The paper responds to the growing interest in genealogical method as a means of inquiry in education research. The three authors bring together their collective understandingof the nature and purpose of genealogy as a method deriving from the work of Michel Foucault. The authors then indicate how such understandings were applied by each of them to a particular scholarly task. In elaborating the uses and the pitfalls of genealogical approaches by this means, the writers make it clear that there is no blueprintfor genealogical use. Rather, working through genealogical methods demands from the researcher a strong grasp of the epistemological and theoretical tensions involved in asking how our present educational practices function as they do.New methodologies have their tensions, and genealogical method is no exception. In this paper, we explore tensions inherent in enacting genealogical method as a nontraditional research tool. The diµ culty of using a set of methodological techniques which has only marginal status within the eld of educational research is, quite obviously, one signi cant tension. Concern arises because, while genealogy is an increasingly popular methodology in the social sciences, it is often misunderstood, sometimes misrepresented, and has still to achieve broad acceptance. Another concern, based more pragmatically on the question of tense, is getting our grammatical timing right. This occurs because genealogy is a '' history of the present '' (Foucault in Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1982, p. 118) with all the ambivalence around timing that is implied by such a phrase. These are but two of the tensions addressed in this paper ; others are identi ed and illustrated through research instances which we have included from our own work in genealogy.We proceed rst by elaborating the nature of a genealogy and arguing for its importance as a method of educational inquiry. We then move to three research narratives in order to demonstrate how each of us in our writing has struggled to get our textwork under control. Particular pieces of text are used as exemplars of the scope o ¶ ered by the genealogical method as well as some of the traps it sets up for the experienced researcher and the novice alike.

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This paper analyses policies pertaining to school dress codes which have been formulated recently by all state education bureaucracies in Australia. It examines these policies and their implementation in the context of devolution, the marketisation of schools, and cognate social legislation. In doing so it seeks to understand the textual hiatus between government policy and schooling practices.

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This paper investigates the ways in which corporate ideas are impacting on Australian education, with a particular emphasis on secondary schools. We note the growing importance of a culture of enterprise in changing the practices of schooling, indicating how a performative organisational culture is producing different identities and relationships in educational work. The paper begins by considering the imperative for schools and individuals to be enterprising. It then moves on to examine more closely the impact of this discursive shift on teachers, students and school communities as they engage in enterprising practices. We draw on our research of over 50 state and private schools mainly in south-east Queensland to demonstrate how the newly emergent corporate 'curriculum' is producing a changing set of imperatives, responsibilities and outcomes for leadership in 'enterprising" schools.

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