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Doctoral training continues to grow in scale and scope in Australia, but has been subjected to far less design and improvement compared with other facets of higher education. Governments and universities engage in ongoing change which helps respond to opportunities and challenges but also leads to a proliferation of options and approaches. The current research study was seeded and shaped by the ambitious view that despite such refinement the doctorate remains in need of much bolder and deeper design, and particularly design with an education focus. This paper reports outcomes from a four-year national project which sought to articulate a doctoral design architecture. The paper discusses framing contexts and concepts, design and characteristics of the doctoral architecture, then implications for sectoral, institutional and individual practice. It concludes that this kind of architecture can provide a useful guide for growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia was an early signatory to the Salamanca Statement, and it espouses inclusive education (IE) as the overarching philosophy of education for all. A 2015 critique of IE in Australia [Anderson and Boyle 2015. "Inclusive Education in Australia: Rhetoric, Reality and the Road Ahead." Support for Learning 30 (1): 4–22. doi:] found that while some gains had been made, particularly in the recognition of the needs of some of the nation's minority groups, the lack of a nationally accepted understanding of IE meant that it was transpiring in fundamentally distinctive ways across the eight education jurisdictions, with different outcomes for different groups of students. This paper reflects upon why Australia has struggled to enact the recommendations outlined in the Salamanca Statement a quarter of a century ago. The impacts of current education reforms, including the current model of educational provision, the understanding of disability and educational need, and the neo-liberal concepts of standardisation, measurement, and choice are explored. It challenges the idea that IE is the work of schools, and instead argues the need for a national approach to IE. Governments must acknowledge the barriers that their current policies and structures erect and shift towards a more inclusive model of educational delivery – for the benefit of all children and young people in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inclusive education ( IE) is a term that has been part of the educational discourse in Australia for almost two decades. While there is no overarching definition under which IE operates in that country, it is accepted that the meaning behind the term has shifted from being exclusively about students with a disability to now encompassing the delivery of a high-quality education to all students. The public education system is carrying the burden of an increasingly diverse student population ( Gonski et al., 2011), and as such, each of the eight educational jurisdictions responsible for the schools within their borders have developed policies and increased funding levels in the name of IE ( Graham, in press). Despite this, there are currently no standards or guidelines provided at the state or federal level to measure the success (or not) of IE practices within Australian educational sectors. This article aims to do just that, by providing a 'report card' on IE in Australia. An extensive review of the current literature and related educational policies and reports was conducted, and Loreman's (2014) three guides for measuring IE - student participation, student achievement and post-school options - were adopted to evaluate the performance of Australia's public education system. The findings indicate that, despite operating under the same national legislative acts, the eight educational jurisdictions in Australia are managing and enacting IE in different ways, leading to inconsistent levels of access and educational outcomes for students. Rates of segregation and exclusion (through both the provision of education in 'alternative' settings and disciplinary action) are on the increase, with disproportionate representation of students from minority groups. This has been exacerbated by the inception of a national testing regime, which some have argued is in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act as it excludes participation by particular groups of students. On the flip side, for the first time Australia has a consistent curriculum that has provided a set of outcomes for all students, and the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in the areas of literacy and numeracy is on the decrease, albeit a slow decrease. However, there is still a long way to go, and this paper discusses the need for a national approach to IE to enable the continued development of effective schooling for all students across Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of Sinology in Australia was contingent upon, and serves as a lens through which to view, a number of transformations to Australian society in the middle decades of the twentieth century, as the country sought independence from the "Mother Country," Great Britain, and reoriented itself towards Asia. These include Australia's first forays into independent international diplomacy and the introduction of the Ph.D. degree and postgraduate research in the university system—culminating in the first Australian postgraduate work on China in the 1950s. While government support has always been crucial to the enterprise, from the early years until today scholars have defended the Chinese humanities against the utilitarian "national interest" proclivities of governments. Adopting a broad definition of Sinology, one which encompasses post-war trends in "Chinese Studies," this article surveys the universities that have been important to Sinology, the scholars who worked in them and the ongoing challenges to the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the 1988 Dawkins reforms to Australian higher education and the creation of a unified national system. The article is based on two propositions. The first is that as historians we should examine educational reforms in a changing society not only for what they propose, but with a look backwards to understand their place within a longer history of educational reform. The second – with a side-glance to the British higher education reforms of the early 1990s as a counterpoint – is the extent to which the 1988 Australian higher education reforms should be seen as neoliberal or, as Quicke, McCulloch and Openshaw argue, should we as historians look for nuance within the complex philosophical forces at play? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]