Search

The enactment of the Australian Curriculum for Health and Physical Education (AC:HPE) is intended to be informed by five 'propositions' or Key Ideas, one of which is 'Develop Health Literacy'. Our study occurred at four Tasmanian primary schools and was conducted by a research team consisting of public health and education academics. This team composition reflects the nature of the HealthLit4Kids program as a university and community grant-funded study intervention. We examined inter-dependent networks, of teachers and children, to investigate Health Literacy (HL) teaching. Data were collected from 30 primary teacher participants and figurational sociology was our theoretical framework. While our program increased teacher awareness about health education, participants demonstrated limited HL knowledge with their teaching largely informed by 'everyday philosophies'. While increasing health awareness is a welcome first step with the potential to broadly influence students' adult behaviours, the teachers' ideas about HL were largely fantastical. This finding was supported by a latent data theme showing a restricted connection between teacher HL knowledge and the AC:HPE.

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.

The role of interdisciplinarity in achieving authentic and transformative learning outcomes is both contested and complex. At the same time, traditional disciplinary ways of being, doing and knowing have been further tested by the impact of COVID-19 on students, schools and communities. In Tasmania, already experiencing amongst the lowest levels of educational attainment in Australia, the educational implications of COVID-19 have been polarising. Preliminary reports have employed interdisciplinary perspectives to understand how the situation is unfolding. Extremes of privilege and poverty have intensified, with accentuated disadvantage experienced by already vulnerable groups, whilst ingenuity, adaptability and innovation have flourished elsewhere. The spectrum and range of this polarisation yield compelling evidence for the inadequate address of complex societal problems through singular disciplines or institutions. This article explores storied data generated from the intersections of interdisciplinary strategy enacted across three settings: education, creative industries and community-based arts practice. The data derive from two Tasmanian case studies where interdisciplinary collaboration between the education sector, creative industries and community is well established. In subsequent discussion, the multidisciplinary authorship team make and offer meaning from participatory lived experiences of pursuing social justice outcomes prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. From this, we posit how lived experiences of interdisciplinarity impact social justice enterprise in times of increasingly complex socio-economic challenge. In addressing these concerns, we elucidate the role interdisciplinarity plays in both enabling and inhibiting social justice imperatives shared across education, creative industry and community-based arts practice immediately prior to and during a global pandemic. In so doing, we elicit the ways interdisciplinary practices, partnerships and priorities recalibrate in response to global challenges.

This chapter explores the urgent relevance of posthumanist theory and practice for democratizing creative educational experiences in 21st-century schools, universities, and informal learning environments. Posthumanism challenges the myopic centering of the human in creative education in an age of climate change, artificial intelligence, and zoonotic disease, where nonhuman agencies are intricately imbricated in human cultures and lives. Using a cartographic methodology, the chapter critically maps key theories and debates in posthumanist creativity studies across four substantive fields of inquiry: (a) process philosophy; (b) affect studies; (c) place-based education; and (d) creative ecology. Drawing links between theoretical concepts and practical examples of creative experience across formal and informal education contexts, the chapter scopes an alternative agenda for critical studies of creativity in light of the posthuman turn.

In the years either side of Federation in 1901, Australia's Irish Catholics balanced two often contradictory impulses: their determination to retain their cultural and religious links with Ireland in the face of an often unsympathetic Protestant majority, and the desire to become 'good' Australians in order to make 'a go' of their lives in the new land. This paper explores how this process played out at St Joseph's Nudgee College, a Christian Brothers' day and boarding school in Brisbane, the capital of the Australian state of Queensland, and how sport played a central role in satisfying both imperatives. This discussion will be framed by the intersection of the social/political/economic context of Queensland during the period 1891-1914. It will focus on the educational context in which the Irish Christian Brothers operated as they struggled to make the College a bastion of Irish Catholicism and a vehicle for the socio-economic advancement of their community.

