Search

This paper critically examines articulations of relationality present in education policy texts that shape particular discursive representations of relationality between students, teachers and curriculum. The policy texts of Australian state and territory education departments are considered as a set of discursive statements to illustrate how concepts such as relationality are deployed in policy as floating signifiers. Without deep contextualisation, concepts like relationality are instead potentially co-opted and corrupted. We contend that through its uptake, relationality has become a handy catch-all in educational policy discourses, while remaining a sliding signifier, free from a more productive affective potentiality. Instead, we argue that relationality should be centred in education policymaking as part of a commitment to recentre teaching and learning at the heart of schooling through a more authentic, dialogic relational pedagogy.

Music is learned and taught in multiple ways dependent on the socio-cultural contexts in which learning occurs. The processes employed by music teachers have been extensively explored by music educators and ethnomusicologists in a range of contexts, although there has been limited research into which modes are most predominantly used in different socio-cultural contexts. Further, it is unknown how students make meaning in these different contexts. This article presents three distinct music learning and teaching contexts--Carnatic music, instrumental music in Australian schools, and online music learning. Using a socio-cultural semiotic tool to identify musical modes, this article examines the ensembles of modes used during music learning events and considers how this knowledge may improve the learning and teaching of music for all students, particularly those whose culture and language differs from the majority of the population. It aims to identify how students make meaning in learning contexts through distinct modes of communication. Findings demonstrated that different "ensembles of modes" were used in diverse learning contexts and that these approaches were influenced by socio-cultural contexts. It is important for teachers to understand that varied combinations of modes of communication are possible because students may find learning more meaningful when related to their own personal frames of reference. Without this knowledge, music learning and teaching practices may continue to privilege some modes over others.

This paper considers the implications of the current landscape of education policy reform in Australian schooling. We argue that the decontextualisation of education policy enactments and the eschewing of concerns relevant at the local level of the school over the past two decades have prompted various reform agendas to fail. We contend that recognition of the deep contextualisation of schools is paramount in any attempt at renewal. Therefore, it is at the local school-level that reform agendas can and should be directed by the pedagogical and innovative work of educators. We focus on 'relational pedagogy' because it offers opportunities to enact school-wide reform and enhance the professional capacities of educators as pedagogical innovators. Contemporary education reform agendas are best situated and registered within school sites and relational pedagogy stands as a deeply contextualised provocation for enacting school renewal.

This paper is one of two that bring together a range of education scholars to consider how education might be for democracy in a time of complex challenges facing twenty-first century societies. In this paper, scholars from Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom consider how sites of formal and informal education can respond to multiple unfolding crises, including the COVID-19 global pandemic, catastrophic climate change and ecological collapse, political upheaval, and growing social and economic inequality. What emerges is a wide-ranging set of reflections that engage with these complexities and challenges in a considered and hopeful way.

Curricular justice, achieved through a counter-hegemonic curriculum that serves the needs of the least rather than most advantaged members of society, plays a central role in providing more equitable access to meaningful education for all young people. We contend that the defining features of the contemporary schooling context in many parts of the globe, including Australia, are growing inequality and increasing disparity between students who have access to educational opportunities and outcomes, and those who do not. We take Connell's claims--made in "Schools and Social Justice, "published in 1993--of the centrality of social justice in schooling and consider its relevance nearly 30 years later. In particular, we argue that curricular justice must sit at the heart of schooling that fosters democratic participation and meaningful opportunities for civic participation and belonging within society.

This paper provides a conceptualisation of relational pedagogy in which informality is proposed as a pedagogical modality to activate inclusive, socially just learning and teaching encounters. Findings from two ethnographic studies conducted in alternative learning contexts are examined, which demonstrated that informality was crucial to the formation of pedagogical 'activations' that marked the conduct of each learning context and the interactions between teachers, students and learning. The formation of close bonds between students and teachers extended to renegotiated associations with the practices of schooling and reformulated relationships with learning experienced by students and their teachers. It was at the 'interface' between students, teachers and learning that these activations of relationality materialised, in which informality was a central dynamic. From these findings, a set of propositions are generated to centre relational pedagogy as being key to the engagement of young people in meaningful education across schooling and other learning contexts.

