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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.

This paper is one of two which bring together leading educational researchers to consider some of the key challenges facing democracy and education during the twenty-first century, including rising social and economic inequality, political instability, and the existential threats of global pandemics and climate change. In this paper, key educational scholar-activists respond to the challenges and possibilities for democracy and education, with consideration of the importance of reimagining education as being for democracy. The questions asked in this paper have particular salience for educational leaders, who must be at the centre of any commitment to democratic education.

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.

This paper extends Steven Threadgold’s theorisation of the ‘figures’ of youth. Threadgold highlights that predominant representations cast young people as the focus of moral panic, revolution, consumption, ‘cool’, the future, nostalgia, cognitive risk and social risk. We extend these figurational categories to also include a conceptualisation of the young person as spatially figured. The consideration of spatiality as a key identifier of young people and characteristic of young peoples’ experiences identifies the importance of the spatial terrain in framing young peoples’ positionality. Drawing on data collected with a group of young people resident in a regional town in Southern Queensland, we consider the interplay of distance, access and sociality as markers of a spatial figuration of the young person. The imbrication of geography and spatiality with identity asserted implications for how these young people engaged as members of their community, and further, how they were received and encountered by others. We contend that close attention should be given to the interconnected effects of geography and spatiality on identity, particularly in terms of how the geo-spatial figuration of young people influences their engagement in wider community and social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a conceptual framework for enacting relational pedagogy. Commencing with a description of a relational ontology that can work to provide the foundation for engaged and participatory enactments of teaching and learning, the paper moves to consider the dynamics that support inclusive modes of education and the dimensions of relational pedagogical encounters. In particular, the pedagogical encounter is examined with a view to illuminating how the ontological and epistemological dynamics and dimensions of relational pedagogy open opportunities for inclusive and participatory modes of teaching and learning. In addition, the practical implications of pedagogical informality are considered, including the in-the-moment immediacy inherent to the relational encounter and concomitant enactments of the pedagogical exchange. In doing so, we argue for a relational pedagogy that widens the possibility for meaningful engagement with young people through pedagogical enactments that build upon the inter-relationality of teachers and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Faced with increasing systemic constraints and pressures, secondary school English teachers often implement transactional approaches to pedagogy and curriculum aimed at improving student results on external exams, which are then used to rank schools. Despite the pressure to teach this way, teachers acknowledge the power of literature, literacy and language in the English curriculum as vehicles for educating students to be critical readers of texts for a democratic society. As such, the purpose of this paper is to share perspectives of secondary English teachers in relation to the democratic potential of their subject. Design/methodology/approach: Using a qualitative case study method, this paper shares data from six Australian secondary school English teachers who work in culturally diverse schools. Teachers were interviewed about their perspectives regarding how the Australian English curriculum enabled and/or constrained the teaching of critical and creative thinking in support of a democratic society. Findings: Using Marri's model of multicultural democratic education, interview data were deductively analyzed to identify elements of the model, including critical pedagogies, disciplinary content and community building. Teachers were concerned that building critical literacy skills was minimized by the system and students' personal dispositions. Originality/value: The English teachers in this study held a strong belief that the subject of English could emancipate students, although they felt it might be "the last bastion" for a democratic education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.