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Mass media provides a public space for its readers to enter the discussion on education, as they consume and interpret key messages, which are often shaped by key educational policies. With a suite of recent teacher education reform measures in Australia aimed at solving the "problem" with teacher quality, a conceptual map for conducting a media framing analysis is prop osed and utilised to examine how teacher quality is portrayed in the media. This study found that the media portrays education, and teacher quality more specifically, in Australia through a lens of crisis and decline, with national policies being positioned as the solution. National policies which focus on more rigorous entry and exit requirements for teacher candidates, or a discourse of inputs, are offered as the solution to the education crisis in Australia. With the inherent power that media holds in proffering particular policies and/or viewpoints, this paper argues for the need to employ five analytic devices – event, format, voice, problem and solution – to understand how teacher quality is portrayed in the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations (UN) asserts that children and young people should have access to human rights education (HRE) and that schools are one of the key means through which HRE should be made available. However, there is currently limited knowledge about the presence and form of HRE in school contexts, and there is no established means through which HRE provision within schools is evaluated. This paper proposes a theoretical framework to support the classification of teachers' responsibilities in relation to HRE and argues that systemic change is needed within education systems if HRE provision is to be realised in more extensive and consistent ways. The curriculum documents of three nations – Australia, England and Sweden – were analysed to determine teacher responsibilities for educating pupils about human rights. The viability of the developed framework was then tested through applying it to the outcomes of these analyses. The theoretical contribution made by the paper deepens knowledge and understandings about the nature of responsibilities placed on teachers to educate pupils about human rights, and provides a foundation from which to stimulate debate about what constitutes effective school-based HRE practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on Bernstein's educational sociology to illustrate how a language-focused "subversive" pedagogic approach (Martin, 2011) was systematically realised through classroom interactions. While educational inequalities are often addressed at the level of policy and budgets, this paper provides a perspective on inequality and differentiated student outcomes within the classroom. Our research context is Australia, where we have a seemingly intractable gap between mainstream educational outcomes and those of disadvantaged groups. We present a study on how teachers' conscious pedagogic choices worked to support marginalised students. The participatory research focused on a series of science lessons, conducted in a suburban primary school, with a high proportion of students of refugee background. We explain how, in collaboration with teachers, we reframed Bernstein's abstract notions of regulative and instructional discourses into practical, intentional pedagogic strategies. We describe how these strategies were named and implemented, how they became a shared heuristic for the research team, and the empowering effect they had on teachers and students. The study demonstrates the potential of bringing educational and linguistic theories into practice as classroom pedagogic dialogue, with the empowerment of marginalised students in mind.

This paper interrogates international and domestic peer relations in two Australian schools and how they are shaped by structural, cultural and discursive dimensions of schooling. In particular, it analyses intercultural relations between domestic and international students in the context of policies promoting "internationalisation-at-home". We argue that how international students are positioned within specific school contexts impacts their sense of inclusion in everyday social and pedagogical relations and informs their relationships with domestic students, whether viewed as a stranger or potentially as a friend raising questions as to who is responsible for intercultural relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four sets of issues raised in the papers published in this special issue of 'Educational Review' are discussed. First problems surrounding the use of the term inclusion are sketched. Secondly, the tendency of writers to resort to reductionism is examined: can the constricting of inclusive education to a traditional special educational framework and the disconnecting of inclusive education policy from the broader educational policy context be avoided? Thirdly, the papers in this issue researching the parent and then the pupil perspective are welcomed as a counterweight to the common silencing of the voice of disabled people and their families. Finally, issues surrounding the training of teachers are raised: should not the preparation of 'inclusive' teachers be woven right across the fabric of the teacher-training curriculum? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home education is a legal educational option in Australia that continues to rise in popularity. This paper summarises the demographics and influences upon the decision to home educate of 385 home education families from Australia, representing 676 children who were home educated at the time of questionnaire completion. The research suggests female caregivers with higher levels of educational achievement than the general population predominantly coordinate home education. Some families eschewed mainstream education for philosophical reasons whilst others home educated due to perceived necessity. However, characteristic of both groups was the belief that the current education system was unable to provide a learning environment that would meet the educational and psychosocial needs of their children. This was not specific to a particular population of students but included those who were gifted children, or those who had a mental health or neurodevelopmental disorder such as autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disabilities, intellectual disability and/or impairment in vision and hearing. This has clear implications for policy and resourcing, including in-service teacher training. It also raises questions in relation to the provision of funding for families who home educate their children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the literature on best practices to engage parents in order to equip them to support their children's higher education aspirations. Parents from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds, in common with other parents, report that they want "the best" for their children's future. Getting a good education is a part of the aspiration of most parents, regardless of SES. However, unlike parents from mid and high SES backgrounds who usually have "educational cultural capital" to support their children's educational aspiration, parents from low SES backgrounds often are unable to confidently access information they need about possible education pathways within and beyond school. Additionally, they need to know where to find out about financial and other support resources available to facilitate access to higher education. Higher education participation by students from non-traditional backgrounds could be improved by outreach that promotes parents' social capital and "educational cultural" capital. This project has built upon University of Tasmania and University of Wollongong's combined experience, international literature and workshops with parent engagement practitioners to identify features of parent engagement programmes and resources that are efficient and effective in engaging parents from low SES backgrounds to support their children's higher education aspirations. From this, the higher education Design and Evaluation Matrix for Outreach was modified to develop a tool to plan, design, modify and evaluate parent engagement programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this position paper we consider the significance of global climate activism by children and young people in the light of ongoing western adult-centric policies and educational practices that largely continue to exclude Indigenous perspectives. Reflecting on the implications of this hegemony in the face of the convergent crises of climate and COVID-19 and concomitant exacerbations of social inequities, we acknowledge the impact of this reality on the emotional wellbeing of children, young people and Indigenous peoples, many of whom may be encountering an overwhelming sense of existential trauma and ecological grief. Drawing on our previous research we provide examples of early childhood pedagogies which resonate Indigenous values of relationality. These include trust in children's judgement in managing risks, fostering a sense of collective pride and identity, and affirming accountability to the wider collectivity of humans and more-than-human entities. We suggest that such grounding in local Indigenous onto-epistemologies can provide inspiration for educational programmes, including environmental education and education for sustainability, as well as for local governance.

Non-traditional open-plan schools and classrooms are currently enjoying a resurgence in Australia, with proponents arguing for the necessity of educational spaces that more readily accommodate the needs of twenty-first century learners. However, these learning environments can pose considerable pedagogic challenges for teachers who must balance the ethos of spaces designed to facilitate autonomous and flexible student learning, while simultaneously managing the complexities of shared space and resources, decreased staff–student ratios, and highly variable student responses to learning in open-plan settings. This paper draws on observational and interview data from an Australian study of three primary schools operating in open-plan spaces. Informed by cultural theories of spatial practice, we argue that the ways in which teachers conceptualize and operationalize notions of “structure” is pivotal to the responsiveness of pedagogic approaches within open-plan spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to present a schema that maps the terrain of intercultural assessment strategies. This schema is based upon Haraway's semiotic square and has two dimensions. The first considers how distant or near the cultural Other is understood to be -- whether they are perceived a "stranger" or a "neighbour." The second considers whether the student is encouraged to see the cultural Other as an object about whom one learns facts, or if student and the cultural Other are expected to interact as a means to transforming their mutually interrelated lives. We argue that this mapping helps illuminate the benefits and shortcomings of various assessment strategies, highlighting the underlying curricular assumptions and objectives of these assessment strategies. This paper argues that curricular and assessment models that treat cultural Others as neighbours engaged in joint transformative change should increasingly be the focus of intercultural learning and assessment strategies. A review of extant literature found that school systems, international and transnational curriculum bodies, and some for-profit companies provide a wide range of models for assessing student intercultural awareness, understanding and componence. These models differ so significantly that the term "intercultural" may appear a floating signifier. However, the benefit of our schema is in classifying these models by focusing on the forms of intercultural interactions they anticipate.

This conceptual paper traces the development of the culture and capture of celebrity in the field of educational leadership. Drawing on Rojek’s (Celebrity. London: Reaktion Books, 2001) typology of celebrity, we examine the emergence of celebrity of leadership that is activated via the current policy environment that compels schools and school leaders to be recognised and well-known. It is this well-knownness that subsequently contributes to the school as a marketable commodity that “people like us” desire. We highlight the complex convergence of these two phenomena in our reading of the independent school sector in Victoria (Australia). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The United Nations (UN) asserts that children and young people should have access to human rights education (HRE) and that schools are one of the key means through which HRE should be made available. However, there is currently limited knowledge about the presence and form of HRE in school contexts, and there is no established means through which HRE provision within schools is evaluated. This paper proposes a theoretical framework to support the classification of teachers' responsibilities in relation to HRE and argues that systemic change is needed within education systems if HRE provision is to be realised in more extensive and consistent ways. The curriculum documents of three nations -- Australia, England and Sweden -- were analysed to determine teacher responsibilities for educating pupils about human rights. The viability of the developed framework was then tested through applying it to the outcomes of these analyses. The theoretical contribution made by the paper deepens knowledge and understandings about the nature of responsibilities placed on teachers to educate pupils about human rights, and provides a foundation from which to stimulate debate about what constitutes effective school-based HRE practices.

This paper interrogates international and domestic peer relations in two Australian schools and how they are shaped by structural, cultural and discursive dimensions of schooling. In particular, it analyses intercultural relations between domestic and international students in the context of policies promoting "internationalisation-at-home". We argue that how international students are positioned within specific school contexts impacts their sense of inclusion in everyday social and pedagogical relations and informs their relationships with domestic students, whether viewed as a stranger or potentially as a friend raising questions as to who is responsible for intercultural relations.

This paper investigates higher education (HE) student recruitment practices from the standpoint of market orientation. By adopting the well-established market orientation framework of Narver and Slater [1990, The effect of a market orientation on a business profitability.Journal of Marketing54, no. 4: 20–35], we examine the extent to which individual market orientation components are reflected in the strategies adopted by international student recruitment (ISR) departments in Australian HE institutions and how these, in turn, influence ISR performance. The analysis of data collected from ISR practitioners, via online survey, suggests a number of important theoretical and practical implications and strong recommendations for further research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Effective feedback is an essential tool for making learning explicit and an essential feature of classroom practice that promotes learner autonomy. Yet, it remains a pressing challenge for teachers to scaffold the active involvement of students as critical, reflective and autonomous learners who use feedback constructively. This paper seeks to present a recalibrated perspective of feedback by exploring the concept as a student-initiated learning action, manifested within classroom practice as help seeking for learning. Teachers and students from years 2, 4 and 6 at an Australian primary school worked together on a writing project, which was structured as a three-phase learning process. The value of this approach was revealed by data gathered through students' planning templates, writing samples, interviews with students and teachers along with email correspondence with the teachers. A framework of social cognitive theory guided the analysis. It is suggested that the three-phase Assessment as Learning (AaL) process has the potential to support teachers in scaffolding students to seek help at a time when they are receptive to feedback. Furthermore, this AaL approach appears to have enhanced the teachers' practice, particularly in respect to providing support for students during the forethought stage of the learning process. Practical techniques for scaffolding students' adaptive help seeking and autonomy as learners are presented in the paper.

This study examines how access to the academic curriculum creates patterns of inequality in Australian schools. Examining students' access to the academic curriculum gives an indication of how schooling is structured to support students in pursuing higher education opportunities. To date, little research attention has been given to the opportunities schools offer students to access the academic curriculum in order to enter university. Using administrative data on students and schools, we find that there are fewer average curriculum subjects, and less complexity in the subjects offered, in schools with low levels of socio-educational advantage. We argue that curriculum differentiation across schools is a systemic constraint that students in schools with higher levels of socio-educational disadvantage face in progressing to university because these schools are less able to provide students with access to core academic curriculum subjects in the final year of secondary school. Previous research has highlighted the social differences reflected in both educational access and outcomes due to the marketisation of schools and policies of school choice. Our findings indeed demonstrate that there are relationships between access to the academic curriculum, school socio-educational advantage and the social composition of schools, and these factors have important educational policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines digital data use within three Australian secondary schools, drawing on in-depth interviews with 50 school staff to explore tensions between: (i) established logics of "data-driven" schooling; and (ii) emerging "datafied" practices associated with digital systems, platforms and devices. Using sociological theorisation of institutional logics, the article examines how promises of digital "dataism" are thwarted by the entrenched temporal organisation of schooling, and teacher-centred understandings of students as coerced subjects. As such, prevailing logics of state bureaucracy and professionalism combine in ways that temper the prospect of individualism, self-regulation, continuous feedback, and other implicit promises of digital data. The paper considers the extent to which school data logics can endure amid the increased digitisation of K-12 education.

This paper traces the introduction of Steiner programmes in publicly funded school settings in Victoria, Australia, through a recent history covering approximately 1990-2011. Three programmes are examined through interviews with Steiner educators focusing on some of the challenges of working with these alternative educational ideas in these settings. While the first two of these programmes proved successful, the third was discontinued amid some controversy in 2011. The educational change these programmes presented is framed in terms of their contribution to epistemological diversity within the public-education domain in Australia, as reflected in the educational values associated with these programmes, and the educational sensibilities through which these were mediated in terms of the Steiner educators interviewed. Biographical Sociology is drawn on to foreground the felt experience of the Steiner educators involved, and to highlight some of the ideological and philosophical tensions that were at play, and how they were managed. These tensions, it is argued, were at times exacerbated through the co-location of these programmes within existing mainstream schools in Australia, in contrast to the more common stand-alone, publicly funded Steiner schools established internationally. In exploring the spilling over of these tensions into polemical public debate in relation to the third programme, the move of Steiner education into publicly funded school settings internationally is taken into account, and questions of the successful mitigation of these tensions more generally examined, placing these local experiences into a wider context.

