Valerie Harwood
Biographic Data
| ID | 178232 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Valerie Harwood |
| GIVEN NAMES | Valerie |
| FAMILY NAME | Harwood |
| SIGNATURE | HARWOOD V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wollongong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6359-1384 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 134 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Evaluating Ngaramura
Ngaramura is an innovative, Aboriginal-designed, strengths-based education program for Aboriginal young people. This unique program addresses the complex and seemingly entrenched issues of disengagement and disproportionate suspension of Aboriginal students from high schools, tackling challenges faced by students in mainstream school environments that fail to meet their needs. Derived from the Dharawal word meaning ‘see the way’, Ngaramura provid…
Seeing Jigamy; using an arts-based method to explore the meaning of place for an aboriginal community controlled organisation on the South Coast of NSW
The relationship between health and place is often difficult to articulate. This paper explores the use of community mapping to understand the meaning of place for members of an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation on the South Coast of NSW. The paper demonstrates that engagement in this arts-based method allows people to think deeply about place to construct a multilayered visual narrative which encompasses history, current experience, a…
Shifting sands
Place and health are deeply interconnected for Indigenous people, and place-based services have been established to better meet people's needs. The meaning of place, however, remains difficult to define, an issue compounded by non-Indigenous settler attempts to erase people's association with place. This paper argues that we must understand place as something more than a geographical locality, and consider the histories, experiences and feelings …
Approaching the self
In this paper we respond to this special issue’s critical focus on mental health in education by considering the medicalised and homogenising approaches to the mental health of young people and the severely negative consequences for young people. Our argument is underpinned by the need to destabilise the hegemony of the current dominant discourses and practices of mental health used in education. The problem with these discourses and practices, i…
Towards a conceptual framework for Country-centred teaching and learning
Mandatory Aboriginal education units of study in teacher education programmes are often constrained by overcrowded curriculum, time and classroom-based learning which limit opportunities to engage with and learn from local Aboriginal people and communities. Recognising these issues, at an urban Australian university two of the authors introduced ‘Learning from Country’ (LFC) cultural immersion experiences led by local Aboriginal community-based e…
Exploring students’ metaphors for learning in Western Sydney schools
In both academic and policy spaces, learning is often cast as lifelong, dynamic, constructive and in particular, agentic. Despite this focus students’ voices are rarely privileged in these spaces – especially in policy. We respond to this oversight by deploying Foucault’s theories of knowledge to explore how students understand themselves as learners, considering this alongside dominant political and academic discursive constructions of learning.…
Aboriginal cultural educators teaching the teachers
This paper discusses an Aboriginal cultural mentoring project for non-Aboriginal teachers that positions Aboriginal people front and centre as cultural and educational experts. In so doing it sets out to contribute to work in Australia that challenges 'common' understandings about mentoring in educational contexts where the expert is usually a western-educated non-Aboriginal teacher. In this project, non-Aboriginal teachers are supported in imple…
No Shame at Aime
Shame is a 'slippery' concept in educational contexts but by listening to Aboriginal philosophy and Country, we can rethink its slipperiness. This article contemplates how multiple understandings of shame are derived from and coexist within colonised educational contexts. We focus on one positive example of Indigenous education to consider how these understandings can be challenged and transformed for the benefit of Indigenous learners. We discus…
Strategic discourse production and parent involvement
Parent involvement in a child’s education is usually viewed as integral for building educational participation. Critical work has examined the complexity of issues that work to exclude certain social and cultural ‘groups’, as well as practices that can work to build inclusion. This article sets out to contribute to the latter by examining how an approach we term strategic discourse production offers possibilities for practices of subjectivation t…
Foucault as educator
Stephen Ball is a key thinker in sociology of education and renowned for his scholarship on Foucault and education. Foucault as Educator continues this tradition, making a significant and noteworth
Amidst the Reign of Behaviour and Disorder
In May 2013 one of the most profoundly influential books of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century was released in its fifth edition. Yet, it is not unreasonable to speculate that this newest edition will pass largely unnoticed, even as new diagnoses (and the loss of current ones) seep into the everyday. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) will undoubtedly be influential in education -…
Biological sciences, social sciences and the languages of stress
There are well documented concerns with the imposition of high stakes testing into the fabric of school education, and there is now an increasing focus on how such tests impact children’s ‘well-being’. This can be witnessed in reports in the popular news media, where discussion of these impacts frequently refer to ‘stress’ and ‘anxiety’. Yet, there is no work that is able to tell us about what is happening in the bodies of the teachers and childr…
Shifting the blame in higher education – social inclusion and deficit discourses
The principles of social inclusion have been embraced by institutions across the higher education sector but their translation into practice through pedagogy is not readily apparent. This paper examines perceptions of social inclusion and inclusive pedagogies held by academic staff at an Australian university. Of specific interest were the perceptions of teaching staff with regard to diverse student populations, particularly students from low soc…
The Politics of Widening Participation and University Access for Young People
Young people with tenuous relationships to schooling and education are an enduring challenge when it comes to addressing social inclusion, yet their experiences remain overlooked in efforts to widen participation in higher education. The Politics of Widening Participation and University Access for Young People examines the existing knowledges and feelings these young people have about higher education, and, through the authors’ empirical research…
Students that just hate school wouldn’t go’
This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on widening university participation and brings a focus on the classed and embodied nature of young people’s imagination to existing discussions. We interviewed 250 young people living in disadvantaged communities across five Australian states who had experienced disengagement from compulsory primary and secondary schooling. We asked them about their education and their educational futures, s…
Foucauldian Archaeological Analyses
Foucauldian archeological analyses are useful for understanding how knowledge about a given topic is constructed. Because of this, Foucauldian archeology can be argued to be a powerful way to uncover the taken for granted and to inspire different ways of thinking about knowledge and the practices on which it is based. This entry provides a brief outline of Foucauldian archeology and then presents an example where this style of analysis was put to…
Authentic representations or stereotyped ‘outliers’
There is a growing body of literature that discusses the stereotyped representations of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in film. Existing literature questions the integrity of filmic representations, listing stereotypes in image, formulaic plots, homogeneous archetypes and unrealistic relationships as a few of the contentious issues. This paper, the first to our knowledge, utilizes an empirical assessment tool, the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (…
Finding education
Educators in resettlement countries are grappling with ways to adequately engage and meet the needs of newly arrived refugee students. In this article we argue that to fully meet the needs of refugee students a deeper understanding of their educational experience as ‘a refugee’ prior to resettlement is vital. In particular we foreground the stories of three young former refugees and explore the ways in which they actively constructed new identiti…
Medicus interruptus in the behaviour of children in disadvantaged contexts in Scotland
The medicalisation of the behaviour of children is a phenomenon that is attracting growing attention, with particular concern about the increased likelihood of children living in disadvantaged contexts receiving a medical diagnosis, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and treatment. This paper reports on a study of professionals involved with children experiencing behavioural problems. The professionals interviewed in this study art…
Foucault, power, and education
Book review of: Foucault, power, and education, by Stephen J. Ball, Abingdon, Routledge, 2013, 178 pp., £24.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-89537-8
Biopolitics and the 'Obesity Epidemic'
Part I: Biopolitics and the 'Obesity Epidemic' 1. Bio-power, Biopedagogies and the Obesity Epidemic Jan Wright 2. Theorizing Biopedagogies Valerie Harwood 3. Friends, Enemies and the Cultural Politics of Critical Obesity Research Michael Gard 4. Bio-Citizenship: Virtue Discourses and the Birth of the Bio-Citizen Christine Halse 5. Doctor's Orders: Diagnosis, Medical Authority and the Exploitation of the Fat Body Annemarie Jutel 6. Marked as 'Path…