This article explores the experience of three research teams operating across a variety of educational contexts. As members of these teams, the authors were privy to a range of opportunities and challenges that emphasised how political collaboration can be, even when the team formation is an outgrowth of previous personal and professional relationships. There are a range of inhibitors and enablers that impact on the success of a collaborative team, which can be further exacerbated by increasingly performative requirements and expectations in the university sector. In response, university academics seek collaborative opportunities in order to enhance research productivity and to establish networks capable of attracting competitive grant funding. However, little attention has been given to the experiences, attitudes and values of research team members, particularly those undertaking leadership responsibilities. Using the premise of Hitchcock's (Strangers on a train [Motion picture], Warner Brothers, Hollywood, 1951) film noir "Strangers on a Train" as a metaphoric device, three collaborative teams are investigated using a narrative approach. The narrative account draws upon the authors' reflections of their participation in the teams which are fused in a single imaginative vignette in order to identify the key factors that contributed to the success or demise of the teams. The findings revealed the critical importance of established relationships, clear vision and communication, and institutional rewards.

Objective: To ascertain teachers' articulation and experiences of navigating dilemmas that inhibit and/or enable the fostering of health literacy in primary school settings. Design: Qualitative analysis of teachers' written reflections on introducing health literacy into their school and classroom. Setting: Tasmania, Australia. Method: Eighty-four teachers in five primary schools participated in the HealthLit4Kids programme. Teacher reflections were collected at the conclusion of the first year of the programme and assessed using Windschitl's Dilemmas to identify recurrent themes raised by the conceptual, pedagogic, cultural and political dilemmas teachers faced. Results: Key dilemmas faced by teachers concerned the development of a whole-of-school approach, student engagement and professional development. Conclusion: Internationally few health literacy programmes for primary schools exist. The theory developed from the themes identified in this study will inform future health literacy programme design and implementation strategies. Purposeful consideration of each theme will guide their success, scalability and sustainability. Future research on the role of constructivist teaching styles in health literacy development in the school setting is urgently required.

A significant contention underpinning the commentary around STEM/STEAM is the evidence of discipline hierarchies, and inherent binary perspectives and/or biases that lend themselves to privileging one or more disciplines over another in an interdisciplinary education context. The current focus on increasing engagement with STEM in Australian schools provides opportunities to explore how the creative and liberal arts, and arts-based approaches to teaching and learning are being adopted to significantly enhance teaching and learning outcomes in and for STEM education. This article examines how design for a STEAM education programme evolves and is adopted in an Australian context. Tasmania represents one of the most vibrant creative communities in Australia. At the same time it has one of the lowest levels of educational attainment. Entrenched teaching habits and disciplinary hierarchies often create significant barriers to the implementation of STEAM despite genuine goodwill and enthusiasm for STEAM among teachers and within schools. This article argues that, despite the contrasting dynamics extant in the Tasmanian educational context, it is here that some of the nation's most curious and exciting examples of STEAM teaching and learning have emerged. It offers an example of an innovative learning project and proposes the means by which these disciplinary strands have been effectively entwined.

Over the past two decades children's picture books dealing with the Australian experience during the First World War have sought to balance a number of thematic imperatives. The increasingly sentimentalised construct of the Australian soldier as a victim of trauma, the challenge of providing a moral lesson that reflects both modern ideological assumptions and the historical record, and the traditional use of Australian war literature as an exercise in nation building have all exerted an influence on the literary output of a range of authors and illustrators. The number of publications over this period is proof of the enduring fascination with war as a topic as well as the widespread acceptance that this conflict has been profoundly significant in shaping Australian public and political culture and perceptions about national character and identity (Beaumont, 1995, p. xvii). As MacCallum-Stewart (2007, p. 177) argues, authors and illustrators must therefore balance notions of 'respect' for a national foundation myth with a 'pity of war' approach that reflects modern attitudes to conflict. Whatever their ideological commitment, many authors and illustrators respond to this challenge by adopting an approach that serves to indoctrinate readers into the Anzac tradition (Anzac refers to the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps raised for war in 1914. It has become a generic term for Australian and New Zealand soldiers. The Anzac tradition established at Gallipoli, Australia's first major military campaign, has been traditionally viewed as the nation's founding moment.).

There is extensive research that shows how the arts provide many benefits for all students yet there is evidence that arts education offerings and experiences are decreasing across both university and school sectors. It is important that we recognize the essential role of teacher educators in preparing pre-service teachers to be aware of the "bigger picture" of arts education before beginning their work with students. Drawing on interview data from eight tertiary arts educators, this paper will provide a timely national snapshot view of their perceptions. It explores their experiences as arts educators in higher education contexts in regards to the "state of the arts" at their respective institutions. Together with a narrative inquiry approach, this research investigates deeper, lived experiences of the authors in relation to their experiences as arts educators and offers suggestions for improvement to arts education in teacher education programs.

