David Zyngier Dr David Zyngier is a former school principal. He lectures in Pedagogy and Curriculum at Monash University’s Education Faculty. His research focus is on pedagogies and pedagogues that engage students, especially at-risk students, and (how) can they be change agents (professional activists) amongst their peers? He holds to a critical orientation to social justice (with interests in who benefits and who does not by particular social arrangements) and its dialectic critical method investigating how school education can improve student outcomes for all but in particular for at risk students.
    
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    (Re)conceptualising Risk: Left numb and unengaged and lost in a no-man’s-land or what (seems to) work for at-risk students.
    Dr David Zyngier Monash University, Faculty of Education Peninsula Campus Frankston 3199 Victoria Australia
    
    Email: david.zyngier@education.moansh.edu.au
    Phone 613 9904 4230 Fax 613 9904 4027
    
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    (Re)conceptualising risk: Left numb and unengaged and lost in a no-man’s-land or what (seems to) work for at-risk students.1 ∗ Abstract: This review of current research into at-risk programs serves to categorise and characterise existing programs and to evaluate the contribution of these programs to assisting students at-risk from marginalised backgrounds. This characterisation questions the (sometimes) implicit assumptions and the consequences of those assumptions inherent in and behind these various accounts. Using as a lens the (various and varied) understandings of social justice and the goals of education (Gale & Densmore, 2000; 2003), I identify three sometimes overlapping and sometimes contesting standpoints in relation to at-risk students, characterised as instrumentalist or rational technical, social constructivist or individualist and critical transformative or empowering. I argue that a critical transformative understanding of risk may deliver improved outcomes for young people by challenging ‘the school context in which the young people are located’ (Stewart, 1998, p.4). Keywords: student risk; social justice; critical pedagogy; critical pedagogy;
    Schooling should be socially just so that ... all students have access to the high quality education necessary to enable the completion of school education to Year 12 or its vocational equivalent … . (Ministerial Council on Employment Education Training and Youth Affairs, 1999) If a business is losing clients it doesn’t blame the clients, it looks at itself and makes the changes that need to be made [School Principal]. (Strategic Partners, 2001a, p.74)
    
    Introduction This paper reviews the research literature on school-based programs that seek to improve the educational outcomes for students who are variously nominated by their educational institutions as at-risk or at-risk of failure or at-risk of early school leaving or non completion of school. These students are predominantly found in schools ‘facing challenging circumstances’ of ‘high teacher turnover, newly appointed teachers and leaders, low student retention, high student and teacher absenteeism, and persistent low student (under)achievement’ (Johnston & Hayes, 2007, p. 371) – that is communities that experience social, economic and educational inequalities. This analysis of the research literature is part of a broader synthesis and reformulation of understandings of student connectedness (Zyngier, 2003) and student engagement (Zyngier, 2007), based on the epistemological standpoints, both explicit and implied, of the various researchers in relation to their (various and varied) understandings of social justice2 and the goals of education (Gale & Densmore, 2000, 2003). In this process I identify three sometimes overlapping and sometimes contesting standpoints in the research literature in relation to at-risk students, which are referred to as instrumentalist or rational technical, social constructivist or individualist and critical transformative or empowering. This classification is potentially useful in the analysis
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    David Zyngier Faculty of Education Monash University, Peninsula Campus Frankston 3199 Victoria Australia Email: david.zyngier@education.moansh.edu.au
    
    and evaluation of the bewildering array of programs available not only in Australia but across the industrialised world. Taking a recognitive social justice position (Gale, 2000), I explain why programs that have at their focus student resilience ‘which simply seek to achieve change in the individual young people are doomed to failure’ (Stewart, 1998, p. 4) and why a critical transformative understanding of student risk may deliver improved outcomes for young people by challenging ‘the school context in which the young people are located’ (Stewart, 1998, p. 4)3. This paper seeks to explore how student risk is variously defined and enacted by educators, and how these definitions serve to either replicate the status quo or work for increased equity and social justice (Lingard, 2007; Lingard & Mills, 2007; Johnson & Hayes, 2007). I offer a positive proposal for a new framework of student learning and teacher pedagogy for marginalised youth - CORE Pedagogy - which through pedagogical reciprocity has the potential to achieve both social justice and enhanced student achievement (Butler-Kisber and Portelli, 2003). This research is part of an empirical and qualitative study seeking to understand the experiences of one group of students beginning their high school years (Zyngier, 2007) involving the pedagogical development and change of a team of teachers in a disadvantaged, working class state high school in Australia. As part of that research I analysed multiple data including narratives from semi-structured interviews with teachers and students as well as teacher self-surveys of their pedagogy. Students are too often left out of the discourse and are traditionally objectified and omitted from this dialogue as they are often configured as the products of formal education systems (Murphy, 2001). The students were asked to reflect on their teachers’ attempts to modify their pedagogies as they variously endeavoured to engage the students. Giving voice to students, I have elsewhere compared and contrasted the various and sometimes contesting understandings of what an authentic student engagement might mean for students at risk - and for both school and classroom practice - suggesting that a pedagogical practice that connects to the real life of the students is a too often ignored but necessary element of teacher pedagogy for all students, but in particular for those from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds (Zyngier, 2007). For three decades or more, those concerned with education have theorised how and why schools produce and reproduce unequal educational outcomes and benefits and thus contribute to ongoing social inequality (Thomson, 2002, p. 10). Johnston and Hayes suggest that:
    We have known so much for so long about what works in schools, yet there is very little evidence that those who work within [schools] have the capacity to apply this knowledge, particularly in the absence of educational leadership and within unstable contexts. (Johnston & Hayes, 2007, p. 372)
    
    While it is significant that there are few opportunities for teachers to learn how to apply this knowledge, there is some evidence that this is increasingly happening (Munns 2007; Zyngier 2007). ‘What works for whom and under which circumstances’ - one problem, many interpretations At the beginning of the 21st Century, there is significant interest and concern within Western industrialised nations with student retention, participation and achievement rates in post compulsory schooling. By way of response, governments and schools have developed many programs which aim to improve students’ engagement with
    
