LPLC Past Events
Each year various presentations, workshops, seminars and events are conducted by researchers within the Centre, but also by colleagues visiting from interstate and overseas. Such events provide unique opportunities to keep abreast of current research and progress within the various fields. The Centre encourages all of its students and researchers to participate.
- Research-at-work Seminars
- Space Place Text Seminar
- Fatherhood Mini Conference
- Lunchtime Public talks
Research-at-work seminars
The Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures Research-at-work Seminar Series provides opportunities for: (a) academics to share what they are up to in their research projects: such as work in progress, problematisations, issues with analysis and theory building, methodological and ethical quandries; (b) post graduate students to present their latest writing to a supportive audience; and (c) visiting researchers to talk about their research work.
Research-at-work 2007 seminars
(With various PowerPoints, papers and audio files available for downloading)
Research-at-work 2006 seminars
(With various files available for downloading)
June 13th 2008
Presenters: Lyn Kerkham and Brenton Prosser
Topic: Narrative poesis: Embracing narrative ways of knowing and troubling the
'strip-mining' of participant stories
The recent rapid expansion in the use of narrative methods in social science has not been matched by new considerations of aesthetics, poetics or methods of analysis. As a result, there is a danger that narrative inquiry can be used as a means to ‘strip mine’ participant experience through coding, while neglecting the ways of knowing that are central to the narrative form. The first presentation will trace one researcher’s journey to narrative inquiry, their response to the emerging tension between aesthetic and pragmatic renditions, while discussing the use of a critical narratives approach with secondary students to write a novel that resists deficit identities in Adelaide's northern suburbs. The second presentation will present work-in-progress on transcripts of four interviews with one of the teachers in the study ‘Teacher in their place: teachers at work in an environmental communications curriculum’. This presentation will outline an approach to analysis, a combination of aspects of narrative and poststructuralist analysis, and the process of constructing the transcript poem to consider a representation of narrative and spatial identities. Together these presentations explore the application of narrative inquiry methods in different educational contexts, the narrative nature of identit(ies), and the importance of aesthetic ways of knowing for deeper understanding.
May 9th 2008
Presenters: Jenni Carter and Sam Sellar
Topic:
Pedagogy and policy in education: The ineptitude of calculation (Video of the seminar)
March 14th 2008
Presenters: TESOL Researchers Group
Topic:
The Globalization of English: Implications for Research-at-work (Video of the seminar)
TESOL Researchers Group PowerPoint presentation
Over the past several decades English language use has expanded rapidly across the globe, and English has become a true world language. As a consequence, the field of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) has experienced massive changes. It has gone from an apparently cozy place, where amateur linguists could exercise their assumed superiority of native speaker status, to an extensive community of researchers and practitioners operating in a highly competitive industry, where international political and commercial interests often overshadow local concerns and cultures.
Since the start of its fortnightly meetings over a year ago, the TESOL Researchers Group, with members from Thailand, Vietnam, China, Korea, Indonesia, Israel, Scotland and Australia, has been engaging with this dynamic context of globalization and the issues it presents for learners and practitioners. Our Research-at-Work presentation reviews the work of the Group in developing its own research culture, and provides a sample of some of the research being undertaken by individual members.
Space Place Text Seminar
The Space, Place, Text Seminar series began on Monday 3rd December 2007 with a public talk by Professor Paul Carter from Melbourne University and Associate Professor Julian Sefton-Green from the Untied Kingdom. In addition to this evening event there were also Master Classes held over the following days, a Brown Bag Lunch Seminar for Post-doctoral students, as well as one-on-one conversations with Professor Carter about various research projects and plans.
This first seminar event in a series of three that the LPLC have planned for 2007, 2008 and 2009 was a great success and will be followed up by another series in April 2008. At this point guest speakers have yet to be decided.
Public Seminar December 3rd 2007
Professor Paul Carter
Public space composition analysis: An interdisciplinary approach to
place-making and -remaking
Paul is Professor in the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. He is an
internationally renowned interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of spatial history and place-making and has a
well deserved reputation as an artist working in the public sphere.
Audio file: Professor Paul Carter
Associate Professor Julian Sefton-Green
Informal learning and school systems: An ecological history of anxiety,
opportunity and regulation (PDF 240kb)
Julian is an independent consultant and researcher working in Education and the
Cultural and Creative Industries. He is a well-known and respected researcher in
the field of of media education, new technologies and informal learning and an
Adjunct Professor in the LPLC at the University of South Australia.
