Search

This paper presents a theoretical discussion of recent policy efforts to raise the qualification levels of the Australian early childhood workforce. Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical tools enable the early childhood profession to be conceptualised as a dynamic field in which particular forms of symbolic and cultural capital are valued, with consequences for the relative position of educators at different qualification levels. The paper briefly considers the historical and structural forces that have shaped the relative position of differently qualified educators in Australia. It then applies Bourdieu's theories to the policy proposition that these positions can be improved through the acquisition of higher qualifications; a proposition that not all educators have embraced. It concludes by considering implications for practice arising from this theoretical approach; both in raising awareness of the different positions of educators in the professionalisation agenda, and in creating opportunities for diverse forms of capital to be recognised and valued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly, there are expectations internationally that schools will use research to inform their improvement initiatives. Within this context, this paper brings together findings from two large-scale Australian studies – the Monash Q Project and the University of Newcastle's Quality Teaching Rounds Project – to explore educators' patterns of engagement with research. The combination of these studies provides data from a larger and more diverse sample (n = 774) than other recent Australian studies, and integrates insights from direct and indirect approaches to investigating educators' research engagement. The analysis highlights several common themes associated with educators' research use including: the perceived credibility of different sources; the relevance and usability of research; and affordances of access to research and time to use it well in practice. Newer and more nuanced insights include: the interrelationships between collaborative and directed research use; the need for research to be convenient in terms of access and usability; the role of trusted colleagues in helping to bridge gaps between research and practice; and educators' distrust of research itself. The paper argues that these insights provide important cues as to how systems and school leaders can help educators to increase and improve their use of research in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines responses to the trend for increasing participation in tertiary education, linking developments in higher education with those in apprenticeship systems, in Australia and the United Kingdom. In both sectors, expansion proceeded for several decades, but was robustly criticised in both countries. The expansion of access to these two forms of tertiary education, therefore, was contested and potentially precarious. The paper finds, through analysis of official data, that participation in higher education and in apprenticeship was actually almost static, or fell, in both countries in the 2010s. Yet criticism of expansion continued in media commentary during this decade. The paper both explains and takes issue with the arguments against expansion, which have been influential in both sectors. It discusses some ways forward to understand the phenomenon better, and also the need to address the problems caused by the restriction of opportunities. Comparative analysis between the two sectors has not previously been undertaken. It is argued in the paper that such analysis enriches the theoretical lenses through which expansion of access may be viewed, and that it may suggest avenues for future research, and perhaps, for advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The persistent failure of contemporary policies to improve school retention rates and close the achievement gap between students from low and high socio-economic (SES) backgrounds should be a matter of grave concern. In this article, we set out to show what it means to be educated in a context of disadvantage from the perspectives of young people attending a senior secondary public school in regional Australia. Acknowledging that youth are experts in their own lives, we draw extensively on student narratives of the funds of knowledge and opportunity structures that support and/or constrain education and employment opportunities in low-income neighbourhoods. Although young peoples' stories of hope and agency go some way to undermining the deficit thinking about these students and their families, we argue that the realisation of their aspirations requires institutional support and policies that address the systemic causes of educational disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The "boy turn" in research on gender and education has sought to understand how social practices and schooling contribute to the process of orientation to particular identities. This paper applies the theories of affect to explore the story of an underprivileged, low-achieving Samoan boy, as he engaged with learning Chinese in an Australian primary school classroom. Through an ethnographic lens, observational, journal entry and interview data reveal that learner identity is not a fixed thing; rather, it is contradictory in nature and constantly impacted by curricular and pedagogic regimes. In this paper, I argue that pedagogic practices, which appear to generate affects and open up spaces for embodying a desire to learn, need to be brought to the fore in classrooms. Research on the affective dimensions of boyhood can add to our understanding of boys' experiences with learning and learner identity, so as to positively influence educational practice today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contextualises a keynote address delivered at the 2022 Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Melbourne, Australia. The paper aligns with the conference theme of Beyond Borders from the perspective of moving beyond borders of regular practice to develop strong partnerships and networks within our communities to advocate and support necessary change. Change or enhancement to current practice is necessary if we are to reduce current inequities in education experienced by many children in our communities, including those with communication challenges. Strengths-based and culturally responsive literacy approaches to supporting children within the context of their family and community are increasingly gaining support as we address this challenge. The Better Start Literacy Approach (Te Ara Reo Matatini), currently being implemented in junior school classrooms across New Zealand is described. It is one example of large-scale implementation of a strengths-based and culturally responsive early literacy approach, based on the science of reading. Data support the effectiveness of the Better Start Literacy Approach in significantly enhancing the foundational literacy skills of 5- and 6-year-old children, including those who commence school with lower levels of oral language ability. Through establishing strong partnerships within communities, speech pathologists have much to offer in motivating systems level change to enhance early literacy success for all learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details the gendered oppressions of young female