Greg Thompson is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education. Greg's work involves using qualitative research methods to investigate what schools are like for young people.
In particular, postmodern theories of education are used to ask questions about 'commonsense' notions of schooling that have often been taken for granted. This has led to studies that have addressed discourses of connectedness in secondary schools and visions of the good student in secondary schools. Currently Greg is interested in the increasing emphasis placed on high stakes testing in the name of accountability in Australian schools.
Greg is also interested in applying postmodern theories of education to schools to bring about ontological and epistemological change. Address: School of Education
Murdoch University
South St, Murdoch
Australia 6150
For many people, schools and schooling only make sense if they resonate with past experiences. Th... more For many people, schools and schooling only make sense if they resonate with past experiences. The good student is framed within these aspects of cultural understanding. However, this commonsense attitude is based on a hegemonic understanding of the good, rather than the good student as a contingent multiplicity that is produced by an infinite set of discourses and experiences. In this book, author Greg Thompson argues that this understanding of subjectivities and power is crucial if schools are to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and challenging world.
Connectedness is a complex idea that seems to mean different things to different people. This boo... more Connectedness is a complex idea that seems to mean different things to different people. This book uncovers the discourses that various stakeholder groups have concerning connectedness. Using the theories of Michel Foucault, this text argues that connectedness is not a monolithic context, but rather a set of converging and diverging disourses that students must contend with.
The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives
The use of standardised testing, particularly of literacy and numeracy, has become
a common pol... more The use of standardised testing, particularly of literacy and numeracy, has become
a common policy initiative throughout many education jurisdictions in the Western
world. National and international testing, particularly of literacy and numeracy, has
become a fixture in school calendars and the education experience of students in many
countries. TIMMS, PIRLS, PISA and the various national tests such as NAPLAN,
NAEP and SATs have all contributed to testing becoming a, if not the, compelling
language of education quality across national boundaries. These tests generally have a
similar aim, to improve the quality of education systems through producing data that
can be used to make schools and teachers accountable.
The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives
This paper explores Rizvi and Lingard’s (2010) idea of the “local
vernacular” of the global educ... more This paper explores Rizvi and Lingard’s (2010) idea of the “local
vernacular” of the global education policy trend of using high-stakes testing to increase accountability and transparency, and by extension quality, within schools and education systems in Australia. In the first part of the paper a brief context of the policy trajectory of National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is given in Australia. In the second part, empirical evidence drawn from a survey of teachers in Western Australia (WA) and South Australia (SA) is used to explore teacher perceptions of the impacts a high-stakes testing regime is having on student learning, relationships with parents and pedagogy
in specific sites.
After the 2007 Australian Federal election, one of Labor’s policy
objectives was to deliver an “Education Revolution” designed to improve both the equity and excellence in the Australian school system1 (Rudd & Gillard, 2008). This reform agenda aims to “deliver real changes” through: “raising the quality of teaching in our schools” and “improving transparency and accountability of schools and school systems” (Rudd & Gillard, 2008, p. 5). Central to this linking of accountability, the transparency of schools and school systems and raising teaching quality was the creation of a regime of testing (NAPLAN) that would generate data about the attainment of basic literacy and numeracy skills by students in Australian schools.
This paper examines the global policy convergence toward high-stakes testing in schools and the u... more This paper examines the global policy convergence toward high-stakes testing in schools and the use of test results to ‘steer at a distance’, particularly as it applies to policy-makers’ promise to improve teacher quality. Using Deleuze’s three syntheses of time in the context of the Australian policy blueprint Quality Education, this paper argues that using test scores to discipline teaching repeats the past habit of policy-making as continuing the problem of the unaccountable teacher. This results in local policy-making enfolding test scores in a pure past where the teacher-as-problem is resolved through the use of data from testing to deliver accountability and transparency. This use of the database returns a digitised form of inspection that is a repetition of the habit of teacher-as-problem. While dystopian possibilities are available through the database, in what Deleuze refers to as a control society, for us the challenge is to consider policy-making as a step into an unknown future, to engage with producing policy that is not grounded on the unconscious interiority of solving the teacher problem, but of imagining new ways of conceiving the relationship between policy-making and teaching.
Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education
This article uses topological approaches to suggest that education is becoming-topological. Analy... more This article uses topological approaches to suggest that education is becoming-topological. Analyses presented in a recent double-issue of Theory, Culture & Society are used to demonstrate the utility of topology for education. In particular, the article explains education's topological character through examining the global convergence of education policy, testing and the discursive ranking of systems, schools and individuals in the promise of reforming education through the proliferation of regimes of testing at local and global levels that constitute a new form of governance through data. In this conceptualisation of global education policy changes in the form and nature of testing combine with it the emergence of global policy network to change the nature of the local (national, regional, school and classroom) forces that operate through the ‘system’. While these forces change, they work through a discursivity that produces disciplinary effects, but in a different way. This new–old disciplinarity, or ‘database effect’, is here represented through a topological approach because of its utility for conceiving education in an increasingly networked world.
This paper reports preliminary survey findings of Western Australian and South Australian teacher... more This paper reports preliminary survey findings of Western Australian and South Australian teacher perceptions of the impact of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy in their classroom and school. The paper examines how teachers perceive the effects of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy and whether these perceptions mediated by the teacher’s gender, the socioeconomics of the school, the State and the school system in which the teacher works. Teachers report that they are either choosing or being instructed to teach to the test, that this results in less time being spent on other curriculum areas and that these effects contribute in a negative way to the class environment and the engagement of students. This largely agrees with a body of international research that suggests that high-stakes literacy and numeracy tests often results in unintended consequences such as a narrow curriculum focus, a return to teacher-centred instruction and a decrease in motivation. Analysis suggests there is a relationship between participant responses to the effect of NAPLAN on curriculum based on the characteristics of which State the teacher taught in, the socioeconomic status of the school and the school system in which they were employed (State, Catholic, and Independent).
