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Educational institutions in Australia face complex challenges in providing inclusive learning experiences for a growing number of North African refugee students. This paper explores the school experiences of five North African refugee students who volunteered to participate in semi-structured interviews in 2012. A qualitative intrinsic case study approach was employed to investigate participant experiences with their Australian peers. This included peer influence on defining social norms and the articulation of race, religion and social differences. Foucault's theories of discourse, the subject, disciplinary practices and normalisation, have been utilised as tools to drive the exploration of students' experiences. Participants encountered 'difference' in the Australian schooling context that affected their ability to connect to the social discourse and the disciplinary systems of school. Participants indicated that their knowledge of themselves, and others, had developed from a point of 'difference' and isolation, to ways of 'seeing' the characteristics of the 'Australian' student and the diversity within their 'white' peers and teachers. Exploring this discursive negotiation illuminates the taken-for-granted ways these students come to know the role of student, friend and school in facilitating membership and belonging.

Teaching subjects they are not formally qualified to teach presents those teaching out of field with many challenges. Being expected to promote numeracy learning in contexts where numeracy is seen as an across the curriculum responsibility places additional expectations on out-of-field teachers. This paper draws on some findings from a study that investigated how to support teachers to promote numeracy learning across the curriculum. The study developed and evaluated a conceptual framework for identity as an embedder-of-numeracy and employed an adaptation of Valsiner's zone theory to understand how such an identity is formed. The purpose of this paper is to highlight some of the issues faced by out-of-field teachers when they are also expected to promote numeracy learning. The case study of a secondary school teacher who was teaching science out of field is presented. Limited opportunities to develop the subject knowledge needed to teach science and how she viewed the representational tools she employed were identified as contributing to the way in which she addressed numeracy learning opportunities in science. Further research is needed to investigate ways to assist out-of-field teachers to promote numeracy learning in ways that assist them to address the other challenges they face.

This paper examines the rise and fall of the Victorian education department's learning management system Ultranet. The Ultranet was conceived as a web-based portal that was designed to integrate and deliver on a range of policy objectives in the areas of student management, school networking and communication, and teaching and learning. Heavily promoted by the Victorian educational bureaucracy and the government, the Ultranet, which operated between 2010 and 2013, proved a costly failure and became the subject of an inquiry by Victoria's anti-corruption commission. This paper looks beyond the inquiry's focus on the conduct of senior departmental officials involved in Ultranet's procurement to examine the policy, technological and pedagogical contexts that framed the project. We argue that the project had its roots in pre-digital educational policy settings of devolution and entrepreneurship, which supported a transformative agenda focused on digital information and communication technologies. While the Ultranet software had fatal design and usability flaws, we broaden the scope of analysis to argue that the project rested on problematic assumptions about the digital literacy and connectivity of parents and teachers, and the viability of a technology-based response to risk and privacy embodied in a 'closed' network, that compromised the venture from its inception.

Recent debate in the educational sphere highlights the continuing dilemma that is the creation and implementation of a true 21st century classroom in secondary schools across Australia. A difficulty with these ongoing attempts to reform teaching and learning is the behaviourist educational paradigm through which Western schools operate. This traditional perspective influences the ways in which modern researchers, policy-makers, teachers and the wider community all conceptualise education and its purpose. As such, this paper aims to establish that this understanding of education needs to be overthrown, in light of a changing global context and the evolving needs of students. Thus, an alternative paradigm will be discussed, specifically with reference to the explicit and effective incorporation of metacognition and metacognitive strategies, which are conducive to lifelong learning. For such a teaching and learning focus to become a reality, however, the re-training of needs of educators would be extensive, as would be the restructuring of pre-service teachers' programs. This paper therefore aims to establish the need for future research into education programs, as well as the current ability of teachers to incorporate further skills and instruction into their pedagogical practice. Such evidence would contribute to the ongoing discussion surrounding the creation and application of modern schooling practices.

In this (purportedly) Anthropocene epoch, are schools meaningfully learning with 'Earth in mind'? This paper explores the early stages of a participatory action research (PAR) project in an inner-urban Melbourne secondary school generating a postcolonial, place-responsive, ecopedagogy framework. The project, dubbed the "EcoTardis" by the research group, is made up of the author-researcher, two school teachers, the student Environment Team and a pod of students in an elective class. This paper depicts how a small intergenerational research group configures the process of making sense of the state of our planet, in our local places, through transdisciplinary school learning. The research process takes place over at least one school year to allow time and reflective space for the iterative PAR process of planning, acting-observing, reflecting and planning anew. The project has now morphed into a 'pilot' elective subject, initially running for one term, developing our place-responsive ecopedagogy framework within the temporal constrictions of a school timetable. In the process of dreaming this into being, the importance of local Indigenous knowledge and stories has come to the fore, as well as the role of the more-than-human members of the local community as explored through arts-based methodologies, engendering ecoliteracy, ecophilia, ecojustice, and emplacing the notion of ecological consciousness. Weaving through the lived, embodied, material, messy and profound assemblages in the project thus far, this paper expounds the early insights in transforming education research ecopedagogically.

Contemporary learning in Australia necessitates that students develop the capability to play an active role in their own learning. Yet, the student's role as an active agent in the learning process has not been fully examined. Drawing on the notion of assessment as generations informed by conflicting theoretical viewpoints, this paper explores how social cognitive theory presents a conceptually transformational and practical way forward in respect to understanding assessment as a learning process. The paper pursues two goals. First, it outlines the transformation of assessment practice over three generations of pedagogical theory. Second, it argues that social cognitive theory presents a broadened understanding of assessment as a student-centred learning process. It is suggested that this may be the emergence of a new generation of assessment, in which understandings of formative assessment is enhanced through the integration of intrapersonal, behavioural and contextual influences. Interview data from a cross-sectional, one-setting study into Assessment as Learning (AaL) are used to suggest how AaL transforms the role of students, from being participants in a social practice directed by teachers, into agents of learning in a reciprocal learning process.

This paper aims to clarify certain causes of the apparent reluctance of some classroom teachers to assist students to learn through the use computers. The main emphasis will be on primary school teaching, but it will be argued that the same, or similar, issues affect teachers at secondary and tertiary levels. It should be noted that the focus is on planned learning with the assistance of computers rather than on whether teachers and students do or do not use computers in the classrooms. Teacher communications, both formal and informal, together with classroom research reports indicate the existence of underlying concerns about promoting student learning with ICT. This paper proposes that the reluctance of some teachers to make ICT an integral part of their classroom teaching practices is related to factors over which they have limited control. This reluctance occurs even though teachers tend to use various forms of social networking as part of their non-classroom lifestyle in a technologically ubiquitous environment. Over the past decade the author has participated in several small-scale research projects conducted in Australian schools. Each project has been a mini-case study and data has been collected through video-recording lessons and interviewing teachers.

This paper discusses the use of video data to research pedagogic practices in new generation learning environments (NGLEs) in primary and secondary schools. Using video footage drawn from a collaborative research project between the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (2013), the paper charts the development of a framework for analysing and representing teacher practice across a range of NGLEs: learning spaces that provide a greater degree of spatial variation, geographic freedom and access to resources for students and teachers than traditional classrooms. Video of teacher practice collected in four Victorian government schools was used as the basis for developing the framework. This footage was initially coded using Studiocode, a software tool that has been employed to analyse teacher practice in classrooms across the world, including by the International Centre for Classroom Research (ICCR), but not as far as we know used to analyse teacher practice in NGLEs through a human geographic or spatial lens. The paper describes the research methodology, the data collection methods and the analysis framework that was developed to represent data about the 'intersections' between people, space, practice and time i.e. the complex spatialized pedagogic practice of teachers in NGLEs. The practical dilemmas and hurdles that were encountered during the process of developing a simple coding system and visual tool that could represent teacher practice in NGLEs are discussed, along with the final analysis framework and representational tool that arose from the empirical data.

This paper draws from a large longitudinal study into issues related to student retention beyond the compulsory years of schooling and gives voice to a commonly-overlooked set of stakeholders, namely those in the community. Although many studies report on students' and teachers' opinions of the influence of the community on student engagement and retention, very little is found based on data from the community members themselves. This paper provides an analysis of 11 in-depth interviews carried out with members of the community during the three-year mixed-methods research project on student retention in rural, regional, and disadvantaged areas of Tasmania. Of the themes that emerged, the most salient was that of the provision of educational pathways for students. Other themes included job opportunities, both as a positive and negative influence on student retention, the responsibilities of the community from the perspectives of community members themselves, and their views of the importance of parents and teachers in relation to retention.

The professional development of supervisors of higher degree research students is growing in importance and undergoing change, based on the demand for timely completion of higher degrees and the Australian federal government's quality agenda driving improvement of practice. Research has informed the design of research supervision frameworks within large universities (Carton & Kelly, 2014; Luca et al., 2013) but smaller institutions face different issues, including the challenge of developing an active research culture. This paper reports on the outcomes of an institution-wide project that was conducted in a small, private higher education institution involving the development and implementation of a framework for research supervision. The theoretical framework of the project drew on the pedagogical principles of research education (Kiley, 2009; Kiley & Wisker, 2009; Willison, 2010) and the project's methodological design adopted a utilisation-focused evaluation approach. By using a participatory research methodology, the perspectives of academic and administration staff, and higher degree students were gathered. Guidance was also sought from national and international experts in research supervision. This paper outlines the research approach used and the framework that was developed, and reports on the issues raised during the initiative including insights into the success factors in changing culture.

Australian schools are increasingly multicultural, with student diversity reflecting processes of migration and globalisation. This has led to an imagining of possibilities, and resultant educational interest in the concept of global citizenship, which offers a conceptual response to the transnationalising orientations and aspirations of students and school culture. The paper will investigate the concept of global citizenship, and in particular, will examine the role of policy, programs, schools and teachers in enhancing student insights on the issue. The phenomenon of global citizenship will be explored within an interpretivist paradigm (Weber, 1978), and will focus on the enactment of classroom discourse in order to understand how reflective school programs and practices are in informing global citizenship education. Few studies have investigated the roles that classroom discourse and the recognition of the cultural and linguistic resources students bring to their learning can play in promoting global mindedness in their students. As such, this paper aims to illuminate the complexities around young people?s understandings of global citizenship and consider the role of teachers and schools in developing global mindedness against national agendas.

In recent years an increasing number of Chinese international students have made a decision to attend regional Australian universities rather than following the large city tendency. However, so far little attention has been paid to this trend. This paper proposes a holistic theoretical framework to interpret Chinese students' decision-making in choosing regional Australian higher education. Inspired by the Engel-Kollat-Blackwell (EKB) model, according to which choices, factors and process are main components in people's decision-making, this paper combines the following three theoretical approaches. Firstly, in cognitive perspective, six choices relating to Australian higher education made by international students (Duan, 1997) provide a theoretical basis to explain core choices of Chinese students about regional Australian higher education. Secondly, using migration theory, Mazzarol and Soutar's push-pull model (2002) refers to factors influencing Chinese students' decision-making of regional Australian higher education. Thirdly, again in terms of cognitive perspective, three classic decision-making process models (Lawley (1993), Duan (1997), and Pimpa (2002)) offer an additional insight to analyze Chinese international students' decision-making process. By integrating these three approaches, the framework develops a multidimensional and systematic theoretical comprehension of Chinese international students' decision-making in selecting regional Australian higher education.

There is increasing pressure to make pathways to higher education more accessible to students from a wide range of backgrounds, including those from lower socioeconomic circumstances. Often, those students gain vocational qualifications but those qualifications do not always support them fully to articulate to higher education. This is, at least in part, due to the gap in mathematics knowledge between what is taught in the vocational qualifications and what is required for entry into the related higher education courses. This paper reports on a project that took a cross-sector approach to improving pathways from vocational to higher education that focus on mathematical skill development. The project developed pathways for four disciplines, engineering, education, health science and business. This paper examines the challenges faced when working across those sectors to develop resources and establish pathways for students to articulate from vocational qualifications into related higher education courses. Of particular interest are the outcomes for the education pathway. A preliminary evaluation of the development of the education pathway resources is presented. The study utilises an exploratory research paradigm to explore the issues of working across sectors through content analysis of reports and surveys of stakeholders in the project.

