The ‘Insider Guides to Success in Academia’ offers support and practical advice to doctoral stude... more The ‘Insider Guides to Success in Academia’ offers support and practical advice to doctoral students and early-career researchers. Covering the topics that really matter, but which often get overlooked, this indispensable series provides practical and realistic guidance to address many of the needs and challenges of trying to operate, and remain, in academia. These neat pocket guides fill specific and significant gaps in current literature. Each book offers insider perspectives on the often implicit rules of the game – the things you need to know but usually aren’t told by institutional postgraduate support, researcher development units, or supervisors – and will address a practical topic that is key to career progression. They are essential reading for doctoral students, early-career researchers, supervisors, mentors, or anyone looking to launch or maintain their career in academia. ‘Making It’ as a Contract Researcher examines the contemporary experience of research employment in universities from the perspective of a significant yet often invisible group: temporary or contract researchers, who make up a substantial, and ever-growing, proportion of the academic research workforce. A critical, pragmatic and international account of the contemporary research career, this book explores the question of what it means to ‘make it’ as a contract researcher in academia, and how individuals and organisations in higher education might seek to do things differently. Providing the reader with practical and realistic strategies for improving the experience of being a contract researcher and achieving and sustaining an academic research career, this book guides the reader on a range of topics, including: Charging fairly for your work Building a publication track record Finding the next contract Sustaining your network Feeling like you belong Moving beyond contract research. Using a combination of current research, interviews and reflective writing, the book is written specifically for and by contract researchers in academia, offering unique and extremely valuable advice for all new and current contract researchers, including PhD students, early career researchers, and any party interested in pursuing a research career in academia.
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 2016
The work of categorisation in achieving moral order in feedback talk during the school-based prof... more The work of categorisation in achieving moral order in feedback talk during the school-based professional experience Short Title: Initial feedback talk during the practicum
Previous chapters have explored how schools in the research network engaged with a variety of pro... more Previous chapters have explored how schools in the research network engaged with a variety of projects and a range of evidence to develop strategies for promoting equity. Authors throughout the book have highlighted the different ways that multiple forms of evidence have been used to prompt change and inform approaches to equitable school development, along with their associated challenges. As these accounts demonstrate, the process of change in schools is never easy or straightforward. There is also a concern that such initiatives may take the form of temporary projects, carried on separate from normal school business, such that their impact may eventually fade and disappear. With this challenge in mind, this chapter describes the work of school leaders, teachers and students at Stoneleigh State Primary School as they designed strategies to bring about whole-school change by implementing new models of pedagogy and professional development. In so doing, their aim was to bring about ...
The COVID-19 pandemic produced widespread disruption to schooling, impacting 90% of the world’s s... more The COVID-19 pandemic produced widespread disruption to schooling, impacting 90% of the world’s students and moving entire school systems to remote and online learning. In the state of New South Wales, Australia, most students engaged in learning from home for at least eight weeks, with subsequent individual and intermittent school closures. However, while numerous claims have circulated in the popular media and in think tank reports, internationally, about the negative impacts on learning, there is limited empirical evidence of decreased student achievement. Drawing on data from more than 4800 Year 3 and 4 students from 113 NSW government schools, this paper compares student achievement during 2019 and 2020 in a sample of matched schools to examine the effects of the system-wide disruption. Somewhat surprisingly, our analysis found no significant differences between 2019 and 2020 in student achievement growth as measured by progressive achievement tests in mathematics or reading. A...
Abstract Translation of teacher professional development into improved student outcomes is of glo... more Abstract Translation of teacher professional development into improved student outcomes is of global interest, with experimental methods required to demonstrate potential professional development intervention effects. This protocol for a four-arm cluster randomised controlled trial is designed to test the efficacy of a structured collaborative approach to professional development called Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR). Linear mixed models will be used to compare a QTR group to two time-equivalent intervention groups and a usual-practice control group. The primary outcomes are at the student level (reading, mathematics and science). Secondary outcomes are assessed at student level (quality of school life and aspirations), and teacher level (teaching quality, engagement, morale, teaching efficacy and collective efficacy). Qualitative methods are used to complement quantitative analysis.
