Are we there yet? Research with and for teachers and children and the possibilities of schooling in a complex world

Abstract

Shifting the relationship between schooling, social justice and equity, and the present and future experiences of children, young people, and their families and communities, has been a focus of educational research, and indeed policy and practice, for many decades. In this paper, I discuss education and its preparedness to work towards social justice, by drawing on examples across a number of studies. While I consider the possibilities for teachers and young people and children in schools today and present several counter narratives to those in popular circulation, I also detail initiatives that I engaged in with members during the time I was President of AARE. The point is to highlight social justice issues in education in Australia and highlight some ways forward.

Educators engaged in curriculum work: Encounters with relationally responsive curriculum practices

“…Such a context has led to the erosion of spaces for educators to engage in curriculum work. Indeed, it seems that the expectation that teachers' work includes a responsibility to craft curriculum, assessment and pedagogy for the students they teach and that teachers are best placed to do this work as localised practice, is increasingly challenged (Woods, 2021). Among this broader curriculum context, the Australian Curriculum, introduced more than a decade ago, has a technical form (Luke et al., 2013) that placed content about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures into a horizontal curriculum plane as a cross‐curriculum priority 1 .…”

https://journal.spera.asn.au/index.php/AIJRE/article/view/323

“…A mantra of education in recent times has been that schools need to be inclusive, to welcome all students and to provide access and resources for those who are marginalised or excluded in some settings. Despite the push to provide equitable educational opportunities, deficit discourses or stories of blame still circulate in relation to particular groups of students, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in Australia (Hogarth, 2017), children and families who live in poverty (Woods, 2021;Warren et al, 2016), and students who have English as an additional language (Alford & Woods, 2017). Indeed, over many years as researchers, we have recorded and analysed deficit discourses that have surfaced in our investigations of the lived experiences of agricultural worker families in Australia and the US and the education on offer for the children of those families (e.g., Gouwens, 2001;Gouwens & Henderson, 2017;Henderson, 2008aHenderson, , 2017Henderson & Gouwens, 2013).…”

Interpreting and reinterpreting heritability estimates in educational behavior genetics

“…It may be self-evident to point out that educational contexts are not static: They continuously evolve both within and between systems, influenced by local and global cultural and policy shifts (e.g., Addey, 2017; Vadeboncoeur, 1997). For example, development of theories of learning, constantly changing administrative structures, variable recommendations on instructional practices, and frequent reform movements are features of many educational systems (Rose, 2006; Stanovich & Stanovich, 2003; Woods, 2021). For readers who come to the behavior genetics literature from the field of education research, discussion of heritability estimates may seem to put an overabundance of emphasis on quantifying the genetic influence on phenotypes at the expense of examining the cultural variation within and between school systems, or over time.…”