teachers in three elite boys' private schools in Australia. Drawing on Foucauldian analytics and the theory of practice architectures, we explore the discourses and practices that work together to silence and disempower female teachers in these schools. There is an unevenness in these accounts, as there are also female teachers in the study who appear to successfully circumnavigate these issues. However, this apparent wherewithal of some female teachers speaks to the internalisations of gender oppression as much as it does to the teachers' agency. This paper illuminates these gender oppressions, which are made possible because they remain hidden and unchallenged. The findings of this study raise thorny issues for school-based leadership, but also for educational policy-makers, because gender oppression is seemingly inextricable from the social practices that elite private boys' schools both advocate and rely on for positional advantage in schooling markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to our understanding of Islamist extremism by examining the relationship between early educational interests and ideas associated with Islamist-jihadist ideology. The article uses data collected through the Islam in Australia survey and specifically compares STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) with HSS (humanities and social science) fields of educational interest in relation to respondents' identification with political Islamist and militant typologies, identification with Islam as a political system, understandings of jihad and views on the caliphate as an Islamic religious obligation. The article found Muslim Australians who expressed an interest in STEM fields at high school were more likely than those interested in HSS to: (1) identify with the political Islamist and militant typology; (2) believe Islam advocates a political system; (3) believe establishing a caliphate is a religious obligation; and (4) define jihad as defensive and offensive rather than as defensive only. As discussed in the article, these findings support those of other research), which have identified an overrepresentation of STEM and an underrepresentation of HSS among Islamist-jihadists. This article adds weight to the assertion that the mindset of Islamist-jihadists, may be present prior to undertaking tertiary education and may predispose some to support extremist ideologies. This paper finds that an Islamist-jihadist ideological orientation has a relationship with the STEM fields broadly and Islamic studies specifically during adolescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper investigates the impact on Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities in Australia of government and community responses to the coronavirus pandemic of 2019 in the domains of education, employment, housing, social connectedness, and public health communication. Most of the examples are drawn from the state of New South Wales. In Australia, CALD refers to people from countries not classified as main English speaking. Most CALD communities reported in this article are from refugee backgrounds, are recently arrived migrants or do not use English in most of their communication. Inadequate, and in some instances, inappropriate or absent support, adversely impacts CALD communities. We used a multidisciplinary bricolage approach that draws on media, government, and community support publications and concluded that CALD communities experienced heightened pressures due to lower resource availability and poor communication. This led to disruption of support services, exposing gaps and vulnerability. The results reported here challenge Australian government, schools, community agencies, researchers to include proactively CALD community perspectives when planning and responding to such crises in future. Improving communication, pandemic response planning, addressing needs and ensuring participation are key considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compelling international evidence illustrates the potential of reading for pleasure for enhancing student reading achievement along with other learning and wellbeing outcomes. Yet profound challenges exist for nations seeking to encompass attention to students' volitional reading. In this paper we critically review the growing research evidence in this area by drawing systematically on cognitive psychological studies of reading attainment and motivation, educational studies of classroom practice, and the work of literary scholars and medical professionals. We consider and critique the methodologies deployed and read between the lines, exposing contradictions and complexities across this interdisciplinary field before considering the demands of operationalising this agenda in education. Through a dual focus on England and Australia, where, exemplifying international trends, young people's voluntary reading continues to decline, we examine difficulties and dilemmas which play out in policy and practice contexts. Our points of commonality and comparison surface key issues for consideration in countries working to reconcile the push and pull of performativity and reading for pleasure agendas in order to nurture children's volitional reading. To conclude, we examine ways forward for research, policy and practice which deserve increased global attention, and offer future-focused recommendations to advance this significant social justice agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the discussant of this special issue, I focus on two related ideas: choice and self-interest. First, I explore the idea of choice and its relevance within research that concerns itself with a heavily loaded concept like ‘social justice’. My proposal here is that future scholarship that explores the consequences of privatised health and physical education (HPE) might at least factor in choice as one from a list of competing priorities. For example, does greater choice trump concerns about equity? Is it possible that increasing choice is one of the ways in which important social policy outcomes might be achieved? Second, like a number of the papers in this special issue, I argue that the privatisation of HPE portends significant changes in the way knowledge is produced, consumed and evaluated. Through all of this, old ideas about the role of the academic are increasingly salient. But rather than limiting our critical gaze to the purveyors of privatised HPE, I suggest that financial self-interest is only one kind of self-interest amongst many others, each of which deserve our attention. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There are over one million people in Australia who are either living with or have lived with cancer, and approximately 145,000 new cancer cases are expected this year (AIHW, 2019). Oncology social workers are essential members of the health care team in meeting the needs of cancer patients and their families; however, the training and specialisation of social work professionals in the field of oncology is less developed in Australia compared to other western countries. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the strategies implemented in the USA to develop and train oncology social workers and to assess the utility of these strategies in the Australian context. This paper will address the current state of oncology social work in both the USA and Australia, educational models of training oncology social workers, and the research capacity of oncology social workers. The feasibility of adapting some of these key strategies for training oncology social workers in the Australian context will be discussed. It is essential to train skilled oncology social workers to be recognised as key providers of psychosocial care to cancer patients and their families via credentialing or certification. Developing an oncology social work research base is essential for both oncology social workers as well as cancer patients and their families. The strategic alliance and support of the key national cancer bodies (e.g., Clinical Oncology Society of Australia, Cancer Council Australia, and Cancer Australia) are crucial to the formal recognition and support of oncology social workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primarily developed as an alternative to narrow measures of well-being such as utility and resources, Amartya Sen’s capability approach places strong emphasis on people’s substantive opportunities. As a broad normative framework, the capability approach has become a valuable tool for understanding and evaluating social arrangements (e.g. education policies and development programmes) in terms of individuals’ effective freedoms to achieve valuable beings and doings. This paper explores the recent emergence of ‘capability’ in Australian education policy, specifically in theAustralia in the Asian CenturyWhite Paper. We explore capability as a framing device and reveal how its various meanings are at odds with the scholarly literature, specifically Sen’s conception of capability and its implications for social justice in and through education. The analysis shows that the social justice intent of a capability approach appears to be overtaken in the White Paper by an emphasis on outcomes, performance and functionings that seek to serve the nation’s economic interests more than the interests of students, especially the disadvantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is interested in thinking more about sexuality education at school. As such, it is concerned with a mundane and unacknowledged feature of the sexuality classroom - the mapping of movement. While human movement is a familiar focus of educational research, the movement of things is not. With reference to Barad’s concept of intra-activity, the paper maps human-non-human movements and characterises these as a sexual choreography of schooling. Instead of asking what does movement mean or reveal about sexuality education, I attend to the event movement inaugurates. Predominantly theoretical, the paper weaves together ideas from conventionally disparate disciplinary fields. These include Edensor’s concept of rhythm from geography, Eggermont’s notion of the choreography of schooling from education, and Barad’s spacetimemattering from quantum physics. This theorisation enables a recognition of movement as a force in human-non-human classroom intra-actions implicated in the becoming of sexuality education as event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The home care sector comprises one of Australia’s fastest growing workforces, yet few papers capture the overall landscape of Australian home care. This integrative review investigates home care with the aim of better understanding care recipients and their needs, funding, and regulation; care worker skills, tasks, demographics, employment conditions, and training needs. Over 2,700 pieces of literature were analyzed to inform this review. Results suggest sector fragmentation and a home care workforce who, although well-placed to improve outcomes for care recipients, are in need of better training and employment support. Suggestions for future research regarding Australian home care include studies that combine both aged and disability aspects of care, more research around care recipients, priority needs and strategies for addressing them, and how best to prepare home care workers for their roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital fabrication and '3D Making' are prominent recent additions to school curricula, hastened by the increased affordability of Computer Assisted Design software and devices such as 3D printers. It is increasingly argued that classroom use of these technologies can re-orientate schools towards forms of skills and knowledge appropriate for contemporary industry, STEM education and 'Maker culture'. Amidst such rhetoric, questions are raised about how these technologies are being used in schools, and the extent to which this represents 'new' and/or 'innovative' forms of education. This paper presents an ethnographic investigation of a 3D printing course enacted in an Australian high school. These curricular activities are considered from three different perspectives: (i) the artefacts and devices involved in the project; (ii) the surrounding social and educational contexts; and (iii) the activities and practices implicit in the implementation of the project. These different levels of analysis highlight the complexities of technology-based schooling -- not least the ways in which possible technical and/or pedagogical 'innovations' associated with 3D printing are shaped by the situational constraints of school contexts. The paper concludes by considering the likely future(s) of 3D printing and other forms of digital fabrication within the institutional confines of school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand the construction of teachers within one New South Wales education policy, querying this construction in relation to both local and international processes and factors. As such, it also looks to contribute to a growing body of international literature which grapples with the role and nature of neoliberal policy development in education more broadly. To accomplish this, the paper analyses Great Teaching, Inspired Learning (GTIL), a policy with wide-ranging and potentially significant ramifications for teachers. Ultimately it is argued that although aspects of neoliberal thinking are evident in the policy, particularities of context have mediated this push. It is suggested that this has led to a particular neoliberalisation of policy that variously targets and supports individual teachers and the systems and structures surrounding them, while the place of GTIL within both local state politics and the global imaginary is questioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When school boards are confronted with the challenge of unfamiliar, changing contexts, opportunities and governance responsibilities, they have to be able to respond appropriately. The research reported in this paper investigated the response of five Western Australian primary school boards to such situations. It analyses interview data from 49 board members on their roles and responsibilities using elements of Heifetz' framework of adaptive leadership, and explores the implications of these findings for the boards and their leaders. The findings reinforce the importance of the leader's role in choreographing the learning of the board members, and raise questions about the effect that the composition of boards may have on their capacities for strategic thinking. The paper concludes with a model of adaptive leadership appropriate for school boards, emphasising key elements that are necessary for sustained change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Becoming a researcher is one of the roads travelled in the emotional, social, and intellectual process of PhD journeys. As such, developing a researcher identity during doctoral study is a social undertaking. This paper explores instances and practices where doctoral students identify as becoming researchers. Based on interviews with 30 PhD students from two Australian metropolitan universities, this paper presents students' experiences of moments when they feel like researchers. The paper finds identification as a researcher occurs early on in the PhD, and such instances are underpinned by external and internal validation of the student as a researcher. Validation is gained throughresearch outputs (mainly publications),doing research, andtalking about research. Such experiences are often mundane, occur daily, and constitute personal, social, informal, and formal learning opportunities for researcher development. Supervisors are largely absent as students draw on multiple individuals on and off campus in assuming a researcher identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper stems from research in Australia examining pre-service teacher and mentor teacher experiences on the practicum. The paper focuses on findings from the research, highlighting the tendency among the pre-service teachers to either valorise or demonise their mentor teachers, reflective of what we describe, following Kristeva and Britzman, as their powerful need to believe. The paper draws on psychoanalytic theory in order gain insights into this process, viewing the pre-service teachers’ accounts of their mentors as fantasies that serve a stabilising function in order to manage the intense emotional demands of schools and classrooms. The paper concludes with considerations of how teacher educators might ameliorate the ideality of novice teachers, reflecting the insistence of the imaginary, and hence enable them to benefit more from the practicum experience. We briefly suggest the use of tools that work within the symbolic register to exercise a mediating role in the context of these intense demands. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Evaluate the utility of brief online training for facilitating mental health professionals' perceived knowledge, confidence, and comfort in working with non-binary clients, and building positive attitudes. Baseline participants were 79 Australian registered mental health professionals, of whom 38 completed online training and a one-week follow-up assessment. Participants completed an assessment of attitudes, comfort, confidence, and perceived knowledge pertaining to non-binary people before and after completing online training. The training (30-minute average completion time) provided information on non-binary people's lives using text, images, embedded video, and links to optional resources. Follow-up measures completed one-week post-intervention indicated engagement in the training may lead to increased perceived knowledge, confidence and comfort. Attitudes were positive at baseline and were not significantly different at follow-up. Providing brief online training for working with non-binary people in mental health might improve practitioner perceived knowledge, confidence and competence at low cost and with easy access. Future research is required to account for limitations and build on current outcomes. Key Points What is already known on this topic: Little is known about the effects of brief online training regarding non-binary genders on mental health practitioner's attitudes, confidence, comfort, and perceived knowledge. Previous research has shown that brief training can increase positive attitudes for, knowledge of, behavioural intent, and cultural competence for working with sexual and gender minorities, though has not specifically focused on non-binary people. Previous literature has highlighted positive associations between practitioner knowledge and the well-being of non-binary people accessing health services. What this paper adds: This paper adds to the ongoing genesis of options for training mental health practitioners about non-binary people and relevant issues. Findings suggest beneficial outcomes from both prior professional training in this area and the brief training used in the study. The brief online training used in the study was associated with higher perceived knowledge, confidence, and comfort for working with non-binary clients, but further research is needed to understand reasons for change in these variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, as is the case in other countries around the world, the Early Childhood workforce is in the process of ‘skilling up’ to meet government demands related to quality service provision. This paper sets out to identify what constitutes effective teacher professional learning through mentoring. Guided by critical realism and social practice as theoretical perspectives, the paper uses data drawn from the State-wide Professional Mentoring Program for Early Childhood Teachers (2011-2014), Victoria, Australia. The findings identify four C’s essential to effective professional learning - Context: the association between individual aspirations and systemic requirements; Collegiality: the positioning and importance of collegial relationships; Criticality: critical deliberation in ‘safe’ learning environments; and Change: recognition that teacher learning takes place in the domains of professional dispositions, pedagogical knowledge and social capital. These findings point to the need to consider teachers’ contexts of practice in the design of professional development programs such as mentoring, and to conceptualise learning as a socially situated practice rather than a detached pedagogic event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of distance education in the 1990s sought to broaden the access to a social work qualification to Australians who are excluded from educational institutions which have high attendance requirements. This paper describes the evolution of an online social work education at Deakin University from a programme which commenced in 1996 predominantly relying on print-based learning materials. In Australia, distance education in social work remains controversial and the quality of education possible is often questioned. Data from national surveys are presented indicating that high-quality student learning experiences can be reported by social work students studying at a distance when properly resourced. The paper concludes by contending that it is inappropriate to generalise about all online and distance education programmes in social work and that rather than considering the mode of delivery, individual courses should be evaluated as to whether or not graduates are appropriately prepared for professional practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptualisations about teachers and teaching have important implications for teachers' practice, expectations of their practice, their initial education and continuing professional development. This paper presents empirical data from a qualitative multiple case study to discuss conceptualisations of good teaching in Australia's Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector. It argues that the sector's contemporary discourse, influenced by neoliberalist reforms and