Sustaining the Home Economics profession in New Times A Convergent Moment

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Sustaining the Home Economics profession in New
Times A Convergent Moment

• Dr Donna Pendergast

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Aims of this presentation

• The establishment decade
• Convergent moments
• Revisioning and sustaining
• the profession the
• New Home Economics

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Australia????
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The establishment decade

• terminology, the name
• the connection of the profession with
• womens work and how this was a
• significant achievement in the context of
  
• the first wave of feminism
• divergent foci and lack of separate
• subject matter

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Converging Events

• History - A century of development and change in
  gender roles
• Patterns - Consumption, globalisation, abundance
• Generations a sociocultural construction
• Context - New Times
• Family structure - Changes to individual and
  family characteristics
• Education for Sustainable Development UNESCO
  2005-2014

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1. History - A century of development
1900 - 1910

• 1901 Lake Placid conferences Home Economics
  named
• 1903 Australian women vote for the first time
• 1903 Henry Ford founds the Ford Motor Company
• 1903 The Wright Brothers first flight at Kitty
  Hawk
• 1905 Einstein outlines his Special Theory of
  Relativity (Emc2)
• 1907 US Stock market crash
• 1908 Hollywood is founded in the Los Angeles
  area

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1911-1920

• 1912 Titanic sinks after hitting iceberg
• 1914 World War 1
• 1916 Treatment of war casualties helps develop
  plastic surgery
• 1916 Margaret Sanger arrested for opening birth
  control clinic in Brooklyn
• 1917 American Clarence Birdseye develops
  freezing for use in the preservation of food

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• 1918 British women over 30 win right to vote
• 1918 Influenza pandemic killing more than 20
  million
• 1920 Sigmund Freud Introduction to
  Psychoanalysis
• 1920 Oxford University admits women

Emergency hospital for influenza patients
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1921-1930

• 1928 Disney introduces Mickey Mouse
• 1928 Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
• 1927 First home refrigerator by GE
• 1929 Wall street crashes leading to world-wide
  economic depression
• 1930 Invention of Perspex and plastics

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1931-1940

• 1936 Charlie Chaplin speaks on flim for the
  first time
• 1936 Worlds first high definition television
  service launched by BBC
• 1938 Orson Welles radio show War of the Worlds
  causes panic
• 1939 Nylon stockings marketed
• 1939 End of the Great Depression following the
  Wall Street Crash of 1929

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1941-1950

• 1942 Nazis propose Final Solution
• 1945 America drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima
  Nagasaki
• 1945 End of World War 11
• 1946 Doctor Spocks The Commonsense Book of
  Baby and Child Care

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• 1947 Supersonic flight introduced
• 1947 Invention of the transistor
• 1948 World Health Organisation formed
• 1950 Korean War begins
• 1950 Mother Teresa establishes the Missionaries
  of Charity in Calcutta

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1951-1960

• 1952 Elizabeth becomes Queen
• 1956 Fortran computer language is developed
• 1956 Elvis Presley records his first hit
• 1957 Launch of USSR Sputnik 1, the worlds
  first artificial satellite
• 1958 Ultrasound used to diagnose disorders of
  the foetus
• 1960 Contraceptive pill marketed

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1961-70

• 1961 Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in
  space
• 1062 John Glenn the first American to orbit the
  earth
• 1963 Measles vaccine
• 1963 John F Kennedy assassinated
• 1967 First heart transplant
• 1966 Indira Gandhi becomes first prime minister
  of India
• 1966 Mao Tsetung begins Chinas Cultural
  Revolution
• 1969 American astronauts Neil Armstrong and
  Edwin Aldrin land on the moon in Apollo 11
  mission
• 1969 Woodstock music festival

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1971-1980

• 1972 CAT scanning introduced
• 1973 Famine hits Ethiopia
• 1973 Concorde developed as product of the Cold
  War
• 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen offer to build
  BASIC complier for MITS the start of what will
  become Microsoft
• 1977 Apple 11 Commodore computers introduced
• 1978 First test tube baby born in England
• 1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes Britains first
  woman Prime Minister

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1981-1990

• 1981 Scientists identify Acquired Immune
  Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)
• 1983 Microsoft announces Windows technology
• 1983 first laptop computer
• 1985 British Antarctic survey finds a hole in
  the ozone layer
• 1987 World population passes 5 billion
• 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall
• 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre
• 1990 Human Genome project established

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1991-2000

• 1991 WWW developed for the internet
• 1991 Virtual Reality computer systems developed
• 1995 Galileo space probe reaches Jupiter
• 1997 Global HIV infection at 22.6 million cases
• 1997 Scottish scientists succeed in cloning
  sheep Dolly
• 1999 Japan legalises the Pill for women

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2001

• 2001 September 11 terrorism attack on World
  Trade Centre
• 2001 War on Terrorism
• Digital revolution continues, with SMS texting
• Robotics
• Genetic modification

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Our world has no boundaries
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• 4th C - Alphabet literacy
• 15th C - Printing Press
• 20th C - Digital technology

• The emergence of electronically based, digital
  culture has begun to reorganise and reshape how
  people live their lives. These effects will
  become greater.

