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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 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]

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]