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In a globally austere policy context, state financing of public services has been positioned as perennially 'in crisis' with private intervention a positive solution. There is a general assumption – in education policy and practice – that philanthropic donations can be a solution to reduced public funding of schooling. While much research investigates the role of new philanthropy and venture capital in funding and influencing public schooling, this paper focuses on the reconstitution of 'old' philanthropy in new ways. We focus on the role of parents, through Parent and Citizen (P&C) associations, to show how they are being responsibilised to fundraise for their child's public school, shifting from their traditional fundraising of small amounts of money through 'community building' activities (e.g. fetes, stalls and trivia nights) to engaging in 'commercial fundraising' (e.g. running the canteen, uniform shop and Outside House School Care for profit) that can raise hundreds and thousands of dollars each year. Through this analysis we argue we are seeing a further stratification of the public school system coupled with a concerning lack of transparency around the extent to which some public schools are being nourished by the deep coffers of successful P&Cs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives an account of competing public discourses on schooling. In particular, it investigates one newspaper's coverage of the release of an educational report. The paper combines interview data with a critical discourse analysis of newspaper texts to show how media reporting of Queensland schools constructed a preferred discourse on education that represented schools as being in crisis, 'in trouble'. The analysis describes how the paper shaped popular opinion on educational policy through the construction of public discourses of crisis in education. Further, the analysis shows how this discourse positioned particular groups as the authoritative voice on standards in Queensland schools. It shows how, at a time when teacher quality was under question, the media constructed a public discourse that diminished the authority of teachers to speak about education policy, granting that authority to the newspaper's editor, who assumed the people's voice on educational issues. This analysis of the construction of public discourses about education policy gives insights into the media's place in educational policy-making. In so doing, the paper adds to the small body of literature that investigates the relationships between the media and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of a Teaching and Learning Audit of all government schools in Queensland, Australia. This audit has a concern with the extent to which schools ‘differentiate classroom learning’. We note that in England, since September 2012, one of the standards that teachers have been expected to demonstrate is an ability to ‘differentiate appropriately’, and thus the lessons of how this particular audit was implemented in Queensland have relevance outside of Australia. The paper draws on data collected from Red Point High School, one of the State’s 1257 schools and education centres audited in 2010. We suggest that this requirement to differentiate classroom learning was implemented without appropriate clarity or support, and that it increased teacher surveillance in this school. However, we also argue that some spaces were opened up by this audit, and its concern with differentiation, to articulate a social justice agenda within the school. We conclude that differentiation is a complex concept which is not easy to shift from a policy to a classroom context, and requires more careful explication at policy level and more support for teachers to enact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on an interview‐based study which explored the implementation of a major policy initiative in Queensland, Australia, with particular attention to social justice issues. Interviews were conducted with key policy actors in three sections of the bureaucracy: strategic directions, performance and measurement; curriculum and assessment; workforce and professional development. We were interested in the ways in which the tensions between redistributive and recognitive approaches to social justice were being managed in the bureaucracy. We drew on Bourdieu’s concepts of field, logic of practice, political discourse, habitus, capital, and symbolic power struggles to theorize the politics of discourse associated with such policy implementation processes within bureaucracies. The interview data revealed differences in approach to equity issues and in the language used in the three sections of the bureaucracy. We argue that these differences, associated with the different priorities of the three sections and their differing roles in the implementation processes, reflect the different logics of practice operating within the different sections. The final section of the paper discusses the implications of the analysis for theorizing equity and difference in education policy in new times and considers the value of Bourdieu’s concepts for theorizing policy implementation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses sociologically the current form of school-based secondary assessment, in Queensland which is criterion-referenced to Year 10 and a hybrid criterion/norm referenced form at the end of Year 12. Habermas' arguments are used to suggest that this. assessment pattern will give the state potentially greater 'steering capacity' over education by 'rationalising' it-the 'scientisation of schooling'. This form of assessment fits within the accountability discourse of the economically parsimonious 1980 while meeting selection demands. However, the approach does meet some educational demands. The paper also reflects upon the role of the state and expert knowledge in policy formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the strong policy push to improve students' results on national literacy and numeracy tests - the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) - in the Australian state of Queensland influenced schooling practices, including teachers' learning. The paper argues the focus upon improved test scores on NAPLAN within schools was the result of sustained policy pressure for increased attention to such foci at national and state levels, and a broader political context in which rapid improvement in test results was considered imperative. However, implementation, (or what this paper describes more accurately as 'enactment') of the policy also revealed NAPLAN as providing evidence of students' learning, as useful for grouping students to help improve their literacy and numeracy capabilities, and as a stimulus for teacher professional development. Drawing upon the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the paper argues that even as more political concerns about comparing NAPLAN results with other states were recognised by educators, the field of schooling practices was characterised by a logic of active appropriation of political concerns about improved test scores by teachers, for more educative purposes. In this way, policy enactment in schools is characterised by competing interests, and involving not just interpretation, translation and critique but active appropriation of political concerns by teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how policy pressure for increased performance on standardised measures of student achievement influenced the teacher learning practices that arose in a school setting in Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon research and theorising of governing by numbers, and applications to the governance of education, and particularly teachers’ learning, the research analyses how a group of Year 3 teachers collaborated to better inform themselves about the nature of their students’ learning. The research reveals that the governance of teachers’ learning under current policy conditions was manifest through both teachers’ compliance with and critique of a strong focus upon school, regional, state and national data – specifically, students’ attainment in ‘leveled’ readers and other school-based standardised measures of reading and mathematics, and school, state and regional results on national literacy and numeracy tests. There is little research that highlights the tensions around these numbers as governing technologies in relation to specific formal, ongoing instances of teacher professional development practices. The research cautions against the influence of such governing processes for how they potentially narrow teachers’ attention to more standardized measures of students’ learning, even as teachers may critique these more reductive effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Queensland, Australia, the school system is being reformed to be more 'inclusive'. However, the enthusiasm for 'inclusive education' in Queensland seems to be waning amongst practitioners, and the 'confusion, frustration, guilt and exhaustion' that has emerged with teachers and support practitioners in the UK is emerging amongst support practitioners and teachers in Queensland. This paper argues that this is happening because inclusive education reforms that intend to provide an equitable education for all students regardless of cultural, physical, social/emotional and behavioural differences are being introduced, but these policies, procedures and structures continue to label, isolate and segregate students within schools in the way in which segregated special education facilities did in the past. Also, new policies and structures are being introduced without practitioners having the time and support to examine critically the underlying assumptions about disability, difference and inclusion that underpin their practices. These reforms need to be reviewed in terms of their effectiveness in achieving their 'inclusive' goals, i.e. in terms of the impacts that these reforms are having on the students themselves, and on the educational practitioners who support the students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parent engagement in schooling has long been held as a vital component of the successful navigation of the schooling process and, consequently, governments often invite such engagement via policy implementation. However, at times, contestation arises about parent engagement, with some parents seemingly 'crossing the line' when attempting to be involved in their children's schooling. This paper investigates the possibility of parent engagement in schooling in Queensland, Australia, conceptualising it as a game of social and systemic practice. The author examines this notion using an example of contestation between parents at a regional government school and the education authority. Policy directives about parent engagement are explored, with the rhetoric of such policy applied to the example in question. The work of Bourdieu and Foucault is used to argue that the invitation to parents to engage is framed and thus often misrecognised, resulting in unintended conflictual relationships between parents and governing authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parent engagement in schooling has long been held as a vital component of the successful navigation of the schooling process and, consequently, governments often invite such engagement via policy implementation. However, at times, contestation arises about parent engagement, with some parents seemingly 'crossing the line' when attempting to be involved in their children's schooling. This paper investigates the possibility of parent engagement in schooling in Queensland, Australia, conceptualising it as a game of social and systemic practice. The author examines this notion using a recent example of contestation between parents at a regional government school and the education authority. Policy directives about parent engagement are explored, with the rhetoric of such policy applied to the example in question. The work of Bourdieu and Foucault is used to argue that the invitation to parents to engage is framed and thus often misrecognised, resulting in unintended conflictual relationships between parents and governing authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discourses of public education reform, like that exemplified within the Queensland Government's future vision document, Queensland State Education-2010 (QSE-2010), position schooling as a panacea to pervasive social instability and a means to achieve a new consensus. However, in unravelling the many conflicting statements that conjoin to form education policy and inform related literature ( Ball, 1993 ), it becomes clear that education reform discourse is polyvalent ( Foucault, 1977 ). Alongside visionary statements that speak of public education as a vehicle for social justice are the (re)visionary or those reflecting neoliberal individualism and a conservative politics. In this paper, it is argued that the latter coagulate to form strategic discursive practices which work to (re)secure dominant relations of power. Further, discussion of the characteristics needed by the ‘ideal’ future citizen of Queensland reflect efforts to ‘tame change through the making of the child’ ( Popkewitz, 2004 , p. 201). The casualties of this (re)vision and the refusal to investigate the pathologies of ‘traditional’ schooling are the children who, for whatever reason, do not conform to the norm of the desired school child as an ‘ideal’ citizen-in-the-making and who become relegated to alternative educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frequent calls for more male teachers are being made in English-speaking countries. Many of these calls are based upon the fact that the teaching profession has become (even more) 'feminized' and the presumption that this has had negative effects for the education of boys. The employment of more male teachers is sometimes suggested as a way to re-masculinize schools so they become more 'boy-friendly' and thus contribute to improving boys' school performance. The focus of this paper is on an Australian education policy document in the state of Queensland that is concerned with the attraction, recruitment and retention of male teachers in the government education system. It considers the failure of this document, as with many of the calls for more male teachers, to take into account complex matters of gender raised by feminism and the sociology of masculinities. The paper then critiques the primary argument given for the need for more male teachers: that is, that male teachers provide boys with much needed role models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses exclusion, enrolment cancellation, and suspension rates in government schools in the Australian state of Queensland to investigate the impact of legislation to extend principals' disciplinary powers. Results suggest that the provision of alternative disciplinary options, including Saturday detentions and community service, failed to curb increases in the use of enrolment cancellations and exclusions as originally intended. Moreover, suspension rates increased at more than double the rate of enrolment growth during the same period. Year on year analysis of suspension rates reveals two specific calendar years and two particular grade levels in which there were very large increases. These calendar years coincide with two key education reforms in Queensland in addition to the extension of principals' power, indicating that the move to extend principals' disciplinary powers interacted with other major education reforms occurring within that same period. Grade level patterns indicate that education policy and school environments may play a role in rising school suspension rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]