Diffractive accounts of inequality in education: making the effects of differences evident

Abstract

Inequitable outcomes from schooling are an enduring and global concern. Large scale data sets of achievement in the form of international and national standardised tests provide geographies of the effects of schooling. Our interests as educational researchers have focused on mapping the local contours of schooling through the use of ethnographically informed approaches to research. In this paper, we consider the implications for ethnographers of schooling of setting aside standard measurements of space and time, for example, to examine how these phenomena are made meaningful and made to matter in particular ways through practices of knowing. We investigate what changes when processes intended to reflect what is ‘real’ are replaced by performative understandings of knowledge-making. We ground this discussion in three ethnographic studies that provide starting points for reconceptualizing the meaning making of ethnographic practices.

Keywords:

• non-representational ontology
• ethnography
• diffractive methodology
• inequality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling (the Gonski Review) presented in December 2011.

2 Even as the terms ‘belonging’ and ‘engagement’ are less contested and politically charged than terms such as ‘social cohesion’, they are racialized and gendered, particularly in a contemporary climate of surveillance of Muslim students in the name of ‘counter-terrorism’ (Coppock, 2014; Kundnani, 2012). It is beyond the scope of this article to enter into a discussion about what such terms performatively produce.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Debra Hayes

Dr Debra Hayes is Professor, Education & Equity and Head Of Sydney School of Education & Social Work at The University of Sydney. She investigates the inequitable effects of schooling and is committed to better and fairer education for all young people. Her co-authored books describe pedagogical, leadership and schooling practices that contribute to young people's experiences and outcomes from schooling.

Debra Talbot

Dr Debra Talbot is a senior lecturer (Sociology and Science Education) in the School of Education & Social Work, University of Sydney. She utilises institutional ethnography and considerations of affect to explore the learning work of teachers and their students.

Eve Mayes

Dr Eve Mayes is a Lecturer (Pedagogy and Curriculum) in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University, Geelong. Her research is concerned with exploring and problematizing ‘experiences’ of educational institutions, through creative and philosophical experimentation with issues of ‘voice’, affect, space and materiality.