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This article examines the relationships between the embodiment of dramatic characters, gender, and identity. It draws on ethnographic data based on observations and interviews with 24 drama teachers and senior secondary drama students in Western Australia. We explore how student becomings in year 12 drama classrooms are mediated and constituted through socially overcoded gender binaries in a dominant neoliberal culture of competitive performativity. We ask the questions: What constructions of femininity and masculinity are students embodying from popular dramatic texts in the drama classroom at a critical time in their social and emotional development? Are these constructions empowering? Or disempowering? What factors are influencing teachers’ choices of texts for their predominantly female students? Our research shows that what is delimiting about this potentiality in a time of identity exploration and formation are the constraining gender-binary roles available to young women particularly, and the performative pressures teachers are experiencing.

Late adolescence is a critical time in the formation of a young person’s sense of self with studies pointing to the senior secondary drama classroom as a generative space for this to occur. What is not yet clear is the importance of context, and particularly the powerful forces of neoliberal times, in shaping and potentially delimiting young people’s explorations of gender and life trajectories. More specifically, through the texts students study and the characters they embody, personality and desires are moulded by capital in ways hidden from individual control. Drawing on 15 drama teachers and 13 of their post compulsory students from government, Catholic and independent schools in Western Australia from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds, this dissertation examines the formation of identity/ies in the context of students’ embodiment of characters from proscribed texts in the senior secondary drama classroom and asks: how does the embodiment of characters in texts in year 12 drama empower and constrain adolescent becomings in contemporary times? Year 12 is the final year of schooling for students in Australia. Framed through a critical, post-humanist ethnographic methodology, the theories of Butler, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari are utilised to examine how these forces and “becoming,” as a process of change and resistance, interact to create something new. Second, embodiment is considered through a neoliberal culture of competitive performativity, with gender considered third. Fourth, drama education and creativity are highlighted and linked in generative ways, with consideration then given to the ways that the contemporary zeitgeist impacts on drama education itself in uncertain times. The study contributes to our understanding of neoliberal education systems, whilst focusing specifically on adolescent becomings in drama. The research revealed evidence of a culture of performativity in Western Australian drama education. This is manifest in fewer subject ch

This thesis presents the results of a study designed to examine ways to engage and scaffold primary school students who experience literacy learning difficulties. Utilising a pedagogy of multiliteracies, proposed by the New London Group (1996, 2000), and a framework for inclusive pedagogy (Florian, 2014), this thesis sought to investigate ways to facilitate meaningful literacy learning for students who experience challenges when participating in print-based classroom activities. A qualitative case study approach was adopted to support the broader sociocultural and multiliteracies perspective that underlies the theoretical direction of this research. Three student case studies were constructed illustrating the students’ in-school and out-of-school literacy practices. Research data indicated that while these students exhibited strong engagement with multiple literacies in their out-of-school environment, their experiences in a classroom context were, at times, challenging and marginalising. During the fieldwork period, which took place in a Western Australian Year 6 primary classroom, a multimodal literacy activity was implemented over one school term. This activity required students to: 1. Audioread the novel The Bad Beginning 2. Create a storyboard utilising the iPad app Kid’s Book Report and 3. Create an iMovie review about the novel. Data analysis revealed that engagement with the multimodal literacy activity emerged in similar ways for the case study students. These students appeared to be engaged with the literacy activity when they were: • Activating prior knowledge and immersed in meaningful practices via situated learning. • Experiencing opportunities to create meaning in multiple ways. • Fostering shared meanings - scaffolded within a community of practice. Results indicate that engagement with multiple literacies, beyond the printed word, allowed the students to navigate literacy within various contexts. Exploring multimodal ways to present their thoughts f

This article explores the effects of neoliberalism and performative educational cultures on secondary school drama classrooms. We consider the ways Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis and Butler’s concept of gender performance enable us to chart the embodied, relational, spatial and affective energies that inhabit the often neoliberal and heterosexually striated space of the drama classroom. These post-humanist analyses are useful methodological tools for mapping the complexities of student becomings in the space context of the secondary school. We also show how Foucault’s governmentality and Ball’s theory of competitive performativity are particularly salient in the context of immanent capitalism that shapes the desires of its subjects. These frameworks, when combined, can be useful in critiquing neoliberal educational assemblages and in indicating emerging deterritorializations and lines of flight in teachers and students.

