Abstracts
"Is that all there is?" The View from Critical Educational Psychology
Lise Bird Claiborne, University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand
In the past quarter century, psychology has turned firmly from the cognitive 'revolution' to a technology-driven fascination with neuroscience. Findings from small studies of brain imaging form the basis of inferential leaps about the behaviour of the universal 'very young child' or 'adolescent'. Despite changes in research paradigm, the goals of much psychological research and practice in education remain the same: ensuring that individual students conform to normative expectations about the emotionally contained, self-motivated learner, who is assumed to be the ideal future citizen. In this session, a critical educational psychologist considers ways that new feminist questions about ontologies and postmodern ethics can critique as well as enliven psychological practices used in the monitoring, enhancement and containment of students struggling to understand education and their place (and possibilities) within it.
Lise Bird Claiborne, University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand
In the past quarter century, psychology has turned firmly from the cognitive 'revolution' to a technology-driven fascination with neuroscience. Findings from small studies of brain imaging form the basis of inferential leaps about the behaviour of the universal 'very young child' or 'adolescent'. Despite changes in research paradigm, the goals of much psychological research and practice in education remain the same: ensuring that individual students conform to normative expectations about the emotionally contained, self-motivated learner, who is assumed to be the ideal future citizen. In this session, a critical educational psychologist considers ways that new feminist questions about ontologies and postmodern ethics can critique as well as enliven psychological practices used in the monitoring, enhancement and containment of students struggling to understand education and their place (and possibilities) within it.
Re-thinking pointiness
Cath Laws, Australian Catholic University
In this session I look at some educational issues working with those students at the margins or in the speak of mainstream psy-disciplines – those at the ‘pointy end’. My work involved developing the capacity to apply poststructuralism in a place where other discourses are dominant. As a principal of a special school for those positioned as emotionally/behaviourally disturbed/disordered and, at the same time, researcher, I examined the educational practices used in a special school for those students who are read as unmanageable and too violent to be maintained in mainstream/regular schooling. Here I would like to look at some of the educational/psychological processes used to inform teachers and students and make the discursive practices of the special school more visible. I will discuss how the works of Foucault and other postructuralists helped me to move towards counteracting dominant discourses and use poststructuralist theory to bring about change.
Cath Laws, Australian Catholic University
In this session I look at some educational issues working with those students at the margins or in the speak of mainstream psy-disciplines – those at the ‘pointy end’. My work involved developing the capacity to apply poststructuralism in a place where other discourses are dominant. As a principal of a special school for those positioned as emotionally/behaviourally disturbed/disordered and, at the same time, researcher, I examined the educational practices used in a special school for those students who are read as unmanageable and too violent to be maintained in mainstream/regular schooling. Here I would like to look at some of the educational/psychological processes used to inform teachers and students and make the discursive practices of the special school more visible. I will discuss how the works of Foucault and other postructuralists helped me to move towards counteracting dominant discourses and use poststructuralist theory to bring about change.
‘The Elephant in the Room’: Silence in the ‘Inclusive’ Early Childhood Classroom.
Karen Watson, the University of Newcastle
In the ‘inclusive’ early childhood classroom the gaze of educators, professionals, children and researchers often focuses on the ‘child with a diagnosis’. Rarely does this gaze of scrutiny fall on the ‘including space’, the ‘normal’, ‘the children without a diagnosis’. This paper will turn the interrogatory gaze toward the ‘normal’ and its discursive constitution.
From an ethnographic study of three early childhood classrooms, I will present some of the created data. Using a post-structural framework I analyse how the children’s take up of the available and sanctioned discourses, including child development and special education, produce particular subject positions and particular practices that create a ‘silence’ around the discursively produced Other, the child with a diagnosis. Keeping ‘silent’, being ‘silent’, not speaking, or speaking about something in different terms are just some of the manifestations of ‘silence’ that work to maintain the discursive ‘normal’ and conserve social order. The children without a diagnosis, through silence share an understanding about their subject positionings, while sharing and avoiding the ‘obvious’ presence of the Other. In the ‘inclusive’ early childhood classroom, the category of the ‘normal’ is maintained by a ‘taboo’. ‘The elephant in the room’ becomes ‘obvious’ in this analysis.
Karen Watson, the University of Newcastle
In the ‘inclusive’ early childhood classroom the gaze of educators, professionals, children and researchers often focuses on the ‘child with a diagnosis’. Rarely does this gaze of scrutiny fall on the ‘including space’, the ‘normal’, ‘the children without a diagnosis’. This paper will turn the interrogatory gaze toward the ‘normal’ and its discursive constitution.
From an ethnographic study of three early childhood classrooms, I will present some of the created data. Using a post-structural framework I analyse how the children’s take up of the available and sanctioned discourses, including child development and special education, produce particular subject positions and particular practices that create a ‘silence’ around the discursively produced Other, the child with a diagnosis. Keeping ‘silent’, being ‘silent’, not speaking, or speaking about something in different terms are just some of the manifestations of ‘silence’ that work to maintain the discursive ‘normal’ and conserve social order. The children without a diagnosis, through silence share an understanding about their subject positionings, while sharing and avoiding the ‘obvious’ presence of the Other. In the ‘inclusive’ early childhood classroom, the category of the ‘normal’ is maintained by a ‘taboo’. ‘The elephant in the room’ becomes ‘obvious’ in this analysis.
