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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]

This paper takes as its subject the circulation of tolerance discourse within two pedagogical encounters in two Australian educational settings, and draws from the work of Wendy Brown on tolerance as a regulatory force. Brown argues that discourses of tolerance are produced within historical and cultural milieu that enable tolerance and aversion to exist simultaneously. This has significant implications for how we might come to understand the project of working towards a socially just educational system and the various struggles encountered within pedagogical sites. I also examine the pedagogical affects that are produced within different educational moments as we work to teach in or around difference and when we embody the Other in the classroom. I engage with how these experiences speak to the way in which tolerance as national ideal acts to both alleviate and circulate discourses of inequality such as sexism and homophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the provision of distance education to young people studying from their isolated properties in remote areas of Australia. While Australia's innovative approach to remote education is well established, this paper challenges the gender and structural assumptions underpinning this approach. A sustained period of rural restructuring and a long period of drought have changed the social relations of agriculture in a number of significant ways that ultimately undermine distance education as it is currently constructed. The assumption that mothers are available to provide home tutoring is no longer valid given the pressures on them to work on properties due to staff cutbacks and off properties to earn additional income. Further, the trend for farm family properties to be amalgamated into larger holdings and for these holdings to be run by farm workers also undermines the assumption that parents are willing, able and resourced to home tutor their children for long periods. This paper raises significant questions about the adequacy of current distance education provisions in remote areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores leadership styles and gender in higher education (HE) by examining representation of female professors in Australian and Turkish universities and identifying barriers to achieving seniority. The paper explores factors, including leadership styles, which explain the higher representation of female professors in Turkey, despite legislative frameworks and strategies in Australia to improve representation of senior women. It then explores barriers to women's career advancement, including the difficult management culture, low morale, informal processes in appointment and promotion, and lack of training for management roles in Australia, and conflict between career and family roles in Turkey. Finally, the paper identifies the impact of strategic choices on leadership styles and women's career advancement. This research questions the impact of equal employment opportunity and affirmative action frameworks on women's representation as professors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the extent of graduate overeducation in Australia utilising both the objective and mean methods. As well, the paper tests for non-linear returns to overeducation. It is found that the rates of graduate overeducation vary by both gender and with the methods utilised, and stand between 21% and 46%. Non-linear returns to overeducation were evident among some groups of graduates. Young male graduates seem to suffer no penalty for overeducation compared with their matched peers, but this may be a reflection of technological change altering workplace requirements faster than changes in occupational titles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on related research studies in two urban centres (Melbourne and Adelaide, Australia) with South Sudanese men and women engaged in varying degrees with higher education. The co-authors examine some gendered differences in the process and demands of resettlement, including within employment and education, and its implications for rapidly changing public versus private gender roles. We argue against essentialising discourses of the ‘liberatory’ nature of education in the west, versus constructions of ‘cultural knowledge’ as innate, burdensome, and less useful in western contexts. Drawing on Ahmed's critique of discourses of the ‘melancholy migrant’ which position western knowledges and gendered practices as progressive and therefore more desirable, the authors interrogate the possibility of multiple forms of knowledge and new migrants – especially South Sudanese – as enriched by their previous experiences and knowledges, rather than impoverished by them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The majority of the still limited literature on education in non-metropolitan areas adopts an understanding of rurality as a fixed and known geographic entity. This paper departs from such a functionalist perspective to explore how rurality is constructed in a programme for at-risk teenagers in remote Australia. Drawing on a range of texts about the programme, including a documentary series entitledOutback Kids,we examine how the rural space is imagined as simultaneously therapeutic and disciplining and therefore appropriate for troubled youth. Alongside this discussion we map the way in which other qualities and values associated with bifurcated definitions of the rural as a place of tradition and authenticity, and the urban as a place of disorder and pretence, are engaged in the texts to endorse the programme and its practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recognition of human rights on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status by the United Nations has led to the development of new policies concerning homophobia and transphobia in educational contexts. This paper examines new Australian education policies impacting gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (GLBTIQ) teachers. A policy review uncovered a range of protections for GLBTIQ teachers in contexts such as the State of Victoria, alongside restrictions. Experiences of policy discussed in pilot study data from surveys of 63 Victorian GLBTIQ teachers, and in-depth interviews with nine Victorian GLBTIQ teachers, revealed that GLBTIQ teachers were relatively unaware of the protections available to them, compared to their awareness of protections for students. Many teachers were out as lesbian or gay to some staff members but fewer had come out to students. Teachers in religious schools had more difficulties, causing some to leave the sector. Further promotion of protections and more research are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the potential conflict classroom teachers face in their dual roles as ‘guardians of grammar’ and as ‘agents of social language reform’ with reference to third person singular generic pronouns in English. We investigate to what extent teachers (primary, secondary and tertiary) experience tensions between these roles in relation to their own and students' use of generic pronouns, and if they do, how they resolve the issue. Drawing upon survey and interview data from Australian classroom teachers we find substantial adoption of gender-inclusive alternatives to generic he with a clear preference for and tolerance of singular they in their own and their students' writing. Remnants of social gender and the use of generic he and generic she are found for the antecedents real estate agent and teacher respectively. Younger teachers are by and large unaware of grammatical prescriptivism arguments while all teachers have awareness of the need to address and reform linguistic discrimination. Female educators lead the way as ‘agents of change’ and intervene in students' writing to promote the avoidance of gender-exclusive generic he. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]