This article examines the attempted reform of education within an emerging audit culture in Austr... more This article examines the attempted reform of education within an emerging audit culture in Australia that has led to the implementation of a high-stakes testing regime known as NAPLAN. NAPLAN represents a machine of auditing, which creates and accounts for data that are used to measure, amongst other things, good teaching. In particular, we address the logics of a policy intervention that aims to improve the quality of education through returning ‘good teaching’. Using Deleuze’s concepts of series, events, copies and simulacra, we suggest that an attempt to return past commonsense logics of ‘good teaching’ as a result of NAPLAN is not possible. In an audit culture as exemplified by NAPLAN, ‘good teaching’ is being reconceptualized through those practices and becomes unrecognizable. Whilst policy claims to improved equity and quality are admirable, this article suggests that the simulacral change to logics of good teaching may actualize something very different.
This paper reports preliminary findings of a survey of in-service teachers in WA and SA conducted... more This paper reports preliminary findings of a survey of in-service teachers in WA and SA conducted in 2012. Participants completed an online survey open to all teachers in WA and SA. The survey ran for three months from April to June 2012. One section of the survey asked teachers to report their perceptions of the impact that NAPLAN has had on the curriculum and pedagogy of their classroom and school.
Two principal research questions were addressed in this preliminary analysis. First, is the socioeconomic drawing area of the school, the State in which they teach, or the school system in which the teacher works significant in perceptions of the impact of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy? Second, are there any interaction effects between gender, socioeconomics status, location and school system on teachers perceptions? Statistical analyses examined one- and two-way MANOVA to assess main effects and interaction effects on teachers’ global perceptions. These were followed by a series of exploratory one- and two-way ANOVA of specific survey items to suggest potential sources for differences among teachers from different socioeconomic regions, states and systems.
Teachers report that they are either choosing or being instructed to teach to the test, that this results in less time being spent on other curriculum areas and that these effects contribute in a negative way on the engagement of students. This largely agrees with a body of international research that suggests that high-stakes literacy and numeracy tests often results in unintended consequences such as a narrow curriculum focus (Reid, 2009; Au, 2007), a return to teacher-centred instruction (Barret, 2009; Polesel, Dulfer, & Turnbull, 2012; Barksdale-Ladd & Thomas, 2000) and a decrease in motivation (Ryan & Wesinstein, 2009). Preliminary results from early survey respondents suggests there is a relationship between participant responses to the effect of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy based on the characteristics of which State the teacher taught in, their perceptions of the socioeconomic status of the school and the school system in which they were employed (State, Other non-Government, and Independent).
This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of faciality to analyse the teacher’s face. Accord... more This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of faciality to analyse the teacher’s face. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the teacher-face is a special type of face because it is an ‘overcoded’ face produced in specific landscapes. This paper suggests four limit-faces for teacher faciality that actualise different mixes of signifiance and subjectification in a classroom in which individualisation and massifications are affected. Understanding these limit-faces suggests new ways to conceive the affects actualised in the classroom and subjected to increasing levels of surveillance from education policy makers. Through this ‘partial mapping’ new possibilities emerge to “escape the face”.
This paper applies concepts Deleuze developed in his ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, es... more This paper applies concepts Deleuze developed in his ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, especially those relating to modulatory power, dividuation and control, to aspects of Australian schooling to explore how this transition is manifesting itself. Two modulatory machines of assessment, NAPLAN and My Schools, are examined as a means to better understand how the disciplinary institution is changing as a result of modulation. This transition from discipline to modulation is visible in the declining importance of the disciplinary teacher/student relationship as a measure of the success of the educative process. The transition occurs through seduction because that which purports to measure classroom quality is in fact a serpent of modulation that produces simulacra of the disciplinary classroom. The effect is to sever what happens in the disciplinary space from its representations in a luminiferous ether that overlays the classroom.
High-stakes testing is changing what it means to be a ‘good teacher’ in the contemporary school. ... more High-stakes testing is changing what it means to be a ‘good teacher’ in the contemporary school. This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas on the control society and dividuation in the context of NAPLAN testing in Australia to suggest that the database generates new understandings of the ‘good teacher’. Media reports are used to look at how teachers are responding to the high-stakes database through manipulating the data. This paper argues that manipulating the data is a regrettable, but logical, response to manifestations of teaching where only the data counts.
Current educational practice tends to ascribe a limiting vision of the good student as one who is... more Current educational practice tends to ascribe a limiting vision of the good student as one who is well-behaved, performs well in assessments and demonstrates values in keeping with dominant expectations. This paper argues that this vision of the good student is antithetical to the lived experience of students as they negotiate their positionality within complex power games in secondary schools. Student voices in focus group research nominate six rationales of the good student that inform their ‘performances’ of the good student. Understanding the multiplicity and dynamism of the good student is an educational imperative as schools seek to meet the changing needs of society in the new millennium.
Since 2008 all Australian school students have sat standardised tests in Reading, Writing, Langua... more Since 2008 all Australian school students have sat standardised tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation) and Numeracy in years 3,5,7 and 9. NAPLAN tests report individual students’ attainment of skills against a set of standards. Individual student results are communicated to parents. Schools are then ranked against other schools depending upon the aggregate of their NAPLAN results. The process is explained to parents and community members as “improving the learning outcomes for all Australian students” (MCEETYA, 2009). This paper will examine NAPLAN as it is being played out in a mediated space through analysing unsolicited comment found in new media such as Twitter and online forums. NAPLAN intersects with contemporary debates about Australian education policy: the roles schools should play in improving national productivity, the relationship between state and federal government interest in education, the role and expectations of the teacher, what curriculum and pedagogy should be and look like and how limited financial resources can best be spread across education sectors and systems. These are not new considerations, however, what has changed is that education policy seems to have become even more of a political issue than it has before. This paper uses Ball’s ‘toolkit’ approach to education policy analysis to suggest that there are multiple ‘effects’ of NAPLAN culminating in a series of disconnected conversations between various stakeholders.
Ideally, school would be a place where all students felt that they belonged. However, the reality... more Ideally, school would be a place where all students felt that they belonged. However, the reality is that many students feel as though they do not belong to their school community. Alienated or disaffected students are an endemic problem in schools in Australia, affecting the whole school community, as well as life chances for the students themselves after school. The crux of this matter, we believe, are the tensions between the desire to connect to the school community, and the frustration experienced by some students as a result of their subjectification by the school system. Perhaps students that we tend to identify as alienated or disaffected in their schools may be resisting the accepted negotiations of power that underpin the school system.
Quiet students are a feature of the organisation of secondary schools. Using qualitative methods ... more Quiet students are a feature of the organisation of secondary schools. Using qualitative methods and Deleuzean conceptualisations of modern subjectivity, this paper explores the ways that quiet students negotiate the terrain of their school. These negotiations often seem to produce a self that is trapped rather than a subject who seizes opportunities to be inventive, creative and experimental of their self. Understanding the faciality of quiet students provides opportunities to advance debate on how schools could encourage freer selves.
The policy issue of performance pay is an emotive one within the current education landscape. It ... more The policy issue of performance pay is an emotive one within the current education landscape. It is entrenched with the changing terrain of education policy in Australia (Reid, 2009). Part of this change has resulted in an increasingly centralised approach to school education as the Commonwealth and states have warred for the ‘soul’ of education. Since 2000 it is possible to see the impact of ‘coercive federalism’ in the relationship between federal and state education bureaucracies (Reid, 2009). One of the results of this
federalisation of school education has been the amplification of discourses that prioritise schooling for economic purposes. In 2008 the then Education Minister Julia Gillard outlined the Labor government’s reform of school funding as “a major plank (…) reached in Adelaide yesterday, which outlines a productivity and participation agenda that spans early childhood to adulthood” (Gillard, 2008). In 2011 the Federal Government announced a policy to support performance pay for teachers that will financially reward the
‘best’ teachers up to $8,100 pa from 2014. Not surprisingly this policy has created diverse opinions ranging from support to outrage.
This paper suggests a different strategy to understand performance pay – that of an historical examination of the issues of performance pay for teachers in Western Australia since 1871. This was the year of the
notorious Education Bill, causing the usually “phlegmatic” colonists to become suddenly “roused into action” (Perth Gazette, 1871). The Bill introduced a series of measures to improve the parlous state of education. Among these was the establishment of a Central Board responsible for general supervision of schools including the payment of teachers. Payment was largely based on individual exam results “fifteen shillings each for a pass in reading, writing and arithmetic and ten shillings for a pass in geography...” The result was “a growing inclination on the part of many teachers to let geography drop out of the course.” (Colebatch 1929, p.290). By the 1890s a new Inspector of Schools arrived with new ideas. He pointed to the weak spots in the still struggling education system – “inadequate staffing due to poor salaries; non
enforcement of compulsory attendances; payment by results; and want of proper facilities for training teachers” (Colebatch 1929, p.291). Reid (2005) argues that the value of historical sociology is that it shows that education policies and practices have a past. In this paper we will present an historical overview of the issue of performance pay from 1871 to the present.
References
Colebatch, H. (1929). A Story of a Hundred Years. Western Australia 1829 – 1929. Government Printer. Perth, Western Australia.
Gillard, J. (2008). NAPLAN, OECD Report, teacher quality, age pension. Retrieved April 29th, 2011, from Hon Julia Gillard MP:
http://mediacentre.dewr.gov.au/mediacentre/Gillard/Releases/NAPLANOECDReportteacherqualityagepension.htm Reid, A. (2005). The regulated education market has a past. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26: 1, 79-94. Routledge.
Reid, A. (2009). Is this a revolution? A critical analysis of the Rudd government's national education agenda. Curriculum Perspectives , 29 (3), 1-13.
Schools are places where student subjectivities are negotiated and contested in a variety of spac... more Schools are places where student subjectivities are negotiated and contested in a variety of spaces. This paper argues that schools organise the possibilities for student subjectivities through a set of discourses that construct idealised notions of the good student. Whilst some discourses occur across educational sites, in practice these sets of discourses construct a unique vision of the good student in each specific school site. This vision is articulated in a variety of ways in each school, however, the result is that each student is enmeshed within a complex nexus of power relations that they can contest, negotiate or accept. Most of the time, students engage in a swirling set of subjectivities that encompasses these possibilities in various ways at various times.
This paper problematises commonsense notions of the good student at one school site. One intent is to give voice to the lived experience of students who find themselves the site of these technologies of power. These technologies construct a set of commonsense expectations of schools - amongst which is the desire to produce the good student. Another is to use a Foucaultean analysis that rejects the good/bad binary that underpins many commonsense understandings of what students should be.
For many people, schools and schooling only make sense if they resonate with past experiences. Th... more For many people, schools and schooling only make sense if they resonate with past experiences. The good student is framed within these aspects of cultural understanding. However, this commonsense attitude is based on a hegemonic understanding of the good, rather than the good student as a contingent multiplicity that is produced by an infinite set of discourses and experiences. In this book, author Greg Thompson argues that this understanding of subjectivities and power is crucial if schools are to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and challenging world.
Connectedness is a complex idea that seems to mean different things to different people. This boo... more Connectedness is a complex idea that seems to mean different things to different people. This book uncovers the discourses that various stakeholder groups have concerning connectedness. Using the theories of Michel Foucault, this text argues that connectedness is not a monolithic context, but rather a set of converging and diverging disourses that students must contend with.
The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives
The use of standardised testing, particularly of literacy and numeracy, has become
a common pol... more The use of standardised testing, particularly of literacy and numeracy, has become
a common policy initiative throughout many education jurisdictions in the Western
world. National and international testing, particularly of literacy and numeracy, has
become a fixture in school calendars and the education experience of students in many
countries. TIMMS, PIRLS, PISA and the various national tests such as NAPLAN,
NAEP and SATs have all contributed to testing becoming a, if not the, compelling
language of education quality across national boundaries. These tests generally have a
similar aim, to improve the quality of education systems through producing data that
can be used to make schools and teachers accountable.
