Books & Edited Volumes by Katie Wright
Special Issue of the Journal of Australian Studies
Special edition of Child Abuse & Neglect on the Australian Royal Commission
Edited by Katie Wright & Julie McLeod
This volume offers a critical rethinking of the construc... more Edited by Katie Wright & Julie McLeod
This volume offers a critical rethinking of the construct of youth wellbeing, stepping back from taken-for-granted and psychologically inflected understandings. Wellbeing has become a catchphrase in educational, health and social care policies internationally, informing a range of school programs and social interventions and increasingly shaping everyday understandings of young people. Drawing on research by established and emerging scholars in Australia, Singapore and the UK, the book critically examines the myriad effects of dominant discourses of wellbeing on the one hand, and the social and cultural dimensions of wellbeing on the other. From diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives, it explores how notions of wellbeing have been mobilized across time and space, in and out of school contexts, and the different inflections and effects of wellbeing discourses are having in education, transnationally and comparatively. The book offers researchers as well as practitioners new perspectives on current approaches to student wellbeing in schools and novel ways of thinking about the wellbeing of young people beyond educational settings.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Inventing youth wellbeing -- Julie McLeod & Katie Wright
2. To be well is to be not unwell: The new battleground inside our children’s heads -- Linda Graham
3. Vulnerability and wellbeing in educational settings: The implications of a therapeutic approach to social justice -- Kathryn Ecclestone
4. The limits of wellbeing -- Johanna Wyn, Hernan Cuervo & Evelina Landstedt
5. Constructions of young women’s health and wellbeing in neoliberal times: A case study of the HPV vaccination program in Australia -- Kellie Burns & Cristyn Davies
6. Young people, sexual pleasure and sexual health services: What happens when “good sex” is bad for your health? -- Ester McGeeney
7. “I’d just cut myself to kill the pain”: Seeing sense in young women’s self-injury -- Kathryn Daley
8. Rethinking role-play for health and wellbeing: Creating a pedagogy of possibility -- Helen Cahill
9. Wellbeing and schools: Exploring the normative dimensions -- Amy Chapman
10. Social-emotional learning: Promotion of youth wellbeing in Singapore schools -- Chong Wan Har and Lee Boon Ooi
11. Happiness, wellbeing and self-esteem: Public feelings and educational projects -- Julie McLeod
12. From targeted interventions to universal approaches: Historicizing wellbeing -- Katie Wright
This book is an examination of our fascination with psychological life and the historical develop... more This book is an examination of our fascination with psychological life and the historical developments that fostered it. Taking Australia as the focal point, Katie Wright traces the ascendancy of therapeutic culture, from nineteenth century concerns about nervousness, to the growth of psychology, the diffusion of an analytic attitude, and the spread of therapy and counselling. Wright's analysis, which draws on social theory, cultural history, and interviews with therapists and people in therapy, calls into question the pessimism that pervades many accounts of the therapeutic turn and provides an alternative assessment of its ramifications for social, political, and personal life in the globalized West.
"Wright's work provides an all important antidote to a long series of off-base polemics that misunderstand the role of psychotherapy in contemporary society. Wright's work provides a sharp and welcome contrast. She finds the language of therapy at the heart of the new social movements." -Jeffrey C. Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Yale University
"The strength of Wright's work lies in its emphasis on the complex, contradictory ways in which various aspects of our global worlds enter into the inner, emotional texture of identity as well as the processes through which the unconscious imagination constitutes fabrications of the social-historical world." -Anthony Elliott, Chair of Sociology, Flinders University, Australia.
"This work makes an important contribution to cultural and historical sociology. Wright argues convincingly for a reappraisal of therapeutic culture through a compelling critique of existing theory and by drawing on alternative traditions to those that have dominated scholarship in this field. The case studies she presents are intrinsically interesting and theoretically important, and her innovative perspective on the therapeutic society will make a valuable and significant contribution to the field." -Zlatko Skrbis, Dean, UQ Graduate School, The University of Queensland, Australia.
