Barry Down

When Susan invited me to contribute to this collection of essays, I was in the process of navigating my transition to ‘retirement’ after 30 years working as a teacher educator-researcher grappling with the changing nature of teachers’ work, student dis/re/engagement, educational inequality, and social justice. The opportunity to reflect on my own intellectual journey was both timely and challenging as I tried to make sense of what it means to be an activist educator in the context of the ideas animating this book – hope, courage, and wisdom. I want to begin by referring to Postman and Weingartner’s classic book Teaching as a subversive activity. My motivation is threefold, firstly, it was one of the few books that excited me as a student teacher back in the 1970s, secondly, it offered a critique of the problems and impediments facing education, and thirdly, it proposed an alternative vision for teaching. The book resonated with me for many reasons – the playfulness of language, the provocations, the metaphors, the social imaginary, the spirit of rebellion and the courage to question the way things are. In essence, Postman and Weingartner were railing against the “essential mindlessness” of the “burgeoning bureaucracy” captured in the motto “Carry on regardless” (p. 24). They argued that bureaucracies, like schools, “rarely ask themselves ‘Why?’ but only ‘How?’ questions” (p. 24)…

While tidying up e-mail archives in 2019, the authors stumbled across correspondence from their research participants that captured their attention. They had interviewed thirty-two high school students as part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) project over a three-year period while these young people were transitioning from school to the world of work. Even though the project had finished in 2013, the authors deliberately maintained contact with them electronically to understand what was happening in their lives. Not all young people responded in 2014; however, the fact that some did was quite remarkable, and their responses unearthed ‘thick descriptions’ and powerful narratives that the authors reflect on throughout the chapter. Participants’ stories advance theoretical and methodological insights capable of informing social action, bringing to the fore ‘modalities of time and space’ as they continue to ‘echo’; demanding our reflexive attention as we enter the ‘field’ once again to engage, connect and listen to their narratives; ‘with them’. Weaving together student narratives, researcher fieldnotes and supporting theoretical frameworks, this chapter culminates in sharing experiences and memories that ‘haunt’ even when consciously attempting to ‘let participants go’ (from a field of choice). We learn from and acknowledge the haunting echoes of our participants because they never really ‘exit’ but ‘tag along’ as we continue to create democratic spaces, places and directions in future educational research.

Approaches to learning and teaching cast under the designation of "relational pedagogy" provide the focus of this chapter. We argue that democratic education is most apparent in the moment of encounter between students and teachers. When deliberative negotiation of learning occurs and recognition is given to the mutuality of the pedagogical encounter, moves toward a democratic education are established. For this pedagogic deliberation to occur, the formation of meaningful relationships between students and teachers is fundamental. By meaningfully coming into relation and setting about the task of negotiating how learning should proceed, teachers and students give credence to the immediacy of the moment-to the immediacy of the pedagogical encounter-and the effects exerted by the context within which this relationship is activated. This chapter asserts that it is in these terms that relational pedagogies actively resist the normalising effects of dominant expressions of schooling typical of this present moment-approaches to schooling that preface reductive, decontextualised, "one size fits all" logics-to instead provoke recognition of the idiosyncratic, in-the-moment character of learning. It is in these moments that deliberation and negotiation become crucial to learning and expose formations of a democratic education that positions the relational at its core.

In chronicling the origins of radical education in the United Kingdom between 1790 and 1848, Richard Johnson (1979) invoked the idea of ‘really useful knowledge’ as a way of distancing educative or transformative ideologies from the processes of capitalist schooling and related forms of ‘subjection', ‘servility', ‘slavery’ and ‘surveillance’ (or ‘useless knowledge') (1979: 78). He identified four key aspects of radical education that are pertinent to this chapter. First, it involved a critique of all forms of ‘provided’ education including both state and religious. In other words, radical education was strongly oppositional and revolved around ‘a contestation of orthodoxies’ ...

Throughout this chapter it is argued that young people themselves are the 'purest witnesses' to what's happening and what works best for them in their schools. The authors draw on the experience of Jacinta, one of the participants from a larger ethnographic study of outer metropolitan high schools in Perth, Western Australia, to better understand how young people navigate the dynamics and complex demands of classrooms. Jacinta's experience sheds light on the ways in which schools are becoming increasingly irrelevant and inhospitable places for some of society's most vulnerable and marginalised young people. The authors contend that far too many young people like Jacinta are being failed by society and excluded from the benefits of education. At the same time, Jacinta captures the sense of hope and optimism that many young people have for their imagined futures and it is this sense of agency that creates new possibilities for education based on the values of democracy, social justice, trust, respect and care for all.

Internationally, there has been considerable political activity around the question of how to better prepare quality teachers and make training institutions more accountable. In Australia, the 2014 report Action now: classroom ready teachers illustrates many of the underlying assumptions, perceived problems and potential solutions driving this agenda. This report, similar to reports in other countries, reinforces the public perception that the "quality" of teachers is deteriorating and the only solution is to intensify accountability regimes through increased levels of control. To this end, the Australian federal government committed $16.9 million to the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership to ensure that "teachers are better trained". This involves a greater focus on accountability, accreditation, regulation, selection, assessment, content and evidence about "what works". This chapter critically reflects on the Australian Action now: classroom ready teachers report as a case study of policy rhetoric and policy reality. Drawing on the tradition of critical policy analysis, the chapter sets out to examine (i) the broader social context in which this reform initiative is located, (ii) the key normative values and assumptions underpinning the report, (iii) gaps, silences and contradictions in policy discourses, and (iv) alternative conceptions of teacher education grounded in a more relational and intellectually engaged response.

This chapter sets out to interrupt common-sense explanations of educational inequality by questioning the logic of schooling that artificially divides students into academic and vocational learners. It seeks to challenge the logic of schooling that serves to sustain the practice of streaming in schools through, first, deficit and pathologising discourses; second, practical, hands-on curriculum; and, third, the preparation of a skilled workforce to meet the needs of a modernising economy. Deficit and pathologising discourses reinforce the belief that some students are simply not 'bright' enough to study the traditional academic subjects which lead to an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) score necessary for university entry. By default, non-academic students are deemed to be intellectually inferior and therefore more suited to a practical competency-based vocational pathway. The chapter considers the benefits of integrating vocational and academic learning based on 'a logic of sufficiency'.