The International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives
This paper explores Rizvi and Lingard’s (2010) idea of the “local
vernacular” of the global educ... more This paper explores Rizvi and Lingard’s (2010) idea of the “local
vernacular” of the global education policy trend of using high-stakes testing to increase accountability and transparency, and by extension quality, within schools and education systems in Australia. In the first part of the paper a brief context of the policy trajectory of National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is given in Australia. In the second part, empirical evidence drawn from a survey of teachers in Western Australia (WA) and South Australia (SA) is used to explore teacher perceptions of the impacts a high-stakes testing regime is having on student learning, relationships with parents and pedagogy
in specific sites.
After the 2007 Australian Federal election, one of Labor’s policy
objectives was to deliver an “Education Revolution” designed to improve both the equity and excellence in the Australian school system1 (Rudd & Gillard, 2008). This reform agenda aims to “deliver real changes” through: “raising the quality of teaching in our schools” and “improving transparency and accountability of schools and school systems” (Rudd & Gillard, 2008, p. 5). Central to this linking of accountability, the transparency of schools and school systems and raising teaching quality was the creation of a regime of testing (NAPLAN) that would generate data about the attainment of basic literacy and numeracy skills by students in Australian schools.
This paper examines the global policy convergence toward high-stakes testing in schools and the u... more This paper examines the global policy convergence toward high-stakes testing in schools and the use of test results to ‘steer at a distance’, particularly as it applies to policy-makers’ promise to improve teacher quality. Using Deleuze’s three syntheses of time in the context of the Australian policy blueprint Quality Education, this paper argues that using test scores to discipline teaching repeats the past habit of policy-making as continuing the problem of the unaccountable teacher. This results in local policy-making enfolding test scores in a pure past where the teacher-as-problem is resolved through the use of data from testing to deliver accountability and transparency. This use of the database returns a digitised form of inspection that is a repetition of the habit of teacher-as-problem. While dystopian possibilities are available through the database, in what Deleuze refers to as a control society, for us the challenge is to consider policy-making as a step into an unknown future, to engage with producing policy that is not grounded on the unconscious interiority of solving the teacher problem, but of imagining new ways of conceiving the relationship between policy-making and teaching.
Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education
This article uses topological approaches to suggest that education is becoming-topological. Analy... more This article uses topological approaches to suggest that education is becoming-topological. Analyses presented in a recent double-issue of Theory, Culture & Society are used to demonstrate the utility of topology for education. In particular, the article explains education's topological character through examining the global convergence of education policy, testing and the discursive ranking of systems, schools and individuals in the promise of reforming education through the proliferation of regimes of testing at local and global levels that constitute a new form of governance through data. In this conceptualisation of global education policy changes in the form and nature of testing combine with it the emergence of global policy network to change the nature of the local (national, regional, school and classroom) forces that operate through the ‘system’. While these forces change, they work through a discursivity that produces disciplinary effects, but in a different way. This new–old disciplinarity, or ‘database effect’, is here represented through a topological approach because of its utility for conceiving education in an increasingly networked world.
This paper reports preliminary survey findings of Western Australian and South Australian teacher... more This paper reports preliminary survey findings of Western Australian and South Australian teacher perceptions of the impact of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy in their classroom and school. The paper examines how teachers perceive the effects of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy and whether these perceptions mediated by the teacher’s gender, the socioeconomics of the school, the State and the school system in which the teacher works. Teachers report that they are either choosing or being instructed to teach to the test, that this results in less time being spent on other curriculum areas and that these effects contribute in a negative way to the class environment and the engagement of students. This largely agrees with a body of international research that suggests that high-stakes literacy and numeracy tests often results in unintended consequences such as a narrow curriculum focus, a return to teacher-centred instruction and a decrease in motivation. Analysis suggests there is a relationship between participant responses to the effect of NAPLAN on curriculum based on the characteristics of which State the teacher taught in, the socioeconomic status of the school and the school system in which they were employed (State, Catholic, and Independent).
This article examines the attempted reform of education within an emerging audit culture in Austr... more This article examines the attempted reform of education within an emerging audit culture in Australia that has led to the implementation of a high-stakes testing regime known as NAPLAN. NAPLAN represents a machine of auditing, which creates and accounts for data that are used to measure, amongst other things, good teaching. In particular, we address the logics of a policy intervention that aims to improve the quality of education through returning ‘good teaching’. Using Deleuze’s concepts of series, events, copies and simulacra, we suggest that an attempt to return past commonsense logics of ‘good teaching’ as a result of NAPLAN is not possible. In an audit culture as exemplified by NAPLAN, ‘good teaching’ is being reconceptualized through those practices and becomes unrecognizable. Whilst policy claims to improved equity and quality are admirable, this article suggests that the simulacral change to logics of good teaching may actualize something very different.
This paper reports preliminary findings of a survey of in-service teachers in WA and SA conducted... more This paper reports preliminary findings of a survey of in-service teachers in WA and SA conducted in 2012. Participants completed an online survey open to all teachers in WA and SA. The survey ran for three months from April to June 2012. One section of the survey asked teachers to report their perceptions of the impact that NAPLAN has had on the curriculum and pedagogy of their classroom and school.
Two principal research questions were addressed in this preliminary analysis. First, is the socioeconomic drawing area of the school, the State in which they teach, or the school system in which the teacher works significant in perceptions of the impact of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy? Second, are there any interaction effects between gender, socioeconomics status, location and school system on teachers perceptions? Statistical analyses examined one- and two-way MANOVA to assess main effects and interaction effects on teachers’ global perceptions. These were followed by a series of exploratory one- and two-way ANOVA of specific survey items to suggest potential sources for differences among teachers from different socioeconomic regions, states and systems.
