The Iraq war, 'sound science,' and 'evidence-based' educational reform : How the Bush Administration uses deception, manipulation, and subterfuge to advance its chosen ideology
- Authors: Gordon, Stephen , Smyth, John , Diehl, Julie
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies Vol. 6, no. 2 (2008), p.
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- Description: In this article we describe how the Bush administration has used deceptive techniques and subterfuge to force its ideology upon the American people. We provide examples of similar techniques used to manipulate public opinion and national policy in three broad areas: national defense, science, and education. Our example from national defense policy, as one might guess, relates to the centerpiece of the Bush Administration, the Iraq War, and in particular the gathering and presenting of 'evidence' on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in order to gather public support for the war. The build up to the war provides examples of fabricated evidence, dire warnings, and manipulation of U. S. intelligence agencies, all orchestrated by the White House. The breadth of deception and manipulation of science by the Bush Administration is quite amazing, cutting across policy on endangered species, climate change, reproductive health, stem cell research, dietary science, and environmental pollution. This is a story of suppressing and tampering with scientific findings, intimidating scientists, manipulating the membership of scientific committees, and allowing representatives of industry and social conservative groups to write Administration policies or legislative proposals. We go on to show how many of the same techniques used by the Bush Administration in the build up to the Iraq War and in science have been adapted to control education in the U. S. under the guise of "evidencebased educational reform." We document Administration efforts to "scrub" educational documents to delete content that does not agree with the "Administration"s ideology, promote private management and private schools at the expense of public schools, andforce schools to adopt commercial curricula favored by the Administration. Bush's attempts to control public education are explained by his allegiance to two major constituencies, social conservatives and the corporate sector, and his commitment to what we refer to as neoconservative federalism. We show how these three factors merge as the underlying basis of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and an array of other Administration efforts to control education.
- Description: 2003006323
"Living on the edge" : A case of school reform working for disadvantaged adolescents
- Authors: Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Teachers College Record Vol. 109, no. 5 (2007), p. 1123-1170
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP110102619
- Full Text: false
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- Description: The issue of why so many young adolescents around the world are disengaging from school and making the choice to drop out is one of the most intractable, vexed, perplexing, and controversial issues confronting educators. Tackling it requires courage and a radical rethinking of school reform around issues of power, ownership of learning, and the relevance of schooling and curriculum for young lives. This means a heightened institutional capacity to "listen." This article describes an instance of a disadvantaged urban Australian government school that realized it had little alternative but to try new approaches; "old ways" were not working. The article describes an ensemble of school reform practices, philosophies, and strategies that give young adolescents genuine ownership of their learning. This school stands out as a beacon that school reform is possible, even for young adolescents from the most difficult of circumstances. However, such approaches look markedly different from where mainstream educational reform is taking us at the moment. Copyright © by Teachers College, Columbia University.
- Description: 2003005576
Addressing literacy in secondary schools : Introduction
- Authors: May, Stephen , Smyth, John
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Language and Education Vol. 21, no. 5 (2007), p. 365-369
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- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005591
Attrition from schools
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Gender and education: an encyclopedia volume 1 & 2 p. 389-394
- Full Text: false
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- Description: A better understanding of the ways in which gender and attrition are interrelated can be had within a theoretical framework that focuses attention on school culture, coercion and harassment, school credentialing, and transitions to the labour market.
