(2018). Enlightenment or Status Defence? Education and Social Problem Concerns from Adolescence to Midlife. British Journal of Sociology of Education, v39 n7 p942-960. This paper asks whether concerns about social problems decline with age. Unconditional growth models (without covariates) revealed a decline over 25 years (age 18 to 43) in concerns about racial discrimination, treatment of Aboriginal Peoples, female job discrimination, unemployment and environmental pollution. Educational attainment was not associated with these change trajectories in conditional control models, providing no support for enlightenment or social reproduction hypotheses. Higher household income (age 43) was associated with faster declines in concerns about racial discrimination, treatment of Aboriginal Peoples and unemployment. With household income as a predictor, downward trajectories in treatment of Aboriginal Peoples, female job discrimination and environmental pollution were no longer significant, and the racial discrimination trajectory was reversed direction. These results provide compelling evidence for status defence theory…. [Direct]
(2014). Crafting the Normative Subject: Queerying the Politics of Race in the New Zealand Health Education Classroom. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, v35 n3 p393-404. This article explores the potential of queering as a mode of critique by problematising the ways in which liberal politics of race shape normative understandings of health in a high school classroom. Drawing on findings from an Australian and New Zealand (NZ) research project designed to respond to religious and cultural difference in school-based sexuality education programmes, we critically queer how the Maori concept of "hauora" is deployed in the intended and operational NZ Health curriculum to shape the raced subject. Despite the best intentions of curriculum developers and classroom teachers to utilise Maori ways of knowing to meet their obligations within a bicultural nation, we argue that the notion of "hauora" is domesticated by being aligned with normalising individualistic notions of well-being that reflect the Eurocentric neoliberal individual enterprise subject. Palatable notions of Maori epistemologies as cultural artefacts and iconography drive that… [Direct]
(2012). Teachers' Revitalizing the \Culture Commons\: An Ecological Imperative for the 21st Century Curriculum. Online Submission, Paper presented at the American Association for Teaching and Curriculum (AATC) Conference (San Antonio, TX, Oct 4, 2012). This paper reports on a summer program for educators that sought to prepare them to teach in and through the \cultural commons\ in the summer of 2012. The 5-day Academy for the Critical Inquiry of the Cultural Commons set out to foster knowledge of the cultural commons and their importance in the forging of ecological intelligence among contemporary educators. In this article, the Academy program and some of the work of the participants within it are described in detail. The authors define the \cultural commons\ and the relevance of this concept in contemporary education. The theoretical framework for the work is described along with descriptive vignettes of educators' experience…. [PDF]
(2015). Texturing Space-Times in the Australian Curriculum: Cross-Curriculum Priorities. Curriculum Inquiry, v45 n4 p367-388. The Australian curriculum, as a policy imagining what learning should take place in schools, and what that learning should achieve, involves the imagining and rescaling of social relations amongst students, their schools, the nation-state and the globe. Following David Harvey's theorisations of space-time and Norman Fairclough's operationalisation of these theories in the texturing of spatio-temporalities within policy texts, we seek to critically explore the cross-curriculum priorities of the Australian curriculum. These priorities–Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures, Asia and Australia's Engagement with Asia, and sustainability–collectively provide a "futures orientation" to the curriculum. They also mediate and assemble conflicting spatio-temporalities, aligning the purposes of Australian schooling with an instrumentalist concern for "Asia literacy," whilst simultaneously recasting the space-times of neoliberal capitalism within… [Direct]
(2012). Poetry and Prose as Pedagogical Tools for Addressing Difficult Knowledges: Translocational Positionality and Issues of Collective Political Agency. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, v20 n2 p317-332. In this paper the focus is on the possibilities that poetry and prose offer as pedagogical tools that can both accommodate and address difficult and painful knowledges. The paper presents and analyses poems and prose written by students at a non-traditional secondary school for disadvantaged girls (many of whom identify as Indigenous Australian). Through stories of grief and pain, but also hope and possibility, the poetry/prose book signifies a sense of collective political agency against oppressive relations towards the girls creating new moulds of existence. Contra to dominant approaches to recognising and valuing Indigeneity in schools, these writings represent Indigenous culture as a complex, dynamic and contingent social practice. While it is contended that a valuing of marginalised cultures is an important aspect of cultural recognition, the paper argues that a broader and more critical focus is required in beginning to address Indigenous oppressions. (Contains 1 note.)… [Direct]
