Critical voices in teacher education: Teaching for social justice in conservative times
- Authors: Down, Barry , Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Edited book
- Full Text: false
Doing research on student voice in Australia
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Management in Education Vol. 26, no. 3 (2012), p. 153-154
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The Australian school context has been something of a failed test case of trying to organise schooling around the tenets of the market as a regulating mechanism. The result has been an intensification of social stratification as the already 'disadvantaged' miss out yet again in education. This short paper argues that what is needed to interrupt and puncture this unfortunate policy trajectory, is to begin to include the desires, wishes, lives and experiences of young people - and the way to do this is through the promotion of policy approaches that are informed by and celebrate 'student voice'. © 2012 British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society (BELMAS).
From silent witnesses to active agents: Student voice in re-engaging with learning
- Authors: Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book
- Relation: Adolescent cultures, school & society No. 55
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
Introduction: From critique to new scripts and possibilities in teacher education
- Authors: Down, Barry , Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Critical voices in teacher education: Teaching for social justice in conservative times p. 1-9
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This book is about the stories of teacher educators committed to pursuing social justice in teacher education. It draws on the struggles of those who have taught about issues of social justice within universities, their accumulated knowledge and their practices in classrooms. The purpose of the book is to provide a space where teacher educators can deconstruct their own pedagogies, empower individuals to develop critical consciousness, and inspire a future generation of teachers to engage in social justice activism. To this end, the book provides some insights into the daily realities of critical teaching in conservative times (Brookfield, 2005; Kincheloe, Slattery, & Steinberg, 2000; Shor, 1992).
Policy activism: An animating idea with/for young people
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Educational Administration and History Vol. 44, no. 3 (2012), p. 179-186
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: By whatever indicators we choose to use, the bold neoliberal experiment embarked upon by developed Western countries has been an unqualified disaster for young people. Far from them being ‘included’ as the shrill policy rhetoric argues, increasing numbers of young people, especially those who are pushed into the increasing social gradient that labels them as being ‘disadvantaged’, are finding schools to be inhospitable places that do not connect with their communities, lives or aspirations for rewarding futures. This particular social group are rejecting the institution of schooling in unprecedented numbers, and are switching off emotionally, relationally and intellectually.
Problematising teachers' work in dangerous times
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Critical voices in teacher education: Teaching for social justice in conservative times p. 13-25
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
Pushed out, shut out: Addressing unjust geographies of schooling and work
- Authors: Robinson, Janean , Down, Barry , Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal on School Disaffection Vol. 9, no. 2 (2012), p. 7-24
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: In neo-liberal times educational policy and practice is being realigned more closely to the shifting imperatives of the market with damaging effects on the lives of young people. Whilst the rhetoric suggests that schools are safe, welcoming and caring environments for the benefit of all, the veracity is very different for significant numbers of marginalised students who face fragile, uncertain and unpredictable futures. This paper draws on a number of research projects in Australia to investigate the lived reality of students who are struggling to make sense of school and their transition to 'getting a job'. The research is neither impartial nor neutral. It draws on the tradition of critical policy ethnography to identify, describe and map the kinds of conditions that both constrain and enable the aspirations, dreams and hopes of young people for productive and rewarding lives. The intent is to unsettle commonsense and deficit understandings of school life that serve to oppress and marginalise the least advantaged students.
Sculpting a 'social space' for re-engaging disengaged 'disadvantaged' young people with learning
- Authors: Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Educational Administration and History Vol. 44, no. 3 (2012), p. 187-201
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This paper examines the complex constellation of conditions that turn many young people into 'exiles' from schooling. From the vantage point of young people, the paper traces out a profile of the conditions that need to be brought into existence for these young people to find a way back into learning. The paper argues that current educational policies are deeply hostile to young people in the ways they position them as 'silent witnesses' and exclude them from having a voice in the important decisions about what they learn, how, with whom, and with what effects. In contrast, the paper explores six alternative programmes in Australia, warehoused from within the same systems that 'damaged' these young people. Paradoxically these programmes are seen as providing these damaged young people with the spaces in which they can become powerful 'active agents' in re-forming an educational identity for themselves. Where these alternatives depart from the damaging policy regime is in the highly context-sensitive way they enable young learners and local policy advocates who work with them, to effectively contest exclusionary and undemocratic neoliberal policies. © 2012 Taylor & Francis.
Student Engagement for Equity and Social Justice: Creating Space for Student Voice
- Authors: McMahon, Brenda , Munns, Geoff , Zyngier, David , Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Teaching & Learning Vol. 7, no. 2 (2012), p. 63-78
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This paper describes three student engagement initiatives that have been successfully implemented in Australia and Canada, where social justice educators are struggling with issues resulting from reforms that marginalize visible minority and low-income students. The projects envision student engagement in critical democratic ways. Using different strategies, they are informed by approaches that: respect students, educators and teaching/learning processes; connect on emotional as well as cognitive levels; and shift away from narrow notions of schooling to broader visions of education for marginalized students. Transferable to other locations, these programmes provide insights into what is possible when student engagement is enacted in equitable, socially just, and transformative environments.