This paper examines the utility of Campbell's narrative construction of 'the hero's journey' as a conceptual apparatus to understand how international students from Confucian heritage cultures navigate their experiences in Western schooling systems like Australia. The hero's journey framework was used to investigate the commonalities and differences in international students' beliefs and behaviours, which led to the development of three different students 'hero' models: the self-determined hero, the hesitant hero, and the wounded hero. These models were used to represent the students' beliefs, behaviours and perceptions of support and to describe the experiences and motivations of students in different contexts during their secondary schooling in Australia. The hero's journey provides a potentially useful framework from which to engage schools, systems, and policymakers in productive dialogue regarding the support and engagement of international students.

This paper presents an analysis of contemporary education policy levers that seek to standardise and measure teaching quality through the deployment of professional standards and increased surveillance of teachers' work. These policy frameworks--with a focus in this paper on the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers--are contrasted against the experiences of five Australian primary school teachers, using interpretative case study analysis to demonstrate the contradictions, tensions and fragile discursive construction of the idealised 'good' teacher. Implications for teacher agency and autonomy are considered, and propositions are generated for policy frameworks that support and enhance quality teaching, rather than reducing the complexities of teaching to a set of standardised metrics.

Young people who graduate from high school are more likely to transition into further study or training, get a job and earn higher wages. However, many young people with the highest needs leave or become excluded from mainstream school settings and some complete their education in alternative education contexts. This paper shares reflections from Flexi School graduates on their experiences of alternative education, demonstrating their commitment to employment and integration into their communities, because their alternative education enabled them to gain a sense of belonging. Graduates assert the significance of their alternative schooling experiences in improving their outcomes and helping them overcome disadvantage and marginalisation. We contend that alternative schooling can help marginalised young people attain the skills and qualifications required for further study or training by giving them proficiencies, confidence and attitudes that help to generate positive opportunities and outcomes.

In a policy landscape dominated by forces that seek to continually reshape education according to market logics, there are particular impacts on the seemingly intractable crisis of Indigenous education policy making. Entrenched discourses of deficit result in education policy continually being 'done to' communities, with little heed paid to the effects of such efforts on the learning opportunities available to young Indigenous learners, particularly those living in remote communities. This paper examines the contemporary network of policy levers that come to shape how literacy policy is framed for Indigenous Australians through narratives of failure and crisis. In doing so, we ask what learning is made (im)possible and what are some of the 'flattening' effects on literacy curriculum and pedagogy as a result? Further, this paper seeks to open up the conversation around what learning is possible when the policy landscape is unflattened, when policy is 'done with' communities, and when pedagogical practices are opened up, rather than closed down.

"Harmony High" is an alternative school where music functions as an educational magnet to attract marginalised students who have disengaged from the mainstream. Through an investigation of the student perspective, we discover that while acting as a magnet, music also becomes the educational matrix or "heart and soul" that helps to create a school culture with a positive spirit of connectedness and community working to motivate and inspire active learning. Thus Harmony High demonstrates a model highlighting the need for alternative education contexts that adapt to the needs, voice, interests and experiences of disaffected students. This becomes increasingly important in order to offer alternatives to current neoliberal agendas that focus on the standardisation of education in order to meet economic political and market ideals rather than the needs of students.

This action research project investigated the effects of negotiating curriculum on the affective attitudes of boys in my Year 8 English class towards studying English at high school. The ensuing unit involved developing autobiographical narratives to create, share and critique the students' life-stories, undertaking learning activities that were developed through the negotiation process. A pre-negotiated curriculum survey and post-negotiated curriculum survey were conducted, as well as collecting data from the negotiated curriculum sessions, and weekly student feedback and reflections on the learning activities. The negotiated curriculum experience yielded positive outcomes for both the students and myself, although it was difficult to make claims of correlation and statistical significance from the data, due to the near-curricular isolation and novelty of the experience. There is much more work that needs to be done on the effects of negotiated curriculum on the affective and academic outcomes for students, and the action research method seems well-placed as an authentic, naturalistic tool for undertaking this challenge. (Contains 1 table.)