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Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia

Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia This paper presents a critical exploration of a reported decline in student achieve- ment in Australia (2000–2020). Declining student achievement is framed as sympto- matic of broader dysfunction within the education system. The context of declining student achievement is articulated through a Bourdieusian being critical sociology of education. This is achieved using the concepts of illusio and educationalisation as they intersect with Australian schools, in which classroom teachers are given responsibility for solving social and economic ills. As such, due consideration of the goals and commitments to action in the Melbourne Declaration (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA, 2008), and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019) is provided. Drawing from these formative documents, the ‘stakes’ that matter are examined highlighting the potential misalignment between equality of opportunity in ameliorating educational disadvantage and the priorities of modern educational discourse. Keywords Bourdieu · Being critical · Student achievement · Policy · Australia, Educationalisation * Andrew Skourdoumbis andrew.skourdoumbis@deakin.edu.au Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas matthew.thomas@deakin.edu.au Shaun Rawolle shaun.rawolle@deakin.edu.au Faculty of Arts & Education Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Melbourne, VIC 3125, Australia Faculty of Arts and Education Deakin University, Waurn Ponds Campus, Geelong, Australia Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. Introduction This paper explores a reported decline in student achievement from 2000 to 2020 in Australia. The most recent Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Devel- opment (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a major international large-scale assessment (ILSA) test reflects that Australian student per - formance over successive testing cycles has declined (OECD, 2019). A worrying feature of the most recent PISA data is a precipitous decline of the most academi- cally able students in juxtaposition to their counterparts from fifteen years ago (see ACER, 2019). Disturbingly, fewer Australian 15-year-olds are performing at the higher mathematics and reading proficiencies and Australia has now fallen below the average PISA benchmark in Mathematical literacy (see ACER, 2019; OECD PISA, 2019). The argument which follows posits that the precipitous decline in Australian stu- dent achievement identified by PISA (2019) is a consequence of a broader dysfunc- tion in the education system. An obvious aftereffect might be a destabilisation of Australian education in realising its potential. This is not to suggest that PISA per se has had a direct effect in Australia in the re-working or streamlining of curriculum content as has happened in Japan (see Takayama, 2008). Our argument postulates on the decline in student achievement in Australia, and to that end offers a poten- tial explanation. We suggest that any potential dysfunction is brought about through a system-wide reliance on the economic (exchange value) and functionalist (use value) role of education. This duality is emblematic of the political and socio-eco- nomic features of the modern nation state educationalisation wherein the ‘problems’ of society are thrust upon schools and classroom teachers (Depaepe and Smeyers, 2008). This has been achieved in Australia as other Anglophone nations, via: 1. Binding economic, social and education policy agendas together over successive decades. This focuses attention on how schools and classroom teachers contribute to national economic competitiveness. 2. Over time, this binding illuminates how the classroom-based teaching practices of teachers are the key to enhancing and making the die ff rence to student achieve - ment. Debates in these two areas typically centre on notions of creativity, innovation, teacher effectiveness/quality, curriculum change, managerialism, privatisation, cor - poratisation, accountability and standardisation (Skourdoumbis & Rawolle, 2020). Whilst we draw on PISA directly, we acknowledge the limitations of ILSAs includ- ing their supposed accuracy and validity (see Gillis et al., 2016), and their influence on education policy and practice, which is significant (see Fischman et  al., 2019). ILSAs in their measurements narrow the educational experiences of students, and in doing so, curtail other ways of understanding student achievement. The need for quality productive pedagogies which value the development of higher-order creative and critical thinking skills generally reflect rich curriculum and assessment practices which enhance deeper learning and stronger intellectual engagement (see Swain 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia et  al., 2018). These very particular pedagogical practices are not usually found in ILSA tests. The exploration provided here is made alongside the current media debate high- lighting student achievement as a persistent policy problem of note which has been characterised as perhaps the biggest national policy failure in Australian his- tory (Kelly, 2021). The trend in declining student achievement in Australia is also occurring in other countries and there is a definite increasing inequity link which Chmielewski’s (2019) recent research highlights. Chmielewski’s (2019) study exam- ined thirty international large-scale assessments over fifty years, representing 100 countries and about 5.8 million students. It found evidence of an increasing achieve- ment gap revealing growing educational inequity across a range of countries ’…sug- gesting that cognitive skills are an increasingly important dimension of educational stratification worldwide’ (Chmielewski, 2019, p. 517). Our article utilises ‘being critical’ (Grenfell, 2010), a perspective informed by Bourdieu. This approach in education foregrounds the political, economic and social levers which work to construct schooling. ‘Being critical’ commits us to examine the interests that different groups have in education and through this to expose the illusio (strategies and investments) of formalist cultural, socio-political and eco- nomic principles of action. PISA ‘…could be regarded as policy given that it does have policy effects in schooling systems, providing comparative data for policy making’ (Baroutsis and Lingard, 2022, p. 905). It is imperative for critical sociology to not accept at face value arguments about the direction of education without exam- ining the interests that underlie these arguments and the positions of those making them. This is important in an era which emphasises outcomes from schooling. In the argument which follows we point to two kinds of illusio which do not always align, specifically, the commitment that education is the appropriate institution for solv - ing social problems, alongside the reductionism involved in measuring the impact of education in ways that seemingly offers solutions to major broad-based problems. To this end the article focuses on two reform/vision-oriented Australian policy texts of the recent era; the Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019), especially their core goals and commitments to action. Both Declarations are national policy texts with national goals signed off by the federal, state and territory ministers. These Declara- tions orient the Australian federal system of schooling, which includes the ‘systema- tisation of the Commonwealth’s role’ (Lingard, 2000, p. 26) in school education (see also Lingard & Lewis, 2017). The Declarations have been a focal point for nego- tiations and targets between states, territories and the federal Government, resulting in national reports on the schooling sector (Rawolle et  al., ). This federal system has its origins in the strong equity agenda of the Whitlam Labor years (1972–1975) and has seen enhanced federal involvement in national schooling policies over time especially under the Rudd Labor government (2007–2010) onwards (Lingard, 2010). Taken together, the Declarations reflect a tangible commitment and faith ‘in the game’ of education reinforcing a formalist belief (illusio) in maintaining ‘the game’ as it is currently played. The paper proceeds in four parts. Part one outlines the downward achievement spiral in Australia which has occurred alongside some of the reformist supports 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. characteristic of the field of school education over successive decades: marketisa- tion, nationalisation of the education system, the increasing prevalence of interna- tional comparisons, an ‘innovation push’, the school improvement agenda and the alignment to national/international economic goals, and an increased obsession about numbers in education (see Lingard et al., 2016). In part two, the Bourdieusian ‘being critical’ approach to problems of educational importance is canvassed draw- ing on the notion of illusio. This makes explicit how the decline in student achieve- ment links with a broader problem of note for the field of school education, that of educationalisation. It provides the opportunity to examine what specific commit- ments and interests come to matter. This then provides the framework in part three for a conceptual account of educationalisation in Australia. It considers the case of two important education policy-related reform/vision-oriented documents which set out the major aims and objectives of Australian school education, the Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Dec- laration (Education Council, 2019). Part four argues that the various commitments to action within the Declarations have minimal substantive effect on enhancing student achievement because they fail to articulate a viable equality of opportunity objec- tive that transcends the reformist illusio of recent decades. The paper concludes by claiming that the decline in student achievement in Australia reflects the paradox of educationalisation in that reform / vision-oriented goals and commitments to action buy into the illusio without paying sufficient attention to equality of opportunity. We take equality of opportunity to mean at its most basic level equalising opportu- nities. Equity when mentioned in the paper is mostly given a financial connotation where we mean more resources for the most disadvantaged (see Wilson and Spill- man, 2022). We also suggest as others have (see Connell, 1993, 2011) that there are social inequities of class, race and gender so there is a concern for social inclu- sion recognising diversity and a right to be heard which aligns with Gale’s definition of the concept of equity as the ‘…identification, problematisation and redressing of underrepresentation’ (Gale, 2015, p. 261). By equality, we mean basic formal rights (political, legal, educational and so on) that all peoples should have. Context and field characterisations—a downward student achievement spiral A downward student achievement spiral in Australian schools is reflected in the data gleaned from the most recent PISA test. PISA provides mean scores of student per- formance across the subjects/domains of Literacy/Reading, Mathematics and Scien- tific Literacy. PISA claims to measure the application of knowledge rather than tests curricula knowledge. PISA results are considered statistically significant in terms of the difference between subject/domain performances over time. All students tested as part of the 2018 PISA cycle completed tasks from the Reading domain and the Mathematical and Scientific Literacy domains. The 2018 PISA is the seventh cycle of the PISA test from when it was first introduced in 2000. The term literacy as applied to the respective domains reflects a set of skills within reading, mathematics and science. The 2018 PISA defined the reading literacy for each of the domains as 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia ‘… students’ capacity to understand, use, evaluate, reflect on and engage with texts in order to achieve