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The Oceania Ethnography and Education Network’s 2 nd Annual Conference 16-17 August 2018 Hosted by the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) and Research for Educational Impact (REDI) Deakin University in Partnership with the University of Western Australia, School of Social Sciences

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Page 1: 2nd Annual Conference - WordPress.com · 2nd Annual Conference 16-17 August 2018 Hosted by the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) and ... In this presentation

The Oceania Ethnography and Education Network’s

2nd Annual Conference

16-17 August 2018

Hosted by the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) and Research for Educational Impact (REDI) Deakin University

in Partnership with the University of Western Australia, School of Social Sciences

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY Wominjeka. This conference takes place on the land of the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin nations. We acknowledge the traditional owners and local people of this land, land which has never been ceded and we pay our respects to their Elders: past present and future.

FUNDING ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This conference is possible due to generous funding from an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (#DE160100922, Jessica Walton), Deakin University Research, and Research for Educational Impact, as well as in-kind support from the University of Western Australia, School of Social Sciences.

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WELCOME to the OEEN 2nd ANNUAL CONFERENCE! We would like to welcome all of you to the 2nd Annual Conference of the Oceania Ethnography and Education Network (OEEN)! The aim of the network is to bring together scholars from diverse disciplines who are interested in a socio-cultural analysis of education and the specific affordances of ethnographic research in educational settings. Educational ethnography is understood as an intensive multi-modal and multi-sited process through which the lived experiences of people in educational settings, formal and informal schooling and school practices are examined within local and mobile socio-cultural contexts. Our key aims include the following:

v To build a network of scholars, particularly in Oceania, who are conducting research in education, with a specific focus on ethnography.

v To advance empirical, methodological and theoretical approaches in ethnographic educational research.

v To mentor and support early career researchers and Higher Degree Research students. v To support collaborations across the network, including workshops, grants and publications. v To foster domestic and international connections with organisations both within and outside

Oceania.

If you are interested in joining the network, please check out our webpage: https://oeenblog.wordpress.com/ We are pleased to be hosting our invited speakers who will speak on two Roundtables about theoretical and methodological issues relating to positionality, ethnographic research and inclusive education in the classroom, affect, emotion and the body. We also have an excellent range of papers highlighting current ethnographic research in education. It is wonderful to have this opportunity to share each other’s research and discover synergies that will no doubt contribute to in-depth conversations and unearth potential collaborations and new directions. We look forward to a stimulating array of discussions over the next few days. Finally, it is thanks to all of you, who have generously contributed to this conference, that has made this event possible. We would like to thank all of you and our growing membership for your support for the OEEN! With best wishes, Jessica, Julian and Martin OEEN Co-convenors

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LOCATION OF THE OEEN CONFERENCE Address: Deakin Downtown, Level 12, Tower 2 (KPMG Building), 727 Collins Street When you arrive at Tower 2, walk past the lifts and to the right, go up the small escalator to the next mezzanine level. Next, tap “Deakin University” on the touchscreen panel and proceed to the lift marked on the screen. DIRECTIONS: From Southern Cross station By Walking: It is a 7-minute walk (550m) down Collins Street toward the Docklands. By Tram: Get on Tram #48 or #11 toward the Docklands at Stop 1 (Southern Cross Station, Collins Street). Get off at Tram Stop D15 (Batman’s Hill). Parking: There is paid parking available at Secure Parking, 700 Collins Street. It is expensive ($54/day) so we recommend getting public transport.

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Invited speakers

Fetaui Iosefo (PhD Candidate), is a Samoan woman born in Aotearoa New Zealand. She is a Professional Teaching Fellow in Critical Studies at Faculty of Education and Social work at the University of Auckland. Fetaui is a is a published poet and a critical autoethnographer with an academic interest in Critical theory; Decolonising and the Samoan Indigenous Reference in ethical practices.

Hyang-Jin Jung is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Seoul National University, South Korea. She received her Ph.D. in 2001 in cultural anthropology from the University of Minnesota, U.S.A. Her research interests lie in the intersection among culture, self, and emotion, with U.S. and the two Koreas as her primary anthropological sites. Her ongoing research projects include the emotional culture of the postmodern American society, the psychocultural underpinnings of the North Korean statehood and society, and education and the socialization of affect in South Korea. She is author of Learning to Be an Individual: Emotion and Person in an American Junior High School (Peter Lang, 2007). She is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Korean Anthropology Review: A Journal of Korean Anthropology in Translation.

