Kate O’Connor – författare

This book explores the everyday ways in which time marks the experience of education as well as the concerns and methods of education and youth research. It asks: what do we notice afresh and what comes into sharper view when temporality becomes a focal point? What theories and ways of seeing offer new angles onto temporality in interaction with space and place? In responding to these questions, the book engages with approaches from sociology, history, and cultural and policy studies. It brings critical attention to the movement and layers of time in the memories, aspirations and orientations of educational actors – across lives, generations and diverse places. Informed by the politics of local/global relations and new transnational formations, the chapters feature case studies located in Australia, the UK, India, South Africa, the Philippines and Finland. Topics examined include processes of social and educational differentiation in disruptive times, affective practices, intergenerational dynamics, collective memory, archiving, mobilities and migration, school spaces and difficult histories. The authors grapple with what is involved methodologically in interrogating the times and places of education – including the construction of educational ideas, problems and policy solutions – and in historicising the time and places from which we research, write and work.

This book explores the everyday ways in which time marks the experience of education as well as the concerns and methods of education and youth research. It asks: what do we notice afresh and what comes into sharper view when temporality becomes a focal point? What theories and ways of seeing offer new angles onto temporality in interaction with space and place? In responding to these questions, the book engages with approaches from sociology, history, and cultural and policy studies. It brings critical attention to the movement and layers of time in the memories, aspirations and orientations of educational actors – across lives, generations and diverse places. Informed by the politics of local/global relations and new transnational formations, the chapters feature case studies located in Australia, the UK, India, South Africa, the Philippines and Finland. Topics examined include processes of social and educational differentiation in disruptive times, affective practices, intergenerational dynamics, collective memory, archiving, mobilities and migration, school spaces and difficult histories. The authors grapple with what is involved methodologically in interrogating the times and places of education – including the construction of educational ideas, problems and policy solutions – and in historicising the time and places from which we research, write and work.

Australia's Curriculum Dilemmas tells the story of Australia's recent attempts to come to grips with the big challenges of curriculum and sets up the background to understanding the debates that continue to surface as we move for the first time towards a national approach. Detailing some of the inside stories and arguments of the last 30 years about what schools should do, as well as some of the politics and lessons that have been learnt along the way, it brings together accounts from a national research project and reflections from people who have been actively involved in developing curriculum policies for each state. Expert contributors examine the challenges of the public management of curriculum, drawing on the different experiences of curriculum reforms in different states. They take up the problems of framing vocational and academic education for the new century and of confronting equity and diversity issues. They show the fundamental differences that exist in Australia regarding the impact of examinations and assessment, and the very different policy approaches that have been taken to tackle these issues. Many people in this country are unaware of how much t

There is much discussion about what needs to change in education institutions in the 21st century, but less attention given to how core disciplinary studies should be considered within that context. This book is based on a major 4-year research study of history and physics in the changing environment of schools and universities in Australia. Are these forms of knowledge still valuable for students? Are they complementary to, or at odds with the concerns about ‘21st century skills’, interdisciplinary and collaborative research teams, employability and ‘learner-centred’ education? How do those who work in these fields see changes in their disciplines and in their work environment? And what are the similarities and differences between the experiences of teachers and academics in physics and those in history? The book draws on interviews with 115 school teachers and university academics to provide new perspectives on two important issues. Firstly, how, for the purposes of today’s schools and universities, can we adequately understand knowledge and knowledge building over time? Secondly, what has been productive and what has been counter-productive in recent efforts to steer and manage the changes in Australia?

There is much discussion about what needs to change in education institutions in the 21st century, but less attention given to how core disciplinary studies should be considered within that context. This book is based on a major 4-year research study of history and physics in the changing environment of schools and universities in Australia.

In a context in which explicit attention to the curriculum has been sidelined in universities’ strategy, this book makes an argument for why curriculum matters, both in understanding the effects of unbundled online learning and more broadly.

In a context in which explicit attention to the curriculum has been sidelined in universities’ strategy, this book makes an argument for why curriculum matters, both in understanding the effects of unbundled online learning and more broadly. It takes up two particular curriculum issues which are amplified in an unbundled context: differences in the formulation of curriculum between disciplines and professional fields, and the extent these are recognised in university strategy; and the push for constructivist pedagogies, and its effects on curriculum construction. Since the onslaught of MOOCs in 2012, unbundled forms of online learning offered via partnerships with external online program management and MOOC providers have grown significantly across the university sector. There has been much debate about the implications of these partnerships but the focus has predominantly been on the engagement of students and their learning. This book takes adifferent and novel approach, looking instead at the effects on curriculum and knowledge.Drawing on selected case studies, the book reflects on how university leaders and academics engaged with MOOCs and other forms of unbundled online learning in the early 2010s, and the effects of these reforms on curriculum practice. It captures in detail the complex and difficult work involved in university curriculum making in a way rarely seen in discussions of higher education. And it generates new in-sights about some of the critical problems manifest in the ongoing moves to embrace unbundled online learning today.