This paper reports on research conducted on the effectiveness and relevance of authentic assessment in a Mobile Application Development course, answering the research question "How practical is authentic assessment in Digital Media courses?" To facilitate this research, students were provided a set of tasks that consisted of developing a Mobile application for the Bundaberg Health and Wellbeing program. They were required to develop a working prototype mobile application that measures health related routine using the latest programming tool and APIs as used in industry. The mobile application is then used in the Bundaberg Health and Wellbeing program as a tool to monitor the progress of group members, providing a more authentic experience that connects and relates to the real needs and expectation of a client. A survey was then conducted to assess how students felt about the assessment piece and how it compared to other assessment they had done before. Overall, this indicated that most of the students favoured the introduction of authentic assessment in the course program; only a portion of the students feels otherwise. Based on this, the paper will conclude with strategies to encourage future technology-based courses in digital media courses to be based on authentic assessment.

This paper presents a study of teachers' perceptions of '21st century literacy' practices and the dilemmas teacher face when these perceptions clash with the policies and the practices they feel are expected of them. Using narrative inquiry as its methodology, the paper presents 3 themes identified within the study, namely: 'Teachers' insights into 21st century literacy, 'Teachers' perceptions of necessary 21st century literacy skills for Year 6 students' and 'Influences on teachers' literacy pedagogical decision-making and practice'. The narratives present two teachers' perceptions (and misperceptions) of 21st century literacy, their pedagogical approaches, and how various factors influence their work. The paper considers how various factors influence teachers' pedagogical practices, and highlights discrepancies between teachers' professional beliefs and their practices based on external classroom influences. Narrative offers an insider's view of how these discrepancies are lived out in two Victorian classrooms.

My privileged opportunity to work with renowned Drama theorist, Dorothy Heathcote, in Melbourne in the 1970s, set a foundation for what I now call Theatre as Education research. Formerly a teacher of Secondary Drama, I became very experienced at creating plays with my students, based on their own ideas, or inspired by the stories of the community. When working in a tiny country town in Victoria, I took my Drama class to visit the Senior Citizens in our community, and collect anecdotes of their youthful experiences. The adolescents asked, "What was it like -- here in this town -- when you were my age?" The responses were candid and sometimes less likely than fiction. We wrote a one-act play, which incorporated the many different dialogues, and we performed it for the town. Our co-researchers were the special guests, taking front row seats. They watched their lives reenacted, and an inter-generational bond was forged. This paper will present my approach to creating plays out of chaotic, narrative data. There has emerged a kind of formula, which is flexible enough to apply to groups of students or adults, with varying abilities in qualitative research data collection and in the performing arts. I have used the Theatre as Education formula to showcase research data in both schools and at academic conferences, as well as in print. This paper presents a step-by-step approach to collecting, analysing, interpreting and restructuring oral data for performance text. It will also present some examples from published plays, which were born of narrative. I believe Theatre as Education works as both an engaging pedagogy for teachers, and an innovative framework for the presentation of primary research data. I would like to share my approach with you.

This paper proposes a taxonomy of school funding formula elements which distinguishes between funding based on individual student needs and the needs of populations of students based on particular characteristics or labels. This builds on the theoretical approach proposed by Caldwell, Levacic and Ross (1999) where school funding formulae can be categorized into one of four generations with first generation funding being simple pupil/teacher ratios supplemented by per pupil grants and fourth generation providing comprehensive support for students with differing needs and being related to student learning outcomes. The taxonomy proposed in this paper follows the generic funding model put forward by Odden and Busch (1998) and Fazekas (2012). A suggested broadening of this taxonomy is proposed based on recent evidence in Australia which examined the efficacy of funding formulae based on individual student needs and those based on the average level of need for populations of students based on particular characteristics.

This paper introduces the concept of the phallic teacher, a spectral figure that needs to be negotiated in teachers' everyday work and in school-based disciplinary communities of practice. Reporting the findings of a three year 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 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.

Current development in global migration flows reveals a rapid increase in student mobility through international education. However, the study of teacher education-migration nexus is relatively unknown in migration and education research. This paper aims to address such a lacuna. Taken from a larger longitudinal study, this paper offers a hermeneutic phenomenological examination of four international pre-service teachers undertaking Masters in Teaching in one large Australian university. They arrive on student visas with the intention to be qualified to teach, and gain permanent resident status, upon graduation in Australia. Such motivation is an important dimension of transnationalism situated within their social imagination of the West. Drawing on Appadurai's (1996) work on imagination, I identify two broad currents that shape their imaginations to migrate to Australia through teacher education studies, namely: Fitting-In that explores the forms, contents and workings of cultural constructions of power that are being played out in the teaching practicum sites; and Looking-Out that explores their continuous struggle to maintain balance between space and relationships which was not experienced back in their home country. These two currents provide nuanced engagements to understanding pre-service teacher-mobility, as a subset of student-migrants, in adopting the identity of a transnational profile. Such currents of imagination are central to understanding how Teacher Education can influence the intercultural adaptations of student-migrants to institutional practices in university and schools, and the ways in which Teacher Education has the potential to shape the capacities and productions of transnational subjects who embody specific forms of fitting-in and looking-out.

Teachers of all school subjects have an important role to play in developing the numeracy capabilities of students. However, to fully exploit the numeracy learning opportunities that exist in the subjects they teach, teachers need to have an identity as a teacher of numeracy. In this paper some findings are presented from a two-year study designed to investigate how teachers develop this type of identity. The specific purpose of this paper is to present a preliminary case study of one of the teachers to illustrate how an adaptation of Valsiner's zone theory can be employed to describe and analyse a teacher's identity as an embedder-of-numeracy. Drawing on interviews and lesson observations, a preliminary case study of a secondary school history teacher is presented. The case study includes information about the teacher, his professional context, and a classroom vignette to illustrate practice. Data are mapped onto the teacher's Zone of Proximal Development, Zone of Free Movement, and Zone of Promoted Action and his identity as an embedder-of-numeracy is described and analysed in these terms. The analysis suggests that there are several ways that this teacher could be supported to develop his capacity to embed numeracy into the history curriculum.