Since 2018, school students around the world have gone on strike from school to call on leaders to take decisive action on climate change. Prominent in the resultant rallies are placards created by participants -- from small children to their adult allies. This paper explores how students in the movement enact and activate visual approaches to communicating their concerns regarding climate change. By analysing the signage created by protestors at the largest yet rally held in Sydney, in September 2019, we situate the protests as a unique space for students' political voice. Our analysis of the signs and placards held by children finds that students use creative, mixed-media construction methods and draw on culturally significant objects and images to produce and visually communicate perspectives on climate change. This study shows how placards leverage emotional responses of anger, amusement and empathy to reflect the political, social and environmental dimensions of climate change, and collective demands for urgent policy action. In doing this, we highlight the role of visual communication in public protests and civic discourse, and the potential benefits to education on climate change. The visual language of the protest reinforces the critical or immediate nature of climate change to students as they draw on temporal symbols to communicate how they relate to climate change. We argue that these findings highlight the importance of creative, participatory and visual methods for student learning -- and co-creating climate change education.

While the impacts of COVID-19 on higher education are still unfolding, it is clear that the disruption caused by the pandemic has provided a warrant to re-consider existing teaching and learning practices. We provide a reading on whether existing teaching and learning practices should be retained or whether new practices can and should emerge through the lens of culturally and linguistically diverse migrant and refugee (CALDMR) students. These students already experienced significant educational disadvantage before the pandemic moved teaching and learning online. Drawing on findings from an Australian study that explores the experiences of both university students and staff, we question whether these experiences offer hope for what bell hooks calls engaged pedagogy – as a form of university teaching and learning that is more caring, more student-centred and collaborative, and more exciting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates UNESCO's recommended sexuality educational framework for junior school students aged 5-8 years. It also compares it to an existing state-designed Health and Physical Education curriculum that includes sexual and reproductive health for the same cohort. Based on the universal values of respect and human rights, UNESCO's" International Technical Guidance" (2009) promotes clear, comprehensive, and evidence-informed sexuality education in the compulsory school years, for all countries. Aimed at education and health decision-makers, the framework addresses knowledge, values and discussion of often-stifled issues that are appropriate for healthy child development, and necessary to counter children's vulnerability to abuse, exploitation and sexually transmitted infections. Most importantly, it emphasises that children are not ready for sexual contact with other people. The results of this paper's evaluation show that the "Guidance" offers timely, definitive, wide-ranging, inclusive and effective sexuality education for children who are usually left "to find their own way". The comparative results show that the sampled Australian curriculum is woefully inadequate for the task of teaching puberty, sexuality and reproductive health and safety education.

This paper explores the views of international students and academic staff on the use of prior professional experience in disciplinary academic writing in Australian higher education. The main finding of this case study indicates that disciplinary practice related to the issue of whether, and how, students should represent aspects of their prior professional experience in disciplinary writing seems to be differently reproduced from the lenses of international student and lecturers. Within the current higher education practices, the diverse dimensions of prior professional experiences that international students bring into the learning context appear to count more in oral class discussion than in academic writing and in formal assessment. Furthermore, despite the rhetoric of internationalization of the curriculum and "inclusivity", the valid academic practices of international students seem to be marginalized and delegitimized due to the very subtlety and inconsistence of the lecturers' expectations. The paper concludes with the implications for institutions to more effectively address the needs of international students in terms of knowledge construction in the process of implementing diversity principles within the internationalization agenda. (Contains 1 figure.)

Within political philosophy and particularly in the work of Chantal Mouffe and Hannah Arendt, "agonism" has been described as representing the notion of being able to challenge and dissent in a productive way. However, little is known about how agonism is used in the educational literature, other than some applications relevant to democratic education. This paper considers the use of agonism in the educational literature drawing on the findings of a systematic scoping review exploring how it has been used in the context of education. Five databases were searched for literature published using agonism within the context of education to map the existing body of work in a systematic fashion, and to explore how agonism has been differently conceptualised and utilised by researchers in the field of education. The findings suggest that there have been a range of attempts to apply agonistic principles in different educational sub-fields (including, citizenship education, early years education, initial teacher training, arts education and international education), and different interpretations of such principles into education based on different philosophical underpinnings (dissociative and associative approaches). As agonism is mostly explored in a theoretical way, we also discuss the potential of abstract theoretical agonistic principles from different philosophical traditions to be translated into meaningful practical applications for education in order to inform curriculum development, infuse democratic principles into classroom practice, and help to negotiate deep-running tensions amongst key stakeholders in education.

