Are Teachers Still the Problem? An Analysis of the NSW Education What Works Best Documents

Abstract

This paper interrogates Stacey’s assertion that New South Wales (NSW) education policy is underpinned by a ‘particular instance of neoliberalisation’ which has significant ‘direct and material impacts’ on teachers. It examines the role Evidence-based Practice can play in the neoliberalist reform of education globally and analyses the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation’s What Works Best documents. The paper asserts that the character of education policy in NSW is consistent with the wider Global Education Reform Movement and continues to exhibit and extend the neoliberalist tendencies identified by Stacey. Furthermore, it claims that, through a collection of neoliberalist devices, teachers are being ‘governed at a distance’ through documents such as What Works Best. It is hoped this paper might provide teachers with ‘insights and arguments to help them to resist unwarranted expectations about the role of evidence in their practices and even more so of unwarranted interventions in their practices’.

No longer optional: The Infusion of Digital Technology in Praxical Secondary School Music Education

“…They experienced freedom in doing what they believed was important. This significant finding contrasts with the trend outside New Zealand in Music and other Performing Arts where teacher autonomy is reduced through top-down approaches to curriculum change (Fuller, 2022;Fuller & Humberstone, 2022;Horsley, 2017), curriculum design (Fautley & Daubney, 2019;Spruce et al, 2021), and ongoing class/power struggles through political educational change (Bull, 2019;Wright & Davies, 2017). For example, the UK-Model Music Curriculum had as one of its aims "...to make sure that every child is taught to read and write musical notation and has been introduced to the musical giants of the past" (Gibb, 2021).…”

“…which contrasts with the majority of the overseas literature where national policies and structures are limiters (Bull, 2019;Fuller, 2022). A foremost reason is that New Zealand schools make their own decisions about the purchase of resources which includes digital technology (Starkey & Finger, 2018) and music instruments.…”

“…How different sources of subject knowledge are accepted or rejected when curriculum decisions are made reveal political, moral and social interests (Fuller, 2022;Hess, 2015).…”