Associate Professor
Cushla Kapitzke

This person does not currently hold a position at QUT.
Biography
My early work as a critical language and literacy educator focused on the literacies afforded by new communications technologies. As part of that work, I observed that heightened levels of copyright protection accompanied the upsurge of creative endeavour enabled by networked technologies. From a critical sociological perspective, policy trends toward more tightly regulated intellectual property regimes can be viewed as mechanisms for the maintenance of scarcity within conditions of abundance.
Following this, my current teaching and research program focuses on issues of education policy and governance in relation to the shrinking domains of public knowledge and public education within social contexts driven by global capital. I use Neo-Foucauldian theorisations of power, the subject, agency, and governmentality to link macro forces of globalisation with everyday practices in local intersections of education, the state, and the market.
For example, with a team of researchers from QUT, Griffith University, and the Department of Education and Training, I lead an ARC Linkage study of industry school partnerships. Given the focus on 'partnering' in current state and national policy discourse, the project investigates conceptions of partnerships held by participants. Its aim is to assess the degree to which participant views and practices reflect the literature framing partnerships as networks for knowledge sharing across the sites of schools, communities and workplaces. It is anticipated that the findings will generate a framework for partnering to ensure optimum outcomes for all parties, including students, industry, business and community.
Personal details
Keywords
Education Policy, Globalisation, Governmentality studies, Literacy, Literacy education, Sociology of Education, copyrights, educational implications for intellectual property regimes, globalization, knowledge policy, sociology of public knowledge, the intellectual commons
Discipline
Curriculum and Pedagogy, Sociology, Library and Information Studies
Field of Research code, Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), 2008
Qualifications
- PhD (James Cook Uni. of North Qld)
- MEd (James Cook Uni. of North Qld)
- Cert of TechLib (Kelvin Grove C.A.E)
- BA (James Cook Uni. of North Qld)
- Certificate of Education (Townsville T.C.)
Professional memberships and associations
- Australian Association for Research in Education
- American Association for Research in Education
- Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
- Registered secondary teacher, Queensland College of Teachers (1975-2010)
Teaching
I currently teach the entry unit for the Master of Education program, EDN610 Professional Dialogues in Education.
Other undergraduate and postgraduate subjects I have taught include:
- Media & Technologies in Education
- Technology, Media and Literacy
- Language & Discourse in Education
- Becoming a Qualitative Researcher
- Digital information, Knowledge and Learning
- Virtual Learning Communities for K–12 Education
- Library to Cybrary: Education for the Information Age
I also deliver workshops and seminars on research design and scholarly publishing for the Centre for Learning Innovation, which is the organisational unit that manages and supports research for the Faculty of Education.
Experience
My current record of scholarly outputs is 83 publications, including 26 refereed items since my appointment to QUT in 2006.
More than 470 citations of my work, as recorded in Harzing’s Publish or Perish citations metric tool, provide evidence of the national and international impact of the work.
I have conducted numerous consultancy research projects and, since 2010, have attracted $1 030 322 of ARC Linkage grant funding to QUT. I am team member of one of those projects and leader of the team in the other.
From 2008 to 2010, I held the position of Associate Editor for the professional journal of the educational research community in Australia, The Australian Educational Researcher. I have served as editorial reviewer for a number of international journals such as the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, and currently serve on the editorial boards of Educational Philosophy and Theory, Policy Futures in Education, Critical Discourse Studies and International Journal of Progressive Education.
Selected publications
- Kapitzke C, Peters M, (2007) Global knowledge cultures, Sense.
- Kapitzke C, (2009) Rethinking copyrights for the library through creative commons licensing, Library Trends, 58 (1), pp. 95-108.
- Hay S, Kapitzke C, (2009) 'Smart' state for a knowledge economy: reconstituting creativity through student subjectivity, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30 (2), pp. 151-164.
- Hay S, Kapitzke C, (2009) Industry school partnerships: reconstituting spaces of educational governance, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 7 (2), pp. 203-216.
- Dooley K, Kapitzke C, Luke C, (2007) New Urban Terrains: Literacies, World Kids, and Teachers. In W Pink & G Noblit, International Handbook of Urban Education, Springer, pp. 381-394.
- Pendergast D, Kapitzke C, (2006) Virtual teachers: Negotiating new spaces for teaching bodies, Pedagogies, 1 (4), pp. 253-267.
- Kapitzke C, (2003) Information literacy: a review and poststructural critique, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 26 (1), pp. 53-66.
- Kapitzke C, (2003) (In)formation literacy: a positivist epistemology and a politics of (out)formation, Educational Theory, 53 (1), pp. 37-53.
- Kapitzke C, Pendergast D, (2005) Virtual schooling service: Productive pedagogies or pedagogical possibilities?, Teachers College Record, 107 (8), pp. 1626-1651.
QUT ePrints
For more publications by Cushla, explore their research in QUT ePrints (our digital repository).
Research projects
- Title
- Industry-school Partnerships: A Strategy to Enhance Education and Training Opportunities
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP100200052
- Start year
- 2011
- Keywords
- Youth Employment; Education Policy; Industry-school Partnerships; Curriculum Innovation
- Title
- Remote Music Interactions through On-line Networks
- Primary fund type
- CAT 1 - Australian Competitive Grant
- Project ID
- LP0989403
- Start year
- 2010
- Keywords
- Music Interactions; Online Networks; User Generated Content; Peer to Peer Interaction; Music Education