School of Education
Professor Stephen Kemmis
Professor of Education
Professor Emeritus, University of Ballarat
BA (Hons first class) (University of Sydney), 1971,
EdM (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), 1975,
PhD (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), 1976,
Ed D honoris causa (U Jyväskylä) 2009.
Professor Stephen Kemmis
Bio
Stephen Kemmis is Professor in the School of Education at Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia, and a key researcher in the University’s Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education. His research interests include the study of professional practice, approaches to educational research and evaluation, curriculum, Indigenous education and university development. He is co-author with Wilfred Carr of Becoming Critical: Education, knowledge and action research (London: Falmer, 1986) and, with Robin McTaggart (2005) of ‘Participatory Action Research: Communicative Action and the Public Sphere’, Chapter 23 in Norman Denzin & Yvonna Lincoln (eds.) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd edn. (Thousand Oaks, California: Sage), as well as other publications on action research. His most recent book, co-edited with Tracey Smith (2008), is Enabling Praxis: Challenges for education, in the Sense Publishers (Rotterdam) ‘Pedagogy, Education and Praxis’ series. The book is a contribution to an international research program on praxis development involving researchers from the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the United Kingdom.
Brief career history
1971-2: Tutor in Education, University of Sydney.
1972-4: University Fellow, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
1975-8: Senior Research Associate, Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia, UK.
1978: Independent consultant to the national Curriculum Development Centre, Canberra.
1978-94: Senior Lecturer, then Associate Professor, then Professor of Education, Deakin University, Geelong (also Deputy Vice Chancellor – Research, ’91; Chair, Academic Board, ’93-4; Director, Deakin Institute for Studies in Education, ’81-’93; Co-Director, Deakin Centre for Education and Change, ’94).
1994-5: Principal, Stephen Kemmis Research & Consulting.
1996-7: Pro Vice Chancellor (Research) then Deputy Vice Chancellor (Operations), University of Ballarat.
1997 – : Director, Stephen Kemmis Research & Consulting, Pty Ltd (ABN 26 081 107 164).
2002 – : Professor of Education, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga campus
Research
Evaluation
At the Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia, I worked with colleagues on the development of case study methods in evaluation, on “democratic evaluation”, and on an idiographic approach to the evaluation of student learning with computers. I also developed approaches to assisted self-evaluation through a variety of school-based projects in the late 1970’s early 1980’s, and through projects at Batchelor College in the Northern Territory in Aboriginal education and teacher education. In the last two years, I have been developing the notion of “communicative evaluation” with colleagues in Finland.
I have worked on a wide variety of large and small evaluation projects. My program evaluation studies include the evaluation of British National Development Programme in Computer Assisted Learning, the OECD Pacific Circle Consortium, the Victorian Transition Education Program, the Victorian Participation and Equity Program, the National Schools Computing Program of the Australian Schools Commission, the NSW Priority Action Schools Program, and the Mid-Term Review of ‘Partners in a Learning Culture’, Australia’s national strategy for vocational education and training for Indigenous people. My institutional evaluation studies include an independent evaluation of Geelong Grammar School, and reviews of a number of departments, schools and research centres in universities. I have conducted a number of meta-evaluation studies (evaluations of evaluations), the most recent being the meta-evaluation of the Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum Evaluation (University of Illinois) Evaluation of Reader Focused Writing for the US Veterans’ Benefits Administration. My participatory evaluation studies include work with various schools and universities, and some Aboriginal communities, in self-evaluation and participatory action research projects. I have been an evaluation consultant to a wide variety of projects, programs, institutions and organizations, in government, non-government and community settings.
In addition to dozens of evaluation reports produced for specific projects, my publications in evaluation include: Evaluating Curriculum (with Robert E. Stake), Deakin University Press, 1988; Transition and Reform in the Victorian Transition Education Program (with David Dawkins, Lynton Brown, Barbara Cramer and Terry Reilly), Transition Education Advisory Committee, Victoria, 1983; Coming to Terms with Computers in Schools (with Chris Bigum and others), Deakin Institute for Studies in Education, 1987; Dilemmas of Reform: The Participation and Equity Program in Victorian Schools (with Fazal Rizvi), Deakin Institute for Studies in Education, 1987; “A new view of evaluation: communicative evaluation” (with Hannele Niemi, Lifelong Learning in Europe, 1999, vol.4, no.1, pp.55-64); 2001 Implementation of the Western Australian Strategic Plan for Aboriginal Education and Training (with Dharmadasa Serasinghe, Western Australian Aboriginal Education and Training Council, Perth, 2004); Knowing Makes the Difference: Learnings from the NSW Priority Action Schools Program (with Susan Groundwater-Smith, New South Wales Department of Education & Training, Sydney, 2004; Partners in a Learning Culture: Blueprint for Implementation: Mid-term Review: Final Report (with Marianne Atkinson Thurling, Roslin Brennan and Casey Atkinson, Australian National Training Authority, Brisbane, 2004); and a book in preparation (with Hannele Niemi) tentatively entitled Evaluation in the Public Sphere: Opening Communicative Space (for the ‘Evaluation and Society’ series of Information Age Publishing, Greenwich, Connecticut).
In 1986, I received the inaugural Australasian Evaluation Society ET&S Award for Outstanding Contribution to Evaluation.
Participatory action research
A key aspect of my work since the late 1970s has been in developing the theory and practice of educational action research. Together with colleagues at Deakin and elsewhere, I have advocated “emancipatory action research” as a participatory form of research and evaluation which embodies the aspirations of a critical science of education. Participatory action research (PAR) is a way of working which helps teachers, students and communities to work individually and collectively in developing their practices, their understandings of their practices, and the situations in which they live and work – to transform the work, the worker and the workplace.
My publications on action research include: Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research (with Wilfred Carr) Falmer Press and Deakin University Press 1986; The Action Research Planner (with Robin McTaggart and others; fourth edition, Deakin University Press, 1988); and the edited volume The Action Research Reader (also with Robin McTaggart and others), fourth edition, Deakin University Press, 1988; the articles on action research for the first and second editions of The International Encyclopedia of Education: Research and Studies (second edition 1994; Pergamon Press London); “Foucault, Habermas and Evaluation” (Curriculum Studies, 1993, vol.1, no.1, pp.35-54); a (September 1995) monograph prepared for the Innovative Links Project of the National Professional Development Program, Action research and communicative action: Changing teaching practices and the organization of teachers’ work; “Emancipatory Aspirations in a Postmodern Era” (Curriculum Studies, 1995, vol.3, no.2, pp.133-167); the chapter “Action Research Exemplary Projects: The Asturias Project” in Jennifer Angwin (ed.) The Essence of Action Research (Deakin Centre for Education and Change, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, 1998). I was co-editor (with Bill Atweh and Patricia Weeks) of Action Research in Practice: Partnerships for Social Justice in Education (Routledge, London, 1998), a volume reporting the work of a group of participatory action research projects connected with the Queensland University of Technology (including three chapters of which I was co-author). With Robin McTaggart, I co-authored the chapter “Participatory Action Research” in The International Handbook on Qualitative Research (2nd edition, edited by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, Sage Publications, 2000) and a substantially revised version “Participatory Action Research: Communicative Action and the Public Sphere” (Chapter 23 in Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln, editors, Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, 3rd edition, Sage, Thousand Oaks, California, 2005). I also wrote the chapter “Critical Theory and Action Research” for the International Handbook on Action Research (Hilary Bradbury and Peter Reason, editors, Sage publications, 2001). In 2005, Wilfred Carr and I wrote “Staying Critical” for a special issue of the Journal of Educational Action Research (special issue commemorating the 20th anniversary of the publication of Carr and Kemmis, Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research, vol.13, no.3).
