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“I am smart and I am not joking”: Aiming high in the middle years of schooling

The Australian Educational Researcher volume 35, pages 15–35 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

In this paper, we draw on accounts from students to inform a Middle Schooling movement that has been variously described as “arrested”, “unfinished” and “exhausted”. We propose that if the Middle Schooling movement is to understand the changing worlds of students and develop new approaches in the middle years of schooling, then it is important to draw on the insights that individual students can provide by conducting research with “students-as-informants”. The early adolescent informants to this paper report high hopes for their futures (despite their lower socioeconomic surroundings), which reinforces the importance of supporting successful learner identities and highlights the role of schooling in the decline of adolescent student aspirations. However, their insights did not stop at the individual learner, with students also identifying cultural and structural constraints to reform. As such, we argue that students may be both an important resource for inquiry into individual school reform and for the Middle Schooling movement internationally.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies, University of South Australia, Australia

    Brenton Prosser, Faye McCallum, Philippa Milroy, Barbara Comber & Helen Nixon

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  1. Brenton Prosser
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  2. Faye McCallum
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  3. Philippa Milroy
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  4. Barbara Comber
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  5. Helen Nixon
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Prosser, B., McCallum, F., Milroy, P. et al. “I am smart and I am not joking”: Aiming high in the middle years of schooling. Aust. Educ. Res. 35, 15–35 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03216881

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Keywords

  • Middle School
  • Urban Fringe
  • Teacher Research
  • Learner Identity
  • Deficit View