Universities have increasingly adopted "first-generation status" as a new category for addressing equity in higher education, especially in the UK and Australia. This category targets students whose parents do not have a university degree and therefore are "newcomers" to higher education. While the category is well-intentioned, given the persistence of inequitable enrolment patterns and the need to widen participation, it has resulted in a fairly narrow and limiting view of first-generation students. Typically, students have been set in binary opposition to their peers with university-educated parents and consequently positioned within deficit discourses -- as sharing a similar set of "problems" that need to be remedied by policy and practice. This paper problematises such a totalising depiction of first-generation entrants by examining diversity "within the category" rather than simply demarcating "differences" from their continuing-generation peers. Drawing on focus group data from 198 prospective first-generation students enrolled in government schools in New South Wales, Australia, we utilise the Bourdieusian lens of social capital to explore the multiple social networks within which young people are situated. We propose a new continuum that better captures how students are differentially positioned in social space, and identify three clusters based on their capacity to mobilise capital -- "inheritors", "opportunists", and "outsiders". In so doing, we unsettle the symbolic boundary around what it means to "be first", and argue that this more nuanced reconceptualisation of first-generation entry is critical if the category is to be a meaningful vehicle for redressing historical exclusions and widening participation in higher education.

Mass media provides a public space for its readers to enter the discussion on education, as they consume and interpret key messages, which are often shaped by key educational policies. With a suite of recent teacher education reform measures in Australia aimed at solving the "problem" with teacher quality, a conceptual map for conducting a media framing analysis is proposed and utilised to examine how teacher quality is portrayed in the media. This study found that the media portrays education, and teacher quality more specifically, in Australia through a lens of crisis and decline, with national policies being positioned as the solution. National policies which focus on more rigorous entry and exit requirements for teacher candidates, or a discourse of "inputs," are offered as the solution to the education crisis in Australia. With the inherent power that media holds in proffering particular policies and/or viewpoints, this paper argues for the need to employ five analytic devices -- event, format, voice, problem and solution -- to understand how teacher quality is portrayed in the media.

Home education is a legal educational option in Australia that continues to rise in popularity. This paper summarises the demographics and influences upon the decision to home educate of 385 home education families from Australia, representing 676 children who were home educated at the time of questionnaire completion. The research suggests female caregivers with higher levels of educational achievement than the general population predominantly coordinate home education. Some families eschewed mainstream education for philosophical reasons whilst others home educated due to perceived necessity. However, characteristic of both groups was the belief that the current education system was unable to provide a learning environment that would meet the educational and psychosocial needs of their children. This was not specific to a particular population of students but included those who were gifted children, or those who had a mental health or neurodevelopmental disorder such as autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), learning disabilities, intellectual disability and/or impairment in vision and hearing. This has clear implications for policy and resourcing, including in-service teacher training. It also raises questions in relation to the provision of funding for families who home educate their children.

Argues that the government in Australia is involved in the decentralization of control over education while trying to give the appearance of doing the reverse. Impact of educational restructuring on teachers' choices in the areas of curriculum content, pedagogy and their overall sense of ownership of their work; Economic context of the restructuring.

Provides information on Australia's literacy education particularly teaching of writing. Historical background to process writing and the whole language; Revolution in the process writing in primary and secondary schools; Critique of the pedagogy of process writing or whole language; Genre-based approach to the teaching of writing; Role of teacher and the effectiveness of teacher interactions with the students.

Presents a summary of major changes in the management, administration and organisation of Western Australian education which have implications for quality and accountability of service delivery. Background to quality and accountability issues in Western Australia education; Towards a clarification of managing for quality while meeting public accountability; Significant and specific policy initiatives taken in Western Australian which have a bearing on quality and accountability.

Focuses on the indicators which will permit institutional differences in performance to be quantified in comparable terms and which will permit institutions to assess their relative performance in particular departments. The role of profiles and performance indicators; Issues underlying the use of profiling and performance indicators; Implications of the changes in funding mechanisms for institutional behaviour.