In 2004, John Retallick worked with Robin McTaggart and me to produce a revised version of the short 2nd edition of The Action Research Planner to be used in developing countries (published in Karachi, Pakistan by the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development). In 2004-5, I have been working with Robin McTaggart and Zeffie Nicholasin the preparation of a substantially revised version of the third edition of the Planner to appear as a book whose working title is Participatory Research in Education.
My interest in participatory action research has led me into a close study of the nature of practice, especially in the professions. As one of the international contributors at an invitational conference on practice in Umeä, Sweden, I presented a paper “Knowing practice: Searching for saliences” (which appears, in a slightly revised form, in Pedagogy, Culture and Society, special issue on practice, vol.13, no.3). Some of these ideas were further developed in my “Is mathematics education a practice? Mathematics teaching?” (in Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Mathematics, Education and Society, Brisbane, Griffith University, 2005).
I was Congress Advocate (previously known as Patron) of the Joint 5th World Congress on Action Learning, Action Research and Process Management (ALARPM) and 9th World Congress on Participatory Action Research held in Ballarat, Victoria, in September 2000. During the Congress, I contributed a paper “Leadership: Less is More” to a symposium on leadership in action research. With Roslin Brennan Kemmis, I presented a keynote address, “Making and writing the history of the future together: Exploratory action in participatory action research” at the Congreso Internacional de Educación (Congreso V Nacional y III Internacional), Córdoba, Argentine Republic, October 9 – 11, 2003.
Curriculum, the socially-critical school, and full service schooling
My theoretical work in curriculum studies has been concerned with the development and reconstruction of reproduction theory, for example in Curriculum Theorising: Beyond Reproduction Theory (with Lindsay Fitzclarence), Deakin University Press, 1986. This line of theoretical work was further developed through an Australian Research Council-funded project “Educational Reform in Australia, 1972-88”, and has led to a variety of publications. One of my recent publications in curriculum is “System and lifeworld and the conditions of learning in late modernity” (Curriculum Studies, 2000, vol.6, no.3, pp.269-305).
More practically, I contributed to debates about curriculum in Australia through the development of the notion of ‘the socially-critical school’, first outlined in a brief monograph Orientations to Curriculum and Transition: Towards the Socially-Critical School (with Peter Cole and Dale Suggett), Victorian Institute of Secondary Education, Melbourne, 1983. The theme of social justice in and through education remains central to my work.
In 1980, I was one of a team conducting innovative case studies of schools aimed at illuminating issues of alienation. The results appeared in the book (by Peter Fensham, Colin Power, David Tripp and Stephen Kemmis) Alienation from Schooling (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1986), including my fictionalized case study of “Addison Hills” High School. In 1981-3, I directed a multi-site case study evaluation of the Victorian Transition Education Program, a Commonwealth-funded program aimed at enhancing schools’ responses to the problem of transition from school to work or further study at a time of growing unemployment. This study was reported in a book Transition and Reform in the Victorian Transition Education Program (by Stephen Kemmis, David Dawkins, Lynton Brown, Barbara Cramer and Terry Reilly; published by the Transition Education Advisory Committee, Victoria, 1983). The evaluation team also produced twenty-four case studies of transition projects in schools and TAFE colleges, and a number of discussion papers. In 1985-6, I co-directed an evaluation of the Commonwealth’s Participation and Equity Program in Victoria, the successor program to the Transition Education Program. By now, unemployment in Australia, especially youth unemployment, was at a level unprecedented since the Great Depression, and governments were committed to significantly improving Year 12 retention rates – promoting school and curriculum reforms aimed at encouraging students to stay in school longer. The evaluation of the Program was published in Dilemmas of Reform: The Participation and Equity Program in Victorian Schools (by Fazal Rizvi and Stephen Kemmis; Deakin Institute for Studies in Education, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, 1987). These studies threw light on the issues of school alienation and the response of schools to initiatives aimed at meeting the needs of young people previously under-represented in schooling in the post-compulsory years. They also contributed to contemporary debates about the connections between social justice and education as the issues were played out in school organization, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment practices of the 1980s.
Since late 1997, I have been working with colleagues to develop and investigate the theory and practice of ‘full service schooling’ – especially the community development approach to full service schooling.. Collaborators in this endeavour have included the Australian Council for Equity through Education, the Australian National Schools Network, and the Myer Full Service Schools Project (coordinated by Berry Street and Banksia Secondary College). In April 2000, the Australian Centre for Equity through Education published a kit of materials about the work of a research circle of schools and colleagues exploring the theory and practice of full service schooling using an action research approach; the kit includes my case study of the project The Full Service Schools Story (which contains an updated version of a presentation on social justice and education given at a Community Consultation Day at Banksia Secondary College).
My other publications on full service schooling include: ‘Building a Community of Practice: Developing Full Service Schools” (presentation to an ACEE conference in Sydney in September, 1998); “The Aspirations of the Full Service School: Individual and Community Development” (with Theresa Lynch; prepared for the Myer FSS Project, June, 2000); “Full Service Schooling: Developing Students and Communities” (a paper for a conference on FSS at Penrith, NSW, August, 2000); and “Full Service Schooling”, Independent Education, vol.30, no.3, October 2000, pp.27-8.
My interest in practitioner research led to an invitation to prepare a commissioned paper (with Viv White of the Australian National Schools Network) The Research Functions of the Victorian Institute of Teaching for the Ministerial Advisory Group on the Victorian Institute of Teaching. The paper argues the case that the Institute should promote and support research by teachers and schools in addition to its roles in registering teachers and accrediting teacher education programs.
At the invitation of the Australian Association for Research in Education, I presented the 2000 Radford Lecture at the Association’s Annual Conference in December 2000. My lecture, Educational Research and Evaluation: Opening Communicative Space, advocated more inclusive approaches to research and evaluation (especially to include practitioners and others) and the roles for research and evaluation that contribute to the public sphere and the development of social movements. (In 2001, it was published in The Australian Educational Researcher, vol. 28, no.1, pp.1-30.) A year later, in 2001, I accepted the Association’s invitation to become an Honorary Life Member.
Indigenous education and training
I have a strong interest in issues of Indigenous education and reconciliation. From 1983, I worked with Batchelor College (now Institute) on self-evaluation processes in Aboriginal teacher education, and worked with a number of North East Arnhem Land schools on the education and development of Aboriginal teachers. That involvement led to my 1987-8 appointment to evaluate the Remote Area Teacher Education programs offered by Batchelor. In 1998, I participated (with two Yolngu women) in an international conference on Indigenous Science at the University of Calgary in Canada. I was instrumental in the development of a Deakin University program for Aboriginal teachers upgrading to the Bachelor of Arts in Education degree run by Deakin at Batchelor. I was also instrumental in the formation of the Deakin Aboriginal Teacher Education program, and the subsequent development of the Deakin Institute of Koorie Education. In 1994, I was a consultant to the national Review of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Educational Policy chaired by Mandawuy Yunupingu. I was one of a number of people assisting with the preparation of proposals which led to the formation of the Garma Cultural Studies Institute of the Yothu Yindi Foundation. In 1995, I worked with the Aboriginal Studies Centre of Curtin University, preparing papers on reconciliation issues in higher education which helped form reconciliation practices in the curriculum and teaching processes of Curtin University. In 1996-7, in my role as Deputy Vice Chancellor (Operations) of the University of Ballarat, I assisted the University’s Koorie Education Unit in its work, and I wrote the first draft of the University’s Statement of Reconciliation. In 1998-9, I worked with Woolum Bellum Koorie Open Door Education school in East Gippsland assisting it in development work as part of the National Schools Network Full Service Schools Research Circle. In 1999, I chaired a review of the Aboriginal Centres of the University of Western Australia. In 2000, I was so-facilitator (with Viv White, Director, Australian National Schools Network) of an Action Research Workshop in Brisbane for Queensland Aboriginal Education Coordinators.