one’s goals, develop one’s knowledge and potential and partici- pate in society’ (OECD PISA, 2019, p. 4). PISA is conducted every three years with results reported towards the end of the subsequent year. Originating in 2000 as part of a nine-year cycle, the first PISA focused on Reading Literacy (2000–2009) which was the major focus again in PISA 2018, whilst mathematical literacy provided the focus in 2003/2012 and scientific literacy in 2006/2015. PISA tests are age-based and include students from different grades and classes which means that the number of students tested in each class is relatively small. Claims to validity nonetheless are potentially problematic and for this reason, some argue for the benefits of ‘data expansion’ meaning the comparison of longitudinal datasets. This would involve comparison across the nine-year cycle rather than three years (see Kuger and Kliene, 2016), and across times when a specific literacy is taken as the extended focus. The most recent Australian PISA (2018) sample comprised 14,273 students from across all Australian states and territories regardless of sector. In making compari- son over successive cycles with reading literacy over eighteen years, mathematical literacy over fifteen years and scientific literacy over twelve years, the PISA results regarding Australian student achievement indicate that: The performance of students has declined in each assessment domain The proportion of low performers has increased whilst the proportion of high performers has decreased in each domain The proportion of students who attained the National Proficient Standard has declined in each domain. (Thomson et al., 2019, p. 7) Put another way: In reading literacy, Australia performed the equivalent of about 1½ years of schooling lower than the highest performing economy… (China) and around 1.5 years lower than the highest performing country, Singapore. In mathematical literacy, Australia performed the equivalent of more than 3½ years of schooling lower than the highest performing economy… (China) and around 3 years lower than the highest performing country, Singapore. In scientific literacy, Australia performed the equivalent of more than 3 years of schooling lower than the highest performing economy … (China) and around 1¾ years lower than the highest performing country, Singapore. (See Thomson et al., 2019) The above accords with a recent report Structural Failure: Why Australia keeps falling short of our educational goals. The report indicates that ‘…we are falling short in excellence, evidenced by accounts of deteriorating school performance over the last two decades’ (Bonnor et al., 2021, p. 5). This narrative of declining student achievement is reinforced in the Through Growth to Achievement Report: Report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, known collo- quially as Gonski 2.0. 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. Australia has a strong educational heritage and committed educators. Since 2000, however, academic performance has declined when compared to other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, suggesting that Australian students and schools are not improving at the same rate and are falling short of achieving the full learning potential of which they are capable. (Gonski et al., 2018, p. viii). In effect and since 2009, ‘…Australia’s performance has declined in absolute terms and relative to other countries’ (Bonnor et al., 2021, p. 5). The Review of funding for schooling (2012) and Through Growth to Achieve- ment: Report of the review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools (2018), the former known as Gonski 1.0, the latter as Gonski 2.0, have acknowledged worsening student achievement in Australia and both have explic- itly made the connection between schooling outcomes including student achieve- ment and funding. Constitutional responsibility for school education in Australia lies with the various states and territories including regulation/administration and funding of government schools (see Harrington, 2011). Funding responsi- bilities are shared between the federal government and state and territory govern- ments with the federal government providing a total funding allocation based on the schooling resources standard (SRS). This recurrent funding arrangement is comprised of a base amount for each student in addition to a series of six load- ings providing additional funding to meet student needs. The recurrent needs- based funding mix is designed to ensure that all schools receive public funds. This translates to some schools receiving full public funding whilst others remain subsidised. Resource disparities are acknowledged under this funding framework with deliberations hinging on identifying differences and meeting shortfalls (see Greenwell and Bonnor, 2022). Tackling student achievement in Australia is not limited to seeking reforms in funding models. Action has also centred on reforms which target (1) teacher pro- fessionalism focused on enhancing teacher quality and effectiveness and (2) school governance interventions centred on greater school autonomy to increase school effectiveness (see Skourdoumbis & Rawolle, 2020; Johnston, 2015). A key compo- nent of the teacher and school quality/effectiveness push around enhancing student achievement is the provision and governance arguments which enable ‘…discourses of accountability, competition and choice in education’ (Hogan, 2016, p. 94). These approaches include increased school autonomy and decision-making freedom as the way to bolster student achievement, despite an absence of significant evidence about ‘linking greater school autonomy to improved academic attainment’ (Keddie, 2017, p. 374). This propensity to shift the responsibility of educational attainment and by proxy, economic performance onto schools and teachers is not new although is now arguably sharper and more expansive in the demands it places on schools and teachers regarding expected ‘quality’ outcomes. The need for schools and teachers to develop their capabilities and actions as part of a wider economic competitiveness agenda is coupled with an educationalisation of social and other problems: student well-being, addressing physical and mental health, countering gender inequality and so on (see Depaepe & Smeyers, 2008). Whilst not a new phenomenon, educa- tionalisation is a process which asks both schools and teachers to ameliorate social/ 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia community-related problems of all kinds and is now an entrenched feature of the contemporary education system (see Depaepe & Smeyers, 2008). Bourdieu and ‘being critical’ There are two aspects involved in Bourdieu’s approach towards criticality. This includes a commitment to the sociology of practice that (a) provides an interrogation of ‘categories of thought’ (Grenfell, 2010, p. 88) and (b) an ‘epistemology in prac- tice’ [italics in original] (Robbins, 2021, p. 326) meaning an exposé of dominant and dominating power relations. The Bourdieusian critical perspective provides a means to account for power structures as part of the established order and in doing so recognises ‘that our conceptualizations are immanent in the social process and are complicit in the transient constitution of impermanent realities’ (Robbins, 2021, p. 326). This process uncovers the nuanced intersections of socio-political, eco- nomic and cultural systems looking for the dominant pre-suppositions and symbols manifest in the ‘arbitrary foundations of the status quo’ (Swartz, 2013, p. 239). A critical aspect involved in Bourdieu’s work is the attention given to pre-con- structed ‘taken-for-granted’ statements and explanations or (Doxa), which are devoid of any socio-historical and politico-economic contingencies. The latter avoids the criticality involved in a socio-analysis which offers the possibility of highlighting dominant power relations and ‘conditions that undergird inequalities but go mis- recognied’ (Swartz, 2013, p. 239). This then is about offering a critical sociological discourse and commentary that points towards the inherent tensions of unquestioned and unchallenged dominant interests which are themselves in general political and cultural value expressions. In effect, the Bourdieusian ‘being critical’ sociology of practice recognises the two-fold constitution of the world through (1) systems of communication and the ‘set of signs and symbols’ which construct meaning and (2) the social infrastructure allowing ‘its functionalist operations’ (Grenfell, 2010, p. 88). In the Bourdieusian sense ‘being critical’ means an exposition of various values and capitals which are interest-laden precepts that are immanent in a field revealing any active biases that are present. The illusio represents the conjugated field-specific needs and interests that often go unstated given expression through position. Ilusio ‘has all the appearances of being natural’ (Grenfell, 2010, p. 161) so that rewards bestowed, or hierarchies tolerated seem either the product of motivation and merit or in the latter case, exude the accumulated symbolic capital that comes with the power and prestige of in most cases the intellectual field. The Bourdieusian ‘being critical’ approach to school education recognises that the field over time has experienced major redefinitions and reshaping. These have come with their own managerialist ‘logic of practice’ involving the intensifications associated with the education system as a field of power, especially around data utilisation and individual competition and accountability measures. The resultant restructuring of the field of education including its processes and relations becomes legitimated by a specifically coordinated politicisation. Grenfell has characterised this politicisation by highlighting a threefold way of doing things where the focus is 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. on (1) claiming system failure, (2) raising public concern and (3) stressing greater public involvement within the field (Grenfell, 2010). This represents ‘the “stake- holder” interest…the rationale for new forms of capital and for changes in the hier- archy of capital values’ [emphasis in original] (Grenfell, 2010, p. 90). It justifies an ‘officialised’ (policy-related) version of events especially around ways to ‘fix’ the problem in student achievement including how the field must adapt and move for - ward vis-à-vis its vision and objectives for improving performance. The Declara- tions that are the subject of this paper can be viewed in this light. Educationalisation the Australian way—the Declarations Educationalisation is about thrusting social including economic problems and responsibilities onto the education system as the means for their solution. It is if anything the pre-eminent modernisation process holding the education system (schools and teachers) accountable for solving the basic social inequities of class, race and gender to ‘enhancing public health, economic productivity, citizenship, and even performances in sports contests such as the Olympic Games’ (Depaepe & Smeyers, 2008, p. 379). The social functions that educationalisation expresses are the very foundation of education’s role ‘…in the formation of the modern nation- state’ (Depaepe & Smeyers, 2008, p. 379). This sees schools undertake the grand enterprise of assuming total responsibility in the form of ‘…new programs, new curricula, new institutions, new degrees, new educational opportunities…in place of solutions that might make real changes in the ways in which we distribute social power, wealth, and honor’ (Labaree, 2008, p. 448). At the heart of the notion of edu- cationalisation is an interventionist knowledge and skills agenda where the school, through education tackles the problems of society by invoking social and economic reforms. To this end educationalisation in its contemporary guise is framed by a series of ‘technologies’ which incorporate rationalisation, governance, monitoring, accountability, foreclosure and norm-referencing, viewing the world and its com- plexities as problems to be solved (see Fendler, 2008). This is