The Big House Closing the Gap: Dreams and Dissonant Discourses

Senior Lecturer Arts EducationSchool of Linguistics, Adult and Specialist EducationUSQ Applied Linguistics Group, Leadership Research International Group

Keynote by Dr Janice K Jones2015 International Conference on Deep Languages Education

Policy and Practices (17 – 18 October)Stimulating languages and learning - global perspectives and

community engagement

Acknowledgement of Country

I acknowledge the Yuggera and Ugarapul people who have been custodians of country and who support and celebrate our shared journey in learning. I honour the wisdom of Elders past, present and future, seeking to walk together in the spirit of reconciliation.

Image: Jada DENNISON/Untitled/2015/acrylic monoprint/60 x 42 cm

Closing the gap…Universities’ role

A significant gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians

Melbourne Declaration (2008)

A ‘fair go’: equal opportunity

Human rights

Health Life expectancy Education Employment Rate of imprisonment Suicide rates

Moral - and Economic Imperatives

A ‘fair go’: equal opportunity

Human rights Reversing damage of

colonialisation Improving health Reducing suicide

rates Revivifying language

Cost of education far less than cost of imprisonment

Benefits to all parts of society, family structures, child and adult health

University funding for increased low SES enrolments

USA: The ‘School to Prison Pipeline’USA: confinement of African American males in secure juvenile detention mirrors their experiences with school discipline. Given the potential influence of teacher and leadership preparation programs on pre- and in-service teacher and school practices, teacher educators must deconstruct and reverse pathways from the schoolhouse to the “Big House.”

"the school-to-prison pipeline is characterized as the negative school experiences that persistently route African American males away from school and into juvenile justice systems" (Townsend Walker, B. L. 2012, p. 320)

Confronting Statistics

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2014)http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4517.0~2014~Main%20Features~Imprisonment%20rates~10009

Korff, J. (2015, September). http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/law/aboriginal-prison-rates#axzz3ojH4j7fZ

The challenges

Increasing student disengagement from formal schooling. Mistrust/fear of ‘the big house’, its values, fear of intrusion, documentation, recording, monitoring, control

Education and urbanisation: the new divides Loss of Australia’s Indigenous languages, displacement

and ‘stolen generation’/’lost generation’ Universities: complex, hierarchical entities: Gatekeeping,

certification and corporatisation Privilege excellence over attending to education for the

masses. Hence, the university may be perceived as the Big House, the locus of power, control and judgement.

From A Big House to The Big House A Big House (positive

connotations) 1850’s Ireland, Carolina.

Labouring tenants on large estates

Grandeur, wealth, size, spaciousness

Antebellum America – shift in meaning the big house = home of the landowner

Image of power, control & punishment

The Big House (negative associations)

Power, domination ‘landowner/slave-

owner’ Shift 1940’s: street

slang – Prison (USA, Ireland, Australia)

Shift 1980’s: any institution of control

Can universities reverse the damage? How?

Educating future teachers Creating pathways for

participation and completion of degrees

AND Community Engagement! Let’s break down the barriers –

build real relationships with our Indigenous communities!

The University as Saviour and Superhero!

The Big House

Lines, boxes, borders, boundaries

One Study – Community Engagement

University as ‘The Big House’ (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012)

The challenge: to build bridges

It starts with people not institutions…

Individual teachers, artists and researchers build trust

But…against a background of mistrust of institutional power

relationship building takes time

Different ways: epistemology/ontology

Increasing university focus on control, image management and protection, branding and compliance.Two discourses: ‘How we do things here’ (Cornbleth, 2010).

The project team: arts researchers

Education through Arts

for Social Justice

EquityTransformation

Arts for Transformation

Lindy: White Middle-class Australian

Informal and Non-traditional

Education

Janice: White Migrant

Celtic Diaspora

Space, Power, Culture and

Identity

Language and Arts Pedagogy

Diversity and Inclusivity

School Improvement

Technologies and Networks

A Successful Funding Bid!!

Kulila Indigenous Kindergarten Parent and child as co-

learner using iPads to build capacities in language, literacies, digital technologies

Building Childcare staff skills Partnership building…. Exhibition and launch at the

university?

WHADDUP! Indigenous Youth Centre Teenagers: creating art

works for exhibition Using technologies -

Augmented Reality Young people capture their

own films: Music, drama, dance

storytelling Come to the university to

edit them!

Building trust 101: Youth Group

Community facilitated and strengths-based approach

Friday nights 7 – 9pm volunteers drive round town to collect the kids

Focus: Pride, skills, sports, arts, healthy cooking Positive role models Keeping youngsters out of trouble and

off the streets Leadership/mentoring - sport, arts,

healthy cooking, organised trips. Volunteers from PCYC, schools, parents

and Elders

Building Trust 101: The Kindy

Discourse – The Community

Discourse – The University

‘Partnership’= Market VisibilityOf course exhibition documents and the children’s books will have university logos on – we’re funding the project, after all!We need to meet with all stakeholders in the community.Filming children? Public exhibition? Parents must sign forms – we’ll set up a meeting between the legal office and your community leadersThe iPads will belong to the university – not the communityThe IP of childrens’ books will belong to the university. We will arrange a book launch and display on campus.The expansion of marketisation has not always been antithetical to egalitarianism. Yet its effects have been increasingly inegalitarian (Spies-Butcher, 2014)

A Collision of Discourses

Another kind of impact

‘If academics want to prevent the further colonization of higher education …they cannot afford to be either silent or distant observers. The stakes are too high and the struggle too important.’ (Giroux, 2011)

Further complexity – colonising representations

Deficit discourses operate at many levels – for community agents/researchers as well as institutions.

