This Issue of AARE News carries four abstracts of recently completed doctoral theses. Again, they are illustrative of the quality of research being conducted in education within Australia. Issues of social justice, equity, marginalisation and so on also continue to feature in the doctoral abstracts we receive. No doubt you will have your own particular reading of these abstracts. My reading highlighted for me certain aspects, which probably reflect my own interests, or at least some of them. For example, at a theoretical level, an understanding of context looms large in several of these studies and seems to have gained some ascendancy in the education field more generally. Some provide a more critical reading of context than others, noting, for example, the cultural and knowledge controls of classrooms, the limiting effects of schooling and the negative portrayal of 'other'. Although not as evident in the following abstracts, it is interesting to also note a rising methodological interest in longitudinal studies and in a quantitative-qualitative mix. On the latter, Brown, Halsey, et al. (1997) have argued the need for postmodern researchers not to discount the need for a 'political arithmetic' as a form of social accountability, given the currency of statistics in advanced post-industrial societies. As with context, my interest is in politicising quantitative methods and recognising their political opportunities and possibilities. Richard Teese's (2003) Undemocratic Schooling is a case in point. But as I say, this is my reading and I expect others may read these abstracts and the field of education research differently.
I extend my congratulations to the authors for their respective contributions. Please note that we are now publishing the names of candidates' supervisors, to include them in the celebration of the work completed. If you wish to submit an abstract to this column, please follow the guidelines outlined in the last newsletter (Issue 42, available on AARE's website) and also include your supervisors' names. Submissions can be sent to me at Trevor.Gale@education.monash.edu.au
Trevor Gale
Executive Member
Dr Greg Curran (PhD), University of Melbourne, Young queers getting together: Moving beyond isolation and loneliness.
Over the last decade, education-focused research/studies on young queers (or same-sex attracted young people) have highlighted the many problems or difficulties they face growing up in a homophobic, heterosexist society. Strategies to address these issues (proposed in numerous research articles and reports) have largely focused on the school setting. I argue that these strategies are limited by heterosexual norms, which regulate and contain in advance what is possible (for queers) within the formal school system. I examine the ways in which these heterosexual norms work to constrain the queer subject in education-focused research and studies on young queers. Within this field of study, young queers have largely been characterized as victims: of homophobic abuse and harassment, and neglect by families and schools. They're said to be lonely and isolated, 'at risk' of attempted suicide, unsafe sex, drug and alcohol abuse, and homelessness. I argue that these representations convey a negative portrait of young queers - as wounded subjects. I illustrate how the emphasis on the wounded queer subject can work against the interests of young queers. In particular, it obscures those queer perspectives involving agency: first, queer cultures and communities; second, the knowledge and experiences of those who have gained confidence in their queerness, who have queer social and sexual lives. These (agentic) queers can offer us ways of understanding how young queers move beyond isolation and loneliness. This study highlights the importance, for many young queers, of having opportunities and spaces where they can connect with each other. Socialization and sexualization among young queers involves a certain openness - being and doing queer - a practice which is unintelligible within most education-focused research/studies on young queers. This is illustrated and explored through comparative analysis of queer subjectivities in two differentiated spheres: on the one hand - education-focused research and studies relating to the school context, and on the other - gay/lesbian/queer studies and literature relating to queer social and sexual contexts. The key contexts and themes examined here are: early sexual experience and beats, queer cultures and communities, and queer youth support and social groups.
Dr Neil Harrison (PhD), Northern Territory University, An adventure of insight in ethnography and pedagogy:Learning/teaching relationships and the production of knowledge in the crosscultural classroom.