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Missy Morton joined the University of Auckland as Professor of Disability Studies and Inclusive Education in July 2017. She had previously been Professor and Head of School in the School of Educational Studies and Leadership at the University of Canterbury. Missy studied qualitative research and ethnography in education at Syracuse University with Robert Bogdan, Steven Taylor, Doug Biklen and Sari Biklen. These professors taught her the life changing possibilities of ethnography, in particular for understanding the social constructions of humanness. In her recent work, Missy has used ethnographic ways of thinking to inform teachers’ approaches to assessment, curriculum and pedagogy, as well as cultures of belonging in schools. Recent publications describing this work include Mills, D. & Morton, M. (2013). Ethnography in education. London: BERA/Sage and Morton, M. & Guerin, A. (2017). Sociocultural perspectives on curriculum, pedagogy and assessment to support inclusive education. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford University Press. DOI: http://education.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-147

Jessica Zacher Pandya is Chair of the Liberal Studies Department and Professor in the Departments of Teacher Education and Liberal Studies at California State University, Long Beach. Her early work focused on children's identity work in diverse urban classrooms. More recently she has investigated the ways English learners make meaning in multiple modes as they create digital videos on iPads. Findings from the longitudinal study have been published in Teachers College Record and the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, among other places. Her forthcoming book, Exploring Critical Digital Literacy Practices: Everyday Video in a Dual Language Context (Routledge), stems from this project. Pandya is the Past Chair of the American Educational Research Association Writing and Literacies Special interest Group. She and the other Executive Board members of the Writing & Literacies SIG have recently edited the Handbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures (Routledge, 2018).

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Megan Watkins is Associate Professor in the School of Education and the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. Her research interests lie in the cultural analysis of education and the formation of human subjectivities. In particular, her work engages with issues of pedagogy, embodiment, discipline and affect and the interrelation of these to human agency. Megan’s publications include Discipline and Learn: Bodies, Pedagogy and Writing (Sense 2012), Disposed to Learn: Schooling, Ethnicity and the Scholarly Habitus with Greg Noble (Bloomsbury 2013) and Cultural Pedagogies and Human Conduct (ed) with Greg Noble and Catherine Driscoll (Routledge 2015).

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Roundtable #1 - Finding your place: The ethnographer in education Facilitated by: Julian Sefton-Green FETAUI IOSEFO (University of Auckland) Title: Vasa-Va’sa

Abstract: The vasa in Samoan refers to the ocean. In this context vasa is the metaphor for research. Va’ is Samoan for the ‘relational spaces in-between and sa’ is Samoan for lore/as opposed to Westminster law. It is in here that we acknowledge the merger of Critical Autoethnography (CAE) into the vasa (ocean of research). Holman Jones (2015) describes CAE as a means to disrupt the status quo of research by encouraging, robust, creativity of thought in, the hope of making writing, and knowledge accessible and understandable for all. Autoethnography has been described as being ‘self-indulgent’ and having questionable ethics. In this presentation I hope to explore this notion of knowledge, and the ethical care in CAE from a Pasifika woman, born in Aotearoa, New Zealand and whose bones are in Samoa.

MISSY MORTON (University of Auckland) Title: The sociological imagination, ethnography and the everyday classroom

Abstract: Wansart (1995) describes teacher research as knowledge created when teachers seek to discover the stories students reveal about themselves as learners within the range of contexts they inhabit. He draws on the tools and aims of ethnography as he considers the perspectives of participants and the meanings they make of and the meanings they give to their lives. These stories can support educators to think about ways of improving educational practice for all learners, and especially those groups that are traditionally disadvantaged within education systems (Ferguson, Ferguson & Taylor, 1992; Macartney, 2008; Morton, 2011). In this paper I suggest distinctive opportunities for enhancing inclusive practices when we support teachers to develop a sociological imagination and thinking like an ethnographer.

JESSICA ZACHER PANDYA (California State University, Long Beach) Title: Ethnographer Doing: Digital literacies research in a school close to home

Abstract: In this presentation, I discuss two aspects of “ethnographer doing” (Heath, 1983) that challenged, and invigorated, my four-year, design-based research project at a public school in Southern California. The first was related to tensions generated by engaging in research in a context to which I had personal ties. I share field notes and other ephemera to show how I documented my own child’s presence in the school while the school was in a battle with the local administration to remove its charter and shut it down. The second challenge was related to the complexities of attempting to conduct a full-scale ethnographic project while helping children make digital artifacts, which required me and my research team to spend less time writing field jottings and notes than we desired, and more time making, tracking and storing artifacts for later analysis. I discuss the ramifications of these challenges on analysis and findings.

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Roundtable #2 – Bodies, affect and emotion in education Facilitated by: Jessica Walton HYANG-JIN JUNG (Seoul National University) Title: Viewing Education in the Context of Affective Culture

Abstract: In this roundtable session, I will discuss education in relation to affective culture, by way of my own research trajectories since the early 1990s. Education, emotion, and culture together make a focal area in my research program. Cultural approaches to education have been well established, particularly in the anthropology of education, on the one hand. On the other hand, the link between emotion and culture has long been a central concern in psychological anthropology and cultural psychology. Curiously, however, education is not readily viewed in the context of affective culture. As much as education pertains to the issues of self and person, it is necessary to attend to the cultural conceptions of emotion and affective practices that direct, shape or otherwise imbue the educational process. My research experiences in South Korean and U.S. schools attest to education being deeply embedded in broader affective contexts of the respective societies.

