Professor Terri Seddon

1. Professor Terri Seddon Globalising working life and education: Investigating boundary work

2. Disturbed and disturbing work • Disturbed work: Flexible capitalism and increased global interconnectedness are reordering occupations • Disturbing working life: Changes are experienced as disturbing, troubling, contradictory • Transforming politics: These contradictions can encourage passivity and silence, or prompt practical politics

3. Boundaries • Define a territory and the identities that inhabit it • Act as barriers or bridges regulating access and cross-border movements (flows) - through organisational practices and priorities that manage preferred identities and distinctions • Create a context that enables-disables agency • Anchor narratives of place that give spatial arrangements meaning and construct moral landscapes.

4. Territory A travelling policy like lifelong learning disrupts established boundaries of education and the identities that inhabit that territory: • 3.4 million students in schools Yet • 1.7 million learners in VET • 5.9 million people in work-related training courses • 600,000 people in adult & community education programs • Sports coaches, swim teachers, music teachers, instructors in software companies, trainers supporting equipment sales

5. Flows Education boundaries are more permeable than in the past encouraging movements and mobile identities: Travelling across boundaries: • 183,000 senior secondary school students did a VET unit • International students and student exchange • Teachers are most globally mobile occupation in Australia. Between 1999-2003, 5% of the 2001 stock of teachers left Australia Bridging relationships support cross-boundary transactions: • Partnerships and collaborations • Cross-border activities - international projects and income flows • Knowledge flows - corporate influence in education, professional-academic knowledge transfers

6. Institutional matrix and political projects Changed context shifts patterns of agency. Teachers confront new dilemmas and must negotiate these in their practice and self-work. The department has become a business. I mean, I think to survive you have to see yourself as a business that is providing education to the client who, from a policy point of view, is industry, but from the educator’s point of view is the people that come in here on a daily basis. I think it’s wrestling with that - trying to keep industry happy but making sure that we treat our customers not as customers or as clients, but ... in a broad sort of educational perspective. I mean, we really do see them as people and, sure, we have to justify our existence under policy, but they are still people with problems, people with issues, and, from and educational perspective, that’s just as important as meeting the demands of industry. (1999)

7. Institutional matrix and political projects Changed context shifts patterns of agency. Boundaries can be mobilised through organisational work to create safe spaces where identities can be affirmed and capacities for agency consolidated: …what capacities are being built? Its values. Values in action. But capacities for what? I think it is for building a better world. The capacity is oriented to an end … All the New Right stuff has meant that is very hard to find a way of speaking about values. The traditional norms [in education] have been delegitimised. If we espouse those old values explicitly we are seen as being ‘beyond the pale’. This de-norming is so profound that we seem to have become alienated from our moral positions. (2004)

8. Moral narratives Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives - for opportunity and income; rights, voice and recognition; family stability and personal development; and fairness and gender equality (ILO, Decent work for a fair globalisation p. 1) Elitist professionalism is divisive, seeks to impose a uniform view, denies that workers have needs and emphasizes an individualist approach that lacks any basis in a service ethos (p. 180) Democratic professionalism is a collectivist strategy that recognizes the pluralism of professional interests. It aims at empowering both service users and members of professional groups at different levels of occupational hierarchies (p. 185) (Henriksson et al, 2006)

9. References Henriksson, L. et al 2006 Understanding professional projects in welfare service work: Revival of old professionalism Gender, Work and Organization 13 (2), 174-192 ILO 2007 Decent work for a fair globalisation, Seddon, T. 1999 Capacity building: Between state and market Pedagogy, Culture and Society 7 (1), pp. 35-5 Seddon,T. and Cairns, L. 2002 Enhancing knowledge in organizations: Developing capacity and capability through learning and leadership, in K.Leithwood et al (Eds) Second International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Administration, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic, pp. 720-759 Seddon, T. Billett, S., Clemans, A. Ovens, C, Ferguson, K. and Fennessy, K. 2007 Sustaining Effective Social Partnerships, Adelaide, NCVER

10. THE RQF -The 4 “best” outputs of each of the eligible researchers -The full list of research outputs produced in last 6 years -Statements of early impact, verified by end-users. • 12 Expert Assessment Panels – each to develop their own discipline–specific guidelines. • Panels able to flexibly expand membership and have access to Specialist Assessor Groups to make assessments.

11. THE RQF • Quality to be assessed against a 5-point scale and impact against a 3-point scale • Talk of “non-linear” funding model

12. THE RQF Major Issue How do we decide on research groupings? Unlike UK RAE, we can put as many research groupings as we like to a particular panel.

13. THE RQF The Nonlinear Funding Issue Illustration Assume - Department of 20 eligible researchers evenly spread in quality. 4 each of rating 5,4,3,2,1 - Group rating decided on by average of individuals

14. THE RQF Illustration continued… - Average >4.4 → Group Rating 5 >3.4 → Group Rating 4 >2.4 → Group Rating 3 >1.4 → Group Rating 2

15. THE RQF Illustration continued… Funding Group 5 16k per person Group 4 9k per person Group 3 4k per person Group 2 1k per person Group 1 0 per person

16. THE RQF Funding differs depending on Groupings. 1. Each person by themselves 120k 2. Department as grouping 80k 3. Submit 16 individuals rated 5-2 Average 3.5 144k • Group A 4 5s 4 4s Average 4.5 124k Group B 4 3s 4 2s Average 2.5 32k Total 156k May wish to maximize number of research groupings rated 5.

17. THE RQF Eligibility of Past Staff Professor Jan Smith worked at University A for years 1-3 and then moved to University B for remainder of period. Provided she has 4 outputs in years 1-3, can be included in University A’s submission. Provided she has 4 outputs in years 4-6, can be included in University B’s submission also.

18. THE RQF Eligibility of Past Staffcontinued… University A would get no funding for her work but University B would

19. THE RQF Preparation at Monash • RQF team - myself - Julie Larsen - Andrew Brion - Ronald Tang • Formation of Research Quality Framework Strategy Committee 3. “Roadshow” to faculties and Gippsland 4. Meetings with Departments and Schools

20. THE RQF Preparation at Monash continued… 5. Mock RQF 6. Modelling of Research Groupings 7. Understanding the rules and working towards an optimal submission within these rules. 8. Learning from colleagues in UK and NZ.

21. THE RQF The Mock RQF Main principle is to follow the “Final Advice” paper and its model for an RQF while keeping in mind we want an independent assessment of our research that will inform decisions for the real RQF

22. THE RQF Asking Schools/Faculties to decide on Research Groupings and for each Research Grouping to assemble an Evidence Portfolio for assessment. Will ask assessors to assess individual outputs as well as context statements/impact statements. 4-6 research outputs. Prefer it to be more inclusive than for actual RQF.

23. THE RQF Hope to be able to send assessors electronic links to outputs. • ARROW Will need help identifying potential assessors

24. THE RQF Tools to Help TARDIS University-wide research data reporting tool. ROPES A researcher specific restricted view of TARDIS data, reformatted so it is ‘useful’. Will be available via portal in March. Currently being tested.

25. THE RQF ARROW A repository for digital items (eg papers, pictures, video etc) DART Set of tools and protocols for enabling research and research collaborations. RMEWEB Web based version of specific Research Master Modules and additional RQF functionality.

26. THE RQF Events to Help Meetings with HoDs and HoSs. Workshop planned in March (?) on measuring/recording research impact.