This paper explores how the creative experience and related dispositional outcomes can be fostered in undergraduate primary generalist pre-service teachers through the development of innovative learning approaches to visual and creative arts education. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss the results and show how creative thinking and action can be fostered in pre-service teachers. I argue that the creative arts courses offered in teacher education programs need to design for levels of creativity by developing an understanding how the creative experience generates different dispositional outcomes during experiential studio-based workshops. Building on Eisner (1998) developmental work on creative dispositional outcomes, the paper explores how pre-service teachers develop their 'creativity' through flexibility and risk-taking attitudes; mindfulness and avoidance of premature closure and a willingness to visualise new possibilities through inquiry learning approaches. This paper reports on the findings of 350 pre-service teachers as part of the Creative Arts program offered at a Sydney-based university. The focus of the mixed-method approach was on how the creative experience affects participants' opinions and experiences of creativity. Pre-service teachers' creative expressions were queried before and after the studio-based workshops. Firstly, a questionnaire was given to the total cohort, followed by participant observations made during the creative activities using video footage. Twelve participants then contributed in qualitative semi-structured interviews; this follow-up part of the research was aimed at evaluating the impact of the creative experience specifically, the participants' changing opinions of creative experiences and how new approaches can be developed with children. The significance of this study is that it connects to a socio-cultural framework that works with a community of practice model. In this model, the core role of the teacher is to facilitate the development of primary school children's creativity learning in informal classroom settings. Consequences of this study suggest that pre-service teachers need to become more aware of the different levels of creativity and how to develop creative dispositional outcomes. The outcomes suggest that studio-based workshops encourage participants to become more mindful of the artistic creative experience and how to visualise new approaches to use with children.

Unaccompanied minor (e.g. below 18 years) asylum seekers (UMAS) as school students bring a complex array of needs into the schooling system. This paper aims to capture the teaching experience of a classroom teacher in a Vocational Training Center setting for UMAS students (n= 15 students between the ages of 16 and 17) at a detention facility in Australia. The English as a Second Language (ESL) Community Program extended over a 7-month period (March 2013-September 2013). As a reflective personal narrative case study this paper provides insight into how the ontological security paradigm was used to support UMAS students. UMAS students have complex needs from mental health to English language deficits and face continual challenges at all levels of their reintegration and settlement. Findings highlight that direct and explicit teacher training is required to assist UMAS students.

This paper explores the participation of Muslim girls in Health, Physical Education (HPE) and Sports in Brisbane Muslim and non-Muslim schools. The debate of Muslim women's' participation in sports is strongly entwined with firmly held beliefs inherited through culture, religion, politics and tradition regarding the female body. Specifically, this study examines how Muslim female students interpret their participation in HPE and other school sporting activities. Muslim women experience certain difficulties, including undertaking strenuous exercise during the fasting month of Ramadan, mixed-gender participation and problematic dress codes. Additionally, because of reasons of religious and cultural ethnicity, they could confront certain constrictions in extracurricular activities. This paper seeks to develop an understanding of the importance of HPE and other sporting activities in the lives of Muslim girls accompanied by the views of parents and teachers; informed by in-depth, open-ended and semi-structured interviews with Muslim girls, their parents and teachers from Muslim and non-Muslim schools of Brisbane. Essentially, this paper presents the views of high school girls about their own involvement in HPE and other sporting activities. A phenomenological approach is adopted and the data is analysed using the Grounded Theory approach. Some of the findings of this study reveal that Muslim girls who attended the non-Muslim schools, in general are struggling between the cultural and religious limitations when it comes to their participation in sporting activities. The schools are making efforts to accommodate the needs of Muslim students but appear to be constrained by views of Muslim modesty impacting on their capacity to undertake many of the activities associated with HPE/Sport. However, this study reveals that the Muslim girls in Islamic schools are interested in participating in sport. Indeed, female students and their parents are very happy with their participation and encourage it. The insights gained from this study contribute to fostering a better understanding of the challenges Muslim girls face when it comes to their participation in HPE/Sport. Furthermore, it could also assist school leaders to make changes in educational settings, so as to enable Muslim girls to participate in HPE/Sport.

The focus of this paper is to examine the personal impact professional learning had on ITAs within the mathematics classroom. This paper is based on a four-year longitudinal qualitative study called Representations, Oral Language and Engagement in Mathematics (RoleM). The main study focused on the teaching and learning of mathematics of Indigenous students. As part of this study, Indigenous teacher assistants (ITAs) together with their teachers participated in the RoleM professional learning model (RoleM PL). RoleM PL included professional development workshops, leadership workshops and follow-up visits in the classrooms, which were facilitated by researchers. Nineteen Indigenous teacher assistants from remote, rural and metropolitan Queensland participated in this study. Data were drawn from semi-structured interviews conducted at least once a year with ITAs. An analysis of the interview transcripts highlights the beliefs, attitudes and understandings of Indigenous teacher assistants with regard to their mathematical knowledge and confidence in teaching mathematics. The analysis also identifies the difficulties ITAs were having in teaching mathematics, and how the RoleM professional learning model had benefited them in the mathematics classroom. As a result of participating in the RoleM PL, ITAs confidence increased and they gained insights into how to effectively help their Indigenous students learn mathematics.

Social skills and communication for students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are a challenging area in spite of many years of research and interventions. Whilst the vast majority of strategies and interventions reported in the literature for students with ASD are teacher/expert-generated, this study focuses on the use of technology to create possibilities for students to develop their social and literacy skills. This paper reports on part of a larger study that explored the potential of seven high school students with ASD using a new form of video making called "Blended Digital Media", which integrates video and still images with an audio narration, to digitally communicate their personal interests as a means of developing social and multimodal literacies. The research used a multiple case study design incorporating a range of qualitative methods to ascertain to what extent and with what implications students were able to create their own personal blended digital media about their interests. For the purpose of this paper, reported data focusses on the experiences of two of the seven student case studies. Findings revealed that students were able to combine various modes and media forms to create their own blended digital media, and that they could justify their media use based on an understanding of modal affordances. Students were also able to communicate a range of personal interests and respond to the interests of others in a social context as a result of making and sharing their blended digital media.

Despite numerous reviews, strategies and programs, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students still have lower academic achievement levels than non-Indigenous Australian students (as measured by NAPLAN). Educational research suggests that parental involvement in their children's education significantly contributes to improved academic, social, personal and professional outcomes for students, parents, and educators alike. However, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from remote and very remote communities are educated at boarding schools or colleges in larger cities or regional areas, with a recent push to expand this. The limited ability for parental involvement for such students has largely been ignored, yet requires detailed consideration. The purpose of this paper is to highlight this need by defining and exploring the barriers to, and potential improvements for, parental involvement and the role of parent-school communication in educational outcomes. The paper is written as part of a PhD research project that considers the importance of cultural and educational contexts in parental involvement and communication, especially for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.