Teachers report that they are either choosing or being instructed to teach to the test, that this results in less time being spent on other curriculum areas and that these effects contribute in a negative way on the engagement of students. This largely agrees with a body of international research that suggests that high-stakes literacy and numeracy tests often results in unintended consequences such as a narrow curriculum focus (Reid, 2009; Au, 2007), a return to teacher-centred instruction (Barret, 2009; Polesel, Dulfer, & Turnbull, 2012; Barksdale-Ladd & Thomas, 2000) and a decrease in motivation (Ryan & Wesinstein, 2009). Preliminary results from early survey respondents suggests there is a relationship between participant responses to the effect of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy based on the characteristics of which State the teacher taught in, their perceptions of the socioeconomic status of the school and the school system in which they were employed (State, Other non-Government, and Independent).
This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of faciality to analyse the teacher’s face. Accord... more This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of faciality to analyse the teacher’s face. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the teacher-face is a special type of face because it is an ‘overcoded’ face produced in specific landscapes. This paper suggests four limit-faces for teacher faciality that actualise different mixes of signifiance and subjectification in a classroom in which individualisation and massifications are affected. Understanding these limit-faces suggests new ways to conceive the affects actualised in the classroom and subjected to increasing levels of surveillance from education policy makers. Through this ‘partial mapping’ new possibilities emerge to “escape the face”.
This paper applies concepts Deleuze developed in his ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, es... more This paper applies concepts Deleuze developed in his ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, especially those relating to modulatory power, dividuation and control, to aspects of Australian schooling to explore how this transition is manifesting itself. Two modulatory machines of assessment, NAPLAN and My Schools, are examined as a means to better understand how the disciplinary institution is changing as a result of modulation. This transition from discipline to modulation is visible in the declining importance of the disciplinary teacher/student relationship as a measure of the success of the educative process. The transition occurs through seduction because that which purports to measure classroom quality is in fact a serpent of modulation that produces simulacra of the disciplinary classroom. The effect is to sever what happens in the disciplinary space from its representations in a luminiferous ether that overlays the classroom.
High-stakes testing is changing what it means to be a ‘good teacher’ in the contemporary school. ... more High-stakes testing is changing what it means to be a ‘good teacher’ in the contemporary school. This paper uses Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas on the control society and dividuation in the context of NAPLAN testing in Australia to suggest that the database generates new understandings of the ‘good teacher’. Media reports are used to look at how teachers are responding to the high-stakes database through manipulating the data. This paper argues that manipulating the data is a regrettable, but logical, response to manifestations of teaching where only the data counts.
Current educational practice tends to ascribe a limiting vision of the good student as one who is... more Current educational practice tends to ascribe a limiting vision of the good student as one who is well-behaved, performs well in assessments and demonstrates values in keeping with dominant expectations. This paper argues that this vision of the good student is antithetical to the lived experience of students as they negotiate their positionality within complex power games in secondary schools. Student voices in focus group research nominate six rationales of the good student that inform their ‘performances’ of the good student. Understanding the multiplicity and dynamism of the good student is an educational imperative as schools seek to meet the changing needs of society in the new millennium.
Since 2008 all Australian school students have sat standardised tests in Reading, Writing, Langua... more Since 2008 all Australian school students have sat standardised tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation) and Numeracy in years 3,5,7 and 9. NAPLAN tests report individual students’ attainment of skills against a set of standards. Individual student results are communicated to parents. Schools are then ranked against other schools depending upon the aggregate of their NAPLAN results. The process is explained to parents and community members as “improving the learning outcomes for all Australian students” (MCEETYA, 2009). This paper will examine NAPLAN as it is being played out in a mediated space through analysing unsolicited comment found in new media such as Twitter and online forums. NAPLAN intersects with contemporary debates about Australian education policy: the roles schools should play in improving national productivity, the relationship between state and federal government interest in education, the role and expectations of the teacher, what curriculum and pedagogy should be and look like and how limited financial resources can best be spread across education sectors and systems. These are not new considerations, however, what has changed is that education policy seems to have become even more of a political issue than it has before. This paper uses Ball’s ‘toolkit’ approach to education policy analysis to suggest that there are multiple ‘effects’ of NAPLAN culminating in a series of disconnected conversations between various stakeholders.
Ideally, school would be a place where all students felt that they belonged. However, the reality... more Ideally, school would be a place where all students felt that they belonged. However, the reality is that many students feel as though they do not belong to their school community. Alienated or disaffected students are an endemic problem in schools in Australia, affecting the whole school community, as well as life chances for the students themselves after school. The crux of this matter, we believe, are the tensions between the desire to connect to the school community, and the frustration experienced by some students as a result of their subjectification by the school system. Perhaps students that we tend to identify as alienated or disaffected in their schools may be resisting the accepted negotiations of power that underpin the school system.
Quiet students are a feature of the organisation of secondary schools. Using qualitative methods ... more Quiet students are a feature of the organisation of secondary schools. Using qualitative methods and Deleuzean conceptualisations of modern subjectivity, this paper explores the ways that quiet students negotiate the terrain of their school. These negotiations often seem to produce a self that is trapped rather than a subject who seizes opportunities to be inventive, creative and experimental of their self. Understanding the faciality of quiet students provides opportunities to advance debate on how schools could encourage freer selves.
The policy issue of performance pay is an emotive one within the current education landscape. It ... more The policy issue of performance pay is an emotive one within the current education landscape. It is entrenched with the changing terrain of education policy in Australia (Reid, 2009). Part of this change has resulted in an increasingly centralised approach to school education as the Commonwealth and states have warred for the ‘soul’ of education. Since 2000 it is possible to see the impact of ‘coercive federalism’ in the relationship between federal and state education bureaucracies (Reid, 2009). One of the results of this
federalisation of school education has been the amplification of discourses that prioritise schooling for economic purposes. In 2008 the then Education Minister Julia Gillard outlined the Labor government’s reform of school funding as “a major plank (…) reached in Adelaide yesterday, which outlines a productivity and participation agenda that spans early childhood to adulthood” (Gillard, 2008). In 2011 the Federal Government announced a policy to support performance pay for teachers that will financially reward the
‘best’ teachers up to $8,100 pa from 2014. Not surprisingly this policy has created diverse opinions ranging from support to outrage.
