Breaking and making curriculum from inside ‘policy storms’ in an Australian pre-service teacher education course

ABSTRACT

How teacher educators respond as policy actors from inside spaces where multiple policies and discourses collide provides insights into the ways in which policy plays out in educational contexts. By engaging and working within the uncertain space of our own contextual ‘policy storm’ we provide a narrative of enactment highlighting the roles and actions of policy actors simultaneously constrained and inspired by policy. We use the policy actor framework [Ball, S.J., Maguire, M., Braun, A., & Hoskins, K. (2011a). Policy actors: Doing policy work in schools, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(4), 625-639] to unpack policy meaning-making within university and faculty climates, teacher education, and curriculum reform in Health and Physical Education (HPE) in Australia. This paper has three tasks. Firstly, we set-up the conditions of uncertainty and possibility as a ‘policy storm’ and place where four disparate policies converged. Secondly, we provide an empirical and theoretical account of policy interpretation and enactment from the actors perspective. Finally, we test the policy actor framework to determine if it adequately describes our insider policy work. In moving beyond reductionist policy narratives we provide policy possibilities that illustrate enactment, are innovative, and explore the productive potential inside policy reform.

KEYWORDS:

• Health and Physical Education
• curriculum reform
• higher education
• teacher education
• curriculum policy
• PETE
• policy actor framework

Acknowledgments

This research was made possible as the result of a 12-month Monash Education Academy Better Teaching, Better Learning small grant awarded in 2015. Thanks to Laura Alfrey and Dawn Penney for working with us on this project.

We offer a very special thanks to Mark Priestley and Stavroula Philippou for their extensive and insightful editorial support on our first draft. .

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Our research process and approach to publications have been very collegial. Karen developed the original grant application with feedback from all and also drafted two paper ideas that were shared in the final of five team meetings with invitations for all to contribute. All members agreed to be involved in paper 1 (in draft), however, only Justen indicated interest in paper 2. The current paper is generated from the data of Karen and Justen only from within the team project, and has been shared with the other team members.

Additional information

Funding

12-month Monash Education Academy Better Teaching, Better Learning small grant.

Notes on contributors

Karen Lambert

Karen Lambert has been teaching teachers to teach for the past seventeen years. Her teaching specialties lie in health and physical education pedagogies, youth health, gender and sexuality studies, and health promotion. She engages poststructural feminist and queer theory in her teaching as a result of her research interests around identity, place and difference. She is currently researching and writing in the area of scholarship of learning and teaching, curriculum policy reform, and embodied learning and pedagogies in physical education.

Justen O'Connor

Justen O'Connor is a senior lecturer and researcher in health and physical education within the Faculty of Education Monash University. Justen's research centres on exploring various socio-ecological factors that facilitate and constrain young people's engagement in movement. He draws upon systems thinking and strengths-based approaches to explore curriculum and pedagogy associated with health, physical education, sport and lifetime physical activity. Justen also has an interest in social justice within education as well as informal forms of participation in movement.