The international literature is clear that a professional school culture and supportive administrative arrangements are essential to the retention and development of quality teachers. In this paper the research and conceptual understandings underpinning this statement are elaborated, with discussions of the nature of quality teaching, teachers' professional practice, and the general nature of the teaching profession. The findings from the literature are then outlined and the data on employment of recent initial teacher education graduates set out. The data shows that the large majority of graduates do not have the employment conditions that the literature indicates are necessary for effective retention and development of quality teachers. The paper concludes with suggestions for policy that could improve not only the retention and development of quality beginning teachers, but also improve the learning conditions of students and the work of the teaching profession as a whole.

The Federal Government's recent Building the Education Revolution program resulted in, among other features, the creation of over 600 new school libraries in Queensland alone. This paper reports on a component of a research project carried out with students in six primary schools and one secondary school that benefitted from the program, investigating the influences of these new physical environments on learning and teaching. In particular, this paper discusses one missing voice from the design process--that of the students who would be key users of the newly-created spaces in those schools. While opportunities for real involvement in design were minimal for most potential users of the new spaces, students' imagined possibilities for school libraries, as submitted to the research project, suggest that students could have contributed different perspectives to enhance learning engagement through imaginative design elements. The findings of the project have relevance for teachers and teacher librarians in reconsidering the ways in which the new learning spaces are used as well as informing school designers in planning engaging school facilities. The findings may be extrapolated to the design and planning of general classrooms and other learning environments.

This paper is an account of Aboriginal community engagement in relation to the design and development of a Project being undertaken through an Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) grant to develop Indigenous Online Cultural Teaching & Sharing (Kinship On-line Project), which is an on-line cultural education workshop based around Aboriginal Kinship systems used in Australia. The Project is built on an existing face-to-face interactive presentation based on the theme of Australian Aboriginal Kinship systems developed by Lynette Riley. The on-line cultural education workshop is being designed as an experiential learning environment for two reasons. Firstly, there is a long denial of Aboriginal knowledges and their importance in contemporary Australia. Secondly, the experiential format is used in Aboriginal learning and is therefore an appropriate way of conveying these knowledge systems. The Project reflects where possible Aboriginal knowledge sharing processes, bringing this into mainstream teaching of humanities and social science related to subjects, such as sociology, law, education and social work. Aboriginal knowledge sharing has been adapted to this experiential learning environment via software design. The paper outlines the community engagement process for the Kinship On-line Project in the context of Indigenous methodological, epistemological and ethical considerations by juxtaposing Indigenous and western ways of teaching and research and exploring in greater detail the differences between them.

Agile learning spaces have the potential to afford flexible and innovative pedagogic practice. However there is little known about the experiences of teachers and learners in newly designed learning spaces, and whether the potential for reimagined pedagogies is being realised. This paper uses data from a recent study into the experiences of teacher-librarians, teachers, students and leaders of seven Queensland school libraries built with Building the Education Revolution (BER) funding, to explore the question, "how does the physical environment of school libraries influence pedagogic practices?" This paper proposes that teachers explored new pedagogies within the spaces when there was opportunity for flexibility and experimentation and the spaces sufficiently supported their beliefs about student learning. The perspectives of a range of library users were gathered through an innovative research design incorporating student drawings, videoed library tours and reflections, and interviews. The research team collected qualitative data from school libraries throughout 2012. The libraries represented a variety of geographic locations, socioeconomic conditions and both primary and secondary campuses. The use of multiple data sources, and also the perspectives of the multiple researchers who visited the sites and then coded the data, enabled complementary insights and synergies to emerge. Principles of effective teacher learning that can underpin school wide learning about the potential for agile learning spaces to enhance student learning, are identified. The paper concludes that widespread innovative use of the new library spaces was significantly enhanced when the school leadership fostered whole school discussions about the type of learning the spaces might provoke. This research has the potential to inform school designers, teachers and teacher-librarians to make the most of the transformative potential of next generation learning spaces.

Observers of teachers' practice in their classrooms have typically been adults: academic researchers analysing professional practice, school executive members assessing teacher quality and colleagues engaged in professional development and school reform initiatives. This paper discusses observations of teachers' practice from a different vantage point: students. In 2011, two Year 9 students observed a teacher in her classroom. This student research event was part of a broader four-year Students-as-Co-Researchers initiative investigating teaching and learning in a low socio-economic high school receiving targeted funding. In 2013, these students were invited to remember and re-construct the 2011 research event in various configurations. This paper examines the affective flows at work in re-positioning students and teachers using the concepts of the "assemblage" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987), subjectivity as "lines" (Deleuze & Parnet, 2006/1977) and "rhizoanalysis" (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980/1987). It is argued that lines of flight -- ruptures in thought and experimentation in practice -- escaped in and through the 2011 research event and the 2013 research assemblages for both the students, the teacher and the researcher. Alternative ways of speaking, relating, teaching, learning and becoming prompted by these encounters in the classroom, the staffroom and the school are considered for their potential to convert the "education assemblage" (Youdell, 2011, p. 137).

The intent of this paper is to stress the importance of narrative and story, and to share the experience of opening the windows of memory to look into the past and uncover fascinating and valuable histories as portrayed in a current study. The longitudinal study of an educator follows his life story and his role in education. Set in Victoria, it explores the founding of the State's education system and highlights progressive developments. The life story reveals the history of the system and evolving philosophies that influenced the life of the subject. The study considers the philosophies and how they influenced the subject's thinking and actions. Using windows as a metaphor, Part 1 of the paper includes discussion regarding the appropriacy of narrative as a research tool, considers the notion of memory and introduces the research subject. Part 2 gives insights into three distinct periods and the part played by three men who guided Victoria's educational development and growth throughout the twentieth century. In relation to each is a brief discussion of their influence on the career of the research subject.

This paper challenges the prevailing understandings of homogenous Chineseness in the context of children's mathematics learning in Sydney. Recent research which examines the influence of culture on student's mathematics performance tends to see Chinese as one homogenous group. Research data collected from six Chinese families living in Sydney, however, suggests a contradictory view on Chineseness. Through the use of narrative inquiry as storytelling of lived experiences, it was found that families have different interpretations of Chineseness and hence, different representations of their identities. Their hybrid identities shift over time and in different social situations. While they see mathematics as important for their children's future, there do not seem to be clear links between their perceptions of identities and their children's mathematics learning in Australia. Data gathered in the interviews with the six families were first analysed with themes derived from the literature on identity and Chinese students' performance in mathematics before they were written in the form of narratives. Interpreting data with different analysis crystallises the experiences of the participants. This paper also provides some insights into how the researcher's own narrative can provide a special lens in the interpretation of that of the participants' in an ethnographic study.

