Okay, perhaps a little melodramatic there, but after I’d got up at 2 am on Saturday to set up polling booths and then spent the whole day handing out how to vote cards before scrutineering, I can probably get away with being a little deflates about the whole election thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the whole business – it was interesting to see how it all worked – t he blood and guts of Australian democracy so to speak, but it was also a little disheartening in the end.

Let me explain: the local labor member is in danger of losing his seat to the libs candidate. Fair enough? Well, maybe, but I’ve got a few problems with that. Firstly, the libs candidate ran a campaign where she said nothing. Not to the people or the press. Except for one late interview on 2GB, she was effectively gagged and hidden away from sight. No community forums. No online presence. No town hall meetings. In fact, the only way we knew she existed at all was because every now and then we’d get glossy brochures through the mail, promising real action. That’s it. I bet every other bloody lib candidate had the same glossy brochures, with just the electorates name changed.

But it got worse – when it came to election day, lo and behold, hundreds of liberals descend upon Bradbury from Manly! They didn’t know the local area (kind of funny watching them try to give directions), they didn’t know Fiona Scott, and they were getting paid by the liberal party for the day, according to some.

And they might still win the seat of Lindsay. Doesn’t seem right, really, does it?

Anyway, with a bit of perspective, you can see where it all went wrong for labor; a lot of people might argue that it started when Keven Rudd was unceremoniously shown the door. That’s not the way that I see it: I think that it happened before that, when Rudd backed down over the ETS and the Mining Tax. I’m not sure what else he could have done – the hate campaign being run by News Ltd and Fairfax pretty much ensured that public opinion was turning against him anyway, but I can’t get past the feeling that he lost his nerve a little bit. The moment that the ETS – and climate change – was off the agenda, you could almost see the left wing of the labor party start to decamp to the greens. The Mining Tax only accelerated this departure.

And that’s the crucial thing that so many of our political commentators missed at the first analysis; while this election certainly wasn’t a win for Labor, it wasn’t much of a win for the LNPs either. Instead, it was a major win for the greens – with power in the Senate and now their first lower house representative, too. It seems like Australia got the parliament it deserved!

So where to now for the Labor Party?

Recently, I had the opportunity to visit Mamre Homestead (http://www.mamre.com.au/) and see the work that goes on there. Mamre Homestead is an organisation run by the Sisters of Mercy, and it involves a wide number of inter-related activities, all aimed at some kind of empowerment. That was the main reason for my interest; I was curious about the kind of ‘education for social change’ opportunities that were available to people in Western Sydney. Of course, linked to this, I was particularly interested in the way that these programs might engage with and challenge racism and the oppression created by prejudice.

A friend of mine mentioned Mamre Homestead, so I got in touch with Sister Mary Louise, who was more than willing to explain to me what happens there. As mentioned above, there are a number of different programs. Firstly, there is the Learning Links program which runs for at risk youth from local high schools for two days every week. It’s been going for a number of years at the moment, and has about 16 students with two facilitators. The aim of this program is to empower students to be aware of their capacity to make choices in their lives, and recognize potentially poor choices. I was particularly curious to see if this project could be considered, in any way, Freirean.

My initial impression: sort of. I know that’s not particularly illuminating, but it’s not really a cut and dried situation. Firstly, let’s establish what are the features of a Freirean educational practice: Freire generally worked with adult, in an informal setting, drawing students from a marginalised group or class of society. Freire’s purpose, delivered through his literacy programs, was to encourage the development of critical consciousness – the ability to see the world for the way it is – and hence empowerment. To do this, Freire developed a model that was based on the students own experiences, motivated by the students’ own interests and centred on a problem posing approach as opposed to the ‘banking’ model that Freire believed was commonplace.

Clearly, there are points of similarity and difference between Learning Links and a Freirean model. I believe the major point of departure was the intended purpose; Freire’s model always planned on changing the participants and thus the world. In other words, the aim was to overcome oppression on a wider scale than the purely individual. However Learning Links doesn’t really seek to change society in that way; rather, the emphasis is restricted solely to the individual. He or she must learn to modify his or her behaviour.

