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Concern about declining enrollments in senior school History subjects has been a regular feature of history education discourse in Australia for at least 30 years. This concern is also evident in international discourse about History being a subject "in crisis". In Australia and elsewhere, there has been increased speculation about the reasons History enrollments are contracting. However, students are not often included in these discussions, and the external conditions affecting their subject choices tend to be overlooked. Our mixed methods research draws on descriptive statistics and thematic analysis of data from an online survey of 293 students in years 10, 11, and 12 from across Australia. This article examines influences on History's status in the subject 'marketplace' from the perspective of students and conceptualizes three sets of influences: instrumental, subject status, and local context. We position this work in the context of history education, subject selection, careers education research literature, and policy. The dominance of instrumental influences on the decisions of participants to choose or reject History as a senior secondary subject also leads us to examine how, in uncertain times, the forces of neoliberalism are shaping young people's perceptions of the alignment of school and future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Review of: Ignored Histories: The Politics of History Education and Indigenous Settler Relations in Australia and Kanaky/New Caledonia, Angélique Stastny (2022) Honolulu, HI: The University of Hawai'i Press, 280 pp., ISBN 978 0 82488 997 5 (hbk), US$68 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical significance continues to be the forgotten element of history education. Without student capacity to establish what they think is important, or why they would care about certain events and people from the past, students will continue to be disinterested in the study of history. This paper draws on the results of a three-year study aimed at understanding how the Stolen Generations in Australia becomes historical significant for pre-service teachers. Rather than being disinterested in stories of the Stolen Generations, we find that these students are vitally invested in such narratives to the extent that they, on occasion, cannot bear to hear the story. While they acquire knowledge, they also resist and ignore it. Hence, we argue that neither reason or cognitive science are up to the task of resisting either the student's drive to ignore, or their assimilation of difference into the same. For history to be significant in the classroom for students, it must be understood as more than an epistemological pursuit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History education in Australian universities finds itself under increasing pressure in the age of neoliberalism and the crisis precipitated by COVID-19. Universities and professional associations have been forced to adopt a generic discourse of transferable 'skills' in order to justify the place of history in the curriculum. We show, however, that these skills may have specific or even contested meanings within disciplines. Moreover, students can only properly acquire higher-order transferable skills by practising them in disciplinary contexts. Consequently, reinvesting skills with disciplinary meaning is necessary for student outcomes even within a neoliberal rationale, enabling a new defence of the specific nature of historical work. We advance a means of working with primary sources using strategic questioning of increasing complexity as a tool for achieving these twin goals. We show how our approach is embedded in the cognitive processes of historical thinking as defined in both of the major theoretical models that have achieved currency, and posit it as a mode of pedagogical resistance in the neoliberal university landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Intercultural understanding' (ICU) and its core concept 'interculturality', was introduced in the new national curriculum, implemented across Australia from 2013 (Australian Curriculum, ACARA. [2013]. Australian curriculum V.60. Retrieved from ). This paper draws on a study conducted in Victoria, Australia, which asked: how history teachers conceptualise interculturality for history teaching and learning? The study used two methods to gather data: textual analysis and focus group interviews. This paper only reports on specific findings from the focus group interviews, analysed through a methodology of crystallisation and discourse analysis, framed by four modes of historical thinking; traditional, exemplary, critical and transformative. The paper argues that interculturality is a significant challenge to history education often located in discourses constructed over time which disrupt how things have always been taught. By analysing the teachers' talk through a lens whereby the construction of language reveals the educational problematic, the research looks for a way in for interculturality into history teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims, firstly, to provide a sketch of the humanistic tradition of education from Classical Antiquity through to the present, as the cultivation of the whole person as an individual and as a responsible citizen, which arguably still underpins European and other western education systems but which has been eroded in Australia. Secondly, this article aims to provide an outline history of universities in Australia from 1850 to the present, highlighting by way of examples consistent patterns and failures, and the sources of challenges now facing the sector. Thirdly, this article provides a brief summary of those challenges, some of which have been exacerbated but not caused by COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Australian curricula require teachers to