This paper suggests a different strategy to understand performance pay – that of an historical examination of the issues of performance pay for teachers in Western Australia since 1871. This was the year of the
notorious Education Bill, causing the usually “phlegmatic” colonists to become suddenly “roused into action” (Perth Gazette, 1871). The Bill introduced a series of measures to improve the parlous state of education. Among these was the establishment of a Central Board responsible for general supervision of schools including the payment of teachers. Payment was largely based on individual exam results “fifteen shillings each for a pass in reading, writing and arithmetic and ten shillings for a pass in geography...” The result was “a growing inclination on the part of many teachers to let geography drop out of the course.” (Colebatch 1929, p.290). By the 1890s a new Inspector of Schools arrived with new ideas. He pointed to the weak spots in the still struggling education system – “inadequate staffing due to poor salaries; non
enforcement of compulsory attendances; payment by results; and want of proper facilities for training teachers” (Colebatch 1929, p.291). Reid (2005) argues that the value of historical sociology is that it shows that education policies and practices have a past. In this paper we will present an historical overview of the issue of performance pay from 1871 to the present.
References
Colebatch, H. (1929). A Story of a Hundred Years. Western Australia 1829 – 1929. Government Printer. Perth, Western Australia.
Gillard, J. (2008). NAPLAN, OECD Report, teacher quality, age pension. Retrieved April 29th, 2011, from Hon Julia Gillard MP:
http://mediacentre.dewr.gov.au/mediacentre/Gillard/Releases/NAPLANOECDReportteacherqualityagepension.htm Reid, A. (2005). The regulated education market has a past. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26: 1, 79-94. Routledge.
Reid, A. (2009). Is this a revolution? A critical analysis of the Rudd government's national education agenda. Curriculum Perspectives , 29 (3), 1-13.
Schools are places where student subjectivities are negotiated and contested in a variety of spac... more Schools are places where student subjectivities are negotiated and contested in a variety of spaces. This paper argues that schools organise the possibilities for student subjectivities through a set of discourses that construct idealised notions of the good student. Whilst some discourses occur across educational sites, in practice these sets of discourses construct a unique vision of the good student in each specific school site. This vision is articulated in a variety of ways in each school, however, the result is that each student is enmeshed within a complex nexus of power relations that they can contest, negotiate or accept. Most of the time, students engage in a swirling set of subjectivities that encompasses these possibilities in various ways at various times.
This paper problematises commonsense notions of the good student at one school site. One intent is to give voice to the lived experience of students who find themselves the site of these technologies of power. These technologies construct a set of commonsense expectations of schools - amongst which is the desire to produce the good student. Another is to use a Foucaultean analysis that rejects the good/bad binary that underpins many commonsense understandings of what students should be.
As academics there is an expectation that we will have a strong research output. The recent Rese... more As academics there is an expectation that we will have a strong research output. The recent Research Quality Framework (RQF) and now Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) includes publications as key indicator of both individual and institutional performance. Coupled with increased teaching and administrative workloads many academics have found the imperative to 'publish or perish', has placed added pressure on already busy lives particularly for early (ECR) or interrupted (ICR) career academics.
Many universities have offered different solutions to support staff in developing a research profile. McGrail, Rickard and Jones (2006) have outlined three main approaches used by universities to support academic staff, namely, writing courses and provision of a writing coach or mentor. Of these three interventions the support groups were found to have the highest rate of success in terms of publications, but all were supportive of the writing process and individual output.
In this presentation we will tell the story of our writing group. After several manifestations it is now made up of seven academics from two universities. The research interests/paradigms of the group are diverse and the group has had to carve out a physical and temporal space to do nothing but write, think and share.
We have timetabled one and two-day periods for writing, critical feedback and support of each other. Unlike many writing groups we write in community. It is this writing in community that we believe is the strength and point of difference of our group. We have improved our publication output, but we have also developed relationships and support mechanisms for ourselves as members of a community of writers. The outcome of our work thus far (and it is a work in progress) has led us to surmise that although targeted workshops are helpful, and individual coaching or mentoring offers support, it is writing in community where individual academics are best supported. We offer our experience as a way of supporting writing for academics across the university sector. Fear and anxiety about writing, time available, worthiness of ideas and lack of confidence have been identified as issues for academic writers (Lee & Boud, 2010; McGrail, et al, 2006; Rickard, et al, 2008) and writing together has, we believe, gone some way to alleviate these issues.
This paper looks at the emergent performative culture seducing education in the Australian contex... more This paper looks at the emergent performative culture seducing education in the Australian context. It links this corporate discourse to Deleuzean theorising of control societies to postulate that what we are experiencing is a new form of power relations – that of the modulating mechanisms of power. These modulating mechanisms overlay disciplinary power such that the self is modulated through the amplification and frequencies of the instruments of modulation: the simulation, the categorical
sorting and the sample. These instruments are increasingly utilised within the performative culture of the Australian Federal Government’s Education Revolution as examples of the performative ‘terror’ or the abstraction of the self from the terrain in which they move. Finally, some new weapons are suggested that may offer preliminary and tentative ‘movement’ in deterritorialising ways through the enclosed spaces of mass, compulsory school and the policy that shapes it.
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a common policy initiative throughout many education jurisdictions in the Western
world. National and international testing, particularly of literacy and numeracy, has
become a fixture in school calendars and the education experience of students in many
countries. TIMMS, PIRLS, PISA and the various national tests such as NAPLAN,
NAEP and SATs have all contributed to testing becoming a, if not the, compelling
language of education quality across national boundaries. These tests generally have a
similar aim, to improve the quality of education systems through producing data that
can be used to make schools and teachers accountable.
vernacular” of the global education policy trend of using high-stakes testing to increase accountability and transparency, and by extension quality, within schools and education systems in Australia. In the first part of the paper a brief context of the policy trajectory of National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is given in Australia. In the second part, empirical evidence drawn from a survey of teachers in Western Australia (WA) and South Australia (SA) is used to explore teacher perceptions of the impacts a high-stakes testing regime is having on student learning, relationships with parents and pedagogy
in specific sites.
