Student voices 'echo' from the ethnographic field
- Authors: Robinson, Janean , Down, Barry , Smyth, John
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Leaving the field : methodological insights from ethnographic exits Chapter 8 p. 126-138
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Critical social science as a research methodology in universities in times of crisis
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Qualitative Research Journal Vol. 20, no. 4 (2020), p. 351-360
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- Description: Purpose: To consider what a criticalist qualitative research methodology might look like for universities in the context of the contemporary COVID-19 crisis. Design/methodology/approach: This polemical paper explores the rationale for a dramatic recasting of the approach needed in qualitative research methodology to address the challenges of the crisis-ridden times we live in. Broadly conceived of as an “evolving criticality”, to borrow from Kincheloe, the paper addresses the kind of disposition, orientation or state of mind required that provides the space and opportunities in universities within which this strategic methodological reinvention might occur. After explaining what a research methodology committed to the notion of “criticality” might look like, the paper argues that to enact this we need to start with the immediacy of our own academic work and then emanate to other public spheres. Findings: The polemical exchange engaged in by this paper presents the underpinnings of how critical social science might be deployed in both reconceiving how we understand the purpose of research in universities and changing the nature of academic work. Research limitations/implications: These exist only in so far as university academics are prepared to embrace what is being argued for to change the status quo. Practical implications: The broader critical social science methodology being argued for in this paper is using a wider framing to a form of critical ethnography that has the potential to enable academic workers to extricate themselves from the ruinous situation brought on by the neoliberal paradigm that has been so drastically exacerbated by COVID-19. Originality/value: While the paper rehearses some existing ideas of critical social science, the novelty of the papers lies in the way these are applied to the COVID-19 crisis within which universities have become embroiled. © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited.
Jacinta's story : challenging neoliberal practices and creating democratic spaces in public high schools
- Authors: Robinson, Janean , Down, Barry , Smyth, John
- Date: 2019
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Re-Imagining Education for Democracy p. 156-173
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Class, dispositions and radical politics -- A rejoinder
- Authors: Smyth, John , Simmons, Robin
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies Vol. 16, no. 3 (2018), p. 185-193
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- Description: This paper is a rejoinder to James Avis' paper: "A Note on Class, Dispositions and Radical Politics" which is, in turn, a critique of the opening chapter of the book "Education and Working-Class Youth: Reshaping the Politics of Inclusion," written by the authors of this article. Here we deal with each of the criticisms raised by Avis, including his accusation that our position is reductionist and fails to recognise the complex nature of social class in contemporary society. In doing this, we re-emphasise our relational perspective on education and social class.
Education and social class : How did we get to this and what needs to change?
- Authors: Simmons, Robin , Smyth, John
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Education and Working-Class Youth: Reshaping the Politics of Inclusion Chapter 10 p. 233-259
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- Description: This chapter locates the classed nature of education within a critical socio-historical framework, and considers how questions of social class are played out not only in the classroom but also at the institutional and the systemic level. Historical and contemporary debates about the nature and purpose of education are used to challenge the status quo, and present an agenda for change. The chapter argues that re-engaging with social class as a key organising concept is necessary in order to understand the nature of contemporary schooling in western neoliberal societies such as the UK, and to re-imagine young people’s relationship with education. This, it is argued, is necessary to re-engage working-class youth in ways that are not only meaningful but also socially and economically just.
Education and working-class youth : Reshaping the politics of inclusion
- Authors: Simmons, Robin , Smyth, John
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book
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- Description: This book provides an inclusive and incisive analysis of the experiences of working-class young people in education. While there is an established literature on education and the working class stretching back decades, comparatively there has been something of a neglect of class-based inequality – with questions of gender, ‘race’ and other forms of identity attracting significant attention. However, events including Britain's 2016 decision to leave the European Union, have thrown social class into sharp focus, both in the UK and elsewhere. Featuring leading thinkers in the sociology of education, this book examines the different ways in which young people relate to various parts of the education system, including different forms of schooling, post-compulsory and university education. They maintain that the issue of social class goes beyond the walls of specific institutions to affect young people in a variety of ways: not only in the UK, but across the globe. This book will be of great value and interest to students and scholars of the sociology of education, working-class youth, and equality of opportunity.
Where is class in the analysis of working-class education?
- Authors: Smyth, John , Simmons, Robin
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Education and Working-Class Youth: Reshaping the Politics of Inclusion Chapter 1 p. 1-28
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- Description: This chapter provides the backdrop and sets the tone for the book. It begins by scoping out some of the challenges and injustices facing working-class youth, and by highlighting some of the mismatches between the structures and processes of education and the lives of many working-class young people. It then goes on to develop an alternative agenda which, it is argued, is necessary to engage working-class youth in relevant and meaningful ways, and to challenge the dominant structures of schooling and education which systematically disadvantage so many young people. The chapter finishes by proving a brief overview of the chapters which follow, and by highlighting some of the key themes explored in the rest of the book.`
'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.
