Thinking Past Educational Disadvantage, and Theories of Reproduction
- Authors: Hattam, Robert , Smyth, John
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Sociology Vol. 49, no. 2 (2015), p. 270-286
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- Description: This article proposes a critique of critical sociology of education as a means of thinking past theories of reproduction which are the doxa for our field. The article problematizes key words such as 'disadvantage' and pursues a critique of reproduction theory, drawing on Rancière’s foregrounding of equality as an axiom rather than an outcome. The article goes some way towards showing how we might practically think past theories of reproduction by offering an alternative version of educational equality. © The Author(s) 2014
The making of young lives with/against the school credential
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Education and Work Vol. 16, no. 2 (2003), p. 127-146
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- Description: This article provides argument and 'voiced' evidence from an Australian study (Smyth et al., 2000) of 209 young people who had chosen not to complete their secondary schooling. It reports on how they made these complex decisions, particularly around the credentialling process. There is support here for Wyn and Dwyer's (2000) thesis that some young people are not propelled through schooling by the lure of a credential, and quite to the contrary, they have a high level of agency in constructing alternative biographies for themselves that undermine the policy trajectory. Far from being victims who 'drop out', these young people presented in individualistic ways that amounted to accommodation and resistance to the impediments of a policy credential for university entrance which they labelled as irrelevant, despite its declared intention to be inclusive of all.
Living on the edge : Rethinking poverty, class and schooling
- Authors: Smyth, John , Wrigley, Terry
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Book
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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
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'Ordinary kids' navigating geographies of educational opportunity in the context of an Australian 'place-based intervention'
- Authors: Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Education Policy Vol. 29, no. 3 (May 2014), p. 285-301
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP110102619
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- Description: This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as 'disadvantaged' in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much more complex process by which aspirations are formed, sustained, contested and maintained by young people who regard themselves as 'ordinary' and as being engaged instead in a process of navigating educational opportunities on the basis of resources available to them.
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
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- Description: C1
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
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- 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).
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
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The disaster of the 'self-managing school' - genesis, trajectory, undisclosed agenda, and effects
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Educational Administration and History Vol. 43, no. 2 (2010), p. 95-117
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
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- Description: Sometimes an educational idea is inexplicably adopted around the world with remarkable speed and consistency and in the absence of a proper evidence base or with little regard or respect for teachers, students or learning. This paper examines what has arguably been the most contentious and virulent educational reform of the past half-century. Variously labelled, in what amounts to the self-managing school, what this reform has done is virtually dismantle public education and privatise it without public debate or proper scrutiny. This paper considers the alleged claims by the enthusiastic proponents and examines what has subsequently transpired, particularly in respect of the most disadvantaged students and the broader mission of improved learning. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.
How did we get to this situation? The immiseration of the modern university in a globalizing context
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Contemporary colleges and universities: A reader p.
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Losing our way? Challenging the direction of teacher education in Australia by reframing it around the Socially Just School
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 41, no. 1 (2013), p. 111-122
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- Description: In this discursive and wide-ranging paper I want to do two things: first, to interrogate the conditions that led to, and continue to wreak havoc as a result of, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and that underpin current policy approaches to teacher education in Australia and other western countries; and second, to move in the direction of puncturing the status quo by proffering an alternative orientation to teacher education deriving from some of my own research that is informed by what I am calling the Socially Just School. My argument is that teacher education could benefit from moving away from the ideological conditions that have produced the GFC and instead be informed by an approach to schooling around notions of social justice. © 2013 Copyright 2013 Australian Teacher Education Association.
- Description: 2003010826
Re-engagement to where? Low SES students in alternative-education programmes on the path to low-status destinations?
- Authors: Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter , Fish, Tim
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Research in Post-Compulsory Education Vol. 18, no. 1-2 (2013), p. 194-207
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
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- Description: This paper poses a rarely asked question - Re-engagement to where? Or to what valued social purpose for the young people concerned? Drawing from a larger project funded by the Australian Research Council, the paper analyses the 'portraits' of two young people whose lives were seemingly better within a re-engagement programme, but whose lives were severely circumscribed by the narrow vocationalism offered in the programme. More concerning was the fact that the considerable natural talents and skills of these young people were neither acknowledged nor used as the basis to improve their life chances or opportunities. © 2013 Copyright Further Education Research Association.
- Description: 2003010827
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
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- 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).
Improving schools in poor areas: It's not about the organisation, structures and privatisation, stupid!
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Improving Schools Vol. 17, no. 3 (2014), p. 231-240
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- Description: In this article, the author presents a review of his extended research engagement with disadvantaged young people and their education. He challenges the dominant neoliberal model of school reform based on business values and the ‘managerial school’ as alien to educational values. He introduces various stages of research he and his colleagues have undertaken over the past two decades, showing the importance of an authentic engagement with young people’s lives, the characteristics of schools which reach out to disadvantaged students and the importance of transformative pedagogy and community involvement.
Critical voices in teacher education: Teaching for social justice in conservative times
- Authors: Down, Barry , Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Edited book
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Curriculum theory: curriculum ideology
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies p. 155-157
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- Description: Critical theory is a philosophical, sociological, and cultural studies term that relates closely to matters of legitimation, power and conflict, and argument. These are matters of central and defining interest in curriculum studies. Critical theory can be defined as an orienation, a disposition, and a way of acting on the world in order to change it. Above all critical theory is a form of social analysis that is not prepared to accept things at face value or as they are presented.
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
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- 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.
Managing the myth of the self-managing school as an international education reform
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2001
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Taking education really seriously: Four years' hard labour p. 238-253
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Speaking back to educational policy: why social inclusion will not work for disadvantaged Australian schools
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Critical Studies in Education Vol. 51, no. 2 (2010), p. 113-128
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP0665569
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- Description: The Labor government in Australia has recently embarked on an extremely ambitious program of social inclusion for the most marginalized groups in society. Drawing upon the approach of "policy scholarship" this paper examines some federal government "policy texts" to describe what has occurred and asks questions about what is meant by the social inclusion policy orientation in the context of educational disadvantage. It challenges the efficacy of uncritically following the experience of New Labour in England as the basis for an Australian social inclusion agenda. The paper concludes with the need to include the voices of "policy users", who are supposed to be the beneficiaries, in the construction of more reflexive alternatives
Unmasking teachers' subjectivities in local school management
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Researching educational leadership and management p.
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