This volume explores questions about hope, optimism and the possibilities of the 'new' as express... more This volume explores questions about hope, optimism and the possibilities of the 'new' as expressed in educational thinking on the nature and problem of adolescence. One focus is on the interwar years in Australian education, and the proliferation of educational reports and programs directed to understanding, governing, educating and enlivening adolescents. This included studies of the secondary school curriculum, reviews of teaching of civics and democracy, the development of guidance programs, the specification of the needs and attributes of the adolescent, and interventions to engage the 'average student' in post-primary schooling. Framed by imperatives to respond in new ways to educational problems, and to the call of modernity, many of these programs and reforms conveyed a sense of enormous optimism in the compelling power of education and schools to foster new personal and social knowledge and transformation. A second focus is the expression of such utopianism in educational history - themes that may seem novel, or incongruous, or even inexplicable in the present - and in studies and representations of young people as citizens in the making. Finally, developing broadly genealogical approaches to the study of adolescence, the chapters variously seek to provoke more explicitly historical thinking about the construction of the field of youth studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Educational Administration and History.
Articles & Chapters by Katie Wright
The damaging effects of abuse in childhood were repeatedly emphasised in public hearings and in m... more The damaging effects of abuse in childhood were repeatedly emphasised in public hearings and in media coverage of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Testimony from earlier Australian inquiries, which documented widespread experiences of child maltreatment, particularly in institutions, also underscored the ongoing and often intergenerational impact of abuse. Taking institutional child abuse inquiries as a case study, this article examines how psychological and therapeutic concepts have been mobilised politically. It argues that therapeutically oriented and psychologically informed cultural narratives of childhood trauma and its ongoing effects have provided a framework for making sense of long-term experiences of adversity and suffering and have enriched attention to “the question of justice” for survivors of historical institutional child abuse.
Journal of Australian Studies, 2018
The establishment of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse foll... more The establishment of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse followed years of lobbying by survivor groups, damning findings from previous inquiries, and increasing societal recognition of the often lifelong and intergenerational damage caused by child sexual abuse. Through extensive media coverage, the Royal Commission brought into public view the reality that the sexual abuse of children was widespread, and its recommendations are prompting organisational, policy, and legislative reform. This article explores the background to the Royal Commission, situating it within the history of previous inquiries and growing community outrage at the failure of institutions to adequately protect children and respond appropriately when abuse occurs. The article explores the ways in which the Royal Commission, more so than previous inquiries, brought child sexual abuse into public discourse. It also serves as an introduction to this special issue of the Journal of Australian Studies, which illustrates how the Royal Commission has fostered new scholarship across a range of disciplines as researchers engage with complex issues related to institutional child sexual abuse, its history, causes, impacts, and the important role of inquiries in confronting it.
Current Issues in Comparative Education, 2017
The development of "international mindedness" is an established aim of international education an... more The development of "international mindedness" is an established aim of international education and has recently gained prominence in national school systems. Despite its increasing salience, it remains an ambiguous construct and an understudied aspect of schooling. It is implicated in globalized educational markets and attempts to measure international mindedness and its kindred concepts, such as cosmopolitanism, are fraught. Drawing on a study of subjective perceptions of the influence of schooling over the life course, this article explores education for international mindedness. Informed by life history and narrative approaches, it provides an analysis of reflections from people who completed International Baccalaureate (IB) programs from the 1970s to 2010s. Commonalities and differences in narratives of those who attended " international schools " and " national schools " are explored in relation to influences people attribute to shaping their worldviews. The article illustrates the value of qualitative approaches and offers new insights into sociological critiques of international education and international mindedness, grounding and enlivening recent characterizations in complex life histories.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is the largest royal comm... more The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is the largest royal commission in Australia's history and one of the largest public inquiries into institutional child abuse internationally. With an investment from the Australian government of half a billion dollars, it examined how institutions with a responsibility for children, both historically and in the present, have responded to allegations of child sexual abuse. Announced in the wake of previous Australian and international inquiries, public scandals and lobbying by survivor groups, its establishment reflected increasing recognition of the often lifelong and intergenerational damage caused by childhood sexual abuse and a strong political commitment to improving child safety and wellbeing in Australia. This article outlines the background, key features and innovations of this landmark public inquiry, focusing in particular on its extensive research program. It considers its international significance and also serves as an introduction to this special edition on the Australian Royal Commission, exploring its implications for better understanding institutional child sexual abuse and its impacts, and for making institutions safer places for children in the future.