This article examines the intersection between the senior secondary drama classroom, creativity and neoliberalism. Informed by a research project involving fifteen West Australian drama teachers and thirteen students, it considers the drama classroom as one site where tensions between the performative needs of neoliberal education and the more humanistic desires that drama teachers embody are enacted. This paper suggests that drama education can be a powerfully transformative vehicle for creative and innovative thinking because of its spatially unique classroom environment and embodied nature. However, collisions between rhetoric and reality, social good and economic return, can mean that young people are denied opportunities for choice and the capability development that drama education brings.

This paper explores Deleuze and Guattari's schizoanalysis in relation to student and teacher becomings and the way these are actualised within the neoliberal and heterosexually striated spaces of the secondary school assemblage. Deleuze and Guattari considered a narrow approach to education problematic and called for creativity as a site of ‘resistance’. Drama is one subject rich with potentiality for students to strengthen their creativity and ‘speak back’ against the neoliberal project. What our research revealed is how the drama classroom is an open, dynamic space where students can embody different identities at a critical time in their adolescent development. What is delimiting about this potentiality is the proclivity of teachers and students, as desiring machines, to conform to the dominant neoliberal culture of competitive performativity. The paper proposes that schizoanalysis offers new insights for mapping complex desire-flows and embodied identities through and against the dominant performative and heterosexist culture.

In today’s increasingly intercultural workplace setting, an individual’s ability to function effectively in culturally diverse situations is paramount for the success of the organisation. The main purpose of this study is to examine and understand the intercultural communication between Australian hospital workers (nurse managers, nurses and Patient Care Assistants and volunteers) through the theoretical lens of Cultural Intelligence (CQ). A mixed method approach was employed to collect data from multiple sources including the use of questionnaires and interviews. Items for the questionnaires and interviews were drawn from the literature on cultural intelligence. The questionnaire included 20 Likert scale items which were developed by the Centre for Cultural Intelligence based in the United States and Singapore. In addition there were six Likert scale items developed by the researcher on intercultural experiences to gauge satisfaction levels in interactions. Another seven Likert scale items were drawn from the Ali Individualism Scale to understand how culture type influenced CQ and intercultural interactions. The interview included six open-ended questions related to cultural intelligence, English language proficiency and a critical incident scenario. The interviews were used to provide detail on the cultural intelligence questionnaire statements. A Western Australian private hospital was selected for the study where 400 questionnaires were distributed. Out of these 157 returned questionnaires, 15 voluntary interviewees were chosen based on their job roles and culture type to be interviewed. The study found that overall the hospital workers had a high level of cultural intelligence. There were two cultural intelligence factors that were low: Cognitive CQ, involving knowledge of other cultures, and Behavioural CQ, involving the ability to provide the appropriate cultural response during intercultural interactions. The study found that those with higher levels of CQ e

This study examines agricultural education in Botswana among students and teachers. Since independence in 1966 to the present time, agricultural production has declined from about 40 percent to about 3 percent. Harsh climatic conditions and a general ignorance about agriculture contribute to the restricted perception of agriculture and careers in this field. Individual and focus group interviews were conducted with agricultural teachers who had resigned and former graduates in four secondary schools and three postsecondary educational institutions (Botswana College of Agriculture, University of Botswana, and Tonota College of Education). Negative, positive and mixed images emerged that revealed some similar and some contradictory perceptions of agriculture education. The attrition of teachers also attracted attention because of their working conditions and their images of agricultural teaching. However, the phenomenon of teacher attrition is not unique to agriculture. Students and teachers had conflicting images concerning curriculum instruction. Teachers identified the inadequacy of practicals because students are unable to apply the theoretical knowledge they have acquired to satisfy the various skills required in their new jobs. On the other hand, students perceived practicals as misdirected intensive labour. Non-agricultural tertiary students demonstrated that they do not have a full understanding of the potential career opportunities that agriculture can provide. They often thought that agriculture was confined to ploughing and food production. Nevertheless, both agricultural students and non-agricultural students agreed that agriculture could be a good career that they might consider later in their lives. Participants in the study suggested strategies to enhance the poor perception of agriculture education in educational institutions in Botswana. One strategy was for curriculum reform, such that agriculture teaching should reinforce practicals that are relevan

