Engaging Gen Y in schooling: the need for an egalitarian ethos of education

Abstract

Narratives of power that purport to represent the ‘truth’ of others need to be challenged by the individual stories of those who are silenced by ‘authority’ and ‘expert’ opinion. This paper utilises research data from an open-ended ethnographic study of 32 Australian high school students at the turn of the twenty-first century. In its entirety, this research explored a range of issues in respect to contemporary youth, including globalisation, technological change and identity formation. In this paper, I present a selection of that data to invite reflection upon the notion that in order to encourage the intellectual growth and engagement of many youth whose sensibilities and behaviour have been shaped by a postmodern milieu, educators need to review the student–teacher binary and work to establish more egalitarian relationships. As educators, we cannot ignore the impact on young people of social, cultural and economic transformations. Data presented in this paper support the perspective that our pedagogical relationships with today’s students are fundamental to their engagement with schooling.

Keywords: school reform; student voice; feminist poststructuralist theory; postcolonialism