Naomi Barnes
Biographic Data
| ID | 4438082 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Naomi Barnes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Naomi |
| FAMILY NAME | Barnes |
| SIGNATURE | BARNES N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queensland University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4049-1866 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Commercial curriculum, efficiency claims and teachers’ work
This paper presents a systematic literature synthesis examining commercial curriculum resources and their effects on teachers’ workload, with a specific focus on lesson planning and preparation time. The review develops a typology spanning commercially published curriculum materials, including textbooks, scripted programs, online repositories, digital platforms, and more recently GenAI tools. Across resource types, the dominant policy and provide…
Introduction to special section
Becoming propaganda
How does a social cause like race in public education get revived and reinvented? How do political interest groups mount a campaign that flows internationally from the United States to Australia and leads to the political exclusion of Critical Race Theory from the Australian Curriculum? This article addresses these questions by examining how social media has been used to distribute propaganda that infers racial literacy education is a problem for…
The role of online crisis actors in teachers’ work and lives
It is not surprising that various sources have recently described the teaching profession in Australia as 'in crisis'. The consequences of pandemic policy have provided opportunities for groups to exploit the cascading crises facing teachers. We argue the online political ecosystem recognises teachers as a trope useful for retaining or gaining power. Astroturfing is the process by which political actors seek to present policy platforms emerging i…
The cultural politics of emotion and mothers’ responsibility for school choice
This paper focuses on school choice within the public school system in Queensland, Australia.While school choice has typically been framed as a logic of economic rationalism (for middle-class families), in this paper we use Ahmed's concept of the cultural politics of emotion to describe a more complex dimension of choice through gendered community.We argue that mothers become responsibilized for school choice, and in the process become emotionall…
Chaplains in Australian public schools? A matter of philanthropy
This paper uses the case of chaplains in Australian public schools to construct a Foucauldian dispositif. In examining the interplay between discourse and material structures, we argue that the embedding of chaplaincy in public schooling is driven by economic rather than purely ideological discourse. We highlight the evolving social and political dynamics and the construction and regulation of knowledge and practices, demonstrating that philanthr…
Centralising Qualitative Research in Big Data Methods Through Algorithmic Ethnography
Responding to the challenge for qualitative researchers to claim a central place in conversations about big data, analytics, datafication, data mining and the role of algorithms, this article describes a mixed-method research partnership focused on algorithmic ethnography. In the debates about the opacity of online algorithms, qualitative researchers typically advocate for access to code. This standard discourse centralises the technical aspects …
The social life of literacy education
The moral positioning of education policy publics
Social media has become a core feature in policy development and enactment. This article extends current features of digital policy sociology to include the entanglement of education policy development processes with new media, paying particular attention to how two conservative think tanks in Australia have strategically used social media in their lobbying practices. By concentrating on policy publics, we show how The Centre for Independent Stud…
School choice to religiously discriminate
This paper traces the influence of failed Christian organisation Logos Foundation on Australian secular schooling debates across the 1970s and 1980s. Concerned with the changing nature of secular schooling in the 1970s and 1980s, religiopolitical organisations lobbied for increased parental choice in the ethos of education for their children. Logos, a Christian Right group connected to US think tank of the religious right, The Chalcedon Foundatio…
Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture
The Online Life of Literacy Education
This paper provides an overview of the Reading Wars as a site of discursive struggle. Using a Bourdieu (1993) facilitated digital sociology, this paper will present a case study of the 2018 hashtag #PhonicsDebate to illustrate how literacy researchers and cognitive scientists used social media as a space to navigate, negotiate and reimagine the contours of the field of literacy. Using a digital sociological account of online events associated wit…
Online educational populism and New Right 2.0 in Australia and England
In this paper, we consider educational populism on social media in England and Australia. In both contexts, academics are positioned as a key constituent of an unjust elite with previously voiceless teachers (UK) and students (Australia) framed as the ‘just people’. While populism often speaks to nations and nationalism, as ‘the people’ against an ‘unjust elite’ or ‘other’, micropopulism concerns a particular community against an elite. Although …
Parents, carers, and policy labor
Based on literacy policy educational reform in Australia, this article explores the role of new media, policy labor and what small data analysis can reveal about parents and carers as networked policy actors. Using qualitative critical network (QCN) analysis, legacy and social media data, this article provides a snapshot of how policy actors interact online to labor for education reform. This article shows that parent and carer advocacy is centra…
Trace publics as a qualitative critical network tool
The relationship between the daily practice of personal politics and digitally networked publics amplify a familiar shaping and reshaping of the social. This article expands on nascent critiques of nodocentrism as a contemporary representation of the social in new media research to begin to advance a digital methods multidisciplinary project. Trace publics as a qualitative critical network (QCN) approach considers how representations developed by…
Coming to know collectively
