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In 2017, it was excitedly pronounced across major newspapers in Australia that public schools' share of student enrolment had increased, marking a "determined end to a 40-year decline". The claims were bolstered by numerical data, and an accompanied media release, issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. These bold claims immediately caught my attention, first for the assertion they were making and the implications for public schools; but second, for the way in which they potentially elided complex and variable units of analysis, to simplify and stabilise the numbers into a depoliticised narrative. Education reform relies on measurements, quantification and statistics to inform policy, but also to inform public opinion. Drawing on Petty's notion of political arithmetic and Gorur's "sociology of measurement", this paper explores and critiques the role of counting in relation to national school enrolment shares, as divided between public and private schools in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspiration for higher education has been a focus of significant policy intervention in Australia for some time, with numerous large-scale research studies investigating the formation of aspiration amongst high school students. However, case studies in particular schools which might provide insights into the complexities and contradictions of aspirations for individual young people are scarce. This paper explores aspirations for particular futures from the perspectives of young women in a single-sex NSW government school in an area of historically lower HE participation. Rather than conventional interview-based methods where researchers ask young people to articulate their plans for the future, the study adopted creative arts-based methods which enabled students to engage with each other and a range of materials to produce multimodal 'aspiration artefacts' of their imagined futures. The method assemblage privileged imagination and embodied feelings, beyond the rational information-driven pedagogies that are promoted in widening participation policies. Our close readings of artefacts created by three Year 9 girls demonstrate that aspiration is a process that is relational, embodied, affectively and discursively constituted; and further, that this is inflected by gender, class and other positionalities in elusive and unanticipated ways. Arts-based methods allow us to tentatively trace the work of thinking–feeling–imagining that is entailed in developing and articulating aspirations for particular futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stories and literature play an important and necessary role in understanding the past and in creating the future. Yet, in colonised countries such as Australia, the status of contemporary national texts, particularly those reflecting the diverse voices of Indigenous writers, women, and other marginalised groups, continue to be underrepresented in schools. In this article, we explore the reasons why Australian texts continue to be marginalised in education, when there is a clear desire for diverse Australian voices amongst the reading public. We also consider the kinds of national identities that current text selection and teaching policies are creating and maintaining in schools. In order to develop these ideas, we draw on data collected via a survey of secondary English teachers for a pilot research project called Teaching Australia. In this project, we explored the Australian texts being selected and championed by teachers in secondary schools, the perceptions of nation and national identity these convey, and teachers' approaches to including diverse Australian texts in their classrooms. In the final section of the paper, we consider some future opportunities for engagement with diverse Australian literature for teachers and students of English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the visual and verbal representation of diversity in Australian early childhood picture books, focusing on those that have been shortlisted for the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Early Childhood Book of the Year award (2001–2020). Educators at all levels draw on award lists to help create their reading lists and build their library collections. For early childhood to kindergarten educators, these selections are principally picture books. Picture books are significant for the cultural messages and values they convey about society, and for helping children learn about their world. How diverse that world is impacts on a child's sense of belonging and inclusion. Using content analysis, this study demonstrates the extent to which the story worlds in the CBCA award winning early childhood picture books may be considered a source of diversity for young Australian readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, education think tanks have become increasingly influential in policy circles through 'reports' to government, and in public debate through the mainstream media. Invariably think-tanks draw on educational research to lend authority and legitimacy to their work. This is desirable if the research deepens understandings about important educational issues. However, it can be dangerous if it is enlisted to serve a specific ideology. This paper takes a case study of an avowedly conservative think-tank in Australia-the Education Standards Institute (ESI)-to explore the ways in which research is (mis)used in the service of a particular ideology in the public sphere. To sharpen the case study, the paper focuses on a contemporary policy issue in Australia-Independent Public Schools. It is argued that over a prolonged period of time the ESI Director has argued for an extreme version of school autonomy which goes far beyond anything which has yet been proposed by policy-makers in Australia. In so doing he uses the imprimatur of research evidence to substantiate his claims. The paper explores the many flaws in the ways in which educational research is employed to bolster the case. Education research should play a central role in informing public discussions and debates about education policy. It should not be used as a front for sloganeering for particular ideologies, and educational researchers have an important role to play in pointing this out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceptualises think tanks and edu-businesses in relation to education policy work in the Australian polity. It situates the enhanced influence of both in relation to the restructured state, which has lost some key capacities in relation to the generation of research and ideas for policy. This restructuring has been strongly influenced by the techniques of new public management, the auditing of education through national and international testing and new forms of network governance, which have opened up spaces for the increased influence of think tanks and edu-businesses across the policy cycle in education. We see here the workings of a 'polycentric state'. The paper also considers changing concepts of 'evidence', 'expertise' and 'influence' in respect of the involvement of think tanks and edu-businesses in circulating policy ideas and affecting policy development in Australian education. This introduction to this special issue of The Australian Educational Researcher serves as a provocation to further research on this new policy scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mainstreaming of English-as-an-additional-language (EAL) education necessitates collaboration between EAL teachers and content teachers to support EAL students' learning in content areas. A question left open is how EAL and content teachers exercise relational agency through professional dialogue and collaborative practices. The current paper examined this question through the concept of relational agency grounded in sociocultural theory. Data include group interviews with and self-recorded collaborative conversations between an EAL teacher and a science teacher in planning and delivering science content in an Australian secondary school. Findings reveal professional dialogue and collaborative practices created mediational spaces for them to exercise relational agency. They