'Voiced' research as a sociology for understanding 'dropping out' of school
- Authors: Smyth, John , Hattam, Robert
- Date: 2001
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 22, no. 3 (Spetember 2001 2001), p. 402-415
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- Description: How people obtain more complex understandings of the phenomenon of 'dropping out' of school is one of the most urgent policy and practice issues facing educational practitioners, policy-makers and sociological researchers at the moment. Smyth and Hattam argue that a different 'sociological imagination' is required--one that is simultaneously more attentive to the lifeworlds of young people and more reflexive of its own agenda.
Education reform makes no sense without social class
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article , Review
- Relation: British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 35, no. 6 (2014), p. 953-962
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- Description: In enlightened and civilised societies we like to think that the blatantly racist eugenics movement that involved social selection based upon genetic traits is a disgraceful notion relegated to the past; but it seems not, it has just re-emerged in another form through the back door. It is an interesting question as to why social class continues to remain such a verboten topic, and to understand why we need to get inside what is going on. I can get to the essence of my argument quickly through an example from a university colleague: ‘This is bullshit,’ the student muttered under her breath. The tutorial topic assigned for that week was class. I’d kicked things off by asking whether class existed in modern Australia, or whether it was a relic of nineteenth century Europe. Struck by the student’s response, I asked her to elaborate. She did: Look, I went to private school and my Dad’s a CEO and most of his friends are business people. So I guess that’s supposed to make me upper class? But class has nothing to do with it. Going to a private school was my parents’ decision. And my Dad’s friends are just his friends. I suggested that the choice of school – not to mention the capacity to affordthe fees – and her father’s friendship network might have been heavily shaped by their class position. That wasn’t to say there was anything wrong with it, but it did show how our lives are shaped by larger social and economic forces we don’t control. The student was having none of it. It was clear that she’d encountered the notion of class before and found it singularly unconvincing. In her world, everything was simply a matter of individual choice – choices that were unconstrained … [and while] she didn’t actually say it, … class seemed to be an excuse for people who made the wrong choices in life. (Scanlon 2014)
Engaging the education sector: A policy orientation to stop damaging our schools
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Learning Communities Vol. , no. 1 (2003), p. 22-40
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- Description: In this paper the author makes a passionate 'plea for discontent', arguing that there is something fundamentally wrong with the overall direction of education policy as it is being applied to schools, and that new ways of re-engaging with it must be found. The author commences by arguing for a proposition, presenting some evidence from some research, and using that as a basis for suggesting a fundamental re-think in the way educational policy operates in relation to schools. In doing this, he underscores the centrality and significance of social capital as the basis for this re-engagement. The underlying question concerns how educational policy making is to be engaged so that it is central to institutional building. With the threat of losing schools as social institutions under the current regime of educational policy, the author argues that new ways of re-engaging educational policy beyond parallel discourses are needed. The underlying proposition is that schools that succeed are ones that have trusting relationships between school systems, teachers, parents and students. Trust between those making educational policy and schools, produces better outcomes for all, and trust is given expression through meaningful partnerships, authentic accountability, and distributed (or enabling) leadership. Social capital is central to any educational policy re-engagement with schools. The underlying argument of this paper is that schools have a social responsibility as places that 'manufacture hope' often in situations of increasing 'despair' and adversity.
Making 'space' : young people put at a disadvantage re-engaging with learning
- Authors: Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 34, no. 1 (2013), p. 39-55
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
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- Description: Young people who disengage or disconnect from school are often demonised within the media and the wider public imagination, from a largely individualized and pathological positioning. Policy explanations and responses are often unhelpful in their focus on a range of 'deficit' attributes - poverty, poor parenting, dysfunctional families, low familial achievement, aspiration and motivation, and other 'at risk' categories. This paper offers a different explanatory framework that foregrounds the experiences of some young people who had disengaged from school and resumed learning under a very different set of conditions to the ones that had exiled them from schools in the first place. Using a socio-spatial framework, the paper explores the notion of 'relational space' as it was appropriated and reclaimed by these young people, in explaining how they saw themselves as constructing viable and sustainable learning identities for themselves. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
- Description: 2003010681
Tackling school leaving at its Source: A case of reform in the middle years of schooling
- Authors: Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter , Hattam, Robert
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British journal of sociology of education Vol. 24, no. 2 (2003), p. 177-193
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- Description: One of the most pervasive educational issues confronting Australia, and other countries, at the moment is the declining completion rates in high schools. While a period of success was experienced after the Second World War, there is now a pressing need to reform high schools in the ways they connect with young lives. In this paper, we present a 'sociology of the high school' as a way of encapsulating the high school as an institution that: is still largely stuck in a 'continuity of practice' (Elmore, 1987); has an 'attachment to familiar pedagogical routines' (Eisner, 1992); fails to listen to students; is hierarchically structured; treats students in immature ways; is hung up with passing on content; and seems more concerned with insulating itself from, rather connecting with or appropriating, young lives into the curriculum. As an alternative, we examine the notion of middle schooling that requires a version of whole school reform that engages with structures, cultures and changing pedagogy in ways more resonant with, and respectful of, young lives. We examine the tensions and dilemmas experienced at Investigator [1] High School in Australia, and conclude that the centerpiece has to be breaking the mold of the 'scripted' teacher and its replacement by the 'teacher-as-improviser'.