Higher education has undergone significant change as universities have sought to respond to government reforms in a period of globalisation. One major reform that globalisation has introduced is the reduction in state funding for higher education. Universities have turned to other resources to provide funding and one of these is the recruitment of international students. The focus of this thesis is on contrasting the internationalisation policies of two nations, Australia and the United States, by analysing published policies, statistics and carrying out interviews on two campuses. Two universities, one in Australia and the other in the United States, served as case studies to examine the strategies used to implement these policies. Approximately 100 participants were interviewed, including administrators and faculty members, international and domestic students. Each university featured internationalisation as a goal in its mission statement. By integrating intercultural and global dimensions into the teaching, research and service functions of a university, internationalisation encompasses a multitude of activities that provide an educational experience. While administrators generally stated that the implementation of strategic plans to achieve international goals had been successful, many faculty members, domestic and international students were of the view that international goals were yet to be realised. These contrasting discourses revealed that each university was falling short of achieving its internationalisation goals. Faculty members and domestic and international students expressed dissatisfaction about cultural insensitivity, lack of adequate services that offered housing and emotional/social support, and language barriers. At the same time, each university was achieving some of its internationalisation goals. In conclusion, strategies are suggested that might improve the implementation of internationalisation at both universities.

Over the past thirty years, the World Bank has intensified its activities relating to education in developing countries. Notable developments in the World Bank's policy on education include promotion of 'innovative delivery', which refers to the use of new and existing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in education. The World Bank claims that the unique characteristics of ICTs have the potential to produce new forms of delivery in higher education that can overcome existing barriers to education and facilitate student-centred learning (World Bank, 1999, 2005). Many forms of innovative delivery, such as distance education and open learning, are not new forms of instruction. However, promotion of innovative delivery as a global priority for education in developing countries is new. In this thesis, I interrogate the World Bank's assumptions concerning innovative delivery as expressed in their landmark policy statement on education, the 1999 Education Sector Strategy Report (ES99) (World Bank, 1999). I focus on the assumptions that underlie views put forward in the ES99 on the nature of technology and its role in education, the role of innovative delivery in overcoming existing barriers to education, and the potential of innovative delivery to facilitate student-centred learning. A central aim of this thesis was to better understand the socio-cultural and pedagogical issues that may arise when these assumptions are put into practice in different cultural contexts. This was achieved by comparing the assumptions put forward in the ES99 with the reported perceptions of, attitudes toward, and use of ICTs by students and lecturers from three different cultural contexts. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used to gather detailed empirical data on end-users' perceptions, attitudes to and use of online technologies at universities in Australia, Malaysia and the United States. The findings suggested that across all three cultural contexts, respondent

This study explores the human face of workplace change in two Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges in Western Australia. It analyses the impact of neoliberalism on organisational culture by examining the way vocational education and training (VET) reforms influenced the restructuring and orientation of these colleges, and changed their power dynamics and work practices. It presents the accounts of 100 women and men who were interviewed between 2000-2002 about their working lives. Their stories of passion and angst represent a 'vertical slice' of life in TAFE and include responses from administrative staff, lecturers, academic managers, corporate services managers and executives. This study explores perceptions of power and the mechanisms of control that were exerted upon and within the colleges with a focus on the factors that impact on career satisfaction. In addition, it examines perceptions of fairness in relation to employment, remuneration and promotion issues. Specifically, it reveals a variety of points of view on the attributes of success and outlines the strategies individuals use to get ahead. Furthermore, it seeks to understand the way values and norms guide and justify conduct and how they influence organisational culture. It evaluates whether a climate of sacrifice operates in the colleges and whether individuals will sacrifice personal or professional values to get ahead. Although much has been written on the impact of neoliberalism on the changing nature of work and organisational culture, there has been little investigation of the TAFE 'experience' at the individual, group and institutional level. It is also less common to find analyses of workplace restructuring that conceptualises the changes from a feminist and sociocultural perspective. By investigating the colleges as sites of gender and identity politics, this study explores the way individuals and groups do gender and describes how gender asymmetry is reproduced through social, cult

