Lisa Cary

Biography

It has been quite a journey to Dr Lisa Cary current position as a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Murdoch University.  She started my career as a secondary teacher here in Western Australia in the 1980’s. Since then, however, She has taught, studied and conducted research in educational contexts in Australia, Canada and the United States of America. She completed her Master of Education degree at the University of Regina in Canada in 1995 and her Doctor of Philosophy degree at The Ohio State University in the United States of America in 1999. Since completing her doctoral degree She held a number of academic positions in the U.S.A., including Assistant Professor at Oklahoma State University and Associate Professor at The University of Texas in Austin, Texas. She began her time here at Murdoch in 2010.  Her academic identity in the fields of Curriculum Studies, Social Education and Educational Research emerged in those years overseas.  Now She hope to bring all of these life experiences as both teacher and researcher to bear on my work here in Australia.  

Research Interest

Lisa Cary  work focuses on four research areas (with significant blurring of the boundaries between each area) : 1)  The Study of Curriculum - the production of valid knowledge and the study of power in curriculum. The central question is “Whose knowledge counts?”.  This question provides a window into the social construction of knowledge and the exclusionary practices of schooling for those considered deviant of different. 2)  Educational Research Theory – The Philosophical Foundations of Understanding (epistemology – how we know what we know), and Issues of  Representation in research. 3) The Social Construction of the Subject – from a sociological and anthropological perspective, I am interested in issies of race, class, gender and sexuality.  By historicising the present, I consider how we know difference and how this knowing excludes those considered the Other. 4) Social Education – this area brings together all of the specific areas of interest outlined above.  I have been researching in this area for some years and now have returned to Australia to research the histocial social construction of the ‘good citizen’, the ‘good girl’ and the ‘good teacher’.  I examine the way ‘how we know what we know’ is a historical product reflected in contemporary discourses.