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Throughout 2020, the world was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of higher education, the pandemic critically affected professional experience, a core component of teacher education. This paper shares data from a large-scale survey about teachers' sense of self-efficacy and the impact of COVID-19 on professional experience. Findings showed that the disrupted context had a moderate effect of pre-service teachers' self-efficacy in relation to their classroom management, instructional strategies, and student engagement. Qualitative results illuminated that the modes of learning, changing classroom contexts and communication between the pre-service teachers, school and their university were the underlying contextual factors that impacted pre-service teacher's self-efficacy. Implications from these findings challenge universities to consider how to best support pre-service teachers' progression in times of disruption and consider how Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs prepare pre-service teachers to teach in disrupted classrooms.

Effective arts learning requires the development of important literacies. While investigation of discipline-specific literacies has filtered the literature, it is unclear if these literacies are acknowledged, understood, and/or taught. In this paper, we share the classroom discourse of two arts teachers in early and middle years across visual art and music--to determine how discipline-specific literacies are used and taught. Findings show that these teachers intuitively and consistently share age-appropriate arts-literacies and use semiotic metalanguage with their students to express and make meaning through arts practices. With contemporary research in the field of literacy consistently acknowledging the diverse ways we communicate and the importance of creative thinking and aesthetic-artistic reasoning, it is critical that classroom data, such as shared in this paper, is considered for future curriculum development. We conclude by recommending strategies and considerations for arts teachers when planning and implementing arts literacies to improve students' applied understanding.

Publishing in the academy is a high-stakes activity often used to measure academic staff progress and inform promotion. Many universities have increased pressure on academics, even at the earliest stages of their careers, to publish in high-ranking journals resulting in increased stress and uncertainty. The authors of this paper are members of a writing group in an Australian regional university, established to support each other towards success in quality research and publishing. Over the 2020-2021 summer semester, six members of the group decided to reflect on their experiences, emotions and outcomes throughout the writing process by participating in four reflective arts-based activities. Theoretical frameworks of reflection and metaphor were used to share findings. Strong evidence of having to grapple with meeting university expectations in tension with personal goals and passions was ever-present. The importance of drawing on both personal resources and significant others to manage these tensions through self-care practices was also evident. Implications resulting from this research include recognising the pressures placed on academics to publish only in specifically ranked journals. Overall, the arts-based reflection was critical in uncovering deeper feelings about the pressures of publishing and supporting higher education employees' well-being and self-care during the writing process.

Teacher professional development in writing is an increasing area of interest due to the complex nature of the profession including learning needs of students and the demands of external assessment regimes in the contemporary landscape. However, professional development often denies the contextual experiences and expertise of teachers in favor of prescriptive top-down approaches. This paper contributes to the literature on effective teacher professional learning by showing how co-design between teachers and researchers can have an impact on student learning. In this study we focus on professional learning for the teaching of writing in the elementary classroom context, working with third grade students in the age range of 8-9. Through a reflexive analysis of multiple data sets including student writing samples, interviews, classroom observation footage, and teacher testimony, this study reveals the importance of teacher confidence in enabling students to view themselves as writers with a clear audience and purpose. The findings show how positioning teachers as research partners throughout a co-design process of professional learning benefits both students and teachers as it provides authentic, contextualized and creative approaches to teaching writing and improved writing outcomes for students.

Effective assessment design and subsequent assessment practices are essential for student success in the higher education sector. A plethora of research on assessment in higher education exists which tends to focus primarily on the student experience. This paper shares results from a 3 phased study that explored staff perceptions related to assessment practices in an undergraduate Initial Teacher Education program within an Australian metropolitan university. First, course learning objectives, activities and assessment items were mapped to identify the presence of constructive alignment. Second, staff were invited to complete a survey and a follow-up interview in relation to understanding of assessment knowledge and skills. Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning (2013) was used to analyse the qualitative data and findings suggest that staff are highly committed to quality assessment practices but often work in silos rather than teams. Additionally, a lack of professional development and learning was available at the school level, particularly for casual staff. Further research about assessment practices in higher education in relation to staff rather than student experience is warranted.

