Redesigning pedagogical practices: new designs for new landscapes

Abstract

New educational landscapes have emerged in large systems of schooling around the globe. While these formations are shaped by local conditions and develop regional characteristics, they also bear the marks of neo-liberalism and are responsive to its devices, such as intensified local markets competing for students and the pressure of privatization. Not surprisingly, schools in favourable contexts where there are strong resonances between home and school cultures are more able to accommodate and benefit from these conditions than are schools in challenging contexts where inequitable effects tend to be amplified and more deeply entrenched. This article interrogates the pressures on schools to change implicit in educational policy landscapes that have developed in Australia, and compares these with some examples of design processes that make up the mix of how schools in England and the United States have responded to similar pressures. Long-term reform efforts in two Australian public secondary schools are described in detail. These cases illustrate two commonly adopted designs for improving the pedagogical practice of teachers. The tension between what is rendered possible through locally available resources and what is needed in schools characterized by high levels of poverty and difference is explored in this article through a discussion of a selection of design processes and products, as well as two specific case studies.

Keywords:

• equity
• school reform
• pedagogy