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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]

Increasing numbers of Australian parents, like me, are choosing to home educate. US estimates suggest, within home educated populations, 5 per cent of home education cohorts (Riley, 2018) follow an unschooling, or self-directed education (SDE), approach. In the past, these parents registered with the government department; however, policy changes made in Queensland in May 2018 make registration almost impossible for unschoolers and discriminate against families whose registration was based on a philosophy such as SDE. In this paper, I use Fairclough's (2003) Critical Discourse Analysis as a tool to interrogate how changes to the Queensland Education Act (2006) in May 2018 privilege a curriculum centric approach to education by requiring families to report on their child's 'progress' in relation to schooled children's levels. I argue these changes privilege the needs of bureaucrats who are invested in presenting a 'school' view of education. Fairclough (2003) would describe this policy change as a change to the social order that privileges the discourse of education over the real education occurring in families that choose to follow an SDE philosophy. By undertaking a Faircloughian Discourse Analysis, the paper analyses the policy shifts in Queensland's Education Act in regard to home educators. The concluding section of the paper suggests these changes may affect registration rates among SDE families or unschoolers which has both practical and philosophical effects. Practically, the changes affect family support and benefits payments because registration is required to access government support payments. Philosophically, there are wider cultural and social impacts by legitimating government overreach and further entrenching school models of education. [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]

Positive behaviour for learning (PBL) was introduced to the state education sector in Queensland in the early 2000s in an effort to move schools away from use of punitive disciplinary practices towards a positive and supportive approach to student behaviour. Although around half of state schools in Queensland have received training to implement PBL, as yet no studies into the outcomes of PBL implementation in that state have been conducted. In the October, 2019 edition of Interchange an article by Paul and Cindy-lou Bleakley claimed to demonstrate a link between the widespread adoption of PBL and increasing rates of suspensions in Queensland state schools. In our article, we refute this claim and respond to several errors and misconceptions in the paper by Bleakley and Bleakley. First, we counter the claim that PBL takes a punitive approach to student behaviour and point out the ways in which PBL has been misconstrued. Next, we discuss flaws in the methodology used to assert a causal relationship between increasing rates of suspension and the introduction of PBL. To conclude, we reject the assertion that PBL replaced restorative justice as the preferred model of behaviour support in Queensland and argue that a restorative justice approach is not incompatible with implementation of PBL [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Engaging positively with the mobility of Indigenous students has been the centre of a 5-year action research project in Queensland, Australia. Drawing on responses developed for other marginalised mobile populations, and with consideration for the extent of mobility amongst many Indigenous people in Australia, this paper focuses on the professional development of teachers to understand the needs of highly mobile Indigenous students. The paper outlines the introduction of a key support role within the school, a Mobility Support Teacher (MST). The role and the programme are reviewed in the context of a recent renewed commitment to ‘needs based funding’ in schools in Australia. Taking a critical view of the funding arrangements for Australian schools, it is argued that mobile Indigenous students, as an underserved population, require significant ongoing support. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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]

Inclusive education is central to achieving high-quality education for all students and is a recognised commitment of the Australian government under international human rights law. However, Australia's lack of commitment to move away from segregation is reflected in its persistence in maintaining and funding segregated (special) settings. Queensland led the way with the introduction of an inclusive education policy in 2018; nonetheless, this does not go far enough, as there is no commitment to diminish segregated schooling for students with disability. This lack of action works against the effective implementation of the policy. Using the Framework of Drivers for and Barriers to the Closure of Special Schools, we conducted a thematic analysis focussing on societal, systemic, school and family drivers for and barriers to educational desegregation. Our findings indicate where and why discrimination, segregation and exclusion remain strongly embedded in our society and education system. We provide recommendations for future reforms to the Disability Standards for Education in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary definitions of inclusion in Australian early education go beyond support for children with disability to encompass equitable educational provision for children with varying abilities and from diverse backgrounds. However, a tension exists between policies and practices emphasising remediation for target groups and those focused on system-wide educational change. Middle leading has been identified as an effective driver of educational change that works at the site level to address problems of practice. The Enhancing Continuity and Alignment K-2 strategy in Queensland (Australia) positioned coaches as middle leaders to address site-based inclusion concerns by building professional capability and coordinating transition to school practices. The effectiveness of the project relied on the participants' ability to establish shared equity goals and on the purposeful enactment of middle leading to address inclusion. Enabling and constraining arrangements were identified, as was the potential of middle leading to tackle the variance between system-wide and targeted approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THIS PAPER REPORTS THE findings of a research project investigating parents' conceptions of an early childhood program in Queensland. During 2007, early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Queensland underwent significant reform associated with the introduction of a full-time Preparatory Year program in all schools throughout the state. The research used a phenomenographic approach to examine the varying ways a group of 26 parents viewed such a program. This study revealed that parents viewed the Preparatory Year in relation to their own needs, their children's needs, and to how the program prepared children for success in school and beyond. Five ways of understanding the Preparatory Year emerged, linked to and differentiated from each other by two central themes. The results imply that continued consultation with parents will be required as the Preparatory Year is introduced throughout Queensland, and that further investigation of parents' views in wider contexts would be beneficial during this time of transition. [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]

The article reports on the fourth stage of an evolving study to develop a systems model for embedding education for sustainability (EfS) into preservice teacher education. It describes the first three stages of developing and trialling the model before presenting the case study and action research methods employed, four key lessons learned from the project, and the implications of the major outcomes for teacher education policies and practices.

Reports on the launch of a national schools project in Queensland designed to make education more efficient and productive. Call for the establishment of a national professional organization of teachers to foster greater quality in teaching.