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    learning and improve educational outcomes for all students but in particular those identified as ‘at-risk of disengagement’ from schooling, and education and training more broadly. In Australia, like other OECD countries, the response has been to equate these issues with a lack of student engagement and assume that the problem is with the students; that is the students are in need of changing. Previous OECD longitudinal research (OECD, 1998; 1999) concludes that there is no single factor associated with education success or failure. It seems that being at-risk of failure at school is the product of the interaction of many variables: some are student based (various forms of special educational need and adolescent developmental problems); others may relate to factors in the student’s home and community environment (low income, ethnic minority or migrant background); and still others are school based (inappropriate teaching methods, inadequate resources, poor curriculum). The OECD research has variously attempted to provide overarching explanations of educational failure by stressing the causal effect of psychological, socio-cultural or institutional variables (or a combination of these). As is concluded below, as a result of this search for such an explanation, it is not uncommon for contrasting and complimentary perspectives to be located together. Mortimore and Mortimore (1999) identified different approaches to improve students’ outcomes in at-risk programs that include: special endeavours for the benefit of individuals within already effective schools that concentrate on building on existing good practice; the focussed intervention by projects and programs in schools that are failing; and system wide reform. They note that there are frequent and obvious overlaps between these, but make the point that it is not just a question about ‘what works’ but equally important ‘what works for whom and under which circumstances’ (Mortimore & Mortimore, 1999, p.110, original emphasis). Gale similarly suggests that:
    At times the differences between these categories appear minimal and the differences within them great, yet … the categories offer plausible and useful accounts that warrant their separations. (Gale, 2000, p. 253)
    
    These approaches impact on the development of different implementation and policy strategies (OECD, 1998) and are here characterised on the basis of their social justice perspective(s) and understanding of the purpose of education, for whose benefit the education system functions and what is privileged as a result (Gale & Densmore, 2000). I have previously called them instrumentalist or rational technical, social constructivist or individualist and critical transformative or empowering (Zyngier, 2005). Connell proposes that the imperative of social justice is ‘to generalize the point of view of the disadvantaged rather than separate it off’ (Connell, 1993, p. 52; original emphasis). Like Gale (2000), I favour a ‘recognitive approach to social justice, concerned as it is with rethinking social arrangements thought to be just, giving status to things thought to be counterproductive and decentring concerns thought to be pivotal’ (Gale, 2000, p. 253). These three perspectives are now examined as a way of categorising the research on at-risk students. Instrumentalist views An instrumentalist or rational technical approach to the issues of risk are characterised by a retributive view of social justice (Gale, 2000; Gale & Densmore, 2000)4, seeing the goals of education as largely vocational in order to prepare students for (sometimes, but not always) meaningful and productive work. Workplace skills and competencies are privileged in a curriculum that is overlaid with programs of school reform often determined or driven by national testing regimes. The beneficiaries of
    
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    this approach are the broader economy and employers of labour in particular. Connell (1993) suggests that the logic underpinning this perspective is that it aims to ‘bring the disadvantaged to the same table at which the advantaged are already eating’ (Connell, 1993, p. 51). Following this logic, research into youth resilience (Benard & Marshall, 1997; Masten, 1997, 2000; McGrath, 2006; Mills, 1997) claims however that certain youth are more or less resilient or socially competent. These researchers suggest that:
    Some children managed to succeed in spite of adversity and disadvantage …. Resilience research was aimed at understanding how some children grow up competent in spite of many risk factors in their lives. (Masten, 2000)
    
    Fuller (1998, 2000) speaks about young people in terms of this individual vulnerability, which characterises the lives of many children at-risk and focuses their deficits in terms of their psycho-social and environmental circumstances. Children who do not have a healthy or competent temperament, or who are born into families that cannot provide rich relationships, are seen to lack “natural resilience” or hardiness (Benard, 1991, p. 2). In this pathological view, these deficits almost inevitably and inexorably lead children to “succumb” to risk. Fuller (1998) describes risk in terms of inadequate or inappropriate psychological development and behaviours attributed to individuals and their families, seeing it in terms of a “war”, using the metaphors and clichés of battle, of schools as the first line of defense, and the “early identification” pathology of deficit behaviour. This essentialist and positivist typology is rejected as self-fulfilling labelling (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1992) of risk factors to include individual, family, school and social circumstances. Graham (2006) suggests that it appears then that any role schooling plays in the psychopathologisation of children is implicit in nature. Such a deficit view also shifts the blame for student failure at school onto ineffective parenting, the inability of youth to control their impulses, to delay gratification or cope with stress. Masten (1997) claims for example, that average or better intellectual skills and good parenting are the most crucial factors for student success. But risk can also encompass the connection between individual and societal-based at-risk factors. In these transactional models favoured by the psycho-pathological research literature (e.g. Sameroff, Miller & Lewis, 2000), ‘consistent, loving parenting; sensitive, enriched teaching; and stable, supportive environments’ (Masten, 1997, p. 2), become “self-righting influences,” making the young person at-risk more resilient. Student outcomes at any point in time are thus seen to be resulting from a continuous dynamic interplay among child behaviour, caregiver responses to the child's behaviour, and environmental variables that may influence both the child and the caregiver (de Valenzuela, 2002). These influences, claim Sameroff and Chandler (1975), are powerful forces leading toward normal human development. While resilience theorists agree that there are dynamic interactions between child characteristics, and multiple environmental factors, including perceptions of “actors in the developmental drama”, these researchers (and practitioners) often do not grasp that these acknowledged subtleties do not get translated into action by schools. There, the world-view constructed in schools of student-risk is too often developed for practical, or pragmatic purposes, emphasising a linear environmentalism at the expense of the more complex interplay between dynamic systems. Emphasising psycho-social issues, deficit research proposes programs and measures that focus on individual behavioural modification and other psychological strategies
    