MEGAN WATKINS (Western Sydney University) Title: Affect, Embodiment and the Ethnographic Gaze: Capturing the Allusive within Educational Research

Abstract: While affect and embodiment are topics of increasing popularity within educational research, influenced by their longer-term focus within sociocultural theory, the methodological challenges of research in these areas tend to receive far less attention. Together with this, there is also a definitional fuzziness about what these terms mean. This is particularly the case with ‘affect’ where it is often used interchangeably with emotion, feeling and mood. But are these cognate terms or do they differ and what is the relationship between affect and embodiment? In this presentation I grapple with these questions drawing on how Spinoza, Tomkins and Stern conceive of affect and the utility of their work in researching how affect is embodied within educational contexts. In doing this, I foreground the value of ethnography as a methodology for capturing these processes and draw on examples from previous research to examine the challenges each posed.

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OEEN CONFERENCE PROGRAM 16-17 August 2017, Deakin Downtown (Level 12, Tower 2, 727 Collins Street)

DAY 1

9:00am ~ 9:20am Arrival (tea/coffee)

9:20am ~ 9:30am Welcome Jessica Walton

Julian Sefton-Green

Martin Forsey

9:30am ~ 11:00am ROUNDTABLE 1:

Finding your place: The ethnographer in education

Facilitated by Julian Sefton-Green

Missy Morton

Fetaui Iosefo

Jessica Zacher Pandya

11:00am ~ 11:30am Morning tea

11:30am ~ 12:30pm SESSION 1:

Challenges and opportunities in ethnographic research

Lorena Gibson

Kati Tonkin, Sara Page & Martin Forsey

12:30pm ~ 1:30pm Lunch

1:30pm ~ 2:30pm SESSION 2:

Critical reflexivity in ethnographic research

Gary Levy

Keith Heggart

2:30pm ~ 3:00pm Afternoon tea

3:00~4:00pm SESSION 3:

Temporalities and past/future learnings

Zazie Bowen

Claire Deery

4:00pm ~ 6:00pm Drinks nearby

6:00pm ~ 8:00pm Dinner at 9 Elephants Thai (67 Village St, Docklands)

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DAY 2

9:00am ~ 9:30am Arrival (tea/coffee)

9:30am ~ 10:45am ROUNDTABLE 2:

Bodies, affect and emotion in education

Facilitated by Jessica Walton

Megan Watkins

Hyang-Jin Jung

10:45am ~ 11:15am Morning tea

11:15pm ~ 12:15pm SESSION 4: Digitally-mediated learning

Jessica Walton

Katherine McLay

12:15pm ~ 1:15pm Lunch

1:15pm ~ 2:45pm SESSION 5: Gender, race and class inequalities in education

Leanne Higham

Brittany Bro & Martin Forsey

Eve Mayes

2:45pm ~ 3:30pm Afternoon tea and General OEEN Meeting (future directions, ideas etc.)

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PRESENTERS (In alphabetical order) BRITTANY BRO & MARTIN FORSEY TITLE: Bright and Beautiful: The Representations of Ideal Womanhood in Independent Girls’ Schools ABSTRACT: Websites are an important aspect of differentiation for schools, creating a means of impression management and market positioning that while vital to the ongoing viability of all educational institutions, are arguably most significant for elite schools (Symes 1998; Wilkins 2012; Drew 2013). We report findings of a systematic study into the forms and styles of representation of idealised womanhood evident in the websites of elite independent girls’ schools across Australia. This content analysis contributes to a larger study examining the co-production of young women through elite girls’ schools. Using ICSEA values from My School, we analyse the websites of the top ranked independent girls’ schools in each of the Australian states. Drawing on forms of sensory ethnography through a feminist lens, we view these elite school websites as a form of Bourdieuian practice, with their emphasis on individualistic values, ‘girl power’, and the subversion of traditionally masculine disciplines such as sports and science, as indicative of broader cultural shifts in Western values. Preliminary findings suggest that while the school advertisements appear progressive in their message they tend to recirculate traditional gender messages in new ways. From which, we argue that the contradictory signifiers evident in these webpages are representative of the schizoid tensions within contemporary womanhood, entrenched in upper-middle class ‘whiteness’, that previous studies note are ‘setting the standard’ for other schools and broader society. Given the significance of aesthetics in today’s image-focused world, we suggest that digital visual methods, when used as part of a research process, can help to illuminate aspects of the schooling experience often sensory and invisible. While there is already vast and growing literature about internet ethnography, further attention to reflexive visual research methods is needed in ethnography and education. BIO: Brittany Bro is currently a Masters of Research student with the discipline group of Anthropology & Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, University of Western Australia. Her research interests include Gender Studies and Sociology of Education. Her current study explores how the elite all-girls schooling context affects young women, with particular interest in the configuration of “successful womanhood”. If her research proves fruitful, Brittany’s long-term aim is to continue her work with a PhD and eventually teach in the classroom herself, working with underprivileged Australians. Brittany’s immediate aim upon completion of her Masters is to pursue an internship with Aurora, working in the Indigenous sector involved with native title. When away from her studies she enjoys meeting up with her friends for their weekly session of Dungeons and Dragons and going hiking.