Many academics become teachers without the help of formal professional learning. This study explores how a small group of academics have done this. The research aims to uncover the informal, experiential means whereby participants have constructed the knowledge about teaching and learning that underpins their pedagogies. The research begins with the assumption that three key elements play a major role in supporting academics' informal learning about teaching. These are a person's previous experiences of learning, their experience of being part of a particular academic environment and their personal or 'private' theories about teaching and learning, which are experientially based. Life narratives were collected from a small group of university teachers who participated in qualitative interviews and provided written evidence of their experiences, practices and philosophies of teaching. The research uses an ethnographic, interpretive approach to collect and analyse data in which participants' voices are foregrounded. The researcher's life narratives also form part of the final thesis, demonstrating an 'engaged' approach to research and providing explicit evidence of the researcher's positioning in relation to the subject matter of the thesis. The research reveals the importance for participants of a 'teaching self' or consistent identity that develops in early life and continues through to the adult professional context. This identity forms a basis for participants' teaching practices. The challenges experienced by participants when institutional practices do not support or help maintain this identity are discussed, as are the processes whereby participants seek out like-minded colleagues with whom to engage in 'professional conversations' about teaching. The research reveals strong connections between participants' sense of 'self' and the principles underpinning their pedagogies, and the thesis concludes with some suggestions about how the concept of the 'teaching sel

Through a critique of Ball's (1990) policy analysis framework, this dissertation explores the influences that led to the deregulation of international student recruitment ('the policy') and the subsequent development of pathway programs in the Australian higher education sector. In this study Ball's framework is extended to include Marginson and Rhoades' (2002) glonacal heuristic to analyse the global, national and local contexts that contributed to the creation and implementation of 'the policy'. The development of pathway programs is chosen as one aspect of implementation to allow for an exploration that progresses from a macro to a microanalysis of 'the policy' cycle. The study examines the key 'players' or individuals who contributed to 'the policy's' creation, the ideologies that influenced these individuals and the contexts within which decisions were made. The research found that glonacal influences of neoliberalism, globalisation, internationalisation and commercialisation were paramount in the formation of 'the policy', and in influencing key 'players'. It was also recognized that it was not always possible to definitively describe the role of these 'players' or 'actors' according to a hierarchical structure and separate contexts, confirming Ball's (1990) theory that influence on policy is often ad hoc and trajectory in nature. Education is an export industry, which contributes an income of $5.6 billion to the Australian economy. In 2004, there were 151,798 international students in the higher education sector, with 10 Australian universities depending on this industry for 15% to 40% of their total income. The development of pathway programs and universities' close association with private providers has contributed significantly to the overall commercial and internationalisation objectives of these universities. The pathway model, delivered through a private provider, examined in this study is quintessentially Australian, and was a local response to the pos

By the end of the 20th Century a major global social issue had become the movement of people fleeing countries affected by war, religious persecution, ethnic tension, political repression and poverty. Large numbers of people were claiming asylum under the international Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951). Since the mid-1990s the Australian government progressively hardened its attitude to asylum seekers and implemented one of the harshest responses in the Western world. Although the policies implemented have been held to breach a variety of international human rights conventions, they have received popular support. The dominant discourse about asylum seekers in Australia was characterised by fear, ignorance and rejection. This research challenges the dominant discourse and is an expression of my commitment to social justice. It involved the design and implementation of a 6-week community education programme on asylum seekers for Australian residents. Through the project I explored how a diverse group of Australian residents experienced and responded to a pedagogy that went against the grain of the dominant discourse about asylum seekers. Using critical pedagogy, critical postmodernism, cultural studies, popular education and feminist pedagogies, I sought to create a transformative pedagogy. Through the empirical data generated I developed situated theory that would be of use to social change educators. The research embodies the cyclical process of action and reflection/practice and theory informed by the tradition of critical social research. The participants in the research who attended the community education programme were largely from the dominant cultural group (White, Anglo-Celtic Australians) but their attitudes to asylum seekers and refugees covered the broad range found in the community. Their participation in the programme thus resulted in a wide range of responses. To locate and describe the participants I created three categories based o