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    that attempt to remove community and environmental risk factors, correcting students’ and family behaviour, so that all, or most at-risk youth can become more resilient, that is, bouncing or springing back from these risky situations (Szirom, Jaffe et al., 2001). Masten concludes that ‘we learned that children who succeeded in the face of adversity had more internal and external resources, particularly in the form of good thinking skills and effective parenting’ (Masten, 2000, p. 1). Instrumentalist perspectives focus on the individual, whether it is the young person or the family unit and suggest that ‘while not all young people face the same degree of risk, all young people are vulnerable to some extent’ (Szirom, Waller et al., 2001, 26). Fuller (1998) stresses that peer connectedness, fitting into school, and feeling attached to significant adults, promote such student well being. Stewart (1998) comments on this model as ‘fail[ing] to recognise the significance of gender, race, sexuality or ethnicity on young people’s experience of these risk factors (Stewart, 1998, p. 1). This approach identifies ‘problem behaviours’ as the core of the at-risk issue and therefore suggests intervention strategies to either prevent or ameliorate these problems because ‘[e]ach young person [has] a unique set of needs and capacities, and [is] exposed to a unique combination of risk factors, requires individualised instruction and if at-risk, individualised pathway planning’ (Withers & Russell, 1998, p. 8). These deficit explanations give rise to a plethora of remedial education programs in practice (Zyngier & Gale, 2003a, 2003ba) and pedagogies that provide for separate provision, streaming or setting, and withdrawal. In the end such programs are all about human adaptation not system change, changing the individual to better fit the system so that ‘children are protected not onlyt by the self-righting nature of development, but also by their own actions and the actions of adults’ (Masten, 1997, p. 5). Batten and Russell (1995, p. 2) in their meta-review of the Australian literature of atrisk from 1980 to 1994, are sympathetic to this deficit view and suggest that it is ‘virtually synonymous with disadvantage (absence of beneficial factors such as adequate family income) or maltreatment (presence of active negative factors such as physical abuse within the family)’ (Batten & Russell, 1995, p. 2). They propose that students who underachieve and fail at school can be characterised by their lower socio economic status families resulting from a deficit of cultural and economic capital. This view of resilience as the antidote to student deficiencies has had a significant impact on the development of programs in schools with large numbers of students identified as at-risk. The programs can be characterised as seeking to enhance student attachment to school through a behavioural or psychological process enhancing student well-being so that students feel wanted and loved, fitting in and belonging to school (Zyngier & Gale, 2003b). Dependence on “protective” factors is also acknowledged by Benard and Marshall (1997), and Fullarton (2002) as fundamental in relation to student success and engagement. Fullarton (2002) and Benard and Marshall (1997) both conclude that student engagement is located in and owned by the individual student. Student connectedness and well-being - consistent with this view - are both measured and promoted by student participation in extra curricular activities at school This has been critiqued and rejected (Zyngier, 2005) because according to Fullarton, (2002) schools making the strongest claims for engagement are located in middle class professional schools where students learn the efficacy of their own values and manners in a system that neatly matches their own cultural background thereby reinforcing the cultural capital of the dominant hegemonic group. Te Reile (2006) arguing against this position, suggests that school outcomes are not merely the result of particular strategies implemented by the school, but are
    
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    influenced by the complexity of the social and historical context of the school, while Slee, Weiner, and Tomlinson challenges the ‘normalizing project of the effective school’ (1998, p. 101) and comment that while there is a need to redirect attention to the process of schooling for marginalised students it is an issue of ‘cultural politics and not a technical problem of program delivery’ (Slee et al., 1998, p. 101). Also challenging this position, Wright, McGlaughlin, and Weekes’ (2000), discussion of the effects of race, class and gender on school exclusions in the United Kingdom, and Armstrong’s (2006) discussion of youth criminality, acknowledge the effects of school cultures on student risk. Armstrong critiques the ‘basic assumptions underpinning early intervention programmes based on the identification of risk factors [that] are rarely questioned’ (Armstrong, 2006, p. 272). Moreover, policies of inclusion, James and Freeze (2006) argue, are negated and undermined by practices of so-called zero tolerance, especially school suspensions, expulsions and segregation. Marginalised students are stereotyped as deviant and like the pathology view of risk, are seen as capable of “contaminating” the school, creating a school culture that emphasises discipline and correct behaviour, and programs designed to ‘reinforce structures that have broken down’ (Wright et al., 2000, p. 35), rather than question the structures themselves. Such fears lead to authoritarian solutions (Armstrong, 2006). These deficit views ignore the issues of socio-economic disadvantage, together with cultural diversity, gender and geographical location (Luke et al., 2003). Armstrong concludes that the nature of ‘risk as a cultural artefact is under-theorized with the consequence that inclusion is narrowly understood in terms of a naive philosophy of hope’ (Armstrong, 2006, p. 274) where student “problem behaviour” is seen as resistance to domination instead of them perceived as victims or potential problems requiring surveillance and regulation, and control. Social constructivist individualist views Social constructivist view regarding student risk is an individualist approach to dealing with student success or failure. It often includes the segregation of at-risk students either into separate school systems (technical colleges or vocational schools for the students “good with their hands”), streaming or setting into “separate but equal” courses for students at-risk within an academic school (the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning introduced in 2003 is an example of this5), selective specialist government schools and elite, high-fee private schools6. The annual Schools Australia report, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, showed the number of students at government schools has risen by just 1.2 per cent since 1996, compared with a 21.5 per cent rise in the number of pupils at independent and Catholic schools. According to the Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop ‘parents are choosing to pay school fees at non-government schools because of the quality of education provided.’ This phenomena is widely described in the literature as the move for more effective schooling and reflects a (re)distributive view of social justice (Gale, 2000; Mills & Gale, 2002). Education goals are largely academic, for the personal edification and individual enrichment of students, achieved by individual advancement and competitive assessment, through hierarchical subject disciplines that especially privilege and benefit society’s elites. Connell (1993) describes the logic of this approach as ‘you don’t try to bring the poor to the same table as the rich because the table itself is not level, and the poor can’t get a fair feed at it’ (Connell, 1993, pp. 51-52). While this often produces more dignified and interesting classrooms (Zyngier, 2005), it does not necessarily raise substantive (and critical) student inquiry that
    
