Studying Historical Periodisation: Towards a Concept of Refraction (original) (raw)
Related papers
Higher Education Timescapes: Temporal Understandings of Students and Learning
Sociology, 2021
This article draws on data from six European countries (Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland and Spain) to explore the higher education timescapes inhabited by students. Despite arguments that degree-level study has become increasingly similar across Europe – because of global pressures and also specific initiatives such as the Bologna Process and the creation of a European Higher Education Area – it shows how such timescapes differed in important ways, largely by nation. These differences are then explained in terms of: the distinctive traditions of higher education still evident across the continent; the particular mechanisms through which degrees are funded; and the nature of recent national-level policy activity. The analysis thus speaks to debates about Europeanisation, as well as how we theorise the relationship between time and place.
Educational Equality: A Politico-Temporal Approach
Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2019
In a number of more recent studies, it has been argued that an increasingly presentistic temporal regime has emerged in educational politics since the 1970s. Against this backdrop, with Sweden as an exemplar, the purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, it serves to elaborate on how this presentist temporal logic in the educational field appears to be entwined with a specific form of equality, which I will refer to as imaginary equality. Arguing that it is motivated to conceive of these two-the tendency of presentism and the imaginary equality-as one problem complex, I maintain that the politico-temporal order that has emerged since the 1970s runs counter to democracy as a regime for enhancing political freedom. In light of this, the second purpose is to delineate a politically more dynamic way to tackle education as a politico-temporal challenge. I argue that Hannah Arendt's reflections on the role of education and her idea of the world offer ways to address the problem which calls into question the tenacious and with modernity concomitant division between traditionalism and progressivism. I maintain that we, by cutting across this division, open up for more viable ways of tackling education as a politico-temporal challenge. A crisis forces us back to the questions themselves and requires from us either new or old answers on which we ordinarily rely without even realising they were originally answers to questions. A crisis becomes a disaster only when we respond to it with preformed judgements, that is, with prejudices. Such an attitude not only sharpens the crisis but makes us forfeit the experience of reality and the opportunity for reflection it provides.
Refraction as a Tool for Understanding Action and Educational Orthodoxy and Transgression
Revista Tempos e Espaços em Educação, Special Issue : Curriculum, Orthodoxy and Transgression. v. 9, n. 18 (2016), Janeiro-Abril
Preamble: Toward a Theory of Refraction This paper further develops the concept of 'refraction' (Goodson & Rudd 2012; Rudd & Goodson 2014), a conceptual tool intended to support complex and rich methodological and theoretical explorations of educational discourse, systems, policies and practice. Refraction seeks to simultaneously examine structure and agency and the interrelationships between them, whilst also placing historical and contextual influence at the heart of explorations. Supra level global trends are seldom interpreted identically in the form of national policies, and similarly, national policies are rarely replicated as intended at the institutional and individual levels. Rather trends and policies are reinterpreted and redirected at local and classroom levels and revised by individuals. This 'refraction' results in global trends being mediated by wider national histories, traditions and dominant ideologies and politics, and national policies being translated through institutional cultures and practice and redirected through action arising based on individuals' and groups' own beliefs, values and trajectories.
2009
Support for this project has been provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd. This work is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike 2.5 Australia Licence. Under this Licence you are free to copy, distribute, display and perform the work and to make derivative works. Attribution: You must attribute the work to the original authors and include the following statement: Support for the original work was provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Noncommercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
British Journal of the Sociology of Education, 2017
This article explores how temporality and temporal regimes might be engaged in qualitative research in the sociology of education, proposing that such questions matter in relation to how research is done, not only to the topics and themes researched. The article shows how temporality enters into research designs, practices and imaginaries, arguing that research methodologies mobilise intersecting temporalities. Debates in the philosophy of history regarding the collision of temporalities are canvassed, and approaches are outlined for conceptualising temporality in reference to qualitative studies. To illustrate these arguments, an account is offered of theoretical and methodological approaches framing a new qualitative longitudinal study of young people and secondary schooling in Australia; to highlight the historicity of methodologies, comparisons are also drawn between this study and an earlier related longitudinal study undertaken in the 1990s. The article concludes by inviting a reconsideration of the possibilities for a renewal of historical sociology of education.
Developing a Concept of ‘Refraction’: Exploring Educational Change and Oppositional Practice
In much of our experiences of, and research in, educational policy we see how global and national policies are often reinterpreted and redirected at local and classroom level. In this paper, we highlight some initial thoughts relating to the development of the concept of ‘refraction’ as a lens for both theoretical development and for informing methodological approaches and empirical investigation that may provide rich and contextualised understandings of schools and practice.
Historical thinking in higher education : an ALTC discipline-based initiative
2009
Support for this project has been provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd. This work is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike 2.5 Australia Licence. Under this Licence you are free to copy, distribute, display and perform the work and to make derivative works. Attribution: You must attribute the work to the original authors and include the following statement: Support for the original work was provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Ltd, an initiative of the Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Noncommercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes.