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The article reviews the paper "A Review of Young People and the Arts: An Agenda for Change" by Sue Giles which discusess recent developments in theatre-making by and for young people and children. Topics discussed include history of Australian Theatre for Young Audiences and Youth Arts; analysis of theatre in education; and recent government policies that focus on STEM subjects in the school curriculum and within education policy.

This paper examines school management and policies in Germany and Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study, which is comparative and qualitative, explores the interrelationship between different levels of governance and the responses of teacher unions. The inquiry is informed by the perspectives of historical institutionalism and path dependency, and the document analysis is conducted by utilising the justification categories of value, collective, and formal and procedural driven arguments. We argue the contestation which occurred between different levels of school governance and the teacher unions amidst the pandemic created the potential for changes in policy settings and influence over the administration of schooling. However, there is no indication of fundamental shifts in the organisation, policy direction or control over schooling in Germany or Australia. Instead, there is a conformity to established institutional arrangements and path dependencies, which secure and protect the vested interests of the different policy actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools are critical spaces for young men from refugee backgrounds. They play an integral role in literacy development, educational attainment, and providing a sense of belonging. Inclusive education practices for this group are largely absent in Australian schools. Research shows focusing on these young men from a non-deficit position assists with inclusivity. There is a lack of research exploring the agentic practices of young men from refugee backgrounds within schools. This paper explores the symbolic value of swagger for a group of young men from refugee backgrounds at a high school in Australia. A Bourdieusian theoretical framework guided critical awareness of power in schools. This research shows how a group of young men found a meaningful way to acquire social and cultural capital. Despite the school's constraints, this group developed a group identity reflected in their clothing and embodied dispositions referred to here as swagger. Our findings demonstrate the complex power relations at work, including the opportunity for the young men to resist and be included. In the spirit of Bourdieu's concern for reflexivity our findings point to the need for schools, teachers, and education policy makers to consider the workings of power in schools in more considered ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy analysis can be useful for learning about 'what works' in policy. Contemporary policy studies literature highlight that such learning is influenced by power relations in government that shape our ways of knowing the world. This paper offers a critically reflexive narrative account of power relations present during Indigenous higher education policy analysis research conducted in the Northern Territory (NT), Australia to shed light on how to effectively negotiate policy analysis. We reflect on tensions that arose by applying Nakata's concept of the 'cultural interface', which accounts for the complexity of meaning making across diverse knowledge spaces. Narratives from an Indigenous Project Reference Group member are included to provide a perspective on these tensions from an Indigenous standpoint. The paper concludes by describing enabling conditions and strategies that were necessary for effective policy analysis, and considers implications for Indigenous higher education policy analysis in the NT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the reform of initial teacher education (ITE) policy in Australia over a 25-year period from 1998 to 2023. It examines policy shifts and movements over this timeframe and aims to better understand the ongoing reforms in the changing contexts of their times. Design/methodology/approach: The paper engages a critical policy historiography approach, focusing on four "policy moments" each linked to a review commissioned by the Commonwealth government of the day. It draws upon the reports and government responses themselves, along with media reports, extracts from Hansard, and ministerial speeches, press releases and interviews related to each of the four policy moments, asking critical questions about the "public issues" and "private troubles" (Gale, 2001) of each moment and aiming to shed light on the complexities of these accounts of policy and the trajectory they represent. Findings: The paper charts the construction of the problem of ITE in Australia over time, highlighting the discursive continuities and shifts since 1998. It traces the constitution of both policy problems and solutions to explain the current policy settlement using a historical lens. Originality/value: Its value lies in offering a reading of the current policy settlement, based on a close and systematic historical analysis. Where previous research has focused either on particular moments or concepts in ITE reform, this analysis seeks to understand the current policy settlement by taking a longer, contextualised view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations (AFMLTA) is committed to expanding, domestically and internationally, the high profile of our federation as the peak body for languages educators in Australia. An important part of this commitment is engaging in strategic collaborative partnerships and advocacy at national and international levels. This paper reports on the Association for Language Learning UK (ALL) Conference Language World in Sheffield, England, in which the authors participated during March 2023. Language World offered a packed program with speakers from across the languages sector, with a large number coming from primary and secondary schools. Additionally, many involved in languages education governance in the UK also participated, providing insights into the challenges and successes in languages education policy in the UK. In this paper, stimulating and useful learning from Language World is showcased, which can be used to inform both how we support languages education in Australia and how we continue to engage with partners and collaborators around the world on matters of current concern and interest Through this learning we provide connection with the AFMLTA Professional Standards for Accomplished Teaching of Languages (AFMLTA, 2021), and in particular the dimension of "Active engagement with wider context". We explore how accomplished teachers of languages establish relationships to wider contexts and are able to connect the local to the global through collaborative partnerships and comparison of our respective policy documentation to support teachers and teaching of languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews policies affecting domestic students in the higher education system in Australia over the last several decades. It examines the implementation and expansion of Australia's student loan program and policies to encourage widening participation in the higher education sector among equity or target groups, including those from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Using quantitative data from Australian government and university sources as well as the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, this research seeks to assess whether equity and inclusion in higher education over this period has improved or been maintained. The findings show that while the conditions under which students are able to access higher education in Australia remain relatively generous, the participation rates of equity groups have not substantially improved over the last two decades. Further, the less advantaged circumstances of equity students continue to predict their outcomes prior to and beyond degree completion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy classifies and shapes people/subjects in particular kinds of ways. Focusing on the context of Health and Physical Education (HPE), this paper analyses policy documents from Australia, the United States of America (USA) and Wales. We pay particular attention to how learners are represented within and across the three policy documents, and we apply Bacchi's 'What's the Problem Represented to be?' approach to guide the analysis. For us, problematization is a fruitful and positive process that enables educators to engage with a critical dialogue regarding the policies they are expected to enact. Our analysis highlighted that common across the policies were overlapping discourses of idealism, neoliberalism, healthism, and individualism, which serve to reinforce deficit language and a focus on what learners 'lack'. The problem of 'learner as lacking' is represented within the policies via at least three subject positions: 'the sedentary learner', 'the un-educated learner' and 'the naïve learner'. The findings suggest that the three policies were producing an ideal and perhaps impossible learner (subject) whilst at the same time representing the learner as a problem that the policy could 'fix'. This paper is important because it: (i) demonstrates how certain discourses and voices are amplified and silenced within curriculum policy documents and policy work more broadly; (ii) makes educational and health politics visible; and (iii) creates space for the profession to develop greater critical consciousness related to policy. In terms of future directions, we urge curriculum policy writers and other stakeholders to carefully consider how learners are categorised, represented and governed in and through policy. If curriculum policies, by their very nature, need to produce problems – in this case, the (im)possible subject - we invite educators to engage in critical conversations regarding the policies they are expected to enact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education has often acted as a social microcosm that reflects the growing levels of religious and cultural diversity in Australia, with educators facing the daily task of responding pedagogically and interculturally to the challenges this evolving context brings. This paper engages critically with intercultural initiatives and policies and their role in fostering inclusivity and cross-cultural understanding in education practice across Australia. It explores the discourses, policies, and curricula developments that attempt to address growing levels of diversity both within and beyond educational settings. The paper argues that policy statements and educational policies alone are not sufficient to ensure broader uptake of an intercultural pedagogic ethos. Rather, such initiatives need to be augmented by broader institutional leadership, adequate resourcing, and context-sensitive enabling strategies. This argument is corroborated by current evidence indicating that principled approaches to introducing intercultural perspectives in education require certain conditions before they can disrupt long-standing racist attitudes and exclusionary discourse. The implementation of systematic and transformative intercultural approaches in schools can create more inclusive pedagogic practices and respectful intercultural relations that transcend the boundaries of the schoolyard and extend into broader society. Targeted, long-term intercultural understanding trainings can also engender more constructive discourse within and beyond schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative education is one of the key contributors in achieving the goal of sustainability. Several studies mention that the sustainability curriculum and educators can play an immense role in developing awareness in practicing the concept of sustainability. Relatively there is no comprehensive study to typify the recent contributions of teacher education for sustainability. In this light, the aim of the study is to understand the progress of the research on teacher education for sustainability (TES) in terms of growth, evolution, influence and significant research themes. To achieve the aim of the study, 1782 documents indexed in the Scopus database over three decades starting from 1991 to 2020 were analyzed by using bibliometric analysis. The data are visualized in the paper by using VOSviewer and Tableau. Results show that there has been a significant increase in yearly publications and citations over the years, trending research papers, productive authors, institutions and countries and thematic areas of research. Most frequently published journal has a considerable cite score and quartile. Universities from Australia published the most. The most commonly published themes are education for sustainability, Agenda 21, sustainable development education, environmental education, and later the focus is shifted to teacher training, teachers, education, values, teaching and education policy, sustainability competencies. Future research should focus on blended learning, digital learning, other modern tools and techniques to achieve the goal of sustainable development as well as to address the issue of teaching sustainability during uncertainty conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International migration is attaining new records, diversifying nations' cultural–social landscapes. The number of international migrants is estimated to be about 272 million globally, with nearly two‐thirds being labour migrants, surpassing historic projections. Concomitantly, migrant teachers are becoming more prevalent in educational markets; spaces that may serve as institutional vehicles promoting social cohesion and tolerance. Acknowledging that such spaces have an increasing share of faith‐based schools—settings that foreground particular groups' cultural and social values—this critical analysis seeks to identify how migrant teachers' aspirations are shaped and ethically negotiated in seemingly exclusive educational sites. Drawing upon migrant teacher interviews from American and Australian faith‐based schools, and utilising concepts of motility and institutional viscosity, this paper captures the