Teaching is more or less my family trade,
and I’ve done it all my adult life, mainly in universities. I could hardly avoid thinking about education
as a process, and trying to connect it with the social dynamics I was
researching. And I’ve been involved in
various practical attempts to democratise higher education.
So my research on education has mainly
concerned social justice issues, and the operation of schools and universities
as a massive and potent social institution that is constantly in change.
Education is about creating capacities for practice - capacities that are both
individual and social. In the process, some groups gain privilege and
others are dealt heavy blows. That used to be deliberate: school systems
were born segregated. It’s now more covert, but still happens. How, is worth knowing.
My first educational research was my PhD
thesis, on the development of Australian children’s political ideas. This was
undoubtedly the funniest research project I have done, but also sinister, showing
the widespread fear – encouraged by media and government – in the 1960s
directed at foreigners, war and communism. I was also part of a team
doing a large study of Sydney teenagers (published in 1975 as 12 to 20.) This quantitative work
showed the widespread social class inequalities in education, and gave me a
feel for its complexities.
I then joined with Dean Ashenden, Sandra
Kessler and Gary Dowsett in a close-focus study of how educational inequality
worked, in everyday school processes. We interviewed students aged about
14, their parents (usually at their home), their teachers, and their
principals. The result was an extraordinarily rich body of information,
which took us years to analyze, working case by case.
I still remember the 40 minutes I spent in
a leather chair in a well-appointed office, listening to the principal of an
elite private school giving me a stunning run-down of the corporate hierarchy,
housing trends, cultural divisions, families and factions of an Australian
city’s ruling class. I could have published it in a sociology journal
without changing a word. But I also remember talks with working-class
mothers and fathers in fibro cottages on the same city’s outskirts. They knew
as much, but about different things.
Tlhis project turned into two books, Making the Difference and its sequel Teachers’ Work, more than a dozen
articles, a video, endless conference presentations and workshops with teachers
and parents. It was the most intense research collaboration in my career,
and the four of us remain friends, nearly thirty years later.
From this project I got an undeserved
reputation as knowing about poverty. So I was commissioned to do a
national study of the Disadvantaged Schools Programme, to help a re-thinking of
this very creative programme. I worked intensively on this with Viv White
and Ken Johnston, and in quick time we put together a portfolio of studies
including surveys of teachers, oral history, school case studies, conceptual
work and policy proposals.
But in the late 1980s education reforms in
the interest of social justice were under attack by neoliberals. Our project
reports were shelved by the hard-faced men who now controlled education policy
in Canberra. Deakin University came to the rescue and published them as Running Twice as Hard, masquerading as
an education policy case study.
I kept thinking about the issues, and a
couple of years later, on the invitation of the Canadian journal Our Schools Ourselves, published a
little book called Schools and Social
Justice. This pulled together some of the DSP findings and offered
ideas about ‘curricular justice’. But the Australian publisher went
broke, so the book was never reprinted and had little impact locally. Curiously
my paper in a mainstream US educational journal was reprinted four times
overseas.
By now I also had a lot of experience with
gender research (see Gender).
Making the Difference had fascinating
material on gender relations in families, schools and adolescent life. We
wrote several articles about this, and a splendidly-illustrated booklet called Ockers and Disco-maniacs. Later I
did a life-history project on masculinity that yielded a good deal of evidence
about experiences of school. I was therefore in a good position to be an
expert on boys’ education, when this became a public issue.
I did write a number of papers about this,
showing how schools constructed multiple masculinities, through curriculum
differences, discipline, sports and peer group life, and how schools handled
the relations between masculinities. Unfortunately this wasn’t the
anti-feminist message the media wanted to hear, so I missed my chance for world
fame.
At the turn of the new century, I had a
job as professor of education and became involved, with Steve Crump and
colleagues from the NSW school system, in a study of new vocational education
courses in senior high school. This explored the dilemmas created for
parents by the changing school system and labour market, and raised issues
about the new conditions of teachers’ work.
Teachers’ work was now
being re-shaped by neoliberal policy, through accreditation and auditing
regimes. I have always valued my connection with teachers in schools, and
convened a very lively series of seminars at the University of Sydney on the
theme of ‘the good teacher’. I shamelessly borrowed from the
contributors’ ideas in writing a report on the subject. Since then I have been trying to analyze how
market agendas and corporate power work in education, in universities as well
as schools.
SELECTION OF TEN
Connell, Raewyn. 2013. The neoliberal cascade and education: an essay on the marketagenda and its consequences. Critical Studies in Education, vol. 54 no. 2, 99-112.
An attempt to gain a perspective on how neoliberalism works in education, as a major (though rarely dramatised) arena of struggle over the future shape of society.
Connell,
Raewyn. 2009. Good teachers on dangerous ground: towards a new view of teacher
quality and professionalism. Critical
Studies in Education, vol. 50 no. 3, 213-229.
Newly powerful accreditation bodies, and massive testing programmes, are changing the official definition of a good teacher. This paper looks back at the history of teaching and forward to non-neoliberal ways of thinking about ‘quality’ in teaching.
Connell, Raewyn. 2003. Working-class families and the new secondary education. Australian Journal of Education, vol. 47 no. 3, 237-252.