- Description: C1
Teachers as classed cultural workers speaking back through critical reflection
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Critical voices in teacher education: Teaching for social justice in conservative times p. 81-95
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
The socially just school and critical pedagogies in communities put at a disadvantage
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Critical Studies in Education Vol. 53, no. 1 (2012), p. 9-18
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: Public schools around the world have been hijacked and deformed beyond recognition by the forces of the economy over the past three decades. This paper provides an analysis and a way out of this miasma around the notion of the socially just school. While not another prescription, this orientation is argued to be the most hopeful possibility for those parts of the community that have lost the most through the spot-welding of schools onto the economy. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
When students "speak back": Student engagement towards a socially just society
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Student engagement in urban schools: Beyond neoliberal discourses p. 73-90
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: This chapter explores theoretically and practically the rationale, approaches, possibilities, and cffecL or engaging with students in schools in ways that challenge injustices and that regard education as beingforsocialjustice. Examples and illustrations arc drawn from research by the author in Australia from over 2!'i critical cthnographics of disadvantaged schools conducted over the past two decades. The central framing themes and ideas for the chapter focus on: • student voice • the relational school • the pedagogically engaged school • community organizing for activist reform • community-voiced approaches lo schooling • "speaking the unpleasant" about poverty, education, and class • beyond commodification, prescription, and consumption The chapter presents a number of ethnographic slices or portraits of students and schools that have created ways of "working against the grain" in the sense of foregrounding notions of social justice and challenging dominant, deforming, and damaging approaches to education and supplanting them with alternatives. The chapter explores what is possible when teachers, students, parents, and communities take seriously the opportunity to embrace a socially critical view of student engagement.
'Coming to a place near you?' The politics and possibilities of a critical pedagogy of place-based education
- Authors: McInerney, Peter , Smyth, John , Down, Barry
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 39, no. 1 (2011), p. 3-16
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: It may seem something of a paradox that in a globalised age where notions of interdependence, interconnectedness and common destinies abound, the 'local', with its diversity of cultures, languages, histories and geographies, continues to exercise a powerful grip on the human imagination. The ties that bind us have global connections but are anchored in a strong sense of locality. This paper explores the theoretical foundations of place-based education (PBE) and considers the merits and limitations of current approaches with particular reference to Australian studies. The authors argue that there is a place for PBE in schools but contend that it must be informed by a far more critical reading of the notions of 'place', 'identity' and 'community'. The implications of pursuing a critical pedagogy of place-based education are discussed with reference to curriculum, pedagogy and teacher education.
A dialogic encounter with Joe Kincheloe's "Meet me behind the curtain" Catalyst for an evolving contemporary critical theory of teachers' work
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Key works in critical pedagogy p. 101-106
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
Critical civic engagement from inside an Australian School and its community put at a disadvantage
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Critical Civic Literacy: A reader p. 141-154
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: 2003009322
Critical pedagogy for social justice
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Book
- Relation: Critical pedagogy today
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: An incisive analysis of how Critical Pedagogy can be a force for positive change in schools around the world, helping the most disadvantaged students.
The Deakin experience: discovery crafting and finessing a critical perspective with which to speak back
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Education, social justice and the legacy of Deakin University: Reflections of the Deakin Diaspora p. 173-185
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: I will start at the beginning—even though I am sorely tempted to start from where I am at the moment and work backwards. There is a bit of history that is important to understanding my story.
- Description: 2003009321
Triple G (Girls Get Going): Design of an intervention to foster and promote sport and physical activity among adolescent girls
- Authors: Casey, Meghan , Mooney, Amanda , Harvey, Jack , Eime, Rochelle , Telford, Amanda , Smyth, John , Payne, Warren
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport Vol. 14, no. Supplement 1 (December 2011 2011), p. e78
- Full Text:
- Reviewed:
- Description: C1
'Hanging in with kids' in tough times: Engagement in contexts of educational disadvantage in the relational school
- Authors: Smyth, John , Down, Barry , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Book
- Relation: Adolescent Cultures, School, and Society Vol. Volume 49
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Synopsis - This book brings a unique, innovative and refreshing perspective to one of the most protracted issues affecting young lives - disengagement from schooling. Rather than continuing to blame young people, as most educational policies do, this book examines disengagement from the vantage point of the lives, experiences, interests and aspirations of the communities from which young people come, and within which they are embedded. It uses a narrative and representational approach that gives detailed insights into the wider context of poverty, class, power, relationships and identity. A major and defining hallmark of the book is the emphasis it places upon a number of 'doings', - including community voice, identity formation, critical work education and education policy - all of which provide a very different set of scripts with which to reinvent the institution of high school.
Adolescent engagement, connectedness and dropping out of school
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Adolescent education: A reader p. 195-208
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed: