Since reinstituting this column in AARE News I have been continually reminded of the wealth of research conducted by doctoral students across the country in education faculties and departments, and their substantial contributions to Australian education. This issue's sample is a good example of these contributions and, as it happens, several reveal a distinctive Foucauldian influence. I wonder what, if anything, this says about the ways we currently understand the social world of education that Foucault's critique and concepts should appear as useful tools for researchers.
Over a similar period I have become increasingly aware of some disenchantment with educational research; the claim that, by and large, educational research has not delivered measurable differences in terms of students' educational experiences and outcomes. Certainly, 'making a difference' is an important aspect of social research yet such negative evaluations have tended to define the contributions of research and research itself in particular ways and, hence, what counts as a valuable outcome. That is, current definitions that dominate the broad field of inquiry tend to be narrow and to privilege certain forms of research over others. To rework a familiar analogy, apples are easily dismissed as not research or not valuable research when research is defined only in terms of oranges and only in the interests of their producers and consumers.
For all its merits, the recent statement by the Chief Scientist (Robin Batterham) carries a similar message about the nature of research. The danger for educational researchers and those in the social sciences more generally is that the entirety of their research effort might be measured against criteria with more validity in the physical sciences. By way of illustration, in a 1996 address to the London Teacher Training Authority, David Hargreaves - informed by positivist explanations of research -suggested that educational research has not figured significantly in changing or reinforming teachers' practices, that it has failed the test of performativity. Of course, Hargreaves' address was part of a much broader push in the UK - with similarities in the Australian context - to frame educational research in terms of government research agendas, those that meet its short term goals. For those interested, Jenny Ozga (2000) critiques this development very well in her recent book, Policy Research in Educational Settings.
Perhaps it was such claims that prompted the Australian Government around two years ago to commission four research teams to investigate the outcomes of Australian educational research. The reports have never been released yet it is widely believed within the academic community that they paint a picture of its substantial impact. It is possibly not a research outcome that the government wanted to hear and certainly not justification for any reduction in funding such research. Yet even at current levels, financial support for educational research is under considerable pressure (see Lingard & Blackmore, 1997, AER 24(3)). And, more than any other field (46%), the vast majority (87%) of this expenditure on educational research occurs within the higher education sector. Clearly, a reduction to research funding in universities has far more impact on Australian educational research than any other field of inquiry.
Still, I can imagine that some might read accounts of educational research, such as those below that champion the likes of Foucault, and remark along with the Scottish brogue in an old TV ad. for instant oats, 'Aye, it's delicious, but it's no how ye make porridge!' Despite these narrow conceptions it would seem that educational research in all its forms is having significant influence in Australian education. (Certainly, the government has chosen not to release research that might suggest otherwise.) This includes the research of doctoral students, which often forms a substantial part of the research activity in faculties and departments of education, also under threat by funding arrangements regarding completions and the distribution of places across the sector.
I am pleased, then, to be able to celebrate with the authors of the following doctoral theses. Their work represents a more general celebration of the contributions of educational researchers in Australia. We should celebrate, too, the federal government's recent increase to funding Australian research, including educational research. To utilise the discourse of Batterham, the 'success' of research needs to be measured in more than its contribution to a knowledge economy in order to include and foreground how it contributes to a knowledge society.
Again, the following two titles and four abbreviated abstracts constitute a very opportunistic sample, largely contingent on my 'supply lines'. If you are willing to pass on current details (of doctoral theses completed within the last six months) from your institution please email me at t.gale@cqu.edu.au. Alternatively, you might be able to pass on this request to the person(s) at your institution who regularly handles this data.
Congratulations to the authors. For all the reasons above, I encourage them to seek out public forums in which to make the value of their research known. Apologies for the truncations of abstracts for reasons of space.
Trevor Gale
Dr Lolita Andrada (PhD), University of South Australia, Teaching with a difference: Profiling for instructional leadership.
Dr Ruth Reynolds (PhD), University of Newcastle, Geography, history and the social sciences: The evolution of secondary school syllabuses in New South Wales 1967-1989.
Dr Dianne Bills (PhD), University of South Australia, Adolescents' talk in class: the social and institutional work of being a student.
This study of adolescent students' talk in school examined the social and institutional relations assembled in and around peer talk in the classroom. A sociocultural approach to literacy learning encouraged the teacher-researcher to hear multiple discourses, genres and literacies in her students' talk as it was shaped by the social and institutional contexts and relations of school activity. An ethnomethodological perspective enabled her to hear their talk as social action and as a resource through which they accomplished the job of being a student. Fourteen students were recorded talking in the subjects of English, Technology Studies and Pastoral Care, on the many occasions during three months of school when talk unfolded in the everyday contexts of classroom activity. ... The analysis focused on the sequential order of talk on a turn-by-turn basis and the inferential order of talk as it was evoked through turn design and categorisation devices. ... The study found that students' talk is a prime resource for doing the social and institutional work of being a student and showed how such work demanded continuous creative effort from the students as they drew on emotional and intellectual resources as well as funds of social, cultural and institutional knowledge. The findings suggest that peer talk in the classroom is a site for the mediation of various social and student identities, in particular gendered, age-related and (in this case) rural identities, which need to be negotiated and performed anew on each occasion. Adolescents are often portrayed as using social and peer discourses to resist or undermine the discourses of schooling, but this study shows how expertly students can 'play out' various institutional discourses and genres at the same time they are 'playing with' familiar social and peer discourses that help them do the work of being a student.