accompanied by the prioritisation of education towards a competitive spirit as the central guiding force in making social and economic progress. In other words, the promise of education is in the degree to which it has ‘positive’ social and economic impacts on both the individual and nation. There is a documented history of educationalisation throughout the Anglo- capitalist ‘West’ where the locus of power and control over the field of both school and higher education has become enmeshed within an ideological tenet that emphasises the commodity exchange value of an education (Depaepe & Smeyers, 2008). An important feature is the promise invested in education helping develop and shape people’s knowledge and skills for employability purposes. Progress towards this is typically couched in human capital ways evoking a ‘payoff’ realised through the delivery of enhanced ‘economic growth, higher productivity or a larger paycheck’ (Brown et  al., 2020, p. 1) alongside the inclusion of ‘social goods like equity into economic productivity’ (Savage, 2013, p. 186). An important aspect involved here is the notion of the ‘knowledge-based economy’ (Ailwood, 2004) with 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia its emphasis upon economic competitiveness which should spring from enhanced levels of innovation, creativity, worker flexibility and so on underpinned by an adaptable and responsive education system. The rationale which underpins a triad of education, technology and employment is the expectation that heightened levels of employability are only possible by embracing the opportunities on offer via a knowledge-based economy of global economic competition and the lure of new technologies. In other words, the ‘…taken for granted visions of neoliberal social development and the associated understandings of concepts such as education, technology, and employment’ (Peters et  al., 2019, p. 252), that together adhere to fuel individual and national competitive advantage. This form of educationalisation in Australia has since the early 2000s revolved around a view of the education system which is about ‘…building enterprising, marketised and globally competitive schools’ (Savage, 2013, p. 186). The prom- ise of education delivering upon stronger economic growth, employability and equity abuts major reform agendas of recent times, which in the field of school education are best viewed in the Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019). The Melbourne Declaration for instance ‘frames education as both a social and economic investment in a globalising marketplace’ (Savage, 2013, p. 186) as does the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019). The educationalisation agenda expressed in both is founded upon the key goals of equity and excellence positioning the education system as the driver of edu- cational and economic advancement through a competitive edge built on knowl- edge and innovation (see MCEETYA, 2008; Education Council, 2019). The Mel- bourne Declaration acknowledges the important global pressure points of the era, these being: global integration and mass mobility, the rise and influence of India, China and other Asian nation states, the effects of economic globalisation and technological change on skill development and education, the rise of complex social, economic and environmental problems, and the rapid change in the con- tinuing advances of information and communication technology (ICT). Schools are encouraged to be ‘…promoting the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians’ highlighting their importance ‘…in ensuring the nation’s ongoing economic pros- perity and social cohesion’ (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 4). Important aims included enhancing the outcomes of all young Australians and for the education system over the ensuing decade (2010–2020) ‘…to become second to none amongst the world’s best school systems’ (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 5). These aims are set against some of the worst educational failures of the time in terms of equity and excel- lence including ‘inequalities in year 12 attainment, disparities in literacy and numeracy scores, and underachievement amongst young indigenous Australians’ (Savage, 2013, p. 186). Literacy and numeracy and knowledge of the key disci- plines were to be prioritised alongside the ‘new’ 21st-century skill sets of social interaction, cross-disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media. In addi- tion, the education system was to play an important part in civics and citizenship around ‘national values of democracy, equity and justice, and personal values and attributes such as honesty, resilience and respect for others’ (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. 5). The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration is in keeping with such goals and commitments although it contains three differences compared to its Melbourne predecessor: (1) it renews attention on the achievement gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous students, (2) it calls for the recognition and so the inclusion of Indigenous history and cultural knowledge in school curriculums and (3) it seeks to respond as a whole to the broader decline in achievement prob- lem in Australian school education (see Education Council, 2019). In setting out goals and commitments to action, the Declarations establish their strategic aims for the Australian education system. The Melbourne Declaration contained two goals and eight commitments to action whereas the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration contains the same two goals albeit with a slight change to Goal 2 and eleven commitments to action (see Table 1). Roughly half of the commitments to action in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration are either different to and/or contain some change to those found in the Melbourne Declaration (see Table 2). Table 1 The Goals and Commitments to Action in the Melbourne and Alice Springs Declarations Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019)  Goal 1: Australian schooling promotes equity and  Goal 1: The Australian education system pro- excellence motes excellence and equity  Goal 2: All young Australians become:  Goal 2: All young Australians become confident -successful learners and creative individuals, successful lifelong -confident and creative individuals learners and active and informed members of -active and informed citizens the community Commitments to action Commitments to Action  Developing strong partnerships  Developing stronger partnerships  Supporting quality teaching and school leadership  Supporting quality teaching and school leadership  Enhancing middle years development  Strengthening early childhood education  Supporting senior years of schooling and youth  Building foundational skills through the primary transitions school years  Promoting world-class curriculum and assessment  Enhancing middle years development  Improving educational outcomes for Indigenous  Supporting senior years of schooling youth and disadvantaged young Australians, especially those from low socio-economic backgrounds  Strengthening accountability and transparency  Embedding pathways for learning throughout life and supporting effective transitions  Delivering world-class curriculum and assess- ment  Supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners to reach their potential  Supporting all young Australians at risk of educa- tional disadvantage  Strengthening accountability and transparency with strong meaningful measures Adapted from (MCEETYA, 2008 and Education Council, 2019) 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia Table 2 The different Commitments to Action within the declarations Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019) Supporting senior years of schooling and youth Supporting senior years of schooling transitions Promoting world-class curriculum and assessment Delivering world-class curriculum and assessment Improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth and disadvantaged young Australians, learners to reach their potential especially those from low socio-economic Supporting all young Australians at risk of educa- backgrounds tional disadvantage Strengthening accountability and transparency Strengthening accountability and transparency with strong meaningful measures New—Building foundational skills through the primary school years and New—Embedding pathways for learning through- out life and supporting effective transitions Adapted from the (MCEETYA, 2008) and (Education Council, 2019) declarations Four commitments to action in both Declarations have remained the same. Those are as follows: Developing stronger partnerships, Supporting quality teaching and school leadership, Strengthening early childhood education and Enhancing middle years development. The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration contains two new commitments to action: Building foundational skills through the primary school years and Embedding pathways for learning throughout life and supporting effective transitions. Some of the changes outlined in Table 2 above reflect the continued educational and other disadvantage experienced by indigenous students meriting a ‘stand- alone’ commitment to action in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declara- tion although with a similar emphasis on Australian governments and the educa- tion community working to ‘close the gap’ for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) peoples. Interestingly, the explicit reference within the Declara- tion about ‘delivering world-class curriculum and assessment’ and provision of ‘… strong meaningful measures’ with the emphasis on ‘delivering’ and ‘strong mean- ingful measures’ is indicative of the performance measurement line of deliverology this being ‘…a top-down approach to governance that focuses on improving pub- lic service delivery processes by identifying goals, and measures to assess progress towards them…designed to motivate and inform system improvements with respect to both excellence and equity and ensure that public money is well spent’ (Gewirtz et al., 2021, pp. 504–505). This captures the formalist pattern of the goals and com- mitments to action found within the Declarations in that they reflect many of the social, political and economic values and beliefs common to and prevalent within the knowledge economy discourse, i.e. the optimism associated with the supposed opportunities on offer via the intensification of heightened global economic com- petition and a social/political world in flux. Faith in the capacity of education to solve the economic and social problems that the Declarations outline expresses the 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. extrinsic rather than intrinsic value of education. Put simply, committing education to a wider process of action where it is responsible for and responds to differing pur - poses and aims. Reinforcing illusio The Declarations have each concentrated their attention on the ‘steady work’ (Elmore & McLaughlin, 1988) which has come to characterise Declarations and policy reports of this kind: espousal of supposed ‘partnerships’, the strengthening of accountability and measurement mechanisms, curriculum and teacher effectiveness/ quality and so on, in short, the usual policy rhetoric which reflects new instrumen- talist rationalisations of the relationship between education, the economy and other socio/cultural areas and what the former can accomplish in respect of these. The belief (illusio) and over-emphasis on variables such as classroom teacher impact/s, the ‘school’, and so on regarding how we might engage with and enhance student achievement and deal with problems of equity, is an acknowledgement of social class and its effects on student performance whilst simultaneously giving credence to the educational blame mantra of ‘bad teachers and their teaching practice/s’ and ‘failing schools’. This in effect is representative of an assumption within education- alisation, that the technical elements of other fields such as