promote reconciliation through the teaching of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and languages. Engaging with First Nations knowledges and histories in education comes with a very complex and historically layered legacy. This paper examines the role of education in the ongoing process of colonisation by critically analysing historical and contemporary documents prescribing what Victorian students should learn about First Nations peoples, histories and cultures. These documents are discussed in the context of relevant events and policies, from the Terra Nullius ideologies that dominated curricula until the 1960s, through the growing agenda of self-determination in the 1970–1980s, and into the current swinging pendulum of political agendas. It is argued that contemporary curricula and policies promote reconciliation without embracing the necessary social justice and decolonising ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways that history curriculum has worked to legitimise dispossession through narratives that elide questions of Indigenous sovereignty, and which construct and consolidate white settler identity and possession. Design/methodology/approach: The paper uses two case studies to compare history education documentation and materials at key moments where dominant narratives of settler legitimacy were challenged in public discourse: (1) the post-war humanitarian agenda of fostering "international understanding" and; (2) the release and educational recommendations of the 1997 Bringing them Home Report. Findings: The paper shows that in two moments where narratives of settler legitimacy were challenged in public discourse, the legitimacy of settler possession was reiterated in history curricula in various ways. Practical implications: This research suggests that the prevailing constructivist framework for history education has not sufficiently challenged criticisms of the representation of Aboriginal history and the history of settler-colonialism in the history syllabus. Originality/value: The paper introduces two case studies of history curriculum and shows how, in different but resonant ways, curricular reforms worked to bolster the liberal credentials of the settler state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research on history education's role in agendas of transitional justice is focused on societies undertaking regime change or rebuilding after extensive conflict and often centres disciplinary competencies as part of educational reform objectives to support political transition. However, the orientation towards transitional justice in settler colonial democracies such as Australia has prompted debate about the role of history curriculum in transitional contexts where constructivist, discipline-based approaches are already prescribed. While "historical thinking" in Australia has been a pragmatic middle way between polarised single-narrative and deconstructivist paradigms, this article argues that questions of transitional justice return the subjective, contemporary, and political to history education in ways that challenge the scope of disciplinary meaning-making and complicate the civic promises of disciplinary thinking. By discussing examples of how time is presently imagined and engaged using second-order historical thinking concepts, this article engages some key limitations of disciplinary history curriculum vis-à-vis transitional justice. It suggests alternate approaches that stretch the disciplinary paradigm in new directions that carry important implications for other societies engaged in questions of transitional justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the 1988 Dawkins reforms to Australian higher education and the creation of a unified national system. The article is based on two propositions. The first is that as historians we should examine educational reforms in a changing society not only for what they propose, but with a look backwards to understand their place within a longer history of educational reform. The second – with a side-glance to the British higher education reforms of the early 1990s as a counterpoint – is the extent to which the 1988 Australian higher education reforms should be seen as neoliberal or, as Quicke, McCulloch and Openshaw argue, should we as historians look for nuance within the complex philosophical forces at play? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce a broad theoretical orientation for the themed section of History of Education Review, "Unstable concepts in the history of Australian schooling: radicalism, religion, migration". Through the conceptual frame of "contrapuntal historiography", it commends the practice of re-looking at taken-for-granted concepts and re-readings of the cultural archive of Australian schooling, with especial attention to silences, discontinuities and the movements of concepts. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on Edward Said's approach of "contrapuntal reading", this paper refers to the recent work of Bruce Pascoe as an exemplar of this practice in the field of Australian history. It then relates this approach to the study of the history of Australian schooling as demonstrated in the three papers that make up the themed section "Unstable concepts in the history of Australian schooling: radicalism, religion, migration". Findings: Following in the style of Said's contrapuntal reading and the example of Pascoe's work, this paper argues that there are inerasable traces of historical politics – that is, the records of constitutive exclusions and silences – which "haunt" taken-for-granted concepts like the migrant, the secular and the radical in the history of Australian schooling. Originality/value: Taken alongside the three papers in the themed section, this paper urges the proliferation of different theoretical and disciplinary approaches in order to think anew about silences, discontinuities