actively worked together on a complex problem and shared motive, built and utilised common knowledge, and drew on relational expertise in responding to the demands of enhancing EAL students' learning of language and content in the science classroom. Findings have implications for promoting teacher agency and quality collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many remote places in Queensland, Australia have access to schools, very few have provision for preschool education. Recent efforts to change this have included the development of a kindergarten program delivered through the local school. An impact assessment undertaken in 2017 involved visiting 30 remote sites offering the program. Analysis of interview data indicated the importance of sense of place in the delivery of this program. Educators and family members were overwhelmingly supportive of the option of a kindergarten program in their sites, regarding it as an equity and social justice imperative to provide access to programs that seem to be taken-for-granted for children and families in urban and regional locations. The potential for the program to enhance social interactions and educational outcomes was highlighted, even when educators noted a range of challenges in the implementation of the program. Sense of place and the positioning of educators and families are explored in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been more than 100 reports focusing on the effectiveness of teacher education in Australia over the last 35 years with many positioning teacher education as flawed and in need of reform. These frequent criticisms have drawn attention to the difficulty teacher educators can experience when trying to interrupt or contest this representation: a situation not unique to Australia. In the United States, for example, Pam Grossman has suggested that those in teacher education 'seem ill prepared to respond to critics who question the value of professional education for teachers with evidence of our effectiveness' (Grossman in J Teach Educ 59(1):10-23, ). A key question facing teacher educators, therefore, concerns the kinds of research that will most effectively allow us to lead debates about teacher preparation. This paper outlines an approach to the conceptualization and conduct of research into the effectiveness of teacher education that seeks to move debates in new directions. Drawing upon the theoretical resources of Soja (Thirdspace: journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places, ) and Lefebre (The production of space, ) we outline the ways in which a spatial approach to conceptualizing teacher education influenced the design and conduct of a large scale, longitudinal project that investigated the question of the effectiveness of teacher education in Australia. In exploring the design features of this ARC linkage grant the paper demonstrates how research changes when teacher education is conceptualised from a spatial point of view and illustrates the ways in which consideration of the conceived, perceived and lived spaces of teacher education can move research about effectiveness into new directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although international definitions of early childhood repeatedly refer to a birth-8 age span, there are complex, institutional divides within this age range. This paper explores the divide between pre-compulsory and compulsory early childhood institutions. In countries such as Finland this divide is not such an issue because children do not begin formal schooling until age seven or eight. However, in Australia these 8 years include both pre-compulsory programs (often birth-5) and compulsory schooling. We argue that in situations where the early years of compulsory school are included in a country's definitions of early childhood, they often occupy a tenuous place in research, policy and practice. Drawing from the history of early childhood education in South Australia, we explore the place that the early years of school have occupied in early childhood discourse, policy and practice and then consider some contemporary state-based and national reforms. Our hope is that by considering the South Australian past, the paper may provide a space from which to advocate for policies and structures that uphold specialist expertise and leadership in the early years of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalent knowledge economy discourse has direct implications for higher education policies and practices. It is expected that the higher education sector supports national economic competitiveness mainly through promoting scientific research, supporting technological transfer and innovation, and producing 'knowledge workers' such as higher degree by research graduates. However in the context of changing work requirements and fast paced technological progress, the 'skills gap' between the labour market needs and the actual attributes of graduates has emerged as a tangible concern. This paper explores the issue of research graduate employability in Australia. Drawing on critical frame analysis, the paper particularly problematises the way research graduate employability has been framed in relevant policy texts, and shows what issues are excluded from the policy agenda and why. By way of demonstrating exclusions from the current debate on doctoral graduates' skills and employability, we briefly report on new data on the level of industry-engagement of research students at one large Australian university to argue that assumptions about the need to 'fix' the skills deficit of graduates have excluded from view high levels of industry engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early career teachers often feel overwhelmed by the complex, intense and unpredictable nature of their work. Recently, policy initiatives have been introduced to provide new teachers with extra release-time from face-to-face classroom teaching duties to assist them in their transition to the workforce. This paper reports on a critical policy study that investigated the enactment of this policy initiative. A data set was created from a larger qualitative study which investigated early career teacher resilience. Drawing on a policy enactment theoretical 'toolbox', the findings indicate that school leaders can empower early career teachers to move beyond being 'receivers' of policy to assume a more active policy role. This paper argues that school leaders are very powerful in their capacity to enact policy to ensure strategic access to appropriate on-going learning opportunities to support early career teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within literature relating to the broad field of boys' education attention is regularly drawn to the significant difference between essentialist and anti-essentialist accounts of 'the boy problem' and the limitations of gender-based educational reforms which rely upon deterministic notions of what boys are 'really' like and, by extension, what they 'really' need. While these deterministic interventions have been widely critiqued in academic literature they nevertheless continue to dominate school and media based discussions about how to best support alienated, disengaged and at risk boys. This raises questions about the extent to which anti-essentialist approaches can be made more accessible and meaningful to teachers in schools. It further suggests the value of developing detailed accounts of real world interventions that have had a demonstrably positive impact upon the boys involved without reinforcing essentialist notions of masculinity. Adopting an attitude of 'educated hope' (Giroux, , ) and drawing upon the resources of (Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, ), this paper examines one such case of anti-essentialist reform involving three Australian schools. It explores one particular boy's experience of an intervention known as Boys with Books and argues that Ryan's journey can be conceptualised as a line of flight away from traditional forms of masculinity: a journey in progress that has impacted positively upon his relationships with peers and teachers and changed his beliefs about his possible future options. The paper, therefore, illustrates the capacity for