Of course, there are other differences, too – for example, Learning Links works with young people, as opposed to adults, and is an adjunct to a formal schooling system, as opposed to an informal stand alone program. However, there are numerous similarities, too – the basis of both programs is the students’ own experiences, and there is a real emphasis on problem solving, rather than depositing content or knowledge. Certainly, it was worthwhile comparing the two programs.

There was another reason that I wanted to visit Mamre Homested. In addition to Learning Links, the volunteers there run a refugee education program. Working with recent arrivals from places like Sudan, the volunteers educate them in things like English, child care, cooking and cleaning. Although this might sound banal, I think this accurately reflects some elements of Freirean practice, too – these are the skills that will actually help the refugees become active members of society, although there was no element of activism or political education inherent in the programs.

The work that Mamre Homestead does is vital and valuable to the community. Sister Mary-Louise summed it up as providing people with the skills that allow them to become effective members of the community. In some ways, this only goes half-way. There is no ‘critical’ element to the work, by which I mean the opportunity for these people to come to a fuller consciousness about the world and the way dominant ideologies affect it.

Next, I will be talking to some people who work with homeless people in education programs, to see if that fits a Freirean perspective.

The importance of democratic education in today’s schools is highlighted in this article by Susan Engel and Marlene Sandstrom. This article identifies that, rather than shiny binders and expensive anti-bullying programs, the best way to deal with bullying and its attendant problems is through building a sense of community, where everybody involved in childrens education works to challenge incidences of bullying and encourage the democratic essentialities of
tolerance, participation and inclusivity.

The full article can be read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/opinion/23engel.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=there%27s%20only%20one%20way%20to%20stop%20a%20bully&st=cse

The part I particularly liked was where the authors highlight the problems associated with standardized testing and an increasingly crowded curriculum. They write:

Yet, in American curriculums, a growing emphasis on standardized test scores as the primary measure of “successful” schools has crowded out what should be an essential criterion for well-educated students: a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others

Makes my research seem even more vital in this context.

Traditionally, Freirean pedagogy and popular education and its derivatives (most notably popular theatre) have worked with adult communities in informal settings. This setting has, of course, it’s own particular advantages and disadvantages, but it is worth noting that the applications of Popular Education is not solely restricted to either the informal education domain or the adult education domain.

Indeed, a number of scholars have been exploring the implementation of Popular Educationa theory and methodology in the area of high school education, an area that might be considered to the be the polar opposite of the traditional application of Popular Education. As opposed to adult education, educators working in this domain work with children. And instead of an informal setting, teachers in this area have to work within the boundaries of a strictly formalized curricula and setting.

However, the application of Freire’s work in such an area is an appealing prospect; to me, it seems that few institutions in a state seem to contribute to the acceptance of hegemony as much as schools. After all, one need only examine the work of people like John Taylor Gotto and you quickly come to a realisation that many schools (but not, I think, all) actively seek to not only oppress their students through the rigid application of coercive power, but also condition students to further accept such oppression in their wider and later lives. As an example, one might take the New South Wales History curriculum, which seeks to privilege the contributions to Australia made by certain groups – and in certain ways – over others. Furthermore, the way this curriculum is traditionally delivered – the Banking model that Freire described – only conditions students to further accept their role as passive objects with no further power to become more fully human.

Therefore, the idea of a theory that could empower students in this setting is a tempting one. However, it is a challenging prospect for teachers for a number of reasons. I intend to explore just one, in this blog posting – that of context. Freire’s work often highlights the importance of context, and it is especially pertinent in this discussion. Moving out of adult education into school education, one must recognize that both the age and the motivations of the group have changed. In addition, there are a number of constraining factors, like the demands of government bodies for teachers to cover certain skills and content, of which raising critical consciousness might come a long way down the list.

In addition, whereas traditional popular education works exclusively in the realm of marginalized groups, it is possible that when working in the school environment (and especially in a systemic religious school, like I do) one might be working with students who might be perfectly satisfied with the status quo. In this case, popular education might become more about recognizing privilege than understanding oppression. In this case, one must ask, what is the purpose of the popular educator? Is it to encourage students to recognize this privilege? And then to encourage them to commit, as Freire describes it, class suicide? It’s a confronting thought.

