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This paper discusses an Aboriginal cultural mentoring project for non-Aboriginal teachers that positions Aboriginal people front and centre as cultural and educational experts. In so doing it sets out to contribute to work in Australia that challenges 'common' understandings about mentoring in educational contexts where the expert is usually a western-educated non-Aboriginal teacher. In this project, non-Aboriginal teachers are supported in implementing culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogies into their classroom through building relationships with Aboriginal mentors and students. Analysis of thirteen pre and post surveys, four mentee interviews and one mentee focus group, illuminated the emergence of collaborative cultural mentoring processes, where teachers developed trusting, reciprocal and respectful relationships with Aboriginal people. We argue that a systematic, well-supported Aboriginal cultural mentoring program can be used to create and convert new knowledge into practice, and that this can have a positive impact on teachers' understanding of teaching/learning processes thereby contributing to Aboriginal student engagement in their learning.

In both academic and policy spaces, learning is often cast as lifelong, dynamic, constructive and in particular, agentic. Despite this focus students' voices are rarely privileged in these spaces -- especially in policy. We respond to this oversight by deploying Foucault's theories of knowledge to explore how students understand themselves as learners, considering this alongside dominant political and academic discursive constructions of learning. Using a metaphor card approach, we explored metaphors for learning articulated by students in longitudinal focus group interviews. Conducted over a two-year period with 47 students from four Western Sydney schools, student metaphors for learning were diverse and wide-ranging, frequently reflecting strategic approaches to learning that aligned with requirements of high stakes exit exams. Significantly, student descriptions of themselves as exhausted, passive containers of impermanent learning were at odds with national and international policy and higher education constructions of learning as 'lifelong and agentic'. This contradiction raises critical questions about students' experiences of learning in schools, the role of teacher education, and re-direction of university equity programmes aimed at increasing access and participation for educationally marginalised students.

Mandatory Aboriginal education units of study in teacher education programmes are often constrained by overcrowded curriculum, time and classroom-based learning which limit opportunities to engage with and learn from local Aboriginal people and communities. Recognising these issues, at an urban Australian university two of the authors introduced 'Learning from Country' (LFC) cultural immersion experiences led by local Aboriginal community-based educators. These LFC experiences are now integral in several Aboriginal education electives. Emerging from these experiences, we developed an organic, iterative conceptual framework to articulate and make visible what LFC looks, feels and sounds like. In this paper we explain the LFC framework and discuss how it can be used to support preservice teachers to incorporate LFC principles into their professional practice and become part of their personal and professional identities in order to affect change in Aboriginal education in the schools and classrooms in which they will work.

Shame is a 'slippery' concept in educational contexts but by listening to Aboriginal philosophy and Country, we can rethink its slipperiness. This article contemplates how multiple understandings of shame are derived from and coexist within colonised educational contexts. We focus on one positive example of Indigenous education to consider how these understandings can be challenged and transformed for the benefit of Indigenous learners. We discuss a mentoring program run by and for Indigenous young people that is successfully impacting school retention and completion rates: The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME). AIME has a rule, 'No Shame at AIME', with the view to minimising shame as a barrier to engaging with Western education. But is this as beneficial as might first appear? Might this erode important cultural understandings of shame necessary in Indigenous education? Instead, could shame be repositioned to better align with original cultural meanings and purposes? We philosophise about the AIME rule with Yuin Country and stories from Country along with our observational and interview data. We argue AIME does not so much 'remove' shame as reposition it to better align with Aboriginal cultural educational practice, which positively impacts mentees.

There are well documented concerns with the imposition of high stakes testing into the fabric of school education, and there is now an increasing focus on how such tests impact children's "well-being." This can be witnessed in reports in the popular news media, where discussion of these impacts frequently refer to "stress" and "anxiety." Yet, there is no work that is able to tell us about what is happening in the bodies of the teachers and children who are living this schooling in the day-to-day; whether this is best considered through the languages of "stress"; or what the implications--emotional, educational, embodied--of these experiences might be. This paper develops a transdisciplinary approach that brings social and biological accounts together in order to address the "more-than-social" of the emotionality of childhood and schooling. We seek out opportunities for transdisciplinary connectivity and for new ways of seeing and knowing about learning. We consider what these ways of seeing and knowing might offer to education.