History of the Human Sciences, 2017
Constructions of normality and abnormality in discussions of young people changed considerably in... more Constructions of normality and abnormality in discussions of young people changed considerably in the early to mid-twentieth century in many parts of the world, including Australia. The perennial trope of youth as a threat assumed a distinctly new form in this era, as the troubled and troublesome child, the incipient and confirmed delinquent, was reconfigured through emerging knowledges of the human sciences. Exploring the effects of new concerns with the 'normal', this article begins by examining the construct of normalcy and its interdependency with notions of the 'abnormal', particularly juvenile delinquency, as the antithesis of personal and social adjustment. Yet the discursive strategies that saw delinquency, at one level, recognized as a complex and multi-causal problem also construed it as amenable to clinical solutions, notably psychological intervention. The article explores how emergent ideas of the importance of early intervention created divisions between three groups of youthful populations: the 'normal child' deemed well adjusted, the 'problem child' thought to be responsive to adjustive measures, and the 'confirmed delinquent', whose behaviour was considered intractable and was thus unlikely to attain the socially desired status of normalcy.
Journal of Historical Sociology, 2018
Testimony before inquiries into out-of-home care that have taken place in many countries over the... more Testimony before inquiries into out-of-home care that have taken place in many countries over the last twenty years has severely disrupted received ideas about the quality of care given to children in the past. Evidence of the widespread abuse of children presented before recent inquiries internationally gives rise to the question: why didn’t we know? Part of the answer lies in the changing forms and functions of inquiries, whose interests they serve, how they are organised and how they gather evidence. Using as a case study, a survey of historical abuse inquiries in Australia, this article explores the shift to victim and survivor testimony and in so doing offers a new way of conceptualising and categorising historical child abuse inquiries. It focuses less on how inquiries are constituted or governed, and instead advances an historically contextualised approach that foregrounds the issue of who speaks and who is heard.
Child Abuse & Neglect, 2017
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is the largest royal comm... more The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is the largest royal commission in Australia’s history and one of the largest public inquiries into institutional child abuse internationally. With an investment from the Australian government of half a billion dollars, it examined how institutions with a responsibility for children, both historically and in the present, have responded to allegations of child sexual abuse. Announced in the wake of previous Australian and international inquiries, public scandals and lobbying by survivor groups, its establishment reflected increasing recognition of the often lifelong and intergenerational damage caused by childhood sexual abuse and a strong political commitment to improving child safety and wellbeing in Australia. This article outlines the background, key features and innovations of this landmark public inquiry, focusing in particular on its extensive research program. It considers its international significance and also serves as an introduction to this special edition on the Australian Royal Commission, exploring its implications for better understanding institutional child sexual abuse and its impacts, and for making institutions safer places for children in the future.
This article explores the rise of concerns with child sexual abuse and corresponding representati... more This article explores the rise of concerns with child sexual abuse and corresponding representations of childhood, innocence and trauma.
Wellbeing has become a keyword in youth and social policy, a construct deployed as a measure of a... more Wellbeing has become a keyword in youth and social policy, a construct deployed as a measure of a good life. Often associated with physical and mental health, wellbeing encompasses numerous indicators, from subjective experiences of happiness and satisfaction to markers of economic prosperity and basic human needs of security. This article examines wellbeing as an organizing concept in discourses on young people and argues for defamiliarizing its truth claims and cultural authority by investigating what wellbeing does. We begin by examining the rise of wellbeing, drawing attention to its conceptual muddiness and ambiguity. Framed by the Foucauldian notion of problematization, the analysis proceeds along two routes: first, through an historical consideration of wellbeing as a relational concept with antecedents, focusing on ‘self-esteem’; and second, through a reading of wellbeing in contemporary educational policy. Informed by Somers’ historical sociology of concept formation and Bacchi’s critical policy analysis, we illuminate the mixed dimensions of wellbeing’s reach, placing it within longer traditions of youth studies and psy-knowledges and showing its transformative promise as well as its individualizing effects. In doing so, we elaborate a methodological approach that can be adapted to examine other keywords in youth studies and social policy discourse.
PURPOSE – The purpose of this paper is to examine expert ideas about education for citizenship in... more PURPOSE – The purpose of this paper is to examine expert ideas about education for citizenship in 1930s Australia. Drawing on a larger study of adolescence and schooling during the middle decades of the twentieth century, the paper explores the role of international networks and US philanthropy in fostering the spread of new psychological and curriculum ideas that shaped citizenship education, and broader educational changes during the interwar period. A second purpose is to provide historical perspectives on contemporary concerns about the role of schooling in addressing social values and student wellbeing.
DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH – The discussion is informed by approaches drawn from Foucauldian genealogy and historical studies of transnationalism. It examines constructions of the good and problem student and the networks of international educational expertise as forms of “travelling ideas”. These transnational exchanges are explored through a close analysis of a defining moment in Australian educational history, the 1937 conference of the New Education Fellowship.
FINDINGS – The analysis reveals the ways in which psychological understandings and curriculum reforms shaped education for citizenship in the 1930s and identify in particular the emergent role of psychology in defining what it meant to be a good student and a good future citizen. The paper further finds that Australian education during the interwar years was more cosmopolitan and engaged in international discussions about citizenship and schooling than is usually remembered in the present. Elaborating this is important for building transnational histories of knowledge exchange in Australian education.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE – The paper shows the value of a relational analysis of school curriculum and psychological understandings for more fully grasping the different dimensions of education for citizenship both in the interwar years and now. It offers fresh perspectives on contemporary educational debates about globalisation and youth identities, as played out in current concerns about social values and schooling.
KEYWORDS: Curriculum reform, Genealogy, American philanthropy, Citizenship education, Psychology, Transnationalism, Travelling ideas
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 321-336., 2008
Analyses of the influence of psychology and the growth of counselling during the 20th century com... more Analyses of the influence of psychology and the growth of counselling during the 20th century commonly point to the deleterious effects of a cultural shift from reticence and self-reliance to emotional expressiveness and help-seeking. Indeed, the ascendancy of therapeutic culture has been widely interpreted as fostering cultural decline and enabling new forms of social control. Drawing on less pessimistic assessments of cultural change and recent directions in social theory, this article argues for greater recognition of the ambivalent legacy of the therapeutic turn. Through a reinterpretation of the consequences of the diminution of traditional authority, the weakening of the division between public and private life, and the rise of the confessional, the article challenges dominant readings of decline and control. In doing so, it draws attention to how psychological knowledge and therapeutic understandings of the self have given legitimacy to, and furnished a language with which to articulate, experiences of suffering formerly confined to private life. In advancing a less pessimistic interpretation of cultural change, it considers two historic moments in Australia: the advent of telephone counselling in the 1960s and the Royal Commission on Human Relationships in the 1970s.
In Petra Bueskens, Editor: Mothering and Psychoanalysis: Clinical, Sociological and Feminist Perspectives, 2014
In: K. Wright and J. McLeod, Rethinking Youth Wellbeing: Critical Perspectives, pp. 197-218, 2015
Concern about high rates of mental health disorders amongst young people has underwritten a proli... more Concern about high rates of mental health disorders amongst young people has underwritten a proliferation of social and educational policy aimed at improving youth wellbeing. This chapter examines educational concerns with mental health through a critical analysis of wellbeing as an object of educational policy and practice. It begins by considering the construction of mental health as an educational problem, in the past and in the present, and the policy solutions that have been developed in order to address this. It then explores how rising concern with the wellbeing of young people has fostered a shift from the historically narrow educational focus on targeted interventions – for students experiencing problems or identified as being at risk of mental health difficulties – to the more recent emphasis on universal approaches and preventative programs. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the seductive power of ideas of prevention and “psychological immunization” and considers the implications of this for contemporary educational policy and practice, and ultimately for understanding and promoting youth wellbeing.
In: K. Wright & J. McLeod, Rethinking Youth Wellbeing: Critical Perspectives, pp. 1-10, 2015
Calls to address wellbeing are now so commonplace and widespread that they can mean both everythi... more Calls to address wellbeing are now so commonplace and widespread that they can mean both everything and nothing. Across policy and popular discourses, improving wellbeing is offered as a solution to the myriad issues facing young people today. This chapter explores the invention of youth wellbeing as a concept and a category of concern, noting its ambiguity and changing applications. It introduces a case for defamilarizing the status and truth claims of the construct of youth wellbeing, by exploring its invention as well as its movements and productive effects. Two sets of conceptual resources are outlined for developing this analysis: the first is informed by Somers’ approach to developing an historical sociology of concept formation, and the second is Bacchi’s account of the construction of policy problems. The chapter concludes with an overview of the papers in this volume which, in drawing on a range of approaches and intellectual traditions, take a step back from taken-for-granted assumptions about youth wellbeing and provide provocations to think anew about this category, the problems it addresses and the 1promises it makes.