schools' 'viscous' conditions and complex facilitation through which educators professionally move and ethically navigate their practice. Bourdieu's thinking tools of field, habitus, capital and symbolic violence provided a supplementary theoretical framework that draws attention to the evolving discourse of the subordinate 'invisible foreign educator' in the faith‐based educational setting. The paper portrays strategies of initial institutional welcoming; enabling migrant educators a smooth spatial mobility into the field but challenging them to work against their social mobility aspirations. It illustrates the educators' failed attempts to negotiate intra‐institutional transitions; experiencing feelings of trepidation about future professional moves and ethical conflicts between their obligation to adhere to institutional procedures and commitment to operate from an ethic of care. The paper argues for education policies that enable motility over time and empower ethical skilled migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intercultural education in Australia has been positioned in Statebased official curriculum and education policy as developing understanding between diverse cultural groups. However, cultivating such understanding far more complex in practice than policy and curriculum directives can capture. In Australia, eruptions of intercultural tensions has an ongoing and complex history. This paper examines the challenges for teachers' intercultural practice in one Australian public school setting. Reporting on a single-site ethnography drawing on Lefebvre's production of space. I conceptualise teachers' intercultural work as a praxis of difference, this paper problematises the way intercultural education is often taken up in tokenistic ways and advocates for reimagining intercultural education as a challenge of practice. I argue that an examination of the conditions that produce complex relations between diverse cultural groups in particular spaces is a productive starting point for developing intercultural understanding as a rational praxis of difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that when young children are given an opportunity for their voice to be heard, they are competent communicators and social agents who can co-create cultural practices as theory makers. The paper draws on video recorded data from a small study that focussed on how young children (3–5 years) participated in an end-of-year cultural celebration in an early childhood education setting in Australia. The children organized a party, invited Santa Claus to visit, and setup a special place where they could hold conversations with Santa. Video recorded data of the conversations initiated by the children with Santa Claus were transcribed and analysed using the fine-grained interactional tools of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis. Analyses identified children's competence as active social agents who challenged Santa's authenticity through checking his appearance, knowledge testing and, suggesting he was not the 'real Santa'. This evidence of children's capacity to authenticate cultural experiences demonstrates that incorporating children's voice in the co-creation of culture fosters children's opportunities to make and interrogate theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abundance of research in Indigenous education has not resulted in significant systemic change in relation to Indigenous education in Australia. In this paper we examine convergence and divergence across the policy, practice and research realms with the aim of identifying key sites of opportunity for innovation and change. Through analysing how research and evidence is produced and included/excluded in Indigenous education policy settings, the complexities of how different types of evidence are considered rigorous and relevant were found to be clearly implicated with broader social and political discourses with relation to Indigenous peoples and interests. Whilst we argue for an Indigenous based evidence approach that centres Indigenous agency and solutions, we propose that deeper conversations about Indigenous voice and diversity is needed in implementing such an approach. We re-visit some key policy cycles that resembles the new co-design approach announced by the Australian Government in 2019 and consider the implications based on published literature to date for Indigenous education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the intense politicisation of education, many teacher educators are caught in the cross-hairs of government's reform agendas, university expectations and student teacher needs. This paper reports on a study of 28 literacy teacher educators in four countries (Canada, US, Australia and England). This paper reports on the broad question: How is politics affecting literacy teacher educators? Three specific aspects are considered: their pedagogies, identity and well-being. It describes how their pedagogy (goals and teaching strategies) has narrowed because of mandated curriculum and exit exams. It shows how their identity as academics is being complicated because they often do not have time for their research. And their well-being is compromised because of excessive external inspections and as their community in the university splinters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of widening participation initiatives internationally, including those in Australia, much has been written about equity policies in education. There is a growing body of research related to the outcomes of such policies and the experiences of non-traditional students, including those from low socio-economic status (LSES) backgrounds and students who are First Generation and/or First in Family, as well as other equity groups. This paper presents data related to a less researched effect of widening participation: the experiences of and impact on academic staff and those providing support services to students. We focus particularly on students from LSES backgrounds. Qualitative data were collected through focus groups with academic and student support staff in a large regional Australian university, with several themes emerging. In this paper, we investigate staff experiences related to diversity in student cohorts, drawing on Bourdieu's concept of capital. Results show that the academics are supportive of LSES students and sensitive to the range of student backgrounds in their courses, including differences in cultural capital and students experiencing extreme hardship, but the support provided is affected by staff gender. It is evident that staff endeavour pedagogically and pastorally to support students, often at personal cost. There are workload and welfare implications evident for staff, institutions and funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on Bourdieu's theorising (particularly habitus and field) to think about position‐making of teachers in respect of the early enactment of the Australian Curriculum. Position‐making, a concept developed from the analysis proffered, can be contrasted with the more common practice of position‐taking endemic in a relatively stable field. Position‐making is