lisa.hunter@griffith.au

1. MSAWA International Middle Schooling Conference 2006 lisa.hunter@griffith.edu.au Who is motivated? Whose meaning? And managing What?: Positioning young people in their middle years of schooling

2. What selves/habitus do we make possible in the field of schooling? (Middle years of) schooling (Field) Classroom and school interactions (Practices & processes) (Habitus) Students & teachers

3. organisation How do we know? Who says? Who benefits? Where are the kids? How are they positioned?

4. James Beane •  General curriculum • Serve students’ needs • Retheorise category of ‘early adolescent’ • Different theory of curriculum and learning ‘curriculum embraces an entirely different theory of curriculum and learning than that of the subject-area approach. It assumes that a curriculum that facilitates integration and is person-centered, constructivist, and thematic makes sense, and, therefore, ought to be the whole curriculum’ (Integrated curriculum in the middle schools, 1991)

5. The logic of practice in schooling (dominant) and for young people in their middle years of schooling • Game • Misrecognition • Habitus • Field • Capital

6. In a game, the field (the pitch or board on which it is played, the rules, the outcome at stake, etc) is clearly seen for what it is, an arbitrary social construct, an artefact whose arbitrariness and artificiality are underlined by everything that defines its autonomy - explicit and specific rules, strictly delimited and extra-ordinary time and space.... By constrast, in the social fields, which are the products of a long, slow process of autonomization, and are therefore, so to speak, games 'in themselves' and not 'for themselves', one does not embark on the game by a conscious act, one is born into the game, with the game; and the relation of investment, illusio, investment, is made more total and unconditional by the fact that it is unaware of what it is. Bourdieu, 1990. The logic of practice p. 67

7. Misrecognition (‘natural’) • Adolescent/early adolescent • Adult knowledge • Academic, technical, personal, social, embodied • Teacher-student relationships • Assessment of information • Transition • Subject based • V Integrated curriculum • interdisciplinary • multidisciplinary • transdisciplinary

8. Habitus andfield • In a game, the field (the pitch or board on which it is played, the rules, the outcome at stake, etc) is clearly seen for what it is, an arbitrary social construct, an artefact whose arbitrariness and artificiality are underlined by everything that defines its autonomy - explicit and specific rules, strictly delimited and extra-ordinary time and space. (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 67) • Sensible practices • Feel for the game • Mastery of the game • Embodying the field

9. Habitus and field • An institution, even an economy, is complete and fully viable only if it is durably objectified not only in things, that is, in the logic, transcending individual agents, of a particular field [schooling], but also in bodies, in durable dispositions [teachers, students] to recognize and comply with the demands immanent in the field. (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 58)

10. Capital • Value • Exchangeable • Legitimated • Social, symbolic, economic, cultural

11. Capitals • Economic - wealth • Social – network of lasting relations • Symbolic – good students • Cultural – ‘education’, (physical) • Physical – appearance and competence

12. Where are the young people? • What practices have teachers, students and schooling ‘naturalised’? • What are the presuppositions and therefore practices of ‘traditional primary/secondary’ and ‘middle’ schooling? • What investments are there by teachers, parents, administration, schooling and students in school? • What is legitimated within the field of education and institutions of schools?

13. Who can they be and not be? How are they conceptualised and organised in schools? What does school mean to them? And how do we know?

14. society school Knowledge/ subjects Student/s time awkward threat public adolescent hormones on legs unruly lazy bullying smelly

15. Ways of ‘knowing’and The Truth about Adolescence/ts What are the systems of ideas that make possible the young people that we see, think, feel, understand, and act upon as they are situated in their middle years of schooling? e.g. Nancy Lesko, Johanna Wyn

16. Adolescence, Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education 1904 Recapitulation theory race nation gender Boy Scouts Muscular Christianity Develop manhood Juvenile courts Schools G Stanley Hall New truths of ADOLESCENT/ADOLESCENCE New professionals and institutions Teachers, play reformers, psychologists, scout leaders

17. In seeking understanding much depends on where you look...

18. Adolescence as part of the metadiscourse of age Adolescence as culturally constructed What are the available discourses?

19. Discourse One: Age/stage developmentalism • Underlying theory: Individual development psychology (Piaget) • Young person: delimited, hormonal, and suspended by biological fact • Teacher: Controller, Disciplinarian • Pedagogy: "Adolescent" strategies - explicit rewards and punishment system, watering down of curriculum to bide time until biology make interaction worthwhile

20. Discourse Two: Pathologization • Quantitative language supporting neurophysiological categories • In development or fully flagrantis of biomedical condition (such as ADD, ADHD, ODD) • co-diagnostician, along with parent, psychologist, and counsellor • Strategies to mediate the diagnosed disability

21. Discourse Three: Progressivism • Individuals in a risk society (Beck, Giddens) • Unruly and 'At-risk' in a danger-riddled time and a hazardous world • Counsellor from on high • Self-help, self-esteem, and 'feel good' goals

22. Discourse Four: Oppression and Resistance • critical (Marx, Neomarxism, Gramsci) • Easily duped purveyor of commercial texts • Unveiler of implicit power structures • Deconstruction of youth subculture texts

23. Complexity theory/postmodernism Young person Necessarily complex Unpredictable unique from others (expected diversity) Teacher Necessarily complex Unpredictable Unique from others Guides relevant activities based on contextual needs Discerns the minimal number of enabling constraints Pedagogy Works within few but essential enabling constraints Expects unpredictable outcomes Recursive mediation among participants, context, and needs

24. Implications for middle years. a shift from old mindsets to reform • A shift from pedagogical content knowledge to pedagogical inquiries and curiosities • A shift from the ‘known adolescent’ to the dynamic and complex young person in their middle years • A shift from static questions to dynamism, recursivity, and discursivity

25. Static contexts and purposes Not asked-assumed to be known What are the needs of the adolescent? What do they need to learn? What are the rules? Reconstructing subjectivities within complexity Who are the participants in the context? What are the needs, abilities, and proclivities of these participants in this setting? What individual and collective learning can occur in this context? What are liberating structures that will allow for divergent and productive learning for these people in this setting? A shift in relevant questions:

26. Who are the ‘known’ ‘adolescents’? How do we know? Who is intelligible?

27. The body as a site for learning Democratic learning spaces Engaging pedagogy Negotiated curriculum Authentic assessment

28. What implications does this have for the way we present, view and talk about bodies? (philosophy) What are implications for the way we work in subject areas, extra curricula, schooling? (pedagogy) What implications does this have for the way we interact with (young) people? (Curriculum) What implications does this have for the information we support as knowledge? (curriculum) What implications does this have for the way we legitimate what is important? (assessment )

29. What selves/habitus do we make possible in the field of schooling? (Middle years of) schooling (Field) Classroom and school interactions (Practices & processes) (Habitus) Students & teachers

30. Resituating young people as curious, passionate, generative, participative, social, embodied, reflective learners who have opinions and are valued. Who is motivated? Whose meaning? And managing What? Re-Positioning young people in their middle years of schooling society schooling classpace