teachers and schools to display anti-essentialist understandings about masculinity while responding in practical and 'do-able' ways to the needs of at risk, alienated and underperforming boys in schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescent aspirations have been extensively researched, particularly in the contexts of higher education and the workforce. This paper extends research by exploring how the educational and career aspirations of rural adolescent girls relate to their other future goals. It demonstrates how exploring aspirations, both within and outside of the contexts of higher education and the workforce, enables a deeper understanding of various adolescent aspirations and the interconnections between them. This paper draws on a qualitative study with adolescent girls living in the Cradle Coast region of Tasmania-a rural and remote region where access to a wide range of educational resources and experiences is limited in comparison to those available in metropolitan centres. The paper responds to recent participation policy in Australia that implies young people from rural locations are lacking in aspiration. The article demonstrates that despite rurality, the girls in this study have many aspirations, including those for higher education. It discusses how having many and quite varied aspirations influences the girls' decision making and planning around their futures. The paper shows that it is the balancing of many future goals that influences educational and career decision-making, rather than low aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the nature and implementation of the Australian VET FEE-HELP (VFH) policy initiative: a scheme introduced in 2008 to extend income-contingent loans to the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia. We argue that the implementation of the scheme has been seriously flawed, leading to a range of counter-educational and unethical practices on the part of some VET providers. An ongoing research project into the impact of the changing contemporary cultural context of VET on the creation of moral dilemmas facing VET teachers in their work has identified four dilemmas that were seen by teachers to be significantly driven by the VFH scheme. Those dilemmas arose from (1) unethical student recruitment and enrolment practices, (2) overlooking traditional educational standards, (3) constraining teacher responsiveness and (4) manipulating learning assessment. The identifying teachers saw themselves as being professionally unprepared to handle such moral dilemmas, leading to discomfort and inappropriate handling of the dilemmas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2008, all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 have been assessed in literacy and numeracy through an annual National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test. In 2015, a team of mathematics education researchers across Australia conducted a nationwide research project to identify school practices and policies that were consistent between schools that showed growth and/or improvement in their NAPLAN numeracy results. This paper reports findings from three case study schools, using a school improvement framework to interpret evidence gathered from the schools’ principals and school leaders. The study has particular implications for policy makers and school leaders who may be seeking ways to improve mathematical practices in their own jurisdictions and schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of spaces that encouraged the participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in higher education became a reality in the early 1980s. Since then, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators and leaders have worked tirelessly to find their ‘fit’ within the Western academy, which continues to impose a colonial, Western educative framework onto Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. More recently, universities are attempting to move towards a ‘whole of university’ approach to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander higher education. To achieve such a major shift across the academy, Indigenous values, perspectives and knowledges need to be acknowledged as a strong contributor to the environments of universities in all core areas: student engagement, learning and teaching, research and workforce. In a move to achieving a ‘whole of university’ approach which revolves around Aboriginal culture and knowledges, the Wollotuka Institute at the University of Newcastle developed a set of cultural standards, as part of an international accreditation process, to guide a culturally affirming environment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and staff. This environment acknowledges the unique cultural values and perspectives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In this paper, the authors explore, from an Indigenous Standpoint, the creation of a university environment that privileges Aboriginal values, principles, knowledges and perspectives. The paper exposes how traditional Aboriginal Songlines, particularly in Aboriginal education, were disrupted, and how the creation and emergence of a contemporary environment of Aboriginal educational and cultural affirmation works towards the re-emergence of Songlines within higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of commercialisation in Australian public schools, reporting on findings from an open-ended survey question from an exploratory study that sought to investigate teacher and school leader perceptions and experiences of commercialisation. Commercialisation, for the purposes of this paper, is understood as the creation, marketing and sale of education goods and services to schools by for-profit providers and often includes (but is not limited to) the provision of curriculum content, assessment services, data infrastructures, digital learning, remedial instruction, professional development and school administration support. Our account highlights that commercialisation is prevalent in the day-to-day practice of Australian public schools. The perceptions of teachers and leaders suggest that commercialisation is complex, with both affordances and challenges. Respondents acknowledged that aspects of commercialisation are necessary for successfully running schools and classrooms in the 21st century, but also noted that there is a fine line beyond which these seemingly innocuous services become perilous. Concerns focused on how particular services are leading to the deprofessionalisation of teachers as they have less autonomy over what to teach and how to teach it. Moreover, teachers and school leaders reported being perturbed by the idea that commercial providers and services might work to replace teachers in the future. Drawing on these data we argue that growing commercialisation in Australian public schools clearly requires an ethical debate that schools, education professionals, policy makers and interested publics are yet to have. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School partnerships support the effective provision of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the senior years of secondary schooling, to a varying degree, in most OECD nations. However, the nature and quality of these partnerships vary considerably from school to school and, indeed, from nation to nation (see Murray and Polesel, Eur J Educ 48(2):233-246, 2013). Given the role of these partnerships in VET provision in the senior years of schooling, it might be argued that there has been limited discussion about the role and nature of these relationships and the challenges associated with their establishment and long-term sustainability, especially in the Australian context (Allison et al. Building learning communities: partnerships, social capital and VET performance. NCVER, Adelaide, 2006). This paper explores the emergence of partnerships in a variety of educational and training contexts in Australia and describes the types of partnerships that have been established to respond to the specific needs of students. It also identifies the benefits and challenges associated with the delivery of VET programs through partnerships and the ways in which these partnerships can be