Reflection, reflective thinking and reflexivity have received significant attention in the scholarly literature on higher education yet there is limited research that explores these concepts in relation to international students. This paper consequently explores what reflection and reflective thinking might look and feel like for international students. We theorize the importance of supporting international students in becoming reflexive practitioners in their chosen area of study; particularly in respect to graduate attributes including reflection and employability. The paper attends to this theorization by sharing Rodgers' (2002) four functions of reflection, a reflective thinking model -- the 4Rs -- as well as Archer's (2000, 2012) notion of reflexivity. We explore how higher educators might consider these frameworks comprehensively when working with international students particularly in the area of workplace experience.

International students face many challenges when studying and living outside their home countries. These challenges are magnified when unexpected events occur such as COVID-19. Due to border closures, travel restrictions, quarantining and even job losses international students have particularly faced hardship in the first six months of the 2020 academic year in Australia. This paper reports on an arts-based research study that aimed to support international students to reflect on their studies and personal working lives during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The authors implemented a reflective process involving mindfulness and body mapping to support international students in expressing their experiences and feelings during this time. Results show that the international students gained a deeper understanding of what they experienced personally and how these experiences were both different and similar to their peers. The process enabled students to acknowledge and accept challenges faced as well as provided a safe avenue to do so. They reported the powerful nature of the arts-based methods in helping them think positively about their studies and future working lives.

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 systematic quantitative literature review explores existent empirical studies with an interest in multiage education in small school settings, with a specific focus on curriculum and pedagogy. Database searches were methodically conducted across six data bases. The inclusion criteria specified the need for empirical research, and publication dates ranged from 1997 to 2017. The article begins by setting the scene for the systematic review, exploring historical and international practices related to multiage complexities and terminology. Curriculum and pedagogical practices are explored to identify key advantages and disadvantages associated with a multiage approach in small school contexts.

This paper works on the premise that classroom talk conveys meaning about students as writers and asks how classroom talk facilitates the formation of students' identities as writers. We present findings from an ethnographic investigation of elementary writing lessons across six participant schools in Australia. Our data analysis is informed by two theoretical constructs that of positioning and implied identity. First, we explore different ways that students are positioned as a result of classroom talk and discuss implied identities -- what these positions imply about writer identities within a context. Second, using a micro-ethnographic case study approach, we highlight how participants of classroom talk orient to the acts of positioning within a classroom context. The first section of findings revealed how classroom talk positions students as either autonomous, communicative, metareflexive, or fractured writers. Furthermore, findings showed that the observed writing lessons position students as writers who are concerned with form and pay attention to function. In the second section, we share an in-depth investigation of a year six writing lesson to show how different types of positions are negotiated by teacher and students on a temporal basis. We discuss implications for research and practice related to the teaching of writing.

The teaching of reading is a core priority across the education sector. In an attempt to better prepare our next generation of professional teachers of reading, academic staff at an Australian university implemented coursework changes that were designed to enhance the phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge of first-year preservice teacher education students. All students were asked to complete written surveys measuring phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge during class-time at the start and end of their first semester of study. During the semester, students were expected to complete two online modules on phonological awareness and orthographic conventions and pass an online quiz (worth 10% of their grade) as part of their course on the Teaching of Reading and Writing. Education students' performance in phonological awareness and orthographic knowledge improved significantly over the course of the semester. However, a significant percentage of students failed to achieve mastery level in phoneme-level awareness. Implications and future directions for current higher education practices are presented.

Writing requires a high level of nuanced decision-making related to language, purpose, audience, and medium. Writing teachers thus need a deep understanding of language, process, and pedagogy, and of the interface between them. This article draws on reflexivity theory to interrogate the pedagogical priorities and perspectives of 19 writing teachers in primary classrooms across Australia. Data are composed of teacher interview transcripts and nuanced time analyses of classroom observation videos. Findings show that teachers experience both enabling and constraining conditions that emerge in different ways in different contexts. Enablements include high motivations to teach writing and a reflective and collaborative approach to practice. However, constraints were evident in areas of time management, dominance of teacher talk, teachers' scope and confidence in their knowledge and practice, and a perceived lack of professional support for writing pedagogy. The article concludes with recommendations for a reflexive approach to managing these emergences in the teaching of writing.