In this paper we respond to this special issue's critical focus on mental health in education by considering the medicalised and homogenising approaches to the mental health of young people and the severely negative consequences for young people. Our argument is underpinned by the need to destabilise the hegemony of the current dominant discourses and practices of mental health used in education. The problem with these discourses and practices, informed by particular forms of psychiatry and psychology, is precisely their dominance and their popularised proxy take-up of these. We firstly outline this problem, explore the emergence and saturation of a 'damaged self' in education and consider the impact on young people. We offer counter-narratives that involve a reframing of the self in relation to ethics, politics, capability and the arts and can assist in countering the psy-dominance in education. The paper concludes with some reflections on how teachers might work against the damaging effects of the psy-disciplines and instead support young people in finding their counter-narrative selves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) is a national, extra-curricular mentoring programme that is closing the educational gap for young Indigenous Australians. So what is AIME doing that is working so well? This article draws on a large-scale classroom ethnography to describe the pedagogies that facilitate the teacher-student relationships in this programme. We use Shawn Wilson's theorisation of Indigenous ways of knowing in order to "unpack" how these approaches succeeded in creating the egalitarian and trust-filled relationships reportedly experienced in the AIME programme.

Shotgun metagenomic sequencing of the collective genomic information carried across microbial communities is emerging as a powerful approach for monitoring antibiotic resistance in environmental matrices. Metagenomics is advantageous in that known and putative antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) (i.e., the resistome) can be screened simultaneously without a priori selection of targets. Additionally, as new ARGs are discovered and catalogued, stored sequencing data can be reanalyzed to assess the prevalence of emerging genes or pathogens. However, best practices for metagenomic data generation and processing are needed to support comparability across space and time. To support reproducible downstream analysis, guidance is first needed with respect to sampling design, sample preservation and storage, DNA extraction, library preparation, sequencing depth, and experimental controls. Here we conducted a systematic review to assess current practices for the application of metagenomics for AR profiling of wastewater, recycled water, and surface water and to offer recommendations to support comparability in the collection, production, and analysis of resulting data. Based on integrated analysis of findings and data reported across 95 articles identified, a field to benchtop metagenomic workflow is discussed for optimizing the representativeness and comparability of generated data. Through the reanalysis of 1474 publicly-available metagenomes, appropriate sequencing depths per environment and uniform normalization strategies are provided. Further, there is opportunity to harness the quantitative capacity of metagenomics more overtly through inclusion of sequencing controls. The recommendations will amplify the overall value of the metagenomic data generated to support within and between study comparisons, now and in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principles of social inclusion have been embraced by institutions across the higher education sector but their translation into practice through pedagogy is not readily apparent. This paper examines perceptions of social inclusion and inclusive pedagogies held by academic staff at an Australian university. Of specific interest were the perceptions of teaching staff with regard to diverse student populations, particularly students from low socio-economic (LSES) backgrounds, given the institution's reasonably high proportion of LSES student enrolment (14%). A mixed-method approach was utilised: (i) in-depth interviews with a representative sample of academic staff and (ii) an online survey targeting all academic staff across the institution. The results point to the dual responsibilities of students and institutions in enacting inclusivity in order to move beyond reductive standpoints that simply apportion blame.

This article explores the unique mentoring model that the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) has established to assist Australian Indigenous young people succeed educationally. AIME can be described as a structured educational mentoring programme, which recruits university students to mentor Indigenous high school students. The success of the programme is unequivocal, with the AIME Indigenous mentees completing high school and the transition to further education and employment at higher rates than their non-AIME Indigenous counterparts. This article reports on a study that sought to deeply explore the particular approach to mentoring that AIME adopts. The study drew upon interviews, observations and surveys with AIME staff, mentees and mentors, and the focus in this article is on the surveys completed by the university mentors involved in the programme. Overall, there seems to be a discernible mutual reciprocity inherent in the learning outcomes of this mentoring programme; the mentors are learning along with the mentees. The article seeks to consider how AIME mentors reflect upon their learning in this programme and also how this pedagogic potential has been facilitated.

