Publications

Featured publications

  • Students and a teacher in a classroom, taken from the back of the room.

    Undermining teachers' social capital

    A paper co-authored with my colleagues Nicky Dulfer and Jeana Kriewaldt, based on data from research into differentiation in Victorian schools. The article explores the impacts of discourses and policy directions on teachers’ perceptions of professional trust. Drawing on case study data from two schools in the state of Victoria, Australia, we highlight the ways discourses of professional distrust emerge through policy directives that position teachers as ‘the problem’ in education.

    Read it here.

  • The cream-coloured facade of Melbourne's Immigration Museum, located in the grand nineteenth century building Old Customs House.

    The Palimpsest and Heterotopia: Reading Traces at Melbourne’s Immigration Museum

    A chapter for the edited book, Temporality, Space and Place in Education and Youth Research (ed. Julie McLeod, Kate O’Connor, Nicole Davis, and Amy McKernan). The chapter explores the galleries of the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, Victoria through a ‘palimpsestuous’ lens, exploring the ways layers of the past are over-written in the galleries of this museum.

    Read more about it here.

  • A black and white photograph of a protest march. A placard reads, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

    Confronting Histories and the Learner Profile

    Confronting Histories and the Learner Profile is the final report for my Jeff Thompson Research Award, funded by the International Baccalaurate Organisation. The project investigated the ways students in International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) History classrooms learn with histories of trauma, injustice, and violence. Teachers and students of IBDP History were interviewed, canvassing a range of perspectives of learning with confronting topics and eliciting insights into the potential of these topics to support the development (or activation) of a range of Learner Profile attributes.

    Read it here.

Publications

Academic papers (peer-reviewed)

McKernan, A. (2023). ‘The Heterotopia and the palimpsest: Reading the layers of the Immigration Museum, Melbourne.’ In Temporality and Place in Educational Research: Looking Beyond Local/Global Binaries, edited by J. McLeod, K. O’Connor, A. McKernan, & N. Davis. Routledge.

Dulfer, N., McKernan, A., & Kriewaldt, J. (2023). ‘Undermining teachers’ social capital: A question of trust, professionalism, and empowerment.’ British Journal of Sociology of Education. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2023.2179018

Smith, C., Selkrig, M., Dulfer, N., Harrison, M., Cochrane, T., McKernan, A., Pollard, V. & Rasche, J. (2023). Traversing learning and leading collaboration: Stepping towards new power values during turbulent and in-between times. In Coleman, K., Uzhegova, D., Blaher, B., & Arkoudis, S. (Eds.), The Educational Turn. Routledge.

Dulfer, N., Kriewaldt, J., & McKernan, A. (in press). 'Using collaborative action research to enhance differentiation.' International Journal of Inclusive Education.

López López, L., McCaw, C., Di Biase, R., McKernan, A., Rudolph, S., Galatis, A., Dulfer, N., Gerrard, J., McKinley, E., McLeod, J., & Rizvi, F. (2020). 'The Quarantine Archives: Educators in “Social Isolation”.' History of Education Review 49(2): 195-213.

McKernan, A. (2020). ‘“A little more courageous”: cultural recognition and histories of migration and diversity at the Immigration Museum, Melbourne.’ Museum Management and Curatorship 35(1): 2-14, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2019.1707706

McKernan, A. & McLeod, J. (2018). ‘Commemoration, affective practice and the difficult histories of war.’ In Emotion, Affective Practices and the Past in the Present, edited by L. Smith, M. Wetherell, and G. Campbell, pp. 56-69. Oxon and New York: Routledge.

McKernan, A. (2018). ‘Affective practices and the prison visit: Learning at Port Arthur and the Cascades Female Factory.’ History of Education Review 47(2): 131-142. [Winner Emerald Publishing Awards for Excellence, Outstanding Paper 2019]. Open access: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/HER-11-2017-0023/full/html.

McKernan, A. (2017). ‘Discomfort at the Australian War Memorial: Learning the trauma of war.’ History Australia 14(1): 99-114.

McKernan, A. (2015). ‘Thinking historically in the Immigration Museum’. Agora 50(4): 4-11.

Reports and media

Selkrig, M., Dulfer, N., Harrison, M., Smith, C., Cochrane, T., & McKernan, A. (2023, forthcoming). Keeping it human: Learning design in the digital landscape. Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne.

McKernan, A. (2022, May 1). ‘Why one cute hamster says everything you need to know about what online learning should be.’ Byteside. https://www.byteside.com/2022/05/one-cute-hamster-says-everything-about-online-learning/

McKernan, A. and Oldham, S. (2019). Confronting Histories and the Learner Profile. Report to the International Baccalaureate Organisation. Available at: https://www.ibo.org/contentassets/8cef1adee86046cb902d930a17da1e56/confronting-historieslearner-profile-full-report.pdf

Dulfer, N., McKernan, A. and Brindle, K. (2017). Different countries, different approaches to teaching and learning (Jeff Thompson project report). Report to the International Baccalaureate Organisation. Available at: https://www.ibo.org/globalassets/dulfer-jta-final-report-en.pdf

Flottman, R., McKernan, A., Church, A. & Tayler, C. Practice Principle 2: Partnerships with professionals [Victorian Early Years Learning and Development Framework Evidence Paper]. Department of Education and Early Childhood Education, Melbourne.

Conference presentations

Dulfer, N., McKernan, A. & Brindle, K. (2017). Differentiation in a Global Curriculum Context. Presentation at the British Educational Research Association conference, 5 – 7 September, Brighton, UK. [Authored, did not present. 

McKernan, A., Suda, E. & Molloy, J. (2017). Selective histories: Sifting and sorting truths. Presentation at the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria conference, 20 – 21 July, Melbourne.

McKernan, A. (2016). Memory, history and affective dissonance: Managing the past in the present at Port Arthur. Presentation at the Australian Association of Research in Education conference, 28 November – 2 December, Melbourne.

McKernan, A. (2015, July). Discomfort at the Australian War Memorial: learning the difficult histories of war and conflict. Presentation at the Australian Historical Association conference, 6 – 10 July, Sydney. [Recipient of AHA/Copyright Agency Bursary]

McKernan, A. (2014, May). Difficult history and social justice in Australia’s museums. Presentation at the Museums Australia Conference, 16 – 19 May, Launceston. [Recipient of a bursary from the Museum Australia Education Network]

McKernan, A. (2013, November). Comfort with discomfort: empathy and experience in Museum Victoria. Presentation at the MGSE Graduate Conference, 23 November, Melbourne.

McKernan, A. (2013, July). Difficult histories in German museums. Presentation at the HTAV Conference, 25 – 26 July, Melbourne.

McKernan, A. (2013, June). Uncomfortable Histories: Educating with difficult histories in Australian Museums. Presentation at the EERA Histories of Education Summer School, 13 – 16 June, Hamburg, Germany.

Jongebloed, L. & McKernan, A. (2012, July). Making the most of museums. Presentation at the HTAV Conference, 26 – 27 July, Melbourne.

Lectures and invited presentations

McKernan, A. (2019). Confronting Histories and the Learner Profile. Invited presentation at the International Baccalaureate Schools Australasia Leadership Symposium, 23 August, Melbourne.

McKernan, A. (2018). Teaching Confronted and Contested Histories in Museums. Presentation to the Museums Australia Education Network ‘It’s Academic’ seminar, 6 September, Melbourne.

McKernan, A. (2015). White walls and psychological punishment: Difficult history in Port Arthur’s Separate Prison. Sites of International Memory & Documenting UNESCO in Australia Workshop, August, University of Melbourne.