Even more confronting is the research that has been done regarding how an uncritical approach to privileging student experience might lead to the actual encouragement of oppressive views. In some examples that Kathryn Choules writes about, teachers attempting to apply a Freirean methodology to students from mixed groups might only encourage those who benefit from the status quo to speak out, thus concreting marginalised groups thoughts about oppression and their place in society.

Next blog post – Making the Method Fit the Message!

Recently, I met with Dr Rick Flowers, my supervisor, for another doctoral meeting. The purpose of this meeting was to consider how my research has been getting on, and to decide what are the best ways forward regarding said research. It was a really good meeting. Once again, as I was reviewing my notes before the meeting, I was pleased with how far I had come. Then again, as soon as I’d had this meeting, I was reminded by how far there is still to travel!

Anyway, there were a few key learning points about for my research from this meeting. Firstly, Rick suggested that I needed to ground my research in a particular issue. This was of vital importance. To be honest, I think this exposes a bit of a lack of understanding on my behalf; I’d got so convinced of the idea of the importance of a completely student-negotiated curriculum that I’d kind of lost sight of the fact that this is precisely what Freire himself had done. For Freire, it was illiteracy that was the grounding for his work on empowerment.

Therefore, it is important for me to consider what kind of issue that I want to ground my work in. It is easy for me to say that I want to look at citizenship education or active citizenship – but these ideas are probably a little too broad if I’m going to be working on specifically active citizenship. In brief, the students I work – and myself, of course – need something to be active about. Fortunately, there are plenty of possibilities for just such a topic. Rick and I brainstormed a few ideas: the environment, specifically water pollution. Substance abuse. Drink Driving. Alcohol fueled violence. Refugees, racism and asylum seekers.

We did discuss one of these at length: the issue of refugees and racism. It must be stated that, considering the headlines of today, it is certainly a very topical issue, with the talk of the Pacific Solution and so on. Even more so, it is particularly appropriate for Western Sydney, which is often identified as a ‘heartland of racism’.  Originally, I had concerns about this kind of project, because, as is clear from even the most limited understanding of Freire’s work, Freire worked with those who were oppressed; he used a kind of bottom up approach. I didn’t see how it would be possible for me to do this, considering my limited access to people who were refugees; my school is pretty uniform, although there are changes taking place pretty slowly.

Secondly, although I had read quite a lot of Freire, it had been quite narrow in scope. Thus, when Rick asked me about my action research project and how it would be based on Freire’s principles, I struggled to explain how it might work. What I need to do know is read more about the ways that Freire’s work has been applied in particular contexts. Rick suggested that I explore two phenomena in particular; photovoice and popular theatre, so these two ideas will be the focus of my reading for a considerable period to come.

Thirdly, we had the opportunity to discuss what my portfolio might look like. Although we didn’t discuss this much, we did talk about the online forum. Here, Rick cautioned me to make sure that I kept this as an intellectual exercise, because it needed to be this if I was going to keep using it as part of my forum. We talked about the best ways to keep it working, and agreed that the use of social media would be a valuable tool, as well as the university mailing lists. Getting this up and running will be one of my key projects over the holidays.

However, the part of the discussion that I thought was the most important focused on what I’m contributing to the academy by my research. In short, what am I doing that is new or unique? What are the particular features of my research that are important?What is the importance of my research? What am I doing that is new or different? I think that it is important to be clear about the benefits of my work. Here are my original thoughts to answer this question:

• It’s the first time (at least, the first time that I’m aware) that educators in Australia have tried to link Freire’s pedagogy with citizenship education.
• The context of the work is vital – it’s intensely practical. It’s not simply a theoretical discussion of Freire and education, but it is using Freire’s pedagogy to challenge the oppression of Racism in Emu Plains, Sydney. Personally, I think that this makes my research vital.
• Finally, unlike may Freirean approaches to education, this particular project is looking at children and Freire. Most Freirean prjects explore adult education. This too makes it valuable to the academy.