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    questions the acceptance of official knowledge (Apple, 1996) for students other than the middle class. Connell concludes that ‘at its best, this could produce an educational ethos which builds on working-class experience and ideas about learning’ (Connell, 1993, p. 51). This is a ‘more holistic approach’ (Strategic Partners, 2001b, p. 23) than the instrumentalist one, where schools and education require significant structural reform, at the same time as providing support services and programs for students atrisk. While there is a valid argument to be made for ‘high quality education’ for students, especially students at-risk; the social constructivist approach disregards class and socio- economic status as issues, as it derives from a conviction that all that is required is a greater effort from teachers and students themselves, so that the deficits (of both) can be turned around. In response to the perceived needs of young people at-risk, programs have either been portrayed as preventive, ameliorative (remedial) or sometimes a mixture of the two, as part of an early intervention strategy (Strategic Partners, 2001b). While these strategies are distinctly different the result is similar - schools then come to be regarded both as part of the problem but also a component of the solution. Budge (2000) describes the most common approaches by schools as creating or offering remedial, rather than preventative programs for students at-risk while the problem of risk itself is rarely addressed (Budge, 2000; Istance, 1999; OECD, 1998, 1999). The fixation on improving outcomes for students in the so-called “problematic” middle years of schooling in all Australian States and Territories (Barratt, Cormack, & Cumming, 1998; Centre for Applied Educational Research, 2002; Cumming, 1996) Luke and Elkins (2003) suggest is a direct result of the social constructivist position adopted in the original middle years’ research. This investigated the perceived efficacy of these middle years’ programs across Australia in improving the quality of teaching, learning and student outcomes, in literacy and numeracy, especially for students of at-risk groups. These groups included students from lower socioeconomic communities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI or Indigenous) communities, students with a Language Background other than English (LBOTE), rural and remote students, and students struggling with the transition from middle/upper primary to the junior secondary years. Luke et al. (2003) concluded that where schools were focusing on:
    Dedicated whole-school middle years’ programs that emphasized pastoral care and the wellbeing of students, there was no corresponding indicative data reported that demonstrated improved social outcomes for such students. Where interventions were characterised by withdrawal and ‘pull out’ programs – encouraged in traditional high school structures and where there was a strong ‘test score driven’ state mandate in primary schools – student outcomes gains as reported by school leaders proved more difficult to sustain unless such interventions were linked and articulated back into mainstream classroom pedagogy and curriculum reform efforts in the school. (Luke et al., 2003, p. 9)
    
    Luke et al. (2003) stress that interventionist school-based programs must go beyond a focus on current:
    Philosophical orientations towards adolescent psychological development patterns and pathologies … to directly address how new economic conditions, social contexts and diverse patterns of youth identities, cultures and learning styles are intersecting with issues of growing cultural and linguistic diversity in communities. (Luke et al. 2003, p. 10)
    
    Armstrong (2006, p. 272) suggests that while the ‘basic assumptions underpinning early intervention programmes based on the identification of risk factors are rarely questioned’, he claims that at an individual level, the risk factor approach has ‘weak
    
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    predictive power’. These ‘dilemmas of students intervention’ which face schools in their attempts to intervene in and prevent early school leaving, and their reaction to atrisk students are not easily resolved (Angwin, Blackmore, Harrison et al., 2001). Many of these schools and their communities endure what I term “intervention fatigue”. Angwin et al. (2001) suggest that some schools are more inclined to have students elect, drift or be driven out either by design or by the school’s actions or inaction, sometimes even in ‘unofficial forms of exclusion by which schools persuade both parents and students themselves to collude in their own exclusion’ (Cooper et al., 2000, p. 7). In the United Kingdom in the last 10 years, the problem of school exclusion has reached crisis point and a recent study aims to establish whether a new intensive, multidisciplinary intervention for pupils excluded from primary school because of disruptive/antisocial behaviour helps reduce the number of excluded days and the reoccurrence of emotional and behavioural difficulties when compared with so-called routine care (Panayiotopoulos & Kerfoot, 2007). Mortimore and Mortimer (1999) highlight the effect of disproportionate enrolments of at-risk students in certain schools, where the concentration of students at-risk can create a culture of disadvantage within the community, further compounding an already difficult situation for schools. Although changes in curriculum and pedagogy will be beneficial for these students, the increasingly common practice of segregating disproportionately large enrolments of such students in particular schools runs the risk of these schools being labelled as at-risk specialists (Teese, Lamb, Duru-Bellat, & Helme, 2007). Even research into at-risk students at such schools can cause a flight of mainstream students to ‘more balanced school populations’ (Mortimore & Mortimore, 1999, p. 131). Publication of comparative academic results and/or national and state assessment benchmarks, league tables, parental choice programs and voucher systems being promoted by various ministers of education, may only accentuate any flight of cultural capital (Mortimore & Mortimore, 1999, 121; Teese and Polesel, 2003, p. 119). This is where children of relatively advantaged parents are able to be educated exclusively with children from similar backgrounds in schools that are able to attract those parents (most able to support the school) and those students most likely to succeed academically (Gale, 2005). The impact of this “exodus” on schools then becomes a concern. Wells and Serna (1997) argue that this problem will remain:
    As long as elite parents press the schools to perpetuate their status through the intergenerational transmission of privilege that is based more on cultural capital than “merit”, educators will be forced to choose between equity-based reforms and the flight of elite parents from the public school system. (Wells & Serna, 1997, p. 734)
    
    This also creates in disadvantaged schools a ‘climate less likely to be sympathetic to children not only not producing no positive contribution to these indicators, but who may also prevent others from doing so’ (Cooper et al., 2000, p. 8). This social constructivist response to risk is ‘directly related to the introduction of a market system of education’ (Cooper et al., 2000, p. 8), where the reduced tolerance of at-risk pupils creates a scenario where ‘we have to have losers in order to sustain the winners’ (Stirling, 1996, p. 61) so that instead of ‘promoting equality of opportunities through education, inequality is a necessary driving force within a competitive system’ (Stirling, 1996, p. 61). While the Full Service School research reflects a compensatory approach, some valuable outcomes for good practice have developed: such as the need for effective leadership; the need for a core of committed teachers; an interventionist welfare approach; dynamic full-time counsellors; strong community links; and clear at-risk
    
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    identification practices. Budge (2000) describes these developments as dealing with student social and self-esteem issues, counselling of students and basic literacy and numeracy. Only in a minority of these programs is appropriate teaching and curriculum highlighted and in a majority of cases this is in a context of basic skills and remediation. That is, the focus was still on changing the student (Budge, 2000, 29). Typical of a social constructivist approach is the call for more effective schools, to try to raise the standard of as many schools as possible so that choice becomes less of an imperative for families. However, as ‘more and more people desire access to fewer and fewer schools’ the issue of limited social and cultural capital is further accentuated (Teese & Polesel, 2003). Dividing the students more equitably between schools or even bussing students from more affluent to less advantaged schools has been suggested (Mortimore & Mortimore, 1999, p. 129). Defending such social constructivist intervention, Mortimore and Mortimore argue that it is ‘impossible to make a fair judgement of what [a school is doing] without taking into account the nature of its student intake. … It is foolish to pretend that the social background of the students makes no difference’ (Mortimore & Mortimore, 1999, p. 131). According to the Australian National Training Authority (Szirom, Jaffe et al., 2001, pp. 26-27), educational programs for students at-risk should include a focus on reallife issues of immediate relevance to students through ‘education by stealth or in disguise’ (Apte, 2001, p. 32) by an integrated approach across many subject areas that link young people to key people in their community. Luke et al. (2003, p. 10) reject this as simplistic and conclude that ‘schools are required to move beyond the current professional emphases on curricular integration, student care and behaviour’. Student engagement is often cited as crucial to counter student risk. It is rarely defined, usually as an opposite of alienation or disengagement (Zyngier, 2005). Apte (2001, p. 42) suggests that engagement is:
    Some reference to the idea of joining with another person, the process of forming a relationship, of getting to know each other in a way which is meaningful to what you might need to do together.
    
    Reflecting a social constructivist discourse, Brown and Holdsworth et al. (2001) suggest programs to engage youth need to include a mix of student focus and school focus issues. Apte (2001), also taking a social constructivist position, concludes that maintaining student engagement can be achieved through a focus on curriculum and pedagogical interventions (school/teacher) factors, including work that requires responsibility and challenge within a “cultural sensitive environment”. The Full Service School (FSS) model (Szirom, Jaffe et al., 2001, pp. 26-27) includes integrated multiple strategies across many contexts for effective intervention that focus on a comprehensive set of external factors, but not the deficits of the individual. While arguing from within the social constructivist paradigm, Brown et al. (2001), Apte (2001) and Szirom, Jaffe et al. (2001) also acknowledge that curriculum and pedagogical change in schools cannot be successfully implemented without a change in teacher pedagogy and therefore recommend teacher professional development to enhance the capacity of all teachers to work with at-risk students. However the social constructivist solution that calls for attention to extending individual capabilities because disempowerment and therefore inclusion occurs at the individual level (McGrath, 2006, p. 597) is an illusion, a naïve philosophy of hope located in the redemption of the individual (Armstrong, 2006, p. 276). While the
    
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    social constructivist literature acknowledges that schools have a ‘critical role’ in both prevention and early intervention for at-risk students, there are also many factors outside of the student. Hence successful programs will extend beyond the school but ‘how far is still the subject of debate’ (Strategic Partners, 2001b, p. 25). Brown et al. (2001, p. 126) confirm that students at-risk also clearly understand that the nature of the school culture and ethos is critical to their attachment to school, in both a positive and negative sense. Luke et al. (2003, p. 8) reject both the instrumentalist and social constructivist approaches arguing that tied-funding interventions provided for at-risk ‘target groups appears to encourage piece-meal and pull-out approaches’ making student improvement more difficult to sustain unless such interventions were linked and articulated to the mainstream program. Luke at al. (2003) suggest that wholeschool programs that emphasised pastoral care and the well-being of students do not necessarily improve social outcomes for at-risk students. They maintain that what is required is the revision and modification of whole-school mainstream pedagogy and curriculum programs, including teaching, learning and assessment in order to improve outcomes for marginalised students (Luke et al., 2003). Such changes include the need to stress higher order thinking and critical literacy, greater depth of knowledge and understanding and increases in overall intellectual demand and expectations. Luke et al. (2003) and Hayes et al. (2006) conclude that programs that have ‘connectedness to the world’ in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, can generate improved academic and social outcomes for all students, but especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, while programs that recognise and engage student differences in classroom teaching can produce systematic and sustainable interventions that could better serve the needs of at-risk students. While higher order intellectual engagement is necessary (but not sufficient) in programs in order for all students to access employment and to pursue improved life pathways through school to post-compulsory study, work and community life, there needs to be an emphasis on the intellectual demands of school work and student engagement in mainstream pedagogy that moves beyond increased participation rates and basic skills development. This includes assessment procedures that also focus on higher order intellectual outcomes from all schooling programs, with emphasis on curricular integration. This change needs teacher-leaders with a clear philosophy that critiques society based on the genuine possibilities for hope based on the ‘aspirations, creativity and collectivity that moves away from an individualist theory of risk based on personal troubles’ (Armstrong, 2006, p. 276). Coupled with a strong pedagogic and curricular focus, school leaders can act as internal change agents (Haberman, 1991; Luke et al., 2003) who are ‘centrally concerned with the democratic participation of young people in society and in decisions about its use of resources’. In order for this to be achieved, schools need ‘ to listen to them without trying to cure them of their problems’ (Armstrong, 2006, p. 276). Critically transformative views A third approach dealing with students at-risk is a critically transformative or empowering view, based on a recognitive vision of social justice (Gale, 2000; Gale & Densmore, 2000) where the education goals are social-democratic, seeking to develop students’ knowledge of their world and their ability to act within it. A critically transformative view of at-risk students recognises that:
    
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    The mainstream curriculum is hegemonic in the society at large in the sense that it is part of the cultural and practical underpinnings of the ascendancy of particular social groups capitalists and professionals, men, Anglos. (Connell, 1993, p. 38)
    
    While benefiting all students, this view specifically seeks to privilege the standpoint of the least-advantaged through their participation in critique and a focus on diversity. This is because ‘in general the position of those who carry the burdens of social inequality is a better starting-point for understanding the totality of the social world than is the position of those who enjoy its advantages’ (Connell, 1993, p. 43). This view assumes that schools have the power:
    To make a positive difference to pupil behaviour, a willingness to listen and to learn from the perspectives of others - especially including the pupils themselves - and a commitment to taking whatever action possible to enhance the quality of pupil’s engagement with all aspects of school life. (Cooper et al. 2000, p. 14)
    