This thesis is a history of schooling for Indigenous children in Western Australia between the commencement of the first Aboriginal school in Perth in 1840 and 1978. The thesis represents the view that, for most of this period, and regardless of policy, education for Indigenous children was directed towards changing their beliefs and behaviours from being distinctly Aboriginal to recognizably European. Four major policies for Aborigines provide the framework for the thesis, these being amalgamation (1840-1852), protection (1886-1951), assimilation (1951-1972) and self-determination (1973-). The amalgamation of the Indigenous population with the small colonial society in Western Australia was a short-lived policy adopted by the British Colonial Office. Protection, a policy formalised by Western Australian legislation in 1886, 1905 and 1936, dominated Aboriginal affairs for the first half of the 20th century. Under this policy the Indigenous population was regarded as two distinct groups - a diminishing traditional population to be segregated and protected and an increasing part-Aboriginal population that was to be trained and made ‘useful’. In 1951 Western Australia accepted a policy of assimilation, coordinated by the Commonwealth government, which anticipated that all people of Aboriginal descent would eventually be assimilated into the mainstream Australian society. This policy was replaced in 1973 by one of Aboriginal community self-determination, an initiative of the Commonwealth government and adopted throughout Australia. The attempts at directed cultural change were evident in the ‘Native’ schools that opened in Perth, Fremantle and Guildford in the 1840s where it was assumed that the separation of children from their families and a Christian education would achieve the transition from a ‘savage to civilized’ state. For another century the education of Indigenous children on missions and in government settlements was founded upon similar assumptions. The thes

This thesis investigates the experiences of 21 women in leadership and management who chose to leave their positions in the central office of a large state education department in Australia between 1991 and 2001, despite a record of high achievement and, for most, many years of loyal service. In particular, I identified why the women left and elements of the organisational culture that altered their career directions. The study adds to existing knowledge about women in management in Australia and the phenomenon of 'the glass ceiling' (generally understood to refer to an invisible barrier which prevents women, because they are women, from advancing beyond low to middle levels of organisational management). It demonstrates that the few women who do make it into senior management positions often encounter resistance to their acceptance at that level where the predominantly male managers exclude those who are different. Using a qualitative research approach with in-depth, open-ended interviewing techniques drawn from a critical feminist perspective, I worked with the interviewees to explore their experiences as women in organisational management. In combining a phenomenological approach with critical reflection I aimed to create a dialogue on lived experiences while at the same time using theory to inform and reflect on those experiences. My focus shifts back and forth from the women's stories, related in their own voices, to my critical interpretation through a feminist lens, of their life-worlds. The sample ranged from women leading projects and special programs to directors, executive directors and chief executives. All, with one or two exceptions, encountered barriers and described gendered micropolitical processes at work. The loss of talent is central to the research. The findings suggest that more could be done to retain women of high potential and, more broadly, to value talented and 'different' individuals who may disrupt the traditional understanding of 'manag

In February 1995, the Australian Federal Government Industry Task Force on Leadership and Management, released Enterprising nation: Renewing Australia's managers to meet the challenges of the Asia-Pacific century, 1 (known as the Karpin Report). The Karpin Report defined 1995 - 2010 as a developmental period for improving Australian business practices at leader and manager level. It identified five levers for change. Australian businesses were encouraged to focus on globalisation. Life long learning was seen as a key ingredient in up skilling workers and managers for evolving work environments. Australia was advised to build an enterprise-focused culture. Managers and leaders were encouraged to value diversity in the workforce. Enterprises and education and training institutions were encouraged to implement 'best practice' procedures. This study situated the Karpin recommendations in the literature on gender, leadership, management, and Australian social, economic and political conditions. Employing an interdisciplinary approach and using quantitative and qualitative methods, it sought the views of women in senior, middle and frontline or supervisory positions, in large, medium and small businesses. The study concluded that, in terms of creating diversity within institutionalised leadership, recruitment practices and social circumstances still encouraged the status quo. It found that refocusing Australian business and its leaders was unlikely to provide expanded opportunities for women in leading and managing. The skills women were acknowledged to have often aligned with skills sought for lower management positions. This has been one contributing factor in confining women to lower decision-making roles except in some education and community service environments. In these areas where women often form the majority of workers and reflect the cultures of their industries very successfully, more women occupy senior positions. The study found that women's skills were comp