Economics and the prior - itisation it gives to maximising efficiencies as inputs—outputs, distorts the purpose of education as an exercise in the remediation of all social and economic problems. This perspective aligns with many of the goals and objectives of education policy reports and agendas of the recent era framed within the political and economic ‘free- market’ credo which has dominated over the fields of school and higher education in preceding decades (see Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Fairness and equity in education in such reports and visionary agendas are never mentioned in strong equality of oppor- tunity terms meaning belief in egalitarian principles of justice which ‘…holds that all people should be made equal or close to equal in the rights, opportunities, and resources they have’ (Arneson, 2007. p. 393). Whilst as Savage claims notions of ‘equity, equal- ity and justice have featured prominently in Australian education policies since the evolution of government schooling’ (2013, p. 185), in recent years talk of equity and/ or fairness in education corresponds to ‘the economic rationalities of advanced mar- ket liberalism and are melted into broader productivity agendas’ (Savage, 2013, pp. 196–197). At the beginning of the early 2000s, ‘Australian education policies have reflected…a “social capitalist” political imagination, whereby equity is framed primar - ily as a market enhancing [emphasis in original] mechanism and is collapsed into an evolved human capital agenda’ (Savage, 2013, p. 186). Those with capacity, inclination and/or ‘free-market’ sentiment are well catered for especially the private actors/advo- cates involved in public–private partnerships (PPPs) in which private funds are used as the means towards building equity and buttressing education and the needs of the disadvantaged by leveraging private resources (see Nisbet, 2021). The dilemma created here is the rise in inequality in which wealthier groups purchase ‘a different type of experience of public goods’ (Nisbet, 2021, p. 264) tailored to suit their special aims and requirements. Equity notwithstanding, the commitments to action in the Declarations 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia side-step broader questions around equality of opportunity by making considerations of educational advantage/disadvantage and links to student achievement a problem of educational productivity. Therefore, the commitments to action within the declarations involve ‘developing’, ‘supporting’, ‘strengthening’, ‘enhancing’, ‘improving’ partner- ships between parents and schools, teachers and their teaching practice/s, the curric- ulum, accountability mechanisms and so on. The illusio inherent in the Declarations and their commitments to action is about understanding education as a practice by then viewing the production of student achievement as something made possible via the actions of the school. The elements of most interest for the development of a competi- tive economy within the Declarations mean the stakes are high. This, however, is the illusio of the Declarations, prima facie accepting that student achievement and broader problems of economic productivity/competitiveness, social inequity, racial, class and gender bias amongst other problems are the responsibility of the schooling system and by proxy schools and classroom teachers to fix. Equality of opportunity is a crucial issue in education and should be understood as a form of ‘natural justice’ insofar as ameliorating the constraining or exclusion- ary barriers inherent in what is in general the competition for an education. It means more than equality, the latter tending towards the equalising of inputs and/or of how people are treated. Equality of opportunity understood ‘…as a means to an end’ is about ensuring ‘…that the benefits of education should not be denied to those who faced some specific barrier that stood in the way of an opportunity being grasped’ (Roy, 2004, p. 364). This means more than simply ‘equity’ per se as in weighted funding measures for the redistribution of resources so that those that need more actually end up receiving it. It is about ensuring that the ‘…average achievements of students from different social classes and ethnic groups should be more equal and can be made more equal’ (Roy, 2004, p. 364). This then is about recognising the unique situation of each person which requires tailored policy responsiveness so that opportunities reflect tangible results. Unfortunately, the commitments to action within the Declarations cling to a formalist illusio. They recognise a change in stakes by powerful global economic forces and promote investment in a competitive educational game whilst refusing the durable aspects inherent in the perceptions and actions of the agents occupying their place in the social world. The transposition into a brave new economic and educational order in which the commitments to action within the Declarations are supposed to help facilitate too readily ignore the class-based and other determina- tions of position inherent in any social space. This is to be expected because the educational ‘project’ is not aimed at equal opportunities; rather the principles upon which it is constituted are laid out and controlled by powerful dominant stakeholders set on ‘winning’ and protecting their important ‘stake’ in the game. Conclusion In sum, this paper has offered a critical exploration of the decline in student achievement in Australia (2000–2020) as reported by the latest PISA (2019). It has undertaken this exploration using Bourdieu’s notion of ‘being critical’ and his 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. concept of illusio, analysing the case of declining student achievement as a policy problem of significance. The paper suggests that the decline in student achieve- ment in Australia is symptomatic of two things: (1) the socio-cultural complexi- ties interrelated within student learning experiences (e.g.: motivation, engage- ment, language and so on) all of which reflect the widening gap highlighted in the disparity between socio-economic status and student achievement and (2) a trend premised on educationalisation which has characterised the school education sys- tem over time in which individual schools and classroom teachers are champi- oned as the solution to broader socio-cultural problems which the latter have little control over and effect on. This dominant pattern of practice is the prevailing illu- sio re-enforced by the reform-oriented view/vision of major policy reports/Decla- ration (s) of recent decades which omit reference to solutions based on principles of equality of opportunity which may work to enhance educational achievement. What’s then to be done? There is a pressing need for the expertise of educa- tors to be included and valued regarding bottom-up solutions to complex edu- cational problems. This is about a renewed focus on pedagogies and the types of support structures needed now for both classroom teachers and the broader school community. But it is also about broadening social policy considerations beyond equity with the aim being the revision of educational and other depriva- tions. Hence privileging heterodox educational and economic approaches in pol- icy-making that recognise the structural disadvantages in society. The orientation of education policy should stimulate the development of multiple solutions to the perceived problem of student achievement favouring complex conceptualisation of reform strategies and directions. In short, it means the reconstitution of edu- cation along socially just approaches (see Riddle & Cleaver, 2017) rather than maintaining the policy regime in operation over decades within Australia which espouses the economic function of education. If not, the state of play in our view remains, and little will change in the ‘game’ of school education in Australia. Author contributions The first author AS is responsible for the entire manuscript. MKET and SR assisted in a minor way: basic contributions to the analysis and introduction parts of the manuscript in the main and also proof-reading. Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. There are no sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests involved in the research associated with this research paper. Any data involved and/or reported on (PISA) results are publicly available and accessible to all via the Internet. The Melbourne (MCEETYA) and Mparntwe (Alice Springs) Declarations are both public documents and readily accessible via the internet. Data availability Any data involved and/or reported on (PISA) results are publicly available and accessi- ble to all via the relevant webpage that is readily accessible on the Internet. The Melbourne (MCEETYA) and Mparntwe (Alice Springs) Declarations are both public documents and readily accessible via the Internet. Declarations Conflict of interest There are no financial or other interests pertaining to this research. Ethical approval Not applicable. 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com- mons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/. 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The metrics of teacher effectiveness and teacher quality research. Sidelining the issues that really count. Routledge. Smeyers, P., & Marc, D. (2008). Education research: The educationalization of social problems. Springer. 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia Swain, K., Pendergast, D., & Cumnming, J. (2018). Student experiences of NAPLAN: Sharing insights from two school sites. Australian Educational Researcher, 45, 315–342. Swartz, D. L. (2013). Symbolic Power. The Political Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. The University of Chicago Press. Takayama, K. (2008). The politics of international league tables: PISA in Japan’s achievement crisis debate. Comparative Education, 44(4), 387–407. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1080/ 03050 06080 248141 Thomson, S., De Bortoli, L., Underwood, C., & Schmid, M. (2019). PISA 2018 in Brief I. Student performance. Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). Retrieved 10 January 2022 from https:// resea rch. acer. edu. au/ ozpisa/ 34 Wilson, B., & Spillman, D. (2022). Country as teacher. Using stories from and for Country in Australian education for social and ecological renewal. In S. Riddle, A. Heffernan, & D. Bright (Eds.), New Perspectives on education for democracy. Creative responses to local and global challenges (pp. 53–63). Routledge. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Andrew Skourdoumbis is an Associate Professor in Education (Pedagogy and Curriculum) His research engages with matters of policy analysis, teacher practice and educational performance. He investigates the global reform efforts in education that impact teacher practice and the way that exacting statistical methods of research govern school education policy and teacher performance. Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas (BA [Hons] La Trobe, GCertHELT, GCertAIB Deakin, GDipEd, PhD UniMelb) SFHEA is a Senior Lecturer in Education (Pedagogy and Curriculum) at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the Academic Director of Professional Practice. Matthew lectures in teaching (pedagogy) and curriculum (design) and trains postgraduate researchers. In addition, he works internationally leading humanitarian projects through global immersion programmes. He is a former schoolteacher with a background in leadership, strategy and negotiation. His research explores the sociology of time and education, initial teacher education, surveillance capitalism and human rights. His most recent publications explore the implications of time as a structuring force in learning, human rights in schooling and relationality in initial teacher education. Recently, he co-edited Post-Qualitative Research and Innovative Methodologies (2020; Bloomsbury Academic) and Inclusive Education is a Right, right? (2021; Brill). He tweets @whoseprivacy. Shaun Rawolle is a Senior Lecturer In Education (Pedagogy and Curriculum). His research includes the way that education from schools, vocational education and training, and higher education is constituted, measured and impacted through education policy and by economic thinking. He draws on Pierre Bourdieu, contractualism and the social contract of education in his work. 1 3 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Australian Educational Researcher Springer Journals

Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia

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Abstract

This paper presents a critical exploration of a reported decline in student achieve- ment in Australia (2000–2020). Declining student achievement is framed as sympto- matic of broader dysfunction within the education system. The context of declining student achievement is articulated through a Bourdieusian being critical sociology of education. This is achieved using the concepts of illusio and educationalisation as they intersect with Australian schools, in which classroom teachers are given responsibility for solving social and economic ills. As such, due consideration of the goals and commitments to action in the Melbourne Declaration (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA, 2008), and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019) is provided. Drawing from these formative documents, the ‘stakes’ that matter are examined highlighting the potential misalignment between equality of opportunity in ameliorating educational disadvantage and the priorities of modern educational discourse. Keywords Bourdieu · Being critical · Student achievement · Policy · Australia, Educationalisation * Andrew Skourdoumbis andrew.skourdoumbis@deakin.edu.au Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas matthew.thomas@deakin.edu.au Shaun Rawolle shaun.rawolle@deakin.edu.au Faculty of Arts & Education Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Melbourne, VIC 3125, Australia Faculty of Arts and Education Deakin University, Waurn Ponds Campus, Geelong, Australia Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. Introduction This paper explores a reported decline in student achievement from 2000 to 2020 in Australia. The most recent Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Devel- opment (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a major international large-scale assessment (ILSA) test reflects that Australian student per - formance over successive testing cycles has declined (OECD, 2019). A worrying feature of the most recent PISA data is a precipitous decline of the most academi- cally able students in juxtaposition to their counterparts from fifteen years ago (see ACER, 2019). Disturbingly, fewer Australian 15-year-olds are performing at the higher mathematics and reading proficiencies and Australia has now fallen below the average PISA benchmark in Mathematical literacy (see ACER, 2019; OECD PISA, 2019). The argument which follows posits that the precipitous decline in Australian stu- dent achievement identified by PISA (2019) is a consequence of a broader dysfunc- tion in the education system. An obvious aftereffect might be a destabilisation of Australian education in realising its potential. This is not to suggest that PISA per se has had a direct effect in Australia in the re-working or streamlining of curriculum content as has happened in Japan (see Takayama, 2008). Our argument postulates on the decline in student achievement in Australia, and to that end offers a poten- tial explanation. We suggest that any potential dysfunction is brought about through a system-wide reliance on the economic (exchange value) and functionalist (use value) role of education. This duality is emblematic of the political and socio-eco- nomic features of the modern nation state educationalisation wherein the ‘problems’ of society are thrust upon schools and classroom teachers (Depaepe and Smeyers, 2008). This has been achieved in Australia as other Anglophone nations, via: 1. Binding economic, social and education policy agendas together over successive decades. This focuses attention on how schools and classroom teachers contribute to national economic competitiveness. 2. Over time, this binding illuminates how the classroom-based teaching practices of teachers are the key to enhancing and making the die ff rence to student achieve - ment. Debates in these two areas typically centre on notions of creativity, innovation, teacher effectiveness/quality, curriculum change, managerialism, privatisation, cor - poratisation, accountability and standardisation (Skourdoumbis & Rawolle, 2020). Whilst we draw on PISA directly, we acknowledge the limitations of ILSAs includ- ing their supposed accuracy and validity (see Gillis et al., 2016), and their influence on education policy and practice, which is significant (see Fischman et  al., 2019). ILSAs in their measurements narrow the educational experiences of students, and in doing so, curtail other ways of understanding student achievement. The need for quality productive pedagogies which value the development of higher-order creative and critical thinking skills generally reflect rich curriculum and assessment practices which enhance deeper learning and stronger intellectual engagement (see Swain 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia et  al., 2018). These very particular pedagogical practices are not usually found in ILSA tests. The exploration provided here is made alongside the current media debate high- lighting student achievement as a persistent policy problem of note which has been characterised as perhaps the biggest national policy failure in Australian his- tory (Kelly, 2021). The trend in declining student achievement in Australia is also occurring in other countries and there is a definite increasing inequity link which Chmielewski’s (2019) recent research highlights. Chmielewski’s (2019) study exam- ined thirty international large-scale assessments over fifty years, representing 100 countries and about 5.8 million students. It found evidence of an increasing achieve- ment gap revealing growing educational inequity across a range of countries ’…sug- gesting that cognitive skills are an increasingly important dimension of educational stratification worldwide’ (Chmielewski, 2019, p. 517). Our article utilises ‘being critical’ (Grenfell, 2010), a perspective informed by Bourdieu. This approach in education foregrounds the political, economic and social levers which work to construct schooling. ‘Being critical’ commits us to examine the interests that different groups have in education and through this to expose the illusio (strategies and investments) of formalist cultural, socio-political and eco- nomic principles of action. PISA ‘…could be regarded as policy given that it does have policy effects in schooling systems, providing comparative data for policy making’ (Baroutsis and Lingard, 2022, p. 905). It is imperative for critical sociology to not accept at face value arguments about the direction of education without exam- ining the interests that underlie these arguments and the positions of those making them. This is important in an era which emphasises outcomes from schooling. In the argument which follows we point to two kinds of illusio which do not always align, specifically, the commitment that education is the appropriate institution for solv - ing social problems, alongside the reductionism involved in measuring the impact of education in ways that seemingly offers solutions to major broad-based problems. To this end the article focuses on two reform/vision-oriented Australian policy texts of the recent era; the Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019), especially their core goals and commitments to action. Both Declarations are national policy texts with national goals signed off by the federal, state and territory ministers. These Declara- tions orient the Australian federal system of schooling, which includes the ‘systema- tisation of the Commonwealth’s role’ (Lingard, 2000, p. 26) in school education (see also Lingard & Lewis, 2017). The Declarations have been a focal point for nego- tiations and targets between states, territories and the federal Government, resulting in national reports on the schooling sector (Rawolle et  al., ). This federal system has its origins in the strong equity agenda of the Whitlam Labor years (1972–1975) and has seen enhanced federal involvement in national schooling policies over time especially under the Rudd Labor government (2007–2010) onwards (Lingard, 2010). Taken together, the Declarations reflect a tangible commitment and faith ‘in the game’ of education reinforcing a formalist belief (illusio) in maintaining ‘the game’ as it is currently played. The paper proceeds in four parts. Part one outlines the downward achievement spiral in Australia which has occurred alongside some of the reformist supports 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. characteristic of the field of school education over successive decades: marketisa- tion, nationalisation of the education system, the increasing prevalence of interna- tional comparisons, an ‘innovation push’, the school improvement agenda and the alignment to national/international economic goals, and an increased obsession about numbers in education (see Lingard et al., 2016). In part two, the Bourdieusian ‘being critical’ approach to problems of educational importance is canvassed draw- ing on the notion of illusio. This makes explicit how the decline in student achieve- ment links with a broader problem of note for the field of school education, that of educationalisation. It provides the opportunity to examine what specific commit- ments and interests come to matter. This then provides the framework in part three for a conceptual account of educationalisation in Australia. It considers the case of two important education policy-related reform/vision-oriented documents which set out the major aims and objectives of Australian school education, the Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Dec- laration (Education Council, 2019). Part four argues that the various commitments to action within the Declarations have minimal substantive effect on enhancing student achievement because they fail to articulate a viable equality of opportunity objec- tive that transcends the reformist illusio of recent decades. The paper concludes by claiming that the decline in student achievement in Australia reflects the paradox of educationalisation in that reform / vision-oriented goals and commitments to action buy into the illusio without paying sufficient attention to equality of opportunity. We take equality of opportunity to mean at its most basic level equalising opportu- nities. Equity when mentioned in the paper is mostly given a financial connotation where we mean more resources for the most disadvantaged (see Wilson and Spill- man, 2022). We also suggest as others have (see Connell, 1993, 2011) that there are social inequities of class, race and gender so there is a concern for social inclu- sion recognising diversity and a right to be heard which aligns with Gale’s definition of the concept of equity as the ‘…identification, problematisation and redressing of underrepresentation’ (Gale, 2015, p. 261). By equality, we mean basic formal rights (political, legal, educational and so on) that all peoples should have. Context and field characterisations—a downward student achievement spiral A downward student achievement spiral in Australian schools is reflected in the data gleaned from the most recent PISA test. PISA provides mean scores of student per- formance across the subjects/domains of Literacy/Reading, Mathematics and Scien- tific Literacy. PISA claims to measure the application of knowledge rather than tests curricula knowledge. PISA results are considered statistically significant in terms of the difference between subject/domain performances over time. All students tested as part of the 2018 PISA cycle completed tasks from the Reading domain and the Mathematical and Scientific Literacy domains. The 2018 PISA is the seventh cycle of the PISA test from when it was first introduced in 2000. The term