The expendable teacher in covid-19 times : a poetic inquiry into the reconfiguration of governmentality in victorian schools
- Authors: Zonca, Benjamin , Ambrosy, Josh
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies Vol. 19, no. 1 (2021), p. 212-248
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- Description: The actualization of a neoliberal rationality has been widely explored in global education policy and Australian schools. This paper draws on engagements with neoliberalism as rationality made ‘real’ through government practices, specifically those that reify the teaching profession into one of risk-management and problem-solving at the expense of deliberation about purposes. In this paper, redacted policy poetry and participant-voiced poetry are employed in parallel to explore the COVID-19 crisis as it emerged in the State of Victoria, Australia with a specific focus on the reconfiguration of risk-management discourses through blanket policy directive. This paper identifies and explores three themes highlighted by this reconfiguration of risk discourse and shifts in modes of governance during this time that are magnified by a teacher’s affective and practical responses to the situation. They are: (1) collective teacher response to overt policy decisions that compel the teacher to embrace risk; (2) contradictions of expectation for schools to continue as usual; and (3) an explicit shift away from instrumental evidence-based pedagogies toward new purposes, pedagogies, and community engagement with little guidance. © 2021, Institute for Education Policy Studies. All rights reserved.
The essence of being a year nine teacher
- Authors: Ambrosy, Josh
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Curriculum Perspectives Vol. 43, no. 2 (2023), p. 169-181
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- Description: Year nine students present a perpetual problem to schools and teachers alike. Typically aged 14 or 15 years old, year nines simultaneously experience puberty and adolescence. These converging life stages result in students’ whom teachers have described as being lost, disengaged and, more alarmingly, in never-never land. A largely unrecognised group of schools and teachers in Victoria, Australia, have chosen a novel approach to engaging year nine students through specific schooling structures and targeted curriculum—I term these approaches year nine programmes. These programmes typically involve different structures to mainstream schooling, including residential components, a greater focus on learning through experience and the use of an integrated curriculum. This paper shares the stories of six teachers who work on one such programme. The stories of the teachers are shared using phenomenological found poetry in search of the ‘essences’ of being a year nine teacher. Through the presentation of these essences, I argue that teachers of year nine programmes are required to have an accoutrement of skills, in addition to the skills needed by teachers who work in more mainstream settings. © 2023, The Author(s).
COVID-19 and national sport events : a case study of the sport event logistics for the 2021 Australian Road Nationals Cycling Championships
- Authors: Thomson, Alana , Kaufmann, Kipp , Archer, Verity , Halabi, Abdel , Ambrosy, Josh
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Routledge Handbook of Sport and COVID-19 Chapter 32 p. 341-351
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- Description: This chapter is focused on sport events hosted at a national level. In meeting this aim, the chapter explores the impact of COVID-19 on a national sport event held in Australia as the major case study. The authors conducted a detailed analysis on a national road cycling event held in Ballarat in the state of Victoria. The city of Ballarat hosted the 2021 Australian Road Nationals Cycling Championships, with this national event providing a series of COVID-19-related logistical and event management challenges that are documented and dissected in the chapter. © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Stephen Frawley and Nico Schulenkorf; individual chapters, the contributors.