developed and sustained to improve VET provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the English literacy outcomes of Aboriginal children are constantly measured and debated, attention falls away once they leave school, leading to limited data on English literacy rates among Australia's Aboriginal adults. This paper reports on an investigation into the prevalence of low literacy in adults in eight Aboriginal communities in NSW, Australia, drawing on both self-report data from household surveys and objective professional assessments using the Australian Core Skills Framework (ACSF). The research was conducted in partnership with a national Aboriginal organisation as part of a longitudinal study of the impact of improved adult literacy on the social determinants of health and social wellbeing. Of the participants who were measured to have low or very low English-language literacy level using ACSF, 51% had completed Year 10 or higher. This casts serious doubt on the value of school completion data which is used, for example, in Close the Gap reporting, as an accurate predictor of adult literacy rates. Results further show that while self-reported low literacy was prevalent in the population studied, there was also a significant overestimation, with adults who have completed years 10–11 nearly 30 times more likely to overestimate compared to people who only complete primary school. Given the well-known associations between adult literacy and a range of other outcomes including income, employment and health, national adult literacy surveys such as the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies should aim to produce more comprehensive national, regional and local data on Aboriginal adult English literacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In reporting the Australian results of the 2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALLS), the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, Adult literacy and life skills survey, summary results, Australia, , p. 5) stated that of the five internationally identified levels of literacy and numeracy in the survey, Level 3 is regarded by the survey developers as the 'minimum required for individuals to meet the complex demands of everyday life in the emerging knowledge-based economy'. In effect, this Level 3 criterion, in the wake of traditional functional literacy/illiteracy dichotomies, creates yet another 'single measure' through which to distinguish those who can from those who cannot function in society. The Level 3 criterion and the accompanying verbatim quote have since been cited extensively by powerful institutions, including government, industry and skills in their promotion of a crisis discourse in adult literacy and numeracy. This has led in turn to national policy responses on 'foundation skills' and nationally agreed performance targets (by the Council of Australian Governments) for skills and workforce development based on the ALLS Level 3. In this paper we question the validity, origin and significance of the Level 3 criterion and contend that highlighting this aspect in the reporting of the ALLS has resulted in a narrow and unbalanced perspective on the role of literacy and numeracy in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of Australia's first national research assessment, excellence for research in Australia, provoked considerable discussion about the state of educational research in Australia. Understanding the nature of this field of research became the focus for empirical research and analysis that was intended to inform strategic planning. This paper provides an overview of the articles in this special issue, bringing together research on Australian educational research and insights from international researchers who research the effects of research assessment in educational research in their own countries. These sources inform a commentary on Australian educational research and suggest an agenda for further action on strategic capacity building for Australian educational research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research assessment exercises aim to identify research quantity and quality and provide insights into research capacity building strategies for the future. Yet with limited knowledge of the ecology of Australian educational research, there is little chance of understanding what research audits might contribute towards a capacity building agenda for such a complex field. This paper draws on secondary data analysis of research outputs submitted by 13 Australian higher education institutions to the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) 2010 and 2012 national research assessment exercises, to show where Australian educational research is conducted. Findings offer a profile of education researchers by location in academic organisational units within universities. By analyzing data not accessible through reported ERA data we were also able to present information about appointment profiles, specifically levels and type of appointment within universities, as well as data on institutional and geographic region, and patterns associated with type of outputs (books, book chapters, journal articles, conference papers and other outputs) and field of research. Analysis of the data reveals definitive shifts in the nature of the published outputs and in employment profiles of researchers and their location across university and regional groupings. Research audits are administrative processes that reshape institutional and disciplinary governance structures, policies, individual outputs, work practices and careers, but they are not the sum total of the field per se. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of recognising, valuing and respecting a child's family, culture, language and values is increasingly articulated in educational policy. Diversity and inclusion are central themes of the guiding principles of early childhood education and care in Australia. Children's literature can be a powerful tool for extending children's knowledge and understandings of themselves and others who may be different culturally, socially or historically. However, evidence suggests many settings provide monocultural book collections which are counterproductive to principles of diversity. This paper reports on a larger study investigating factors and relationships influencing the use of children's literature to support principles of cultural diversity in the kindergarten rooms of long day care centres. The study was conducted within an ontological perspective of constructivism and an epistemological perspective of interpretivism informed by sociocultural theory. A mixed methods approach was adopted and convergent design was employed to interpret significant relationships and their meanings. Twenty-four educators and 110 children from four long day care centres in Western Australia participated. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, video-based observations, field notes, document analysis and a book audit. This study identified that current book collections in these four kindergarten rooms of long day care centres promote monocultural viewpoints and 'othering' of minority groups through limited access to books portraying inclusive and authentic cultural diversity. These findings have important social justice implications. The outcomes of this study have implications for educators, policy makers, early childhood organisations and those providing higher education and training for early childhood educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher education is in a state of uncertainty around the world including the more wealthy and less wealthy countries. If it is generally accepted that teacher education can make a difference in the educational lives of all students regardless of cultural and educational background, then how exactly to arrange the detail of schooling is not. Under particular circumstances, schooling that is primarily concerned with reproducing the values and practices of the market economy and privileged minority, suggests that most likely teacher education will submit to economic power and not make a difference. Schooling of this type participates in the rearticulation and sometimes further