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.
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.
Critical perspectives on educational leadership in the context of the march of neoliberalism
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Ideologies in Educational Administration and Leadership p. 147-158
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Geographies of trust : A politics of resistance for an alternative education
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Palgrave International Handbook of Alternative Education Chapter 25 p. 385-400
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- Description: This state-of-the-art, comprehensive Handbook fully explores the field of alternative education on an international scale. Alternatives to mainstream schooling and education are becoming increasingly recognised as pertinent and urgent for better understanding what really works in successfully educating children and adults today, especially in light of the increased performance driven and managerially organised economic modelling of education that dominates. For too long we have wondered what exactly education done otherwise might look like and here we meet individual examples as well as seeing what alternative education is when a collection becomes greater than the sum of parts. The Handbook profiles numerous empirical examples from around the world of education being done in innovative and excitingly democratic and autonomous ways from Forest Schools and Home Education through to new technologies, neuroscience and the importance of solitude. The book also sets out important theoretical perspectives to inform us why seeing education through an alternative lens is useful as well as urgently needed. Global in its perspective and definitive in content, this one-stop volume will be an indispensable reference resource for a wide range of academics, students and researchers in the fields of Education, Education Policy, Sociology and Philosophy as well as educational practitioners.
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.
'Give me air not shelter': critical tales of a policy case of student re-engagement from beyond school
- Authors: Smyth, John , Robinson, Janean
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Education Policy Vol. 30, no. 2 (2015), p. 220-236
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
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- Description: This paper tackles what is arguably one of the most pressing and intractable educational issues confronting western democracies and the disengagement and disconnection from schooling of alarming numbers of young people. The paper looks at the policy response in Victoria, Australia, and through ethnographic interviews with a small number of young people; it finds a significant mismatch between the policy intent of re-engagement programmes, and the experiences of young people themselves. It seems that this is an instance of what might be termed policy deafness, a situation that will likely produce devastating consequences unless corrected.
- Description: This paper tackles what is arguably one of the most pressing and intractable educational issues confronting western democracies – the disengagement and disconnection from schooling of alarming numbers of young people. The paper looks at the policy response in Victoria, Australia, and through ethnographic interviews with a small number of young people; it finds a significant mismatch between the policy intent of re-engagement programmes, and the experiences of young people themselves. It seems that this is an instance of what might be termed policy deafness, a situation that will likely produce devastating consequences unless corrected.
Critical voices from adolescent shape shifters- accessing portraits in 'Becoming Educated'
- Authors: Smyth, John , Hewitson, Robyn
- Date: 2015
- Type: Journal article
- Relation: Children's geographies. Vol. 13 . No. 6 (2015) p.692-707
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP110102619
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- Description: What young people have to say about schooling can be most revealing, particularly when they expose and challenge the injustices and logic of school policies and practices. This paper captures voices from secondary school students from a school in Victoria, Australia, as part of a research project called Becoming Educated. The paper explores a particular geography of youth around the notion of 'shape shifter' as it relates to young people's education in two ways: first, in understanding the changing roles and identities of students as observers of, and participants in, education policies and practices; and second, as a way of interpreting the intent of those who 'shape' new ideas and policies to create a kind of 'temporary alteration of outside appearances for the purpose of deception' [Merchant, B. 1995. "Current Educational Reform: 'Shape-shifting' or Genuine Improvements in the Quality of Teaching and Learning?" Educational Theory 45 (2, Spring): 251-268]. The latter has a particularly significant impact on the former, and this paradox is not one that goes unnoticed by young people. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.
The ‘hidden transcripts’ of digital natives in the peri-urban jungle : Young people making sense of their use of social/digital media
- Authors: Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Educational Practice and Theory Vol. 37, no. 1 (2015), p. 5-17
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- Description: The way young people engage with and make sense of digital/social media is not quite what it seems. In this paper we present two quite different versions, drawing on the work of political scientist James C. Scott. On the one hand, there is the ‘public’ or official transcript or rendition, which comprises the way adults conceive of this usage, and in which young people acquiesce with. On the other hand, in order to subvert the former, what is going on concurrently, is a hidden transcript which is opaque to outsiders and is revealed only to other young ‘insiders’. Acquiescing with the former, in a sense, provides young people with the space in which to construct a much more resistant version of their usage of digital media. © 2015 James Nicholas Publishers.
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
Vulnerable, 'at risk', 'disengaged'. Regional young people.
- Authors: Farrugia, David , Smyth, John , Harrison, Tim
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Interrogating Conceptions of “Vulnerable Youth” in Theory, Policy and Practice p. 165-179
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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.
'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.