(Biopolitics And The )h
Practising Critique, Attending to Truth
Teaching in university education programmes, can, at times, involve the uncomfortable situation of discriminatory speech.A situation that has often occurred in our own teaching, and in those of our colleagues, is the citation of homophobic and heterosexist comments.These are comments that are more likely to occur in foundation subjects such as philosophy and sociology of education.The occurrence of such situations has prompted debate regarding ‘s…
Neither good nor useful
Fat bodies are not, fait accompli, bad. Yet in our international research, we found overwhelmingly that fat functioned as a marker to indicate health or lack of health. A body with fat was simply and conclusively unhealthy. This article reports on how this unbalanced view of fat was tied to assessments of healthy bodies that were achieved by the act of looking. Despite the efforts of health education in each of the three countries in our study, c…
Policy, schools and the new health imperatives
Biopolitics and the 'Obesity Epidemic'
Part I: Biopolitics and the 'Obesity Epidemic' 1. Bio-power, Biopedagogies and the Obesity Epidemic Jan Wright 2. Theorizing Biopedagogies Valerie Harwood 3. Friends, Enemies and the Cultural Politics of Critical Obesity Research Michael Gard 4. Bio-Citizenship: Virtue Discourses and the Birth of the Bio-Citizen Christine Halse 5. Doctor's Orders: Diagnosis, Medical Authority and the Exploitation of the Fat Body Annemarie Jutel 6. Marked as 'Path…
Representations of autism in Australian print media
The mass media provides a frame for discourse around important health issues, and it has been widely demonstrated that the development and reinforcement of stereotypes of minority groups are strongly influenced by the news and entertainment media. An extensive search of academic databases failed to locate any studies which examined the representation of autism in the news media, although there were a number of articles on the media role in the au…
Finding education
Educators in resettlement countries are grappling with ways to adequately engage and meet the needs of newly arrived refugee students. In this article we argue that to fully meet the needs of refugee students a deeper understanding of their educational experience as ‘a refugee’ prior to resettlement is vital. In particular we foreground the stories of three young former refugees and explore the ways in which they actively constructed new identiti…
Developing capabilities for social inclusion
The effort to make schools more inclusive, together with the pressure to retain students until the end of secondary school, has greatly increased both the number and educational requirements of students enrolling in their local school. Of critical concern, despite years of research and improvements in policy, pedagogy and educational knowledge, is the enduring categorisation and marginalisation of students with diverse abilities. Research has sho…
TellingTruths
It appears that being young and queer seems to be all about woundedness: it means experiencing suffering, including the risk of suicide, increased drug use, homelessness and violence. Yet how are these wounded truths told, and further, why is it that people in education seem to tell them "unproblematically"? This paper considers these questions by analysing wounded truth telling in the recent debate over the Western Australia Lesbian and Gay Law …
Biological sciences, social sciences and the languages of stress
There are well documented concerns with the imposition of high stakes testing into the fabric of school education, and there is now an increasing focus on how such tests impact children’s ‘well-being’. This can be witnessed in reports in the popular news media, where discussion of these impacts frequently refer to ‘stress’ and ‘anxiety’. Yet, there is no work that is able to tell us about what is happening in the bodies of the teachers and childr…
Neither good nor useful
Fat bodies are not, fait accompli, bad. Yet in our international research, we found overwhelmingly that fat functioned as a marker to indicate health or lack of health. A body with fat was simply and conclusively unhealthy. This article reports on how this unbalanced view of fat was tied to assessments of healthy bodies that were achieved by the act of looking. Despite the efforts of health education in each of the three countries in our study, c…
Scrutinizing sexuality and psychopathology
This article discusses a Foucauldian‐inspired strategy applied to the analysis of the production of truths about psychopathology, sexuality and young people. Drawing on an interpretation of Foucault’s genealogical tactics, this strategy involves the deployment of four angles of scrutiny: discontinuity, contingency, emergences and subjugated knowledges. The authors discuss how these angles can be drawn on to scrutinize those practices that diagnos…
Students that just hate school wouldn’t go’
