School of Education
Dr Mary O'Dowd
Senior Lecturer
MEd UWA, MEnvironSci PhD Monash
Mary O'Dowd
Bio
Mary did a PhD at Monash. This started as a participant observation study of at-risk young people who were members of an alternative reality run by anarchists and Christians. The study developed into an analysis of the factors that contributed to alienation and marginalisation including how schools and society failed the young people and what factors could improve school retention. She developed a tool to use graffiti as a tool of sociological interpretation of young people’s lives. Her analysis moved from the micro social sociological context of community and school to one of the ‘at-risk world’ where values of the rich and powerful produced and accepted that marginalised people should exist and die young, and endorsed and promoted a culture of greed and contributed to the destruction of the natural world and people. Mary’s masters and PhD thesis reflects her ongoing research interests. After her PhD she went to TAFE to do a Diploma in Natural Resource Management and then transferred to a Masters of Environment Scienc while working as a research and senior research fellow at Monash University . The Monash work included consultancies the areas of education for juvenile offenders; equity of access to tertiary institutions for low-socio-economic students; and transition and transition pedagogy at university. She has also worked as a lecturer at Monash and UNE in Indigenous Studies and a senior research at Victoria University . Currently Mary O’Dowd has an interest in pre-reconciliation work and environment in Australia .
Research
- Colonial History
- Aboriginal Education
- Sociology of Education
Teaching
Interests focus around equity, colonisation and consequent social and environmental justice.
Topics include:
- equity in education, environmental and history education re colonisation and its implications over 200 years;
- the education of pre-teachers in colonial history;
- transition to tertiary study and tertiary study transitions;
- conciliation as a possibility if there is to be reconciliation;
- writing the politics of being a non-Indigenous scholar in an area often named Indigenous Studies because of the continued marginalisation of the Indigenous within the Australian academy; and
- the impact of biography (including being an heir to seven hundred years of colonisation) on trying to understand anything at all.
Professional Engagement
Member of NTEU