International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713760008~db=all

6 times a year.
=============================================================

Issue 6 2007

International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume 20 Issue 6

2007

Free spaces: excavating race, class, and gender among urban schools and
communities

Author: A. A. Akom a
Affiliation: a San Francisco State University, USA
Published in: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume
20, Issue 6 November 2007 , pages 611 - 616
Subject: Research Methods in Education;

Abstract
This article introduces the concept of 'free spaces' as an important site for the
development of theory and practice around youth activism, teacher development, and
the transformation of public and private space in urban schools and communities.
Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Evans and Boyte (1986) introduced the concept of
'free spaces' in their book: Free spaces: the sources of democratic change in America.
Their goal was to highlight the invisible ways in which ordinary people organize
themselves and democratize their communities. The authors in this special issue
implicitly and explicitly use the concept of 'free spaces' to chronicle how lives unfold
in contested spaces - not flat, seemingly 'neutral' spaces - but socially produced
spaces, spaces imbued with racialized, gendered, and hetero-normative values and the
hidden agenda of our society (Lefebvre, 1974; Hayden, 1995). Specifically, the
authors seek to broaden our understanding of the social forces impacting on education
inside and outside schools, with a focus on the role of agency to respond in
transformative ways to these conditions.
================================================
Issue 5 2007

A conversation on practices of the self within relations of power: for scholars

who speak dangerous truths

Author: M. Francyne Huckaby a

Affiliation: a Texas Christian University, USA
Published in: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume
20, Issue 5 September 2007 , pages 513 - 529
First Published on: 15 March 2007
Subject: Research Methods in Education;
Abstract
Through the voices of scholars and metalogues, this paper merges the experiences of
five professors of education who disrupt the status quo with Foucault's scholarship on
practices of the self and parrhesia (the speaking of dangerous truths). The scholars
challenge hegemony in education and its effects on students of color and students with
limited economic resources. Their voices, presented as narratives in the text, are based
on interviews with the professors. Metalogues, imagined conversations with Foucault,
are used to illustrate the ways this paper draws on Foucault's scholarship. Attention is
paid to how the scholars practice technologies of the self within relations of power
through three lenses (1) self-knowledge: resisting repression, seduction and desire, (2)
political activity and tactics, and (3) the self within systems of subjugation. A
metalogue for scholars interested in advocating for social justice that supports the
interests of local communities in urban environments ends the article.

Writing a rhizome: an (im)plausible methodology

Author: Eileen Honan a

Affiliation: a The University of Queensland, Australia
Published in: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume
20, Issue 5 September 2007 , pages 531 - 546
First Published on: 13 October 2006
Subject: Research Methods in Education;
Abstract
In this paper the author provides an overview of a rhizomatic methodology using illustrations
from her doctoral thesis, where she used Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) thinking about rhizomes
in three different ways. First, using the figuration of a rhizome allowed her to construct her
thesis as non-linear with self-conscious attention paid to the writing of the text. Second, she
understood the texts under analysis as rhizomatic, which enabled her to produce an account of
the linkages and connections between various discursive plateaus. Third, she applied a method
of rhizo-textual analysis that mapped the connections between the texts under analysis and
stories about teaching told by herself, the research participants, and popular and academic texts
on teachers and teaching.
=============================================================

Issue 4 2007
=====================================
================
Issue 3 2007
Neoliberalism and education

Authors: Bronwyn Davies - Bronwyn Davies is a Professor and a member of the University of
Western Sydney Centre for Educational Research. She is well known for her work on gender,
classroom research and her writing on poststructuralist theory. More recently she has been
working on collective biography, body/landscape relations, critical literacy, and a critique of
neoliberalism as it impacts on subjectivities at work.a; Peter Bansel - Peter Bansel is a Senior
Research Assistant at the University of Western Sydney. He is working on an Australian
Research Council funded project with Bronwyn Davies and Valerie Walkerdine, exploring the
impacts of changes in the labour market on worker subjectivity.a
Affiliation: a Education Research Centre, University of Western Sydney, Australia Published
in: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume 20, Issue 3 May 2007
, pages 247 - 259
Subject: Research Methods in Education;

Abstract
The discourses and practices of neoliberalism, including government policies for education and
training, public debates regarding standards and changed funding regimes, have been at work
on and in schools in capitalist societies since at least the 1980s. Yet we have been hard pressed
to say what neoliberalism is, where it comes from and how it works on us and through us to
establish the new moral order of schools and schooling, and to produce the new student/subject
who is appropriate to (and appropriated by) the neoliberal economy. Beck (1997) refers to the
current social order as the 'new modernities' and he characterizes the changes bringing about
the present forms of society as having been both surreptitious and unplanned, that is, as being
invisible and difficult to make sense of. In eschewing a theory in which anyone or any group
may have been planning and benefiting from the changes, he falls back on the idea of natural
and inevitable development, and optimistically describes the changes of the last two to three
decades as the inevitable outcome of the victories of capitalism. The authors' approach is not
so optimistic, and they do not accept the idea of the natural inevitability of the changes. The
approach that is taken in this issue is to examine neoliberalism at work through a close
examination of the texts and talk through which neoliberal subjects and their schooling have
been constituted over the last two decades. In this Introduction the authors provide their own
take on the way the present social and political order has emerged as something that its
Subjects of choice and lifelong learning

Author: Peter Bansel - Peter Bansel is a Senior Research Assistant at the University
of Western Sydney. He is working on an Australian Research Council funded project
with Bronwyn Davies and Valerie Walkerdine, exploring the impacts of changes in the
labour market on worker subjectivity.a
Affiliation: a University of Western Sydney, Australia
Published in: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume
20, Issue 3 May 2007 , pages 283 - 300
Subject: Research Methods in Education;