This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on widening university participation and brings a focus on the classed and embodied nature of young people’s imagination to existing discussions. We interviewed 250 young people living in disadvantaged communities across five Australian states who had experienced disengagement from compulsory primary and secondary schooling. We asked them about their education and their educational futures, s…
Aboriginal cultural educators teaching the teachers
This paper discusses an Aboriginal cultural mentoring project for non-Aboriginal teachers that positions Aboriginal people front and centre as cultural and educational experts. In so doing it sets out to contribute to work in Australia that challenges 'common' understandings about mentoring in educational contexts where the expert is usually a western-educated non-Aboriginal teacher. In this project, non-Aboriginal teachers are supported in imple…
No Shame at Aime
Shame is a 'slippery' concept in educational contexts but by listening to Aboriginal philosophy and Country, we can rethink its slipperiness. This article contemplates how multiple understandings of shame are derived from and coexist within colonised educational contexts. We focus on one positive example of Indigenous education to consider how these understandings can be challenged and transformed for the benefit of Indigenous learners. We discus…
Connecting the Dots
One of the numerous responses to the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in April 2007 has been the call for higher education institutions in the United States to take an increased role in identifying troubled students. This has had widely felt effects, with educational institutions across the United States developing mechanisms such as Threat Assessment Teams to respond to the perceived heightened threat of campus violence. At the core of these respo…
Mobile asylums
Harwood, V. (2010). Mobile asylums: Psychopathologisation as a personal, portable psychiatric prison. Special Issue, Discourse
Young people, education and unlawful non‐citizenship
This paper considers Judith Butler’s discussion of the intersections between governmentality and sovereign power in Precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. We consider this interrelationship with a view to considering how this might enable us to expand our understanding of contemporary discourses governing young people within and outside Australia. In particular we focus on the production of groups of young people, such as those cla…
The place of imagination in inclusive pedagogy
Conceptualising difference is a key task for inclusive pedagogy, and vital to the politics of inclusion. My purpose in this paper is to consider the place that imagination has in helping us to conceptualise difference, and to argue that imagination has a key part to play in inclusive pedagogy. To do this I draw closely on the work of Maxine Greene and Hannah Arendt. Arendt's work provides a means to conceptualise difference whereby difference is …
Shifting sands
Place and health are deeply interconnected for Indigenous people, and place-based services have been established to better meet people's needs. The meaning of place, however, remains difficult to define, an issue compounded by non-Indigenous settler attempts to erase people's association with place. This paper argues that we must understand place as something more than a geographical locality, and consider the histories, experiences and feelings …
Strategic discourse production and parent involvement
Parent involvement in a child’s education is usually viewed as integral for building educational participation. Critical work has examined the complexity of issues that work to exclude certain social and cultural ‘groups’, as well as practices that can work to build inclusion. This article sets out to contribute to the latter by examining how an approach we term strategic discourse production offers possibilities for practices of subjectivation t…
Medicus interruptus in the behaviour of children in disadvantaged contexts in Scotland
The medicalisation of the behaviour of children is a phenomenon that is attracting growing attention, with particular concern about the increased likelihood of children living in disadvantaged contexts receiving a medical diagnosis, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and treatment. This paper reports on a study of professionals involved with children experiencing behavioural problems. The professionals interviewed in this study art…
Practising Critique, Attending to Truth
Teaching in university education programmes, can, at times, involve the uncomfortable situation of discriminatory speech.A situation that has often occurred in our own teaching, and in those of our colleagues, is the citation of homophobic and heterosexist comments.These are comments that are more likely to occur in foundation subjects such as philosophy and sociology of education.The occurrence of such situations has prompted debate regarding ‘s…
TellingTruths