The paper draws on research --- "Tellin' the stories of teachers: Tellin' the stories of teaching" project --- that forms part of the national More Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Teachers Initiative. This Initiative aims to increase the number and retention of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the profession. A problematic is therefore raised from the outset -- how can the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers be increased and what conditions promote retention? "Tellin' the stories of teachers: Tellin' the stories of teaching" creates a digital and historical archive of 15 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples presenting perspectives as students, graduate teachers and experienced academics. This collection of voices interpolates a teacher's work and life with what it means to be an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander person. The paper uses critical theoretical frames to analyse the data/stories of the project participants to extrapolate out the following key themes: (1) Valuing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditions in education; (2) Building better foundations through critical engagement; (3) Agency for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge transmission; and (4) Embodying Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community in our work and life.

Numeracy is identified in the Australian Curriculum (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, 2012) as one of seven general capabilities that are to be developed across all curriculum areas, making the development of students' numeracy capabilities the responsibility of all teachers. As mathematics is the discipline that underpins numeracy, teachers must be able to identify the mathematics inherent in their own learning area and design appropriate learning activities in the context of this learning area. If they are to do this they must see themselves not only as teachers of their learning area but also as teachers of numeracy, in other words, develop an identity as a teacher of numeracy. An understanding of how teachers form and develop a numeracy teacher identity will assist in supporting them to develop effective strategies for numeracy learning in their learning area. This paper extends a framework for numeracy teacher identity (Bennison & Goos, 2013) developed through a literature review of teacher identity and explores how the development of numeracy teacher identity could be investigated empirically. The paper argues that an understanding of how the characteristics identified in the numeracy teacher identity framework interact and contribute to the development of numeracy teacher identity can be gained through a sociocultural approach that uses an adaptation of Valsiner's (1997) zone theory as the theoretical framework. The characteristics of the knowledge, affective, social and life history domains of the numeracy teacher identity framework are mapped onto the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), Zone of Free Movement (ZFM) and Zone of Promoted Action (ZPA). To illustrate how empirical data can be analysed through this theoretical framework two hypothetical case studies are described and the hypothetical data are mapped onto the ZPD, ZFM and ZPA to gain an understanding of each hypothetical teacher's numeracy teacher identity.

This paper provides discussion of learning experienced by Applied Learning Educators in a workplace context where everyday teaching activities can involve undertaking unfamiliar tasks to the extent that the concept of 'crossing boundaries', or acting outside 'comfort zones' becomes 'normalised'. This perspective arises from consideration of extensive interviews with Applied Learning Educators who work in the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL), a senior years' pathway in Victoria. The pathway is available in settings of schools, Adult Community Education (ACE) and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and designed to support the engagement of young people in education and their subsequent transition into further study or meaningful work. VCAL Educators use Applied Learning pedagogy in the development of curriculum content that promotes employability skills, connectedness to community and has grounding in student interests and needs. Subsequently student learning in VCAL occurs in and out of classrooms. Applied Learning Educators frequently navigate institutional boundaries in the process of negotiating and developing partnerships with industry and community organisations to enable learning to be undertaken in meaningful and relevant environments. In this paper Boundary Crossing is used as a concept for discussing the wide-ranging nature of VCAL educators' everyday practice as they respond to the needs of the cohort and requirements of the curriculum. Collegial learning is considered using the notion of Communities of Practice.

Improving social equity in the Australian university sector is a complex and ill-defined problem that is underwritten by the diversity of values and interests inherent in our pluralistic society. It displays all hallmarks of being a 'wicked problem' (Rittel and Webber 1973), including having resisted resolution through federal policy initiatives for more than a quarter a century. This paper utilises the theoretical framework of 'wicked problems' to identify a gap in the current understanding of social equity in Australian universities and contribute to a re-framing of the conversation about social equity. Following Krause (2012), this paper proposes improving social equity in the Australian university sector as an ill-defined and under-theorised problem associated with high stakes, national policymaking and funding and theorises problem formulation as a critical generative process in problem resolution. Using discourse analysis this paper demonstrates how the problem of improving social equity in the Australian university sector has been formulated in an increasingly reductive way in contemporary federal higher education policies, from the Dawkins era (late 1980s) to the Bradley era (current). It explains how a one-dimensional understanding of social equity as the proportional representation of specific population subgroups has precipitated a limited approach to problem formulation and resolution. Correspondingly, it shows that the concept of social equity has been diminished through reductive reformulation of key concepts such as 'access', conceived in the Dawkins era policies as a means for the achievement of a fair opportunity for success but currently understood, in Bradley era policies, to constitute the sole provision of universities that is to be fairly distributed. Finally, this paper calls for the development a more comprehensive, complex and nuanced formulation of the problem of improving social equity in the Australian university sector and suggests re-framing (Jerneck & Olsson, 2011) as a tool capable of recognizing, acknowledging and addressing the pluralism and multiplicity which underwrite the 'wicked dynamics' (Krause 2012) of the problem.

There are challenges in obtaining robust, valid evidence that identifies the impact of pre-service teachers upon learners. The University of Tasmania is taking a research-based approach to determine the evidence needed to showcase the impact of its pre-service and graduate teachers on student learning. This paper offers a reflection upon thinking and planning in the "impact" space. We discuss our initial attempts to model analysis of evidence collected during our programs and we provide examples of responses prompted by AITSL templates of evidence that drive teacher education providers to capture impact in its multi-layered forms. We discuss the efficacy of collecting various types of impact evidence that can provide an authentic assessment of the impact of pre-service teachers across a range of initial teacher education programs. In coming back into dialogue with the research literature, we conclude with a plea to shift the conversation. Rounded assessment of the impact of pre-service teachers on learners depends on knowledge, capabilities and dispositions developed during university-based training, as well as field-based experience. Verification of ability to have reliable, sustained impact on students' learning must be based on evidence from both. Evidence from a narrow range of learning episodes is insufficient.

