Award-winning research into schoolyard violence
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Dr Sue Saltmarsh |
PhD research into violence in the schoolyard has opened new doors for Dr Sue Saltmarsh, who after four years of teaching undergraduate and postgraduate units at Macquarie University, is now employed as a postdoctoral research fellow.
Schoolyard violence
Violence in the schoolyard has received extensive media exposure over the past few years. This coverage has focused on everything from crossbows and guns being brought into schools, to gang warfare and acts of a sexual nature being perpetrated on students.
By drawing on violent incidents that occurred in a private school, Saltmarsh found that the culture of violence comes directly from the heart of the education system.
"My doctoral research concerned the ways in which the marketisation of education is implicated in school violence, drawing on a case study of a high profile series of sexually violent incidents that occurred at an elite private boys' school in Sydney a few years ago," she says.
Saltmarsh's PhD looked at the ways in which incidents of school violence are represented by groups such as schools, the media, parents and the community. By looking at data including school promotional materials, school history, media reports and correspondence between the school and parents, she found the marketisation of education shapes public discourse about violence and schooling in ways that reproduce social inequality and maintain unequal relations of power between institutions and consumers.
"I found that the competitive, market-driven ethos that underpins educational provision is structurally violent," explains Saltmarsh. "It is implicated in producing educational climates in which individual success, competition, entitlement and achieving positions of power in various social hierarchies is prioritised over issues of justice and compassion."
The argument that Saltmarsh makes is that while individual schools may not deliberately encourage or condone specific acts of violence, students may use the messages they're receiving in ways that schools haven't intended. "It is crucial, therefore, that we re-examine what society upholds as models of educational 'excellence', and that imperialist, elitist schooling traditions be reconsidered in terms of institutional violence," she says.
Local and national recognition
Saltmarsh's PhD, which was supervised by Associate Professor Joseph Pugliese in the Department of Critical and Cultural Studies and conferred in April last year, has received wide acclaim. She was first presented with Macquarie University's Vice Chancellor's Commendation for Academic Excellence. In late November Saltmarsh received the Australian Association of Research in Education (AARE) Doctoral Thesis Award. The AARE award is selected by an internationally recognised panel of education experts, with only one nomination per university accepted each year.
Looking forward
"While I'm deeply appreciative of the recognition my work has received, I'm also mindful that there is plenty of work ahead," says Saltmarsh. "We live in an era when the gaps between rich and poor are widening, and when human rights and civil liberties are continually threatened by racism, sexism, imperialism, homophobia and other forms of abuse and inequality. I see my academic work in terms of providing me with a means of engaging with social justice issues and debates."
A career in academia appears assured for Saltmarsh, who is set to complete her postdoctoral studies at the end of 2007. "I anticipate continuing an academic career, with a view to extending my work at the intersection of education and cultural studies," she says.
For further information contact Associate Professor Joseph Pugliese via email at joseph.pugliese@mq.edu.au