It appears that being young and queer seems to be all about woundedness: it means experiencing suffering, including the risk of suicide, increased drug use, homelessness and violence. Yet how are these wounded truths told, and further, why is it that people in education seem to tell them "unproblematically"? This paper considers these questions by analysing wounded truth telling in the recent debate over the Western Australia Lesbian and Gay Law …
Scrutinizing sexuality and psychopathology
This article discusses a Foucauldian-inspired strategy applied to the analysis of the production of truths about psychopathology, sexuality and young people. Drawing on an interpretation of Foucault’s genealogical tactics, this strategy involves the deployment of four angles of scrutiny: discontinuity, contingency, emergences and subjugated knowledges. The authors discuss how these angles can be drawn on to scrutinize those practices that diagnos…
Scrutinizing sexuality and psychopathology
This article discusses a Foucauldian‐inspired strategy applied to the analysis of the production of truths about psychopathology, sexuality and young people. Drawing on an interpretation of Foucault’s genealogical tactics, this strategy involves the deployment of four angles of scrutiny: discontinuity, contingency, emergences and subjugated knowledges. The authors discuss how these angles can be drawn on to scrutinize those practices that diagnos…
Diagnosing 'disorderly' Children
Young people, education and unlawful non‐citizenship
This paper considers Judith Butler’s discussion of the intersections between governmentality and sovereign power in Precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. We consider this interrelationship with a view to considering how this might enable us to expand our understanding of contemporary discourses governing young people within and outside Australia. In particular we focus on the production of groups of young people, such as those cla…
The place of imagination in inclusive pedagogy
Conceptualising difference is a key task for inclusive pedagogy, and vital to the politics of inclusion. My purpose in this paper is to consider the place that imagination has in helping us to conceptualise difference, and to argue that imagination has a key part to play in inclusive pedagogy. To do this I draw closely on the work of Maxine Greene and Hannah Arendt. Arendt's work provides a means to conceptualise difference whereby difference is …
Representations of autism in Australian print media
The mass media provides a frame for discourse around important health issues, and it has been widely demonstrated that the development and reinforcement of stereotypes of minority groups are strongly influenced by the news and entertainment media. An extensive search of academic databases failed to locate any studies which examined the representation of autism in the news media, although there were a number of articles on the media role in the au…
Mobile asylums
Harwood, V. (2010). Mobile asylums: Psychopathologisation as a personal, portable psychiatric prison. Special Issue, Discourse
Developing capabilities for social inclusion
The effort to make schools more inclusive, together with the pressure to retain students until the end of secondary school, has greatly increased both the number and educational requirements of students enrolling in their local school. Of critical concern, despite years of research and improvements in policy, pedagogy and educational knowledge, is the enduring categorisation and marginalisation of students with diverse abilities. Research has sho…
Connecting the Dots
One of the numerous responses to the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in April 2007 has been the call for higher education institutions in the United States to take an increased role in identifying troubled students. This has had widely felt effects, with educational institutions across the United States developing mechanisms such as Threat Assessment Teams to respond to the perceived heightened threat of campus violence. At the core of these respo…
Biopolitics and the 'Obesity Epidemic'
Part I: Biopolitics and the 'Obesity Epidemic' 1. Bio-power, Biopedagogies and the Obesity Epidemic Jan Wright 2. Theorizing Biopedagogies Valerie Harwood 3. Friends, Enemies and the Cultural Politics of Critical Obesity Research Michael Gard 4. Bio-Citizenship: Virtue Discourses and the Birth of the Bio-Citizen Christine Halse 5. Doctor's Orders: Diagnosis, Medical Authority and the Exploitation of the Fat Body Annemarie Jutel 6. Marked as 'Path…
(Biopolitics And The )h
Practising Critique, Attending to Truth
Teaching in university education programmes, can, at times, involve the uncomfortable situation of discriminatory speech.A situation that has often occurred in our own teaching, and in those of our colleagues, is the citation of homophobic and heterosexist comments.These are comments that are more likely to occur in foundation subjects such as philosophy and sociology of education.The occurrence of such situations has prompted debate regarding ‘s…
Neither good nor useful