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of highly cited articles published in the Web of Science category "Education and Educational Research" in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). A total of 2091 journal articles published in this category and cited more than 100 times up to the end of the year 2016 were retrieved as highly cited articles. Distributions of highly cited articles per publication year, journals, institutions and countries were analysed, as well as the citation life cycle of the top-cited articles. The USA, its institutions and researchers are the absolute leaders in the category of Education and Educational Research according to the results of the conducted analysis.

This paper reviews the literature on best practices to engage parents in order to equip them to support their children's higher education aspirations. Parents from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds, in common with other parents, report that they want "the best" for their children's future. Getting a good education is a part of the aspiration of most parents, regardless of SES. However, unlike parents from mid and high SES backgrounds who usually have "educational cultural capital" to support their children's educational aspiration, parents from low SES backgrounds often are unable to confidently access information they need about possible education pathways within and beyond school. Additionally, they need to know where to find out about financial and other support resources available to facilitate access to higher education. Higher education participation by students from non-traditional backgrounds could be improved by outreach that promotes parents' social capital and "educational cultural" capital. This project has built upon University of Tasmania and University of Wollongong's combined experience, international literature and workshops with parent engagement practitioners to identify features of parent engagement programmes and resources that are efficient and effective in engaging parents from low SES backgrounds to support their children's higher education aspirations. From this, the higher education Design and Evaluation Matrix for Outreach was modified to develop a tool to plan, design, modify and evaluate parent engagement programmes.

Bullying is defined in a variety of ways in different contexts, and each individual school in England is required to develop its own working definition, parameters and policy. This paper explores a variety of definitions from government and third sector organisations in the UK, making comparison with those from other contexts. In particular, it considers whether bullying is repeated behaviour or experience, and how labels such as target, victim and perpetrator have the potential to damage individual identities. It highlights common themes and differences across definitions and interpretations, comparing them with those of staff (n=131) drawn from research in 16 schools in one large local authority area in England, detailing their conceptions and experiences of bullying. These staff identify whether, where and how bullying is encountered in their settings, how they address such issues, and whether there are particular stimuli on which they focus. It concludes that a redeveloped, clear and understandable definition of bullying is needed that is accessible to all stakeholders in schools, including children. This needs to be inclusive in its focus, unambiguous and applicable across a broad range of settings, leaving aside the historical baggage associated with the subject.

The aim of this scoping review was to map and summarise research relating to school and teacher connectedness, in order to increase current understanding of the ways these terms have been conceptualised in adolescent research. Specifically, this scoping review focuses on the analysis of the actual definitions used and the ways in which school connectedness and teacher connectedness are operationalised in existing measures. Using the terms "connectedness," "teacher" and "school" as keywords, we searched SCOPUS, Web of Science, ERIC, the Cochrane Library and the EPPI Centre Database of Education Research for relevant peer-review articles published in English from 1990 to 2016. 350 papers were selected for the review. Many studies failed to provide a definition of school or teacher connectedness and there were some differences in the way these constructs were operationalised in the main measures. Future research should be thorough in the definition of these constructs, and ensure consistency between the definition used and the operationalisation of the connectedness construct in the selected measure. Unpacking the global concept of school connectedness and examining the role of its different components (global feelings towards school, teacher connectedness, relationships with classmates, etc.) separately may also contribute to building a more coherent body of evidence in this area. Reflecting on the place of school and teacher connectedness in the broader context of the literature on school climate and bridging distances between the research on school connectedness and that on related constructs is another necessary step to move this field forward.

Building active and informed citizens is a major part of civics and citizenship education in order to enhance and sustain democracies. Civic learning and civic action opportunities within school contexts are commonly claimed to promote an active and informed citizenry. In the present research, we examine the meaning of formal civics education and the role of students' participation in a range of curricular and extracurricular activities. Multilevel analyses yield quite stable results across two cohorts of Australian secondary students and reveal that schools account for a surprisingly small share in students' willingness to participate in future civic and political action. Among the influences at the student level, formal civics learning, participation in student governance activities and in the community are the most significant predictors of intended future participation, but some effects vary conditional on whether more conventional or issue-related civic participation is the focus of active citizenship. Implications of these findings for democratic policy and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses some contemporary educational contexts that teachers should consider for their puberty education programmes and/or curricula, for primary and secondary school students. The educational contexts addressed here include significant international puberty education framework documents, socio-biological factors including earlier puberty and a developmental approach, demographic and technological factors, and school factors including what students want from such education, and its professional teaching standards. Teachers and course designers may use these educational contexts to guide their planning, accommodate students' needs and motivation, identify goals, processes and solutions, and respond to international policy directions encapsulating the accelerated change that is the spirit of the age.