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ZAZIE BOWEN TITLE: Imagined Futures in Education Ethnography ABSTRACT: This paper will explore the potential of futures-studies—education-ethnography collaborations in qualitative research in education settings. In producing representations of an ‘ethnographic present’ and the genealogies that produced it, anthropologist often give little attention to time-future. Changes in approach to education provisioning and technologies, as well larger societal changes amidst climate change and economic restructuring, all show that imagining the future is serious business. This makes a compelling case for education research that incorporates comparative insights and foresight about the future, especially futures of schooling and learning. A small cohort of anthropologists have participated in various forms of futures studies over the years, starting with Margaret Mead’s interest in anticipatory anthropology in the mid-1950s. In this paper, I will draw on some of the futures-imaginings of young people in rural schools in North India and also discuss proposed methodologies for incorporating elicitation of imagined futures in ethnographic research in schools. BIO: Extending a pre-academic preoccupation with education in roles that included Pre-school director (inner Melbourne) and education secretary supervising multiple schools and children’s homes (across Sub-Saharan Africa), Dr. Bowen's research examines issues of childhood and education in contemporary rural North India. She investigates the experiences and perspectives of young people from Scheduled Tribe, Scheduled Caste and other rural communities as they negotiate economic and social transformations in rural areas. Patterns of young people’s work and play and methodologies of incorporating children’s perspectives are themes of her work. In 2012 she received her doctorate from the Australian National University for a thesis that explored the peer play of school-aged children in Mayurbhanj, Odisha. Dissatisfied with adopting either of the binary approaches to children’s play: play as socialization; play as transformation, she proposed a model of play as interaction that synthesizes the binary. Other research interests include visual anthropology and film-making, innovations in research methodologies, anthropologies of personhood, and the interplay between communities at various scales. CLAIRE DEERY TITLE: National Identity, Historical Learning, And Culturally Diverse Melbourne Primary Schools ABSTRACT: In recent years, the increase in cultural diversity in Western countries has led political leaders and commentators to become highly concerned about national identity and its connection to history education at schools. As the Dutch historian Maria Grever (2008) points out, ‘since the formation of identities is at least in part a historically orientated process, the transmission of historical knowledge… is considered to be an important tool for strengthening the cohesion of a population and for integrating immigrants’ (p. 43). In Australia, where nearly half the population has a parent who was born overseas, the issue of what history students should learn at school has triggered intense debate. On the one hand, conservative politicians and commentators argue that students should learn a canon of Western civilization that emphasises British heritage and Australian achievements. On the other hand, progressive educationists and historians call for a more pluralist approach to historical learning that incorporates the backgrounds and interests of the students in contemporary Australian classrooms. The purpose of this paper is to explore the historical interests

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of culturally diverse Australian primary school students and investigate how these interests can be incorporated into students’ historical learning in multicultural classrooms. A case study approach with ethnographic and participatory research methods were used to explore these questions. Three culturally diverse Melbourne primary schools were chosen and three to four months were spent in each school. Teachers at these primary schools participated in a semi-structured interview to ascertain their students’ historical interests. A teacher from each school then worked with the author to implement a historical unit that incorporated their students’ cultural backgrounds and interests. Qualitative data collected included participant observations, semi-structured and unstructured interviews with teachers and students, planning documents, and samples of students work.

Initial findings suggest that primary aged students from culturally diverse backgrounds are interested in history connected to their cultural background, as well as world approaches to history. In terms of how this can be taught in the classroom, the data indicates that planning structured historical units with a world history approach provides culturally diverse students with the opportunity to explore their historical interests and also develop their historical thinking. Moreover, it was found that enabling the students to conduct an oral history interview and develop a historical narrative about their life or a person who migrated to another country was an effective pedagogy for teaching history to culturally diverse students from Years 1-6. This research sheds light on how Australian primary school teachers can teach history in multicultural classrooms. In doing so, it supports a more inclusive education system in Australia and, in turn, a more pluralistic Australian identity. BIO: Claire Deery is a doctoral candidate in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she is a recipient of the Australian Postgraduate Award. Claire’s research draws upon ethnographic and participatory methods and examines how the structured historical inquiry approach in the Australian Curriculum History is being implemented in culturally diverse Victorian primary schools. Claire is a member of the History Teachers Association of Victoria (HTAV) and regularly presents at conferences. She has published in the International Review of History Education Volume 9 (November 2018) and HTAV’s Primary Connections. Claire is a practising primary school teacher, with over ten years teaching experience in the Victorian public education system. She has taught in a range of educational settings and all year levels in the primary school sector. LORENA GIBSON TITLE: Challenges and opportunities in ethnographic research with orchestral music education programmes ABSTRACT: Recently I started a long-term visual ethnographic project exploring the social impacts of music educationalists working in low-decile schools in Wellington, New Zealand, who mobilise the Sistema-inspired aspiration of social change through music. El Sistema is a Venezuelan music and social development initiative that began in 1975 and is today one of the world’s largest orchestral music education programmes. I work with three organisations that run Sistema-inspired programmes for young people in urban areas of high socioeconomic deprivation – many of whom are Māori and Pasifika – with the aim of transforming their lives, their families’ lives, and their wider