Chineseness at the crossroads examines how Chineseness is negotiated by diasporic Chinese women in Australia. I question the essentialist notions of Chineseness by deploying Homi Bhabha's theory of liminality. This concept of being neither here nor there helped me examine the women's ambiguous experiences of acceptance and rejection, within and across marginal and dominant Australian circles. My position disrupts the binaric frames that divide the old from the new, and the eastern from the western practices for cultural appropriation. It recognises instead the past and the present in the creation of new but familiar versions of Chineseness. I argue that essentialist norms are commuilicated through cultural semantics to inform how Chineseness is rehearsed. I assert that liminality exposes the power structures that inform these cultural semantics by disrupting the naturalised norms. I posit that the diasporic women's awareness of these interdependent processes enables them to question their practices and ideologies. I used an autoethnographic technique to collapse the divide between the researcher and the researched. It created a liminal space between the researcher and the researched. This subverted norms of the researcher as the archaeologist of knowledge by enabling the other women's narratives to tell their stories alongside mine. This methodological frame also serves as a prism to examine the intersections of gender, sexuality, family, relationships, language, education, class, age, and religion with Chineseness in the lives of the 39 Malaysian and Singaporean women interviewed. My results indicate that Chineseness is precarious and indeterminate, and specific to the particular moments of articulation at the crossroads of geopolitical and socioeconomic factors. The versions of Chineseness rehearsed are complexly influenced by the various cultural semantics that impact on the women's negotiations of who they are as diasporic Chinese women in Australia. I conclude

The regulation of nursing practice has been shown to be an important component of the accountability which professional nurses are committed to in the delivery of care. A qualitative descriptive study was undertaken of the perception of nurses working in hospitals of the effect of regulation on their ability to practise nursing in the way they expect or desire. A theoretical framework was constructed to enable a description and interpretation of twenty-two female nurses’ perceptions about the nature of their practice in relation to the context of professional regulation and the context of the bureaucratic workplace. Data analysis showed a high degree of agreement among the participants with regard to the social construction of nurses and nursing work. There was however little understanding of the nature of professional regulatory control beyond the initial requirement for licensure to practice. The hierarchical and bureaucratic construction of the modern hospital was seen by participants to affect their ability to carry out the quality of nursing care they expected to be able to implement. And whilst this does not cause them to be disillusioned with nursing itself, it leads to frustration and can contribute to poor practice. The results have implications for consumers of nursing care, the nurse regulatory authorities, and the health care delivery system and for nurses who wish to practice as reflective, accountable and responsible practitioners. Several recommendations arose from the findings in relation to further research and policy making. There should be ongoing assessment of professional competence to practice in the workplace. This assessment could be used, by the nurse, as evidence for maintenance of the license to practice. Collaboration between the regulatory authority, the practising nurse and the managers and employers of nurses could contribute to an in depth explication of nursing practice and contribute to a more informed allocation of scarce resources

This thesis is both a record of a personal journey and a social science treatise. It is set in the context of rising public awareness that we live on a finite planet facing potentially devastating environmental problems. The need for widespread changes in Western lifestyles and the search for ways to achieve such change prompted the research. The study is holistic in approach and uses the methodological device of the case study to focus on the issues. The ‘case’ – the Permaculture Association of Western Australia (PAWA) – is an organisation devoted to promoting lifestyles which care for the earth while at the same time caring for people. A statistical comparison of members of the Association with the general state population showed them to be fairly typical on a number of key demographic features. As a focal point and a representative sample, members of the Association and their activities were studied using various methods. These included: participant observation (including experiential insights and a form of action research), responses from a survey of members, and documentary information from permaculture publications and general research literature. Findings highlighted the comprehensive nature of the environmental problem, and the many factors involved in developing an ecologically v sustainable society. The importance of community interaction in promoting the level of change required, was emphasised, as was the effect of informal education in leading to changes in attitudes and values. New experiences with nature and natural processes and cooperative encounters with other people were shown to be crucial in developing new attitudes and satisfactions. The changes required – and desired by people with new values – are set in the context of an economic system committed to continuous growth and an ever-rising standard of living. The dominance of the market economy affords limited opportunities for people to live simpler, less materialistic lives, and this points to

In the education policy arena, the notion of 'quality' as a mechanism for increasing accountability to external stakeholders has risen to prominence in the 1990s, as part of the New Right reform agenda of many national governments. Global economic, political and ideological shifts have provided the macro context for initiation of such policies. This study examines how the localised Australian context created a uniquely Australian version of a quality policy for universities in the early 1990s. Using documents and interviews, the study analyses how the original ministerial policy of 1991 was recontextualised through the Higher Education Council (HEC), to the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (CQAHE), to individual universities over the life of the policy and beyond. A theoretical framework of a policy trajectory is employed to examine how the policy process evolved through contexts of influence, policy text production and practice (effects). The study reveals the complex, contested and messy realities of this Australian quality policy process in higher education. A central finding is that the operation of the Australian quality policy of the early 1990s provides an example par excellence of a policy mechanism of 'steering at a distance'. On the one hand, the parameters were clearly set by ministerial guidelines, but on the other hand, the minutiae of the program were shaped by CQAHE and institutional managers in universities. However, 'room for manoeuvre' at the micro political level of this policy process had definite boundaries. Although there was some variation in policy practices at different sites, the 'bigger picture' effects were clearly to increase Government control of higher education and to increase inequalities between and within universities. A major conclusion of the study is that the quality policy under investigation was a 'clever'* strategy which diverted growing criticism and concerns about increasing demands for accountability dri

