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In 1936, Prof A. P. Elkin attended a seminar in Hawaii lasting several weeks, on the topic of 'native education'. In his various papers presented to a range of experts from the region and beyond during the formal conference held in Honolulu as part of the residency, Elkin set out his views on the future of the Indigenous people of Australia. Education would be pivotal to this new approach on pragmatic and humanitarian grounds. Elkin concurred with the findings of the residency: local forms of adapted education were considered appropriate for most Aboriginal Australians, only a minority continuing into further education; communities as well as children should be better prepared for their integration into the nation as the Indigenous people. This paper sets out to interrogate the proximity of anthropology and education in these claims, and the elision of Aboriginal people's agency including their contemporaneous campaigns for equal education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents lesser known accounts from policy makers whose experiences as elite informants span 40 or so years in Australian early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy history between 1972 and 2009. Drawing on a post-structuralist theoretical frame, this paper employs a Foucauldian-influenced approach to discourse analysis. Given the complexity of policy-making contexts, an adaptation of Bradley’s categories was utilised to categorise the elite informants as policy insiders according to their roles and positions within organisations. Bacchi’s approach to policy analysis was drawn upon to critically analyse the effects of policy insider categories on meanings of quality in the formation of ECEC policy. The findings raise questions about what could be known and spoken about meanings of quality in past policy-making processes. They suggest the innermost categories of policy insiders struggle to retain complex meanings of quality in final ECEC policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reveals the significant historical traces which informed the learning practices of teachers at one particular school site in a rural and regional educational district in Australia. Drawing upon recent theorising into professional practice, the paper argues that teacher learning practices are intrinsically ‘ecologically’ related to teachers’ practices at specific sites. However, extending beyond this theorising, the research also reveals how teacher learning – in the case presented, in relation to classroom dialogue – is also significantly influenced by earlier learning experiences of the teachers involved. In this way, teachers’ practices are revealed as not only influenced by present-day, site-specific, whole-school teacher learning, but also by particular events encountered by teachers at an earlier phase of their careers. The research argues for a conception of teachers’ learning which is not only site-informed and ecologically arranged, but also deeply temporally embedded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although international definitions of early childhood repeatedly refer to a birth-8 age span, there are complex, institutional divides within this age range. This paper explores the divide between pre-compulsory and compulsory early childhood institutions. In countries such as Finland this divide is not such an issue because children do not begin formal schooling until age seven or eight. However, in Australia these 8 years include both pre-compulsory programs (often birth-5) and compulsory schooling. We argue that in situations where the early years of compulsory school are included in a country's definitions of early childhood, they often occupy a tenuous place in research, policy and practice. Drawing from the history of early childhood education in South Australia, we explore the place that the early years of school have occupied in early childhood discourse, policy and practice and then consider some contemporary state-based and national reforms. Our hope is that by considering the South Australian past, the paper may provide a space from which to advocate for policies and structures that uphold specialist expertise and leadership in the early years of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1832, British Quakers James Backhouse and George Washington Walker travelled ‘under concern’ on a trans-imperial journey that took nine years and spanned the Australian colonies of Van Diemen's Land, New South Wales and Swan River in Western Australia, Mauritius and South Africa's Cape Colony. Backhouse and Walker were fundamental to the creation and expansion of humanitarian networks in the antipodes, where they made major humanitarian interventions in matters concerning Aboriginal peoples, penal reform, slavery and education. This paper first traces the genesis and historical dimensions of their journey to contextualise it within a long transnational tradition of Quakers travelling ‘under concern’. The paper considers the tour through diverse interpretative approaches such as transnationalism and new work on transnational social movements, humanitarian travel writing and textuality, and argues that Backhouse and Walker were not imperial agents, nor were they agitators operating outside empire, but rather occupied a complex position as ‘institutional opponents’ working within imperial political circuits to broker various humanitarian reforms at multiple levels in the furtherance of their particular moral empire. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

High quality education programs are essential for preparing the next generation of Chinese medicine (CM) practitioners. Currently, training in CM occurs within differing health and education policy contexts. There has been little analysis of the factors influencing the form and status of CM education in different regions. Such a task is important for understanding how CM is evolving internationally and predicting future workforce characteristics. This paper compares the status of CM education in Australia and Hong Kong across a range of dimensions: historical and current positions in the national higher education system, regulatory context and relationship to the health system, and public and professional legitimacy. The analysis highlights the different ways in which CM education is developing in these settings, with Hong Kong providing somewhat greater access to clinical training opportunities for CM students. However, common trends and challenges shape CM education in both regions, including marginalisation from mainstream health professions, a small but established presence in universities, and an emphasis on biomedical research. Three factors stand out as significant for the evolution of CM education in Australia and Hong Kong and may have international implications: continuing biomedical dominance, increased competition between universities, and strengthened links with mainland China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the Public Relations Institute of Australia's introduction in 1991 of a national accreditation programme for university courses. Drawing on an analysis of previously unstudied industry archives, it identifies four themes significant for industry perspectives of education: public relations knowledge; industry expectations and experience; public relations curricula; and academic legitimacy. While university education was perceived by institute members to demonstrate the professional standing of public relations, the findings reveal divergent understandings of its role and content and identify considerable resistance to the institutionalisation of public relations knowledge. At the same time, the expansion and marketisation of higher education led to the introduction of new, vocational courses such as public relations. The significance of this study is it offers new insights into the development of Australian public relations education and the role of the professional association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Australian and New Zealand children in the early decades of the 20th century, much of their learning about the Pacific Islands came through missionary material, often aimed directly at them. This paper examines the representation of Pacific peoples and societies in a number of monthly journals, sections within adult journals, books and plays designed to enthuse Sunday school children and educate them about missionary activity. Early attempts were ponderous, but Australasian societies soon followed the example of the London Missionary Society's News from Afar (available through Australian Congregational churches), which included adventure stories about children in India, China and the Pacific; news of the various John Williams ships; competitions; specialised artwork; and a generally child-friendly philosophy. Few were as successful, but some imaginative attempts were made by Methodist, Presbyterian and Anglican authorities to encourage Australian and New Zealand children to identify with the missionary needs of the Pacific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World Veterinary Year in 2011 celebrates the 250th anniversary of the establishment of the first modern veterinary school at Lyon in France. To put veterinary education in Australia in its historical context, the veterinary school at Lyon was established nine years before the British had discovered the east coast of Australia in 1770, and 27 years before a shipment of convicts transported from overcrowded gaols in England had arrived in Sydney in 1788. This paper discusses the development of veterinary education in Australia from that time to the present day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1850s to the 1970s the teaching force in Catholic schools in Australia was dominated by priests, female religious and brothers. This paper details the scope of existing research on these teachers, the demands of their religious vocation, their own education, the atmosphere which they established in the schools, leadership opportunities, and the ‘darker side’ of their way of life. Such expositions can promote reflection on the possibility that teaching can be influenced by discourses of ‘vocation’ and ‘the giving of service’, every bit as much as it can be by ‘industrial’ and ‘labour’ perspectives. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]