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This paper draws on transnational education inquiry from Guatemala to Australia. Grounded in field research on Indigenous matters, this paper offers fractal education inquiry as a proposition to interrupt the straight and spatialized notions of time that produce developmental, salvific, and progress-centric aspirations from which educational problems are generated. Set as a manifestación, the paper begins with the case of the Don Dale youth detention center in Australia's Northern Territory and moves on to define the terms of fractal inquiry to defy carceral logics. Fractal education inquiry is exemplified in the study of teacher education reforms in Guatemala. In the last section, the paper interrogates the logics of the gap, teacher competencies in diverse classrooms, and the disadvantaging of populations as reinscriptions of educational regimes attempting to tame multiple and Indigenous fractal ontologies that defy the linear temporalities ruling current schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to provide a source of critical and theoretical reflection on the current mathematics educational objectives for Indigenous students in Australia, which are premised on acceptance of underlying concepts of 'equity'. It is not the intention of this paper to identify 'how' Indigenous knowledge can be positioned within mathematics curricula, as this would entail a philosophical inquiry much deeper than has been afforded thus far. The intent here is a consideration, facilitated through the lens of key concepts of Foucault, of some of the boundaries currently shaping the ways in which this positioning is being influenced in the mathematics, albeit neoliberal education context. Acknowledging the interplay between the social, and unconsciously shaped adoptions of what can be considered truth; knowledge; and therefore power, is a first step toward developing the openness of heart and mind needed to make real and transformative changes to education for future societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I (re)define outsourcing in a way that reflects the nature of the practice in education. While business and management definitions of outsourcing have been generative to this point, they are relatively broad and place wide boundaries on the practice. Moreover, they do not acknowledge the interpretation and enactment of outsourcing in contexts where economic models were never supposed to dominate. To create a bespoke and 'stipulative' definition that is a better fit-for-purpose, I selected one school subject, Health and Physical Education (HPE), and one country, Australia, as an illustrative case. I then analysed three literature corpora to find examples and attributes of outsourcing. I argue that recruiting this new definition will allow scholars within and beyond the field of HPE to construct new arguments and generate different types of rich data on the practice in ways that they might not necessarily have been able to previously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TheAustralian Curriculum: Historyhas emerged out of a neoliberal federal education policy landscape. This is a policy landscape where pragmatic and performative, rather than pedagogic concerns are clearly foregrounded, and this has implications for curriculum development and implementation. A useful way to conceptualise the features, assumptions and potentialities of theAustralian Curriculum: Historythat has been produced from these policy imperatives is through a framework provided by the descriptors, ‘thin’ and ‘thick’. A thin curriculum is one that essentially equates curriculum with a product, and where the prescribed content is central to understanding what a curriculum is. A thick curriculum, on the other hand, is one where the curriculum is understood as a verb, where the details of content are secondary to an exploration of bigger questions and concepts, and where curriculum theory is the starting point for the selection of content. The use of ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ as the ends of a continuum of curriculum provides insights into the purposes of a curriculum. Ultimately, such a dichotomy exposes assumptions about what is important knowledge and who is in control of the curriculum. This paper focuses on how theAustralian Curriculum: Historyas an example of a ‘thin’ curriculum, presents a number of challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates increases in the identification of special educational needs in the New South Wales (NSW) government school system over the last two decades, which are then discussed with senior public servants working within the NSW Department of Education and Communities (DEC). Participant narratives indicate deep structural barriers to inclusion that are perpetuated by the discourses and practices of regular and special education. Despite policies that speak of ‘working together’ for ‘every student’ and ‘every school’, students who experience difficulty in schools and with learning often remain peripheral to the main game, even though their number is said to be increasing. There is, however, some positive progress being made. Findings suggest that key policy figures within the NSW DEC are keenly aware of the barriers and have adopted alternative strategies to drive inclusion via a new discourse of ‘participation’ which is underpinned by the linking of student assessment and the resourcing of schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Colonial settler societies' differing concepts and experiences of time entangle in enactments of curriculum knowledge and the governing of human subjects. This article examines how an Anglo-Eurocentric historical representation of time is used as a principle of reason to establish the conditions of epistemic progress through the curriculum and culturally accounts for human agency, a teleological understanding of human development, and representations of the individual as a subject of knowledge. Here we question how representations of temporality are deployed in curricula to problematise human potential and the subjectification of individuals through the promise of securing human flourishing. We connect this discussion to the way people of the First Nations of Australia report their understanding of time as a principle to order an immanent experience of materiality, recurrence and becoming. This dialogue foregrounds how differing cultural conceptions of time establish conditions of possibility for experiencing and understanding the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structure of the Australian national curriculum encompasses engagement with ‘intercultural education’. Significantly, the context from which the curriculum was developed was heavily influenced by a multiculturalist ideology in which notions of cohesion and harmony were dominant. Therefore, those working with the curriculum need to understand the limited ways in which ideas of ‘diverse’ culture might be constructed. As a cultural text this curriculum is a place of encounter between teachers and the various influences on the curriculum document itself. We assert that the perpetuation of ideographs in the context and text of the curriculum, underpin how ‘intercultural understanding’ is positioned in the Australian Curriculum, and limit the narrative possibility of this encounter. It is essential to identify and interrogate such ideographs if we are to be cognisant of the complex politics of national curriculums and opportunities to ‘re-open’ the place for encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]