Fat bodies are not, fait accompli, bad. Yet in our international research, we found overwhelmingly that fat functioned as a marker to indicate health or lack of health. A body with fat was simply and conclusively unhealthy. This article reports on how this unbalanced view of fat was tied to assessments of healthy bodies that were achieved by the act of looking. Despite the efforts of health education in each of the three countries in our study, c…
Policy, schools and the new health imperatives
Finding education
Educators in resettlement countries are grappling with ways to adequately engage and meet the needs of newly arrived refugee students. In this article we argue that to fully meet the needs of refugee students a deeper understanding of their educational experience as ‘a refugee’ prior to resettlement is vital. In particular we foreground the stories of three young former refugees and explore the ways in which they actively constructed new identiti…
Medicus interruptus in the behaviour of children in disadvantaged contexts in Scotland
The medicalisation of the behaviour of children is a phenomenon that is attracting growing attention, with particular concern about the increased likelihood of children living in disadvantaged contexts receiving a medical diagnosis, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and treatment. This paper reports on a study of professionals involved with children experiencing behavioural problems. The professionals interviewed in this study art…
Foucault, power, and education
Book review of: Foucault, power, and education, by Stephen J. Ball, Abingdon, Routledge, 2013, 178 pp., £24.99 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-89537-8
Authentic representations or stereotyped ‘outliers’
There is a growing body of literature that discusses the stereotyped representations of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in film. Existing literature questions the integrity of filmic representations, listing stereotypes in image, formulaic plots, homogeneous archetypes and unrealistic relationships as a few of the contentious issues. This paper, the first to our knowledge, utilizes an empirical assessment tool, the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (…
Shifting the blame in higher education – social inclusion and deficit discourses
The principles of social inclusion have been embraced by institutions across the higher education sector but their translation into practice through pedagogy is not readily apparent. This paper examines perceptions of social inclusion and inclusive pedagogies held by academic staff at an Australian university. Of specific interest were the perceptions of teaching staff with regard to diverse student populations, particularly students from low soc…
The Politics of Widening Participation and University Access for Young People
Young people with tenuous relationships to schooling and education are an enduring challenge when it comes to addressing social inclusion, yet their experiences remain overlooked in efforts to widen participation in higher education. The Politics of Widening Participation and University Access for Young People examines the existing knowledges and feelings these young people have about higher education, and, through the authors’ empirical research…
Students that just hate school wouldn’t go’
This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on widening university participation and brings a focus on the classed and embodied nature of young people’s imagination to existing discussions. We interviewed 250 young people living in disadvantaged communities across five Australian states who had experienced disengagement from compulsory primary and secondary schooling. We asked them about their education and their educational futures, s…
Foucauldian Archaeological Analyses
Foucauldian archeological analyses are useful for understanding how knowledge about a given topic is constructed. Because of this, Foucauldian archeology can be argued to be a powerful way to uncover the taken for granted and to inspire different ways of thinking about knowledge and the practices on which it is based. This entry provides a brief outline of Foucauldian archeology and then presents an example where this style of analysis was put to…
Foucault as educator
Stephen Ball is a key thinker in sociology of education and renowned for his scholarship on Foucault and education. Foucault as Educator continues this tradition, making a significant and noteworth
Amidst the Reign of Behaviour and Disorder
In May 2013 one of the most profoundly influential books of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century was released in its fifth edition. Yet, it is not unreasonable to speculate that this newest edition will pass largely unnoticed, even as new diagnoses (and the loss of current ones) seep into the everyday. The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) will undoubtedly be influential in education -…
Sociology (29 works) · Political science (19 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Pedagogy (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Social science (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Law (7 works)