Many children and adults have problems differentiating between heat and temperature. As a consequence, intuitive notions developed about the transfer of heat and other thermal concepts do not align with scientific explanations of the phenomena. These notions are formed as alternative conceptions, which are resistant to change and persist as children progress through school. In order to develop teaching interventions that challenge children's thinking it is necessary to determine the potential alternative conceptions developed early in life. Embedded within the context of a STEM research project, the study reported in this paper explored Year 3 students' conceptions about heat transfer and the properties of insulation after they had worked through an experiment that required them to collect data to determine the effect of insulation on the transfer of heat. The students were interviewed and the transcripts were interrogated to identify the instances when the students demonstrated their conceptions of thermal concepts. The aim was to determine the way in which the students related their conceptions of heat transfer and insulating properties of materials to the context of the experiment and to every day experiences. Excerpts from the student interviews are used to illustrate the range of understanding expressed by the students.

"The term 'research' is inextricably linked to European imperialism and colonialism. The word itself 'research' is probably one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world's vocabulary" (Smith, 1999, p. 1). For many Aboriginal communities educational research can be seen with suspicion. In Aboriginal education much of the research is completed by non-Aboriginal researchers whose interpretations maybe culturally biased against Aboriginal peoples and their research may not always go back to support the Aboriginal audience. This paper will highlight the importance of capacity building of Aboriginal researchers to investigate issues within Aboriginal education. Engaging culturally similar researchers to the research participants can base the research process on an equal foundation in the research practice. With the analysis founded through similar cultural filters of the participatory audience (such as Aboriginal students and/or community). Through building Aboriginal culturally sound researchers to walk the bi-cultural pathways of research between Aboriginal communities and non-Aboriginal institutions a more informed examination of the research material can be presented. This position that there is a greater need for Aboriginal educational researchers to be developed to investigate researcher questions in partnership with Aboriginal communities has grown through the development of my PhD research study on "What Form(s) of Pedagogy are Necessary for Increasing the Engagement of Aboriginal School Students?" (Donovan, 2016).

Australia has been the site of significant school facility design innovation during the past decade. This innovation was showcased in 2013 in a report released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) titled "Innovative Learning Environments, Educational Research and Innovation." It featured case studies of 40 exemplary schools from around the world. Of these, seven were from Australia, including six from Victoria. While international attention directed towards the designs of Australian schools is nice, there remains little empirical evidence to attest to the effectiveness of these and other innovative school facilities in supporting desired and emerging pedagogies in primary and secondary schools. The Towards Effective Learning Environments in Catholic Schools: An Evidence Based Approach (TELE) project was set up in 2015 as a collaborative research initiative between Catholic Education Melbourne (CEM) and the Learning Environments Applied Research Network (LEaRN) at the University of Melbourne. Over three years (2015-2017) the project aims to develop empirical evidence and subsequent guidelines that can aid decisions about how best to design and use of learning environments (school facilities) in primary and secondary schools. During the course of the project, the pedagogical effectiveness of 36 learning environments in primary and secondary schools will be evaluated across the Melbourne Diocese using LEaRN Evaluation Module 3--Alignment of Pedagogy and Learning Environments. In doing so, the project seeks to answers to the following questions: 1) How can Catholic school learning environments be designed and used to best pedagogical effect?; 2) How well aligned are contemporary pedagogies with the designs of learning environments in Catholic schools in the Melbourne Diocese?; 3) What influence do different building typologies have on this alignment?; 4) How can the alignment between contemporary pedagogies and the design of school learning environment be improved?; and 5) Is there any correlation between the relative alignment of pedagogies and learning environments and the learning outcomes achieved by students (non-causal)? For the purposes of the project, learning environments have been delineated by the adjoining spaces used by a class, cohort or year level at the same school, including shared zones that have consistent physical features. Five spatial typologies (A to E), as identified by Dovey and Fisher (2014), have been used to group learning environments with similar spatial arrangements. These typologies are differentiated by their relative degree of openness, from traditional classrooms (enclosed) to permanently open-plan spaces (open). Using a strategic sampling technique, an even distribution of each building typology will be evaluated over the course of the three-year project to help identify which learning environments (including furniture, fit-out, and cultural practices) are the most supportive of contemporary pedagogies, as envisaged by CEM and the participating schools. This paper reports on progress towards the development of evidence-based guidelines for the design of contemporary schools, as derived from the program of learning environment evaluation described above.

Supporting secondary school leaders to improve staff wellbeing is important because staff (both teaching and administrative) are key stakeholders in students' educational outcomes. This project is promoting a collaborative approach between a university and leadership staff at three Perth secondary schools to co-create, implement and evaluate professional learning interventions that promote enhanced staff relationships and wellbeing. The participatory action research has involved collecting data across the school environments that were quantitatively analysed to build models of school organisational health and staff morale. These models have facilitated discussion between researchers and staff in the construction of school-wide approaches to supporting staff interpersonal relationships and enhancing school community. The interventions are currently being enacted within the schools, and post-testing will occur in 2017. This paper reports on the generalisable findings from working in the three case study schools, specifically from the initial baseline testing and focus group data used to design the interventions. While the models of factors affecting school culture and staff relationships were different in each school, professional growth and supportive leadership were two factors that were consistent across all three models.

School facilities are some of the most underutilised public assets in Australia. Yet, opportunities to better utilise and enhance school facilities though offering a range of services to growing communities are increasingly being recognised. Across the country, state governments are endorsing the development of "schools as community hubs," based on indications from overseas of better education, health and well-being outcomes for students, as well as benefits to their families and the public. How best to proceed with the development of community oriented schools in Australia however, remains an open question due to a lack of knowledge about; a) what types of services -- beyond the academic -- should be delivered from school sites; b) how best to utilize existing facilities and deliver new infrastructure that may be required for 'nontraditional' service provision; and c) what government funding should be directed to such services and facilities, and from which departments. Curtailing the development of community oriented schools are embedded state government policies and practices that tend to dislocate and dissociate the processes of procuring, designing, governing and using/managing school infrastructure. If the concept of "schools as community hubs" is to be realised, the policy environment through which such provision must be achieved needs to be scrutinised and updated. The provision of school facilities that can support enhanced social capital, education, health and well-being outcomes for Australian communities requires improved co-ordination between multiple levels of government, as well as non-government agencies, schools and community groups. A means of productively navigating and negotiating these multifaceted relationships is needed i.e. a coherent framework that links research, policy and practice associated with the planning and management of service delivery and associated infrastructure on school sites. This paper explores how such a framework may be developed for the purpose of helping state governments, local councils, schools and community stakeholders overcome the current 'obstacle course' that is limiting attempts to maximise school facilities for broader community benefit.