Each year since 1998, I have prepared a report for the Western Australian Aboriginal Education and Training Council (AETC) on the previous year’s implementation of the Western Australian Strategic Plan for Aboriginal Education and Training (known as “the Kemmis reports”). These reports synthesize statistical and qualitative information in annual reports to the AETC from all providers of Aboriginal education and training in the state, together with information from other reports to the AETC. Copies of the reports are distributed by the AETC to (among others) the Ministers for Education, Training, Aboriginal Affairs and Justice in WA, and to the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training. In 2001, I advised the AETC on the development of its Monitoring and Reporting Framework for the new WA Strategic Plan to come into effect in 2002-3.
Some of my publications in the field of Indigenous education and training are: A Study of the Batchelor College Remote Area Teacher Education Program: 1976 - 1988: Final Report (Geelong, Victoria, Deakin Institute for Studies in Education, 1988, 142pp.); Draft Report: Analysis of Submissions to the National Review of Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, May 11, 1994; Final Report: Analysis of Submissions to the National Review of Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, May 29, 1994; National Review of Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People: Summary Report on Public Consultations, July 18, 1994; Synthesis Report: Analysis of Submissions to the National Review of Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, August 10, 1994; A Rational for University Participation in the Reconciliation Process (Perth, WA: Curtin Indigenous Research Centre, Curtin University. Discussion paper No.3, 1997, 18pp.); Rethinking Equity and Justice in the University (Perth, WA: Curtin Indigenous Research Centre, Curtin University, Discussion paper No.4, 1997, 14pp.); Synthesis Report on the 1997 Implementation of the Aboriginal Education and Training Strategic Plan 1997-1999 (Western Australian Aboriginal Education and Training Council, Western Australia, Perth, 1998, 190pp.); Final Synthesis Report on the 1998 Implementation of the Aboriginal Education and Training Strategic Plan 1997-1999 (Western Australian Aboriginal Education and Training Council, Western Australia, Perth, 1999, 200 pp.); Synthesis Report 1999 (Western Australian Aboriginal Education and Training Council, Western Australia, Perth, 2001, 250 pp.); Meta-Evaluation: Monitoring of the 1999 Implementation of the WA Strategic Plan for Aboriginal Education and Training (Western Australian Aboriginal Education and Training Council, Western Australia, Perth, 2001, 9 pp.); and 2000 Implementation of the Western Australian Strategic Plan for Aboriginal Education and Training (Western Australian Aboriginal Education and Training Council, Western Australia, Perth, 2002, 310 pp.). At the Council’s request, I also prepared a Draft Monitoring and Reporting Framework for the 2000-2004 WA Strategic Plan for the WA Aboriginal Education and Training Council (2001, 55pp.). In 2004, Dharmadasa Serasinghe and I completed our report 2001 Implementation of the Western Australian Strategic Plan for Aboriginal Education and Training. for Western Australian Aboriginal Education and Training Council).
In 2003, I directed a study that formed the basis of the Mid-Term Review of ‘Partners in a Learning Culture’, Australia’s national strategy for vocational education and training for Indigenous people. The report of the study was published as Kemmis, S., Atkinson, M. Brennan, R. and Atkinson, C. (2004) Mid-term Review of Partners in a Learning Culture. Brisbane: Australian National Training Authority (Final report 151 pp., Executive Summary 24pp.)
In 2004, with Marianne Atkinson Thurling and Roslin Brennan Kemmis, I presented a keynote address “Indigenous Education: A Collective Task for All Australians” (published in the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Society for the Provision of Education to Rural Australia, 2004, Society for the Provision of Education to Rural Australia, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, NSW, 2004). In 2004-5, with Marianne Thurling, Roslin Brennan Kemmis, Peter Rushbrook and Richard Pickersgill, I conducted a study of Indigenous staff in vocational education and training for the National Council for Vocational Education Research, Adelaide, published as Kemmis, S., Atkinson Thurling, M., Brennan Kemmis, R., Rushbrook, P. and Pickersgill, R. (2006) Indigenous Staffing in Vocational Education and Training: Policies, strategies and performance. Adelaide: National Council for Vocational Education and Training.