This experimental article provides an immanent alternative to the neo-positivist outcomes-driven turn currently cannibalising the Academy. It offers a stitched together, multiphrenic creature, formed in darkness, gore and toil; a co-generative performance embodying coming-to-know as a process of creative co-inquiry. It writes into existence an ungainly and seductive creature who is the speciation of a curious collective who met regularly to explo…
Cutting apart together
Drawing on the notion of cutting together-apart introduced by Karen Barad and combining it with Lefebvre’s notion of a flaneur (f. flâneuse) who moves between temporal, spatial and political relationships, this article performs a collaboration mediated by social media, namely blogging and tweeting. It draws on the notion of history, space, and social relationships to describe how two women met online. This collaboration as inquiry is about workin…
It’s not about punitive’
This article explores how early-career teachers working in high-poverty schools in Australia account for their decision-making during critical classroom incidents. Classroom management solutions are problematized by investigating how two teachers take up particular positions, make decisions, and enact what they believe to be ‘quality teaching’ in context. Through a combination of interviews and observations of teachers ‘in situ’, we examine what …
The cultural politics of emotion and mothers’ responsibility for school choice
This paper focuses on school choice within the public school system in Queensland, Australia.While school choice has typically been framed as a logic of economic rationalism (for middle-class families), in this paper we use Ahmed's concept of the cultural politics of emotion to describe a more complex dimension of choice through gendered community.We argue that mothers become responsibilized for school choice, and in the process become emotionall…
Cutting apart together
Drawing on the notion of cutting together-apart introduced by Karen Barad and combining it with Lefebvre’s notion of a flaneur (f. flâneuse) who moves between temporal, spatial and political relationships, this article performs a collaboration mediated by social media, namely blogging and tweeting. It draws on the notion of history, space, and social relationships to describe how two women met online. This collaboration as inquiry is about workin…
Chaplains in Australian public schools? A matter of philanthropy
This paper uses the case of chaplains in Australian public schools to construct a Foucauldian dispositif. In examining the interplay between discourse and material structures, we argue that the embedding of chaplaincy in public schooling is driven by economic rather than purely ideological discourse. We highlight the evolving social and political dynamics and the construction and regulation of knowledge and practices, demonstrating that philanthr…
Centralising Qualitative Research in Big Data Methods Through Algorithmic Ethnography
Responding to the challenge for qualitative researchers to claim a central place in conversations about big data, analytics, datafication, data mining and the role of algorithms, this article describes a mixed-method research partnership focused on algorithmic ethnography. In the debates about the opacity of online algorithms, qualitative researchers typically advocate for access to code. This standard discourse centralises the technical aspects …
The moral positioning of education policy publics
Social media has become a core feature in policy development and enactment. This article extends current features of digital policy sociology to include the entanglement of education policy development processes with new media, paying particular attention to how two conservative think tanks in Australia have strategically used social media in their lobbying practices. By concentrating on policy publics, we show how The Centre for Independent Stud…
School choice to religiously discriminate
This paper traces the influence of failed Christian organisation Logos Foundation on Australian secular schooling debates across the 1970s and 1980s. Concerned with the changing nature of secular schooling in the 1970s and 1980s, religiopolitical organisations lobbied for increased parental choice in the ethos of education for their children. Logos, a Christian Right group connected to US think tank of the religious right, The Chalcedon Foundatio…
Online educational populism and New Right 2.0 in Australia and England
In this paper, we consider educational populism on social media in England and Australia. In both contexts, academics are positioned as a key constituent of an unjust elite with previously voiceless teachers (UK) and students (Australia) framed as the ‘just people’. While populism often speaks to nations and nationalism, as ‘the people’ against an ‘unjust elite’ or ‘other’, micropopulism concerns a particular community against an elite. Although …
Parents, carers, and policy labor
Based on literacy policy educational reform in Australia, this article explores the role of new media, policy labor and what small data analysis can reveal about parents and carers as networked policy actors. Using qualitative critical network (QCN) analysis, legacy and social media data, this article provides a snapshot of how policy actors interact online to labor for education reform. This article shows that parent and carer advocacy is centra…
It’s not about punitive’
This article explores how early-career teachers working in high-poverty schools in Australia account for their decision-making during critical classroom incidents. Classroom management solutions are problematized by investigating how two teachers take up particular positions, make decisions, and enact what they believe to be ‘quality teaching’ in context. Through a combination of interviews and observations of teachers ‘in situ’, we examine what …
Cutting apart together
Drawing on the notion of cutting together-apart introduced by Karen Barad and combining it with Lefebvre’s notion of a flaneur (f. flâneuse) who moves between temporal, spatial and political relationships, this article performs a collaboration mediated by social media, namely blogging and tweeting. It draws on the notion of history, space, and social relationships to describe how two women met online. This collaboration as inquiry is about workin…
Trace publics as a qualitative critical network tool
The relationship between the daily practice of personal politics and digitally networked publics amplify a familiar shaping and reshaping of the social. This article expands on nascent critiques of nodocentrism as a contemporary representation of the social in new media research to begin to advance a digital methods multidisciplinary project. Trace publics as a qualitative critical network (QCN) approach considers how representations developed by…
Coming to know collectively
This experimental article provides an immanent alternative to the neo-positivist outcomes-driven turn currently cannibalising the Academy. It offers a stitched together, multiphrenic creature, formed in darkness, gore and toil; a co-generative performance embodying coming-to-know as a process of creative co-inquiry. It writes into existence an ungainly and seductive creature who is the speciation of a curious collective who met regularly to explo…
Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture
The Online Life of Literacy Education
This paper provides an overview of the Reading Wars as a site of discursive struggle. Using a Bourdieu (1993) facilitated digital sociology, this paper will present a case study of the 2018 hashtag #PhonicsDebate to illustrate how literacy researchers and cognitive scientists used social media as a space to navigate, negotiate and reimagine the contours of the field of literacy. Using a digital sociological account of online events associated wit…
Online educational populism and New Right 2.0 in Australia and England
In this paper, we consider educational populism on social media in England and Australia. In both contexts, academics are positioned as a key constituent of an unjust elite with previously voiceless teachers (UK) and students (Australia) framed as the ‘just people’. While populism often speaks to nations and nationalism, as ‘the people’ against an ‘unjust elite’ or ‘other’, micropopulism concerns a particular community against an elite. Although …
Parents, carers, and policy labor
Based on literacy policy educational reform in Australia, this article explores the role of new media, policy labor and what small data analysis can reveal about parents and carers as networked policy actors. Using qualitative critical network (QCN) analysis, legacy and social media data, this article provides a snapshot of how policy actors interact online to labor for education reform. This article shows that parent and carer advocacy is centra…
The social life of literacy education
The moral positioning of education policy publics
Social media has become a core feature in policy development and enactment. This article extends current features of digital policy sociology to include the entanglement of education policy development processes with new media, paying particular attention to how two conservative think tanks in Australia have strategically used social media in their lobbying practices. By concentrating on policy publics, we show how The Centre for Independent Stud…
School choice to religiously discriminate
This paper traces the influence of failed Christian organisation Logos Foundation on Australian secular schooling debates across the 1970s and 1980s. Concerned with the changing nature of secular schooling in the 1970s and 1980s, religiopolitical organisations lobbied for increased parental choice in the ethos of education for their children. Logos, a Christian Right group connected to US think tank of the religious right, The Chalcedon Foundatio…
Centralising Qualitative Research in Big Data Methods Through Algorithmic Ethnography
Responding to the challenge for qualitative researchers to claim a central place in conversations about big data, analytics, datafication, data mining and the role of algorithms, this article describes a mixed-method research partnership focused on algorithmic ethnography. In the debates about the opacity of online algorithms, qualitative researchers typically advocate for access to code. This standard discourse centralises the technical aspects …
Becoming propaganda
How does a social cause like race in public education get revived and reinvented? How do political interest groups mount a campaign that flows internationally from the United States to Australia and leads to the political exclusion of Critical Race Theory from the Australian Curriculum? This article addresses these questions by examining how social media has been used to distribute propaganda that infers racial literacy education is a problem for…
The role of online crisis actors in teachers’ work and lives
It is not surprising that various sources have recently described the teaching profession in Australia as 'in crisis'. The consequences of pandemic policy have provided opportunities for groups to exploit the cascading crises facing teachers. We argue the online political ecosystem recognises teachers as a trope useful for retaining or gaining power. Astroturfing is the process by which political actors seek to present policy platforms emerging i…
The cultural politics of emotion and mothers’ responsibility for school choice
This paper focuses on school choice within the public school system in Queensland, Australia.While school choice has typically been framed as a logic of economic rationalism (for middle-class families), in this paper we use Ahmed's concept of the cultural politics of emotion to describe a more complex dimension of choice through gendered community.We argue that mothers become responsibilized for school choice, and in the process become emotionall…
Chaplains in Australian public schools? A matter of philanthropy
This paper uses the case of chaplains in Australian public schools to construct a Foucauldian dispositif. In examining the interplay between discourse and material structures, we argue that the embedding of chaplaincy in public schooling is driven by economic rather than purely ideological discourse. We highlight the evolving social and political dynamics and the construction and regulation of knowledge and practices, demonstrating that philanthr…
Introduction to special section
Commercial curriculum, efficiency claims and teachers’ work
This paper presents a systematic literature synthesis examining commercial curriculum resources and their effects on teachers’ workload, with a specific focus on lesson planning and preparation time. The review develops a typology spanning commercially published curriculum materials, including textbooks, scripted programs, online repositories, digital platforms, and more recently GenAI tools. Across resource types, the dominant policy and provide…
Sociology (17 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Law (10 works) · Media studies (7 works) · Social Media and Politics (7 works) · Social science (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Social media (6 works)