an ongoing phenomenon in a changing field when the habitus is out of place, here the field of the new Australian Curriculum, creating the effect of what Bourdieu sees as hysteresis. This paper explores the positioning and re‐positioning of agents (teachers and school leaders) due to an external change (the Australian curriculum) in the schooling field. Data for this study were collected from a middle‐class state high school in Brisbane Australia, which was an early adopter of the new Australian Curriculum. The initial enactment phase of curriculum change was an unsettling one that (re)positioned agents—hence, the concept of position‐making, which is a contribution to Bourdieu's theoretical resources and which complements the idea of policy enactment as opposed to policy implementation. Both allow some agency in mediation of mandated changes in the specific contexts of schools and teacher/leader habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1988 Dawkins reforms were designed, at least in part, to encourage public universities to organize themselves as if they were corporate enterprises, in order to create a more efficient and competitive sector that was less reliant on government funding. This paper assesses whether successive policy changes since the 1988 Dawkins reforms have achieved these efficiency, competition, and funding objectives. It does so by examining their financial performance over time, applying the techniques employed by investment analysts in the private sector to assess the performance of market participants. It demonstrates that the policy changes have reduced efficiency and competitiveness, and weakened the financial position of a number of universities. It provides empirical support for previous research highlighting the significant structural and regulatory constraints on the creation of a competitive market in higher education. Furthermore, it demonstrates that 35 years of policy change have merely reinforced pre-existing market positions and that, even before the impact of the COVID pandemic is considered, the financial position of the sector has been weakened as a result of the changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to explore the extent to which the South Australian flexible learning option (FLO) secondary school enrolment strategy supports some of the most vulnerable and disengaged students to simultaneously engage in secondary- and higher-education, skills and work-based learning; second, to explore the degree to which this FLO enrolment strategy addresses the United Nations (UN) principles of responsible management education and 17 sustainable development goals.Design/methodology/approach The approach includes a practice perspective, field-notes and documents analysis.Findings This paper finds the flexibility inherent in the FLO enrolment strategy goes some way to addressing inequity in education outcomes amongst those who traditionally disengage from education and work-based learning. Findings also highlight ways in which the FLO enrolment strategy addresses some of the UN principals and 17 goals.Research limitations/implications This paper supports the work of HESWBL by calling for future research into the long-term benefits of flexible education strategies that support HESWBL, through exploring the benefits to young people, from their perspective, with a view to providing accountability.Social implications The paper offers an example of a way a practice perspective can explore an education strategy that addresses “wicked problems” (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Currently, “wicked problems” that pervade member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development include intergenerational poverty, under-education and unemployment.Originality/value This paper is valuable because it explores from a practice perspective, how a secondary education enrolment strategy supports vulnerable students engage in their secondary schooling, while simultaneously supporting students achieve higher education, skills and work-based learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numbers coming out of education departments in Australia suggest that, even though most Australian schools are open, and families are able to send their children to them, increasing numbers of parents are deciding to keep their children at home for their education (Queensland Government: Department of Education, 2020). It may be that, as the president of Australia's home education representative body stated during the pandemic, Covid school closures offered a "risk-free trial" of home education (Lever, 2020) by providing an a-posteriori experience of education outside of schools. Building on the Covid experiences, this paper suggests that 'accidentally falling into' home education may be significant in understanding parents' home education choices. Using numbers of home educators from Australia, and the associated data on their location and ages, this paper argues responsibilisation (see Doherty & Dooley, 2018) provides a suitable lens to examine how parents may decide, after an a-posteriori experience such as Covid school closures and previous, often negative, experiences of schooling, to home educate in the medium to long term. This paper proposes that increasing numbers of home educators will be seen in various jurisdictions where families perceive themselves responsibilised to home educate due to Covid as an a-posteriori experiences of home education. The paper proposes these families are 'accidental' home educators (English, 2021). By contrast, much more stable is the 'deliberate' home education population, those whose choices are based in a-priori beliefs about schooling. The paper proposes that the accidental home education category may be better able to explain the growing numbers of home educators in Australia and across the world, providing a means for governments to respond to the needs of this cohort, and the policies required to manage this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposition that international students are not only sojourners but future immigrants has become well established in public policy. While education and immigration policy have become more intertwined, they continue to be analysed as separate spheres of influence. This paper compares Australia, Canada, and Germany, which between them host nearly 20% of all globally mobile students and where a nexus between international student and immigration policy has emerged. Using critical discourse analysis, a comparative case study design and based on a systematic literature review of over 300 studies published from 1990 to 2018, the findings revealed three ostensibly paradoxical discourses, which are discussed using the new term 'discursive pairings'. First, international students are selected for success but remain vulnerable to policy shifts that may exclude them and cause them to 'fail'. Second, international students are retained to fill economic shortages, but face difficulties being accepted on the labour market. Third, international students help build national reputation yet have been known to be exploited and subject to discrimination. The contradictions that emerge in