All children need timely puberty and sexuality education. The task falls to schools because they have the learning and teaching processes, competency programmes, opportunities, and resources for age-appropriate cognitive, knowledge, and skills development in children and adolescents. Quality sexuality education guidance documents have been designed for teachers to use in programmes at all school age levels, and in many countries. However, this paper aims to show how teachers can use a theoretical framework that particularly addresses learning and teaching processes to guide their planning, provision, and assessing for specific pedagogical solutions in puberty and sexuality education classes. A recommended theoretical framework employs six cognitive processes linked with four types of knowledge in an evidence-based, cumulative, and transparent organisational table, for use in any learning area or educational context. Its application can assist teachers' implementation of quality, effective puberty and sexuality education lessons, Units of work, and full-year learning and teaching in primary and secondary schools. This theoretical framework can also be used by appropriate child and adolescent educators in out-of-school situations, and other evidence-based interventions. The timely, continuing, and normalised implementation of such learning and teaching processes, can, in turn, support students' experiences of puberty, which now start earlier, and also enhance their developmental opportunities, health, safety, prosocial values, and future lifechances.

Student-driven "deep learning", teachers as "coaches" and "activators of learning" and positive student-teacher relationships are all part of the changing and significantly innovative educational landscape which requires considerable pedagogical change in teaching and learning processes. Teacher professional learning communities (PLCs) have been recognised as highly effective in supporting teachers in changing their beliefs and practices. There is considerable agreement about the characteristics of PLCs and there seem to be links with positive psychology's wellbeing and "flourishing" key concepts although there has been little research undertaken about this. The current research aims to explore these connections using case studies of three significantly innovative schools, with research methods including document study, surveys, interviews and focus groups. Research findings and data analysis undertaken highlight the PLC characteristics and positive psychology connections. The paper concludes by highlighting the benefits for schools and education systems of developing a greater understanding of PLCs, through using the lens of positive psychology. Through positive psychology elements such as nurturing positive emotion and a greater sense of purpose for teachers within PLCs, there are benefits for teacher professional learning but also potentially for student learning and wellbeing.

There is a significant body of research supporting the notion that teachers are the single most important school-based resource schools have to lift student achievement, and many principals and policymakers are aware of the need to retain good staff. This study used a large sample of Australian teachers in primary and secondary government and non-government schools to examine differences in the importance given by more and less effective teachers to particular factors that might hold them in a school or cause them to leave. More effective teachers placed greater emphasis on factors such as promotion opportunities and improved professional learning options as means to retain them in a school, while less effective teachers valued a more selective intake of students. More effective teachers gave greater emphasis to poor support from the principal as a reason for leaving a school, while less effective teachers gave greater emphasis to poor student behaviour. Implications for school leaders and policymakers are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Non-traditional open-plan schools and classrooms are currently enjoying a resurgence in Australia, with proponents arguing for the necessity of educational spaces that more readily accommodate the needs of twenty-first century learners. However, these learning environments can pose considerable pedagogic challenges for teachers who must balance the ethos of spaces designed to facilitate autonomous and flexible student learning, while simultaneously managing the complexities of shared space and resources, decreased staff-student ratios, and highly variable student responses to learning in open-plan settings. This paper draws on observational and interview data from an Australian study of three primary schools operating in open-plan spaces. Informed by cultural theories of spatial practice, we argue that the ways in which teachers conceptualize and operationalize notions of "structure" is pivotal to the responsiveness of pedagogic approaches within open-plan spaces.

This conceptual paper traces the development of the culture and capture of celebrity in the field of educational leadership. Drawing on Rojek's ("Celebrity." London: Reaktion Books, 2001) typology of celebrity, we examine the emergence of celebrity of leadership that is activated via the current policy environment that compels schools and school leaders to be recognised and well-known. It is this well-knownness that subsequently contributes to the school as a marketable commodity that "people like us" desire. We highlight the complex convergence of these two phenomena in our reading of the independent school sector in Victoria (Australia).

A review of the articles on modernization in Australia, England, New Zealand, Scotland and the USA demonstrates and discusses the complexity attached to the concept. This also enables a better understanding of the contention and controversy that surrounds the concept and its application to educational policy and practice. Modernization policies in these five countries are then analysed and interpreted within a conceptual framework that explores the locations of decisions and the motivational principles underlying decisions. The analysis proposes four 'ideal' type mechanisms for allocating resources in society. Arguing that a 'mixed economy' model is both necessary and right, the discussion concludes by examining the appropriate balance within that 'mixed economy' if education is to yield both economic growth and social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates higher education (HE) student recruitment practices from the standpoint of market orientation. By adopting the well-established market orientation framework of Narver and Slater [1990, The effect of a market orientation on a business profitability. "Journal of Marketing" 54, no. 4: 20-35], we examine the extent to which individual market orientation components are reflected in the strategies adopted by international student recruitment (ISR) departments in Australian HE institutions and how these, in turn, influence ISR performance. The analysis of data collected from ISR practitioners, via online survey, suggests a number of important theoretical and practical implications and strong recommendations for further research in this area. (Contains 4 tables, 1 figure, and 1 note.)