    Like resiliency advocates, a critically transformative standpoint presupposes a belief that all students have the capacity to become willing, active and positive participants in school. This view acknowledges that this capacity is rarely automatic, but has to be developed otherwise it ‘remains dormant or sometimes masked by attitudes and behaviours which actively deny the existence of the students’ power to engage and learn’ (Cooper et al., 2000, p. 14). But unlike the resiliency approach, a transformative view rejects such an individualist theory of risk where inclusion is often defined in terms of the resolution of young people’s personal issues (Mills, 1997), to one which:
    Needs to be centrally concerned with democratic participation of young people in society and in decisions about its use of resources. To engage with young people we have to listen to them without trying to cure them of their problems. (Armstrong, 2006, p. 276)
    
    While the diversity of attributes of the early school leaver become ‘a cliché of the literature, there is no dominant typification of an early school leaver’ (Strategic Partners, 2001b, p. 15). Furthermore, Thomson (2002) and Mortimore and Mortimore (1999) warn about the dangers of a public discourse that labels schools as welfare, disadvantaged and at-risk specialists. Teese and Polesel (2003) have described this as the social geography of disadvantage, which Thomson (2003) called ‘rustbelt schools’. However Connell (1993) critiques what he terms a false geography of poverty (Connell, 1993, pp. 23-24) that holds that educational inequality is a problem of the disadvantaged or poor minority who are culturally different from the majority. He rejects the:
    Remarkable amount of research [that] still goes looking for evidence of the psychological, altitudinal or cultural distinctiveness of poor children. With little success. The bulk of the evidence actually demonstrates the cultural similarity between the poorest groups and the less poor. (Connell, 1993, p. 23)
    
    Connell (1993) also critiques the instrumentalist neo-conservative approach to school reform via national testing, and the implication of the social constructivist effective schools movement, that all that is needed is to find the right educational fix. The end result of both approaches, he concludes, is:
    A false geography of disadvantage [read risk] that locates the problem in the heads of the poor or the errors of the specific schools serving them [where] the virtues of the educational mainstream are taken for granted. (Connell, 1993, p. 24)
    
    A critical transformative view locates students’ disadvantages or risks in the conventional subject-matter and texts, the traditional teaching methods and assessment, which turn out to be the sources of systemic difficulty. Connell (1993)
    
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    Luke at al. (2003) and Hayes et al. (2006) argue that to improve the educational outcomes of these students, schools and teachers requires a paradigmatic shift in curriculum and pedagogy. The fact that certain groups in seem more likely to be at-risk than others does not come as any surprise. Students from lower socio-economic status families, single parent families, remote or indigenous youth, youth with little or no family history of further study or even completion of 12 years of schooling are factors frequently nominated as causing or associated with risk (Luke et al., 2003; Mortimore & Mortimore, 1999). Ball and Lamb (2001) even found that a determinant of being atrisk was attendance at a government school. While there is some agreement with both instrumentalist and social constructivist views that the breadth of these factors makes almost all students potentially at-risk, significantly, some students are not. Transformative views include ‘pedagogies of the elites together with pedagogies of the oppressed’ in order to capture ‘a more activist and potentially less relativist stance’ (Lingard, 2007, p. 256). Conclusion A new empowered role for teachers Student risk and failure have been identified not in relation to the individual student’s performance, but in terms of what the school is or is not doing (Strategic Partners, 2001b). While the social constructivist view acknowledges and underscores the relational and psycho-social considerations of risk there is a need to address the three message systems of education (Bernstein, 1971) - the curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment needs of all students, not just the marginalised minority if outcomes for all students are to be improved. A transformative view acknowledges the limitations of this approach for ‘personal progress and fulfilment’ (McGrath, 2006, p. 611) and does not ignore the need for broader changes in education. It is necessary to problematise such discourses in order to unravel their complexity to:
    Understand why ... some resist school, achieve poorly, behave badly and leave early, one needs to understand not only more about school cultures, but also about family and community cultures and the way ... [at risk youth] make sense of the world (and their imagined futures) through the various ....lenses available to them. (Gilbert & Gilbert, 2001, p. 3)
    
    Withers and Batten’s review of 10 years of at-risk literature suggests that what the teacher and school does to enhance and maintain the engagement and the involvement of students is more important than an individual student focus. Lingard (2001a) indicates that teachers indeed can tip the balance especially for marginalised students, to which Hattie adds that ‘excellence in teaching is the single most powerful influence on achievement’ (Hattie, 2003, p. 4). What is significantly different in the transformative emphasis is that while inclusive education originally was a call for a radical change to the fabric of schooling, it has increasingly been used as a ‘means for explaining and protecting the status quo’ (Graham & Slee, 2005, p. 2) The Department of Education and Training (Victoria) (SOFweb, 2003) acknowledges that ‘the most powerful lever for reform is the transforming of teachers’ practice’. The OECD review (Lowe & Holt, 1998, p. 13) of the literature suggests that ‘school factors account for some 25% of the variance in student performance’ while Hattie (2003) claims that teachers alone contribute 30% towards student achievement stressing that ‘it is what teachers know, do, and care about which is very powerful in this learning equation’. As Hattie demonstrated, teachers together with schools make up more than 40% of a difference in student achievement, while home
    
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    background contributes less than 10%. Rejecting the social constructivist position that sees the solution to risk in more effective schools and schooling, Hattie emphatically states that:
    Schools barely make a difference to achievement. The discussion on the attributes of schools – the finances, the school size, the class size, the buildings are important as they must be there in some form for a school to exist, but that is about it. (Hattie, 2003, p. 2)
    
    Much has been and continues to be learnt from recent research related to educational effectiveness about the key factors affecting students’ general academic achievements, attitudes, behaviours and experiences of schooling (Darling-Hammond, 1996; 2000; Kleinhenz & Ingvarson, 2004; Rowe, 2003, Rowe, 2004a). While instrumentalist and social constructivist research suggest that these outcomes are influenced by students’ home background and individual characteristics:
    The magnitude of these effects pale into insignificance compared with class/teacher effects. That is, the quality of teaching and learning provision are by far the most salient influences on students’ cognitive, affective, and behavioural outcomes of schooling, regardless of … students’ backgrounds. (Rowe, 2004b, p. 4 original emphasis)
    