Dr Donna Pendergast
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2. The effects of abundanceLife expectancy
At 65 years of age

• 1800 you had been dead for 27 years (38)
• 1900 you had been dead for 12 years (53)
• 2000 you will have 12 15 years to go (80)
• 2100 you will be halfway through your life
  (130)

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Obesity percentages in OECD countries
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Obesity health issues

• Type II Diabetes
• Heart Disease
• High Blood Pressure
• Sleep Apnea
• Osteoarthritis
• Gall Bladder Disease
• Fatty Liver Disease
• Cancer
• Asthma
• Chronic headaches
• Varicose veins
• Coronary artery disease
• Hernias

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3. Generations

• From Greek origins where literal sense is in
  procreation, the production of offspring
• A generation can also represent all the people
  born at the same time, sometimes called a
  generational cohort usually extends around 22
• Anglophone someone who speaks English natively
  or by adoption
• Cultural background associated with the English
  language, regardless of ethnic or geographical
  differences

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(No Transcript)
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Digital Immigrants V Digital Natives
Dr Donna Pendergast
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• Events shaping Millennials
• Digital revolution, personal computers
• Internet, WWW, email
• Chat lines, Blogs
• SMS texting
• Multi-mediated communication
• School violence
• September 11 (marks the birth end)
• Terrorism (marks the birth end)

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4. Context - New Times New Basics

• New student identities changing notions of
  identity, family structures, poverty, social
  dislocation
• New economies with a focus on globalized
  economies, communication across different media
• New workplaces with a focus on the new work
  order, incorporating a shift to expert novice
  new sectors of employment employment insecurity
• New technology including digital and
  multi-mediated communications technologies
• Diverse communities - increasing stress on the
  sense of neighbourhood, community and identity
• Complex cultures blended cultures and loss of
  cultural boundaries
• (Education Queensland, 2000)

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5. Major trends affecting families
worldwide

• changes in family structures
• demographic ageing
• rise of migration
• HIV/AIDS pandemic
• (United Nations)

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The effect of these trends is .

• a challenge to the ability to fulfil basic
  functions of production, reproduction,
  socialization as well as needs of family members
  regarding health, nutrition, shelter, physical
  and emotional care and personal development
• families should be at the center of any future
  social policy development.

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UN Millennium Development Goals 2005-2015

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Achieve universal primary education
• Promote gender equality and empower women
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
• Ensure environmental sustainability
• Develop a global partnership for development

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6. Education for Sustainable Development

• the core themes of education for sustainability
  include lifelong learning, interdisciplinary
  education, partnerships, multicultural education
  and empowerment (UNESCO 200515).
• no one discipline can or should claim ownership
  of Education for Sustainable Development
  (2005np).
• The societal goals of sustainability
  environmental stewardship social equity, justice
  and tolerance and quality of life for all people
  in this generation and the next

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Revisioning and sustaining the profession
theNew Home Economics
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• What place does home economics have in
  contemporary society?
• Can home economics be a vehicle for preparing
  students to live and work in the new economics
  and new workplaces, with new identities and new
  global challenges, where globalization is a
  central way of functioning and communication
  technologies mean an end to enclosure?
• Is home economics a redundant, failed
  institution, a relic left over from a bygone era?

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Evolution of home economics
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• Ironically, just as the need for formal study
  that centred the home and family led to the
  emergence of home economics during the Lake
  Placid conferences one hundred years ago,
  contemporary society is again floundering in the
  wake of world events and societal evolution that
  has led to individual alienation, loss of sense
  of community, inequality, health crises, economic
  mismanagement and predicaments that challenge the
  stability of individuals, families and
  communities globally. It is my contention that
  we need to identify what the major trends are
  affecting individuals and families for this and
  the next generation, and to position the
  profession as a leader directing the political
  action around these issues.

