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.
'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.
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.
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.
'Ordinary kids' navigating geographies of educational opportunity in the context of an Australian 'place-based intervention'
- Authors: Smyth, John , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Education Policy Vol. 29, no. 3 (May 2014), p. 285-301
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP110102619
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- Description: This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as 'disadvantaged' in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much more complex process by which aspirations are formed, sustained, contested and maintained by young people who regard themselves as 'ordinary' and as being engaged instead in a process of navigating educational opportunities on the basis of resources available to them.
It's our turn - young people 'tilting' the neoliberal turn
- Authors: Smyth, John , Robinson, Janean , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Youth Studies Vol. 17, no. 4 (2014), p. 492-509
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
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- Description: Education is an important and defining element in young people's lives. When conceived properly, it has the potential to transform opportunities and life chances. It hardly comes as news that in recent times the authors have witnessed the inappropriate intrusion into education of notions of school reform that while they might arguably be in the national economic interest, are highly questionable from the vantage point of young people. In this paper, the authors present some counter-narratives from a group of young Australians who have 'disengaged' or been 'shoved' out of school and who resumed learning under a very different set of conditions to those that exiled them. Through the comments from young people, the authors construct an account of how they came to be categorised as 'at-risk' in the first place, what this pathologising meant to them, and how an alternative approach that invested them with power enabled a more positive identity formation to occur. Notwithstanding its altruistic intent and more humane approach, the authors remain unconvinced on the larger question of 're-engagement to where?' for these young people, and whether the fundamentals have been sufficiently unsettled to enable them a different trajectory.© 2013 Taylor & Francis. Funding: ARC
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.
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.
The socially just school and critical pedagogies in communities put at a disadvantage
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2012
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Critical Studies in Education Vol. 53, no. 1 (2012), p. 9-18
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
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- Description: Public schools around the world have been hijacked and deformed beyond recognition by the forces of the economy over the past three decades. This paper provides an analysis and a way out of this miasma around the notion of the socially just school. While not another prescription, this orientation is argued to be the most hopeful possibility for those parts of the community that have lost the most through the spot-welding of schools onto the economy. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
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
Young people speaking back from the margins
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Education Canada Vol. 50, no. 5 (2010), p.
- Relation: http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/LP100100045
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- Description: The young people the author has worked with are predominantly from backgrounds where they, their families, and their communities have been put at a disadvantage through the effects of social, economic, and political forces and by the flow-on effects of globalization that have effectively devastated their communities and lives. He wants to explore what is happening when young people from contexts of disadvantage adopt a position of making choices against the institution of schooling that appear to be against their own long term economic interests and that may have the effect of further exacerbating their apparent marginalization. These young people -- who are ignored, silenced, and marginalized, whose lives are ridden over, and who either self-exile themselves from schools or are propelled out of them -- are the same young people who have some extremely perceptive views on the very different conditions that can and need to be created for them to learn.
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
Literacy research methodology that is up to the challenge
- Authors: Smyth, John , Whitehead, David
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Language and Education Vol. 21, no. 5 (2007), p. 377-386
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- Description: This paper outlines the methodological dimensions of the secondary literacy research evaluation that is the focus of this special issue - the New Zealand-based Secondary Schools' Literacy Initiative (SSLI). We argue that these methodological dimensions are an example of the type of contextualised and critical research that might be usefully applied in exploring literacy across the curriculum in other national contexts. A particular concern addressed in the paper is the need to develop a contextualised, rich description of literacy practices in schools, while also addressing a wider policy climate, which is often preoccupied with issues of literacy achievement and, particularly, often-entrenched differential achievement for students across class and ethnicity lines. To achieve this, the researchers adopted a quasi-ethnographic, multi-locale, mixed-methods approach intended to enhance the robustness of the research design and the validity of the results. © 2007 J. Smyth & D. Whitehead.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005588
Pedagogy, school culture and teacher learning : Towards more durable and resistant approaches to secondary school literacy
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Language and Education Vol. 21, no. 5 (2007), p. 406-419
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- Description: The relational, cultural and contextual view of literacy discussed in this paper has profound and widespread implications for the way teachers think about their students, their families, backgrounds and experiences and the aspirations students hold for the future. Focussing on the theoretical construct of teacher identity, the paper discusses the ways teachers worked and what happened to the culture of their schools when a structured literacy intervention enabled them to develop some agency as educational professionals, when provided with some 'social space' in respect of their literacy practices. The paper concludes that the teachers were involved to varying degrees in embracing changes that represented a move in the direction of a socially just pedagogy - the paper explains why. © 2007 J. Smyth.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005585
Critical ethnography for school and community renewal around social class differences affecting learning
- Authors: Smyth, John , Angus, Lawrence , Down, Barry , McInerney, Peter
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Learning communities Vol. 3, no. (2006), p. 121-152
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- Description: Understanding and exploring complex and protracted social questions requires sophisticated investigative approaches. In this article we intend looking at a research approach capable of providing a better understanding of what is going on in schools, students and communities in "exceptionally challenging contexts" (Harris et al., 2006)-code for schools and communities that have as a result of wider social forces, been historically placed in situations of disadvantage.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001884
Social capital and the "Socially just school"
- Authors: Smyth, John
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 25, no. 1 (2004), p. 19-33
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- Description: This paper argues that growing inequalities make it imperative that schools reinvent themselves around the issue of social justice. Through a case study of an Australian primary school, teacher-based forms of social capital are explored revealing progressive pedagogies to be an important precursor to the ‘socially just school’.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003000755