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Books & Edited Volumes by Katie Wright
This volume offers a critical rethinking of the construct of youth wellbeing, stepping back from taken-for-granted and psychologically inflected understandings. Wellbeing has become a catchphrase in educational, health and social care policies internationally, informing a range of school programs and social interventions and increasingly shaping everyday understandings of young people. Drawing on research by established and emerging scholars in Australia, Singapore and the UK, the book critically examines the myriad effects of dominant discourses of wellbeing on the one hand, and the social and cultural dimensions of wellbeing on the other. From diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives, it explores how notions of wellbeing have been mobilized across time and space, in and out of school contexts, and the different inflections and effects of wellbeing discourses are having in education, transnationally and comparatively. The book offers researchers as well as practitioners new perspectives on current approaches to student wellbeing in schools and novel ways of thinking about the wellbeing of young people beyond educational settings.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Inventing youth wellbeing -- Julie McLeod & Katie Wright
2. To be well is to be not unwell: The new battleground inside our children’s heads -- Linda Graham
3. Vulnerability and wellbeing in educational settings: The implications of a therapeutic approach to social justice -- Kathryn Ecclestone
4. The limits of wellbeing -- Johanna Wyn, Hernan Cuervo & Evelina Landstedt
5. Constructions of young women’s health and wellbeing in neoliberal times: A case study of the HPV vaccination program in Australia -- Kellie Burns & Cristyn Davies
6. Young people, sexual pleasure and sexual health services: What happens when “good sex” is bad for your health? -- Ester McGeeney
7. “I’d just cut myself to kill the pain”: Seeing sense in young women’s self-injury -- Kathryn Daley
8. Rethinking role-play for health and wellbeing: Creating a pedagogy of possibility -- Helen Cahill
9. Wellbeing and schools: Exploring the normative dimensions -- Amy Chapman
10. Social-emotional learning: Promotion of youth wellbeing in Singapore schools -- Chong Wan Har and Lee Boon Ooi
11. Happiness, wellbeing and self-esteem: Public feelings and educational projects -- Julie McLeod
12. From targeted interventions to universal approaches: Historicizing wellbeing -- Katie Wright
"Wright's work provides an all important antidote to a long series of off-base polemics that misunderstand the role of psychotherapy in contemporary society. Wright's work provides a sharp and welcome contrast. She finds the language of therapy at the heart of the new social movements." -Jeffrey C. Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Yale University
"The strength of Wright's work lies in its emphasis on the complex, contradictory ways in which various aspects of our global worlds enter into the inner, emotional texture of identity as well as the processes through which the unconscious imagination constitutes fabrications of the social-historical world." -Anthony Elliott, Chair of Sociology, Flinders University, Australia.
"This work makes an important contribution to cultural and historical sociology. Wright argues convincingly for a reappraisal of therapeutic culture through a compelling critique of existing theory and by drawing on alternative traditions to those that have dominated scholarship in this field. The case studies she presents are intrinsically interesting and theoretically important, and her innovative perspective on the therapeutic society will make a valuable and significant contribution to the field." -Zlatko Skrbis, Dean, UQ Graduate School, The University of Queensland, Australia.
Articles & Chapters by Katie Wright
DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH – The discussion is informed by approaches drawn from Foucauldian genealogy and historical studies of transnationalism. It examines constructions of the good and problem student and the networks of international educational expertise as forms of “travelling ideas”. These transnational exchanges are explored through a close analysis of a defining moment in Australian educational history, the 1937 conference of the New Education Fellowship.
FINDINGS – The analysis reveals the ways in which psychological understandings and curriculum reforms shaped education for citizenship in the 1930s and identify in particular the emergent role of psychology in defining what it meant to be a good student and a good future citizen. The paper further finds that Australian education during the interwar years was more cosmopolitan and engaged in international discussions about citizenship and schooling than is usually remembered in the present. Elaborating this is important for building transnational histories of knowledge exchange in Australian education.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE – The paper shows the value of a relational analysis of school curriculum and psychological understandings for more fully grasping the different dimensions of education for citizenship both in the interwar years and now. It offers fresh perspectives on contemporary educational debates about globalisation and youth identities, as played out in current concerns about social values and schooling.