After the 2007 Australian Federal election, one of Labor’s policy
objectives was to deliver an “Education Revolution” designed to improve both the equity and excellence in the Australian school system1 (Rudd & Gillard, 2008). This reform agenda aims to “deliver real changes” through: “raising the quality of teaching in our schools” and “improving transparency and accountability of schools and school systems” (Rudd & Gillard, 2008, p. 5). Central to this linking of accountability, the transparency of schools and school systems and raising teaching quality was the creation of a regime of testing (NAPLAN) that would generate data about the attainment of basic literacy and numeracy skills by students in Australian schools.
Two principal research questions were addressed in this preliminary analysis. First, is the socioeconomic drawing area of the school, the State in which they teach, or the school system in which the teacher works significant in perceptions of the impact of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy? Second, are there any interaction effects between gender, socioeconomics status, location and school system on teachers perceptions? Statistical analyses examined one- and two-way MANOVA to assess main effects and interaction effects on teachers’ global perceptions. These were followed by a series of exploratory one- and two-way ANOVA of specific survey items to suggest potential sources for differences among teachers from different socioeconomic regions, states and systems.
Teachers report that they are either choosing or being instructed to teach to the test, that this results in less time being spent on other curriculum areas and that these effects contribute in a negative way on the engagement of students. This largely agrees with a body of international research that suggests that high-stakes literacy and numeracy tests often results in unintended consequences such as a narrow curriculum focus (Reid, 2009; Au, 2007), a return to teacher-centred instruction (Barret, 2009; Polesel, Dulfer, & Turnbull, 2012; Barksdale-Ladd & Thomas, 2000) and a decrease in motivation (Ryan & Wesinstein, 2009). Preliminary results from early survey respondents suggests there is a relationship between participant responses to the effect of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy based on the characteristics of which State the teacher taught in, their perceptions of the socioeconomic status of the school and the school system in which they were employed (State, Other non-Government, and Independent).
federalisation of school education has been the amplification of discourses that prioritise schooling for economic purposes. In 2008 the then Education Minister Julia Gillard outlined the Labor government’s reform of school funding as “a major plank (…) reached in Adelaide yesterday, which outlines a productivity and participation agenda that spans early childhood to adulthood” (Gillard, 2008). In 2011 the Federal Government announced a policy to support performance pay for teachers that will financially reward the
‘best’ teachers up to $8,100 pa from 2014. Not surprisingly this policy has created diverse opinions ranging from support to outrage.
This paper suggests a different strategy to understand performance pay – that of an historical examination of the issues of performance pay for teachers in Western Australia since 1871. This was the year of the
notorious Education Bill, causing the usually “phlegmatic” colonists to become suddenly “roused into action” (Perth Gazette, 1871). The Bill introduced a series of measures to improve the parlous state of education. Among these was the establishment of a Central Board responsible for general supervision of schools including the payment of teachers. Payment was largely based on individual exam results “fifteen shillings each for a pass in reading, writing and arithmetic and ten shillings for a pass in geography...” The result was “a growing inclination on the part of many teachers to let geography drop out of the course.” (Colebatch 1929, p.290). By the 1890s a new Inspector of Schools arrived with new ideas. He pointed to the weak spots in the still struggling education system – “inadequate staffing due to poor salaries; non
enforcement of compulsory attendances; payment by results; and want of proper facilities for training teachers” (Colebatch 1929, p.291). Reid (2005) argues that the value of historical sociology is that it shows that education policies and practices have a past. In this paper we will present an historical overview of the issue of performance pay from 1871 to the present.
References
Colebatch, H. (1929). A Story of a Hundred Years. Western Australia 1829 – 1929. Government Printer. Perth, Western Australia.
Gillard, J. (2008). NAPLAN, OECD Report, teacher quality, age pension. Retrieved April 29th, 2011, from Hon Julia Gillard MP:
http://mediacentre.dewr.gov.au/mediacentre/Gillard/Releases/NAPLANOECDReportteacherqualityagepension.htm
Reid, A. (2005). The regulated education market has a past. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26: 1, 79-94. Routledge.
Reid, A. (2009). Is this a revolution? A critical analysis of the Rudd government's national education agenda. Curriculum Perspectives , 29 (3), 1-13.
This paper problematises commonsense notions of the good student at one school site. One intent is to give voice to the lived experience of students who find themselves the site of these technologies of power. These technologies construct a set of commonsense expectations of schools - amongst which is the desire to produce the good student. Another is to use a Foucaultean analysis that rejects the good/bad binary that underpins many commonsense understandings of what students should be.
a common policy initiative throughout many education jurisdictions in the Western
world. National and international testing, particularly of literacy and numeracy, has
become a fixture in school calendars and the education experience of students in many
countries. TIMMS, PIRLS, PISA and the various national tests such as NAPLAN,
NAEP and SATs have all contributed to testing becoming a, if not the, compelling
language of education quality across national boundaries. These tests generally have a
similar aim, to improve the quality of education systems through producing data that
can be used to make schools and teachers accountable.
vernacular” of the global education policy trend of using high-stakes testing to increase accountability and transparency, and by extension quality, within schools and education systems in Australia. In the first part of the paper a brief context of the policy trajectory of National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is given in Australia. In the second part, empirical evidence drawn from a survey of teachers in Western Australia (WA) and South Australia (SA) is used to explore teacher perceptions of the impacts a high-stakes testing regime is having on student learning, relationships with parents and pedagogy
in specific sites.