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communities. The music educationalists running these programmes have experienced some challenges in working to achieve their goals, including perceptions about Māori and Pasifika youth and lack of funding. Late last year my project stalled when members from one organisation expressed concerns about my research. They were worried that I was doing extractive research that would advance my career at their expense and perpetuate harmful narratives that marginalise Māori and Pasifika youth. “It’s ironic that you can get money to study what we do,” they commented, “while we can’t get any money to do what we do in the first place.” In this paper I discuss how their resistance to being research subjects generated opportunities for a reciprocal relationship in the form of a collaborative photobook. I also discuss what ethnographic research can contribute to understandings of the long-term social impacts of such orchestral music education programmes. BIO: Dr Lorena Gibson is a lecturer in Cultural Anthropology at Victoria University of Wellington. She specialises in the anthropology of development with an area focus on Melanesia, South Asia, and Oceania. Her research focuses on processes of development and social change, how social actors relate to the future, the politics of hope and agency, and creative artistic practices. KEITH HEGGART TITLE: Is Research Portraiture Compatible with Critical Ethnography? ABSTRACT: Purpose; The purpose of this paper is to explore the nexus between critical ethnography and research portraiture in educational contexts. I draw upon my experiences in researching Justice Citizens, a maximal citizenship education program for Australian high school students, to explicate my formulation of a research methodology that combines critical ethnography and research portraiture in order to holistically describe the experiences of young people enacting their conceptions of identity and citizenship. Design/methodology/approach; Research Portraiture, as originally defined by Lawrence-Lightfoot (1983) and then later refined by Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis (1997) is a form of research that seeks to link narrative with analysis through the use of creative, interpretive descriptions that present the data and findings to a readership that is broader than just the academy. For Lawrence-Lightfoot (1983), research portraiture is a distinct type of qualitative enquiry, although she does acknowledge that it draws on phenomenological approaches to social science enquiry, and is often linked to grounded theory, because it does not seek to ‘diagnose or impose pathologies as defined by the researcher’ (Gaztambide Fernandez et al, 2011, p. 4). The use of research portraits allows the researcher to embrace and then communicate complexity and contradiction. According to Tuck (2009), this is an example of ‘desire-based’ research, which recognizes the primacy of experience and the importance of self-determination. Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis (1997) state categorically that research portraiture is distinct from ethnography, but this is a position that I disagree with, and in this paper, I outline the commonalities between the two traditions. The focus on self-determination provides a level of commonality with critical ethnography. Critical ethnography seeks to link the detailed analysis of ethnographic research with an examination of

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power and oppression within social structures and systems. Madison (2004) recognizes the commitment of the critical ethnographer to addressing injustice within a lived domain. After coming to understand a particular experience, the critical ethnographer seeks to communicate this understanding with the audience. It is the contention of this paper that the use of research portraits is an effective means of communicating this understanding, as well as offering specific insights because each portrait provides a detailed and rich description of the existence of power and oppression in the lived experiences of, in this case, students in a high school in Australia. Findings; This combined methodology proved to be particularly effective in both developing the understanding of the different dimensions of experience that contribute to a young person’s development into an active citizen, and also in communicating these experiences in a meaningful way to a wide range of readers. By combining a six-month period of participant observation with stakeholder interviews, it was possible to identify ‘telling moments’ that encapsulated important concepts relating to identity, belonging and agency. The research portraiture methodology then served as a vehicle to both further explore these moments, as well as presenting them to a wider audience. References; Gaztambide-Fernandez, R., Cairns, K., Kawashima, Y., Menna, L., & VanderDussen, E. (2011).

Portraiture as Pedagogy: Learning Research through the Exploration of Context and Methodology. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 12(4), 1–29.

Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (1983). The good high school. New York: Basic Books. Lawrence-Lightfoot, S., & Davis, J. (1997). The Art and Science of Portraiture. San Francisco:

Jossey-Bass. Madison, S. (2005). Introduction to critical ethnography. Theory and Method, 1–16. Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage – A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3),

409-427. BIO: I’m currently completing my PhD at UTS, while also working there as a casual academic. I am a former high school teacher, as well as an Apple Distinguished Educator and Google Innovator. I am interested in civics and citizenship, and civics and citizenship education – specifically, the kinds of educational experiences that foster development of justice-oriented citizens who are capable of organising and activism to challenge inequalities, injustice and oppression in their communities. I am also interested in Critical Ethnography, especially within schools and communities. LEANNE HIGHAM TITLE: Close encounters with the mundane: Examining microviolence in everyday schooling ABSTRACT: Affective politics is concerned with what is, and what isn’t made possible in the world, through relations between human and non-human. These moment to moment connections bring about different possibilities throughout everyday existence, as various relational encounters materialise. Sometimes they are fleeting, other times they are repeated, becoming enduring. Violence is a relational process that always brings about some degree of reduced affective capacity. However, in its complexity, it can also increase it. Schools are spaces in which violence plays out in different ways, limiting and enabling what is then possible as it unfolds. While intense violence does

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occur in schools, with intense effects, it is both less frequent and more visible than ‘microviolence’ (Lemoine, 2017), those constraining practices that tend to occur in ways which are unnoticed, unquestioned and unchallenged. Much attention around school violence has understandably focused on its more intense manifestations such as bullying, harassment and school shootings. Taking up a Deleuzian-Spinozist ethological approach in examining how affective capacities increase and decrease (Deleuze, 1988), my attention is given to the mundane practices that constitute everyday school life and how they constrain (or perhaps, enable) what is then possible for those in and around school spaces. My research does not seek to de-value work on more intense forms of violence. Rather, it seeks to contribute to such existing knowledge by focusing on the same affective politics at a smaller scale. In this paper, I discuss how I have been approaching this unfolding research, using methods drawn from ethnographic tradition but adapted to my particular research needs. I explore my experiences with using emojis and maps in an anonymous online survey, designed to elicit preliminary information about how people feel in different school spaces, how I have attuned to those feelings to examine the practices that constitute them, through participant observation, and how I have used various video and audio technologies to create interview conditions which engage not only with spoken words, but also with embodiment, through materiality and emotion. I also consider some of the difficulties I have encountered with conducting this research in schools. Deleuze, G. (1988). Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. (R. Hurley, Trans.). San Francisco, CA: City Lights

Books. Lemoine, S. (2017). Micro-violences: le régime du pouvoir au quotidien. Paris, FR: CNRS éditions. BIO: Leanne is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education. Her PhD research takes up affect to explore the work of microviolence in and around schools. This involves close attention to emotions, feelings, space, bodies and things, and how these interplay to constrain possibility (or indeed enable it) on an everyday basis in schools. Previously Leanne was a teacher in a boys’ secondary school, which ignited her interest in school and its sociomaterial effects. Her experiences and encounters there informed her autoethnographic master’s thesis, which was awarded the Freda Cohen Prize in 2016. GARY LEVY TITLE: Becoming-Auto/Ethological: Towards a Differing Mode of Inquiry ABSTRACT: Dewey (1932) claimed that the work of F.M. Alexander held within it, ‘the promise and potentiality of the new direction that is needed in all education’. Alexander’s ‘technique’ facilitates an enhanced ‘embodied awareness’ (Dimon, 2015; Jones, 1976). In the same way as a musician would not perform, either in practice or in public, without first ensuring their instrument was in tune, Alexander’s work provides a means whereby the ‘human instrument’ can be both fine-tuned and monitored for reliable and/or refined perception and engagement. The upshot of this recalibrated attunement is the restoration of a more trustworthy sense- register (Alexander, 1932) with/in the perceiving and inquiring subject/agent. This is a distinctive and vital feature of Alexander’s work. Angelova’s (2014) calls for a ‘pedagogy of radical self-reflexivity, or for ‘moments of Deleuzean auto-ethology’, resonate with the process and direction of Alexander’s work.