Audio file: Associate Professor Julian Sefton-Green
Master Class December 4th 2007
Stepping back to consider methodsDefinitions of research are in flux and the boundaries between the traditional objects of study (urban/rural, design/program, residence/mobility) are dissolving. This master class will step back from thematics and consider methods and the principles which should shape our future.
Postgraduate Seminar December 5th 2007
Research in flux …The borders between traditional objects of study (urban/rural, design/program, residence/mobility) are dissolving. This lunch time session for postgraduate students and early career researchers will consider methodology, addressing the principles and practice of research where discipline boundaries blur.
Fatherhood Mini Conference
In June 2007 The Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures, together with the Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies, conducted a mini conference on Fatherhood. The first session, a public seminar entitled Fatherhood in a Changing World looked at fatherhood in different social and political contexts and added new perspectives to questions on fatherhood and gender relations. Guest speakers included:
Is fatherhood a woman’s question? Fatherhood in Swedish and Australian family and equal status policy. Roger Klinth is from the Linköping University in Sweden, a visiting fellow at The Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies. His field of research is gender and fatherhood policy.
Dr Michael Flood
Supporting separated fathers and encouraging men’s
positive
involvement in parenting.
Michael Flood works at the National Centre for Epistemology and Population Health at The
Australian National University in Canberra. His research topic is gender studies, in relation
to men and masculinity.
PowerPoint presentation: Supporting separated fathers
Dr Sue Nichols
Fathers and family literacy: More than the bed-time story
Sue Nichols works at the Centre for Literacy and Learning Cultures at the University of South Australia.
Her research crosses fields of education, family studies and cultural studies.
PowerPoint presentation: Fathers and family literacy: More than the bedtime story
Dr Tom Laws
What are the potential gains from having fathers engaged in promoting family health?
Tom Laws works at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of South Australia. His research interest is gender
and health care and health promotion, with a special focus on men.
Questions and Answers
The second session, The field of fatherhood: Crossings of the terrain, aimed at researchers and research degree students, continued throughout the afternoon. Links to the audio files, PowerPoints and papers are available below.
Agenda
Guest speakers:
Dr Roger Klinth, Linköping University
Citizen fatherhood in Sweden and Australia: exploring questions of framing and problem representation
Dr Michael Flood, Australian National University
Supporting separated fathers and encouraging men’s positive involvement in parenting
Michael's presentation was an extract from his paper
Separated fathers and the ‘fathers’ rights’ movement (PDF 56kb)
Dr Elspeth McInnes, De Lissa Research Institute, UniSA
Separated fathers’ rights groups’ narrative constructions of ‘Fathers as Victims’ in Australian public policy
Dr Tom Laws, School of Nursing, UniSA
In what ways do men contribute the family health?
Dr Susan Nichols, Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning
Cultures, UniSA
Fatherhood in educational research and theory
PowerPoint presentation: Fatherhood in educational research & theory: Looking back, looking forward
Lunchtime Public Talks
Product placement in children’s literature
Presenter: Dr Elizabeth Bullen
Senior Lecturer in Children's Literature at Deakin University
Audio File:
Liz Bullen public talk
Much has been written about the ways in which children's screen texts seek to socialise children as young consumers and to market brand name products to them through product placement. Children's and young adult print fiction have generally avoided being co-opted into the agendas of consumer capitalism in this way - until now. This paper considers the promotion of consumer identities in an emerging subgenre of Young Adult fiction, focusing on the first novel in J. Minter's The Insiders series and the way brands are used to classify characters and encode class distinction. In considering how fiction functions to socialise readers into consumer society, it attends to the contention that the rise of consumer capitalism has spelled the end of class culture in advanced societies. It argues that rather than diluting awareness of class identity, the patterns of consumption endorsed in The Insiders rearticulates social hierarchies and draws on Bourdieu's sociology in making its case.
Elizabeth Bullen lectures in Children's Literature at Deakin University's Melbourne campus. Her research is interdisciplinary. A former Research Fellow at LPLC, she continues to publish research in the sociology of education. Her research in children's literature combines social theory with literary scholarship. She has published research on risk, resilience and children's literature. Her current research project focuses on the representation of social class in screen and print texts and the implications for the socialization of their young audiences.