Linking physical education with community sport and recreation : A program for adolescent girls
- Authors: Casey, Meghan , Mooney, Amanda , Eime, Rochelle , Harvey, Jack , Smyth, John , Telford, Amanda , Payne, Warren
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Health Promotion Practice Vol. 14, no. 5 (2013), p. 721-731
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP0990206
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- Description: The engagement of adolescent girls in physical activity (PA) is a persistent challenge. School-based PA programs have often met with little success because of the lack of linkages between school and community PA settings. The Triple G program aimed to improve PA levels of secondary school girls (12-15 years) in regional Victoria, Australia. The program included a school-based physical education (PE) component that uniquely incorporated student-centered teaching and behavioral skill development. The school component was conceptually and practically linked to a community component that emphasized appropriate structures for participation. The program was informed by ethnographic fieldwork to understand the contextual factors that affect girls' participation in PA. A collaborative intervention design was undertaken to align with PE curriculum and coaching and instructional approaches in community PA settings. The theoretical framework for the intervention was the socioecological model that was underpinned by both individual-level (social cognitive theory) and organizational-level (building organizational/community capacity) strategies. The program model provides an innovative conceptual framework for linking school PE with community sport and recreation and may benefit other PA programs seeking to engage adolescent girls. The objective of this article is to describe program development and the unique theoretical framework and curriculum approaches.
- Description: The engagement of adolescent girls in physical activity (PA) is a persistent challenge. School-based PA programs have often met with little success because of the lack of linkages between school and community PA settings. The Triple G program aimed to improve PA levels of secondary school girls (12-15 years) in regional Victoria, Australia. The program included a school-based physical education (PE) component that uniquely incorporated student-centered teaching and behavioral skill development. The school component was conceptually and practically linked to a community component that emphasized appropriate structures for participation. The program was informed by ethnographic fieldwork to understand the contextual factors that affect girls' participation in PA. A collaborative intervention design was undertaken to align with PE curriculum and coaching and instructional approaches in community PA settings. The theoretical framework for the intervention was the socioecological model that was underpinned by both individual-level (social cognitive theory) and organizational-level (building organizational/community capacity) strategies. The program model provides an innovative conceptual framework for linking school PE with community sport and recreation and may benefit other PA programs seeking to engage adolescent girls. The objective of this article is to describe program development and the unique theoretical framework and curriculum approaches. © 2012 Society for Public Health Education.
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
'Power, regulation and physically active identities' : the experiences of rural and regional living adolescent girls
- Authors: Casey, Meghan , Mooney, Amanda , Smyth, John , Payne, Warren
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Gender and Education Vol. 28, no. 1 (2016), p. 108-127
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP0990206
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- Description: Drawing on interpretations of Foucault's techniques of power, we explored the discourses and power relations operative between groups of girls that appeared to influence their participation in Physical Education (PE) and outside of school in sport and physical activity (PA) in rural and regional communities. Interviews and focus groups were conducted in eight secondary schools with female students from Year 9 (n = 22) and 10 (n = 116). Dominant gendered and performance discourses were active in shaping girls' construction of what it means to be active or sporty', and these identity positions were normalised and valued. The perceived and real threat of their peer's gaze as a form of surveillance acted to further perpetuate the power of performance discourses; whereby girls measured and (self) regulated their participation. Community settings were normalised as being exclusively for skilled performers and girls self-regulated their non-participation according to judgements made about their own physical abilities. These findings raise questions about the ways in which power relations, as forged in broader sociocultural and institutional discourse-power relations, can infiltrate the level of the PE classroom to regulate and normalise practices in relation to their, and others, PA participation.
'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.
Emplacing young people in an Australian rural community : An extraverted sense of place in times of change
- Authors: Farrugia, David , Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Youth Studies Vol. 17, no. 9 (2014), p. 1152-1167
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- Description: This paper explores the identities of young people in an Australian rural town in relation to contemporary discussions of place and social change. The paper responds to dominant narratives in youth studies which position individualised, reflexive subjectivities at the centre of a homogeneous, placeless modernity with an emplaced analysis of contemporary youth identities. Young people's narratives reveal an attachment to place created in community activities and day to day farm life, articulated in the language of the ‘rural idyll’. Narratives about imagined future lives articulate classed and gendered competencies and dispositions acquired in and through place, reflexively mobilised in life planning practices. Therefore, whilst substantial social changes are reshaping youth identities across rural places, young people's responses to these changes are forged in the way that identities are emplaced, as well as articulated in reflexive orientations towards their future lives. © 2014, © 2014 Taylor & Francis.