    The overwhelming evidence is that ‘good’ teachers can have positive impacts on students’ experiences and outcomes of schooling, and ‘poor’ teachers can have deleterious effects. Gale (2006), however cautions against the leap from ‘teachers can make a difference’ to ‘teachers are the difference’. Darling-Hammond (2000) summarises extant research findings for the effects of teacher quality on student outcomes as follows:
    The effect of poor quality teaching on student outcomes is debilitating and cumulative. … The effects of quality teaching on educational outcomes are greater than those that arise from students’ backgrounds. … A reliance on curriculum standards and state-wide assessment strategies without paying due attention to teacher quality appears to be insufficient to gain the improvements in student outcomes sought. (Darling-Hammond, 2000)
    
    Programs for at-risk students which are either instrumentalist or social constructivist can be characterised as advocating structural changes for systemic, standards-based reform (including curriculum deconstruction and reconstruction) that ‘have a long and not-so distinguished history of rarely penetrating the classroom door’ (Rowe, 2003, p. 16). This is consistent with the adoption of corporate management models in educational governance and a climate of outcomes-driven economic rationalism where such models operate and where together with issues of accountability, assessment monitoring, performance indicators, quality assurance and school effectiveness, are widespread (Rowe, 2003). While paying some attention to issues of social equity and the influence of the school relative to that of ‘sociologicallydetermined’ (Rowe, 2003, p.17) background characteristics of students, these standpoints doubt the capacity of teachers to make a difference relative to the influence of the socio-cultural and economic capital of home background. During the past 40 years, influential studies such as those reported by Coleman et al. (1966) and Jencks et al. (1972) in the USA, and Bernstein (1971), Peaker (1967) and Plowden (1967) in Britain, ‘provided evidence that schools and teachers are not effective in enhancing achievement’ (Hattie, 1992, p. 9) and that schools have little impact on students’ outcomes. For example, after estimating that only 9% of the variance in student achievement measures was due to school effects, Coleman et al. (1966) came to the conclusion that ‘schools bring little influence to bear on a child’s achievement that is independent of his background and general social context’ (Coleman, Campbell, Hobson et al., 1966, p. 325). These deficit and compensatory studies and
    
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    the policies and programs based on them, reflected the dominant social and political discourses that ethnic and family socio-economic background factors constituted the prevailing determinants of students’ educational outcomes. However, a growing number of researchers have been critical of these findings and have since provided contrary evidence to the earlier claims that relative to home background influences, the effects of schooling are negligible (Rowe, 2003, 2004a). Work with youth by Brown et al. (2001) suggests that the relationship between young people and teachers is of paramount importance. To build such positive relationships between students and teachers requires goodwill and commitment from both parties, but also structural support that facilitates and encourages the time and opportunity for engagement and relationship building. Brown et al. (2001, p. 126) highlight ‘substantial pressures and barriers within schools that act to restrict or prevent the development of such relationships’. In particular, these pressures are found in the practices and institutions that serve to informally exclude students at-risk from school (Angwin et al., 2001). Recent research into The New Community Schools initiative in Scotland7 highlights the importance of individuals acquiring a connectedness between one another and that this connectedness was crucial in improving student and community outcomes (Remedios & Allan, 2006). A critical transformative understanding rejects instrumentalist and social constructivist proposals to fix education systems by “bits and pieces” as these ‘will not deliver long term sustainable change’ (Strategic Partners, 2001b, p. 26). Teachers indeed can ‘tip the balance’ (Hattie, 1992, 2003), especially for marginalised students with a new approach and conception of pedagogy (Lingard et al., 2001a). Change will require not only the:
    Proliferation of new practices of student support, but also whole of school change will have to be backed up and mandated by systemic guidelines, policies and appropriate resource allocations. (Strategic Partners, 2001b, 26)
    
    The social constructivist and critically transformative literature reviewed makes it clear that schools in the past have been largely responsible for the weak connections between students and their communities; because of inflexible curriculum pathways, lack of relevance of teaching and learning programs, inadequate skills of teachers, and the inability of students to participate in school life. Mortimore and Mortimore (1999) conclude that these risk factors do not operate exclusively and that the:
    Effects of socio-economic disadvantage are cumulative [so that] individual, familial and societal factors interact in multiplicative ways. The actual impact of a bad school on a particular student’s education will depend mostly on the resilience of the individual and on his or her willingness to continue learning. But the potential impact – in conjunction with the other factors – is daunting. Added to this is the effect of those national school systems that place more students at-risk of failure. For the most disadvantaged, each new factor adds considerably to the problems faced by those least able to compete – with any possibility of success – and so increases the probability of their failure. (Mortimore & Mortimore, 1999, p. 110)
    
    Similarly Budge (2000, p. 29) adds that ‘dropping out is the culmination of a process of disengagement that often begins in the [youngest] class’. In order to improve the outcomes of all, but in particular at-risk youth, school curriculum must be relevant, negotiated, integrated and connected, linking to personal and social concerns, emphasising self direction and constructive learning that include purpose, empowerment, rigour and success (Barratt et al., 1998; Cumming, 1996).
    
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    A critical transformative view suggests a ‘fundamental shift in thinking about the purpose and value of education, and how the educational system should fit into the rest of society’ (Strategic Partners, 2001b, p. 26). Cooper et al., (2000, p. 14) while not denying the importance of the wider social and political factors, conclude it ‘remains possible for teachers … to take positive action’ and resist the pressures that lead to increased student risk. The extensive three year study in Queensland (1999-2001) – The School Reform Longitudinal Study (QSRLS)8 (Lingard et al., 2001a) – rejected a deficit and blamethe-victim approach, while pointing specifically to school related issues of organisation, curriculum and school climate as important factors. Most significantly for at-risk students is what the QSRLS termed productive pedagogies.9. Mortimore and Mortimore (1999) add that students at-risk need more help than schools and individual teachers can offer or provide. Yet, in order for students at-risk to achieve even the national average outcome, they will have to:
    Leapfrog over many of their more advantaged peers. It is a pious hope to assume that this can be achieved by the majority of at risk students in many countries’ systems. This is not to be patronising about such students, but simply to recognise that they have to compete with their peers in what amounts to a schooling race in which they begin from way behind the starting line. (Mortimore & Mortimore, 1999, p. 132)
    