During a project on new vocational curricula in NSW high schools, we interviewed parents, students and teachers. Our discussions with rural and urban working-class families traced an uncertain yet vital relationship with the school system in the upper secondary years.
Connell, Raewyn. 1996. Teaching the boys: new research on masculinity, and gender strategies for schools. Teachers College Record, vol. 98 no. 2, 206-235.
Gender research opened questions about how masculinities are made in the course of growing up. This paper brought together what was known about this process, from social research in several countries, to work out its implications for schools.
Connell, Raewyn. 1994. Poverty and education. Harvard Educational Review, vol. 64 no. 2, 125-149.
This paper brought together Australian, US and UK experience with compensatory education programmes, and argued for an approach to educational inequality that highlighted curriculum, and contested privilege as well as disadvantage. It was courteously published by the Harvard education school.
Connell, Raewyn. 1993. Schools and Social Justice. Toronto, Our Schools Ourselves; Sydney, Pluto Press; Philadelphia, Temple University Press.
Based mainly on our research with the Disadvantaged Schools Programme, which is described in some detail, this book also proposed a theory of ‘curricular justice’ that would put social justice at the heart of education rather than leaving it as an optional extra.
Connell, Raewyn. 1985. How to supervise a PhD. Vestes: Australian Universities Review, vol. 28 no. 2, 38-41.
My most reprinted article! Australian universities were enrolling increasing numbers of research students, but often left them to sink or swim. I argued, from practical experience, that PhD supervision was a demanding form of teaching needing reflection as well as care and enthusiasm.
Connell, Raewyn. 1985. Teachers' Work. Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
The second book from the ‘Making the Difference’ project. We had marvellous interviews with teachers, providing a basis for thinking about their lives and careers, and the nature of their work and workplace. A kind of industrial sociology that located teachers at the centre of major issues about education.
Connell, Raewyn, Dean Ashenden, Sandra Kessler and Gary Dowsett. 1982. Making the Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division. Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
The main publication from an immensely productive research project. It described families’ educational projects, gender in schools, class differences in educational experience, curriculum, schools as institutions, and strategies for democratising the school system. An academic best-seller in Australia, and read a little overseas.
Connell, Raewyn. 1974. Anti-Pygmalion: reflections on some experiments in reforming universities. International Social Science Journal, vol. 26, 483-497.
A look at the student movement of the 1960s, the Free University in Sydney, and attempts to democratise the mainstream universities, from an activist point of view.
Newly powerful accreditation bodies, and massive testing programmes, are changing the official definition of a good teacher. This paper looks back at the history of teaching and forward to non-neoliberal ways of thinking about ‘quality’ in teaching.
Connell, Raewyn. 2003. Working-class families and the new secondary education. Australian Journal of Education, vol. 47 no. 3, 237-252.
During a project on new vocational curricula in NSW high schools, we interviewed parents, students and teachers. Our discussions with rural and urban working-class families traced an uncertain yet vital relationship with the school system in the upper secondary years.
Connell, Raewyn. 1996. Teaching the boys: new research on masculinity, and gender strategies for schools. Teachers College Record, vol. 98 no. 2, 206-235.
Gender research opened questions about how masculinities are made in the course of growing up. This paper brought together what was known about this process, from social research in several countries, to work out its implications for schools.
Connell, Raewyn. 1994. Poverty and education. Harvard Educational Review, vol. 64 no. 2, 125-149.
This paper brought together Australian, US and UK experience with compensatory education programmes, and argued for an approach to educational inequality that highlighted curriculum, and contested privilege as well as disadvantage. It was courteously published by the Harvard education school.
Connell, Raewyn. 1993. Schools and Social Justice. Toronto, Our Schools Ourselves; Sydney, Pluto Press; Philadelphia, Temple University Press.
Based mainly on our research with the Disadvantaged Schools Programme, which is described in some detail, this book also proposed a theory of ‘curricular justice’ that would put social justice at the heart of education rather than leaving it as an optional extra.
Connell, Raewyn. 1985. How to supervise a PhD. Vestes: Australian Universities Review, vol. 28 no. 2, 38-41.
My most reprinted article! Australian universities were enrolling increasing numbers of research students, but often left them to sink or swim. I argued, from practical experience, that PhD supervision was a demanding form of teaching needing reflection as well as care and enthusiasm.
Connell, Raewyn. 1985. Teachers' Work. Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
The second book from the ‘Making the Difference’ project. We had marvellous interviews with teachers, providing a basis for thinking about their lives and careers, and the nature of their work and workplace. A kind of industrial sociology that located teachers at the centre of major issues about education.
Connell, Raewyn, Dean Ashenden, Sandra Kessler and Gary Dowsett. 1982. Making the Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division. Sydney, Allen & Unwin.
The main publication from an immensely productive research project. It described families’ educational projects, gender in schools, class differences in educational experience, curriculum, schools as institutions, and strategies for democratising the school system. An academic best-seller in Australia, and read a little overseas.
Connell, Raewyn. 1974. Anti-Pygmalion: reflections on some experiments in reforming universities. International Social Science Journal, vol. 26, 483-497.
A look at the student movement of the 1960s, the Free University in Sydney, and attempts to democratise the mainstream universities, from an activist point of view.