penetration of social hegemonic practice. On the other hand, if schooling within the dominate economy and values sets about establishing the conditions whereby the majority of students are encouraged to investigate significant knowledge, social constructs and cultural scaffolds critically, imaginatively and independently then teacher education structured in the same way can make a difference, contributing to authentic community building and social change. Drawing inspiration from the work of Paulo Freire, this paper describes the efforts of teacher education in Australia grappling with these tensions and contradictions within the constraints of university and school requirements, as well as a strongly neoliberal economy. It briefly outlines a history of partnership-based and practice-based pre-service teacher education that has generated support for on-site approaches of various types. Moving beyond Pedagogical Content Knowledge, the paper explores the conditions for a new concept of philosophical project knowledge that theorises teacher education as learning through social action and partnerships between communities, schools and universities. In this way, education is seen as a democratic right and a process of liberation for all citizens especially those marginalised and excluded within a market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grouping students by academic achievement level has been practised in a wide variety of forms and contexts for over a century. Despite a general consensus in the research that between-class achievement grouping provides no overall benefit for students, the practice has persisted in various guises. Between-class achievement grouping is common in high schools, and is also practised in a number of primary schools in various countries. While the affective outcomes of such practices have been investigated recently, academic outcomes at primary level have not been studied in recent decades. This paper examines the academic outcomes of between-class achievement grouping in literacy and numeracy classes in Australian primary schools. Results from standardised tests are compared between two groups of schools-one regroups students for these areas, and one maintains mixed-achievement classes. It is argued that the current regrouping practice closely resembles streaming and provides no apparent academic advantage for students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007 the Rudd Labor government in Australia introduced significant changes to education policy for the nation. The Skilling Australia's Future (Rudd et al. Skilling Australia for the future. Election policy document, 2007) policy was meant to redress a perceived failure by the previous Howard federal Liberal-National Coalition governments to fund and manage vocational skills training adequately. The Skilling Australia's Future policy established a number of areas for immediate action. This paper looks at one of these areas from the policy document, namely, the Rudd government's plan for addressing skills shortages (Rudd et al. , pp. 4-9) through the establishment of Trade Training Centres in schools. The policy is analysed using Critical Discourse Analysis, featuring the semiotic concept of intertextuality. Findings from the application of this method suggest that Skilling Australia's Future (2007) belongs within a history of like-minded policy and, although a new direction is provided by the allocation of Trade Training Centres to selected high schools, the policy is not clearly separable from the market-driven discourse that has pervaded education policy since the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well over 20 years since information and communication technologies (ICT) was first included as part of a future vision for Australia's schools. Since this time numerous national policies have been developed, which collectively articulate an official discourse in support of a vision for ICT to be embedded in our schools, and routinely used by 'digital' learners and 'competent' teachers alike. The purpose of this paper is to critique how ICT, teachers and learners are positioned in this vision by an analysis of national school-education ICT policies from 1989 to the present day, including the National Goals of Schooling policies, the Learning in an Online World suite of policies, several Ministerial Statements relating to ICT and the recent A Digital Education Revolution policy. This paper suggests that determinist views of technology and a utopian vision underpin these representations, which creates a flawed, future vision for ICT in school education and its use by teachers and learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an account and a critique of the rise of the contemporary policy as numbers phenomenon and considers its effects on policy and for educational research. Policy as numbers is located within the literatures on numbers in politics and the statistics/state relationship and, while recognising the longevity of the latter relationship, it is argued that the governance turn and neo-liberalism have strengthened the role of numbers in contemporary education policy. This phenomenon is situated in the contemporary 'structure of feeling', which sees politics reduced to managing the everyday and the evisceration of a progressive imaginary. The paper then documents the impact within education, focusing both on the emergent global education policy field and on the national agenda in Australian schooling and the related rise of 'gap talk', both globally and nationally. The paper concludes by drawing out some implications for educational research, suggesting that we as educational researchers are also being positioned by policy as numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proportion of students enrolled at university from the lowest quartile of socio-economic position has remained static at around 15% for at least the past 15 years (DEEWR, Transforming Australia's higher education system, ). This paper argues that the apparent lack of progress towards equity of access has been exacerbated due to how socio-economic position (SEP) is measured within higher education. Three major methodological issues are identified: (a) the use of socio-economic indicator for areas (SEIFA) at an inappropriate unit of geographic area (postcode), (b) an inappropriate choice of index (education and occupation), and (c) using the index of education and occupation as the sole indicator of SEP thereby increasing the risk of misclassification of individuals through the operation of ecological fallacy. This paper argues that to address these methodological deficiencies, alternative methods of determining SEP are required at both the aggregate and individual level. Possible options are proposed for use as replacements for the geographic area (postcode) and index (education and occupation) as well as additional measures at the individual or household level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of Australian higher education has changed, is changing and is about to change, repositioned in relation to other 'fields of power'. It is a sector now well defined by its institutional groupings and by their relative claims to selectivity and exclusivity, with every suggestion of their differentiation growing. The potential of a 'joined-up' tertiary education system, of vocational education and training (VET) and universities, has the potential to further rework these relations within Australian higher education, as will lifting the volume caps on university student enrolments. Moreover, Australian universities now compete within an international higher education marketplace, ranked by THES and Shanghai Jiao Tiong league tables. 'Catchment areas' and knowledge production have become global. In sum, Australian universities (and agents within them) are positioned differently in the field. And being so variously and variably placed, institutions and agents have different stances available to them, including the positions they can take on student equity. In this paper I begin from the premise that our current stance on equity has been out-positioned, as much by a changing higher education field as by entrenched representations of social groups across regions, institutions, disciplines and degrees. In taking a new stance on equity, the paper is also concerned with the positioning in the field of a new national research centre with a focus on student equity in higher education. In particular, the paper asks what stance this new centre can take on student equity that will resonate on a national and even international scale. And, given a global field of higher education, what definitions of equity and propositions for policy and practice can it offer? What will work in the pursuit of equity? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite numerous equity initiatives aimed at increasing participation in higher education, students from regional and remote communities continue to be underrepresented in Australia. This paper presents a scoping review of empirical studies, published between 1991 and 2016, that examined aspirations for higher education of students from regional and remote areas. Analysis of the 65 articles revealed an emphasis on enablers and barriers to participation in higher education including: cost and distance, supportive environments, attachment to home, schooling and academic achievement, knowledge of pathways, and individual characteristics. However, much of the research offers a homogeneous view of regional and remote communities which elides location-specific characteristics that are powerful in shaping educational aspirations. We argue that there is a critical need for greater understanding of the diversity of experiences, influences, and aspirations among students within rural and remote communities to underpin the provision of appropriate infrastructure and support for their higher education aspirations. We identify some key avenues for further research into the aspirations of students in rural and remote communities and the ways in which this research can inform and improve outreach activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, debates around school funding tend to focus on comparisons of funding between school systems and what this means for equity. In this paper, while we look at school-level funding between systems, our emphasis is on private funding in public schools with a particular emphasis on the relationship between private funding and ICSEA. Using data provided by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, we present a series of analyses that document the current funding arrangements of Australian schools. In particular, we focus on how private income and parental contributions are mediated by sector (Government, Catholic and Independent), system (States and Territories) and educational advantage. These analyses show that government schools are generating notable private funding per student with the majority coming from parental fees, charges and other contributions. We further demonstrate that these private contributions advantage may exacerbate inequalities within public systems across Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enabling education has a respected and established place in Australian higher education as an alternative pathway into university study. While the value of enabling education in providing access to higher education is undeniable, its provision across Australia is necessarily diverse, as individual programs respond to the needs of their local communities. This resulting diversity makes it difficult to gain insight into the field of enabling education. Given the purpose of enabling education is to prepare students for tertiary study, the role of academic literacies and language (ALL) is central for both Native English Speaker and Language Background Other Than English students, and it is to this focus that this paper attends. To shed light on the field, this paper presents the findings from a national audit of enabling education, providing a much-needed overview of the enabling programs offered across Australia, focusing on the ways that language and literacies are taught, positioned and, in some cases, disconnected from practice. Drawing on this analysis, we discuss how language and literacies are positioned as either central or periphery to the core work of enabling programs and begin a discussion which seeks to place ALL at the centre of enabling education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of the phallic teacher, a spectral figure negotiated in teachers' everyday work and in school-based disciplinary communities of practice. Reporting the findings of a 3-year Australian doctoral study completed in 2014, the paper looks closely at how English teachers design both curriculum and identity in an environment where feminist and poststructuralist work of the late 20th century seems to have lost traction. These observations made here are based on empirical research in a Victorian school, combined with autoethnographic writing and other materials connecting teachers' and researchers' lives to the broader cultural postfeminist debate. The paper makes room for an absent subject, the teacher, marginalised in neoliberal discourses of curriculum and critiques the masculinist hegemony of outcomes and standards-based education. This provides us with new ways to challenge increasingly dominant current paradigms and to conceptualise a different future in which the standpoints of teachers are privileged in curriculum theory and curricular innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite decades of policy and practice oriented at improving educational outcomes for Aboriginal students in Australia, achievements on most measures indicate that there is a long way to go in this endeavour. One avenue for improving Aboriginal education that has received little attention is accessing the views of Aboriginal students themselves about best practice in engaging Aboriginal students. While there is a body of research in education that attempts to privilege 'student voices,' little work has explicitly focussed on accessing the voices of Aboriginal students. This paper reports on my study that involved asking Aboriginal students their views on schools, teachers and the curriculum in culturally safe discussion spaces. The Aboriginal students highlighted the need for their culture to be represented at schools and the recognition of their Aboriginality in safe environments at school. These findings reinforce the importance of engaging with Aboriginal people in the development of best practice so as to build Aboriginal understandings within a Western educational system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite efforts to foster a more equitable gender representation, Australia's higher education sector and workforce continue to be highly segregated. This article focusses on the gendered experiences of first-in-family (FIF) students—many who are from low-socioeconomic communities—transitioning to Australian universities. In terms of the gendered nature of widening participation, we know students who are FIF will often study disciplines which align with traditional gender norms. Drawing on the First-in-Family Project (n = 48), we present the analysis of our findings in two parts. First, we provide an overview of the cohort where we analyse the gendering of degree choice of FIF students. Second, underpinned by theoretical work focussed on student gendered and classed subjectivities, we address how FIF young people negotiated classed and gendered norms during the transition to university. Our data suggest that young people engage in 'gender work' and 'class work' which informs their identities and how they make choices about their futures. Based on our research, we argue that to achieve social justice there is a need for a renewed attention to gender within the widening participation agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understandings of gender diversity have increasingly recognised the rights and experiences of children and young people (Meyer & Pullen Sansfaçon, 2014, Smith et al., 2014). A small, but significant body of work focusses on the schooling experiences of gender diverse children/young people. The critical role parents play in supporting gender diverse children/young people is acknowledged (Davy & Cordoba, 2020; Riley et al., 2011), including their involvement in negotiating schooling. This research uses a qualitative research design to explore the schooling experiences of five parents with gender diverse children, attending primary or secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia. A feminist poststructuralist framework was used to analyse the complex factors that influenced school choice, and to explore the challenges or opportunities they had encountered during their child's schooling years. The participants in this study highlighted the qualities of schools they believed to be inclusive, which affirmed their own school choice. However, participants also reflected on their sense of rejection when their children were not accommodated at school, or when they had to find a new school. Negotiations around school choice were made easier with economic and social capital. These findings highlight the layered inequalities of the Australian educational marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Aboriginal Voices' project is a consortium of researchers invested in seeking long-term solutions to the many and varied issues that have been identified as factors contributing to the underachievement of Indigenous students in education across Australia. The Aboriginal Voices systematic review project established an agreed methodology and protocols in order to map ten reviews to an overarching question: 'What are the issues affecting the underachievement of Indigenous students in Australia and how can research inform solutions to the complex and inter-related issues needing to be addressed?' The Project focuses on bringing clarity to the overarching question by applying a rigorous process with an Indigenous methodology to undertake these unique reviews. This introductory paper outlines the development of a critical Indigenous methodology used in these discrete but inter-linked systematic investigations. Using a consistent systematic methodology facilitated the re-aggregation of separate review findings to achieve new whole-of-systems insights into the complex issues affecting the educational opportunities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2009, all Australian states require young people to be 'earning or learning' until age 17. Secondary schools and vocational colleges now accommodate students for whom the conventional academic pathways of the past were not designed. The paper reflects on a project designed to explore the moral orders in these institutional settings for managing such students in extended compulsory schooling. Originally designed as classroom ethnographies, the project involved observations over three to four weeks and interviews with teachers and students in five sites in towns experiencing high youth unemployment. The project aimed to support teachers to work productively in such classrooms with such students, under the assumption that teachers orchestrate classroom interactions. However, it became clear events in these classrooms were being shaped by relations and parties above and beyond the classroom, as much as by those present. Teachers and students were observed to both comply with, and push against, the layers of policy and institutional processes regulating their behaviours. This paper re-thinks the original project through the gaze and resources of institutional ethnography, to better account for the layers of accountabilities and documentation practices that impacted on both teacher and student behaviours. By tracing the extended webs of 'ruling relations', it shows both how teachers and students could make trouble for the institutional moral order, and then be held accountable for this trouble. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of increased demands for excellence in all areas, academic promotion and tenure is now directly linked to achievement of measurable outputs in all areas of performance. In a work environment characterised by high workloads, competing expectations and reduced resources, academics must increasingly demonstrate active engagement with the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). For many, this may mean adopting new cultures, methodologies, theories, languages and modes of enquiry outside their home or cognate discipline. In the context of performance management, academics must reconceptualise and articulate notions of 'good academic practice', often in parallel with the practical requirement to continue to teach in the culture and practices of their cognate discipline. We need to better understand the implications, for institutions and individuals, of approaching SoTL through the lens of performance evaluation. This paper reports the key themes from a pilot study examining how academics at an Australian university are responding to the emergence of SoTL in the performance management context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While past literature has explored school engagement in older students, there is less research for younger children specifically, and very little which engages children themselves in the research process. This paper provides insight into school engagement for academically at-risk students in the second year of school through a participatory research project. Specifically, the paper reports on a project which examined three groups of students within the Catholic Education system in Australia, namely, those not considered at-risk academically, those considered at-risk but receiving one-on-one support, and those considered to be at-risk but not receiving support. Students participated in focus groups and a photo elicitation project, with questions adapted from The School Engagement Questionnaire forming the basis of data collection. In relation to behavioural engagement, the thematic analysis demonstrated that students in each group valued social interaction, while at-risk students spoke about experiences of punishment at school and students in the group receiving support spoke about rewards. In relation to cognitive engagement, themes of boredom were evident across all groups, while students in the non at-risk group were more likely to speak about the value of learning. At-risk students also displayed some anxiety in relation to school which was not displayed by students who were receiving support. Free time, favourite lessons and technology were all identified as prominent themes in all groups in relation to affective engagement. While the study has some limitations due to restricted timeframe and sample size, it provides an insight into the utility of considering school engagement in developing an understanding of the school experience of at-risk students in primary school. Future studies in this area should examine broader, more representative samples and also consider students with multiple risk factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The disproportionate focus on classroom teachers and their instruction-teacher effectiveness-in order to confront and address under-achievement and disadvantage appears as a contemporary education policy theme in Australia. Phrases such as 'high performing schooling systems', 'the best teachers', 'high performing countries', 'quality teaching', 'under-performing schools', 'the right change', 'operationally feasible', 'targeting of reforms', 'degrees of under-performance', 'educational drivers', 'teacher quality and improved teaching' and 'external standards and governance' are constantly mentioned and given continual attention and prominence by policy-makers. The paper questions and critiques a policy-making direction that uses teacher effectiveness research to force and steer reform in education. The distinctive and narrow concern with teacher effectiveness works to the specific exclusion of breadth and scope concerning debate about broader education related issues and questions, for example, matters of student achievement, exclusion and disadvantage. This article uses a qualitative research approach informed by critical theory to examine three influential private sector reports on education and schooling: The McKinsey Report ( )- How the world's best- performing school systems come out on top, The Nous Group ( )- Schooling Challenges and Opportunities and The Grattan Institute ( )- Catching up: Learning from the best school systems in East Asia. The article subjects the reports