(2012). Early Childhood Education as a Site of Ecocentric Counter-Colonial Endeavour in Aotearoa New Zealand. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, v13 n2 p86-98. This article draws upon a range of theoretical domains, first to outline the historical rationale for the urgent changes needed to challenge and transform the dominator culture which has justified exploitation of Indigenous peoples and the resources of the earth. It invites educators to reconsider the narratives that are either consciously or inadvertently promoted in our work, suggesting that we can learn from Indigenous epistemologies in which humans are situated alongside earth others, as respectful, related guardians and caretakers. It finally draws on some examples from a recent qualitative study conducted with ten early childhood centres from across Aotearoa, to illuminate possibilities for enactment of counter-colonial renarrativisation within early childhood settings in service of an ethical project of enhancing relationalities, reconnecting children and their families with the more-than-human world. (Contains 7 notes and 1 figure.)… [Direct]
(2017). Parenting Interventions for Indigenous Child Psychosocial Functioning: A Scoping Review. Research on Social Work Practice, v27 n3 p307-334 May. Objectives: To scope evaluations of Indigenous parenting programs designed to improve child psychosocial outcomes. Methods: Electronic databases, gray literature, Indigenous websites and journals, and reference lists were searched. The search was restricted to high-income countries with a history of colonialism. Results: Sixteen studies describing evaluations of 13 programs were found. Most were controlled studies from United States and Australia, targeting child social, emotional, behavioral and mental health outcomes, and these were delivered to groups of parents. Program content focused most often on child development and learning, child behavior management, and parent-child interactions. Some studies reported improvements in child and parent outcomes, though the majority used self-report measures and some were noncontrolled studies. Conclusions: This scoping review provides the first known map of evaluations of programs targeting parents of Indigenous children. There were few… [Direct]
(2013). Quality Teachers for Indigenous Students: An Imperative for the Twenty-First Century. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, v12 n1 p98-118. This paper argues that all learners need teachers who are not only professionally qualified but also culturally competent. This is particularly so with teachers of indigenous students, who face the conflicting expectations of schools and those of their home cultures. References to Pacific students will be used to illustrate some of the conflicts as well as attempts to address teaching and learning issues in Pacific Island Countries (PICs)…. [PDF]
(2015). An Early Mathematical Patterning Assessment: Identifying Young Australian Indigenous Children's Patterning Skills. Mathematics Education Research Journal, v27 n4 p519-534 Dec. This paper presents an Early Mathematical Patterning Assessment (EMPA) tool that provides early childhood educators with a valuable opportunity to identify young children's mathematical thinking and patterning skills through a series of hands-on and drawing tasks. EMPA was administered through one-to-one assessment interviews to children aged 4 to 5 years in the year prior to formal school. Two hundred and seventeen assessments indicated that the young low socioeconomic and predominantly Australian Indigenous children in the study group had varied patterning and counting skills. Three percent of the study group was able to consistently copy and draw an ABABAB pattern made with coloured blocks. Fifty percent could count to six by ones and count out six items with 4% of the total group able to identify six items presented in regular formations without counting. The integration of patterning into early mathematics learning is critical to the abstraction of mathematical ideas and… [Direct]
(2015). Teaching and Learning through the Eyes of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Postgraduates and Their Lecturers in Australia and Vietnam: Implications for the Internationalisation of Education in Australian Universities. Education Research and Perspectives, v42 p329-396. International and transnational education has become common place. Australian universities have embraced the rise in international enrolments from students in the Asia-Pacific region. There are many considerations, however, if these courses are to avoid being labelled neo-colonial exercises, not least of which is the necessity for informed dialogue about practices and beliefs in teaching and learning between all stakeholders. With this in mind, this paper draws on a larger study which examined the teaching and learning experiences and perspectives of a group of culturally and linguistically diverse postgraduates and lecturers from the Asian continent and Australia. All of the participants were involved in an MA program offered by an Australian university and all were, or had been, English language teachers. Findings indicated that while participants from Vietnam, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, India, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia all appreciated (to some extent) educational… [PDF]