accompanied by the development of a culture of performativity, reflects a predominantly 'reductionist' approach to conceptualising teaching – one which seeks to atomise teaching to produce a prescriptive list of capabilities VET teachers need in order to teach well. There exists, however, an alternative, more holistic approach which focuses on the personal, recognising the importance of the individual teacher, and while reductionist approaches may help to identify some of the capabilities required by VET teachers and adequately serve some instrumental and performative purposes, they largely overlook the importance of the unique characteristics of the individual teacher. Developing ways to describe VET teaching using a holistic approach may help to provide an even more insightful and comprehensive understanding of 'good' VET teaching, which may in turn inform strategies for the education and development of VET teachers in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2020a) requires all teachers to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples', culture and history where there is scope to meaningfully do so. However, there is a general absence in Australia and internationally of understanding culturally responsive pedagogy for those perspectives in teaching Physical Education (PE). This concept paper proposes an educational framework comprising Yunkaporta's (2009) 8 Ways Aboriginal Pedagogy and the Game Sense approach (GSA) (Australian Sports Commission [ASC], 1996). for games and sport teaching in PE to move towards a culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy. We provide an empirical argument that curricula are instruments of colonisation and explain the creation of a cultural interface through games and sport as one approach for decolonising PE. We present an opportunity to 'close the gap' between Western and Aboriginal knowledge through the purposeful design of engagement in reconciliation, respect and recognition of continuous living Aboriginal cultures. We use the game Parndo (ASC, 2000) to illustrate an example of how Yunkaporta's (2009) framework and the GSA become a solution for closing our identified gap. By proposing a culturally responsive curriculum, we focus on the importance of identity for all people and how curricula must be relevant and meaningful for all Australians. Importantly, Yunkaporta's (2009) 8 Ways is a product of 'cultural interface', co-created through dialogue between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators. Our findings, although not transferable to other settings, nonetheless have relevance to other countries where there is a similar move to decolonise PE curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Federal and state governments have been introducing neoliberal reforms to the governance of their education systems for a number of decades. One of the most recent programs of reform is the Western Australian Independent Public Schools (IPS) initiative. Similar to decentralizing reforms around the world, the IPS program seeks greater school autonomy from the state education bureaucracy by providing selected principals and school communities with a range of responsibilities. This paper seeks to better understand the kind of post-welfare form of government IPS enacts. Using concepts from the governmentality literature, this paper analyses documents related to the program, and interview data collected from key government officials responsible for the initiative. It finds that while IPS renders operable a neoliberal critique of the public sector by implementing the processes of contractualization, it also diverges from the ideal schema of neoliberalism. Analysis reveals that a number of strategic, pragmatic and political concerns have resulted in what some may view as a contradictory rationality of “the system” being instituted as a key element in this autonomizing reform. The paper calls for attention to the actual operationalizing of neoliberal reform projects to gain a nuanced understanding of modern regimes of rule. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research addresses the appeal for more empirical-based research on exclusionary practices in local community sport that often go unchallenged within dominant discourses. By examining how organised community sport clubs can uphold systemic segregation of various ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious and socioeconomic groups, this study also draws attention to the importance of research on race, ethnicity, and education in primary school age children; a population group often ignored in both racism studies and studies of sport. Using interview and focus group data from school principals and students (aged 9–12), including students from refugee and asylum seeker migrant backgrounds, collected over 3 years from two schools in the same multicultural community in Melbourne, Australia, this paper challenges the depiction of sport as an uncontested inclusive space in national and educational discourse, and instead demonstrates the continued existence of exclusion through systemically mediated segregation in organised community youth sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores two Australian school education policy documents and the inputs they describe to boost student achievement. The paper suggests that current reform efforts in schooling like others previously configure student achievement in input-output terms confining school education policy to predictable inputs that sideline broader influences on educational output including, for instance, school funding. The national policy documents that are the subject of the case study in this paper are the National Plan for School Improvement and the current Students First. Student achievement is explored as an object of study that can be worked on by policy, including for across-theboard national 'non-educational' purposes. The analysis, critical in outlook, suggests that current school education policy trades on a predictable set of evidence-based inputs as correctives to declining levels of student achievement without weaving into the student learning equation the complex mix of relations that frame the educational system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This paper presents a systematic literature review of the qualitative evidence in relation to intergenerational learning programs, principles, and practices. The aim of the review is to develop the evidence base to form an Intergenerational Model of Practice Framework based on the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). The EYLF comprises three inter-related elements: principles, practice, and outcomes. The results of this systematic literature review revealed commonalities across these elements and therefore what is needed to underpin the development of an evidence-based Intergenerational Model of Practice Framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Academic Language and Learning (ALL) is a relatively recent practice field known in Australian Higher Education as Academic Skills Advising or Student Support. Changing social, political and economic circumstances shape ALL work in complex and contradictory ways. Of crucial current significance are discourses calling for education to become an evidence-based practice. This paper outlines the main tenets of evidence-based practice discourses (EBPD); recapitulates Gert Biesta’s critique of EBPD’ views of education as instrumental technology and positivistic science; and explores how these critiques hold in the managerial expropriations of these discourses in the ALL context. The paper argues that, while these managerial expropriations ostensibly provide ALL with some legitimacy, they simultaneously reduce its practice to means-to-end interventions servicing the language/learning commodity; and increasingly consign its research to techno-scientific evaluation investigating managerial outcomes and acting as powerful panoptic surveillance. The paper calls for the continued critique of dominant discourses and their reproducing practices; and reconnecting with questions of educational purpose in ALL thereby enabling more radical and meaningful re-imaginings of this work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the years either side of Federation in 1901, Australia's Irish Catholics balanced two often contradictory impulses: their determination to retain their cultural and religious links with Ireland in the face of an often unsympathetic Protestant majority, and the desire to become 'good' Australians in order to make 'a go' of their lives in the new land. This paper explores how this process played out at St Joseph's Nudgee College, a Christian Brothers' day and boarding school in Brisbane, the capital of the Australian state of Queensland, and how sport played a central role in satisfying both imperatives. This discussion will be framed by the intersection of the social/political/economic context of Queensland during the period 1891–1914. It will focus on the educational context in which the Irish Christian Brothers operated as they struggled to make the College a bastion of Irish Catholicism and a vehicle for the socio-economic advancement of their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines the Australian Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) micro-level data with its longitudinal continuation, the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth data, to measure the association between individual PISA scores and early school dropouts. We use multilevel modelling to distinguish between student and school factors when estimating school dropout propensity for 15–18-year olds. We model attrition and deal with the possibility that PISA scores are endogenous in the dropout decision. We find that PISA scores predict well early dropout, especially so for bottom achievers, and that individual and social disadvantage plays a crucial role in this relationship, both directly and indirectly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the field of language teaching has been increasingly recognised as having an important role in developing not only linguistic proficiency, but also a kind of 'interculturality' among students. Despite this 'intercultural turn' being evident in academic and policy documents, language teachers are at varying stages in their adaptation to such an approach. This paper draws on empirical data from a small-scale study conducted with teachers of Indonesian in Australian schools, to elucidate teachers' understandings of their role as 'intercultural' educators. In particular, the notion of 'culture' is examined, and the ways it is deployed around ideas of 'intercultural understanding' and language teaching pedagogy. This paper argues that despite the prevalence of 'interculturality' in educational policy, and a prevailing 'intercultural ethos' amongst teachers, confusion persists around the foundational idea of 'culture', which may affect teaching philosophy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's involvement in social work education has been limited, despite increased awareness of the importance of young voices in professional education programs. Qualitative research methodologies offer mechanisms for including young people's perspectives in social work education, and tools for social workers to better understand and respond to their concerns. This paper presents an Australian case study of engaging undergraduate social work students in research with secondary school students, to enhance their ability to systematically explore and address young people's needs. Social work students' reflections suggest this experience deepened their understandings of the social and relational challenges young people face during the high school years, improved their self-awareness of assumptions they hold about young people, and enhanced their confidence to identify and address young people's needs in a meaningful way. The paper concludes with an evidence informed discussion about the lessons learned from this study, and the possible implications for integrating similar projects into social work courses in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on facets of Foucault's theoretical resources to critique current education policy reform from within the Australian State of Victoria, namely the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development's (DEECD) discussion paperNew directions for school leadership and the teaching profession. Implicit in the reform effort is decentralization, including penalties for “underperforming” classroom teachers and “ineffective” teacher education courses. Principals will hold a pre-eminent rank in the reforms proposed as they are charged with their oversight and implementation, including intervening in the education and preparation of pre-service teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a body of research concerning the education of students with migrant or refugee backgrounds, little of this research focuses on primary school-aged children. In order to address this gap, the current paper utilises data gained from an ethnographic study to consider the challenges and opportunities associated with diverse classrooms designed for students learning English, in which students come from a complex range of backgrounds and may have experienced trauma. The paper provides support for sociocultural learning approaches, whereby students’ own cultural and linguistic background are treated as beneficial to education rather than as obstacles to be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

2020 has been marked by disruption on a global scale due to a range of compounding crises including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Many community arts responses to the pandemic originated from individuals rather than by means of concerted or sustained sectoral responses. This paper uses reflections from Ireland, Australia, and Mexico to discuss the precariousness and vulnerability of the community arts sector and the artists and educators within it at this profoundly difficult time. We reflect upon some of the artistic and educational innovations and experimentations that have come about. We simultaneously examine the work of artists and arts organizations on a paradigmatic level by reflecting upon the role we play in perhaps involuntarily sustaining inequalities despite articulating a desire for change in the work that we do. We argue for the community arts sector to draw upon its imagination and bravery to reflect, assume responsibility, and recast the world into what we want it to be, rather than rebuilding the old, broken one in an attempt to return to what is perceived to be normal. Finally, in turning to arts education policy, we