the discourses bring into question the 'ideal immigrant' framing of international students, demonstrating that their role, acceptance, and ability to integrate into host countries is far from assured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines articulations of relationality present in education policy texts that shape particular discursive representations of relationality between students, teachers and curriculum. The policy texts of Australian state and territory education departments are considered as a set of discursive statements to illustrate how concepts such as relationality are deployed in policy as floating signifiers. Without deep contextualisation, concepts like relationality are instead potentially co-opted and corrupted. We contend that through its uptake, relationality has become a handy catch-all in educational policy discourses, while remaining a sliding signifier, free from a more productive affective potentiality. Instead, we argue that relationality should be centred in education policymaking as part of a commitment to recentre teaching and learning at the heart of schooling through a more authentic, dialogic relational pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the third-largest export industry, international education occupies an important place in the Australian economy and society. Employing Bacchi's "What is the Problem Represented to be" (WPR) approach, this paper critically analyses four key policies pertaining to international students in Australia since the 1990s. Drawing upon theorising of the globalisation of international education policy, we uncover contestation and problem representation in discourses around the economisation of education and of international students' experiences. The findings reveal multiple discourses of the problematisation of diversity at play, including a "pivot" towards protection of international students' rights as consumers and as potential future citizens, and increased attention to the intrinsic value of international students as people, and not simply as economic agents. The findings have implications for other national contexts, in which international students contribute to the economic viability of education, and in which internationalisation of education in universities has the capacity to foster enhanced cross-cultural understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research in Health and Physical Education has repeatedly highlighted that curriculum development is an ongoing, complex and contested process, and that the realisation of progressive intentions embedded in official curriculum texts is far from assured. Drawing on concepts from education policy sociology this paper positions teacher educators as key policy actors in the interpretation and enactment of new official curriculum texts. More specifically, it reports research that has explored four teacher educators' engagement with a specific feature of the new Australian Curriculum in Health and Physical Education (AC HPE); five interrelated propositions or 'key ideas' that underpinned the new curriculum and openly sought to provide direction for progressive pedagogy in Health and Physical Education. The paper provides conceptual and empirical insight into teacher educators consciously positioning themselves as policy actors, motivated to play a role in shaping policy directions and future curriculum practices. As such, the teacher educators in this project are identified as policy entrepreneurs and provocateurs. The paper details a dialogic research process between the researchers that was designed to make curriculum interpretation a more transparent, collaborative and generative process. The data reported illustrates the research process supporting teacher educators to engage in productive debate about the possible meanings and enactment of the five propositions. Analysis reveals differing perspectives on the propositions and a shared investment in efforts to support their progressive intent. Empirically, the paper highlights the critical role that teacher educators will play in the ongoing enactment of a new curriculum that is overtly identified as 'futures oriented'. Conceptually, the paper adds depth and sophistication to understandings of teacher educators as policy actors. Methodologically, we propose that the research process described can be usefully adopted by other teacher educators and teachers engaged in similar processes of curriculum development, interpretation and enactment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1990s, public schooling in Australia has been shaped by quasi-marketization that has incentivized competition between schools and installed a business logic to school governance. In this paper we argue that it is timely to consider how teachers and school leaders are understanding and responding to the affordances and challenges of this new "work order". We define this new work order as the languages and practices that are shaping public schooling, particularly in regards to increasing commercialization caused by (and contributing to) the quasi-marketization of schooling. The data gathered for this paper comes from a survey of public school educators who were members of the Australian Education Union (AEU). Our interest is in the perceptions that public school educators had of commercialization in their school system. We show that while many teachers express concerns with the logic behind much education policy, they are far from accepting the new work order. In fact, there was a strong sense of an ethical clash between the managerial nature of much policy and bureaucracy, and strongly held beliefs that public education is justified as a democratic good. [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 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]

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to be an important part of education governance. It is already being built into everything from business intelligence platforms to real-time online testing. In this paper, we aim to understand how AI becomes, and forms, a legitimate part of authority in contemporary education governance in what we call the automated education governance assemblage, that incorporates technology companies and AI-supported products used in education. We focus on EduTech Australia – an education technology trade show in Sydney – as a way to look at: (i) how the different aspects of automated governance are connected at EduTech, including the relations between different participants, companies and products; and (ii) how the automated governance assemblage works to legitimise and constitute EduTech as a policy space and site of new authorities in education governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of contemporary education policy levers that seek to standardise and measure teaching quality through the deployment of professional standards and increased surveillance of teachers' work. These policy frameworks—with a focus in this paper on the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers—are contrasted against the experiences of five Australian primary school teachers, using interpretative case study analysis to demonstrate