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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]

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]

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 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]

Schooling in Australia has become subject to increased processes of data-based governance. This article draws upon the insights of an experienced teacher, 'Meriam', who, having taught more than 34-years over almost a 50-year span, reflected upon the nature of such changes. Utilising theorising in relation to datafication processes and accountability logics, the article elaborates Meriam's efforts to engage productively with increased attention to measuring and monitoring students' performance via various modes of data. This is in the context of increased pressure in the state of Queensland to justify teachers' practices, and to show how their students' learning had shown improvement on these data over short periods of time. In this sense, the article challenges a more post-performative conception of professionalism as Meriam struggled to comprehend how the increased attention to a plethora of data could serve as a useful vehicle to inform teachers' work and learning; this was the case even as she found some benefits in increased attention to her own practice and learning. The article delineates the constraints associated with increased attention to data, and how current managerial and neoliberal policy conditions in schools may contribute to potentially significant and harmful effects for both teacher and student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gifted education has been recognised as a fractured field that can be categorised using varying paradigmatic approaches. Over the past thirty years, Gagné's Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talents (DMGT) has maintained a strong influence in Australia, which means that the paradigmatic assumptions that are present in this model have shaped the Australian policy landscape. With recent changes in the gifted education policy and guidance space in many Australian states and territories, it is appropriate to explore whether there is a paradigmatic shift occurring. This research adopted a document study methodology, and found that the DMGT is still a favoured model, which means that an essentialist vein continues to flow through many of the Australian state and territory gifted education approaches. At the same time, most states and territories are attempting to embrace more dynamic approaches to supporting giftedness, which leads to paradigmatic confusion at the policy and guidance level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-invasion Australia, English has been a key instrument of colonisation. English education was tasked with producing subjects both loyal to the Australian nation and the British Empire with little recognition given to people from other languages and cultures, least of all First Peoples. Despite Australia now being considered a successful multicultural nation, it remains haunted by the 'white possessive' of the Frontier. In this essay we interrogate the tensions between language education policy, curriculum, and practice arising from Australia's incapacity to come to terms with its colonial wounds: an incapacity starkly revealed by the failure of the 2023 'Voice' to parliament referendum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]