The purpose of this work is to investigate the sociology of educational systems, both in its theoretical and empirical aspects, by examining the development of teacher training in twentieth century Western Australia. The theoretical enquiry consists of a critical examination of the writings of selected social theorists, particularly Max Weber and some of his followers (especially Margaret Archer), who employed the interpretive method of macro-sociological analysis of educational systems. A relevant selection of system theorists' ideas is also incorporated into the conceptual framework. The empirical investigation examines teacher training in Western Australia, mainly between 1902 and 1990. In the empirical part of the work, the historical method was used, consisting of a critical examination of extant published and especially unpublished archival sources whereby data was obtained to test the validity of the research theses. The main findings of the investigation were that (1) teacher training originated as an educational system in the twentieth century Western Australia in response to specific social, political, economic and cultural conditions, and (2) the system's developmental trajectory (especially its goals and structure) was a reflection of the changing societal matrix. Distinct phases of the system's development were identified and hermeneutic constructs suggested to provide a sociological explanation of the systemic evolution.

Since the advent of the women's movement, the mass media and literary classics have become targets for intensive scrutiny by some feminists who are concerned with the role and influence the media and literature play in promoting a gendered society. This thesis, focuses mainly on representations of Indonesian women as presented by the Jakarta-based women's magazine, femina. By analysing six articles that appeared in the magazine from the 1970s to the 1990s, representations of gender relationships have been highlighted. Shaped dominantly by Islamic beliefs, and the Javanese values, which consist of a syncretic blend of Animist, Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic beliefs, contemporary Indonesian society is dominated by a strong political state and patriarchal value system which downgrades women. Resulting from the political changes introduced by the New Order, there has been a pivotal transformation of Indonesian women's organisations. The regime strongly encourages wives' organisations, despite the full equality guaranteed to men and women by the 1945 Constitution. It is demanded of Indonesian women that their foremost duties are their motherly and wifely roles. The influence of the priyayi, the Javanese elite, who believe that woman's destiny is primarily centred on her role as wife and mother, is partially responsible for the continuing influence of this ideal and the way it subordinates women to men. The religious traditions are also not without considerable influence in this area. These values can be found in the articles examined. Further, the thesis investigates attitudes to women who work outside the home, the double burden that they carry, and any changes in the representations of women and gender relations over the twenty years as revealed infemina.

This thesis investigates the role of middle class schooling in patterns of social disadvantage and privilege. The outstanding performance of a group of government secondary schools at tertiary entrance examinations is widely recognised in Western Australia and is reflected when these schools are popularly described as "Superschools". The practices behind the success of these schools and the systemwide effects created by that success provoke the consideration of a range of issues. A critical methodology is used in providing a comprehensive explanation of the phenomenon of high achieving government schools and involves: Conceptual and economic analyses of class in Australia; a geographic analysis of urban space in the Perth metropolitan area as it relates to class and government secondary schools; an historical analysis of changing government policies for school boundaries and curricula, and; an ethnographic analysis of one of the Superschools in the form of locally-based interviews and document analysis. Evidence is presented identifying a middle class which has been able to exploit opportunities in creating non-fee-paying "Superschools" as educational sites where tertiary entrance examination performance is optimised. The achievement at a level comparable to expensive private schools by these middle class government schools has influenced wider patterns of privilege and disadvantage in education. It masks the real discrepancy in the overall performance between private fee-paying and government non-fee-paying secondary school systems and at the same time is related to the constraints on educational opportunities available to students in other government schools in less affluent areas. Significantly, despite the rhetoric of meritocracy and freedom of choice, urban space provides an arena where economic structures and social practices intersect producing differentiated opportunities and choices in education.