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Article Excerpt
The state of Middle Schooling in many Western countries has been described as under threat, at a crossroads and like a wasteland. Within Australia, it has also been claimed that the past generation focus on Middle Schooling is unfinished and exhausted. But a Middle Schooling movement continues in Australia that provides examples of a way out of a state of arrested development. This article explores the Australian situation in the light of past literature and research, before detailing the potential contributions of a current Australian Research Council project in the area of Middle Schooling. The article argues that, while Middle Schooling may be down in many nations, it is far from down and out, and an Australian perspective has much to offer the Middle Schooling movement internationally.
Key words
middle schools educational change middle years literature reviews educational history university school cooperation
Introduction
Middle Schooling is at a 'cross roads' in the USA (Anafara, 2001), while a range of tensions place it in a difficult position in many Western nations (Carrington, 2006). Various authors have described Middle Schooling to be a 'wasteland' (Beane, 2001; Silberman, 1970; Smyth & McInerney, 2007), while others describe a state of 'arrested development' in Middle Schooling reform (Dickinson, 2001, p. xi). In Australia, it has likewise been asserted that the adoption of Middle Schooling has been limited (Hill & Russell, 1999), with the Middle Schooling project both unfinished and exhausted (Luke et al., 2003).This article details the historical influences that formed and informed the development of the Redesigning Pedagogies in the North (RPiN) project, which seeks to contribute to a new generation of Middle Schooling in Australia.
For the purposes of this article, 'middle years' refers to the ages 10 to 15 (Chadbourne, 2001; Cumming, 1993; Lee Manning & Bucher, 2005), while 'middle school' refers to a separate organisational structure within or outside of a broader campus (Chadbourne, 2001; George et al., 1992; Lee Manning & Bucher, 2005).The focus of the article is 'Middle Schooling' (Carrington, 2006; Luke et al., 2003), which is a philosophy of teaching that can be applied in elementary, secondary or specific middle-school contexts. Middle Schooling is often linked to calls for broader school reform so that the application of the philosophy can be made more sustainable (Chadbourne, 2001; Smyth et al., 2003) and it is the potential for such reform that is the backdrop to this article.
A brief history of Middle Schooling The origins of Middle Schooling
The origins of Middle Schooling can be found in a difficult coming together of interests around reform for Junior High Schools in the United States approximately 100 years ago. It is beyond the scope of an article that focuses on recent developments in Australian Middle Schooling to explore the contesting complexities that Cuban (1992) highlights around the emergence of American junior high schools. At its simplest, two renditions of the history of Middle Schooling have emerged in the USA. The first, from the Turning points group (Carnegie Council, 1989; Jackson & Davis, 2000), focuses on the growth of Middle Schooling as a means to support early adolescent developmental needs and provide specific teacher education. The second, led by Beane (2001; 2005), provides an explanation that places the student at the centre of an integrated process of meaning making, while remaining sensitive to social, economic and demographic influences. For the sake of brevity, I will rely heavily on the historical account of Beane due to its similar orientation to the Australian Middle Schooling projects that are considered in the latter part of this article.
It was not until the early 1900s in the USA that the precursors to middle schools--junior secondary schools--were formed. These schools emerged in response to concerns that reached back to the 1870s about adequately preparing students for college (George et al., 1992) and low student retention (Anafara, 2001; Cuban, 1992). Between 1909 and 1913, the first junior secondary schools opened (George et al., 1992; Lee Manning & Bucher, 2005) demonstrating the growing influence of psychology on education through an interest in the developmental needs of early adolescents (Anafara, 2001; Cuban, 1992; George et al., 1992). But when junior secondary schools were approved across the USA in 1918 (Lee Manning & Bucher, 2005), the recognition of student developmental needs within junior secondary schools was still more rhetoric than reality (Beane, 2001).
During the 1930s and 1940s, the issue of student needs within junior secondary schools received renewed interest; this was quelled by the domination of university intellectuals over school curriculum and the impact of McCarthyism on US culture (Beane, 2001).With significant post-war immigration to the USA and a burgeoning baby boom during the 1950s, pressure was again placed on schooling arrangements (George et al., 1992), which elicited pragmatic rather than pedagogic responses (Beane, 2001). By the early 1960s it was widely acknowledged that the junior secondary school movement had increasingly 'imitated what had existed in the past' (Anafara, 2001, p. ix) and had grown to match the title of junior 'high' school (Cuban, 1992).
The emergence of US Middle Schooling
By the mid-1970s, a distinct middle school reform movement was beginning to take shape (Anafara, 2001; George et al., 1992) and by the end of the 1970s, there were more than 10 000 middle schools in the USA (Daniels et al., 2001). Behind this growth were more liberal values toward education and racial integration (Beane, 2005; Cuban, 1992; George et al., 1992), the growth in unemployment of early school leavers--due to improvements in technology within lower skilled work (Brown, 2005)--and community and demographic pressures brought about by the baby boom (Beane, 2001; 2005). Throughout the 1980s, a number of state initiatives further established middle schools before the newly formed National Middle Schools Association commenced advocacy for Middle Schooling, including calls for more academic challenge, specific middle-school teacher education and teaching that catered for the developmental needs of early adolescents. With this shift to middle schools and an associated call for more interdisciplinary and integrated curriculum (Beane, 1991; 1995; 1996), a heated debate erupted between progressive and traditional approaches. This resulted in a flurry of research papers culminating in the publication of the influential Turning points report in the late 1980s (Carnegie Council, 1989; Powell et al., 2001). This report identified a mismatch between student needs and school structures or curriculum, as well as high levels of student alienation, significant absenteeism and poor-quality teaching. The Turning points initiative continues to shape the content of most middle-school teacher education and other initiatives in the USA. At the core of Turning points is the promotion of small and connected community schools, a strong academic focus, the pursuit of success for all students, expert middle-school teaching education and the promotion of health and fitness amongst students (Carnegie Council, 1989; Jackson & Davis, 2000).
By the turn of the millennium, most critics agreed that much of the promise of Middle Schooling had not been fulfilled. While Beane (2001) located much of his criticism in economic rather than educational interests driving change, the Turning points project (Jackson & Davis, 2000) argued that passive learning, incoherent curriculum, low academic standards and little recognition of diversity had come to typify Middle Schooling. Spurred on by this, the Carnegie Council released a second Turning points report (Jackson & Davis, 2000) that called for more intellectual demand, 'backward curriculum' design (which starts with learning outcomes and...
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