As our team prepared the exhibition we realised we were ‘re-presenting’ the work to please the public’s ideas – not those of the young Indigenous people

Colonising thought – in the selection, presentation and positioning, juxtaposition and labelling of works – in the the curation and launch celebration.

Learning to stept back back from power was critical to the process: community owned that space.

Decolonising the exhibition

A response: removing colourful card mounts: unadjusted originals were placed at child height in the gallery. The variety and range of works challenged concepts of ‘aesthetic’ display running counter to the ‘prettification’ of children’s work in public displays.

Inequities and divergences of purpose and value present challenges for increasingly corporatised universities and for the funding and conduct of community-university initiatives and partnerships.

Educators and researchers engaging with communities, are challenged to be aware of and to de-colonise relationships, discourses and practices.

‘Big Problem’ =big grant (deficit funding)

Universities’ success is celebrated on university websites marketed in terms of:

Deficit discourse: the University as superhero providing solutions - overcoming ‘Wicked Problems’

Weak community – strong university – we can help!! (until the grant runs out and a new research project starts…)

Language of success: innovation, saving the world! Why? So we look better, get more funding – do research

– generate more new ideas to solve the world’s problems!

Driving change –ABCD? Are other approaches possible? Do communities need ‘saving’ by universities? If universities stop trying to be the superhero – how can

they build more balanced and lasting community partnerships?

Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) methods build capacity through a strengths approach (John McKnight and Jody Kretzmann) http://www.abcdinstitute.org/about/

An(other) discourse and practice

Deficit approach Purpose: Changing

community through more service

Method: Institutional reform Accountability: Leaders are

professionals who answer to institutional stakeholders

Assets: Asset mapping is data collection and system input

ABCD approach Changing community

through citizen action Citizen-led production Leaders are volunteer

citizens in widening circles, accountable to community

Assets are dots to connect for self realisation, and leadership development

Adapted from Cormac McCarthy (2009)

Confronting the ‘Discourse of Need’ Emphasise genuine strengths and assets rather than

community’s need for intervention Re-position the university not leader but partner Start from community’s agency to bring change Re-evaluate evidence of impact in longer term

relationship building for equity and longevity. Reframe discourses in terms of assets and agency –

not needs and helplessness Academics: write back/talk back to agendas for

‘projects’, short term funding Challenge institutional habitus - universities too need

to critically evaluate their ways of thinking and doing

Kevin Rudd – Apology 2008Another apology from (most of!) the world’s universities:

Sorry we have not quite ‘got it’ - yet, but we are working to learn new ways of thinking, writing and working with community.

Thanks to: Cormac Russell of the ABCD Institute http://www.abcdinstitute.org/faculty/russell/Dee Brooks of the Jeder Institute http://www.jeder.com.au/about-us/jeder-directors/dee-brooks-director/

Thanks to the Indigenous youth group, kindergarten, families, helpers and Elders of Toowoomba area. Thanks to colleagues and students at the University of Southern Queensland for supporting our work and for learning in partership– we are all leaders in learning.

“Asset Based Community Development believes that every

single person has capacities, abilities and gifts. Living a good life depends on whether those capacities

can be used, abilities expressed and gifts given"

(John McKnight)

Terima Kasih

http://abcdasiapacific.ning.com/

ReferencesCornbleth, C. (2010). Institutional Habitus as the de facto Diversity Curriculum of Teacher Education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 41(3) 17.Giroux, H. A. (2011). Beyond the Swindle of the Corporate University: Higher Education in the Service of Democracy. Op Ed. Truthout.Kevin Rudd's sorry speech: The text of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's speech to Parliament. (2008). Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/kevin-rudds-sorry-speech/2008/02/13/1202760379056.htmlKorff, J. (2015, September). Aboriginal Prison Rates. Creative Spirits.Retrieved from http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/law/aboriginal-prison-rates#axzz3ojH4j7fZ Jones, J. K. (2014). Neither of the air, nor of the earth but a creature somewhere between:The researcher as traveller between worlds. In K. Trimmer, A. Black, & S. Riddle (Eds.), Mainstreams, Margins and the Spaces In-between: New possibilities for education research. Abingdon, Oxford: Taylor & Francis (Routledge).Ministerial Council on Education Employment Training and Youth Affairs. (2008). Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporation Retrieved from http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/National_Declaration_on_the_Educational_Goals_for_Young_Australians.pdf. 

References continued

Scarborough, W. K. (2006). Masters of the big house elite slaveholders of the mid-nineteenth-century South (pp. 521).  Retrieved from http://ezproxy.usq.edu.au/login?url=http://site.ebrary.com/lib/unisouthernqld/Doc?id=10716169 Spies-Butcher, B. (2014). Marketisation and the dual welfare state: Neoliberalism and inequality in Australia. The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 25(2)185-201.Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2012). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books.Townsend Walker, B. L. (2012). Teacher Education and African American Males: Deconstructing Pathways From the Schoolhouse to the “Big House". Teacher Education and Special Education: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children, 35(4), 12. doi:10.1177/0888406412461158