Revolution or backlash? The mediatisation of education policy in Australia

Abstract

Recent scholarship has identified the emergence of a new modality of policy work: the mediatisation of policy. This paper provides an Australian case study which reports on the tactics of an Australian Federal Minister of Education and a media commentator who both engaged in public pedagogical work for the purpose of spinning education policy. In particular, we argue that this example of the mediatisation of education policy has worked to stifle pedagogical innovation as advocates of middle schooling reform struggle against what appears to be a backlash to the social-democratic reforms of the post-World War II era. Such backlash politics is understood in terms of a struggle to maintain the role of teachers as curriculum designers and not be merely technicians; to sustain critically reflective learning communities of colleagues and friends; and not succumb to pedagogies of resentment that are driven by a logic of deficit views of students and their communities.

Keywords:

• education policy
• media
• pedagogical innovation

Acknowledgements

This publication is an outcome of a collaborative research project, funded by the Australian Research Council (LP0454869), between the Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures (University of South Australia), the Northern Adelaide State Secondary Principals Network, the Australian Education Union (SA Branch) and the South Australian Social Inclusion Unit. The Research team includes Phillip Cormack; Barbara Comber; Marie Brennan; Lew Zipin; Alan Reid; Kathy Paige; David Lloyd; Helen Nixon; Bill Lucas; John Walsh; Faye McCallum; Brenton Prosser; Kathy Brady; Mr. Sam Sellar, Andrew Bills and Philippa Milroy. We'd also like to thank the 30 participating teachers.

Notes

1. Borrowing from Thomson (2002), the ‘rust-belt’ phenomenon, is characterised by ‘a concentration of loss of employment and its long term effects on particular people’ (p. 26). Schools in urban rustbelts are in the front line of struggles to deal with significant demographic and social changes, including increased levels of itinerancy and cultural complexity, chronic un(der)employment, and poverty.

2. For the purposes of this paper, the term ‘middle years’ refers to the ages ten to fifteen, while ‘middle school’ refers to a separate organisational structure within or outside of a campus (Chadbourne, 2001). The focus of our research is ‘middle schooling’ (Carrington, 2006; Luke et al., 2003) which is a philosophy of teaching applicable in elementary, secondary or middle school contexts.

3. For an example of Donnelly’ views on internal Liberal party pre-selection issues see: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3592&page=1.

4. John Howard, the ex-Prime Minister of the Federal Liberal Government at the time, was a long time supporter of Quadrant magazine as his speech on the 50^th anniversary of Quadrant attest. See http://www.quadrant.org.au/php/archive_details_list.php?article_id=2290.

5. The Menzies Research Centre has published a book titled Social Justice: Fraud or Fair Go? The contributors of this book include significant contributors to Quadrant and to the Institute for Public Affairs, and John Howard has a chapter. In the opening chapter, by Christopher Pearson, an ex-speech writer of John Howard, is the following quote which provides a sense of the argument for the collection: borrowing from Hayek, that ‘“social” is a weasel word that sucks the goodness out of those next to it’ (p. 18).

6. See http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb//view_document.aspx?TABLE=HANSARDR&ID=2515965.