interrogate the barriers and enablers of change in the arts in a post-COVID world, discussing the influencing policy factors of sectoral weaknesses; individual resourcefulness and resilience; the desire for revolution; and the importance of love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of increasing linguistic and cultural diversity in Australian schools, it is important to consider the value of students' multilingual resources for learning. This paper reports on an ethnographic case study conducted in an Australian metropolitan secondary school where the student body represented more than 40 cultures and languages, yet where the broader structures of education were dominated by a monolingual orientation. The study draws data from student artefacts, student focus groups, a staff questionnaire, and staff interviews to reveal the ways in which multilingual students and their teachers construct and enact language policy at the classroom level. Key themes to emerge from the data included students' application of multilingual resources for individual and collaborative learning and the way multilingualism and related practices, such as translanguaging, were valued by students. Additionally, the data illustrated teachers' situated approaches ranging from a resistance towards multilingual practices, through to active construction of a multilingual classroom. Teachers' approaches which facilitated students' use of their own linguistic resources for learning, and how these approaches were negotiated within a context otherwise dominated by monolingual pedagogies will also be discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overwhelmingly, school-based sexuality education programmes focus on the prevention of infection, pregnancy and abuse, with little if any attention given to positive views of sexuality and rarely the inclusion of sex positive issues such as pleasure, intimacy and desire. This paper explores the experience of teaching about pleasure to pre-service health and physical education teachers as part of compulsory studies in a unit on sexuality education designed to prepare them to teach sexuality education in secondary schools. Drawing on the aims, theoretical framework, content and pedagogical structure of the unit, and data collected from 42, third-year pre-service teachers (PST) in Australia via surveys and student assessment, the paper provides some practical examples of what teaching about pleasure might look like in practice. It argues that with adequate preparation, a framework to celebrate sex and sexuality, a gender lens to examine normative discourses, and the opportunity for reflection, PST can develop the confidence, skill and willingness to include pedagogies of pleasure in their school-based work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we explore the notion of school improvement through the lens of praxis as it relates to equity, inclusion, and transformation, with a particular focus on inquiry-based school and teacher development. We argue that authentic improvement is a consequence of praxis, and highlight, through examples, key ways that authentic school improvement might be achieved through inquiry within a praxis framework. While many recent policy initiatives related to school education in Australia, and internationally, place emphasis on competitive and performance-based mechanisms to drive improvement, the argument in this paper runs counter to these emphases, not in its recognition of the need for school improvement but in its understanding of how that improvement can be defined, developed, and documented. The examples presented illustrate ways in which inquiry-based approaches to teacher professional learning, and teaching practices in classrooms, provide tools for framing authentic school improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operating within a neoliberal education reform context, performativity and teaching in schools has been a focus of study for a number of years. However, less is known about the effects of performativity on teaching and curriculum in the early childhood (preschool) context. Making a case for the intensification of performativity in Australian early childhood education, this paper reports on findings from a doctoral study and draws on research literature from the past fourteen years to illustrate how performative measures have increasingly affected teaching and curriculum. The way that performativity has intensified is discussed in three chronological phases, performativity emerging, consolidating and normalised. Teacher interview transcripts and curricular related policies were analysed using critical discourse analysis and Ranson’s typology of accountability regimes. Findings reveal that early childhood teachers have different ways of responding to performativity, with the teacher featured in this paper displaying three types of performative accountability: anxiety, confidence, and disregard. An implication arising from this paper’s findings illustrates how the effects of performativity on teaching and curriculum can be complex, contradictory and at times, unintended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, recent policies for educational development have emphasised the importance of stakeholder involvement and advocacy in the promotion of student outcomes. There is robust support for the promotion and development of inclusive educational communities able to respond to the various educational needs of students, communities and staff. This paper advocates a practice perspective and establishes a direct correlation between leading practices and the formation of more inclusive school communities. It provides a consideration of the practice architectures which co-construct the ways in which six educational leaders draw on the potential ofteacher talkas a vehicle for practice modification. Teacher talk, as a characteristic of leading practice, responds to the increasing dynamism in the profile of schools, students and teachers in rural New South Wales (NSW), socially, cognitively, economically, linguistically and culturally. This paper uses the medium of teacher talk to: explore the relationship between leading and inclusion –leading-for-inclusion– and interrogate socially just (inclusive) practices in the domain of the professional advocacy of the community. The paper reflects upon the practices of leading-for-inclusion (in the context of change management) and the development of more inclusive school cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Over the last 20 years, curriculum development in Health and Physical Education (HPE) (or Physical Education, Physical Education and Health, Sport Education as it is variously called) has repeatedly attempted to address issues of equity and social inclusion. Why then does systemic educational disadvantage persist, and why do the poorest members of society acquire less privileged and privileging forms of HPE knowledge, skills and bodily dispositions? What constitutes relevant and responsive HPE curriculum for which groups of students remains a site of considerable contestation. Purpose: At a time when significant changes are being suggested to HPE curricula with the development of the Australian (National) Curriculum (seehttp://consultation.australiancurriculum.edu.au/), this paper is an attempt to refocus the analysis of education for Indigenous students in