the contradictions, tensions and fragile discursive construction of the idealised 'good' teacher. Implications for teacher agency and autonomy are considered, and propositions are generated for policy frameworks that support and enhance quality teaching, rather than reducing the complexities of teaching to a set of standardised metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugee-background youth in the Australian context have long been confronted with a series of challenges surrounding their living and educational conditions. However, limited research has been conducted to examine the underlying factors of such problems. This paper critically explores possible factors that contribute to or intensify the challenges that refugee-background children and youth face in Australia by scrutinising related legal documents and education policies (e.g. inclusive and language transition policies). It is argued that the living and learning crisis among refugee-background youth in Australia is a result of: (a) restrictive refugee law; (b) incomplete education policy; and (c) deep-rooted political and historical views on refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, a new system of collecting data on school-aged students with disability is in the early phases of implementation. The nationally consistent collection of data on school-age students with disability (NCCD) establishes a mandatory data collection process in which teachers categorise and report on individual students' level of additional educational needs. This data is used to determine funding allocations for students with disability. Under this policy, teachers are responsible for assessing students' needs, and for documenting their own teaching practice. This paper reports on the early phases of policy implementation. It presents data from teachers at two schools to make visible the new work teachers must undertake. Drawing on Dorothy E. Smith's sociological contributions, we show how the NCCD reorients teachers' work towards documentation and the production of evidence. After exploring teachers' work, we analyse how the NCCD is being taken up in ways that do not contribute to policy aims of ensuring teachers are better able to understand and meet student requirements. Our aim is to understand how the everyday realities of how teachers' work intersects with NCCD goals, and whether this new national policy is likely to make sustained inroads into achieving broader inclusive education ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is incumbent upon universities to deliver quality degree programs that produce employable graduates with discipline-specific knowledge and a well-developed set of generic skills known as graduate attributes. To safeguard the achievement of these outcomes, this paper argues for a holistic, longitudinal approach to degree planning known as programmatic assessment. The status of this relatively new phenomenon in the Australian university landscape is examined through an analysis of assessment-related policies from twenty-two of Australia's top-performing universities. Discourse analysis was employed to determine how programmatic assessment is depicted in policy, how key players are positioned in this space, and the discursive practices used to imbue policy with hortatory intent. The results of this analysis are outlined and indicate that policy constructions of a program-level approach to assessment are inconsistent across different universities and very few policies have specific guidelines about how programmatic assessment should be implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, school leadership is influenced by neoliberal discourses of accountability and performativity. Many schools seek to balance systemic pressures that narrow outcome expectations with a desire to deliver schooling in the broad interests of the students and communities that they serve. In this case, the principal was appointed to a school under threat of closure. To re-establish he purposefully disrupted traditional arrangements using approaches that disregarded many standard school improvement paradigms. The school improved in enrolments, reputation and student learning. This paper examines how this principal found and created spaces for disruptive change within the local context and the broader policy environment. While the value or ethics of the leadership are not the focus of the paper, it is noted that the autocratic position he assumed was problematic. Despite this, the case provides insight into leadership that resisted the confines of normative pressures to support radical school improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates international and domestic peer relations in two Australian schools and how they are shaped by structural, cultural and discursive dimensions of schooling. In particular, it analyses intercultural relations between domestic and international students in the context of policies promoting "internationalisation-at-home". We argue that how international students are positioned within specific school contexts impacts their sense of inclusion in everyday social and pedagogical relations and informs their relationships with domestic students, whether viewed as a stranger or potentially as a friend raising questions as to who is responsible for intercultural relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss the place of plurilingualism in Language and Literacy Education. The article problematises English-only, monolingual-centric assumptions upon which much of Australia's current literacy education policy discourse has been based, to instead advance pluriliteracies as an alternate, more generative lens through which to view literacy learners, literacy learning, and literacy capabilities. The paper begins with tensions inherent in how policy "imagines" learners in Australian schools, and the problem of imposing English-only, monolingual-centric notions of literacy when multilingualism is increasingly more the norm than the exception in many mainstream Australian classrooms. We consider how a pluriliteracy perspective on literacy education offers a more appropriate approach to addressing learners' developmental literacy needs, with particular attention to students' identity and agency. Finally, we consider effective implementation of plurilingual approaches to language and learning, with a focus on the intersection of ideology, practice, and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent reforms in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Australia have called for primary pre-service teachers to graduate with a specialisation in a priority learning area. This represents a significant change to the way that primary teachers are prepared. In this paper, we use Carol Bacchi's What's the Problem Represented to be? approach (WPR) to analyse the discourses present in four policy documents that have led to the introduction of primary specialisations in Australian education. The policy analysis reveals that the introduction of primary specialisations does not have a strong evidence base. Moreover, slippage in definitions causes confusion about what the role entails, with certain people marginalised by this policy direction. Recommendations are given for how teachers and teacher educators can work effectively within this new policy context. [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]

Open Educational Practices (OEP) have played an important role in assisting educational institutions and governments worldwide to meet their current and future educational targets in widening participation, lowering costs, improving the quality of learning and teaching and promoting social inclusion and participatory democracy. There have been some important OEP developments in Australia, but unfortunately the potential of OEP to meet some of the national educational targets has not been fully realised and acknowledged yet, in ways that many countries around the world have. This paper will gather, discuss, and analyse some key national and international policies and documentation available as an attempt to provide a solid foundation for a call to action for OEP in Australia, which will hopefully be an instrument to assist and connect practitioners and policy makers in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the implications of the current landscape of education policy reform in Australian schooling. We argue that the decontextualisation of education policy enactments and the eschewing of concerns relevant at the local level of the school over the past two decades have prompted various reform agendas to fail. We contend that recognition of the deep contextualisation of schools is paramount in any attempt at renewal. Therefore, it is at the local school-level that reform agendas can and should be directed by the pedagogical and innovative work of educators. We focus on 'relational pedagogy' because it offers opportunities to enact school-wide reform and enhance the professional capacities of educators as pedagogical innovators. Contemporary education reform agendas are best situated and registered within school sites and relational pedagogy stands as a deeply contextualised provocation for enacting school renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of Australian mass schooling has seen contestations over school and curriculum purposes, zig-zagging across conservative and progressive directions. In this paper, we examine how possibilities for students to have 'voice', 'participation' and 'leadership' in their learning are currently limited in Australia. Policy framings, we argue, dampen potentials for connecting young people's democratic and activist impulses – manifest, in our example, in the Schools Strike for Climate movement – with curriculum activity that responds to local-global challenges such as the viral-ecological crisis. We propose an activist curriculum praxis wherein young people undertake action-research – in collaboration with diverse community actors, teachers and academics – on problems that matter for local-global future life with others. Since local-global emergencies are emergent, curriculum must build citizen-capacities to work together, apprenticing to problems that matter for social futures, creating emergently needed knowledge-in-action. This participatory-democratic curriculum approach challenges schools to become more socially just and proactive institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social inclusion in Australian higher education was high on the agenda of the recent Rudd/Gillard Australian Government. This paper offers an assessment of that agenda, particularly the extent to which it worked in favour of under-represented groups. It argues that the Government's widening and expansion policies and its equity and aspiration strategies lacked sociological imagination, projecting deficits onto individuals who refused to be taken in by its ambitions for higher education participation. The paper concludes that in the absence of a sociological imagination in government policy, the freedoms of disadvantaged groups continued to be curtailed: not just to choose futures in keeping with their goals but also the freedom to formulate choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tackles what is arguably one of the most pressing and intractable educational issues confronting western democracies – the disengagement and disconnection from schooling of alarming numbers of young people. The paper looks at the policy response in Victoria, Australia, and through ethnographic interviews with a small number of young people; it finds a significant mismatch between the policy intent of re-engagement programmes, and the experiences of young people themselves. It seems that this is an instance of what might be termed policy deafness, a situation that will likely produce devastating consequences unless corrected. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Serious damage to teacher professionalism is being triggered by the current performance dominated culture caused by neoliberal global conditions (performativity) in Australian schools. Many teachers are feeling severely compromised in their ability to offer quality teaching to their students. It is imperative that education policy makers and school leaders are informed on the latest research and literature around this topic. This will help to instigate plans to move forward in a more positive way. This paper explores the relationships between the qualities of a professional teacher and the negative effects of performativity and proposes a rebalancing framework. Three significant elements of teachers' professionalism are identified as essential components of a professional teacher: knowledge, autonomy and responsibility. The negative effects of performance culture on these three aspects are discussed and three compromising factors are identified: lack of autonomy, stifled creativity and breach of trust. Finally, evolving from the analysis of relevant research and literature, a conceptual framework is proposed. With a recurring theme of establishing a balance between control and collaboration, this rebalancing framework focuses on the interconnecting elements of leadership, professional learning and responsible, informed accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the intensely competitive international higher education sector, universities can still play a role in providing public good through building social solidarity and mobility in volatile and increasingly divided societies. This paper draws on a longitudinal narrative enquiry that follows 22 students from asylum-seeking backgrounds in Australian universities—a distinct group within the category of forced migration whose university experiences have rarely been studied. It explores the students' visceral realities and tensions as they attempt to navigate government and institutional policies and practices which fail to recognise the unique category and needs of this distinct group. The paper develops a conceptual frame comprising a critical theory of recognition (Axel Honneth) and the feminist developments of recognition (Nancy Fraser). It explores how competing discourses are being played out in Australian universities about the educational needs of students from asylum-seeking backgrounds. Finally, it critically reflects on the role of