    Gale and Densmore (2000) come to a similar conclusion, while Willis (2001) makes similar claims in relation to those most at-risk in Australia – Indigenous Australian students. Such deep seated problems require systemic change, however ‘the ceding of privilege from the advantaged to disadvantaged’ (Mortimore & Mortimore, 1999, p. 133) would be fraught with political problems and strident opposition to achieve this (Mortimore & Mortimore, 1999; Teese & Polesel, 2003). Important work is currently being undertaken in Australia as a result of the QSRLS (and elsewhere10) on the kinds of pedagogies necessary to improve outcomes for all students but in particular those labelled as at-risk of early school leaving, disadvantaged or from low socio-economic backgrounds. I have called this transformative approach, pedagogical reciprocity where teachers and students learn together and from each other. My research (Zyngier, 2007) proposes that an engaging or CORE pedagogy could ensure that what teachers and students do is: Connecting - to and engaging with the students’ cultural knowledge Owning – all students should be able to see themselves as represented in the work Responding – to students’ lived experiences and actively and consciously critiquing that experience Empowering – students with a belief that what they do will make a difference to their lives and the opportunity to voice and discover their own authentic and authoritative life. For young people at risk, there is already too often an assumption that they are at best, poor learners. Through their own fault, or their parents’, or decisions made by the school, or fate, teachers too often assume that these young people are able to exercise only limited control over their destinies. In an uncertain future, these factors may seem to remove any element of choice. Yet these same young people still assert strongly that they are in control:
    
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    “No-one makes decisions for me”; “we don’t know where we are going, but we’ll get there” (Brown et al., 2001, pp. 118-119).
    
    In the end, it is about what the students themselves say and think (Munns, 2007; Zyngier, 2007). It is too simplistic to define risk in terms of deficiencies arising in the students. Historically the disengaged were those whose appearance, language, culture, values, communities and family structures were in opposition to the dominant (white, middle-class) culture that schools were designed to serve and support (Hickson & Tinzman, 1990; Alexander, 2000; hooks, 2003). The struggle over the definition of risk is significant in itself for it reveals the on-going ideological and epistemological divisions among educators and policy makers, as well as the general public. Research on student risk has shown that an exploration of the questions of class, power, history and particularly students’ lived experiences and social reality reveal a complexity of factors that lead marginalised youth to leave school prematurely. It is therefore crucial that questions of power, equity, and engagement with difference be addressed if we are to improve (learning) outcomes, not just for the most marginalised youth, but for all. Research by Johnson and Hayes (2007), Munns (2007) and Zyngier (2007), suggests that the complexity of issues relating to student engagement (and early school leaving), cannot be fitted neatly into decontextualised accounts of youth experience, school interaction and socio-environmental factors that create in the first instance student disempowerment and disengagement with school. A transformative student pedagogy is an empowering and socially just practice, developing a sense of entitlement, belonging and identification where pedagogical reciprocity creates ‘practices that engage students providing them with ways of knowing that enhance their capacity to live fully and deeply’ (hooks, 1994, p. 22). Otherwise students are still ‘doing time, not doing education’ (Sefa Dei, 2003, p. 251). Acknowledgements The author extends a special thanks to the teachers and especially to the students who made this study possible. Thanks also to the very constructive and helpful comments from the anonymous reviewers on a previous draft
    
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    Notes
    1
    
    The title of this paper comes from Noddings (1997), Pye (1988) and McCrae et al. (2000). Noddings (1997) argues against an ideology of control that forces all students to study a particular, narrowly prescribed curriculum devoid of content they might really care about where ‘the reality of the classroom life in most schools [is] the press of teaching, getting through the curriculum, even if the students are being left behind (or left numb and unengaged) as the curriculum marches on, page by page and day by day’ (1997, 44). Pye (1988) maintains that students are often forgotten abandoned invisible or lost in a no-man’s-land in classrooms, where they are disengaged emotionally and intellectually from the education process, passively excluded not necessarily as a result of conflict, but indifference or worse, benign collusion. Finally McCrae et al. (2000) ask in their research what has worked (and will work again) for the most disadvantaged and most marginalised at-risk group in Australia - Indigenous Australian students. 2 See for example International Journal of Inclusive Education (2007) 11:3 special issue on pedagogies as an issue of social justice and inclusion 3 Munns' conceptualisation of both small e engagement (commitment to classroom experiences) and big E engagement (Commitment to education) as described in The Fair Go Project is an example of transformative understandings of risk differentiating between substantive and procedural engagement (Munns, 2007) 4 Gale (2000) identifies three contesting views of social justice: retributive, redistributive and recognitive. See Gale and Densmore (2002) for further details. 5 The Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) is a hands-on option for students in Years 11 and 12. The VCAL gives practical work-related experience, as well as literacy and numeracy skills and the opportunity to build personal skills that are important for life and work. Like the Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE), VCAL is an accredited secondary certificate. See http://www.vcaa.vic.edu.au/vcal/ for further information. 6 In Australia, according to a report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 43% of all students attend fee-paying schools, this proportion is higher in secondary education. Victoria is the most privatised of all Australian states. See http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/lookupMF/1E44BCDEF87BCA2FCA2568A9001393E7 7 The New Community Schools initiative in Scotland seeks to improve participation, raise achievement, improve health and transform communities. 8 For more information about Productive Pedagogies see the Education Queensland website which describes these powerful and comprehensive set of messages for policy reform and realignment http://education.qld.gov.au/public_media/reports/curriculum-framework/qsrls/ 9 For more information about Productive Pedagogies see the Education Queensland website which describes these powerful and comprehensive set of messages for policy reform and realignment http://education.qld.gov.au/public_media/reports/curriculum-framework/qsrls/ 10 In Canada for example Smith, W., Butler-Kisber, L., LaRoque, L., Portelli, J., Shields, C., Sparkes, C., et al. (2001). Student Engagement in Learning and School Life: National Project Report Montreal: Faculty of Education McGill University.
    
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