After the 2007 Australian Federal election, one of Labor’s policy
objectives was to deliver an “Education Revolution” designed to improve both the equity and excellence in the Australian school system1 (Rudd & Gillard, 2008). This reform agenda aims to “deliver real changes” through: “raising the quality of teaching in our schools” and “improving transparency and accountability of schools and school systems” (Rudd & Gillard, 2008, p. 5). Central to this linking of accountability, the transparency of schools and school systems and raising teaching quality was the creation of a regime of testing (NAPLAN) that would generate data about the attainment of basic literacy and numeracy skills by students in Australian schools.
Two principal research questions were addressed in this preliminary analysis. First, is the socioeconomic drawing area of the school, the State in which they teach, or the school system in which the teacher works significant in perceptions of the impact of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy? Second, are there any interaction effects between gender, socioeconomics status, location and school system on teachers perceptions? Statistical analyses examined one- and two-way MANOVA to assess main effects and interaction effects on teachers’ global perceptions. These were followed by a series of exploratory one- and two-way ANOVA of specific survey items to suggest potential sources for differences among teachers from different socioeconomic regions, states and systems.
Teachers report that they are either choosing or being instructed to teach to the test, that this results in less time being spent on other curriculum areas and that these effects contribute in a negative way on the engagement of students. This largely agrees with a body of international research that suggests that high-stakes literacy and numeracy tests often results in unintended consequences such as a narrow curriculum focus (Reid, 2009; Au, 2007), a return to teacher-centred instruction (Barret, 2009; Polesel, Dulfer, & Turnbull, 2012; Barksdale-Ladd & Thomas, 2000) and a decrease in motivation (Ryan & Wesinstein, 2009). Preliminary results from early survey respondents suggests there is a relationship between participant responses to the effect of NAPLAN on curriculum and pedagogy based on the characteristics of which State the teacher taught in, their perceptions of the socioeconomic status of the school and the school system in which they were employed (State, Other non-Government, and Independent).
federalisation of school education has been the amplification of discourses that prioritise schooling for economic purposes. In 2008 the then Education Minister Julia Gillard outlined the Labor government’s reform of school funding as “a major plank (…) reached in Adelaide yesterday, which outlines a productivity and participation agenda that spans early childhood to adulthood” (Gillard, 2008). In 2011 the Federal Government announced a policy to support performance pay for teachers that will financially reward the
‘best’ teachers up to $8,100 pa from 2014. Not surprisingly this policy has created diverse opinions ranging from support to outrage.
This paper suggests a different strategy to understand performance pay – that of an historical examination of the issues of performance pay for teachers in Western Australia since 1871. This was the year of the
notorious Education Bill, causing the usually “phlegmatic” colonists to become suddenly “roused into action” (Perth Gazette, 1871). The Bill introduced a series of measures to improve the parlous state of education. Among these was the establishment of a Central Board responsible for general supervision of schools including the payment of teachers. Payment was largely based on individual exam results “fifteen shillings each for a pass in reading, writing and arithmetic and ten shillings for a pass in geography...” The result was “a growing inclination on the part of many teachers to let geography drop out of the course.” (Colebatch 1929, p.290). By the 1890s a new Inspector of Schools arrived with new ideas. He pointed to the weak spots in the still struggling education system – “inadequate staffing due to poor salaries; non
enforcement of compulsory attendances; payment by results; and want of proper facilities for training teachers” (Colebatch 1929, p.291). Reid (2005) argues that the value of historical sociology is that it shows that education policies and practices have a past. In this paper we will present an historical overview of the issue of performance pay from 1871 to the present.
References
Colebatch, H. (1929). A Story of a Hundred Years. Western Australia 1829 – 1929. Government Printer. Perth, Western Australia.
Gillard, J. (2008). NAPLAN, OECD Report, teacher quality, age pension. Retrieved April 29th, 2011, from Hon Julia Gillard MP:
http://mediacentre.dewr.gov.au/mediacentre/Gillard/Releases/NAPLANOECDReportteacherqualityagepension.htm
Reid, A. (2005). The regulated education market has a past. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26: 1, 79-94. Routledge.
Reid, A. (2009). Is this a revolution? A critical analysis of the Rudd government's national education agenda. Curriculum Perspectives , 29 (3), 1-13.
This paper problematises commonsense notions of the good student at one school site. One intent is to give voice to the lived experience of students who find themselves the site of these technologies of power. These technologies construct a set of commonsense expectations of schools - amongst which is the desire to produce the good student. Another is to use a Foucaultean analysis that rejects the good/bad binary that underpins many commonsense understandings of what students should be.
Many universities have offered different solutions to support staff in developing a research profile. McGrail, Rickard and Jones (2006) have outlined three main approaches used by universities to support academic staff, namely, writing courses and provision of a writing coach or mentor. Of these three interventions the support groups were found to have the highest rate of success in terms of publications, but all were supportive of the writing process and individual output.
In this presentation we will tell the story of our writing group. After several manifestations it is now made up of seven academics from two universities. The research interests/paradigms of the group are diverse and the group has had to carve out a physical and temporal space to do nothing but write, think and share.
We have timetabled one and two-day periods for writing, critical feedback and support of each other. Unlike many writing groups we write in community. It is this writing in community that we believe is the strength and point of difference of our group. We have improved our publication output, but we have also developed relationships and support mechanisms for ourselves as members of a community of writers. The outcome of our work thus far (and it is a work in progress) has led us to surmise that although targeted workshops are helpful, and individual coaching or mentoring offers support, it is writing in community where individual academics are best supported. We offer our experience as a way of supporting writing for academics across the university sector. Fear and anxiety about writing, time available, worthiness of ideas and lack of confidence have been identified as issues for academic writers (Lee & Boud, 2010; McGrail, et al, 2006; Rickard, et al, 2008) and writing together has, we believe, gone some way to alleviate these issues.
sorting and the sample. These instruments are increasingly utilised within the performative culture of the Australian Federal Government’s Education Revolution as examples of the performative ‘terror’ or the abstraction of the self from the terrain in which they move. Finally, some new weapons are suggested that may offer preliminary and tentative ‘movement’ in deterritorialising ways through the enclosed spaces of mass, compulsory school and the policy that shapes it.