I’ve been pretty busy at work (as you might have noticed from the scarcity of new posts) but I’ve still been able to take the time to reflect on the actual nature of the doctoral process. One key concept that I’ve been wrestling with lately is the idea that doctoral research is very rarely cut-and-dried. By that, I mean that it is not as simple as ‘if you do x, then the result will be y.’ Of course, this is probably linked to the research that I’ve been undertaking regarding qualitative and quantitative method of doing research. Anyway, it’s certainly true of any research involving people and their motivations, and is especially appropriate for educational research.

I realise, now, that I had entered into my doctoral research with only a limited understanding of what this might actually mean for me. As I talked with my supervisor about the research, I fully expected that my results would be immediately clear; essentially, I would find everything that was wrong with citizenship education, and then I would create some curriculum materials that went towards solving this problem.

How wrong I was; the more I research, the more complex the picture becomes. For example, although I don’t think that Discovering Democracy was a particularly successful program, it wasn’t just because of the content heavy approach; rather, the CEG originally encouraged a more active approach to CE, but this was altered by the political involvement. Equally, teacher PD had a large role to play.

Essentially, I think the idea I am trying to communicate here is best expressed by Albert Einstein, who said, ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’

There is a quote by Albert Einstein that I think sums upo th

I recently had the opportunity to have another informal conversation regarding my research project. In this, I interviewed a member of staff at a school who is responsible for facilitating the Student Representative Council (SRC) at a middle-sized systemic Catholic high school.

I wanted to speak to her (lets call her Miss P) to get an idea of what the SRC’s aims and purposes are – and how effective they are in meeting these aims and purposes. The results were interesting – and also quite heartening. Firstly, I explored the ideas behind how people become members of the representative council. The process is quite convoluted:

1. A student must be nominated by 2 other students, and also a member of staff must countersign this nomination.

2. Then students take a vote on the nominated studenst.

3. The students with the most votes are then interviewed by the teachers responsible for facilitating the SRC. During this interview, they are presented with the SRC role description (more on this below) and asked whether they could uphold the qualities and expectations outlined in the document.

I was lucky enough to get hold of a copy of the SRC role description, and I thought that the fact that one exists suggests an interesting perspective already. The role description generally sets out the expected code of behaviour of a member of the Student Representative Council: for example, one of the statements suggests that students on the SRC need to ‘model behaviours that demonstrate integrity, jusctice and peace’ or ‘be committed to the school community through attendance at reflection days, athletics and swimming carnivals, fundraising events, extra curricular activities and information evenings.’

There is little that is explicitly managed about fostering democratic ideals, but I didn’t expect that. When I asked Miss P about what she thought the purpose of the SRC was, she said that she didn’t really have a role deciding that; rather, the purpose of the SRC was determined by the students – all Miss P did was facilitate what they wanted to do. So, if, for example, there was a really heavy emphasis on sporting and house involvement from the SRC in a particular year, that’s what the focus or purpose of the SRC would be. On the other hand, if the SRC was not a vibrant community, or not particularly motivated, then the SRC would have limited impact upon the school.

I did question what kind of power that the actual SRC had within the schooling environment (linking both to my ideas about empowerment of students and Cogan’s description of Australia’s SRCs as without real power or meaningfulness) and Miss P suggested that, really, the SRC were on their own. Miss P could advise and assist them to run presentations, for example, to deal with issues that they had identified, but they actually had little access to the existing power structures within the school.

This raises a number of important issues:

1. Firstly, I think that the idea of a student-negotiated issues is essential.

2. Secondly, I was concerned that, if this is a typical features of SRCs, they are really more of a regulatory body – responsible for monitoring and addressing behaviour amongst the student body – more than a democratic body aiding in the empowering of students.

As part of my doctoral research and training in the first year, I recently completed a 4 week online module on Creative and Critical Thinking run by the Australian Technology Network out of the Queensland University of Technology. It was facilitated by Dr Inger Mewburn.

Essentially, the course had 4 main strands – the first two looked at critical thinking and the second two looked at creative thinking. All of it was directly linked to the idea of research, too. Firstly, we examined the typical idea of critical thinking – that of evaluating and finding fault, before in week two we explored a wider definition of criticality. In week three, we examined the differences between creativity and creative thinking, and in week four we looked at ways that we can utilise creativity in our research.

All told, an excellent program. And I get a certificate, too!