Psychopathology at School: Theorising Mental Disorders in Education
Valerie Harwood, University of Wollongong & Julie Allan (Valerie presenting)
From the well-known ADHD to disorders such as bipolar disorder, learning disorder, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, mental disorders have become part of the common parlance of childhood. Increasing reliance on the medicines for mental disorders has brought the medicalization of children into focus and is the medium that has generated the most controversy. Children are now medicated at earlier ages than ever before and there are proliferating numbers of college and university students on depression related medication. Yet there are many outcomes of diagnosis that slip under the radar when attention is emotively aroused by medication. One of these is the fundamental change occurring in how children are understood. Developmental stages, for instance, now include navigating a narrow passage through the increasing proliferation of mental disorders. From this perspective, psychopathology at school further narrows the normalization of schooling and children (Baker 2002; J. Ryan 1991). In this paper we discuss the findings of our new book ‘Psychopathology at School’ (Routledge, 2014) and argue that psychopathology is a phenomenon firmly entrenched, if not ubiquitous, in schooling.
Valerie Harwood, University of Wollongong & Julie Allan (Valerie presenting)
From the well-known ADHD to disorders such as bipolar disorder, learning disorder, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, mental disorders have become part of the common parlance of childhood. Increasing reliance on the medicines for mental disorders has brought the medicalization of children into focus and is the medium that has generated the most controversy. Children are now medicated at earlier ages than ever before and there are proliferating numbers of college and university students on depression related medication. Yet there are many outcomes of diagnosis that slip under the radar when attention is emotively aroused by medication. One of these is the fundamental change occurring in how children are understood. Developmental stages, for instance, now include navigating a narrow passage through the increasing proliferation of mental disorders. From this perspective, psychopathology at school further narrows the normalization of schooling and children (Baker 2002; J. Ryan 1991). In this paper we discuss the findings of our new book ‘Psychopathology at School’ (Routledge, 2014) and argue that psychopathology is a phenomenon firmly entrenched, if not ubiquitous, in schooling.
‘How do you solve a problem like Maria?’ The problem of representation and the psy-gaze
Matthew Wilson-Wheeler, University of Newcastle
My PhD thesis aims to trouble hegemonic understandings of academic ‘underachievement’ by considering the complexity of the discourses that constitute primary school students academic subjectivities. It was apparent from a conversation with my thesis supervisors about the initial draft of an analysis chapter of an interview with one of my research participants, ‘Maria’, that despite my articulation of the poststructuralist underpinnings of the thesis that I had unreflexively defaulted to psychologising discourses in the analysis. This included engaging in the production of Maria’s biography as a singularly situated real story about her, through ‘triangulating’ her own, her teacher’s and her mother’s stories about her. Moreover, my own positionality in terms of how I engaged with Maria, the power relations between myself and her and my motivation for conducting the interview remained invisible and unchallenged. In this paper I wrestle with the question of how we can know our research participants and map the journey of ‘representing’ ‘Maria’ and the pitfalls that were encountered along the way.
Matthew Wilson-Wheeler, University of Newcastle
My PhD thesis aims to trouble hegemonic understandings of academic ‘underachievement’ by considering the complexity of the discourses that constitute primary school students academic subjectivities. It was apparent from a conversation with my thesis supervisors about the initial draft of an analysis chapter of an interview with one of my research participants, ‘Maria’, that despite my articulation of the poststructuralist underpinnings of the thesis that I had unreflexively defaulted to psychologising discourses in the analysis. This included engaging in the production of Maria’s biography as a singularly situated real story about her, through ‘triangulating’ her own, her teacher’s and her mother’s stories about her. Moreover, my own positionality in terms of how I engaged with Maria, the power relations between myself and her and my motivation for conducting the interview remained invisible and unchallenged. In this paper I wrestle with the question of how we can know our research participants and map the journey of ‘representing’ ‘Maria’ and the pitfalls that were encountered along the way.
Psychological cogs in the teacher education machine
Eva Bendix Petersen & ZSuzsa Millei, University of Newcastle
In his book Discipline and Punish (1977) Foucault offered the notion of the ‘psy- disciplines’, as a collective terms for psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapies, and described how they became entangled in new forms of ‘governing at a distance’ during the 19th century. In this paper we set out to explore the ways in which the ‘psy- disciplines’ continue to be significant cogs in the teacher education machine. Responding to Law and Urry’s (2004) call for a more ‘messy’ social science, we take up Law and Mol’s (2002) exploration strategy called ‘listing’, in which smooth overviews of ‘main contributing factors’ are rejected in favour of disordered sketches of nodes in a complex indefinite assemblage. Taking up such a ‘methodology of disappointment’ (Stronach and MacLure, 1997), the intention is to disappoint the desire for certainty not for knowledge.
Eva Bendix Petersen & ZSuzsa Millei, University of Newcastle
In his book Discipline and Punish (1977) Foucault offered the notion of the ‘psy- disciplines’, as a collective terms for psychology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapies, and described how they became entangled in new forms of ‘governing at a distance’ during the 19th century. In this paper we set out to explore the ways in which the ‘psy- disciplines’ continue to be significant cogs in the teacher education machine. Responding to Law and Urry’s (2004) call for a more ‘messy’ social science, we take up Law and Mol’s (2002) exploration strategy called ‘listing’, in which smooth overviews of ‘main contributing factors’ are rejected in favour of disordered sketches of nodes in a complex indefinite assemblage. Taking up such a ‘methodology of disappointment’ (Stronach and MacLure, 1997), the intention is to disappoint the desire for certainty not for knowledge.