Title: Contested elements, competing voices : values added Australian school gender equity policy 1975-2004
Abstract: This study considers the process of policy making in relation to a contentious social issue (gender) in a contested social field (school education) during a time of complex global change ('New Times'). It explores the question of what happens when social policy gets played out and formed by a range of policy actors in the public arena, particularly in and through the mass media, as well as through 'traditional' policy making channels. It explores Australian school-oriented gender (equity) reform between 1975 and 2004, with a particular focus on a case study of developments in and around the O'Doherty Inquiry and Report in the State of New South Wales in the mid 1990s. The framing and analysis of the research questions were influenced by aspects of poststructurahst feminist and critical theory and by Australian and international research on policy, policy making and gender in the school education context. The theoretical framework of the research project is an amalgam of these multiple perspectives, with a concentrated use of critical poststructurahst feminist approaches. Primarily, data for the case study and the contextual review were gathered through document review and elite interviews. A variety of discourse and textual analytical techniques generated by the adopted theoretical perspectives were applied to a wide selection of texts including formal and 'in-effect' policy documents, interview transcripts and notes, correspondence and newspaper articles. The study highlighted the ways in which changes in the nature and focus of school-oriented gender (equity) policy in Australia during the review period reflect both a 'backlash' against perceptions of feminists and feminisms and their perceived gains and a more general conservative 'backlash' against welfare state notions of the common good and commitment to social justice, as well as moves towards economised and paradoxically globalised and localised notions of participative democracy and individual benefit. The study considered the role and impact of policy makers (broadly defined) and concluded that in the arena of contentious social policy, the significance of individuals is paramount. The study identified 'concern about boys' as an ever-present reform project through numerous significant Federal and State education policy documents, as well as through a range of related materials and measures. During the 1990s, the re-focusing of gender equity to feature boys as objects of direct action was the result of a delicate interplay between contested and competing elements and interests, including issues of a destabilised gender order, rather than about the notions of social justice and educational equality and equity in an environment of oppression, which motivated and characterised earlier school-oriented gender policy in relation to girls. This was evidenced in acute form in the case study of school-oriented gender policy making in New South Wales, including through the analysis of the O 'Doherty Report and three associated documents. The study identified the increased significance of policy making by public processors ('neo democratic' as compared with 'bureaucratic' policy making) and 'autobiography'. This is policy making for 'New Times', which reflects realities contained in a definition of policy as process, and which incorporates the highly significant influence and impact of special interest lobby groups, individuals and the media, operating and mediating, through particular value sets, at a local level within a context of globalisation. Australian school-oriented gender (equity) policy following the O'Doherty Report shows both a shift in values - the rise of a recuperative masculinity politics and a reconstituted notion of equality, along with the associated demise of earlier notions of equity - and the strong influence of the values of those closely engaged with their development. The personal is not only political, the political is profoundly personal. The study provided suggestions as to how these understandings might inform policy study and practice and generate ways forward for school-oriented gender policy as the struggle continues for new forms of gender justice for both boys and girls. It is proposed that: school-oriented gender equity policy be associated and linked to school-based research; Twenty First Century education policy maker 'public intellectuals' include those whose practice is theorised as well as those who mediate the theorisation; such policy work is developed through processes that employ and nurture participative democratic principles; and, policy workers maintain a practice of continually interrogating their processes and products against the criterion of social justice.
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Language: en
Type: dissertation
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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