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on widening university participation and brings a focus on the classed and embodied nature of young people's imagination to existing discussions. We interviewed 250 young people living in disadvantaged communities across five Australian states who had experienced disengagement from compulsory primary and secondary schooling. We asked them about their education and their educational futures, specifically how they imagined universities and university participation. For these young people, universities were imagined as "big", "massive" alienating schools. The paper explores how the elements of schooling from which these young people disengaged became tangible barriers to imagining and pursuing participation in university education. The primary barrier they described was their relationships with school teachers. Our analysis shows how relationships with teachers can impact the imagined improbability/probability of university participation. We offer suggestions for how barriers to university created by poor relationships with teachers may be overcome.

Educators in resettlement countries are grappling with ways to adequately engage and meet the needs of newly arrived refugee students. In this article we argue that to fully meet the needs of refugee students a deeper understanding of their educational experience as "a refugee" prior to resettlement is vital. In particular we foreground the stories of three young former refugees and explore the ways in which they actively constructed new identities in order to access school in their host countries, prior to resettlement. This article discusses how the negative discursive positioning of "the refugee"in the world today has limited the resources and access to education for young refugees. It concludes by arguing that as these students move into education in Australia there is a danger to quickly relabel young former refugees with deficit terms rather than opening up a discourse to include the intricate complexities of each refugee experience.

A strong feature of the widening participation agenda is improving the aspirations of groups that are underrepresented in higher education. This paper seeks to reposition the utility of this as a focal point of educational interventions by showcasing the success of a mentoring program that takes a different approach. The Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) significantly and positively impacts Australian Indigenous high school students' aspirations to finish school and continue to further study, training or employment. AIME is not read as a classic intervention program for raising aspirations. Instead, AIME builds upon the cultural wealth of participants and adopts an approach that seeks to inspire individuals rather than remediate them. The paper draws on survey data and fieldwork to present an example case study for resisting the assumption that young people's aspirations are deficit and in need of "improving." The paper describes how AIME works within young people's "windows of aspiration" to positively impact their engagement in school and further education, training and employment.

Awareness of the need for surveillance of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in water environments is growing, but there is uncertainty regarding appropriate monitoring targets. Adapting culture-based fecal indicator monitoring to include antibiotics in the media provides a potentially low-tech and accessible option, while quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) targeting key genes of interest provides a broad, quantitative measure across the microbial community. The purpose of this study was to compare findings obtained from the culture of cefotaxime-resistant (cefR) Escherichia coli with two qPCR methods for quantification of antibiotic resistance genes across wastewater, recycled water, and surface waters. The culture method was a modification of US EPA Method 1603 for E. coli, in which cefotaxime is included in the medium to capture cefR strains, while qPCR methods quantified sul1 and intI1. A common standard operating procedure for each target was applied to samples collected by six water utilities across the United States and processed by two laboratories. The methods performed consistently, and all three measures reflected the same overarching trends across water types. The qPCR detection of sul1 yielded the widest dynamic range of measurement as an AMR indicator (7-log versus 3.5-log for cefR E. coli), while intI1 was the most frequently detected target (99% versus 96.5% and 50.8% for sul1 and cefR E. coli, respectively). All methods produced comparable measurements between labs (p < 0.05, Kruskal–Wallis). Further study is needed to consider how relevant each measure is to capturing hot spots for the evolution and dissemination of AMR in the environment and as indicators of AMR-associated human health risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The medicalisation of the behaviour of children is a phenomenon that is attracting growing attention, with particular concern about the increased likelihood of children living in disadvantaged contexts receiving a medical diagnosis, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and treatment. This paper reports on a study of professionals involved with children experiencing behavioural problems. The professionals interviewed in this study articulated their own reservations about the medicalisation of children's behaviour and revealed a number of strategies for interrupting the process towards diagnosis. These interruptions, analysed using Deleuze and Guattari's concept of deterriorialisation, took place along linguistic, visual and affective planes and were successful in encouraging teachers and head teachers to see alternatives to the medical route. The findings have implications for existing practice in the response to, and support for, behavioural problems and for teacher education.