The leadership team at my current school was kind enough to book a table of 10 for a resent presentation by the Australian College of Educators. It was at the Waterview Convention Centre at Homebush, which was very nice, and all the bigwigs, including some of those from CEO were there, as well, which wasn’t.

It was meant to be about the national curriculum and the relationship between the values and the national curriculum but the presenter, Professor Deakin Crick from the UK, didn’t really talk about that.

She began by briefly listing the curriculum values that the national curriculum will be based on – critical thinking, creativity etc etc, and then compared them (again, very briefly) with the values that other countries have adopted, like the OECD, or the UK, or the European Council, suggesting that there was more in common between them than there was differences. All pretty interesting stuff; one thing that Professor Deakin Crick did say that stuck with me was that she couldn’t identify any theoretical basis for these values of the national curriculum; rather it just seemed a random grab bag of what should be important in schools.

Professor Deakin Crick then went on to explain what she thought was important in education; she basically gave us a potted history of her research, which had 2 main factors (at least as I understood it.) The first factor was the dimensions of learning, or learning power dimensions. These are thinks like making meaning, creativity, resilience, critical curiousity and a number of others that are ways that Deakin Crick suggests we can encourage young people to not only be less passive in their learning, but to also become lifelong learning. Essentially, Crick’s research suggested that, for a lot of students, their ‘learning power’ decreased as their schooling progressed, which is pretty concerning.

The second part of Crick’s presentation focused on using narration as a central metaphor for curriculum delivery and interpretation; essentially, telling stories to learn. She gave us a number of examples, from both Australia and the UK, where students created stories with animals based on the learning power dimensions; for example, the platypus was meaning-making, or the wedge-tailed eagle was strategic awareness or something similar. The reason this metaphor worked and allowed students to develop these learning dimensions was because it allowed them to both tell their story and also to address complex issues through a relatively simple medium. I was especially captivated by the Taronga Breakout story from students in the Hunter Valley.

However, at the end of the evening, I was still left with a sense of despair; for all the rhetoric of grass-roots change and bottom-up support in the face of the authoritarian top-down approach, I personally am struggling to see  a way we, as teachers, can change the system. Decisions already seem to be made; essentially, the curriculum is signed, sealed and delivered, although I am sure there will be a few changes after the consultation process to prove that policy-makers listened to teachers.

It’s because I’ve seen it all before, and I don’t have any faith in pollies at the moment. I’m struggling with where to go to from here…

*fading muttering about neoliberal ideology and capitalist hegemonies*

But I’ll be back, with a new plan. As soon as I work it out…

So I was lucky enough to have a chance to speak to another person who is on my list of important people – a leading academic in citizenship education, who’s been heavily involved in the development of Discovering Democracy, as well as its evaluation. Let’s call him, for the sake of confidentiality, Professor Y. (I do feel like I’m in a bad James Bond rip-off with all these cheesy nicknames, but nevertheless…)

Unlike my previous informal conversation, my discussion with Professor Y was quite challenging. I had to navigate a tricky line of politeness, because he was involved in Discovering Democracy, and my argument is that Discovering Democracy is pretty ordinary. I broached the subject early on, and Professor Y agreed with me, generally, arguing that while the quality of the materials was high, the implementation left a lot to be desired, mostly because of the mismatch between funding for development of materials and funding for professional development for teachers. In addition, there were issues with the state-federal system nexus, and, in NSW especially, the problem with CCE being spread across History and Geography.

So far, not much new there. Something that Professor Y did say that I found interesting was that there really was very little difference caused by the Howard govt – apparently the finished model was quite similar to what was originally planned in the Keating administration. This is different to what a lot of critics say… He also suggested that CCE was a bit of a wait and see with regards to the National Curriculum – that is, announcements would be made shortly about it.

Anyway, we got to talking about my research project, and Professor Y warned me about taking too much on; he effectively argued that my evaluation of discovering democracy was a separate thesis project to my independent research project. He also urged me to consider what I wanted to do with my finished research – if I wanted to go further with it, then he recommended the evaluation of DD was a much better path; effectively, my IRP was limited in its generalisability.

I was a little put out.

Nevertheless, it does bear some thought. I am going to discuss some of these issues with Rick at our next meeting…