Action, an ‘encompassing ethic’ and academics in the midst of the climate crisis
- Authors: Plowright, Susan
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol. 48, no. 14 (2016), p. 1442-1451
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- Description: In the midst of a crisis like the climate crisis and calls for ‘all hands on deck’, what do academics, as a microcosm of humanity, see? In Hannah Arendt’s terms, an ‘abyss of freedom’ to act or a paralysing ‘abyss of nothingness’? Some from the academy themselves, including Tamboukou, Apple and Bourdieu, make judgements more akin to the latter and mount arguments to urge action. This paper joins their call and theorises ethical and demonstrably plausible resources as a potentially generative heuristic for political action by academics in the face of ‘dark times’. I develop these resources by initially drawing on Arendt’s ethical, but limited, action process. Then, through interpreting and expanding her unfinished theory of judging and echoing Karl Jaspers' concept The Encompassing, I propose the notion of an ‘encompassing ethic’. This ethic, synthesised with Arendt’s action process, ameliorates action’s limitations and suggests the idea of ‘encompassing action’. The paper concludes by bringing these conceptual resources to life through two inspiring historical examples of such action involving academics. © 2016 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia.
What it means to be studying against the grain of neoliberalism in a community-based university programme in a 'disadvantaged area'
- Authors: Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Educational Administration and History Vol. 47, no. 2 (2015), p. 155-173
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- Description: Australia is indicative of a country that is deeply confused and conflicted around a policy discourse of inclusion that is sutured within an existential context heavily committed to the tenets of neoliberalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of higher education, in which the proportion of young people from backgrounds of 'disadvantage' has remained implacably stuck at around 15% for several decades. The research from which this paper comes is an innovative community-based university-provided programme for young people for whom university education was never a realistic possibility - because of family histories, interruption to their lives, of having undertaken forms of secondary education that prevented them from gaining university entrance qualification, or who had terminated their education before completing the secondary years of schooling. This paper explores the story of one young person in his first year in a university programme, as he struggled with obstacles and impediments of a higher education system and set of neoliberal policy discourses that remain deeply sceptical and antagonistic to his trajectory. © 2015 Taylor & Francis.
'Getting a job' : Vocationalism, identity formation, and critical ethnographic inquiry
- Authors: Down, Barry , Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Educational Administration and History Vol. 44, no. 3 (2012), p. 203-219
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
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- Description: This article examines the highly disputed policy nexus around what on the surface appears to be the helpful field of vocational education and training. Despite the promises of vocational education and training to deliver individual labour market success and global competitiveness, the reality is that it serves to residualise unacceptably large numbers of young people, especially those from disadvantaged circumstances, by reinforcing the myth that it is acceptable to have the bifurcation in which some young people work with their hands and not their minds. Furthermore, vocational education and training by itself cannot resolve the fundamental causes of poverty, unemployment, and economic inequality. This article draws on Australian research to describe the insights from a critical ethnographic inquiry in which young people themselves are key informants in making sense of 'getting a job'; how they regard the labour market; the kind of work they find desirable/undesirable; the spaces in which they can see themselves forging an identity as future citizens/workers - and how answers to these questions frame and shape viable, sustainable, and rewarding futures for all young people, not just the privileged few. © 2012 Taylor & Francis.
Simpson, his donkey and the rest of us : Public pedagogies of the value of belonging
- Authors: Tsolidis, Georgina
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol. 42, no. 4 (2010), p. 448-461
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- Description: At the heart of this paper is an exploration of belonging and how this is assumed to connect with a set of values represented as national. There is a particular interest in the relationship between these values and education. Because the significance of the learning that occurs through the public domain outside educational institutions such as schools is assumed, several cultural texts are examined in order to consider public pedagogies of Australianness including iconic displays such as those associated with the Sydney Olympics and the Melbourne Commonwealth Games. Media reports surrounding the Cronulla riots are also examined as a means of understanding the values associated with non-belonging. These cultural texts are considered along side curriculum and policy concerned with values education. Through an exploration of the imaginary, the argument is made that in relation to ethnic difference, an hegemonic narrative has remained at the core of how Australianness is represented, despite multicultural incursions and fears about the cultural dissipation associated with globalisation and so-called postmodern fragmentation. © 2010 The Author. Journal compilation © 2010 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia.