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This policy-interested South Australian public education case study problematises how the Chief Executive (CE) and members of the Education Department's Senior Executive Group (SEG) understood system and school improvement from 2018 to 2022. We applied Carol Bacchi's, "What's the Problem Represented to be?"(WPR) policy analysis framework to unearth the policy assumptions underlying the Department's overarching policy ensemble called "World Class," initiated across South Australia's public primary and secondary schools. WPR reveals heightened centralised technologies of command and control directed at teacher and leader work to achieve McKinsey defined World Class status by 2028. We find school improvement policy solutions were engineered through "managerially enforced complexity reduction" techniques within the paradigm of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). These techniques impacted policy prescriptions, performance management technologies, school improvement plans, curriculum materials for schools, and promoted NAPLAN as the ultimate measure of the good school, the good teacher, and the good principal. NAPLAN is the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy used in Australia and takes the form of an annual standardised assessment for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Most concerningly, we find the policy logics of World Class worked to incentivise inequality across public schools through diminishing the purposes of public education and the professionalism of educators. We conclude arguing for the democratisation of existing departmental structures within iterative inquiry-based approaches to policy formation and practice to better attend to public education purposes.

Inclusive work-integrated learning (WIL) requires collaboration between universities, host organizations and students, particularly, when designing and delivering WIL for students with disabilities. Host organizations, however, are not often included in the collaborations. This study explored host organization knowledge, capacity and challenges to providing WIL experiences for students with disability. A case study multi-method approach comprising an online survey and focus groups was undertaken. Host organizations, represented by supervisors, providing WIL to students enrolled in health courses at two Australian higher education institutions participated. The perceived need for student disclosure, office building limitations, and host organization limited knowledge of WIL expectations, training and student needs impeded the development and provision of optimal WIL experiences for students with disability. A strengths-based approach is proposed to improve the inclusion of host organizations in stakeholder collaborations, their capacity and confidence to support students with disability on WIL and to provide relatable student WIL experiences.

This article reports on a desktop evidence review of Australian public universities work-integrated learning policies and procedures. The review examined the availability and accessibility of these documents to prospective students with disability, as well as their inclusivity and quality, against three dimensions developed from analysis of equity best practice literature. The findings reveal an inconsistent approach by Australian universities to inclusive work-integrated learning for students with disability. The variability in availability and accessibility of inclusive work-integrated learning materials implies course and university decision-making for future university students with disability may be difficult. Quality concerns included a limited reference to relevant standards, transparent terminology and research evidence in available materials, as well as expired policies and procedures, outdated language and disability theory, and a lack of evidence of industry collaboration. Recommendations from these findings support the development of equitable WIL practices with students with disability across Australian universities.

In Australia, concerningly high levels of teacher attrition, and subsequent teacher shortages, have led to calls for improvement in the social status of teachers. In response, this study explored what draws pre-service teachers to the teaching profession in the face of research and media reports that suggest teaching is perceived as a low-status career. Using mixed methods, we surveyed 387 Australian pre-service teachers and found that their primary motivations for entering the teaching profession corresponded with the motivations attributed to social entrepreneurs who use innovation to make positive social change for their constituents. As far as the authors know, this is the first time that a close alignment between pre-service teachers' motivations for entering the teaching profession and social entrepreneurs' behaviours and intentions has been demonstrated. Thus, this study makes a unique contribution in the field of initial teacher education. We suggest that explicitly recognising teachers as social entrepreneurs with the inherent capacity to generate social innovation has the potential to raise the status of the profession. Such recognition could also positively inform pre-service teacher recruitment and teacher retention.

This paper presents a critical exploration of a reported decline in student achievement in Australia (2000-2020). Declining student achievement is framed as symptomatic of broader dysfunction within the education system. The context of declining student achievement is articulated through a Bourdieusian being critical sociology of education. This is achieved using the concepts of illusion and educationalisation as they intersect with Australian schools, in which classroom teachers are given responsibility for solving social and economic ills. As such, due consideration of the goals and commitments to action in the Melbourne Declaration (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA, 2008), and the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration (Education Council, 2019) is provided. Drawing from these formative documents, the 'stakes' that matter are examined highlighting the potential misalignment between equality of opportunity in ameliorating educational disadvantage and the priorities of modern educational discourse.

There is a significant variability in the prevalence of psychotropic medication use among young autistic persons worldwide and this is under-studied in Australia. Apart from risperidone, approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration to manage challenging behaviour, the appropriateness of other psychotropic medications prescribed to young autistic persons warrants scrutiny. This retrospective study aims to gain initial insight into the magnitude, types and indications of psychotropic medication use in autistic children and adolescents in Western Australia. We analysed de-identified data from 239 autistic children and adolescents ([less than or equal to] 21 years) who participated in the Western Australian Autism Biological Registry between 2011 and 2015 and who completed a questionnaire regarding medication use. One-quarter (n = 66, 28%) of young autistic people reported using a total of 137 medications. Most (n = 46, 70%) of those medicated were under 12 years of age; half (n = 33) were 6-12 years and a fifth (n = 13) were under 6 years. The most used medications were stimulants (n = 35, 53.0%), followed by antidepressants (n = 24, 36.4%), antiepileptics (n = 21, 31.8%), sedatives (n = 15, 22.7%) and antipsychotics (n = 14, 21.2%). These medications were mainly to manage attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, challenging behaviours, seizures, insomnia, undefined anxiety, depression and mood instability. While most autistic young people in the Western Australian Autism Biological Registry did not report using psychotropic medication, over a quarter were prescribed medications, primarily stimulants, to manage symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Various medications, including risperidone, were used to help manage challenging behaviours. Medication use should be studied more comprehensively in a larger cohort of autistic persons to confirm our current preliminary observations. Further, future studies should monitor the effectiveness and safety outcomes of such medications due to a limited understanding of their effectiveness in managing the atypical presentation of co-occurring disorders in young autistic persons.

Emphasis on continuous infant sleep overnight may be driven by parental concern of risk to child mental health outcomes. The Mercy Pregnancy and Emotional Wellbeing Study (MPEWS) examined whether infant sleep at 6 and 12 months postpartum predicts anxiety disorders at 2-4 years, and whether this is moderated by maternal depression, active physical comforting (APC) or maternal cognitions about infant sleep. Data included 349 women and infants. Infant sleep was measured using the Brief Infant Sleep Questionnaire and child anxiety disorders by the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment. The risk of developing generalised anxiety or social phobia disorders at 3-4 years was reduced by 42% (p = 0.001) and 31% (p = 0.001), respectively, for a one standard deviation increase in total sleep at 12 months. No other infant sleep outcomes were associated. Maternal depression, APC and cognitions about infant sleep did not significantly moderate these relationships. Focus may need to be on total infant sleep, rather than when sleep is achieved.

There is scant research on preservice English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D) teachers' paired practicums in an online context. Underpinned by Cultural Historical Activity Theory, this paper explores how preservice EAL/D teachers exercise their relational agency during online paired practicums. Data were collected from five preservice EAL/D teachers' weekly journals written during their paired practicums and interviews after they completed their paired practicums. Following the key components of relational agency, the thematic analysis highlights the dialectical relationship between preservice teachers' relational agency and different types of collaboration, evidenced by the formation of mutual objects, tool mediation, and shared expertise. This paper provides new insight into how preservice teachers' knowledge, especially related to the affordances of technology, may be expanded and mediated by collaboration.

Significant collaborations with research partners in China are seen in many Western countries. With increasing US-China geopolitical tensions, governments, research institutions, and individuals in established scientific systems are increasingly required to address a proliferating array of risks and challenges associated with collaboration with China. Academic researchers are only beginning to describe how countries are responding to the ongoing need for global scientific collaboration amidst intensifying geopolitical competition. Several studies have examined the securitization of scientific connections with China in the USA, while others have documented developments in nations such as Australia, the UK, and Sweden. However, there is limited comparative research on approaches to international science amid geopolitical tensions. This paper bridges the gap, illuminating the key dimensions of variation in country-level responses by comparing the cases of Sweden and Australia. The questions we ask are as follows: Who responds to the challenges? By what means? And to what ends are responses directed? Swedish government have been largely passive, but Swedish funding agencies have developed "responsible internationalisation" guidelines that aim to induce proactive reflection by institutions and individual researchers. Australia's approach, by contrast, has centred on legislation, the exercise of ministerial powers, along with sector-wide enactment of expanded due diligence protocols. The comparison highlights key differences in the actors, methods and goals of responses to the intensifying geopolitics of scientific collaboration.

With the recent and rapid transition to online teaching and learning in higher education, this explanatory study investigated the key design considerations used by business educators designing assessments suitable for online delivery. From a comprehensive literature review, we identified five key design considerations for online assessments: they must: (1) assure academic integrity; (2) allow for provision of quality feedback; (3) support a positive learning experience for students; (4) assure the integrity of student information; and (5) ensure all students have an equal chance to complete the assessment successfully. An additional consideration (authenticity) was identified through a survey of educators and four focus group discussions. Our analysis confirmed that scale of delivery and resource limitations, along with institutional policies and accreditation requirements, are broader and interrelated contextual factors that influence practices and decisions about assessment design. Focus group participants also identified constraints and trade-offs they negotiated in designing, evaluating and implementing online assessments. Based on our findings we propose a framework to assist educators in best-practice decision-making about online assessment design and contribute to the discourse between educators, higher education providers and professional accreditation bodies regarding online assessment.

Students with disabilities continue to experience barriers to accessing tertiary (i.e., postsecondary) education in Australia. Using the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) may help educators proactively address barriers through the design of more accessible and inclusive educational experiences. However, at present, references to UDL appear in only a small number of Australian educational policies and tertiary institute websites, and few tertiary educators use UDL in practice. In this article, we describe how a team of educators, learning designers, accessibility advocates, and people with disabilities from multiple institutions across Australia collaborated to co-create a free, accessible eLearning program to build workforce knowledge and skill in UDL. We first describe how the advisory group was established, how the Knowledge to Action cycle was used to guide the activities of the advisory group, and the evaluation framework that was used to assess the outcomes of the eLearning program. We share potential future activities to raise awareness of UDL and influence policy and practice in local contexts and propose directions for future work in this area.

The purpose of this paper was to explore bilingual educators' perceptions of their strategies to maintain their cultural and religious identities within a multicultural society. This multiple case studies of three institutions employed semi-structured interviews and documents. The research question guides this study: What are strategies that have been utilized within the institutions, to further the aims of multicultural education? The data in this study was analyzed thematically via NVivo Qualitative data analysis. The finding of this study showed that the institutions were committed to providing a public education alongside a multicultural education -- respect for other religions, ethnicities, and cultures. These institutions have a strong commitment to their spiritual purpose and maintenance of their respective religious and cultural identities. The findings of this study have implications for the understanding of similar programs and the ways to preserve cultural and religious identities within educational contexts. Most studies of multicultural education have been conducted in public institutions resulting in little information on how ethnic institutions promote cultural and religious identities within their institutions and communities. This research contributes to the body of literature that examines the promotion of cultural and religious identities in ethnic institutions.

The global higher education sector has been significantly disrupted by the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, especially in relation to its implications for assessment. However, few studies to date have explored student perspectives on these tools. This article reports on one of the first large-scale quantitative studies of student views on generative artificial intelligence at an Australian university (n = 1,135). When the survey was conducted, most students had low knowledge, experience, and confidence in using these tools. These results varied across disciplines and across some student sub-groups, such as mature-age students and international students. Confidence appeared to increase with experience, although the data also revealed a portion of students that have never used these tools yet still felt confident in using them. In exploring these results, this article aims to shed new light on this fast-evolving landscape and inform the future direction of supporting students to engage with generative artificial intelligence tools appropriately.

This paper presents findings from a campus climate survey conducted at an Australian university. Unprecedented compositional diversity now exists in higher education, with students enrolled from different religious, socio-economic, geographic, and cultural backgrounds. Despite this diversity, little research has been conducted into the ways that different student groups experience university, including marginalised and 'hidden' groups such as LGBTIQA+ students. The survey aimed to uncover the impact of diversity on student experiences, including the extent to which students associated with others from different backgrounds, the extent to which their own views and beliefs were challenged, and the extent to which they felt safe on campus. Findings suggest a need for more targeted research, particularly into the experiences of marginalised groups, and for reform of both institutional policy and curriculum. Further, we found that students are frequently thinking about identity, diversity, and bias, and their own voices need to be elevated within institutional strategies.

The development of web-based technologies in recent decades has provided ready access to a wealth of on-line educational resources, and despite concerns that availability of on-line recorded lectures impacts on-campus attendance, we believe there needs to be more focus on the learning resources students engage with, along with why and how they use these resources. Our survey of first year science and mathematics students found that more than 80% of on-campus and off-campus students engaged with [greater than or equal to]75% of lectures by attending face-to-face and/or viewing on-line lectures. And when asked about their use of external resources, 80% of students reported using YouTube and/or Open Educational Resources, amongst other on-line resources, to provide increased understanding of content and to view worked problems. Knowing that a large percentage of students will seek out additional on-line resources, we conclude that ensuring all students have well developed on-line search skills and the ability to critically assess the quality of on-line resources are important contributions that teaching staff can make to student learning.

In theory, misalignment of education and career aspirations in high school is a crucial determinant of post-school education and career mismatch. However, existing scholarship investigates the social influence and rational choice determinants of misalignment and mismatch separately. This study examines how misalignment at 15 years of age correlates with career mismatch in young adulthood (25 years). Using data from Y09 cohort in the Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY), it analyses the education and career aspirations of 7,871 15-year-olds and the education and career outcomes of 2,697 of the same cohort after ten years. Consistent with both social class influences and rational choice factors, the results show that young people who were female, misaligned at school, in vocational pathways, were in relatively poor health and wealth when growing up and had a father with lower levels of education were more likely to be mismatched. Notably, misalignment of career and educational aspirations at age 15 was the strongest indicator of employment outcomes in early adulthood at age 25. The findings urge a rethinking of national and state investment in careers education, especially in addressing disadvantages faced by equity groups and within occupations served by vocational education.

Although cognitive load theory research has studied factors associated with motivation, these literatures have primarily been developed in isolation from each other. In this contribution, we aimed to advance both fields by examining the effects of instructional strategies on learners' experience of cognitive load, motivation, engagement, and achievement. Students (N = 1287) in years 7-10 in four Australian high schools completed survey measures of motivation, engagement, cognitive load, and their teachers' perceived instructional strategies and motivating style. Results suggest that teachers' load-reducing instructional strategies were related to lower cognitive load and were positively associated with relative autonomous motivation, engagement, and achievement. Teachers' motivating styles characterized by autonomy support and structure were also associated with reduced extraneous and intrinsic cognitive load, as well as motivation and engagement. We conclude that by using load-reducing strategies and a motivating style characterized by structure and autonomy support, teachers can reduce students' cognitive load and improve their self-regulated motivation, engagement, and achievement. In so doing, we discuss a number of future avenues for the joint study of self-determination theory and cognitive load theory, with the aim of refining and extending both perspectives.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to develop, implement, and evaluate a 16-lesson integrated physical education program focusing on Indigenous games: Education, Movement, and Understanding (EMU). Method: The study aligned with current physical education, English, and mathematics syllabi and involved 105 children (9-12 years) from two primary schools (Awabakal Country, Australia; 2020). Children participated in sixteen 45-60 min EMU lessons over 8 weeks, with feasibility and preliminary efficacy outcomes assessed via mixed methods. Results: EMU was delivered successfully by the research team, with excellent student and teacher evaluations (M = 4.36--5.0 across 20 items). Improvements resulted for children's cardiorespiratory fitness (d = 0.37, p = 0.001), enjoyment of sport (d = 0.27, p = 0.024), physical self-perceptions (d = 0.27, p = 0.043), and academic achievement (spelling d = 0.91, addition d = 0.40, subtraction d = 0.53, and division d = 0.68). No significant changes in wellbeing or multiplication scores resulted. Conclusion: Our results provide support for the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of EMU as a beneficial and enjoyable integrated primary school physical education program.

As the university student body becomes more diversified and students' lives less linear, student retention carries increased importance for universities, including the conversion of deferrers and the re-enrolment of leave-taking students. This paper is based on a broader research project which explored national patterns of deferral and leave of absence in Australia and the policies and strategies for re-engaging the students who defer or take leave. Through a mixed research design, the study explores the extent to which students are positioned at the centre of deferral and leave of absence policy, informed by relationship marketing concepts. This study suggests that many universities have moved towards greater consideration of student perspectives and individualised approaches to building a trustworthy and supportive relationship with deferral and leave-taking students, based on data analytics of individual students' information and circumstances. Despite such efforts, there remain both limitations and tensions within these approaches.

This paper reflects on the recounts of a group of 'old boys' about their transition from elite schools to university. Analysis of semi-structured interview data reveals that this transition was not always straightforward. Although educational background has traditionally determined access to, and progress through, university, this paper details the challenges that confronted a group of old boys as they negotiated a landscape that did not align with the positionality they had assumed in their schooling. Defining this as a 'bubble bursting' moment, the participants relay how negotiations of their positionality provoked a reflexive accounting of what to keep and what to reject in the formation of undergraduate identities. The discourses that surround the educational choices made by elite school students indicate how tightly bound notions of achievement and academic excellence define expectations and concomitant senses of Self. Exposure to a larger, and more diverse student population, as well as changed social strata, resulted in the questioning of the elite school environment and the preparation that it provided. This paper explores a currently under-theorised aspect of the literature to detail how the emotions and feelings that elite school alumni experience frames the transition to university.

This article contributes to debates about international student mobility and the globalisation of higher education by attending to the caring practices of Indian international students at Australian universities. Drawing on qualitative material produced with postgraduate students, it examines the practical, economic, emotional and social ways they support each other throughout their educational sojourns. The main argument is that Indian international students develop critical modes of supporting each other that make international study possible. These caring practices highlight the need to move beyond approaches that cast international students as neoliberal subjects or as a vulnerable group in need of intervention. They also unsettle the tendency to cast the higher educational landscape as strictly neoliberal. They highlight instead the importance of notions such as mutuality and reciprocity among the international student cohort, at the same time as they suggest the production of logics in higher education that cannot strictly be defined as neoliberal.

There is little research regarding autistic adult, parent and professional perspectives on support goals for young autistic children. A total of 87 autistic adults, 159 parents of autistic children, and 80 clinical professionals living in New Zealand and Australia completed a survey about the appropriateness and importance of common support goals for young autistic children. Goals related to the adult supporting the child, the reduction and replacement of harmful behaviours, and improving child quality of life were the highest priority across participant groups, while goals related to child autism characteristics, play and academic skills were the lowest priority. Compared to parents and/or professionals, autistic adults gave lower priority ratings for play skills, autism characteristics and participation goals and were more likely to rate these goal domains as inappropriate. More research is needed to understand the underlying reasons for these similarities and differences.

We investigated academic buoyancy - and its predictors and outcomes - among female students attending all-girls and coeducational schools. We examined data from 1,254 female students. Structural equation modeling revealed that students' perceptions of three instructional climate factors (teacher-student relationships, useful content, engaging content) were positively associated with their learning strategies (elaboration, memorization, control) and achievement and, in turn, academic buoyancy (assessed one year later) in similar ways across the two school types. In turn, learning strategies, achievement, and academic buoyancy were associated with academic, well-being, and occupational outcomes assessed up to age 22 in different ways. Together, the findings provide understanding about academic buoyancy among girls, provide guidance for how teachers can support buoyancy and other personal attributes among girls, and yield knowledge about the longer-term outcomes of academic buoyancy.

By the end of 2021, more than 168 million students across the globe had missed a year of face-to-face schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In NSW, Australia, most students engaged in learning from home for eight weeks during 2020 and a further 14 weeks during 2021. This study provides robust empirical evidence on how two years of disruptions to schooling affected student learning. Drawing on matched data for 3,827 Year 3 and 4 students from 101 NSW government schools, this paper compares student achievement growth in mathematics and reading for 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2021 (second year of the pandemic) student cohorts. While overall there was no significant difference between cohorts, when analysed by socio-educational advantage, we were surprised to find that students in the lowest band achieved approximately three months' additional growth in mathematics. Arguably, grave concerns about the potentially dire impact of COVID-19 on the learning of disadvantaged students were met by investments that made a difference. We argue that targeted funding and system-wide initiatives to support more equitable outcomes should remain a priority after the pandemic if Australia is to meet its aspirations for excellence and equity.

The series of responses in this article were gathered as part of an online mini conference held in September 2021 that sought to explore different ideas and articulations of school autonomy reform across the world (Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, the USA, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand). It centred upon an important question: what needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education? There was consensus across the group that school autonomy reform creates further inequities at school and system levels when driven by the logics of marketisation, competition, economic efficiency and public accountability. Against the backdrop of these themes, the conference generated discussion and debate where provocations and points of agreement and disagreement about issues of social justice and the mobilisation of school autonomy reform were raised. As an important output of this discussion, we asked participants to write a short response to the guiding conference question. The following are these responses which range from philosophical considerations, systems and governance perspectives, national particularities and teacher and principal perspectives.

Group model building is a participatory workshop technique used in system dynamics for developing community consensus to address complex problems by consensus building on individual assumptions. This study examines changes in individual mental models of the complex problem of childhood obesity following participation in group model building (GMB), as part of a larger community-based system dynamics project. Data are drawn from GMB participants across six community sites in the Whole of Systems Trial of Prevention Strategies for Childhood Obesity (WHO STOPS) in rural and regional Victoria, Australia. Each community participated in two GMB sessions resulting in a causal loop diagram (CLD) of drivers of childhood obesity for each community. Presurvey and postsurvey captured participants' perspectives before and after (n = 25) participation in both GMB sessions and a blend of inductive and deductive qualitative content analysis was used to code individual responses. Three calculations were used to determine the number of responses, whether responses were a result of persuasion from others, and comparison of responses to those found in the CLD. Our study found participant mental models shifted during the course of the GMB sessions, with some responses persuaded by others and 75% of new insights identified in CLDs created by communities. The GMB process created a platform for participants to share ideas and learn from each other. In addition, participants listed new insights about childhood obesity in their community through developing CLDs.

The Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018 (FITS Act) requires persons or entities, including universities, who engage with the Australian political landscape on behalf of a foreign principal, to register under the scheme. The High Court of Australia's recent decision in LibertyWorks Inc v Commonwealth of Australia [2021] HCA 18 may cause universities to rethink their registration obligations. This article: (i) considers the elements of the legislation which trigger an obligation to register; (ii) examines the High Court's decision in LibertyWorks v Commonwealth, with particular emphasis on those parts of the judgment most likely to impact universities; and (iii) concludes by considering common activities undertaken by universities that might attract a requirement to register, and analyses the impact the FITS Act is likely to have on universities seeking to comply with the legislative regime.

The theme of belonging in e-pedagogy gained currency in the 2000s when educational providers hastened to join the online teaching and learning boom and studies of building and maintaining a sense of community (SOC) proved central to this endeavour. Motivated by the pandemic-era necessity to convene teaching and learning online as part of a response to super-complexity as a defining feature of tertiary education in the 21st century, work-integrated learning (WIL) practitioners returned to this scholarship to consider, under pressure, modes of building SOC and belonging in online spaces. Underpinned by a broadly constructivist worldview and informed by the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, our COVID-age study considers what pedagogical strategies are viewed as affording learners this sense of belonging - or not. Using a collaborative enquiry to pool our perceptions and experiences from three WIL contexts, we ask how work-integrated learning (WIL) practitioners build belonging in online spaces and identify strategies learners perceive as valuable. Drawing on the authors' small-scale studies of educator and learner experiences of online WIL (eWIL), our collaborative enquiry uses qualitative descriptive analysis to identify key themes in the voices of students. Advancing the scholarship, our study identifies three threads to the fabric of belonging: humanising online WIL; the importance of mentor presence; and fostering professional belonging. The study suggests that strategies impacting these three areas are at the heart of building belonging in online spaces, broadly envisaged as imagined professional communities of practice. Techniques viewed as successful are advanced as possibilities for enhancing pedagogy in online WIL communities.

Successful transition for students commencing university is a focus of increasing institutional interest and resourcing to optimise student success and retention. Investigation of student expectations of university commencement and their lived experience provides an opportunity for identification of a potential mismatch which has received less scrutiny. The Bachelor of Sport Development has an integrated transition initiative with an employability and academic skill development focussed curriculum, designed to support students' successful transition into university. The transition initiative was informed by the Five Senses of Success and First Year Curriculum Principles. This article reports student expectations in week one and at the completion of the first semester after experiencing the transition initiative. Students reported changes in their expectations, assessment concerns, and the assistance they expected from lecturers over this period. Students' early exposure to employability-focused curriculum provided valuable insights into their future profession, consequently reinforcing their long-term goal of employment in the sport sector. Results highlight the effectiveness of the supportive, student focused strategies embedded within the tailored transition initiative in the first semester of study.

Recognizing that university statements about equity, diversity, and inclusion are often cosmetic, performative, or at best, aspirational, rather than indicative of on-campus realities, this project analyzes interpretations of student identity and diversity through publicly available materials. The primary purpose of this research was to investigate how university messages about equity, diversity, and inclusion, available through public websites, are interpreted by faculty and students. Using a students-as-partners approach, we identified and analyzed themes based on our own perceptions and understandings of each of five university websites: University of Calgary (Canada), University of Alabama (USA), Deakin University (Australia), University of Exeter (UK), and Portland State University (USA). While equity, diversity, and inclusion are signature initiatives at many universities, we found that analyses of their websites suggest that the ways in which those are operationalized differ. The patterns identified suggest that messaging through university websites can promote or detract from equity, diversity, and inclusion in university settings, and we observed differences in the ways in which institutions operationalized and represented initiatives related to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Exploring how these efforts at our five institutions are messaged to and interpreted by students provides a better understanding of the institutional priorities and the assumed values identified by student co-researchers. The use of student co-researchers proved an especially valuable contribution to this analysis to gain perspectives about presentations of student identity and diversity. Using this form of embedded research, we identify the limited presentations of and perceptions around diversity at institutions of higher education cited by student co-researchers.

This paper reports on research exploring the academic workload and performance practices of Australian universities. This research has identified a suite of activities associated with teaching, research and service, each with an associated time value (allocation). This led to the development of the academic workload estimation tool (AWET). In 2020, to validate the findings, we contacted academics willing to participate further and conducted interviews. We used the AWET to estimate workload for each individual for the previous year and compared it to the workload allocated according to their institutional workload model. Discrepancies were then discussed to ascertain to what extent the AWET was able to capture their work. In general, the participants thought the AWET provided a more realistic estimate of their actual work and highlighted how much is underestimated or unaccounted for by the workload models used within their institutions. It also showed how academic performance policies, focussed primarily on research output, disadvantaged many individuals because they ignored or minimised many scholarly, teaching and service-related tasks inherent in the academic role. Overall, the findings showed the AWET was a useful tool to discuss academic work and assisted them to better capture the complexity and extent of what they did. We offer the AWET as a validated approach for academics to estimate their workload in a holistic and transparent manner. We suggest its implementation institution-wide, along with an aligned performance policy, will facilitate negotiation of reasonable performance expectations. This will rebuild trust in the processes and improve a university's effectiveness.

In this paper, we address the work of teachers at the intersection of educational policy and professional discretion, by undertaking a conceptual reading of "Through Growth to Achievement: Report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools," and examining how the report conceptualises teacher practice. Drawing on the Bourdieusian notion of regulated improvisation, the study explores the constraints of pedagogical practices as conceptualised by influential policy reports of this kind, highlighting the paradoxical expectations of the report on teachers whose situational awareness of classrooms is curtailed through regulation. The study examines the tension between teacher autonomy and constraints, negating important considerations to temporalities of learning. The central contribution of the paper is a conceptual understanding of how policy drivers position teacher expertise through standardisation, compliance and performance, a concern not unique only to the Australian context of educational policy, nor schooling.

Young people's confidence in their creative abilities, as well as their beliefs about whether these abilities are fixed or malleable, play potentially important roles in educators' efforts to foster creativity. This study explores a multidimensional model of young people's creative self-beliefs that comprises creative self-efficacy, growth-creative mindsets, and fixed-creative mindsets. It operationalizes and tests this model via a new three-factor instrument appropriate for young samples. Drawing on data from 2980 children and adolescents (mean age 12-13 years), confirmatory factor analysis established the construct validity of the scales, and hence, the multidimensional concepts underpinning creative self-beliefs. All measures evinced suitable levels of reliability, and invariance analysis supported configural, metric, and scalar invariance across gender, language background, and school type. Findings supported the convergent and divergent validity of scales against Big Five (openness and conscientiousness) personality measures. Implications of this three-factor creative self-beliefs model for researchers, educational practitioners, and youth are discussed.

This investigation comprised two studies that sought to identify the role of COVID-related disruptions in Australian university students' academic motivation and engagement. Study 1 involved a dataset of 500 university students and examined the links between COVID-19 pandemic disruptions (remote and hybrid learning modes, lockdown, isolation) and students' adaptive (e.g., planning and monitoring) and maladaptive (e.g., disengagement) dimensions of the Motivation and Engagement Scale (MES). Study 2 compared the mean motivation and engagement of Study 1 participants with mean levels from four published pre-COVID-19 Australian studies (N = 55, N = 233, N = 420, N = 941 university students) that also used the MES. Study 1 showed that lockdown and isolation (and not remote/hybrid learning) were associated with problematic motivation and engagement--with lockdown and isolation effects particularly noteworthy for maladaptive motivation and engagement. Study 2 showed that relative to the four pre-COVID-19 samples, the COVID-19 pandemic sample experienced difficulties with motivation and engagement, and again particularly so on maladaptive dimensions.