This research is set in a university context. It draws on extended interviews with nine indigenous students studying at the Northern Territory University to examine the parallel relation between the informant and the ethnographer, and the student and the teacher. I began the research as a crosscultural ethnographer. Accordingly, I assumed that I had access to the informants' knowledge and that I could transmit this knowledge to readers. But after I wrote my first interpretation of the data I was brought to reassess these two assumptions. The research then is a critique of transmission-based theories of knowledge and learning where indigenous students are trained in the knowledge and power of the pedagogue. While most research in crosscultural education has been directed at finding out how an indigenous student can learn from the non-indigenous teacher, this study focuses on a different question: How does an indigenous student learn outside the non-indigenous pedagogue's knowledge and power in the crosscultural classroom? The study turns to critical pedagogic theories for some insight. These theories bring us to the point of understanding that knowledge and learning are produced through a crosscultural relation but they do not show us how this relation is actually produced in the classroom nor how a student can learn outside the knowledge and power of the pedagogue. The research finds that there is a discourse of negotiation already at work, albeit hidden, in the relation between the student and the pedagogue in the university classroom. Intersubjective knowledge and a particular type of learning are produced through the relation between them.
Dr Caroline Mansfield (PhD), Edith Cowan University, The influence of students' contextual perceptions on motivational goal pursuit in the first year of middle school. Supervisors: Len King, Carmel Maloney & Richard Berlach
The nature of student motivation in schools, particularly during early adolescence, has been of growing interest and concern to educators and researchers alike. This study investigated the influence of students' contextual perceptions on the academic and social motivational goals they pursued in their first year of middle school. Using a goal orientation theory framework, this longitudinal, qualitative study focused on the experiences and perceptions of seven, Year 7 students throughout the first year of their middle schooling experience. The study focused particularly on how students' perceptions of their school context influenced the nature of the academic and social motivational goals they chose to pursue throughout the year. A case study approach was used to gain a deeper understanding of the contextual perceptions held by students and to develop a holistic view of the complexities of student life during early adolescence. The findings of the study revealed that students' perceptions of the contexts in which they operated during their first year of middle school had a significant influence on the nature of academic and social goals individuals pursued and that students' goals seemed to emerge from a consistent series of negotiations that occurred between family goals, school and classroom goals, and peer goals over the course of the year. The study illustrates the positive and negative impact educational contexts can have on students particularly during early adolescence. In particular it showed how the nature of behavioural control systems can have a significantly negative impact on individual's motivation with regard to sense of belonging at school, school affect, perceived levels of teacher care and support, student teacher relationships and students' self-reported academic engagement and effort. Perceived teacher support appeared to also have a significant impact on students' school adjustment, feelings about school and academic engagement and effort. The study points to the need for educators and school administrators to approach change in their schools and classrooms from a motivational perspective.
Dr Helen Watt (PhD), University of Sydney, Gendered achievement-related choices and behaviours in Mathematics and English: The nature and influence of self-, task- and value perceptions. Supervisors: Ray Debus & Mike Bailey
The present study investigates students' gendered achievement-related choices and behaviours in mathematics and English, using the Expectancy-Value theory of achievement motivation developed by Eccles and colleagues, which is the most prominent current model predicting academic choices in the form of course enrolments. The central social issue addressed in this thesis is the differential participation in higher-level mathematics by girls and boys, in both their senior high school years and intended careers. Key questions investigated are first, to what extent do boys plan to participate in maths to a greater extent than girls, both in senior high and in their planned careers? Second, what are the predictive influences of gender, expectancies, values and task demands on maths participation and achievement-related behaviours? Third, what is the nature and development of boys' and girls' trajectories for expectancy, value and task demand variables from junior through to senior high school? Fourth, what causal sequencing among expectancy and value constructs can be discerned? These questions are addressed using longitudinal data from three cohorts in an overlapping cohort sequential design (N's= 428, 436, 459). Parallel analyses are conducted for English to assess domain specificity of findings. These four major questions comprise the extensive quantitative survey phase of the study. Further questions comprise the intensive qualitative interview phase, namely: what factors are facilitative of, and detrimental to high-ability girls pursuing high levels of mathematics? How are their self-perceptions of talent derived? And how do students explain greater male participation in maths at school and in the workplace?