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While international research has demonstrated that ability grouping is inequitable, Australian research has often overlooked equity concerns, predominantly focusing on studying the benefits of grouping for students perceived to have high ability, especially in mathematics. This paper investigates the effect that mathematics ability grouping has on senior secondary mathematics participation for low and middle grouped students in New South Wales, Australia. We drew on interviews about mathematics participation with 85 students and 22 mathematics teachers from 11 government high schools. Our thematic analysis of these data identified that secondary school grouping practices often serve to entrench student interest and/or performance from primary school. This has consequences for many students, with a differentiated curriculum in Years 9 and 10 precluding low and middle grouped students from participating in high-level mathematics when they reach senior secondary school. These findings raise serious equity questions about the current push in Australia for universities to re-introduce high-level mathematics as a prerequisite to entering certain degrees. We argue that stakeholders need greater awareness of the consequences of ability grouping and that those seeking to lift post-compulsory mathematics participation should be targeting primary and early secondary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the transition experiences of students with intellectual disability, as they move from primary to secondary school in New South Wales, Australia. Employing a multiple case study approach, the authors investigated the transition from the perspective of the students experiencing it. During the study, ten students with mild to moderate intellectual disability participated in interviews and were observed in the school environment before and after they transitioned from primary school to secondary school. Results indicate that students with intellectual disability generally have a positive transition experience. Nevertheless, students commonly encounter a number of major challenges, including issues around managing school work and homework, and bullying. The study found several factors contribute to a successful transition. These include the provision of assistance to help students become familiar with and manage their physical environment, building positive relationships with teachers, and having extra support from special needs staff. The study suggests there are some simple and practical steps that schools can take to enhance outcomes for successful transition experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study into schooling responses to youth crime in south-western Sydney, Australia. The project was a partnership between the New South Wales Department of Education and Training and the University of Western Sydney's School of Education. Specifically, the paper analyses interviews with school leaders who were interested in understanding how to support young people constructed 'at risk' of engaging in criminal activity. A content analysis, drawing on the concept of 'emotional capital', revealed discourses of safety, hope, engagement, and justice and fairness in the narratives of participants. The various ways in which 'emotion' is operationalized in education is explored so that the nature of emotional capital and its class and gendered inflections are made clear. Emotional capital, as a theoretical framework, also provides new insights into the strategies used by school leaders and helps situate the experiences and interests of the participating principals and key staff in the schools in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the Fair Go Project, research into student engagement among primary school students living in poor communities in South-Western Sydney, Australia. Taking as a starting point recent work into classroom pedagogies (Productive Pedagogies) and drawing on Bernstein's concept of classrooms as message systems, the research has developed a framework that aims to consider and evaluate ways that teachers' classroom practices can send out messages to interrupt the discourses of power that have historically worked against poor students. The Fair Go Project's proposal is that when this happens, there are real chances that these students might develop a consciousness that school is for me, rather than one of defeat, struggle and giving up. The paper describes the theoretical and empirical development of the framework, and illustrates through research data its use in a number of classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the nature of teachers’ professional development (PD) practices in special needs/special education settings in Australia under current neoliberal and managerial conditions. The research is based on individual interviews with teachers from a juvenile justice centre and a dedicated special needs school in a regional city in the state of New South Wales. Bourdieu’s conception of social practice as contested is applied to make sense of teachers’ understanding of the conflicted nature of PD practices in these schooling settings. The findings reveal teacher PD in these special needs settings is influenced by the increased commodification of education, broader accountability pressures which seek to individualise teachers’ PD experiences, and increased attention to a narrower range of educational outcomes, particularly students’ test scores. However, at the same time, these settings also enable more localised, collaborative inquiry focused upon specific students’ needs, and PD relevant to a multi-faceted conception of students’ learning. In this way, teacher PD contributes to a focus upon student learning in all its complexity, even as it is simultaneously confined by neoliberal and managerial pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In large continental landmasses such as Australia, forms of education, including correspondence schooling, emerged in the early twentieth century that allowed children in remote regions to access education. To make such schooling possible, other ‘technologies’ of state provision were mobilised such as the postal system, rail network, and radio stations. One of the curious, under-analysed features of correspondence schooling – a state sponsored form of home schooling – was the degree to which – as a ‘spatial construct’ – it allowed the education centre to act on its periphery. It did so through enlisting strategies that rendered the correspondence pupil visible not as embodiment but as inscription. A complex semiotic landscape was generated consisting of exercise books, school magazines, radio programmes and film, elements of which are analysed in this paper, which deals with the evolution of distance education (tele-didactics) in New South Wales from 1920 to 1950. It is argued that the example of the Correspondence School and its radio version, the School of the Air, demonstrate that educational space is a protean phenomenon, constantly being transformed and modulated into other forms of space.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few decades have witnessed a broad international movement towards the development of inclusive schools through targeted special education funding and resourcing policies. Student placement statistics are often used as a barometer of policy success but they may also be an indication of system change. In this paper, trends in student enrolments from the Australian state of New South Wales are considered in an effort to understand what effect inclusive education has had in this particular region of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how some schooling cultures in New South Wales (hereafter NSW), Australia, police and silence non-heterosexuality through a number of institutional processes which enable homophobia and heterosexism to flourish, while normalizing and constituting heterosexuality as the dominant and only valid sexuality. The discussion shows that despite an apparent broader societal ‘tolerance’ for non-heterosexuality, as well as legislation that condemns anti-‘homosexual’ discrimination in education in NSW, homophobic prejudice — often in the form of silence, omission and assumption — prevails. It illustrates that schools need to be much more aware and proactive in addressing issues pertaining to this social justice issue to ensure a safe and equitable learning and teaching environment for all members of the school community. There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses. (Foucault, 1978, p. 27) Lying is done with words, and also with silence. (Rich, 1980/84, p.186) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]