While always an interdisciplinary endeavour, rapid growth in the fields of Ethnomethodology (here... more While always an interdisciplinary endeavour, rapid growth in the fields of Ethnomethodology (hereafter EM) and Conversation Analysis (hereafter CA) has led to the broader application of EM/CA methodologies and the engagement of researchers from beyond the more traditional fields of sociology and linguistics. EM/CA methodologies are being used to both understand the orderliness of social interaction and also to address specific institutional issues, in this instance in higher education settings. This paper explores the challenges inherent in using these approaches to researching institutional relationships, particularly when a primary aim of the research is to inform practitioners of practices used within institutional settings. We argue the need to draw on a variety of analytical tools to understand in situ practices alongside other lenses to translate these understandings of institutional practice to practitioners. Drawing on data from a study of audio-recorded conversations between supervisory and preservice teachers during the school-based professional experience component of initial teacher education, our analysis illustrates how the tools of conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis reveal the intricacies of how supervising and preservice teachers negotiate issues of asymmetry and position themselves through references to specific institutional documents. We then use the work of Dorothy Smith to support the translatability of descriptive findings to support interventions in the field. We use this example to demonstrate the affordances of using various analytic tools in complementary ways to overcome methodological challenges and provide new insights into institutional relationships and inform future practice.
Around the world, countries are searching for ways of making their schools more effective for all... more Around the world, countries are searching for ways of making their schools more effective for all children and young people. This book offers a new way of thinking about how to address this challenge. It sees improvement as requiring a collective effort that involves contributions from all members of a school community. Crucial to this is the idea of ethical leadership. Promoting Equity in Schools is written by a team of academic researchers who had a most unusual opportunity to work with a network of schools over three years, experimenting to find more effective ways of including hard to reach learners. Bringing together practitioner knowledge and ideas from research carried out from a variety of perspectives, the authors provide rich accounts of what happened when the schools attempted to become more inclusive and fairer. In so doing, they throw light on the challenges this presents for school leaders. The accounts presented in the book are located in Queensland, Australia, where the school system faces significant difficulties in relation to equity that resonate with similar difficulties around the world. These difficulties relate to policies that emphasize high-stakes testing and school choice, which tend to promote increased segregation, to the particular disadvantage of young people from low income and minority backgrounds. The arguments presented suggest that even where worrying policies are in place, with leadership driven by a commitment to equity, schools can still find space to develop more equitable ways of working.
Purpose – The central argument in this paper is that ethical school leadership is imperative in a... more Purpose – The central argument in this paper is that ethical school leadership is imperative in a context of increasing performance-driven accountability. The purpose of this paper is to focus on school principals’ perceptions of how they understand ethical leadership and how they lead the ethical use of data. Design/methodology/approach – This study utilises semi-structured interviews with six state school principals (one primary and six secondary) to explore their perceptions of ethical leadership practices; and how they balance current competing accountabilities in a context of performance-driven accountability. Findings – There were four key findings. First, principals used data to inform and direct their practices and their conversations with teachers. Second, while ethics was a central consideration in how principals’ led, practising in an ethical manner was identified as complex and challenging in the current context. Third, Starratt’s (1996) ethical framework proved to be re...
This paper contributes to critical policy research by theorising one aspect of policy enactment, ... more This paper contributes to critical policy research by theorising one aspect of policy enactment, the meaning making work of a cohort of mid-level policy actors. Specifically, we propose that Basil Bernstein's work on the structuring of pedagogic discourse, in particular, the concept of recontextualisation, may add to understandings of the policy work of interpretation and translation. Recontextualisation refers to the relational processes of selecting and moving knowledge from one context to another, as well as to the distinctive re-organisation of knowledge as an instructional and regulative or moral discourse. Processes of recontextualisation necessitate an analysis of power and control relations, and therefore add to the Foucauldian theorisations of power that currently dominate the critical policy literature. A process of code elaboration (decoding and recoding) takes place in various recontextualising agencies responsible for the production of professional development materials, teaching guidelines and curriculum resources. We propose that mid-level policy actors are crucial to the work of policy interpretation and translation because they are engaged in elaborating the condensed codes of policy texts to an imagined logic of teachers' practical work. To illustrate our theoretical points we draw on data collected for an Australian research project on the accounts of mid-level policy actors responsible for the interpretation of child protection and safety policies for staff in Queensland schools.