This paper explores the adaptation patterns of international Chinese and Vietnamese students in relation to academic writing practices in a higher education context. The study utilises a trans-disciplinary framework for interpreting students' and lecturers' practices within institutional structures. This framework has been developed by infusing a modified version of Lillis' heuristic for exploring students' meaning making with positioning theory. A prominent finding of the study indicates the emergence of three main forms of adaptation, committed adaptation, face-value adaptation and hybrid adaptation, that the students employed to gain access to their disciplinary practices. The findings of the study give insights into ways that a dialogical pedagogic model for mutual adaptation can be developed between international students and academics. The aim is to enhance the education of international students in this increasingly internationalised environment. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)

Sketches a perspective on contemporary issues in English literacy education with reference to Australia as a case study site and findings from the new literacy studies and theories of learning. Interdisciplinary roots of the new literacy studies; Controversies over literacy pedagogy; Political dimensions of literacy and literacy pedagogy.

Focuses on the similarities and differences of curriculum scene in Australia and England. Analysis of Austrlia's social needs and its implications for education; Conclusion.

This paper examines the impact of a politics of resentment, neo-liberal policies, and security concerns on issues of gender justice in schools in various western countries. We argue that since the 1990s gender justice in schools has been severely hampered by a politics of resentment, or backlash politics, and the presence of neo-liberal discourses in education. Furthermore, we contend that current national security concerns in the post-September 11 context have compounded many of the challenges posed by these trends. We detail how such trends have produced constructions of boys as oppressed, as problems and as dangerous. We argue for a problematising of such constructions and of the anti-feminist, masculinist and imperialist discourses undergirding them. We propose that moving beyond such essentialising towards gender justice in education will require a critical engagement with the ways in which national security issues, such as the "war on terror", are working alongside backlash politics and neo-liberal discourses to distort gender equity and schooling priorities.

This paper explores the impact of the internationalization of higher education on the formation of student identity. It does so in the context of increasing developments in offshore education and the rapid emergence of the professional doctorate in Australia and overseas. Drawing on data from a larger qualitative study of student experiences of offshore education, the focus is on professional doctorate candidates located in Hong Kong. Identity is characterized by a series of dilemmas experienced by the students as they seek to become members of the academic community. These dilemmas centre on a range of inter-related issues, including sense of belonging, educational goals, learning style preferences and relationships with supervisors.

This special edition enables an in-depth look at the process of modernization of education in England, in relation to other international developments. In particular we focus on the reform of teachers? work by examining the antecedence of the current policy of remodelling through three articles based on the Evaluation of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) initiative (2002?2003) Transforming the School Workforce Pathfinder Project. Papers on Teaching Assistants, Leadership and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) enable us to focus on policy interventions intended to change the culture and practice of how schools are run and how the workforce understands its role within educational provision. It is timely that we subject the current reforms to this type of analysis and ask questions about how the workforce is engaging with, and experiencing, the changes. We set these reforms in England within a wider international context with four articles from eminent researchers regarding educational restructuring in Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, and the US. Clive Belfield, John Codd, Jenny Ozga, and John Smyth bring to the task of understanding and explaining educational change a range of data and theorizing from a variety of projects and positions. These articles enable us to put the English context into a wider framework while protecting our commitment to understand the local and particular nature of educational issues. Finally Hywel Thomas provides an overview of the special edition by summarizing the key themes running through the English reform agenda and how we can read this through comparison with international developments.

This article has at its centre the project, discourses and practices of modernization and what these mean practically and existentially for schools. The author argues that schools are, at their core, relational organizations, therefore they are primarily concerned with creating the set of relational resources and conditions that enable learning to take place, among students as well as teachers. When this does not happen, for whatever reasons, schools are very dysfunctional, deeply disturbed and unhappy places. An instance is described of an Australian government school that courageously, and in a politically prudent way, created the space within which to construct a viable relationally-affirming alternative. It is a story about how a school found ways of working against the damaging and prevailing managerialist ethos, and devised ways of uniquely re-inventing and reforming itself against/in spite of the external dominant official reform agenda.