Climbing over the rocks in the road to student engagement and learning in a challenging high school in Australia
- Authors: Smyth, John , Fasoli, Lyn
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Educational Research Vol. 49, no. 3 (2007), p. 273-295
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP0665569
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP0208022
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Background There is increasing evidence that schools internationally are not meeting the needs of increasing numbers of young people, especially those at the secondary level, and whose backgrounds have placed them at disadvantage. The evidence is that significant numbers of young people are becoming disconnected from school. While the official term for this is 'disengagement', it seems that official educational policy responses to these tendencies, far from 'fixing' the problem, seem to be exacerbating it. Current policy preoccupations that emphasize accountability, greater parental choice of schools and a more prescriptive curriculum can present difficulties for young people, particularly those from challenging backgrounds. There may be a mismatch between formal educational policy, and the lived experiences at the level of the school and classroom for the most vulnerable young people. Purpose This paper reports on a single instance of a high school that embarked upon a process of reinventing itself in respect of the importance of relationships and 'relational power' for students over their learning. The paper examines what the teachers and students had to say about the efficacy of this school-based reform. Sample The case-study school was located in an area of extreme social disadvantage in which young people had diminished educational expectations. The research involved observations and interviews with a small sample of stakeholders and focus groups with students (13-16-year-olds). Design and method The study was an ethnographic case study of a single secondary school conducted over a five-week continuous period. It used 'embedded interviews' involving observation of in-class teaching prior to extensive 1-hour interviews with teachers and students' focus groups. All interviews were recorded. Detailed field notes were kept of classroom observations and other activities, including school assemblies, staff meetings and reflections on informal conversations held during teaching breaks in the staffroom. Results and conclusions Positive outcomes emerged from a context where fair boundaries were established and in which students could see school as a place where they could experience fun in their learning. The process was by no means complete, but the school felt that it had found a more efficacious way to move forward and the students made this clear in their statements about what the school was attempting to do with them. Key to these positive outcomes was a commitment to placing relationships between students, teachers and parents at the centre of everything the school did.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005579
Literacy research methodology that is up to the challenge
- Authors: Smyth, John , Whitehead, David
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Language and Education Vol. 21, no. 5 (2007), p. 377-386
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- Description: This paper outlines the methodological dimensions of the secondary literacy research evaluation that is the focus of this special issue - the New Zealand-based Secondary Schools' Literacy Initiative (SSLI). We argue that these methodological dimensions are an example of the type of contextualised and critical research that might be usefully applied in exploring literacy across the curriculum in other national contexts. A particular concern addressed in the paper is the need to develop a contextualised, rich description of literacy practices in schools, while also addressing a wider policy climate, which is often preoccupied with issues of literacy achievement and, particularly, often-entrenched differential achievement for students across class and ethnicity lines. To achieve this, the researchers adopted a quasi-ethnographic, multi-locale, mixed-methods approach intended to enhance the robustness of the research design and the validity of the results. © 2007 J. Smyth & D. Whitehead.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005588
Pedagogy, school culture and teacher learning : Towards more durable and resistant approaches to secondary school literacy
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Language and Education Vol. 21, no. 5 (2007), p. 406-419
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- Description: The relational, cultural and contextual view of literacy discussed in this paper has profound and widespread implications for the way teachers think about their students, their families, backgrounds and experiences and the aspirations students hold for the future. Focussing on the theoretical construct of teacher identity, the paper discusses the ways teachers worked and what happened to the culture of their schools when a structured literacy intervention enabled them to develop some agency as educational professionals, when provided with some 'social space' in respect of their literacy practices. The paper concludes that the teachers were involved to varying degrees in embracing changes that represented a move in the direction of a socially just pedagogy - the paper explains why. © 2007 J. Smyth.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005585
Teacher development against the policy reform grain : An argument for recapturing relationships in teaching and learning
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Teacher Development Vol. 11, no. 2 (2007), p. 221-236
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP0665569
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP0560339
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- Description: As public schools in countries like the UK, USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand continue to suffer from the damaging effects of poorly conceptualized educational reforms, educators struggle to come up with alternatives with which to reclaim schools. While acknowledging the situational, contextual and temporal differences between these countries, this paper presents a rationale for reinserting the relational work of schools at the centre of a teacher development-led form of recovery. The central claim advanced herein is that teacher development in schools must have a central and demonstrable concern with the primacy of relationships in teaching and learning. Schools and teachers have the collective capacity to reclaim the ground that has been severely eroded by managerialist and marketizing agenda that have been allowed to intrude on schools and subjugate the importance of relational forms of knowing. Placing students at the centre is crucial to creating the direction necessary for re-establishing the relational complexity of schools.
- Description: 2003005582
Teachers in the middle : Reclaiming the wasteland of the adolescent years of schooling
- Authors: Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book
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- Description: Taking account of the issues of youth alienation and disengagement described in this study, the main intent of the present research was to explore the ways in which teachers and schools are reinventing themselves for young adolescents.
- Description: A1
- Description: 2003005594
Toward the pedagogically engaged school : Listening to student voice as a positive response to disengagement and 'dropping out'?
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The International Handbook of Student Experience in Elementary and Secondary School Chapter 30 p. 635-658
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- Description: Chapter looks at young people's reasons for leaving school early, and how teachers of young adolescents were attempting to re-invent themselves in ways that engaged students. It presents a framework of school reform that has emerged out of the research.