Rural young people in late modernity : Place, globalisation and the spatial contours of identity
- Authors: Farrugia, David , Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Current Sociology Vol. 62, no. 7 (2014), p. 1036-1054
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- Description: This article draws together arguments for an interdisciplinary ‘spatial turn’ within sociology to analyse the subjectivities and biographical imaginings of Australian rural youth. It draws on a theoretical dialogue between theories of social change, and developments in socio-spatial theory in order to analyse the spatial contours of young people’s narratives, making a case for the significance of an ‘extraverted’ and porous sense of place for understanding rural youth identity. After a theoretical argument about the contemporary meaning of place for theories of globalisation and individualisation, the article presents two theoretically driven sets of case studies. The first discusses rural youth whose identities speak to the importance of place and ‘the local’ as resources for identity, while the second describes young people whose identities are ‘stretched’ across multiple spaces and locales. The analysis speaks to the importance of place for understanding the forms of reflexivity that rural youth mobilise in constructing their place in the world, and speaks to new ways in which to re-embed sociological analyses of youth within the spatially complex social landscapes of a globalised world.
Affective topologies of rural youth embodiment
- Authors: Farrugia, David , Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Sociologia Ruralis Vol. 56, no. 1 (2016), p. 116-132
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- Description: This article explores the affective, embodied dimensions of young rural people's relationship with space and place. Relationship with space and place has been recognised as a significant dimension of rural youths' subjectivities but it has been primarily understood through representational perspectives which focus on young people's perceptions, images, or discursive constructions of their local places. In contrast, this article draws on non-representational approaches to subjectivity and space to highlight the embodied, sensuous entanglements between young people's subjectivities and the spaces they have inhabited and experienced. Qualitative data gathered as part of a project exploring youths' subjectivities in regional Australia shows that young people's experience of their rural locale, as well as their relationship to the city, reflect an affective topology of relations of proximity and rhythmic tempo which emerges from the relationship between the space of their bodily hexis and the spaces and places they are situated within. These non-representational, embodied processes are intrinsic to rural youths' subjectivities and structure how young people approach and navigate their futures. © 2015 The Authors. Sociologia Ruralis © 2015 European Society for Rural Sociology.
Moral distinctions and structural inequality : homeless youth salvaging the self
- Authors: Farrugia, David , Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Sociological Review Vol. 64, no. 2 (2016), p. 238-255
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- Description: This paper explores the construction and contestation of moral distinctions as a dimension of contemporary structural inequality through a focus on the subjectivities constructed by young people who have experienced homelessness. Empirical material from two research projects shows that in young people's narratives of homelessness, material insecurity intertwines with the moral economies at work in neoliberal capitalist societies to construct homelessness as a state of moral disgrace, in which an ungovernable experience is experienced as a moral failure. When young people gain access to secure housing, the increasing stability and security of their lives is narrated in terms of a moral adherence to personal responsibility and disciplined conduct. Overall the paper describes an economy of worth organized around distinctions between order and chaos, self-governance and unruliness, morality and disgrace, which structures the experience of homelessness. As young people's position in relation to these moral ideals reflects the material conditions of their lives, their experiences demonstrate the way that moral hierarchies contribute to the existence and experience of structural inequalities in neoliberal capitalist societies. © 2016 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review.
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
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
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
'Coming to a place near you?' The politics and possibilities of a critical pedagogy of place-based education
- Authors: McInerney, Peter , Smyth, John , Down, Barry
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education Vol. 39, no. 1 (2011), p. 3-16
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- Description: It may seem something of a paradox that in a globalised age where notions of interdependence, interconnectedness and common destinies abound, the 'local', with its diversity of cultures, languages, histories and geographies, continues to exercise a powerful grip on the human imagination. The ties that bind us have global connections but are anchored in a strong sense of locality. This paper explores the theoretical foundations of place-based education (PBE) and considers the merits and limitations of current approaches with particular reference to Australian studies. The authors argue that there is a place for PBE in schools but contend that it must be informed by a far more critical reading of the notions of 'place', 'identity' and 'community'. The implications of pursuing a critical pedagogy of place-based education are discussed with reference to curriculum, pedagogy and teacher education.
'I want to get a piece of paper that says I can do stuff': youth narratives of educational opportunities and constraints in low socio-economic neighbourhoods
- Authors: McInerney, Peter , Smyth, John
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Ethnography and Education Vol. 9, no. 3 (September 2014), p. 239-252
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP110102619
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- Description: The persistent failure of contemporary policies to improve school retention rates and close the achievement gap between students from low and high socio-economic (SES) backgrounds should be a matter of grave concern. In this article, we set out to show what it means to be educated in a context of disadvantage from the perspectives of young people attending a senior secondary public school in regional Australia. Acknowledging that youth are experts in their own lives, we draw extensively on student narratives of the funds of knowledge and opportunity structures that support and/or constrain education and employment opportunities in low-income neighbourhoods. Although young peoples' stories of hope and agency go some way to undermining the deficit thinking about these students and their families, we argue that the realisation of their aspirations requires institutional support and policies that address the systemic causes of educational disadvantage.
Student Engagement for Equity and Social Justice: Creating Space for Student Voice
- Authors: McMahon, Brenda , Munns, Geoff , Zyngier, David , Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Teaching & Learning Vol. 7, no. 2 (2012), p. 63-78
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- Description: This paper describes three student engagement initiatives that have been successfully implemented in Australia and Canada, where social justice educators are struggling with issues resulting from reforms that marginalize visible minority and low-income students. The projects envision student engagement in critical democratic ways. Using different strategies, they are informed by approaches that: respect students, educators and teaching/learning processes; connect on emotional as well as cognitive levels; and shift away from narrow notions of schooling to broader visions of education for marginalized students. Transferable to other locations, these programmes provide insights into what is possible when student engagement is enacted in equitable, socially just, and transformative environments.