Whilst deficit discourses in classrooms and staff rooms are pervasive and dominant, there is some research which supports teachers disrupting deficit thinking and reconnecting with student "funds of knowledge". Processes for disrupting deficit knowledges tend to assume individual teacher construction of deficit views in conversation with other teachers, and include questioning and offering other metaphors to unsettle the familiar, in a space where new language about young people is engaged. Neoliberal thinking fosters a mechanistic, problem-based approach which positions teachers as transmitters of knowledge developed elsewhere, efficiently "delivering" enhanced student achievement. In this context, teachers are positioned as performers of "Standards" viewed largely through a lens of certain progression in relation to the "Australian Professional Standards for Teachers." Such certainty in the outcomes misrepresents the micro-interactions of identity and knowledge formation in classrooms. Such a conception of teachers' work fosters deficit thinking about both students and teachers. This paper examines both the development of a process for and the results of an appreciative self-appraisal of a teacher's practice. The process illustrates that challenging deficit thinking, may be possible through an appreciative lens which provides both the "hesitation in friendship" and active "pause" in thought in a space for a disruption in self-assurance long enough to find an alternate way to speak to and about students and to come to understand the world differently. An appreciative lens becomes one element in a repertoire of activities which might assist with thinking outside the discourses in which we live in order to imagine schools with classrooms "full of human knowledge" which arise through creating spaces for learning "where identity, intellect, and imagination are negotiated between teachers and students" (Cummins, 2003, p. 58).

Initial teacher education programs have been charged with failing to keep pace with the the use of technology in the workplace by not modelling technology-rich pedagogy to pre-service teachers. This paper aims to inform the development of contemporary models of learning design in initial teacher education, which focus on pedagogical processes while making authentic use of information communication technologies (ICTs). Research teams in two large schools of education, one in Australia and one in South Africa, engaged in a collaborative process to address the following research questions: What is the current progress of the integration of technology enhanced learning in initial teacher education programmes? What approaches to learning design can assist teacher educators to facilitate technology rich teaching and learning activities? The research teams modeled a socioconstructivist approach to as they combined face-to-face visits and online collaboration to develop the research agenda. The researchers undertook a series of visits and semi-structured interviews involving nine universities to gather data on the design and implementation of a ICT-rich mode of delivery in undergraduate teacher education programs.

This paper documents the development of an online qualitative questionnaire to be used with teachers of young children experiencing parental separation and divorce. The questionnaire forms the first phase one of a larger project where it will be used to determine teachers' thoughts, opinion, and beliefs regarding their preparedness for working with children experiencing parental separation and divorce. Development and structure of the questionnaire has been informed by a previous study whereby teachers disclosed their professional learning needs for working with children and families experiencing parental separation and divorce. The modules in the questionnaire reflect the modules in the online professional learning tool. The categories of teachers' professional learning needs are--(1) knowledge of the phenomenon, (2) working with children, and (3) working with families. Usefulness of the questionnaire was determined using Brookfield's theory of the critically reflective practitioner. I reflected on my own experiences, sought feedback from colleagues who trialed the questionnaire, and made comparisons with the literature. These data were synthesized to conclude the useful of the questionnaire to determine teachers' perception of their preparedness for working with children experiencing parental separation and divorce.

Employability is generally considered to be a set of achievements that provide the "potential" for graduates to obtain employment and be successful in their careers. Employers expect graduates to have the knowledge, skills and understandings of a professional field but they also expect graduates to be able to "do a job." This is largely about the personal attributes that guide performance in the workplace which are best developed through experiential learning. This paper examines the creation of a framework for employability at the University of Queensland which supports the development of work-ready graduates who can add value to an organisation and make a significant contribution to society and the economy throughout their careers. The framework has been developed out of a pilot project with students in a range of extra-curricular activities. It includes a self-reflection process that allows students to translate learning from various experiences into improved employability. The pilot project has been evaluated using qualitative surveys of student participation in employability workshops. Results show that students value the self-reflective process to realise and articulate their employability and thus it has formed the basis of the framework that will guide the university's student employability strategy.

Market orientation has been investigated in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations in countries around the world and is defined as an orientation towards the market, putting focus on the customers. Past studies have shown a positive link between market orientation and organizational performance; and also that adopting market orientation principles will enhance the magnitude and effectiveness of innovation activities. The concept of marketing and market orientation is highly relevant to schools, particularly in countries like Australia and Indonesia, due to the intense competition between schools and within school systems. Marketing is now becoming more relevant in other industrialized countries because of the need to enhance the school reputation, attract students and resources, and attempt to understand the aspirations of the various stakeholders. A deep understanding of market orientation of a school compared with the region will assist school leaders in determining the policy and strategic planning. This paper presents an exploratory study that conceptualizes the principles of market orientation in schools, which will allow a school to map out its strengths and weaknesses in the five dimensions: customer orientation, competitor orientation, inter-functional coordination, long-term-growth focus, and market intelligence.

Phenomenograhy, as an approach to educational research, began appearing in publications early in the 1980s with the predominant form of data drawn from semi-structured interviews. As a qualitative approach, it is used to describe the variations in people's experiences through their own discourse and for analyzing meaning that people ascribe to their world. Critics of this approach have highlighted the need to pay closer attention to a deep examination of the phenomenon. This paper provides an overview of a doctoral study in progress, whereby a "methodological elaboration" has been developed in response to these points of critique. Given that the study sits within the early childhood education and care (ECEC) field, the authors postulate that by combining an arts-based inquiry technique with the traditional semi-structured interview technique, participants were more likely to feel at ease and therefore a greater depth of reflection on their own experiences would likely ensue. The production of the arts-based plate, as a representation of each participant's lived experience in relation to the impacts of regulation on ECEC teacher's pedagogy and practice, was used as a "spark" to commence the semi-structured interview process and equally, provide an anchor for reference points for both participant and interviewer throughout that process. We argue that this methodological elaboration allowed a deeper examination of the phenomenon.