Abstract
This paper addresses some of the discursive practices of neoliberal government
through which the subject is constituted as a subject of choice - subjects whose life
trajectory is shaped by the imperatives of a labour market in which they will become
mobile and flexible workers with multiple careers and jobs. Mobility among these
multiple careers and jobs is secured through ongoing investment in education and
training: an investment in lifelong learning. The paper analyses the ways in which
neoliberal discourses of freedom and choice are mapped onto discourses of the
market, and of the labour market in particular, and recognizes the centrality of
education and training as sites and technologies for the production of mobile and
flexible worker/subjects. Drawing on life-history narratives of forty 18- to 65-year-
olds, the paper addresses the discourses of choice, education and lifelong learning
through which mobility within and adaptation to the labour market is understood as
necessary, desirable and essential to successful negotiation of the multiple
opportunities the participants believed were available to them now and in the future.

Thwarting desire: discursive constraint and pedagogic practice

Author: Megan Watkins - Megan Watkins is Senior Lecturer in Literacy and

Pedagogy in the School of Education at the University of Western Sydney. She is the
co-author of Genre, Text, Grammar: Technologies for Teaching and Assessing Writing
(2005, UNSW Press). Her research interests are in the areas of pedagogy, affect,
desire and embodiment. She has published scholarly articles in the areas of pedagogy,
affect and the role of the body in learning.a
Affiliation: a University of Western Sydney, Australia
Published in: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume
20, Issue 3 May 2007 , pages 301 - 318
Subject: Research Methods in Education;
]
Abstract
This article examines the ways in which the desire to teach is often thwarted within
contemporary pedagogic practice by a set of discursive constraints that draws heavily
on both progressivist notions of teaching and learning and neoliberal forms of
governance. In many Western countries teaching is conceived more as facilitation
rather than instruction. In primary/elementary schools in Australia, for example, this
has resulted in a shift in emphasis from whole-class instruction to group-based and
independent learning. To investigate this shift, and its impact on teaching, a series of
interviews was conducted with 12 teachers and their principals across three state
primary/elementary schools. While a range of perspectives was evident, it became
clear that the desire to teach was more obviously realized through whole-class
instruction and teachers also considered this a more effective means of curriculum
delivery. Many, however, were reluctant to admit this as they felt that instruction was
not deemed 'appropriate pedagogy'. In addition to this, neoliberal practices concerning
organization and accountability were also seen to be impacting upon these teachers, all
of which had a constraining influence on their desire to teach.

Cultural complicities: elitism, heteronormativity and violence in the education

marketplace

Author: Sue Saltmarsh - Sue Saltmarsh is a Senior Lecturer in the Cultural Politics of
Education in the School of Teacher Education at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst.
Her research concerns the discursive production of subjectivities and social relations,
with particular reference to issues of institutional violence and educational
consumption.a
Affiliation: a Charles Sturt University, Australia
DOI: 10.1080/09518390701281934
Publication Frequency: 6 issues per year
Published in: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume
20, Issue 3 May 2007 , pages 335 - 354
Subject: Research Methods in Education;
Abstract
Educational discourse in Australia has been dramatically altered in recent decades as
neoliberal choice policies favouring an increasingly marketized, tiered educational
landscape have witnessed a burgeoning of private sector schooling. In this climate,
many perceive private sector schooling as providing moral, social and academic
benefits beyond those available to students in the public sector. Amid rhetorics of
excellence and accountability that pervade discourses of private schooling, however,
recent high-profile incidents of violence involving students at elite private schools
provide a powerful provocation to these dominant discourses, and call into question a
range of cultural practices associated with elite schooling. In this paper, the author
draws on data generated from a three-year study of sexually violent incidents that took
place at an elite boys' school in Sydney, Australia and their representation in the public
domain, to consider how discourses of elitism, heteronormativity and violence
circulate in dialogue. Through analysis of school- and media-generated texts, and
interviews with a former student and parents of the school, it is argued that the
education marketplace is a site of disjuncture and contradiction, in which the
privileges of private school consumption are simultaneously upheld and revoked in a
complex interplay of school, media and social discourse. In so doing, the author
considers how a range of cultural and institutional practices are complicit in the
production of violence.

Issue 2 2007
====================================
================
Issue 1 2007

Mapping literacy practices: theory, methodology, methods

Authors: Greg Mannion a; Roz Ivani b; the Literacies for Learning in Further
Education b; Research Group b
Affiliations: a University of Stirling, Scotland
b
Lancaster University, UK
Published in: International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Volume
20, Issue 1 January 2007 , pages 15 - 30
Subject: Research Methods in Education;

Abstract
The Literacies for Learning in Further Education (LfLFE) research project has been
funded for three years from January 2004 as part of Phase 3 of the Teaching and
Learning Research Programme in the UK. The project involves collaboration between
two universities and four further education (FE) colleges. The intention is to
investigate students' everyday literacy practices and explore ways of mobilizing these
to enhance their learning on college courses. The LfLFE project does not view
literacy as a set of individual skills and competences alone, but as emergent and
situated in particular social contexts (Barton et al., 2000). As such, literacy practices
are not static or bounded spatially or temporally. A central concern for the project is to
understand how the literacy demands of college life and being a student relate to
students' other literacy practices. As part of the work of the project, the group is
undertaking a 'mapping' of the literacy demands associated with student learning
across a wide range of FE courses. This paper explores the methodological debates in
planning and operationalizing this mapping.