or a positive family mealtime environment than unconcerned parents, at least as reported by their adolescents.

Conclusions and Implications: Parental concern about adolescent weight was associated with lower intakes of energy-dense snacks among adolescents, less home availability of these food items, and less supportive parental feeding practices. Parents should be encouraged to listen to and consider their adolescents' food preferences, and provide supportive family mealtime environments and healthful food in the home.

The future direction of schooling

This chapter provides a cross-societal discussion of the findings of the Schooling for the future study, the case studies. It examines why senior educators and policy leaders in each of the six case study societies believe that bureaucratic school systems are the most likely scenario for future even though these are not the most desired. It examines some of the key factors that account for senior educators and policy leaders’ views, and the changes they argue are needed to achieve the desired scenario for the future. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the contribution and the implications of the study for the usefulness of the OECD scenarios as policy tools.