scholarly journals Gender and Choice: Girls, Single Sex Schooling and School Choice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Susan Anne Watson

<p>New Zealand, like many other OECD nations, has introduced market-style policies into educational provision. The 'rationale' for these policies was derived from New Right or neo-liberal theory. Over the past decade there has been an increasing amount of research aimed at exploring the impact of market-style policies in education, with particular emphasis on issues of equity. However, there has been very little research concerned with examining the implications of the marketisation of education for the schooling of girls. Exploring the implications of marketisation for girls has not been high on the agenda of either critics of marketisation, or of feminist researchers. This thesis is a contribution towards that work. Policies aimed at increasing school choice have been one of the key ways that market-style policies have been introduced into education. The research on which this thesis is based is an exploration of school choice from the perspectives of a group of twenty four girls at a single sex state secondary school in a New Zealand city. In a series of focus group interviews I asked the girls about how they had come to be at Girls' College, their perceptions of their schooling experiences and their reflections on what it meant to be a Girls' College student. Using aspects of feminist poststructural theories, I argue that school choice might be viewed as a site where various discourses are negotiated by girls in the process of educational decision making. These include discourses of gender, which are shaped by social class and ethnicity, as well as by the biography and dynamics of the girls' families; and discourses of choice which have assumed dominance in educational policy. There are also discourses made available to the girls in the context of their schooling experience. If we are to understand the impact of market policies in education on the schooling of girls, we need to consider how girls are negotiating and mediating these discourses and the subjectivities, or ways to do being a 'girl', they make available. We also need to consider the perspectives of girls from a range of social class and ethnic backgrounds since these discourses are shaped by social class and ethnicity to position girls in differing, and often contradictory, ways. Furthermore, in order to understand the impact of market-style policies on the schooling of girls, we also need to consider the girls' schooling experiences in relation to their reasons for being in the school. This exploration of choice and schooling from the girls' perspectives presents a different account of choice to that which is currently available in the research literature or that which is assumed by neo-liberals. By placing the girls' narratives of choice within the broader contexts of their lives and schooling, I have been able to explore the complex dynamics of power that operate inside and outside of school to position the girls, and the school itself, in variously powerful ways. I have been able to show that the assumptions on which the neo-liberal account of choice is based are overly simplistic and serve to marginalise and silence other aspects of the girls' lives and schooling experiences that are not encompassed by a neo-liberal view of the world. Furthermore, this exploration of choice in a particular context and from the perspectives of a certain group of girls also enables me to consider the broader implications of the operation of school choice and market-style policies for the schooling of girls.</p>

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Susan Anne Watson

<p>New Zealand, like many other OECD nations, has introduced market-style policies into educational provision. The 'rationale' for these policies was derived from New Right or neo-liberal theory. Over the past decade there has been an increasing amount of research aimed at exploring the impact of market-style policies in education, with particular emphasis on issues of equity. However, there has been very little research concerned with examining the implications of the marketisation of education for the schooling of girls. Exploring the implications of marketisation for girls has not been high on the agenda of either critics of marketisation, or of feminist researchers. This thesis is a contribution towards that work. Policies aimed at increasing school choice have been one of the key ways that market-style policies have been introduced into education. The research on which this thesis is based is an exploration of school choice from the perspectives of a group of twenty four girls at a single sex state secondary school in a New Zealand city. In a series of focus group interviews I asked the girls about how they had come to be at Girls' College, their perceptions of their schooling experiences and their reflections on what it meant to be a Girls' College student. Using aspects of feminist poststructural theories, I argue that school choice might be viewed as a site where various discourses are negotiated by girls in the process of educational decision making. These include discourses of gender, which are shaped by social class and ethnicity, as well as by the biography and dynamics of the girls' families; and discourses of choice which have assumed dominance in educational policy. There are also discourses made available to the girls in the context of their schooling experience. If we are to understand the impact of market policies in education on the schooling of girls, we need to consider how girls are negotiating and mediating these discourses and the subjectivities, or ways to do being a 'girl', they make available. We also need to consider the perspectives of girls from a range of social class and ethnic backgrounds since these discourses are shaped by social class and ethnicity to position girls in differing, and often contradictory, ways. Furthermore, in order to understand the impact of market-style policies on the schooling of girls, we also need to consider the girls' schooling experiences in relation to their reasons for being in the school. This exploration of choice and schooling from the girls' perspectives presents a different account of choice to that which is currently available in the research literature or that which is assumed by neo-liberals. By placing the girls' narratives of choice within the broader contexts of their lives and schooling, I have been able to explore the complex dynamics of power that operate inside and outside of school to position the girls, and the school itself, in variously powerful ways. I have been able to show that the assumptions on which the neo-liberal account of choice is based are overly simplistic and serve to marginalise and silence other aspects of the girls' lives and schooling experiences that are not encompassed by a neo-liberal view of the world. Furthermore, this exploration of choice in a particular context and from the perspectives of a certain group of girls also enables me to consider the broader implications of the operation of school choice and market-style policies for the schooling of girls.</p>


