In this article, the author explores practices and economies of learning that make visible particular practices where educational work is embedded in places other than schools, colleges and universities, or at least in complex interaction with them. To do this, she draws on a body of work she has been involved with over the past ten years,…

Ghosts haunt the school curriculum. Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" provides a starting point for thinking about these curriculum ghosts. In the Preface, he states that he has "endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea". In this article, the author seeks to raise the ghost of an idea, and to have a bit of fun with…

Teacher education programs focussing on the development of specialist teachers for "the middle years" have proliferated in Australian universities in recent years. This paper provides some insights into middle years' teacher education programs at the University of Queensland, Edith Cowan and Flinders Universities with regard to their:…

Academic engagement with higher education research policy in Australia, and with education policy more generally, is in crisis. This time around, it is not just that our theoretical tools are blunt and irrelevant (Ball 1990), so are our politics. It seems our attention has been so consumed by "what is policy" (Ball 1994a) and with challenging its…

Education has become a domain of considerable ideological division. Today the mantra is freedom and choice, yet at the same time, a push to "back to basics" is observed. This author attempts to trace the contours of this division by taking two steps back from the contemporary fray. One step is to situate present day discussions in a larger…

This paper takes up the question of the way in which "the problem with educational research" is represented. It takes as its point of departure two recent views on "the problem"--one expressed by an educational journalist and one presented by the Australian Council of Deans of Education. It locates these within a larger frame of international…

This paper addresses issues in relation to recent criticism of teacher education, set in the broader context of political agitation for changes to the purposes, role and outcomes of education within society. The paper raises questions around the purpose of schooling and its role in modern societies and argues for the pedagogical importance of…

Over recent years there has been widespread concern for masculinity and the education of boys in Australia. In the policy arena, this has involved a federal parliamentary inquiry into the education of boys ("Boys: Getting it Right: Report on the inquiry into the education of boys", October 2002) and a federal government response to this inquiry…

Academic dishonesty is a fundamental issue for the academic integrity of higher education institutions, and one that has lately been gaining increasing media attention. This study reports on a survey of 1206 students and 190 academic staff across four major Queensland universities in relation to student academic misconduct. The aim of the survey…

Genealogies, or histories of the present, create critical spaces to remind us of the non-necessity of that which we consider necessary to our lives (Burchell 1993). Further, genealogies of governmentality attempt to create this space with a focus on how conduct is conducted. In this paper I suggest that genealogies of governmentality are one way…

In this paper I am concerned with the challenge workplace learners and educators face, as they engage with global economies, to create "a world in common as . . . known in common" (Smith 1999). I focus first on why global companies need their geographically dispersed workers to engage with a world "in common", and how they go about constructing…

This paper argues the importance of examining the collective dimension of masculinities in the early school years through a description of a study into children's (young males') peer group relations. Specifically, the paper attends to the significance of the peer group in shaping behaviour, and in particular exaggerated "masculine" behaviours, and…

In this paper I argue against a dominant view that social planning, supported by strategically located and tightly controlled research and development, is delivered from above and enacted downwards by the education system. As such the paper argues against a view taken by many theorists/politicians and reinforced by the major components of the…

This paper is an essay on the state of Australian education that frames new directions for educational research. It outlines three challenges faced by Australian educators: highly spatialised poverty with particularly strong mediating effects on primary school education; the need for intellectual and critical depth in pedagogy, with a focus in the…

This paper examines the "remaking" of white working class masculinities in the latter quarter of the twentieth century. It draws on ethnographic data gathered at two points in time in order to interrogate the relation of macro-economic and social relations on individual and group identities; to excavate the social psychological relations "between"…