This paper examines the situations of four teacher educators working within academic contexts, but who do not as yet qualify as early career researchers (ECRs) by definition. Within this paper, we define this group as "pre-ECRs"; those working and teaching within contexts of academia whilst undertaking a PhD or similar higher education qualification. Critical comparative analysis is used to examine the nexus between what is currently known about becoming an ECR and narrative accounts of the authors' experiences of negotiating Faculty expectations for research output, teaching and postgraduate study. This approach provides rich insight into what happens prior to and during the initial stages of what we define as the pre-ECR journey. Through the examination of our storied experiences within the context of the existing body of knowledge, the implications of not being able to locate ourselves within a distinctive and appropriate professional identity become apparent. This paper offers a unique insight as it is researched from the perspectives of four pre-ECRs working within an Australian University Faculty of Education. This is valuable given that current research around ECRs provides minimal insight into experiences and challenges unique to those working toward ECR status.

We examine in this article how the construction of a metaphor for collaborative practice can be used as a navigational tool to assist teachers in making meaningful connections between artists and teaching practices. Exploring collaboration in practice as a metaphor can help teachers expand their problem-solving capacities and allow them to cultivate authentic interaction between their artmaking and teaching practices. We also illustrate how collaborative practices, when enacted in both teaching and artmaking and conceived as a metaphorical construct can guide teachers toward identifying synergies between their artmaking and art teaching. To achieve this, we have drawn together a hybridized qualitative methodology to generate a multimodal rendering of intricately layered stories toward cultivating the inter-relationship between artist and teacher.

Within the specific context of "The Australian Curriculum: The Arts", this paper explores how teachers of the Arts and teacher educators encounter and enact curriculum change. Adopting Ewing's notion that curriculum is a complex web of varying stories and storylines that are impacted on by teachers' underlying philosophy, we suggest that Arts teachers embrace the intent behind "The Australian Curriculum: The Arts". This paper unearths and explores insights gleaned from teachers looking inward and reflecting on their own personal curriculum journeys. The learning dimensions of conceptualising, experimenting and developing, reflecting, resolving and communicating are applied to investigate the implementation of the new curriculum. This article shares data from a number of Arts teachers' interviews with the authors in relation to their thoughts on the implementation of the new curriculum. Two key themes emerged from these interviews, these being navigating challenges and the implications of personal attributes in encountering and enacting change. Interestingly, a number of qualities associated with Arts practitioners such as creative and lateral thinking, resilience and flexibility emerge as significant contributing factors in regard to how teachers encounter, enact and become curriculum change.

In the years either side of Federation in 1901, Australia's Irish Catholics balanced two often contradictory impulses: their determination to retain their cultural and religious links with Ireland in the face of an often unsympathetic Protestant majority, and the desire to become 'good' Australians in order to make 'a go' of their lives in the new land. This paper explores how this process played out at St Joseph's Nudgee College, a Christian Brothers' day and boarding school in Brisbane, the capital of the Australian state of Queensland, and how sport played a central role in satisfying both imperatives. This discussion will be framed by the intersection of the social/political/economic context of Queensland during the period 1891–1914. It will focus on the educational context in which the Irish Christian Brothers operated as they struggled to make the College a bastion of Irish Catholicism and a vehicle for the socio-economic advancement of their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To ascertain teachers' articulation and experiences of navigating dilemmas that inhibit and/or enable the fostering of health literacy in primary school settings. Design: Qualitative analysis of teachers' written reflections on introducing health literacy into their school and classroom. Setting: Tasmania, Australia. Method: Eighty-four teachers in five primary schools participated in the HealthLit4Kids programme. Teacher reflections were collected at the conclusion of the first year of the programme and assessed using Windschitl's Dilemmas to identify recurrent themes raised by the conceptual, pedagogic, cultural and political dilemmas teachers faced. Results: Key dilemmas faced by teachers concerned the development of a whole-of-school approach, student engagement and professional development. Conclusion: Internationally few health literacy programmes for primary schools exist. The theory developed from the themes identified in this study will inform future health literacy programme design and implementation strategies. Purposeful consideration of each theme will guide their success, scalability and sustainability. Future research on the role of constructivist teaching styles in health literacy development in the school setting is urgently required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]