to close critical scrutiny and examination and finds that classroom teachers are positioned so that their specific and explicit instruction becomes the differentiating 'variable' in matters of student achievement and success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrative studies with migrant teachers offer new perspectives on local educational practices and policies. As part of a study investigating German migrant teachers' experiences in Australian language classes, this paper uses narratives to evaluate present language education strategies in Germany and Australia. It examines the provision and uptake of foreign languages as a subject area in the two countries and compares existing educational goals and arrangements regarding language education in Germany and Australia. The German migrant teachers' accounts illustrate how current school policies and the value placed on language proficiency and multilingualism in the two countries' education are impacting on learning and teaching in the language classroom. The findings have significant potential to inform and stimulate the evaluation of recent national initiatives in language education in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the outcome of research conducted between June 2010 and January 2011 as part of understanding the building the education revolution (BER) a major policy initiative of the Australian Federal Government which commenced when Julia Gillard, now PM, was the Federal Minister of Education. The BER policy initiative was part of an economic stimulus package delivered in response to the global economic crisis. It saw funding distributed through State governments to schools to develop new learning spaces and facilities. In the Victorian context the timing of the BER came after years of research and development in learning space design and policy under the Victorian Schools Plan and the Building Schools for the Future policies. It outlines both the scope of the research projects undertaken by Deakin University’s Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, Victoria and the approach to using visual methodologies within these projects. The notion of the research as educational tourist is introduced in a discussion of using photographs as ethnographic field notes. As is often the case in such projects, timelines for research and delivery of research products is not always ideal for first wave rigorous analysis intended in the initial research proposals. In light of this the research team had generated, through researcher and participant photography, more data than could be reasonably dealt with. This paper explains the process and usefulness of photography as field notes to expedite research conversations and analysis in the writing of the case studies and construction of the portal. The construct of researchers as educational tourists is also theorised as a way of understanding how images mediate the ethnographically-informed research experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational research has long been the subject of lively and agitated debate, not least because of its diversity. Ranging in scope from academic development and broad-scale policy research through to student engagement and discipline-specific research, it includes methods of traditional academic inquiry and investigations and also less traditional modes of research. However, the topography of Australian educational research and the characteristics of the people who undertake this complex body of work are currently unclear. This paper explores some of the complexities of the Australian research community, drawing on the findings of a national online survey of academics who identified as researching in the field of education from within and outside education schools and faculties. The survey attracted 504 responses from 38 of Australia's 39 universities, and just over two-thirds of respondents were located in a school or faculty of education. We draw on the results to answer the questions of who is undertaking educational research and who how they might be supported. We utilise a conceptual model that 'segments' the educational research workforce represented by the survey respondents, and we conclude by indicating strategies that might be utilised to address research barriers indicated by educational researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides some background information about the Strategic Capacity Building for Australian Educational Research initiative: a joint program of work sponsored by the Australian Association for Research in Education and the Australian Council of Deans of Education. In addition, it offers some broader analysis of the contexts within which Australian Educational Research is being framed and judged, and argues that leaders of educational research need to become more adept at finding and creating spaces in which important policy battles can be won. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing literature on access, participation, and success of refugees entering higher education has illustrated the myriad challenges that this cohort faces. Much of this research has rightly focused on the student perspective, exploring the barriers and challenges that impede entry, engagement, and achievement. Relatedly, there is growing attention to the need for trauma-informed support, particularly following the impacts of COVID on learning. This article takes these challenges as a departure point to adjust the gaze on universities and ask what needs to be considered and implemented in order to develop better student supports. We use Tronto's (2013) notion of ethics of care—examining issues of attentiveness (caring about), responsibility (caring for), competence (caregiving), responsiveness (care receiving), and trust (caring with)—to carefully probe how universities can develop trauma-informed supports that are more caring and nuanced, not only for students from refugee backgrounds but for all students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The requirement for Australian initial teacher education (ITE) providers to administer a Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) highlights a tension between policymaking directives and academic independence. It has raised fears of entrenching simplistic notions of measurement and evidence into a professional field distinguished by its complex relationship with intellectual and academic labour. Drawing on focus group data and reflections of academics co-designing an Australian TPA, this study considers how intellectual labour intertwines with its operational field, wherein co-construction of knowledge, critical thinking, and reflection define both academic and teachers' work. Our analysis explains how education academics, as principle-designers of an assessment instrument, might also negotiate the intellectual premise of a TPA within their own ITE programs. We find that Australia's initial TPA policy framework has been mediated with ITE academics. This offers opportunities for building knowledge to understand more precisely the TPA in its contexts, including admissible evidence to measure classroom-readiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International literature has recognised the importance of education research with Pacific learners. In an Australian context, the early years learning framework for Australia and the Australian curriculum emphasise that education sectors should work towards cultivating respect for cultural diversity and to develop intercultural understanding and intercultural capabilities. As such, the call to better understand the cultural complexities that underpins Pacific learners and their interactions with educational processes remains pertinent. This scoping review offers an important synthesis of empirical research on the educational successes and challenges of Pacific learners in Australian educational settings from 2010 to 2021. While this study offers critical insights for teacher education and research, the findings also revealed paucities in education research with Pacific learners. Thereby, propositions for future and ongoing education research with Pacific learners in Australia are offered in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]