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• We need to ensure our students in classrooms are
  prepared to be active and global citizens in the
  information age. This means a major shift to the
  way we do home economics. To date, home
  economics as a lived culture has failed to
  recognise possibilities for reconstructing its
  own field beyond the confines of modernity and
  patriarchal societal practices, a problem that
  has led to the demise of the field at many levels
  and in many societal contexts due to a devaluing
  of the contributions of the field and the
  negative consequences of constant attempts to
  legitimise the field using societal models that
  ensure its marginality and devaluing. The task
  for the home economics profession is to
  reconfigure itself, without conforming to
  patriarchal power frameworks to resist the ease
  of accepting the value structures dictated by
  patriarchy, and instead to look to a reconfigured
  way of approaching and positioning the profession
  for the contemporary world.

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Need for reconfigured cultural practice

• splintering of specialisations knowledge
• research typically conducted as a small
  piecemeal body of work, lacking impact cohesive
  potentialities
• loss of common professional purpose
• anti-intellectualism
• reluctance on the part of many professionals to
  be self-reflective about their own beliefs
• lack of respect for the academic world
• continuos struggles to gain legitimacy within
  patriarchal parameters
• apolitical orientation of many members of the
  profession
• dominance of transient social agendas driving
  home economics
• difficult relationship between feminism home
  economics (Pendergast, 2001)

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Family as Sociospace

• Characterised by
• imagined community the construction and
  maintenance of social bonds and of support
  networks and
• ability to operate across time-space boundaries
  where family members may no longer be in the
  same local time and place, but are able to
  utilise technology such as email, the web,
  telephone, to provide instant access

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• Want to combat the epidemic of obesity? Bring
  back home economics The New York Times, 2003
• Children who cant cook cant sew cant save
  The Scotsman, 2005
• Ive always believed that home ec should be a
  required class in high school, its certainly
  more important than half the junk they do make
  you learn.
• My high school experience would have been a
  thousand times more valuable if Id been able to
  take home ec instead of phys ed
• Yeah, and if you have decent home ec classes,
  feminazis will scream that schools are trying to
  suppress women etc etc
• Home ec is a failed institution that is degraded
  in the modern school system.
• It may sound old fashioned, but teaching home
  economics is common sense ..to fight rampant
  consumerism, to reduce the divorce rate, to
  diminish child abuse, to prevent cancer and heart
  disease, and to ensure domestic tranquillity,
  this is all we have to do Bring back home
  economics (Austin, 1999).

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5 Capitals model

• Natural
• Human
• Social
• Institutional
• Produced

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Creating positive capital

• The name - rebrand
• Fragmentation of the field
• Contestation of curriculum
• Academic evolution - three essential dimensions
• a focus on fundamental concerns of family and
  everyday life and their importance both at the
  individual and near community levels, and also at
  societal and global levels
• the coalescing of knowledge, processes and skills
  from multiple disciplines synthesised through
  interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary inquiry
  and pertinent theoretical paradigms and
• demonstrated capacity to take critical/
  transformative/ emancipatory action to enhance
  wellbeing and to advocate for individuals,
  families and communities at all levels and
  sectors or society

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Tools for action personal and collective

• Get out of the legitimacy trap stop being
  compliant
• Get a clear brand make it a priority
• Get one/some celebrity/champions identify
  innovators, promote them, get them communicating
• Get beyond volunteerism pool resources locally
  and globally so that the profession is
  collaborative, not competitive
• Get political always act strategically
• Get a world view understand the key issues
  facing families and individuals. This is the
  focus of home economics. IFHE is on several UN
  committees.
• Get a handle on local issues these will reflect
  global issues
• Get relevant curriculum focus on developing
  lifelong learning attributes in students and the
  capacities associated with expert novice
  development

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more tools for action

• Get digital skills get current
• Get strategies for retaining X geners they want
  challenge, reward, recognition
• Get Y Generation savvy they want things to
  happen quickly, want friendships and
  relationships that last, want to work in teams,
  they are optimistic and confident .
• Get tertiary qualifications in place whilst the
  first round of the academic wars are lost, the
  battle isnt get a research agenda forming
  coalitions and collaboration
• Get parents on side these people care about the
  future
• Get a succession plan plan for the future of
  the profession
• Get networked, preferably internationally the
  national boundaries are down now

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Creating a preferred future for the home
economics profession.

• Where do we want to be in 2015 . 2020 . 2030
  . and beyond, and how do we get there?
• A history of passive compliance ..a future of
  active creation