University development, including research development
Over the last twenty years, I have been involved in university research development. After playing a leadership role in building the research profile of the Faculty of Education at Deakin University, I was Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) at Deakin in 1991, and Pro Vice Chancellor (Research) then Deputy Vice Chancellor (Operations) at the University of Ballarat in 1996-7. I have assisted many universities in Australia, in Europe, North America and Asia to construct practical strategies for developing research activity, research proposal preparation, research project design and management, improving publication records, and higher degrees by research supervision.
A recent publication (with Don Maconachie), based on work done at the University of Ballarat, is the monograph Strategic Repositioning: Identifying Areas for Future Investment: A Case Study of Rapid Change at the University of Ballarat (Higher Education Division, Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Canberra, May 1998). In August-September 1999, under contract to the University of Western Australia, I prepared Enhancing Diversity in Australian Higher Education: A Discussion Paper (with Simon Marginson, Paige Porter and Fazal Rizvi; Stephen Kemmis Research & Consulting Pty Ltd; http://www.acs.uwa.edu.au/open_discuss/ ). Short articles based on this discussion paper appeared in The Australian Higher Education Supplement in late 1999.
Since 1994, I have worked on a variety of reviews, development projects and other consultancies in over twenty universities in Australia and elsewhere. In the last three years, I have worked with universities including Curtin University of Technology, Griffith University, La Trobe University, Monash University, RMIT University, the University of Ballarat, the University of the Sunshine Coast , The University of Western Australia and Victoria University, (in Australia); the University of Helsinki and the University of Jyvaskyla (in Finland); Sheffield University and the University College of Northampton (in the UK); and the University of Illinois (in the USA).
I have conducted a number of reviews of university research centres – at Curtin University, for example, I was one of two reviewers examining the Research Institute for Cultural Heritage (with Prof. Ann Curthoys, in 2000), the Institute for Research into International Competitiveness (with Prof. Keith Hancock, 2000), and the Australian Telecommunications Research Institute (with Prof. Rob Evans, 2001). I also conducted the independent review of Curtin University’s Office of Research and Development (2001).
I reviewed Postgraduate Diploma of Education program of the Graduate School of Education of the University of Western Australia and was subsequently involved in a two-year project implementing the 99 recommendations of a review of the whole UWA Graduate School, the Postgraduate Coursework Programs of Murdoch University, and the Graduate School of Education of the University of Queensland. I was the consultant facilitator assisting with the joint Murdoch University – University of Western Australia Australian Institute of Education. As mentioned earlier, I also chaired a review of the Aboriginal Centres of the University of Western Australia which recommended the formation of a School of Indigenous Studies at UWA. I have also been involved in reviewing nurse education programs, for example, at La Trobe University in 2000 (with Prof. Beverley Taylor and Ms Philippa de Voil). Partly because of my university and review experience, in 2001 I was commissioned as a consultant to assist the Review of Nurse Education being conducted by the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training in 2001-2.
Teaching
- Supervision of research higher degree students
- EEB 707 ‘Understanding Professional practice’ in the Doctor of Education program.
Professional Engagement
- Australian Association for Educational Research, member. Made an Honorary Life Member in 2001.
- Australian Evaluation Society. Received inaugural ET&S Award for Outstanding Contribution to Evaluation, 1986.
- Action Learning, Action Research & Process Management (ALARPM) Association, Inc. Was ‘Congress Advocate’ (formerly known as Patron) of the Joint 5th World Congress on Action Learning, Action Research and Process Management (ALARPM) and the 9th World Congress on Participatory Action Research held in Ballarat, Victoria, in September 2000.