(2015). "Abuelita" Epistemologies: Counteracting Subtractive Schools in American Education. Journal of Latinos and Education, v14 n1 p40-54. This autoethnographic inquiry examines the intersection of elder epistemology and subtractive education, exploring how one "abuelita" countered her granddaughter's divestment of Mexican-ness. I demonstrate how the grandmother used "abuelita" epistemologies to navigate this tension and resist the assimilative pressures felt by her granddaughter from school by consistently modeling, at home, a love for Mexican language and culture. I argue that grandmothers play a vital role in rooting young people to their linguistic and cultural assets, a sacred function that many Mexican elders have preserved and brought forward from the precontact era in the Americas to the contemporary era…. [Direct]
(2015). "Because They Want to Teach You about Their Culture": Analyzing Effective Mentoring Conversations between Culturally Responsible Mentors and Secondary Science Teachers of Indigenous Students in Mainstream Schools. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, v52 n10 p1325-1361 Dec. Te Kotahitanga is an educational reform project in Aotearoa/New Zealand demonstrated to have significantly impacted the participation, achievement, and retention of indigenous Maori students in secondary schools. In this paper, I share results from a study of culturally responsible mentoring at 4 different schools participating in the Te Kotahitanga reform project. Specifically, I investigated how Te Kotahitanga facilitators (i.e., site-based mentors/instructional coaches) engage novice and experienced science teachers in reflective conversations around culturally sustaining science instruction for indigenous students. I identify four key themes from these mentoring conversations that can serve as a useful framework for culturally responsible mentoring in science…. [Direct]
(2016). Defying Definition: Rethinking Education Aid Relationships in Solomon Islands. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, v15 n3 p42-56. The discourse of aid–its language, structures and practice–powerfully ascribes roles and attributes to those involved in aid relationships such as developed/developing, partner, recipient/donor etcetera. This discourse is driven by a complex system of diverse and often competing ideas, values, actors and relationships, within which individuals must make sense of their role and agency at both professional and personal levels. While recent years has seen much focus on improving relationships by reordering some of these categories, little research has investigated how individuals themselves make sense of all this, and how it then influences their practice. The research presented in this article investigated the professional subjectivities of a small group of public servants working for the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development in Solomon Islands. The primary aim of the research was to explore the ways in which professional subjectivity is influenced by, and influences,… [PDF] [Direct]
(2016). Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities (PALLIC) Building Relationships: One School's Quest to Raise Indigenous Learners' Literacy. Teaching Education, v27 n2 p136-155. In 2011 to 2012, 48 schools in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland participated in the Principals as Literacy Leaders with Indigenous Communities (PALLIC) project. Central to this project was the establishment of positive working relationships between school principals and Indigenous community leaders in order to improve Indigenous literacy rates. Professional development in leadership skills and effective literacy instruction was provided through five professional learning modules. Participants worked together to create an action plan to support the literacy achievement of Indigenous students in their schools and communities. This article presents a case study of one participating school in Northern Queensland that successfully utilised the PALLIC framework to facilitate leadership actions and activities between Indigenous community and school leaders in order to form productive partnerships for the teaching of reading. In particular, the case study highlights the… [Direct]
(2007). Critical Issues in Conducting Research with Immigrant Children. Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, v1 n2 p83-107 Apr. In this article, we explore critical issues in research with immigrant and refugee children. In particular, we examine the implications of various critiques of research methodologies, the ethical implications of researching children in the light of the United Nations (UN; 1989) \Convention on the Rights of the Child,\ and the new approach to childhood studies. We provide and analyze examples of creative research methods that we have developed and used in studies with immigrant children in terms of their varying levels of involving children in research. One is a game-playing approach used to study childhood loneliness; the other is a creative, arts-based methodology designed to overcome the limitations of language-based research when participants do not speak the same language as the researchers. Possibilities for involving immigrant children in researching their own experiences are considered through the development of visual narratives in the form of fotonovelas. (Contains 1 figure.)… [Direct]