2008 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheree J. Gibb ◽  
David M. Fergusson ◽  
L. John Horwood

This study examined the effects of single-sex and coeducational schooling on the gender gap in educational achievement to age 25. Data were drawn from the Christchurch Health and Development Study, a longitudinal study of a birth cohort of 1265 individuals born in 1977 in Christchurch, New Zealand. After adjustment for a series of covariates related to school choice, there were significant differences between single-sex and coeducational schools in the size and direction of the gender gap. At coeducational schools, there was a statistically significant gap favouring females, while at single-sex schools there was a non-significant gap favouring males. This pattern was apparent for educational achievement both at high school and in tertiary education. These results indicate that single-sex schooling may mitigate male disadvantages in educational achievement.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 328-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Press ◽  
Christine Woodrow ◽  
Helen Logan ◽  
Linda Mitchell

Since the 1990s, neo-liberal economics has profoundly altered the nature and delivery of early childhood education and care in both Australia and New Zealand through the creation of childcare markets. Accompanying the rise of the market has been a discourse of childcare as a commodity – a commodity marketed and sold to its consumers (read parents) as a private benefit. The stratifying impact of neo-liberalism in education policy has been argued by numerous scholars of education. Arguably, in both Australia and New Zealand, early childhood education and care is more commodified and subject to the market than any other area of education. Thus, the authors consider whether early childhood education and care has shifted away from being understood as a social good, a site for social cohesion and democratic practice – all of which the authors consider to be implicated in a conceptualisation of belonging appropriate to the project of early childhood education and care. This article considers the impact of neo-liberal policies on early childhood education and care in Australia and New Zealand, especially in relation to understandings and manifestations of ‘belonging’. The authors trace the impact of neo-liberalism in early childhood education and care policy and examine the ways in which the discourse of early childhood education and care provision has changed, both in policy and in how the market makes its appeal to parents as consumers. The authors argue that appeals to narrowly defined, individualised self-interest and advancement threaten understandings of belonging based on social solidarity and interdependence.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 17-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Beddoe

Social work in Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ) is a contested profession on a journey of professionalisation in an era where contradictory forces impact on its position and strength. Social work education reflects these tensions, being influenced by economic and political forces. The delineation of a benchmark qualification for entry is a core feature of professional status and so the inception of professionalregistration has impacted on social work education in ANZ as it has elsewhere. The aim of this paper is to explore dimensions of the history of social work education in ANZ, the impact of the Social Workers Registration Act (2003) (SWRA) and to examine some current constraints and consider the challenges professional education faces in the next 50 years. It is argued that social work education has been, is and will remain a site of struggle.


2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 134-142
Author(s):  
Nicola Taylor

Relocation disputes are widely regarded internationally as one of the most difficult and controversial issues in family law. This article outlines the legal context governing relocation disputes in New Zealand and briefly reviews the research literature on the impact of parental separation and relocation. The key findings are then set out from a three-year study (2007 to 2009) with 100 New Zealand families where one parent had sought to relocate with their child(ren), either within New Zealand or internationally. Interviews were conducted with 114 parents and 44 children and young people from these families about their experiences. The article concludes by traversing the efforts being made in the international legal policy context to adopt a more consistent approach to relocation disputes in common law jurisdictions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-203
Author(s):  
Roy Jones ◽  
Tod Jones

In the speech in which the phrase ‘land fit for heroes’ was coined, Lloyd George proclaimed ‘(l)et us make victory the motive power to link the old land up in such measure that it will be nearer the sunshine than ever before … it will lift those who have been living in the dark places to a plateau where they will get the rays of the sun’. This speech conflated the issues of the ‘debt of honour’ and the provision of land to those who had served. These ideals had ramifications throughout the British Empire. Here we proffer two Antipodean examples: the national Soldier Settlement Scheme in New Zealand and the Imperial Group Settlement of British migrants in Western Australia and, specifically, the fate and the legacy of a Group of Gaelic speaking Outer Hebrideans who relocated to a site which is now in the outer fringes of metropolitan Perth.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-273
Author(s):  
Katrina Daly Thompson

Through my own narrative about my relationship with my fictive father in Zanzibar and the impact of this relationship on my research, in this autoethnographic essay I explore three themes: fictiveness, fatherhood, and the field. These themes tie together different aspects of the term “patriography,” linking them to ethnography and its subgenre autoethnography. Drawing on the term “patriography” as the science or study of fathers, I use the concept of “the field” to examine the impact of narratives about fathers on not only the field as a site of ethnographic research but also on the field of African cultural studies.


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