literacy as applied to the respective domains reflects a set of skills within reading, mathematics and science. The 2018 PISA defined the reading literacy for each of the domains as 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia ‘… students’ capacity to understand, use, evaluate, reflect on and engage with texts in order to achieve one’s goals, develop one’s knowledge and potential and partici- pate in society’ (OECD PISA, 2019, p. 4). PISA is conducted every three years with results reported towards the end of the subsequent year. Originating in 2000 as part of a nine-year cycle, the first PISA focused on Reading Literacy (2000–2009) which was the major focus again in PISA 2018, whilst mathematical literacy provided the focus in 2003/2012 and scientific literacy in 2006/2015. PISA tests are age-based and include students from different grades and classes which means that the number of students tested in each class is relatively small. Claims to validity nonetheless are potentially problematic and for this reason, some argue for the benefits of ‘data expansion’ meaning the comparison of longitudinal datasets. This would involve comparison across the nine-year cycle rather than three years (see Kuger and Kliene, 2016), and across times when a specific literacy is taken as the extended focus. The most recent Australian PISA (2018) sample comprised 14,273 students from across all Australian states and territories regardless of sector. In making compari- son over successive cycles with reading literacy over eighteen years, mathematical literacy over fifteen years and scientific literacy over twelve years, the PISA results regarding Australian student achievement indicate that: The performance of students has declined in each assessment domain The proportion of low performers has increased whilst the proportion of high performers has decreased in each domain The proportion of students who attained the National Proficient Standard has declined in each domain. (Thomson et al., 2019, p. 7) Put another way: In reading literacy, Australia performed the equivalent of about 1½ years of schooling lower than the highest performing economy… (China) and around 1.5 years lower than the highest performing country, Singapore. In mathematical literacy, Australia performed the equivalent of more than 3½ years of schooling lower than the highest performing economy… (China) and around 3 years lower than the highest performing country, Singapore. In scientific literacy, Australia performed the equivalent of more than 3 years of schooling lower than the highest performing economy … (China) and around 1¾ years lower than the highest performing country, Singapore. (See Thomson et al., 2019) The above accords with a recent report Structural Failure: Why Australia keeps falling short of our educational goals. The report indicates that ‘…we are falling short in excellence, evidenced by accounts of deteriorating school performance over the last two decades’ (Bonnor et al., 2021, p. 5). This narrative of declining student achievement is reinforced in the Through Growth to Achievement Report: Report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, known collo- quially as Gonski 2.0. 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. Australia has a strong educational heritage and committed educators. Since 2000, however, academic performance has declined when compared to other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, suggesting that Australian students and schools are not improving at the same rate and are falling short of achieving the full learning potential of which they are capable. (Gonski et al., 2018, p. viii). In effect and since 2009, ‘…Australia’s performance has declined in absolute terms and relative to other countries’ (Bonnor et al., 2021, p. 5). The Review of funding for schooling (2012) and Through Growth to Achieve- ment: Report of the review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools (2018), the former known as Gonski 1.0, the latter as Gonski 2.0, have acknowledged worsening student achievement in Australia and both have explic- itly made the connection between schooling outcomes including student achieve- ment and funding. Constitutional responsibility for school education in Australia lies with the various states and territories including regulation/administration and funding of government schools (see Harrington, 2011). Funding responsi- bilities are shared between the federal government and state and territory govern- ments with the federal government providing a total funding allocation based on the schooling resources standard (SRS). This recurrent funding arrangement is comprised of a base amount for each student in addition to a series of six load- ings providing additional funding to meet student needs. The recurrent needs- based funding mix is designed to ensure that all schools receive public funds. This translates to some schools receiving full public funding whilst others remain subsidised. Resource disparities are acknowledged under this funding framework with deliberations hinging on identifying differences and meeting shortfalls (see Greenwell and Bonnor, 2022). Tackling student achievement in Australia is not limited to seeking reforms in funding models. Action has also centred on reforms which target (1) teacher pro- fessionalism focused on enhancing teacher quality and effectiveness and (2) school governance interventions centred on greater school autonomy to increase school effectiveness (see Skourdoumbis & Rawolle, 2020; Johnston, 2015). A key compo- nent of the teacher and school quality/effectiveness push around enhancing student achievement is the provision and governance arguments which enable ‘…discourses of accountability, competition and choice in education’ (Hogan, 2016, p. 94). These approaches include increased school autonomy and decision-making freedom as the way to bolster student achievement, despite an absence of significant evidence about ‘linking greater school autonomy to improved academic attainment’ (Keddie, 2017, p. 374). This propensity to shift the responsibility of educational attainment and by proxy, economic performance onto schools and teachers is not new although is now arguably sharper and more expansive in the demands it places on schools and teachers regarding expected ‘quality’ outcomes. The need for schools and teachers to develop their capabilities and actions as part of a wider economic competitiveness agenda is coupled with an educationalisation of social and other problems: student well-being, addressing physical and mental health, countering gender inequality and so on (see Depaepe & Smeyers, 2008). Whilst not a new phenomenon, educa- tionalisation is a process which asks both schools and teachers to ameliorate social/ 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia community-related problems of all kinds and is now an entrenched feature of the contemporary education system (see Depaepe & Smeyers, 2008). Bourdieu and ‘being critical’ There are two aspects involved in Bourdieu’s approach towards criticality. This includes a commitment to the sociology of practice that (a) provides an interrogation of ‘categories of thought’ (Grenfell, 2010, p. 88) and (b) an ‘epistemology in prac- tice’ [italics in original] (Robbins, 2021, p. 326) meaning an exposé of dominant and dominating power relations. The Bourdieusian critical perspective provides a means to account for power structures as part of the established order and in doing so recognises ‘that our conceptualizations are immanent in the social process and are complicit in the transient constitution of impermanent realities’ (Robbins, 2021, p. 326). This process uncovers the nuanced intersections of socio-political, eco- nomic and cultural systems looking for the dominant pre-suppositions and symbols manifest in the ‘arbitrary foundations of the status quo’ (Swartz, 2013, p. 239). A critical aspect involved in Bourdieu’s work is the attention given to pre-con- structed ‘taken-for-granted’ statements and explanations or (Doxa), which are devoid of any socio-historical and politico-economic contingencies. The latter avoids the criticality involved in a socio-analysis which offers the possibility of highlighting dominant power relations and ‘conditions that undergird inequalities but go mis- recognied’ (Swartz, 2013, p. 239). This then is about offering a critical sociological discourse and commentary that points towards the inherent tensions of unquestioned and unchallenged dominant interests which are themselves in general political and cultural value expressions. In effect, the Bourdieusian ‘being critical’ sociology of practice recognises the two-fold constitution of the world through (1) systems of communication and the ‘set of signs and symbols’ which construct meaning and (2) the social infrastructure allowing ‘its functionalist operations’ (Grenfell, 2010, p. 88). In the Bourdieusian sense ‘being critical’ means an exposition of various values and capitals which are interest-laden precepts that are immanent in a field revealing any active biases that are present. The illusio represents the conjugated field-specific needs and interests that often go unstated given expression through position. Ilusio ‘has all the appearances of being natural’ (Grenfell, 2010, p. 161) so that rewards bestowed, or hierarchies tolerated seem either the product of motivation and merit or in the latter case, exude the accumulated symbolic capital that comes with the power and prestige of in most cases the intellectual field. The Bourdieusian ‘being critical’ approach to school education recognises that the field over time has experienced major redefinitions and reshaping. These have come with their own managerialist ‘logic of practice’ involving the intensifications associated with the education system as a field of power, especially around data utilisation and individual competition and accountability measures. The resultant restructuring of the field of education including its processes and relations becomes legitimated by a specifically coordinated politicisation. Grenfell has characterised this politicisation by highlighting a threefold way of doing things where the focus is 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. on (1) claiming system failure, (2) raising public concern and (3) stressing greater public involvement within the field (Grenfell, 2010). This represents ‘the “stake- holder” interest…the rationale for new forms of capital and for changes in the hier- archy of capital values’ [emphasis in original] (Grenfell, 2010, p. 90). It justifies an ‘officialised’ (policy-related) version of events especially around ways to ‘fix’ the problem in student achievement including how the field must adapt and move for - ward vis-à-vis its vision and objectives for improving performance. The Declara- tions that are the subject of this paper can be viewed in this light. Educationalisation the Australian way—the Declarations Educationalisation is about thrusting social including economic problems and responsibilities onto the education system as the means for their solution. It is if anything the pre-eminent modernisation process holding the education system (schools and teachers) accountable for solving the basic social inequities of class, race and gender to ‘enhancing public health, economic productivity, citizenship, and even performances in sports contests such as the Olympic Games’ (Depaepe & Smeyers, 2008, p. 379). The social functions that educationalisation expresses are the very foundation of education’s role ‘…in the formation of the modern nation- state’ (Depaepe & Smeyers, 2008, p. 379). This sees schools undertake the grand enterprise of assuming total responsibility in the form of ‘…new programs, new curricula, new institutions, new degrees, new educational opportunities…in place of solutions that might make real changes in the ways in which we distribute social power, wealth, and honor’ (Labaree, 2008, p. 448). At the heart of the notion of edu- cationalisation is an interventionist knowledge and skills agenda where the school, through education tackles the problems of society