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This paper seeks to tease out some possible connections between (auto-) ethology and (auto-) ethnography. McCormack’s (2013) reading of Dewey’s ‘ethology of experience’ is salient here, with experience conceptualised as open-ended, affective, and ‘radically experimental’. Thus, our interest lies in the subtle, barely-perceptible difference/s that might be made when we contemplate a thought, object, connection, or encounter with a freshly attuned, embodied instrument. Although the (actual) hands-on, experiential component is integral to Alexander’s work, in this presentation I will attempt to impart a fleeting sense of what a more embodied instrument might feel like. This fleeting sense could be considered a ‘minor gesture’ (Manning, 2016) towards something other than what we already know, think, and feel as living creatures who, auto-ethologically, might sometimes also choose to undertake educational/ethnographic research. BIO: Gary has been a qualified and practicing teacher of the Alexander Technique since 1992. He is also a qualified primary school teacher (2004) with a PhD in Education (2012). Alongside his private practice, Gary undertakes teaching and research work at Deakin University in the areas of curriculum, pedagogy, and sociologies and philosophies of education, drawing on a number of critical discourses to frame his thinking. KATHERINE MCLAY TITLE: Exploring contemporary learner identity with Membership Categorisation Analysis ABSTRACT: Recent sociocultural scholarship has taken a more nuanced and problematized approach to digitally-mediated human learning. In particular, education research is increasingly exploring (i) the identity issues that arise from the relationship young people have with technology and (ii) the methodological challenges of understanding learning in contemporary educational contexts that are no longer bounded by time and space. This paper engages with both, by exploring how Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA) can make visible students’ identity work in open-ended ethnographic interviews. MCA is harmonious with a contemporary, reflexive approach to ethnography, in which interviews are not seen coaxing neutral ‘truth’ data from participants, but as empirical situations in their own right. Similarly, MCA is interested in how membership categories are locally accomplished in situated talk-in-interaction; identified categories are not applicable beyond the context of the relevant talk. Extracts of individual and group interview talk, drawn from doctoral research into iPads as a tool for learning, capture students categorising themselves and others as being – and not being – particular ‘kinds’ of iPad-using students. In so doing, participant students paint a picture of themselves as complex, unique and layered, challenging the widespread view of contemporary learners as ‘digital natives’ and opening up ways of understanding learning as involving not only the development of knowledge and skills, but also taking up and resisting identities. BIO: Dr Katherine McLay is a lecturer at the School of Education at The University of Queensland. Her research interest in learning technology arose from praxis, as a secondary school teacher and Head of Department (English). Katherine’s doctoral research involved a sociocultural investigation of student use of iPads as a tool for learning. Her scholarly interests also engage with preservice teacher attitudes to technology for education, and their transaction from tertiary students to

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professional educators. Katherine is a member of the Editorial Team for Qwerty: Interdisciplinary Journal of Technology, Culture and Education. EVE MAYES and Amanda Keddie, Julianne Moss, Shaun Rawolle, Louise Paatsch & Merinda Kelly TITLE: Starting with a carpet loom: A new materialist approach to inequalities, deindustrialisation and schooling in the city of Geelong, Australia. ABSTRACT: This paper developed by a group of Deakin academics is attempting to think through the phenomena of educational inequalities associated with deindustrialisation and schooling in the city of Geelong. We wonder about the future of educational research that seeks to ‘measure’ and ‘intervene’ into inequalities. After Karen Barad, inequalities are phenomena that emerge intra-actively through the cutting together/apart of the apparatuses that ‘measure’ phenomena. Apparatuses, for Barad, are ‘not mere instruments serving as a system of lenses that magnify and focus our attention on the object world’ but are rather ‘an integral part of the phenomena being investigated’, contributing to the ‘production and reconfiguring of difference’ (Barad, 2007, p. 232). Educational inequalities have long been ‘measured’ through apparatuses of tests (and attendant software) that produce ‘data’ about students, teachers and schools; simultaneously, the phenomena of educational inequalities have been ‘represented’ through ethnographic accounts of inequalities from ‘thick descriptions’ of the work of schools. Following Barad, these apparatuses (test questions, software generating ‘data’, interview questions, participant observation) are inseparable from the phenomena of educational inequalities; ‘there is no unambiguous way to differentiate between the “object” and the “agencies of observation”’ (Barad, 2007, p. 114). Educational research, regardless of epistemological paradigm (positivist, interpretivist, critical, poststructural, etc.), thus becomes politically implicated in the re/production of inequalities, as well as having the potential to be part of the production of different relations. We affect what we seek to measure (and write about), and we are affected by our entanglement with our research. Our group of researchers is thinking through how we might do educational research differently, and how educational research might make matter matter differently. We take up Barad’s discussion of Leela Fernandez’s (1997) ethnography of a jute mill in Calcutta and think about deindustrialization, schooling and research. Barad (2007) works with Fernandez’s ethnographic analysis of the refusal of a machine to work on a shop floor, and its consequences for particular gendered and classed relations. In this paper, we start with the 1910 Axminster Jacquard Carpet Loom as apparatus. This carpet loom was once a key machine in a thriving Geelong carpet factory employing families intergenerationally; it is now a demonstration machine in Geelong National Wool Museum, operated by skilled carpet weavers (now employed as demonstrators) formerly employed by the (now closed) factory. We read questions of deindustrialization, schooling and inequalities through the carpet loom as apparatus, working with the questions that it materialises about educational research, ethnography and inequalities. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter

and Meaning. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Fernandez, L. (1997). Producing Workers: The Politics of Gender, Class, and Culture in the Calcutta

Jute Mills. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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BIOS: Eve Mayes is a Lecturer in Pedagogy and Curriculum at Deakin University. She was formerly an English and English as Second Language teacher and Head Teacher in public comprehensive secondary schools. Her PhD thesis (The lines of the voice: An ethnography of the ambivalent affects of student voice) received a Ray Debus Doctoral Research in Education award in 2016 from the Australian Association for Research in Education. Her publications and research interests are in the areas of social justice in education, student participation/ ‘voice’, school reform, affective ethnographic and participatory methodologies, and youth political engagement. Prof Amanda Keddie is Chair of Education in the School of Education at Deakin University. Her expertise in theorizing a broad gamut of social justice issues in education supports this research.