universities' policies and practices in enabling and/or constraining public good through recognising the unique needs of students of asylum-seeking backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) has been a key tenet of Australian education policy since its launch over a decade ago. Print media coverage of NAPLAN and myschool.edu.au , which displays and compares NAPLAN results across Australia, has played a role in both reporting and shaping this aspect of education policy. This paper uses a corpus-assisted approach to map print media representations of NAPLAN over the first decade of the Program, from 2008 to 2018. Building on previous work on NAPLAN and the print media (Mockler, 2013, 2016), it draws on a corpus of almost 6,000 articles from the Australian national and capital city daily newspapers published between 2008 and 2018. It charts the discursive shifts that have taken place over this period as NAPLAN has transitioned in the public space from a diagnostic tool seen to be useful to educators, to a comparative tool seen to be useful to parents and the general public, and more recently to a contested tool seen to have narrow or limited utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers issues that continue to shape doctoral education in Australia in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of relevant issue, and to identify opportunities for future research. It describes examples of responses taken at an institutional level, and their implications for the norms and practices associated with postgraduate research, supervision and candidate support. Comments from discussions with a small number of Australian Deans of Graduate Research are used to illustrate the challenges faced, and the responses taken. The article provides a concise outline of the policy and historical context for these responses, and concludes by considering some of the issues that continue to shape doctoral education in Australia today. It highlights the rise of location-independent graduate research and the prospect of generational change in the higher education workforce as significant factors in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as potentially fruitful avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Indigenous/non-Indigenous collaboration, we examine discourses of 'community engagement' in Australia's blueprint education policy, Through Growth to Achievement: The Report of The Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools. While the report addresses the education sector widely rather than being specifically directed towards Indigenous education, as a significant equity-oriented text it is accountable for responding to the educational inequities that so greatly impact Indigenous students and communities. We begin this paper by reviewing some of the complex historical meanings in educational policy assumed through the term community engagement, followed by an analysis of how Australia's non-Indigenous policy writers have historically constructed Indigenous identities and communities. Drawing on Carol Bacchi's poststructural policy discourse analysis, 'What's the problem represented to be?' we explore the taken-for-granted assumptions about who and what 'community' means including what cause and effect benefits are assumed from community engagement. We propose that colonial legacies are still present in the way 'community engagement' is defined in this influential report and advocate for a policy disruption that utilises Indigenous definitions of community and community engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the changing terrain of disability support policy in Australia. Drawing on a critical disability framework of policy sociology, the paper considers the policy problem of access to education for people with disabilities under recent reform by means of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which commenced full roll-out across the country from July 2016. The paper reviews NDIS reports, legislation and associated literature to consider how eligibility to scheme participation and education services are shaped, and how education is positioned in the development and implementation of the NDIS. The analysis highlights tensions that exist for people with disabilities and their families who both access the scheme and who might draw on its provision to support their education, because of the way the policy is oriented towards pathological categorisation, standardised outcomes and service delineation rather than integrated support and informed involvement. The paper concludes by arguing that despite the policy priority across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries of increasing lifelong learning opportunities, fragmented NDIS policy in Australia prevents people with disabilities from achieving this ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which universities’ strategic plans affect the level of incorporation of sustainability within the curriculum design and property portfolio.Design/methodology/approach This research adopted a case study approach. The case study institution was Deakin University in Australia. This paper used a qualitative research method. Desk-top study included the review of the University’s Strategic Plan, policy agenda on sustainability and the documents on sustainability courses and units. Semi-structured interviews were held with academics who have course development and management responsibility within the university, colleagues who have a sustainability-focused role on estate management and colleagues whose roles are to manage sustainability initiatives at the institution level. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Content analysis was used to analyse the interview data.Findings Despite the University having clear strategic aims and initiatives on the incorporation of sustainability within the curriculum design and property portfolio, there is disconnection between policy development and policy implementation. As a result, the incorporation of sustainability varies largely between curricula within the institution. The incorporation of sustainability within the property portfolio is clear and effective. However, within the curriculum, it is polarised. The level of incorporation depends on the nature of the course or unit and is largely driven by the initiatives of the individual academic. Good practice identified in the incorporation of sustainability within the curriculum is to use a problem-based approach supported by real life projects to enhance the students’ authentic learning experience. A good practice for successfully incorporating sustainability into the property portfolio is to have clear vision of what it has planned to achieve and to ensure that there is a balance between sustainability and value for money.Originality/value This is pioneering research to investigate the incorporation of sustainability into higher education in a more comprehensive way. This paper considered the impact of strategic planning on the incorporation of sustainability within a higher education, on both curriculum design and property portfolio management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]