and movements of concepts as a counterpoint to dominant narrative lines in the history of Australian education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Commencing with publications in the 1970s, the purpose of this paper is to review the historical writing about Australian and New Zealand teachers over the past 50 years. Design/methodology/approach: The paper incorporates men and women who led and taught in domestic spaces, per-school, primary, secondary and higher education. It is structured around publications in the ANZHES Journal and History of Education Review, and includes research published in other forums as appropriate. The literature review is selective rather than comprehensive. Findings: Since the 1980s, the history of New Zealand and Australian teachers has mostly focussed on women educators in an increasing array of contexts, and incorporated various theoretical perspectives over time. Originality/value: The paper highlights key themes and identifies potential directions for research into Australian and New Zealand teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In March 1969, Brisbane student and political activist Margaret Bailey was suspended from Inala High School – ostensibly for "undermining the authority" of her teacher – prompting claims of political suppression. Through a case study of the subsequent campaign for Bailey's reinstatement, the purpose of this paper is to explain the emergence of the high school activist as a new political actor in the late 1960s. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on newsletters and pamphlets produced by Brisbane activists, alongside articles from the left-wing and mainstream press, to reconstruct the key events of the campaign and trace the major arguments advanced by Bailey and her supporters. Findings: Initiated by the high school activist group, Students in Dissent (SID), the campaign in support of Bailey lasted over two months, culminating in a "chain-in" staged by Bailey at the Queensland Treasury Building on 8 May. Linking together arguments about students' rights, civil liberties and democratic government, the campaign reveals how high school activism was enabled not only by the broader climate of political dissent in the late 1960s, but by the increasing emphasis on secondary education as a right of modern citizenship in the preceding decades. Originality/value: This is the first study of the campaign for Bailey's reinstatement at Inala High School and one of the only analyses to date of the political mobilisation of high school students in Australia during the late 1960s. The case study of the Bailey campaign underlines that secondary school students were important players in the political contests of the late 1960s and, if only for brief periods, were able to command the attention of education officials, the media and leading politicians. It represents an important historical precedent for contemporary high school activism, including the global School Strike 4 Climate movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The paper is a study of Clarice McNamara, née Irwin (1901–1990), an educator who advocated for reform in the interwar period in Australia. Clarice is known for her role within the New Education Fellowship in Australia, 1940s–1960s; however, the purpose of this paper is to investigate her activism in an earlier period, including contributions made to the journal Education from 1925 to 1938 to ask how she addressed conditions of schooling, curriculum reform, and a range of other educational, social, political and economic issues, and to what effect. Design/methodology/approach: Primary source material includes the previously ignored contributions to Education and a substantial unpublished autobiography. Used in conjunction, the sources allow a biographical, rhetorical and contextual study to stress a dynamic relationship between writing, attitudes, and the formation and activity of organisations. Findings: McNamara was an unconventional thinker whose writing urged the case for radical change. She kept visions of reformed education alive for educators and brought transnational progressive literature to the attention of Australian educators in an overall reactionary period. Her writing was part of a wider activism that embraced schooling, leftist ideologies, and feminist issues. Originality/value: There has been little scholarly attention to the life and work of McNamara, particularly in the 1920s–1930s. The paper indicates her relevance for histories of progressive education in Australia and its transnational networks, the Teachers Federation and feminist activism between the wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The 1960s in Australia was a politically turbulent time with assimilation policies being questioned by moves in various spheres, including education, to address inequality. The late 1960s also saw the emergence of activist responses to racism as well as the groundbreaking 1967 Referendum, which called for the alteration of two clauses within the Australian Constitution that discriminated against the Indigenous population. A few months after the Referendum was held, a conference called Aborigines and Education was convened at Monash University. Education was seen to be vital in addressing what was described as "profound educational disadvantage" experienced by Indigenous people. The debates that ensued show how education was imagined to be able to solve the problems Indigenous students were encountering. In this article I confine my interest to a selection of papers and examine the features of two distinctive discourses that emerge: that of "uplifting the Aborigine" and that of "upholding" Aboriginal dignity and pride. In doing this, I demonstrate how particular "race logics" were employed and contested in these debates. I argue that the insights garnered through analysis of these discourses offer opportunities for education research and practices that are in solidarity with the emancipatory goals of marginalised communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly mediatised policy processes influence practice in schools as education becomes a site of parental anxiety and choice exacerbated by standardised national assessment and ranking of schools in the media. This paper analyses the responses to media scrutiny of six principals whose schools’ national test results were reported in the Australian press following the release of the federal Labour Government’s MySchool website in 2010. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of social fields, the concept of cross-field effects, and associated research on mediatisation, the evidence suggests that the relationships between the press, education policy and schools are highly contested, and that principals have some agency in talking back regarding their school’s reported ‘performance’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her long-running annual column for the Adelaide Observer, 'Gossip about Children's Books', Australian writer and social reformer, Catherine Helen Spence, maintained that 'the enjoyment of a good story' was key to a good education. Literature and education were, for Spence, inextricably intertwined and mutually reinforcing and the fate of the South Australian colony in which she lived was dependent, she argued, on its young citizens receiving a decent education. While Spence's successive critics and biographers have well documented her advocacy of education, children's social welfare and women's emancipation, little attention has been focused on Spence's literature for children. This essay will argue that Spence's didactic short stories for the young bring together these interconnected strands of Spence's more public activism and are significantly influenced by the pedagogic thinking of late eighteenth-century British and Irish educationists, such as Anna Laetitia Barbauld and Maria Edgeworth. Moreover, this essay will further suggest that Spence's short stories significantly prefigure the critically acknowledged turn in Australian's children's literature to domestic urban realism and family saga in the 1890s and early 1900s. It will utilise as its central focus Spence's short stories for children in Adelaide Observer published throughout the 1880s, as well as her two short stories for Australia's first homegrown school reader, The Children's Hour, published in 1889 and 1890. These stories, this essay will illustrate, explicitly develop an economic sub-narrative that positions their child readers (particularly their female child readers) as active participants in consumer culture and, potentially, a force for the collective economic good of the South Australian colony for which Spence worked so hard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the special issue on topics concerning the Australian and New Zealand history of education including range of educational, textual sources such as autobiography, the paperwork of school administration, as well as oral history interviews.

A century on from the height of John Dewey’s educational writings and the reputation of the Gary Schools Plan as a model of progressive education, the paper reappraises two key matters: the relationship between John Dewey and William Wirt, the first superintendent of the Gary Schools in Gary Indiana, and the coherence between John Dewey’s progressive pedagogies and the early years of the Gary Schools Plan. Through drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources of information, the paper analyses the connections between John Dewey, William Wirt and the Gary Schools Plan in their shared quest to extend progressive education into new urban and industrial schooling contexts. The paper highlights areas where existing assumptions require review and the extent to which the relationship and connections between Dewey and Wirt’s work were mutually beneficial. The paper ends by calling for further related research based on the archival material available. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Comparing our Pasts (COP) project aimed to determine what Swedish and Australian pre-service history teachers know, understand and believe to be important about their nations' past. In this study pre-service history teachers were asked to write a short history of their nation in their own words without using outside sources of information. This article reports on a preliminary analysis of resulting texts, comparing and contrasting their conceptualisations of Sweden and Australia and what aspects of history were manifest in the analysed data. Given that the participant group is situated in two different national contexts, this study aims to analyse how the pre-service teachers' narratives of the nation can be understood as influenced by the national historical cultures of Sweden and Australia. The results show that the respondents' narratives expressed both similarities and differences that highlight the pertinence of a historical cultural approach to history education and pre-service history teacher training that may be linked to the differing national historical contexts. These results are then used to argue the importance of an awareness of historicity in order to highlight and stress how our views of and approaches to national history is contextually contingent. This poses a challenge to history teacher training both in Sweden and Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose This paper provides a critical interpretative analysis of the first secondary English syllabus for schools in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, contained within the Courses for Study for High Schools (New South Wales Department of Public Instruction, 1911). The purpose of the paper is to examine the “continuities that link English curriculum discourses and practices with previous discourses and practices” in the rhetorical curriculum. The analysis identifies those aspects of the 1911 English syllabus that have since become normative and challenges the appropriateness of certain enduring orthodoxies in a twenty-first century context.Design/methodology/approach Focussing on a landmark historical curriculum document from 1911, this paper draws on methods of historical comparative and documentary analysis. It sits within the tradition of historical curriculum research that critiques curriculum documents as a primary source for understanding continuities of discourses and practices. A social constructionist approach informs the analysis.Findings The conceptualisation of subject English evident in the structure, content and emphases of the 1911 English syllabus encodes a range of “discourses and practices” that have in some form endured or been “reconstituted and remade” (Cormack, 2008, p. 275) over the course of a century. The analysis draws attention to those aspects of the subject that have remained unproblematised and taken-for-granted, and the implications of this for universal student participation and attainment.Originality/value This paper reorients critical attention to a significant historical curriculum document that has not, to date, been explored against the backdrop twenty-first century senior secondary English curriculum. In doing so, it presents extended insights into a range of now normative structures, beliefs, ideas, assumptions and practices and questions the potential impact of these on student learning, access and achievement in senior secondary English in NSW in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1966 Anglo-American Seminar at Dartmouth certainly stands as a landmark event in the history of English teaching. For the purposes of this Special Issue, however, I want to unsettle some familiar interpretations of Dartmouth by reading with and against a range of American responses to the conference published in the late 1960s and 1970s. As an American now working in Australia, I hope that my perspectives on Dartmouth will both complicate English educators' views of the past and sensitise us to historical struggles from the (post)Dartmouth-era that have influenced present struggles over the teaching of English in several countries, including Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is time for us to collectively embrace the diversity of the library profession and encourage students and graduates to understand that great employment opportunities present themselves outside the traditional library space. Our traditional library skills will always be required, but to maintain our relevance we must provide a greater emphasis on non-traditional roles when teaching library-related qualifications. The scope and value of what our traditional skills can bring to other industries has been underestimated. A librarian’s job prospects are increasingly diverse, so our pre-service training and ongoing professional development should reflect this. Such practice would go a long way to safeguarding our profession for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the challenging formative years of a new librarian’s career and presents some typical career trajectories, particularly in Australian libraries. Its focus primarily relates to common misconceptions and struggles that new librarians might encounter, as they may not realise that these experiences are commonplace. Key topics include library qualifications, entering the workforce, job application processes and common work experience pitfalls. This paper suggests that challenging experiences are better shared, considered and expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This opinion piece reflects on some critical questions being asked today about Australian library and information science (LIS). It explores some of the foundations of such questions to provide an historical perspective on contemporary Australian LIS practice. This paper contends that lack of historical perspectives amongst recent graduates contributes to a sense of professional isolation, and there is a need to place contemporary concerns within a broader and deeper professional landscape if the profession is to successfully address contemporary concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History of education research has flourished in Australia since the 1960s. However, fewer university appointments in recent years suggest that a decline will soon occur. Nevertheless, research over the previous fifty years has produced much excellent work, following three significant historiographical trends. The first is the dominant Anglo-Empirical Whig tradition, which has concentrated on conflicts between church and state over schooling, and the founders and establishment of schools and public school systems. The second arose from social history, shifting the focus of research onto families, students and teachers. However, the concentration on the social class relations of schooling was eventually overtaken by substantial studies into gender relations. In more recent times, cultural studies and the influence of Foucault have been responsible for new research questions and research, marking a new historiographical trend. A survey of topics for which more research is required concludes the editorial, not least of which is the history of Indigenous education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of Psychology, as an academic discipline in Australia and the attitude of Catholics to the field of study. It is noted that the first professor of psychology in Australia was Tasman Lovell during 1878-1958 and other appointments include H. L. Fowler as Associate Professor in the University of Western Australia. The author observes that some strong comments questioning psychology in non-academic Catholic media sources were witnessed in early 20th century.

This article reports on methodological issues in the study of autobiographical narratives about transition to school within a life course approach. The data consist of 89 Australian participants’ recollections of starting school between 1928 and 1995. These narratives are considered as life reviews and part of the story of ‘continuing me’. They are combinations of memories about childhood experiences, stories told in the family, photos and other artefacts, influenced by the times and places of starting school and of recalling it. This research approach provides one strategy for investigating the ways in which starting school links other life events within individual and family contexts and how the recollections of transition to school are part of each person's constructed life story. The results indicate that narratives of starting school often form an education marker in one's life course and may have an intergenerational impact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article highlights the response of Susan Hopgood, federal secretary of the Australian Education Union (AEU) to the article by Kevin Donnelly "The Australian Education Union: A History of Opposing School Choice and School Autonomy Down-Under" scheduled for published in the "Journal of School Choice." Topics discussed include the degrees of autonomy of public schools in Australia and the basis of the AEU argument about school funding.

Purpose – The Australian Radical Education Group (RED G) was created in June 1976, which in turn launched a magazine for radical(ising) teachers, the Radical Education Dossier (RED), that would be published for the next 30 years. The purpose of this paper is to characterise the emergence and first phase of RED’s publication up to its name change in 1984. Design/methodology/approach – The authors draw on interviews with key members of the magazine’s editorial collective, and a review of RED’s contents, to identify the major political ambitions as manifest in RED in historical context. The authors contextualise this radical education project in the post-1968 world context of social and political upheaval, rejecting the Cold War options of either Soviet style Communist or US-based capitalist pathways. Findings – In this context RED generated powerful critiques of dominant educational policy in multiple areas. The critique was part of a project to promote a socialist understanding of mass education, and to promote the transformation of Australian society towards socialism. The authors argue that the debates and struggles within RED in this period, seeking to define and advance a socialist educational project, reflected a broad and consistent critique of progressive educational reforms, rooted in its radical political foundations. Originality/value – This paper provides an historical review of a 30-year radical education publishing initiative in Australia, about which no accounts have been published. It connects directly with contemporary educational issues, and offers insights for interviews with those directly involved in the historical project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the professional biography of Ethel A. Stephens, examining her career as an artist and a teacher in Sydney between 1890 and 1920. Accounts of (both male and female) artists in this period often dismiss their teaching as just a means to pay the bills. This paper focuses attention on Stephens’ teaching and considers how this, combined with her artistic practice, influenced her students. Design/methodology/approach – Using a fragmentary record of a successful female artist and teacher, this paper considers the role of art education and a career in the arts for respectable middle-class women. Findings – Stephens’ actions and experiences show the ways she negotiated between the public and private sphere. Close examination of her “at home” exhibitions demonstrates one way in which these worlds came together as sites, enabling her to identify as an artist, a teacher and as a respectable middle-class woman. Originality/value – This paper offers insight into the ways women negotiated the Sydney art scene and found opportunities for art education outside of the established modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of universities in the twentieth century is, at least from the perspective of growth, a massive success. Australian higher education is no exception. Prior to the Second World War, Australia had six universities and approximately 10,500 students. Now there are in excess of one million students attending 39 institutions. In each phase of student expansion, governments have sought to make universities accessible to new segments of the community, a pattern that informs contemporary social inclusion initiatives. This paper focuses on two successive periods – the 1940s/1950s and the 1960s/1970s – during which university participation expanded. Comparing two universities which were at that time very different from one another – the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales – I consider the ways both universities approached admissions to understand what each institution hoped to achieve in attracting students beyond the traditional elite. This helps move beyond government strategy and rhetoric to consider what universities believed was at stake as they enabled new students to enter their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of Australian screen content in Australian schools and universities is undergoing rapid change due to digital and online distribution capacity on the supply side and digital and online affordance embedded in student cultures. This paper examines the ways in which Australian screen content and its distribution are beginning to adapt to educational usage. Issues facing content rights holders, distribution companies and emerging digital platforms reflect broad-based digital disruption patterns. Learning opportunities that can coincide with the growth in uptake of Australian screen content in Australia's education sector are not immune to the challenges posed by emerging digital consumption behaviours and issues of sustainability. At the same time, the growth in the use of digital and online screen content learning resources, under current copyright conditions, poses significant increases in the underlying cost structure for educational interests. This paper examines the innovations occurring in both the supply and the demand sides of Australian screen content and the expanded learning opportunities arising out of emerging digital affordances. Precedents in the UK are explored that demonstrate how stronger connections can be forged between nationally produced film and media content and a national curriculum. While addressing recent issues arising out of the Australian Law Review Commission's inquiry into copyright in the digital economy, the purpose of this discussion is not to assess policy debates about fair use versus fair dealing. What is clear, however, is that independent research is required that draws upon research-based evidence with an aim to better understanding the needs of the education sector against the transformative shifts taking place in digital-based learning materials and their modes of delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The place of women's agency in the fertility transition of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century is a contested one. Some argue that the transition was achieved mainly through male methods of contraception. Others, including many arguing from an Australian perspective, contend that women's agency in fertility decline was significant. In this article, the authors revisit the issue of women's agency in Australia. Drawing on a range of archival sources and scholarship, they seek to demonstrate that women in Australia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century had access to contraception, albeit limited, and, where that failed, to abortion. The authors argue that the changing political and educational climate, which saw women gaining the vote in 1894 in South Australia and admission to secondary and higher education and paid work, provided the setting for women's changing status. Their increasing agency – an agency many women worked to secure – encouraged women to challenge many traditional practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

TheAustralian Curriculum: Historyhas emerged out of a neoliberal federal education policy landscape. This is a policy landscape where pragmatic and performative, rather than pedagogic concerns are clearly foregrounded, and this has implications for curriculum development and implementation. A useful way to conceptualise the features, assumptions and potentialities of theAustralian Curriculum: Historythat has been produced from these policy imperatives is through a framework provided by the descriptors, ‘thin’ and ‘thick’. A thin curriculum is one that essentially equates curriculum with a product, and where the prescribed content is central to understanding what a curriculum is. A thick curriculum, on the other hand, is one where the curriculum is understood as a verb, where the details of content are secondary to an exploration of bigger questions and concepts, and where curriculum theory is the starting point for the selection of content. The use of ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ as the ends of a continuum of curriculum provides insights into the purposes of a curriculum. Ultimately, such a dichotomy exposes assumptions about what is important knowledge and who is in control of the curriculum. This paper focuses on how theAustralian Curriculum: Historyas an example of a ‘thin’ curriculum, presents a number of challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to encourage historical research on the educational work of Catholic Sisters in Australia which includes the Sisters’ perspectives. Design/methodology/approach – Reflecting on the experiences of research projects which sought Sisters’ perspectives on their lives and work – from archival, oral and narrative sources – the authors discuss challenges, limitations and ethical considerations. The projects on which the paper is based include: a contextual history of a girls’ school; a narrative history of Sisters in remote areas; an exploration of Sisters’ social welfare work in the nineteenth century, and a history of one section of a teaching order from Ireland. Findings – After discussing difficulties and constraints in accessing convent archives, issues in working with archival documents and undertaking a narrative history through interviews the authors suggest strategies for research which includes the Sisters’ voices. Originality/value – No one has written about the processes of researching the role of Catholic Sisters in Australian education. Whilst Sisters have been significant providers of schooling since the late nineteenth century there is a paucity of research on the topic. Even rarer is research which seeks the Sisters’ voices on their work. As membership of Catholic women’s religious orders is diminishing in Australia there is an urgent need to explore and analyse their endeavours. The paper will assist researchers to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the establishment of legally mandated Protestant training in the Australian state of Victoria and the Canadian province of Ontario. Fearing moral decay at home and a menacing world environment seemingly unfavourable to the ‘British way of life’ in the 1940s, educators asserted that religion, and specifically Protestant Christianity, was the only means by which the moral core of their British democracy could be preserved. The teaching of religious instruction was highly controversial in both places. Supporters of the new curriculum believed the religious courses would strengthen the British identity and moral backbone of the Canadian and Australian nations, while opponents argued that imposing religion in the classroom was antithetical to British ideals of freedom and toleration. Educators struggled to reconcile these divergent views on how religion fitted into a wider British identity, and the resulting tension exposed the points of ethnic and cultural fracture that undermined the credibility of Britishness after 1950. The very efforts to impose a unifying sense of Britishness were so controversial and problematic that they ultimately required an alternative understanding of what it meant to be a citizen of Ontario or Victoria. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I analyse the history of teacher education in Australia from 1974 to the current policy moment in which questions are increasingly being asked about the quality of teaching and teacher education. Teacher education is, and has been, a highly scrutinised domain in Australia. Since the 1970s, we have seen more than 100 reviews of teacher education in Australia, with another one recently announced in 2014. I focus on three phases in the growth and development of teacher education in the past 40 years by considering the ways in which teacher education (and teaching) has been thought about at various points in time and analysing the related policies for funding governance and regulation. I finish by focusing on the current policy moment in Australia which is positioning teacher education as a ‘policy problem’ requiring a national solution and consider the role of research in, on and for, teacher education into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article opens and ends with reference to two interlinked studies: Charles Taylor's 2007 A Secular Age, and his 2011 Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays. These are often magnificent but sometimes flawed works. This article aims to explore the implications and ramifications of Taylor's failure to discuss, in either study, nineteenth-century provision for secular instruction by government elementary schools in Ireland, Great Britain, and the Australian colonies. What these did or did not mean should have been grist to Taylor's mill, especially since, in these places (and other English-speaking countries, such as the United States, Canada, and New Zealand) 'secular instruction' provisions soon attracted energetic imputations of infidelity and atheism, as well as support. 'Secular Instruction' Acts in two Australian colonies ( Victoria in 1872, South Australia in 1851 and 1875) are here considered in detail, for these, especially the Victorian, were interpreted by some then and more recently as emphatically secular (in the sense of 'Godless'). My argument is that this emphatic secularity, for emphatic it often was, mostly should not be read as 'Godless' but as an often Protestant-inflected statutory expression - of the kind usefully defined - by reference to an ideal type - as 'Civic Protestantism.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to a special section on the history of school architecture and educational change in Australia which discusses various articles within the section on topics including alternative schools and social networks.

The article looks at the alternative and community school movements in Australia during the 1970s, with a particular focus on the Huntingdale Technical School and the Swinburne Community School in Melbourne, Victoria. The author examines how the educational philosophies of these schools were expressed in their physical design. Details on the relationship between schools and communities are presented. Other topics include openness and student and teacher identities.

A case study of the J. H. Boyd Domestic College in South Melbourne, Victoria is presented, with an emphasis on the relationship between its physical facilities and its curricular focus on domestic science instruction for girls. Details on demographic factors which influenced the school's history, including increases in immigration and women's employment following World War II, are presented. Other topics include scholarships and educational technology.

A case study of the physical design and educational philosophy of the Woodleigh School in Baxter, Victoria, Australia is presented. Particular focus is given to the careers and the social and professional networks of principal Michael Norman and architects Daryl Jackson and Evan Walker. Details on the relationship between pedagogy, the school facilities, and the surrounding environment are presented. Educator C. F. Walker and the school's curriculum timetable are also discussed.

The article looks at the history of Australian school architecture, with a particular focus on Australian state schools in the 20th century. The author examines the relationship between school architecture and educational aims and ideals. It is suggested that changes in school architecture illustrated changing attitudes towards students' roles and the social and civic purposes of education. The relationship between school, domestic, and industrial architecture is discussed.

The article presents a case study of creative writing pedagogy in West Australian correspondence education during the 1930s. Particular focus is given to newspaper accounts of the poetry anthology "Brave Young Singers," which collected verses written by young students in correspondence classes. Details on English curricula in Australia during this period are presented. Other topics include educator Frank Tate, individual guidance of students by teachers, and results-based educational research.

This paper provides an overview of the contribution of Professor Geoffrey Sherington to the study of the history of Australian education and immigration. His academic and leadership roles are summarised and the main themes of his work are briefly discussed. These themes comprise: Australia as an immigrant nation, British colonial values and meritocracy, public, private, and corporate schooling, and the interconnectedness of educational institutions. These themes recur in the discussion below and are aimed at providing a context for the analyses and assessments of his major scholarly projects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the Queensland government under Premier Sir Francis Nicklin from 1957 through 1968, including the government's policies in regard to education, industrialisation and modernisation. An overview of the Labor Party in Queensland, including its opposition to the Nicklin government, is provided. The cabinet in the Nicklin government, including the role it played in developing a state budget, is discussed.