- Description: C1
'You're no-one if you're not a netball girl': Rural and regional living adolescent girls' negotiation of physically active identities
- Authors: Mooney, Amanda , Casey, Meghan , Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Annals of Leisure Research Vol. 15, no. 1 (2012), p. 19-37
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP0990206
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- Description: Despite the widely articulated health implications of physical inactivity, declines in youth participation levels, particularly for adolescent girls, have fuelled social and moral panics about the importance of regular physical activity. Recent attempts to explain these participation trends have focused on the institutional and cultural discourses that are drawn on to construct particular identities and social practices connected with sport, physical education and leisure interests. In this paper we report on the findings of data collected through interview and focus group sessions with 138 females ranging from 14 to 16 years of age across six rural and regional communities in the state of Victoria, Australia. Adopting a feminist poststructuralist methodology and drawing on the work of Foucault, we explore the impact that dominant discourse-power relations operating in the context of rural and regional sport and physical education can have in the negotiation of physically active identities for adolescent girls.
'Not everyone has a perfect life' : Becoming somebody without school
- Authors: Robert, Hattam , Smyth, John
- Date: 2003
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Pedagogy, Culture & Society Vol. 11, no. 3 (2003), p. 379-398
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- Description: This article draws on the Students Completing Schooling Project, conducted in Australia, which has developed an account of early school leaving though listening to how 209 young people made sense of their experiences of leaving school. In this study, we were keen to understand the way young people deliberate upon how schooling fits into their plans for living a life: for 'becoming somebody'. We propose understanding early school leaving as a tactical manoeuvre and part of the complex process of identity formation. Our interview material indicates that a powerful 'interactive trouble' contributes to the non-completion of school and involves underestimating the demands of private life, especially for those living in poverty.
- Description: 2003003524
Pushed out, shut out: Addressing unjust geographies of schooling and work
- Authors: Robinson, Janean , Down, Barry , Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal on School Disaffection Vol. 9, no. 2 (2012), p. 7-24
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
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- Description: In neo-liberal times educational policy and practice is being realigned more closely to the shifting imperatives of the market with damaging effects on the lives of young people. Whilst the rhetoric suggests that schools are safe, welcoming and caring environments for the benefit of all, the veracity is very different for significant numbers of marginalised students who face fragile, uncertain and unpredictable futures. This paper draws on a number of research projects in Australia to investigate the lived reality of students who are struggling to make sense of school and their transition to 'getting a job'. The research is neither impartial nor neutral. It draws on the tradition of critical policy ethnography to identify, describe and map the kinds of conditions that both constrain and enable the aspirations, dreams and hopes of young people for productive and rewarding lives. The intent is to unsettle commonsense and deficit understandings of school life that serve to oppress and marginalise the least advantaged students.
Crisis of youth or youth in crisis? Education, employment and legitimation crisis
- Authors: Simmons, Robin , Smyth, John
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Lifelong Education Vol. 35, no. 2 (2016), p. 136-152
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- Description: This paper uses the Habermasian concept of legitimation crisis to critique the relationship between post-compulsory education and training and the chronic levels of youth unemployment and under-employment which now characterise post-industrial Western economies, such as the UK. It draws on data from an ethnographic study of the lives of young people classified as NEET (not in education, employment or training), or at risk of becoming so to challenge dominant discourses about youth unemployment and the supposed relationship between worklessness, skills deficits and young people’s lack of ‘work-readiness’. The central argument of the paper is that the labour market insecurity experienced by many young people in the UK and elsewhere derives not from some supposed crisis of youth but is symptomatic of the inherent contradictions contained within capitalist modes of production which, it is argued, are exacerbated under neo-liberal policy regimes. The paper contends that various government-led initiatives which purport to prepare young people for the workplace, create links between the individual and the labour market, or force the unemployed into the labour market are, in Habermasian terms, part of an attempt to resolve the crisis of legitimation associated with contemporary capitalist societies. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
"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
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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
Critically engaged community capacity building and the 'community organizing' approach in disadvantaged contexts
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Critical Studies in Education Vol. 50, no. 1 (2009), p. 9-22
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP0665569
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- Description: This paper critiques the notion of community capacity building (CCB) and the way it is increasingly being invoked in social policy as a way of tackling disadvantage. The paper argues that CCB and a number if its derivative terms are not as straightforward as they appear. Superficially, CCB presents as a useful way of approaching school and community reform in contexts of disadvantage, but closer analysis reveals it to be pre-disposed to deployment as a cover under which to blame schools and communities, while handing over responsibility. What is posited as an alternative is a 'community organizing' approach that is more political, activist, and attuned to providing forms of analysis and leadership skills with which communities and schools can begin to tackle some of the underlying conditions producing the debilitating inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Critical Studies in Education is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
- Description: 2003007956