KEYWORDS: Curriculum reform, Genealogy, American philanthropy, Citizenship education, Psychology, Transnationalism, Travelling ideas
This volume offers a critical rethinking of the construct of youth wellbeing, stepping back from taken-for-granted and psychologically inflected understandings. Wellbeing has become a catchphrase in educational, health and social care policies internationally, informing a range of school programs and social interventions and increasingly shaping everyday understandings of young people. Drawing on research by established and emerging scholars in Australia, Singapore and the UK, the book critically examines the myriad effects of dominant discourses of wellbeing on the one hand, and the social and cultural dimensions of wellbeing on the other. From diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives, it explores how notions of wellbeing have been mobilized across time and space, in and out of school contexts, and the different inflections and effects of wellbeing discourses are having in education, transnationally and comparatively. The book offers researchers as well as practitioners new perspectives on current approaches to student wellbeing in schools and novel ways of thinking about the wellbeing of young people beyond educational settings.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Inventing youth wellbeing -- Julie McLeod & Katie Wright
2. To be well is to be not unwell: The new battleground inside our children’s heads -- Linda Graham
3. Vulnerability and wellbeing in educational settings: The implications of a therapeutic approach to social justice -- Kathryn Ecclestone
4. The limits of wellbeing -- Johanna Wyn, Hernan Cuervo & Evelina Landstedt
5. Constructions of young women’s health and wellbeing in neoliberal times: A case study of the HPV vaccination program in Australia -- Kellie Burns & Cristyn Davies
6. Young people, sexual pleasure and sexual health services: What happens when “good sex” is bad for your health? -- Ester McGeeney
7. “I’d just cut myself to kill the pain”: Seeing sense in young women’s self-injury -- Kathryn Daley
8. Rethinking role-play for health and wellbeing: Creating a pedagogy of possibility -- Helen Cahill
9. Wellbeing and schools: Exploring the normative dimensions -- Amy Chapman
10. Social-emotional learning: Promotion of youth wellbeing in Singapore schools -- Chong Wan Har and Lee Boon Ooi
11. Happiness, wellbeing and self-esteem: Public feelings and educational projects -- Julie McLeod
12. From targeted interventions to universal approaches: Historicizing wellbeing -- Katie Wright
"Wright's work provides an all important antidote to a long series of off-base polemics that misunderstand the role of psychotherapy in contemporary society. Wright's work provides a sharp and welcome contrast. She finds the language of therapy at the heart of the new social movements." -Jeffrey C. Alexander, Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology, Yale University
"The strength of Wright's work lies in its emphasis on the complex, contradictory ways in which various aspects of our global worlds enter into the inner, emotional texture of identity as well as the processes through which the unconscious imagination constitutes fabrications of the social-historical world." -Anthony Elliott, Chair of Sociology, Flinders University, Australia.
"This work makes an important contribution to cultural and historical sociology. Wright argues convincingly for a reappraisal of therapeutic culture through a compelling critique of existing theory and by drawing on alternative traditions to those that have dominated scholarship in this field. The case studies she presents are intrinsically interesting and theoretically important, and her innovative perspective on the therapeutic society will make a valuable and significant contribution to the field." -Zlatko Skrbis, Dean, UQ Graduate School, The University of Queensland, Australia.
DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH – The discussion is informed by approaches drawn from Foucauldian genealogy and historical studies of transnationalism. It examines constructions of the good and problem student and the networks of international educational expertise as forms of “travelling ideas”. These transnational exchanges are explored through a close analysis of a defining moment in Australian educational history, the 1937 conference of the New Education Fellowship.
FINDINGS – The analysis reveals the ways in which psychological understandings and curriculum reforms shaped education for citizenship in the 1930s and identify in particular the emergent role of psychology in defining what it meant to be a good student and a good future citizen. The paper further finds that Australian education during the interwar years was more cosmopolitan and engaged in international discussions about citizenship and schooling than is usually remembered in the present. Elaborating this is important for building transnational histories of knowledge exchange in Australian education.
ORIGINALITY/VALUE – The paper shows the value of a relational analysis of school curriculum and psychological understandings for more fully grasping the different dimensions of education for citizenship both in the interwar years and now. It offers fresh perspectives on contemporary educational debates about globalisation and youth identities, as played out in current concerns about social values and schooling.
KEYWORDS: Curriculum reform, Genealogy, American philanthropy, Citizenship education, Psychology, Transnationalism, Travelling ideas