by invoking social and economic reforms. To this end educationalisation in its contemporary guise is framed by a series of ‘technologies’ which incorporate rationalisation, governance, monitoring, accountability, foreclosure and norm-referencing, viewing the world and its com- plexities as problems to be solved (see Fendler, 2008). This is accompanied by the prioritisation of education towards a competitive spirit as the central guiding force in making social and economic progress. In other words, the promise of education is in the degree to which it has ‘positive’ social and economic impacts on both the individual and nation. There is a documented history of educationalisation throughout the Anglo- capitalist ‘West’ where the locus of power and control over the field of both school and higher education has become enmeshed within an ideological tenet that emphasises the commodity exchange value of an education (Depaepe & Smeyers, 2008). An important feature is the promise invested in education helping develop and shape people’s knowledge and skills for employability purposes. Progress towards this is typically couched in human capital ways evoking a ‘payoff’ realised through the delivery of enhanced ‘economic growth, higher productivity or a larger paycheck’ (Brown et  al., 2020, p. 1) alongside the inclusion of ‘social goods like equity into economic productivity’ (Savage, 2013, p. 186). An important aspect involved here is the notion of the ‘knowledge-based economy’ (Ailwood, 2004) with 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia its emphasis upon economic competitiveness which should spring from enhanced levels of innovation, creativity, worker flexibility and so on underpinned by an adaptable and responsive education system. The rationale which underpins a triad of education, technology and employment is the expectation that heightened levels of employability are only possible by embracing the opportunities on offer via a knowledge-based economy of global economic competition and the lure of new technologies. In other words, the ‘…taken for granted visions of neoliberal social development and the associated understandings of concepts such as education, technology, and employment’ (Peters et  al., 2019, p. 252), that together adhere to fuel individual and national competitive advantage. This form of educationalisation in Australia has since the early 2000s revolved around a view of the education system which is about ‘…building enterprising, marketised and globally competitive schools’ (Savage, 2013, p. 186). The prom- ise of education delivering upon stronger economic growth, employability and equity abuts major reform agendas of recent times, which in the field of school education are best viewed in the Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019). The Melbourne Declaration for instance ‘frames education as both a social and economic investment in a globalising marketplace’ (Savage, 2013, p. 186) as does the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019). The educationalisation agenda expressed in both is founded upon the key goals of equity and excellence positioning the education system as the driver of edu- cational and economic advancement through a competitive edge built on knowl- edge and innovation (see MCEETYA, 2008; Education Council, 2019). The Mel- bourne Declaration acknowledges the important global pressure points of the era, these being: global integration and mass mobility, the rise and influence of India, China and other Asian nation states, the effects of economic globalisation and technological change on skill development and education, the rise of complex social, economic and environmental problems, and the rapid change in the con- tinuing advances of information and communication technology (ICT). Schools are encouraged to be ‘…promoting the intellectual, physical, social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians’ highlighting their importance ‘…in ensuring the nation’s ongoing economic pros- perity and social cohesion’ (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 4). Important aims included enhancing the outcomes of all young Australians and for the education system over the ensuing decade (2010–2020) ‘…to become second to none amongst the world’s best school systems’ (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 5). These aims are set against some of the worst educational failures of the time in terms of equity and excel- lence including ‘inequalities in year 12 attainment, disparities in literacy and numeracy scores, and underachievement amongst young indigenous Australians’ (Savage, 2013, p. 186). Literacy and numeracy and knowledge of the key disci- plines were to be prioritised alongside the ‘new’ 21st-century skill sets of social interaction, cross-disciplinary thinking and the use of digital media. In addi- tion, the education system was to play an important part in civics and citizenship around ‘national values of democracy, equity and justice, and personal values and attributes such as honesty, resilience and respect for others’ (MCEETYA, 2008, p. 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. 5). The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration is in keeping with such goals and commitments although it contains three differences compared to its Melbourne predecessor: (1) it renews attention on the achievement gap between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous students, (2) it calls for the recognition and so the inclusion of Indigenous history and cultural knowledge in school curriculums and (3) it seeks to respond as a whole to the broader decline in achievement prob- lem in Australian school education (see Education Council, 2019). In setting out goals and commitments to action, the Declarations establish their strategic aims for the Australian education system. The Melbourne Declaration contained two goals and eight commitments to action whereas the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration contains the same two goals albeit with a slight change to Goal 2 and eleven commitments to action (see Table 1). Roughly half of the commitments to action in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration are either different to and/or contain some change to those found in the Melbourne Declaration (see Table 2). Table 1 The Goals and Commitments to Action in the Melbourne and Alice Springs Declarations Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019)  Goal 1: Australian schooling promotes equity and  Goal 1: The Australian education system pro- excellence motes excellence and equity  Goal 2: All young Australians become:  Goal 2: All young Australians become confident -successful learners and creative individuals, successful lifelong -confident and creative individuals learners and active and informed members of -active and informed citizens the community Commitments to action Commitments to Action  Developing strong partnerships  Developing stronger partnerships  Supporting quality teaching and school leadership  Supporting quality teaching and school leadership  Enhancing middle years development  Strengthening early childhood education  Supporting senior years of schooling and youth  Building foundational skills through the primary transitions school years  Promoting world-class curriculum and assessment  Enhancing middle years development  Improving educational outcomes for Indigenous  Supporting senior years of schooling youth and disadvantaged young Australians, especially those from low socio-economic backgrounds  Strengthening accountability and transparency  Embedding pathways for learning throughout life and supporting effective transitions  Delivering world-class curriculum and assess- ment  Supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners to reach their potential  Supporting all young Australians at risk of educa- tional disadvantage  Strengthening accountability and transparency with strong meaningful measures Adapted from (MCEETYA, 2008 and Education Council, 2019) 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia Table 2 The different Commitments to Action within the declarations Melbourne Declaration (MCEETYA, 2008) Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019) Supporting senior years of schooling and youth Supporting senior years of schooling transitions Promoting world-class curriculum and assessment Delivering world-class curriculum and assessment Improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth and disadvantaged young Australians, learners to reach their potential especially those from low socio-economic Supporting all young Australians at risk of educa- backgrounds tional disadvantage Strengthening accountability and transparency Strengthening accountability and transparency with strong meaningful measures New—Building foundational skills through the primary school years and New—Embedding pathways for learning through- out life and supporting effective transitions Adapted from the (MCEETYA, 2008) and (Education Council, 2019) declarations Four commitments to action in both Declarations have remained the same. Those are as follows: Developing stronger partnerships, Supporting quality teaching and school leadership, Strengthening early childhood education and Enhancing middle years development. The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration contains two new commitments to action: Building foundational skills through the primary school years and Embedding pathways for learning throughout life and supporting effective transitions. Some of the changes outlined in Table 2 above reflect the continued educational and other disadvantage experienced by indigenous students meriting a ‘stand- alone’ commitment to action in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declara- tion although with a similar emphasis on Australian governments and the educa- tion community working to ‘close the gap’ for young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) peoples. Interestingly, the explicit reference within the Declara- tion about ‘delivering world-class curriculum and assessment’ and provision of ‘… strong meaningful measures’ with the emphasis on ‘delivering’ and ‘strong mean- ingful measures’ is indicative of the performance measurement line of deliverology this being ‘…a top-down approach to governance that focuses on improving pub- lic service delivery processes by identifying goals, and measures to assess progress towards them…designed to motivate and inform system improvements with respect to both excellence and equity and ensure that public money is well spent’ (Gewirtz et al., 2021, pp. 504–505). This captures the formalist pattern of the goals and com- mitments to action found within the Declarations in that they reflect many of the social, political and economic values and beliefs common to and prevalent within the knowledge economy discourse, i.e. the optimism associated with the supposed opportunities on offer via the intensification of heightened global economic com- petition and a social/political world in flux. Faith in the capacity of education to solve the economic and social problems that the Declarations outline expresses the 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. extrinsic rather than intrinsic value of education. Put simply, committing education to a wider process of action where it is responsible for and responds to differing pur - poses and aims. Reinforcing illusio The Declarations have each concentrated their attention on the ‘steady work’ (Elmore & McLaughlin, 1988) which has come to characterise Declarations and policy reports of this kind: espousal of supposed ‘partnerships’, the strengthening of accountability and measurement mechanisms, curriculum and teacher effectiveness/ quality and so on, in short, the usual policy rhetoric which reflects new instrumen- talist rationalisations of the relationship between education, the economy and other socio/cultural areas and what the former can accomplish in respect of these. The belief (illusio) and over-emphasis on variables such as classroom teacher impact/s, the ‘school’, and so on regarding how