- Description: B1
- Description: 2003005597
'When students have power': Student engagement, student voice, and the possibilities for school reform around 'dropping out' of school
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International journal of leadership in education: Theory and practice Vol. 9, no. 4 (2006), p. 285-298
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- Description: It is no coincidence, that disengagement from school by young adolescents has intensified at precisely the same time as there has been a hardening of educational policy regimes that have made schools less hospitable places for students and teachers. This paper argues that producing the circumstances necessary to turn this situation around requires invoking a radically different kind of ethos and educational leadership-one that encourages and promotes the speaking into existence of authentic forms of student voice.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001899
Critical ethnography for school and community renewal around social class differences affecting learning
- Authors: Smyth, John , Angus, Lawrence , Down, Barry , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Learning communities Vol. 3, no. (2006), p. 121-152
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- Description: Understanding and exploring complex and protracted social questions requires sophisticated investigative approaches. In this article we intend looking at a research approach capable of providing a better understanding of what is going on in schools, students and communities in "exceptionally challenging contexts" (Harris et al., 2006)-code for schools and communities that have as a result of wider social forces, been historically placed in situations of disadvantage.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001884
Educational leadership that fosters 'student voice'
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International journal of leadership in education: Theory and practice Vol. 9, no. 4 (2006), p. 279-284
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- Description: This special issue focuses on a controversial topic that has been kept off the official agenda for far too long in educational circles. The question of how to pursue forms of leadership that listen to and attend to the voices of the most informed, yet marginalized witnesses of schooling, young people, has to be the most urgent issue of our times.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001901
Introduction to themed issue new pedagogies for school and community 'capacity building' in disadvantaged schools and communities
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Learning communities Vol. 3, no. (2006), p. 3-6
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- Description: The educational landscape is changing dramatically and profoundly for schools and communities across Australia and other western countries. It is no longer the case that children automatically do not attend their local neighbourhood school, nor can it be assumed that within public schools that there is a heterogenous social mix. What we have is an increasingly segregated, stratified and residualised system of education in Australia as neo-liberal policies of so-called 'choice' do their pock-marking with those who can afford it 'opting out' to private education, leaving behind those without the resources to exercise choice.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001904
Researching teachers working with young adolescents : Implications for ethnographic research
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Ethnography and Education Vol. 1, no.1 (2006), p. 31-51
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- Description: This paper aims to explore theoretically and practically how to better understand how it is that teachers work successfully in schools and classrooms with young adolescents. I want to explore how to undertake research that: (1) listens to the voices of young people in schools and the teachers who work with them, and (2) better understand how it is that some teachers of young adolescents are sucessfully reinventing themselves, their pedagogies and school cultures.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003008113
- Description: 2003001896
Schools and communities put at a disadvantage : Relational power, resistance, boundary work and capacity building in educational identity formation
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Learning communities Vol. 3, no. (2006), p. 7-39
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- Description: This paper is a modest exercise in theory building from a cultural sociological perspective, around the notion of capacity building as it relates to a group of schools and their community experiencing complex intergenerational difficulties around poverty, ill health, housing problems, student disengagement, disaffection, low levels of school completion, and high levels of withdrawal from school. Central to what I want to explore is the notion of capacity building, which is a term that has its origins in development economics, and is currently experiencing celebrity status as a kind of buzz word to refer to multi-fronted approaches to school and community improvement.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001886
The politics of reform of teachers' work and the consequences for schools : Some implications for teacher education
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 34, no. 3 (2006), p. 301-319
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- Description: This paper argues that we are currently experiencing a debilitating overload of political interference and media hyperbole in respect of teaching and teacher education, and that much of this blitzkrieg amounts to a 'political spectacle' and blatant neo-liberal ideology dressed up as rational analysis. The politics of disparagement being unleashed on public education, and by association teacher education, is intended to laminate over the real issue, which is a cultural war over what is officially allowed to constitute teaching and learning.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001902
An argument for new understandings and explanations of early school leaving that go beyond the conventional
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: London Review of Education Vol. 3, no. 2 (2005), p. 117-130
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- Description: This paper presents an argument around the need to rethink the issue of early school leaving from the vantage point of students and teachers, and the conditions and pathways that need to be constructed and brought into existence within schooling, if such conditions do not already exist. The attempt is to move discussions outside of the well-meaning but ultimately unhelpful literatures of 'at risk' categories that end up blaming students, their families or backgrounds. The claim being advanced is that the focus needs to be on relationships, school cultures, and pedagogical arrangements that make schools more attractive and educationally engaging places.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001466
Foreword
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Teachers' work in Aotearoa New Zealand p. 9-10
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Modernizing the Australian education workplace : A case of failure to deliver for teachers of young disadvantaged adolescents
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Educational Review Vol. 57, no. 2 (2005), p. 221-233
- Full Text: false
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- Description: This article has at its centre the project, discourses and practices of modernization and what these mean practically and existentially for schools. The author argues that schools are, at their core, relational organizations, therefore they are primarily concerned with creating the set of relational resources and conditions that enable learning to take place, among students as well as teachers. When this does not happen, for whatever reasons, schools are very dysfunctional, deeply disturbed and unhappy places. An instance is described of an Australian government school that courageously, and in a politically prudent way, created the space within which to construct a viable relationally-affirming alternative. It is a story about how a school found ways of working against the damaging and prevailing managerialist ethos, and devised ways of uniquely re-inventing and reforming itself against/in spite of the external dominant official reform agenda.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001467