Dr Valerie Harwood (PhD), University of South Australia, Truth, power and the self: A Foucaultian analysis of the truth of Conduct Disorder and the construction of young people's mentally disordered subjectivity.
For some young people, being young can involve being told they are mentally disordered. In the lives of some this can involve the diagnosis of Conduct Disorder, a mental disorder specified in the American Psychiatric Association's (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). This study analyses how 'Conduct Disorder' is made truthful and authoritative, and considers how mentally disordered subjectivity is constructed. The central question asks: How is it that a young person can state with certitude that they are mentally disordered? Linked to this are three subquestions: How does Conduct Disorder achieve the status of scientific knowledge? How does Conduct Disorder function as an authoritative knower of young people? and How do young people construct their mentally disordered subjectivity? This study draws on the Foucaultian notions of 'games of truth', 'relations of power' and 'technologies of the self' to fashion a conceptual framework for the analysis of Conduct Disorder and the formation of mentally disordered subjectivity. Methodologically, the genealogical tools of contingency, discontinuity, emergence, subjugated erudite and subjugated disqualified knowledge are engaged to build a style of analysis that directs scrutiny at Conduct Disorder and mentally disordered subjectivity. The consideration of mentally disordered subjectivity involves close research with the subjugated disqualified knowledges of young people who have experienced the effects of being 'mentally disordered' and being made 'other'. To conduct this research I devise what I term my 'grid of sensibility', an approach that draws on genealogy and narrative research literature to provide a theoretical landscape for research with young people who have experienced subjugation and disqualification. The proposition is advanced that Conduct Disorder occurs as a valid scientific knowledge because it subjugates 'alternate knowledges' and, in concert with technologies of the self and relations of power, produces mentally disordered subjectivity. The argument is made that technologies of the self form the pivotal site in the relationship with truth and power. It is proposed that just as technologies of the self are instrumental in the making of mentally disordered subjectivity, so too they are instrumental in 'unmaking' this subjectivity. Through providing a critical perspective of the truth of Conduct Disorder, this study offers an analysis of how psychiatric truth is implicated in the construction of mentally disordered subjectivity, and significantly, argues the possibility for disagreement with its persuasion.
Dr Faye McCallum (PhD), University of South Australia, The effectiveness of training as professional development: Teachers as mandated notifiers of child abuse and neglect.
Teachers in South Australia are mandated to notify suspected child abuse and neglect. The literature highlighted various reasons why teachers under-report such suspicions. This research sought to investigate mandatory notification training as one of the contributing reasons to this under-reporting. Conclusive findings suggest that a collaborative and supportive model of teacher professional development would significantly enhance teacher reporting of suspected child abuse and neglect.
Dr Erica Southgate (PhD), University of Newcastle, Remembering school: Mapping continuities in power, subjectivity and emotion in stories of Australian school life.
This thesis stems from a resurgence of interest in theorising memory as a socio-cultural and collective phenomenon. In line with postpositivist conceptions of memory, I undertook an analysis of experiential stories of school life in twentieth century Australia. Publicly circulating memories of school were collected from numerous sources including published sources such as school magazines, newspapers, autobiographies and anthologies and through in-depth interviews. In all, stories of school were gathered from 289 storytellers. This collection of stories comprised a discursive field in which those power relations, subject positions and emotions most commonly associated with school could be traced. The major aim of this process was to map continuities in power, subjectivity and emotion in the memories of storytellers, across generations. Michel Foucault's theories of power and subjectivity are employed throughout the thesis. Other theoretical influences include materialist, poststructuralist and Foucauldian feminisms. A custom-made theoretical and methodological tool, the "powerplay", was developed in order to trace micro-practices of power at the emotional, subjective and bodily levels. A number of thematic continuities across generational stories were identified. Three were explored in detail. These are punishment, bullying and pleasure. Within each theme there were a number of remarkably stable operations of power, subject positions and emotional repertoires. This thesis provides a micro-analysis of these enduring phenomena, with a focus on making familiar, normalised or commonsensical aspects of schooling, strange. After Foucault, the analysis also unmasks operations of power that are simultaneously productive and repressive. The thesis concludes by arguing that histories of difference and discontinuity should always be accompanied by histories of continuity, if the workings of institutional power are to be better understood.