Prof Julianne Moss is the Director of REDI (Research for Educational Impact), Deakin University’s Strategic Research Centre in Education. Her expertise is in visual methodologies.

Dr Shaun Rawolle is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Deakin University. His expertise is in practice-based methodologies and policy analysis.

A/Prof Louise Paatsch is Associate Head of School (Research and Research Training) in the Faculty of Education at Deakin University. She brings to the research team expertise in mixed methodologies.

Dr Merinda Kelly is an artist, researcher and educator who lectures in arts and education at Deakin University. Her practice includes socially engaged art, public art and experimental pedagogy. KATI TONKIN, SARA PAGE AND MARTIN FORSEY TITLE: Managing Cognitive Load with a Flipped Language Class: An Ethnographic Study ABSTRACT: Based on an ethnographic study of student experiences in a university-based beginners’ class in German language, we report here on how flipped classrooms enable students to better manage the cognitive load associated with second language learning. The study demonstrates ways in which the active learning promoted by flipped classrooms enhances student engagement with unit material. In this case, explicit grammar instruction was removed from face-to-face classes and provided through short video modules accessible via the Learning Management System. The findings suggest that assigning explicit grammar instruction as ‘pre-work’ prior to face-to-face interactive classes reduces stress experienced by students both inside and outside the classroom and increases their confidence with the material. The outcomes support recent quantitative findings that assigning explicit grammar instruction prior to face-to-face language classes promotes higher levels of learner agency, which in turn facilitates second language development by deepening cognitive processing and fostering higher levels of retention. Linking these outcomes to a reduction in cognitive load triggered by the pedagogical strategy of presenting knowledge in manageable amounts prior to face-to-face classes, we report on the students’ perceptions and affective experience of learning a language in this way. BIOS: Kati Tonkin is Senior Lecturer in German Studies and History at the University of Western Australia. She has published in the fields of cultural history, intercultural learning and Austrian literature, and more recently has turned her attention to ethnographic research into student perceptions of flipped

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classroom teaching. She has experimented with different methods of flipping the classroom since 2013.

Sara Page is a social researcher based at The University of Western Australia. Her background work has been in psychology and sociology, with a particular curiosity for how the macro (society, culture and its structures) is reflected in the micro (individual experience and biography) and vice-versa. Her current interests are in the use of digital technology in higher education including mobile and flipped learning; with a specific focus on interrogating the student experience of these innovations.

Martin Forsey is an educational sociologist/anthropologist with particular interests in the social and cultural effects of schooling and tertiary education. An award-winning teacher, Martin has an abiding interest in the scholarship of teaching. He also has an extensive list of research publications including books on neoliberal reform of government schooling and school choice and a range of papers reflecting his interest in qualitative research methods, social change, schools and society, education and mobility. His profile also reflects a strong commitment to interdisciplinary research. JESSICA WALTON TITLE: Touching through the screen: playful cross-cultural interactions among primary school children ABSTRACT: This paper is based on ethnographic research of Grade 5/6 Australian and South Korean students’ experiences interacting through on-line synchronous exchanges as part of their school partnership. While the majority of research about intercultural learning programs focus on knowledge acquisition and the development of intercultural skills and attitudes, this research focused on the students’ embodied ‘playful’ interactions. Drawing on theories of play and embodiment, I argue that attention to children’s playful strategies highlights a bodily co-presence of ‘touching through the screen’ that crossed temporal and spatial boundaries. Through exaggerated bodily gestures, laughing and being noisy, the children playfully subverted the terms and conditions on which they were supposed to behave. These playful interactions helped to mediate cultural and linguistic boundaries and supported more meaningful embodied interpersonal connections rather than focusing on ‘knowing’ each other through a stereotyped cultural lens. BIO: Dr Jessica Walton is a Senior Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. Her research is inter-disciplinary in scope with particular interests in the anthropology/sociology of education, race and ethnic relations, and migration. One of her current projects is an ethnographic study of global school partnerships focused on South Korean and Australian children’s experiences (ARC DECRA). Recent publications include: “‘I am Korean’: Contested belonging in a ‘multicultural’ Korea” (In C. Halse, Ed. Interrogating belonging for young people in schools, Palgrave Macmillan) and “Beyond ‘getting along’: Understanding embodied whiteness in educational spaces” (In G. Vass, J. Maxwell, S. Rudolph & K. Gulson, Eds., The relationality of race and racism in education, Routledge). She has a book contract with Routledge on Korean adoptees and embodied experiences of transnational adoption that is due for publication in June 2019.