The ‘Insider Guides to Success in Academia’ offers support and practical advice to doctoral stude... more The ‘Insider Guides to Success in Academia’ offers support and practical advice to doctoral students and early-career researchers. Covering the topics that really matter, but which often get overlooked, this indispensable series provides practical and realistic guidance to address many of the needs and challenges of trying to operate, and remain, in academia. These neat pocket guides fill specific and significant gaps in current literature. Each book offers insider perspectives on the often implicit rules of the game – the things you need to know but usually aren’t told by institutional postgraduate support, researcher development units, or supervisors – and will address a practical topic that is key to career progression. They are essential reading for doctoral students, early-career researchers, supervisors, mentors, or anyone looking to launch or maintain their career in academia. ‘Making It’ as a Contract Researcher examines the contemporary experience of research employment in universities from the perspective of a significant yet often invisible group: temporary or contract researchers, who make up a substantial, and ever-growing, proportion of the academic research workforce. A critical, pragmatic and international account of the contemporary research career, this book explores the question of what it means to ‘make it’ as a contract researcher in academia, and how individuals and organisations in higher education might seek to do things differently. Providing the reader with practical and realistic strategies for improving the experience of being a contract researcher and achieving and sustaining an academic research career, this book guides the reader on a range of topics, including: Charging fairly for your work Building a publication track record Finding the next contract Sustaining your network Feeling like you belong Moving beyond contract research. Using a combination of current research, interviews and reflective writing, the book is written specifically for and by contract researchers in academia, offering unique and extremely valuable advice for all new and current contract researchers, including PhD students, early career researchers, and any party interested in pursuing a research career in academia.
Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 2016
The work of categorisation in achieving moral order in feedback talk during the school-based prof... more The work of categorisation in achieving moral order in feedback talk during the school-based professional experience Short Title: Initial feedback talk during the practicum
Previous chapters have explored how schools in the research network engaged with a variety of pro... more Previous chapters have explored how schools in the research network engaged with a variety of projects and a range of evidence to develop strategies for promoting equity. Authors throughout the book have highlighted the different ways that multiple forms of evidence have been used to prompt change and inform approaches to equitable school development, along with their associated challenges. As these accounts demonstrate, the process of change in schools is never easy or straightforward. There is also a concern that such initiatives may take the form of temporary projects, carried on separate from normal school business, such that their impact may eventually fade and disappear. With this challenge in mind, this chapter describes the work of school leaders, teachers and students at Stoneleigh State Primary School as they designed strategies to bring about whole-school change by implementing new models of pedagogy and professional development. In so doing, their aim was to bring about ...
The COVID-19 pandemic produced widespread disruption to schooling, impacting 90% of the world’s s... more The COVID-19 pandemic produced widespread disruption to schooling, impacting 90% of the world’s students and moving entire school systems to remote and online learning. In the state of New South Wales, Australia, most students engaged in learning from home for at least eight weeks, with subsequent individual and intermittent school closures. However, while numerous claims have circulated in the popular media and in think tank reports, internationally, about the negative impacts on learning, there is limited empirical evidence of decreased student achievement. Drawing on data from more than 4800 Year 3 and 4 students from 113 NSW government schools, this paper compares student achievement during 2019 and 2020 in a sample of matched schools to examine the effects of the system-wide disruption. Somewhat surprisingly, our analysis found no significant differences between 2019 and 2020 in student achievement growth as measured by progressive achievement tests in mathematics or reading. A...
Abstract Translation of teacher professional development into improved student outcomes is of glo... more Abstract Translation of teacher professional development into improved student outcomes is of global interest, with experimental methods required to demonstrate potential professional development intervention effects. This protocol for a four-arm cluster randomised controlled trial is designed to test the efficacy of a structured collaborative approach to professional development called Quality Teaching Rounds (QTR). Linear mixed models will be used to compare a QTR group to two time-equivalent intervention groups and a usual-practice control group. The primary outcomes are at the student level (reading, mathematics and science). Secondary outcomes are assessed at student level (quality of school life and aspirations), and teacher level (teaching quality, engagement, morale, teaching efficacy and collective efficacy). Qualitative methods are used to complement quantitative analysis.