Access to and participation in university education is a key equity issue, with increased efforts to widen the participation of secondary school-aged students from low socio-economic status (LSES) backgrounds in many countries worldwide. In Australia, programmes aimed at widening university participation generally target LSES children and young people engaged in schooling. Access to such programmes thus demands a connection to schooling, yet not all school-age young people have such connections: they may experience what we term 'precarious' relationships to education. Without school connections, young people with precarious relationships to education have extremely limited opportunities to engage (or to imagine engaging) in higher education. This paper considers this issue from the perspectives of young people who have precarious relationships with school education. Drawing on qualitative research investigating disadvantage and university education, the paper reports on how the imagination of university education, which might be argued to be a 'silenced' border of social inclusion, is described by young people with precarious relationships to education. Drawing on Judith Butler's book "Precarious Life" (2004), the paper puts forward the argument that the precariousness of education is relational and that universities thus have a moral responsibility to recognize and respond to the educational precariousness of the Other.

Schools are often the first point of contact for young refugees resettling in Australia and play a significant role in establishing meaningful connections to Australian society and a sense of belonging in Australia (Olliff in "Settling in: How do refugee young people fair within Australia's settlement system?" Centre for Multicultural Youth Issues, Melbourne. http//:www.cmyi.net.au/ResearchandPolicy. Accessed 21 June 2010, 2007; Gifford et al. in: "Good Starts for recently arrived youth with refugee backgrounds: Promoting wellbeing in the first three years of settlement in Melbourne, Australia." Melbourne: La Trobe Refugee Research Centre. http://www.latrobe.edu.au/larrc/documents-larrc/reports/report-good-starts.pdf. Accessed 4 June 2011, 2009; Sidhu and Taylor in: "Educational provision for refugee youth in Australia: Left to chance?" "Journal of Sociology," 43(3), 283-300, 2007). However, too little is known of how refugee youth encounter school in their new country. This article draws upon individual narratives of young former refugee's experiences of high schools. It explores the stories told by the young people of being identified as different and of negotiating ways of belonging in schools both academically and socially. It argues that it is how the school positions the newly arrived refugee students within mainstream school culture that opens up or restricts opportunities for inclusion in all aspects of school (in culture and pedagogy).

Teaching in university education programmes, can, at times, involve the uncomfortable situation of discriminatory speech. A situation that has often occurred in our own teaching, and in those of our colleagues, is the citation of homophobic and heterosexist comments.These are comments that are more likely to occur in foundation subjects such as philosophy and sociology of education.The occurrence of such situations has prompted debate regarding 'silencing words that wound'. This has prompted the question, 'should we keep students from stating such discriminatory speech?' Our article takes up this issue, and considers it from the perspective of the importance of critique. Working with Foucault's "What is Critique?" together with his discussion of subjectivation in the 1981-82 lectures at the Collège de France, we set out to make the case for the significance of the relationship between truth and critique. This leads us to a position where we ask the question, if we silence, what do we risk doing to critique?

In this article, we highlighted the stories of university student mentors who are involved in the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME). The AIME program works with young Indigenous school students, at primary and secondary school levels, to encourage continued participation in education and to consider university as a viable life goal. The AIME program is explored from the perspective of the university students who are selected to mentor young Australian Indigenous school students. Adopting a narrative inquiry approach, the article presents richly descriptive insight into the motivations of these mentors and highlights how this experience has impacted upon them. While the research presented focuses on narratives of mentors, the data indicate that the AIME program employs an innovative approach to mentoring that enhances cultural understanding for mentors.