we might engage with and enhance student achievement and deal with problems of equity, is an acknowledgement of social class and its effects on student performance whilst simultaneously giving credence to the educational blame mantra of ‘bad teachers and their teaching practice/s’ and ‘failing schools’. This in effect is representative of an assumption within education- alisation, that the technical elements of other fields such as Economics and the prior - itisation it gives to maximising efficiencies as inputs—outputs, distorts the purpose of education as an exercise in the remediation of all social and economic problems. This perspective aligns with many of the goals and objectives of education policy reports and agendas of the recent era framed within the political and economic ‘free- market’ credo which has dominated over the fields of school and higher education in preceding decades (see Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Fairness and equity in education in such reports and visionary agendas are never mentioned in strong equality of oppor- tunity terms meaning belief in egalitarian principles of justice which ‘…holds that all people should be made equal or close to equal in the rights, opportunities, and resources they have’ (Arneson, 2007. p. 393). Whilst as Savage claims notions of ‘equity, equal- ity and justice have featured prominently in Australian education policies since the evolution of government schooling’ (2013, p. 185), in recent years talk of equity and/ or fairness in education corresponds to ‘the economic rationalities of advanced mar- ket liberalism and are melted into broader productivity agendas’ (Savage, 2013, pp. 196–197). At the beginning of the early 2000s, ‘Australian education policies have reflected…a “social capitalist” political imagination, whereby equity is framed primar - ily as a market enhancing [emphasis in original] mechanism and is collapsed into an evolved human capital agenda’ (Savage, 2013, p. 186). Those with capacity, inclination and/or ‘free-market’ sentiment are well catered for especially the private actors/advo- cates involved in public–private partnerships (PPPs) in which private funds are used as the means towards building equity and buttressing education and the needs of the disadvantaged by leveraging private resources (see Nisbet, 2021). The dilemma created here is the rise in inequality in which wealthier groups purchase ‘a different type of experience of public goods’ (Nisbet, 2021, p. 264) tailored to suit their special aims and requirements. Equity notwithstanding, the commitments to action in the Declarations 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia side-step broader questions around equality of opportunity by making considerations of educational advantage/disadvantage and links to student achievement a problem of educational productivity. Therefore, the commitments to action within the declarations involve ‘developing’, ‘supporting’, ‘strengthening’, ‘enhancing’, ‘improving’ partner- ships between parents and schools, teachers and their teaching practice/s, the curric- ulum, accountability mechanisms and so on. The illusio inherent in the Declarations and their commitments to action is about understanding education as a practice by then viewing the production of student achievement as something made possible via the actions of the school. The elements of most interest for the development of a competi- tive economy within the Declarations mean the stakes are high. This, however, is the illusio of the Declarations, prima facie accepting that student achievement and broader problems of economic productivity/competitiveness, social inequity, racial, class and gender bias amongst other problems are the responsibility of the schooling system and by proxy schools and classroom teachers to fix. Equality of opportunity is a crucial issue in education and should be understood as a form of ‘natural justice’ insofar as ameliorating the constraining or exclusion- ary barriers inherent in what is in general the competition for an education. It means more than equality, the latter tending towards the equalising of inputs and/or of how people are treated. Equality of opportunity understood ‘…as a means to an end’ is about ensuring ‘…that the benefits of education should not be denied to those who faced some specific barrier that stood in the way of an opportunity being grasped’ (Roy, 2004, p. 364). This means more than simply ‘equity’ per se as in weighted funding measures for the redistribution of resources so that those that need more actually end up receiving it. It is about ensuring that the ‘…average achievements of students from different social classes and ethnic groups should be more equal and can be made more equal’ (Roy, 2004, p. 364). This then is about recognising the unique situation of each person which requires tailored policy responsiveness so that opportunities reflect tangible results. Unfortunately, the commitments to action within the Declarations cling to a formalist illusio. They recognise a change in stakes by powerful global economic forces and promote investment in a competitive educational game whilst refusing the durable aspects inherent in the perceptions and actions of the agents occupying their place in the social world. The transposition into a brave new economic and educational order in which the commitments to action within the Declarations are supposed to help facilitate too readily ignore the class-based and other determina- tions of position inherent in any social space. This is to be expected because the educational ‘project’ is not aimed at equal opportunities; rather the principles upon which it is constituted are laid out and controlled by powerful dominant stakeholders set on ‘winning’ and protecting their important ‘stake’ in the game. Conclusion In sum, this paper has offered a critical exploration of the decline in student achievement in Australia (2000–2020) as reported by the latest PISA (2019). It has undertaken this exploration using Bourdieu’s notion of ‘being critical’ and his 1 3 A. Skourdoumbis et al. concept of illusio, analysing the case of declining student achievement as a policy problem of significance. The paper suggests that the decline in student achieve- ment in Australia is symptomatic of two things: (1) the socio-cultural complexi- ties interrelated within student learning experiences (e.g.: motivation, engage- ment, language and so on) all of which reflect the widening gap highlighted in the disparity between socio-economic status and student achievement and (2) a trend premised on educationalisation which has characterised the school education sys- tem over time in which individual schools and classroom teachers are champi- oned as the solution to broader socio-cultural problems which the latter have little control over and effect on. This dominant pattern of practice is the prevailing illu- sio re-enforced by the reform-oriented view/vision of major policy reports/Decla- ration (s) of recent decades which omit reference to solutions based on principles of equality of opportunity which may work to enhance educational achievement. What’s then to be done? There is a pressing need for the expertise of educa- tors to be included and valued regarding bottom-up solutions to complex edu- cational problems. This is about a renewed focus on pedagogies and the types of support structures needed now for both classroom teachers and the broader school community. But it is also about broadening social policy considerations beyond equity with the aim being the revision of educational and other depriva- tions. Hence privileging heterodox educational and economic approaches in pol- icy-making that recognise the structural disadvantages in society. The orientation of education policy should stimulate the development of multiple solutions to the perceived problem of student achievement favouring complex conceptualisation of reform strategies and directions. In short, it means the reconstitution of edu- cation along socially just approaches (see Riddle & Cleaver, 2017) rather than maintaining the policy regime in operation over decades within Australia which espouses the economic function of education. If not, the state of play in our view remains, and little will change in the ‘game’ of school education in Australia. Author contributions The first author AS is responsible for the entire manuscript. MKET and SR assisted in a minor way: basic contributions to the analysis and introduction parts of the manuscript in the main and also proof-reading. Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. There are no sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests involved in the research associated with this research paper. Any data involved and/or reported on (PISA) results are publicly available and accessible to all via the Internet. The Melbourne (MCEETYA) and Mparntwe (Alice Springs) Declarations are both public documents and readily accessible via the internet. Data availability Any data involved and/or reported on (PISA) results are publicly available and accessi- ble to all via the relevant webpage that is readily accessible on the Internet. The Melbourne (MCEETYA) and Mparntwe (Alice Springs) Declarations are both public documents and readily accessible via the Internet. Declarations Conflict of interest There are no financial or other interests pertaining to this research. Ethical approval Not applicable. 1 3 Being critical of the student achievement problem in Australia Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com- mons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/. 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Retrieved 10 January 2022 from https:// resea rch. acer. edu. au/ ozpisa/ 34 Wilson, B., & Spillman, D. (2022). Country as teacher. Using stories from and for Country in Australian education for social and ecological renewal. In S. Riddle, A. Heffernan, & D. Bright (Eds.), New Perspectives on education for democracy. Creative responses to local and global challenges (pp. 53–63). Routledge. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Andrew Skourdoumbis is an Associate Professor in Education (Pedagogy and Curriculum) His research engages with matters of policy analysis, teacher practice and educational performance. He investigates the global reform efforts in education that impact teacher practice and the way that exacting statistical methods of research govern school education policy and teacher performance. Matthew Krehl Edward Thomas (BA [Hons] La Trobe, GCertHELT, GCertAIB Deakin, GDipEd, PhD UniMelb) SFHEA is a Senior Lecturer in Education (Pedagogy and Curriculum) at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the Academic Director of Professional Practice. Matthew lectures in teaching (pedagogy) and curriculum (design) and trains postgraduate researchers. In addition, he works internationally leading humanitarian projects through global immersion programmes. He is a former schoolteacher with a background in leadership, strategy and negotiation. His research explores the sociology of time and education, initial teacher education, surveillance capitalism and human rights. His most recent publications explore the implications of time as a structuring force in learning, human rights in schooling and relationality in initial teacher education. Recently, he co-edited Post-Qualitative Research and Innovative Methodologies (2020; Bloomsbury Academic) and Inclusive Education is a Right, right? (2021; Brill). He tweets @whoseprivacy. Shaun Rawolle is a Senior Lecturer In Education (Pedagogy and Curriculum). His research includes the way that education from schools, vocational education and training, and higher education is constituted, measured and impacted through education policy and by economic thinking. He draws on Pierre Bourdieu, contractualism and the social contract of education in his work. 1 3

Journal

The Australian Educational Researcher – Springer Journals

Published: May 20, 2023

Keywords: Bourdieu; Being critical; Student achievement; Policy; Australia, Educationalisation

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