While always an interdisciplinary endeavour, rapid growth in the fields of Ethnomethodology (here... more While always an interdisciplinary endeavour, rapid growth in the fields of Ethnomethodology (hereafter EM) and Conversation Analysis (hereafter CA) has led to the broader application of EM/CA methodologies and the engagement of researchers from beyond the more traditional fields of sociology and linguistics. EM/CA methodologies are being used to both understand the orderliness of social interaction and also to address specific institutional issues, in this instance in higher education settings. This paper explores the challenges inherent in using these approaches to researching institutional relationships, particularly when a primary aim of the research is to inform practitioners of practices used within institutional settings. We argue the need to draw on a variety of analytical tools to understand in situ practices alongside other lenses to translate these understandings of institutional practice to practitioners. Drawing on data from a study of audio-recorded conversations between supervisory and preservice teachers during the school-based professional experience component of initial teacher education, our analysis illustrates how the tools of conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis reveal the intricacies of how supervising and preservice teachers negotiate issues of asymmetry and position themselves through references to specific institutional documents. We then use the work of Dorothy Smith to support the translatability of descriptive findings to support interventions in the field. We use this example to demonstrate the affordances of using various analytic tools in complementary ways to overcome methodological challenges and provide new insights into institutional relationships and inform future practice.
Around the world, countries are searching for ways of making their schools more effective for all... more Around the world, countries are searching for ways of making their schools more effective for all children and young people. This book offers a new way of thinking about how to address this challenge. It sees improvement as requiring a collective effort that involves contributions from all members of a school community. Crucial to this is the idea of ethical leadership. Promoting Equity in Schools is written by a team of academic researchers who had a most unusual opportunity to work with a network of schools over three years, experimenting to find more effective ways of including hard to reach learners. Bringing together practitioner knowledge and ideas from research carried out from a variety of perspectives, the authors provide rich accounts of what happened when the schools attempted to become more inclusive and fairer. In so doing, they throw light on the challenges this presents for school leaders. The accounts presented in the book are located in Queensland, Australia, where the school system faces significant difficulties in relation to equity that resonate with similar difficulties around the world. These difficulties relate to policies that emphasize high-stakes testing and school choice, which tend to promote increased segregation, to the particular disadvantage of young people from low income and minority backgrounds. The arguments presented suggest that even where worrying policies are in place, with leadership driven by a commitment to equity, schools can still find space to develop more equitable ways of working.
Purpose – The central argument in this paper is that ethical school leadership is imperative in a... more Purpose – The central argument in this paper is that ethical school leadership is imperative in a context of increasing performance-driven accountability. The purpose of this paper is to focus on school principals’ perceptions of how they understand ethical leadership and how they lead the ethical use of data. Design/methodology/approach – This study utilises semi-structured interviews with six state school principals (one primary and six secondary) to explore their perceptions of ethical leadership practices; and how they balance current competing accountabilities in a context of performance-driven accountability. Findings – There were four key findings. First, principals used data to inform and direct their practices and their conversations with teachers. Second, while ethics was a central consideration in how principals’ led, practising in an ethical manner was identified as complex and challenging in the current context. Third, Starratt’s (1996) ethical framework proved to be re...
This paper contributes to critical policy research by theorising one aspect of policy enactment, ... more This paper contributes to critical policy research by theorising one aspect of policy enactment, the meaning making work of a cohort of mid-level policy actors. Specifically, we propose that Basil Bernstein's work on the structuring of pedagogic discourse, in particular, the concept of recontextualisation, may add to understandings of the policy work of interpretation and translation. Recontextualisation refers to the relational processes of selecting and moving knowledge from one context to another, as well as to the distinctive re-organisation of knowledge as an instructional and regulative or moral discourse. Processes of recontextualisation necessitate an analysis of power and control relations, and therefore add to the Foucauldian theorisations of power that currently dominate the critical policy literature. A process of code elaboration (decoding and recoding) takes place in various recontextualising agencies responsible for the production of professional development materials, teaching guidelines and curriculum resources. We propose that mid-level policy actors are crucial to the work of policy interpretation and translation because they are engaged in elaborating the condensed codes of policy texts to an imagined logic of teachers' practical work. To illustrate our theoretical points we draw on data collected for an Australian research project on the accounts of mid-level policy actors responsible for the interpretation of child protection and safety policies for staff in Queensland schools.
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Papers by Jess Harris