Australia upon the power and control relations operating within schools, rather than external social relations, using principles of pedagogic discourse from the sociological theories of Basil. The paper contributes to the growing corpus of studies on the social relations within schooling which constitute HPE curriculum, and the possibilities for interrupting systemic social inequity through the redesign of school curriculum and pedagogy. Methods: Using critical ethnographic methodology, a single, intrinsic case study of a school in a Torres Strait Islander community in Australia was undertaken. Document collation, observation and researcher notes, and individual and focus group interviews with stakeholders, comprised the data collection methods. Stakeholders including female students (n= 13), teachers (n= 7), parents (n= 2), school administrators (n= 4), regional education staff (n= 2), community advisors in education and health (n= 2), and regional health professionals (n= 6) comprised the group of key informants and research participants. Discussion and Conclusion: Government policy initiatives have reinforced a dominant and persistently negative discourse about ‘educational disadvantage’ when representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) students and educational outcomes. This paper challenges these negative discourses and focuses attention on the social relations within schooling which constitute the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of HPE curriculum, contributing to the large corpus of Bernsteinian studies of HPE curriculum which ‘look beneath the surface appearances of progress and innovation, to how inequities endure, despite rhetorical claims to the contrary that they have been eroded or have disappeared'. It also reveals the important contribution that Indigenous communities and educators have made and continue to make to curriculum decision-making in HPE for Indigenous Australian students. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Researchers' reflexivity about how they shape the phenomena that they study within the data collection process is often presented as a crucial component of ethnographic research methodology. Nevertheless, academic literature about ethnography is mostly silent around whether researchers' dreams are relevant to the research process and their interpretation can be considered a valuable material to be reflexive of. While using data from an ethnographic study in two public primary schools in Australia and Slovakia about inclusive education and school leadership, this paper demonstrates how researcher's dreams and their interpretation navigated his decisions about the data collection process, data analysis and ethical aspects of the study. This paper presents original implications for understanding the concept of reflexivity and putting it in practice when employing ethnographic research methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critique of the performative assumptions of the teacher professional learning policy direction being adopted in Australia. Through international policy borrowing, the policy direction in Australia is similar to many other countries in that it encourages increasingly standardised teaching practice to afford a more quantitative approach to evaluation. The intent through this paper is to encourage greater imagination with regards to what counts as useful in teacher professional learning. This is achieved initially through highlighting the evidence of teacher learning within the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative (AuSSI), a programme that makes use of collaborative professional inquiry around authentic problems. The social theory concepts of cross-field effects and linked ecologies are then deployed in an analysis of the emerging national policy framework for teacher professional learning in Australia, arguing that this policy framework can suppress the types of learning occurring in approaches such as the AuSSI. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on the processes and outcomes of an experiential learning intervention designed to improve intercultural skills in accounting students by building cross-cultural alliances in culturally mixed groups. The cultural backgrounds of students in accounting units are diverse, and it has proved difficult to break down barriers to interaction between students from different countries. Students were required to complete some alliance building activities as well as working in multicultural groups when completing a major piece of assessment. At the end of the semester, these students were surveyed about their cultural learning, and the results were compared with those from students in similar accounting units who had not participated in the intervention. The results show that students participating in the intervention units reported higher levels of cultural learning than those in corresponding control units. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings and their wider implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interventions in the field of early childhood education policy, drawn from global policy flows, are reconfiguring the work of early childhood educators in Australia. One such intervention is the requirement to designate an ‘educational leader’ (EL) in each service for young children and their families. This policy intervention has its origins in England's Early Years Professional Status initiative. This paper compares the pedagogical leader imagined in regulatory reforms with the educational labour described in interviews with childcare educators in Queensland and Victoria, Australia. The paper argues these educators are being called upon to navigate the tension between ‘imagined’ and ‘actual’ policy effects and that this is a key part of the work of educational leadership. Such leadership includes re-constituting ‘teachers’ in early childhood services as ‘learners’ who are ‘led’ by ‘ELs’, requiring major shifts in professional knowledge and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on the findings of an in-depth genealogical study of the discourse of quality in Australian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) policy. Quality reform has become the foremost global policy agenda for ECEC due to assumptions about the economic potentials of quality services. In Australia, the recent National Quality Framework elevated early childhood policy in Australia from the margins as the lynchpin of a broader economic reform agenda. However, quality ECEC - what it is and does - is a complex, contestable notion that could be considered problematic for the sector to execute, particularly through market models of provision. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of discourse as the ‘already said’, the truth assumptions that have underpinned policy uses of quality ECEC in Australia are identified and critiqued. It is shown that the discourse of quality has been tactically deployed in Australian ECEC policy to realign quality ECEC outcomes with educative outcomes, as a means for government to selectively grow and govern human capital. This positions quality as a high-stakes reform discourse for early childhood stakeholders, entwined with the expanded reach and intensification of selective, performance-related standards and incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]