Fecal indicator bacteria (FIB: Escherichia coli and enterococci) are used to assess recreational water quality. Viral indicators (i.e., somatic and F+ coliphage), could improve the prediction of viral pathogens in recreational waters, however, the impact of environmental factors, including the effect of predatory protozoa source, on their survival in water is poorly understood. We investigated the effect of lakewater or wastewater protozoa, on the decay (decreasing concentrations over time) of culturable FIB and coliphages under sunlight and shaded conditions. FIB decay was generally greater than the coliphages and was more rapid when indicators were exposed to lake vs. wastewater protozoa. F+ coliphage decay was the least affected by experimental variables. Somatic coliphage decayed fastest in the presence of wastewater protozoa and sunlight, though their decay under shaded conditions was-10-fold less than F+ after 14 days. The protozoa source consistently contributed significantly to the decay of FIB, and somatic, though not the F+ coliphage. Sunlight generally accelerated decay, and shade reduced somatic coliphage decay to the lowest level among all the indicators. Differential responses of FIB, somatic, and F+ coliphages to environmental factors support the need for studies that address the relationship between the decay of coliphages and viral pathogens under environmentally relevant conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both academic and policy spaces, learning is often cast as lifelong, dynamic, constructive and in particular, agentic. Despite this focus students' voices are rarely privileged in these spaces – especially in policy. We respond to this oversight by deploying Foucault's theories of knowledge to explore how students understand themselves as learners, considering this alongside dominant political and academic discursive constructions of learning. Using a metaphor card approach, we explored metaphors for learning articulated by students in longitudinal focus group interviews. Conducted over a two-year period with 47 students from four Western Sydney schools, student metaphors for learning were diverse and wide-ranging, frequently reflecting strategic approaches to learning that aligned with requirements of high stakes exit exams. Significantly, student descriptions of themselves as exhausted, passive containers of impermanent learning were at odds with national and international policy and higher education constructions of learning as 'lifelong and agentic'. This contradiction raises critical questions about students' experiences of learning in schools, the role of teacher education, and re-direction of university equity programmes aimed at increasing access and participation for educationally marginalised students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fat bodies are not, fait accompli, bad. Yet in our international research, we found overwhelmingly that fat functioned as a marker to indicate health or lack of health. A body with fat was simply and conclusively unhealthy. This article reports on how this unbalanced view of fat was tied to assessments of healthy bodies that were achieved by "the act of looking." Despite the efforts of health education in each of the three countries in our study, children and young people cited the act of looking at bodies to assess health and when did they arrived at the conclusion that fat on bodies is unmistakably bad. The article uses a Foucauldian analysis of medical perception together with material from Conrad Gessner's sixteenth century "Historia Animalium" to outline how the children in our study placed great reliance on information about fat to make almost exclusively visual assessments of health. The article makes the case that, despite a great deal of health education in schools, these judgments reveal a tendency for children to make incorrect assessments of health. (Contains 15 notes, 1 table, and 5 figures.)

One of the numerous responses to the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in April 2007 has been the call for higher education institutions in the United States to take an increased role in identifying troubled students. This has had widely felt effects, with educational institutions across the United States developing mechanisms such as Threat Assessment Teams to respond to the perceived heightened threat of campus violence. At the core of these responses is the notion of the troubled student that brings dangerousness and depression together. The purpose of this article is to draw attention to this, arguing that extreme violence has been extended from the provenance of the dangerous mad individual to a potential characteristic of the depressed individual. Interrogating this shift takes on special significance because understanding depression and violence is deemed vital to "connect the dots" to detect the troubled student, thereby preventing campus violence in higher education institutions. To consider this shifting conceptualization, this article draws closely on Hannah Arendt's distinction between factual and rational truths and Michel Foucault's analysis of melancholy. The Arendtian distinction between factual and rational truths facilitates analysis of the truths of the troubled student, as well as underscoring the importance that this recognition has for debate. Foucault's investigation of melancholy together with his emphasis on the "structure of perception" is employed to tease out how truths of the troubled student are produced, and thereby demonstrate that they are rational truths. Drawing on these ideas, the article offers a critical examination of how depression figures as potency and advances the argument that in the take-up of these emerging conceptualizations, there is a significant shift in how the troubled student is understood in higher education.

The effort to make schools more inclusive, together with the pressure to retain students until the end of secondary school, has greatly increased both the number and educational requirements of students enrolling in their local school. Of critical concern, despite years of research and improvements in policy, pedagogy and educational knowledge, is the enduring categorisation and marginalisation of students with diverse abilities. Research has shown that it can be difficult for schools to negotiate away from the pressure to categorise or diagnose such students, particularly those with challenging behaviour. In this paper, we highlight instances where some schools have responded to increasing diversity by developing new cultural practices to engage both staff and students; in some cases, they have responded to decreasing suspension while improving retention, behaviour and performance. (Contains 10 notes.)