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Highlights the introduction of Asian studies and languages in Australian education. Description of the Languages and Cultures Initial Teacher Education Program (LACITEP); Analysis of issues relating to the identity formation of preservice students; Complexity of identity formation in the LACITEP immersion.

National curriculum development in Australia has been characterised in a number of ways. In the 1970s words such as 'core', 'common' and 'progressive' were used to describe curriculum and these terms undoubtedly reflected the social idealism and cultural emphasis in curriculum at that time. In recent times a whole new state of descriptors has emerged. These include: 'common,' 'essential', 'assured,' 'guaranteed,' 'entitlement,' 'agreed,' 'compatible,' 'promulgated,' 'streamlined,' 'corporate' and 'instrumental'. All these words reflect the layered warnings and patterns of beliefs broadly defined as ideology within which the idea of curriculum development has been defined currently.

Debate on teacher quality and quality in teaching and teacher education has been as vigorous in Australia as it has been in the UK and the USA In Australia, however, reform in teacher education has been subsumed within a national metapolicy of corporate federalism which is an amalgam of beliefs or discourses including neo-corporatism, economic rationalism, corporate managerialism and human capital The paper analyses the most recent document on reform of teacher education in Australia (the Ebbeck Report) and shows how its policy formulation is influenced by the discourse of corporate federalism It also shows how micro-economic reform in this sector is related to reforms in other sectors of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a broad examination of developments in Australia's teacher education policies in the postwar period and the political economy in which they were situated, with particular attention to the last decade when Labor governments have been in power. Shift from a policy conception in teacher preparations from professional education to competent practice has taken place. The past decade has seen very significant policy changes in teacher education in first world countries as diverse as Britain, the U.S. Underlying this shift has been an instrumental approach to education and teacher education in which they are seen by the state, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and business interests as key elements of a broader program for microeconomic reform, human capital, and the economic restructuring of the nation. A number of features contributed to a shift towards a more professional preparation of teachers during the 1960s and 1970s. They included continuing public and political pressure from teacher unions to raise teaching to a more professional status and a growing social and political acceptance of the necessity of an adequate process of teacher education. The increasing involving of Federal governments in educational issues, including higher education, during this period, was also very important.

Qualitative educational research in Australia has been characterized since the early 1970s by vitality and interest in reconstructing in cultural terms the best research practices, particularly those observed in the UK and USA. The former's influence is best demonstrated in case study method and participatory action research in the 1980s. Australian qualitative educational sociology, drawing on critical theoretical methods, continues to command strong international respect. More recently, post‐structuralist theory has influenced many approaches to qualitative inquiry, especially in feminist research, which reflects a more globalized view of research. Whatever theoretical and methodological directions Australian qualitative enquiry takes in the later 1990s, research must address political and economic contexts of change both nationally and globally if it is to make a difference. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The idea of reflection linked with teaching has a wide semantic array in educational enquiry. In the preceding papers, it has been called reflective teaching [Russell] and reflectivity [Bullough & Gitlin]. While neither of these terms has received any great prominence in Australia, the term “reflection” itself has several images. This paper looks at these images of educational enquiry based on reflection and reviews significant issues that have emerged in Australian research, indicating how these are related to the papers in this issue of QSE. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]