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In this paper we argue that the complexity of education systems can lead to a lack of coherence in the implementation of policy. More effective educational change requires policymakers and researchers to pay more attention to supporting teachers in classrooms. As an example, we consider decades of research attempts in STEM education to implement learning through inquiry and note there has been little change in teaching practices in classrooms. Using formative assessment in science education as a case study, we developed a rubric for teachers that embeds key aspects of the desired pedagogy. We argue this builds teachers' confidence to implement the change in their classrooms and we claim this same principle may apply to the development of rubrics in other disciplines, which can easily be incorporated by researchers into professional learning programs.

This paper reports on research exploring the academic workload and performance practices of Australian universities. This research has identified a suite of activities associated with teaching, research and service, each with an associated time value (allocation). This led to the development of the academic workload estimation tool (AWET). In 2020, to validate the findings, we contacted academics willing to participate further and conducted interviews. We used the AWET to estimate workload for each individual for the previous year and compared it to the workload allocated according to their institutional workload model. Discrepancies were then discussed to ascertain to what extent the AWET was able to capture their work. In general, the participants thought the AWET provided a more realistic estimate of their actual work and highlighted how much is underestimated or unaccounted for by the workload models used within their institutions. It also showed how academic performance policies, focussed primarily on research output, disadvantaged many individuals because they ignored or minimised many scholarly, teaching and service-related tasks inherent in the academic role. Overall, the findings showed the AWET was a useful tool to discuss academic work and assisted them to better capture the complexity and extent of what they did. We offer the AWET as a validated approach for academics to estimate their workload in a holistic and transparent manner. We suggest its implementation institution-wide, along with an aligned performance policy, will facilitate negotiation of reasonable performance expectations. This will rebuild trust in the processes and improve a university's effectiveness.

One of the enduring problems in the education system is the gap between theory and practice, where the research to improve teaching and learning is not fully realised in the classroom. This has impacted the effectiveness of education reform. We take a systems thinking approach to better understand the complexity of an education system, which involves multiple stakeholders, each with different levels of power, purposes, and perspectives about what is important. Drawing on an extensive body of research we propose a set of six foundational and five enabling principles that support systemic educational reform. These 11 principles are put forward to provide guidance for decision-makers, researchers and practitioners on how a given educational reform might be more effectively implemented.

Worldwide, education jurisdictions are looking for authentic ways to address First Nations perspectives in the K-12 curriculum, including science education. At the same time, there have been ongoing efforts to integrate authentic and engaging approaches to teaching science, including those that are student-centred, inquiry-based, multimodal, and linked to meaningful contexts. Both goals may be realised through the principle of Two-Eyed Seeing (TES), which seeks to integrate the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing with one eye, and Western ways of knowing with the other eye, for the benefit of all students. This theoretical paper presents a Two-Eyed Seeing for Science Education (TESSE) Framework, which brings together two pedagogical models. One is from a contemporary science perspective, the 5Es representation-rich inquiry approach, which scaffolds authentic student-centred conceptually focused learning experiences. The other is from an Indigenous perspective, the "8 Aboriginal Ways of Learning," which illustrates different ways of knowing--many of which are familiar with First Peoples across the world (e.g., place-based, visual, holistic). The TESSE Framework aims to act as a strengths-based interface between the two knowledge systems to support a culturally responsive approach to teaching and learning science. It is designed to support meaningful connections through curriculum and pedagogy in ways that are contextually relevant to place. Through empirical investigation and in collaboration with local communities, the Framework has the potential to inform current approaches to science education in schools and universities and provide a pathway towards decolonisation and reconciliation.

In primary science education, we face an ongoing concern of helping classroom teachers overcome negative associations with science content, teaching and learning. These associations can often impact how they view the value of science in their classroom teaching and impede the development of innovative teaching practice. This research effort investigated in-service teachers' perceptions, reflections and considerations that resulted from their direct involvement within a science-focused school university partnership. Utilizing a multiple case study design, this research effort analyzed partnership efforts across five established science-focused partnership programs in the Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania. Analysis of interview data with 80 in-service teachers from across partner sites indicated an increased valuing of science, where teachers viewed working with pre-service teachers as a professional development opportunity, resulting in additional time spent on developing and teaching through inquiry-based science practices.

Internationally, much has changed in the governance of universities since the adoption of corporate management approaches. A strong focus on efficiency, productivity and accountability arising from these approaches has been well documented in the literature. Reductions in government funding have caused universities to become more competitive and entrepreneurial. However, little is known about the impacts of these changes on the working lives of individual academics. This paper is part of an ongoing study exploring the lived experiences of 2526 Australian academics who responded to a national questionnaire. This paper builds on earlier work by holistically drawing together the earlier findings which separately analysed the teaching, research and administration/service aspects of their work. In examining the effectiveness of universities through the ability of their academics to undertake their roles, we found the voices of academics that need to be heard in the development and implementation of key policies, such as academic workload and performance, to preserve the essentially self-managed nature of their work. By combining the learning from the project through the literature review, the statistical analysis and themes from the open-ended questions, we developed a set of principles to underpin these policies in universities. These principles can guide universities to shift towards a more collaborative working relationship with academics, based on trust, and actively encourage them to play be more active in institutional decision-making, especially in relation to policies that directly affect their work. These results have implications for improving the productivity of academics and the institutions in which they work.

This paper addresses the important and linked questions of how to manage academic performance and workload effectively. It highlights the need in a modern, corporatised university to consider the nature of academic work and optimal ways to develop workload allocation and performance management processes. This paper complements two previous papers on time associated with teaching and research components of academic work by exploring service/administration workloads. Data were collected from 665 academics with recent administration experience through a nation-wide survey in 2016 and 2018. The data were analysed to understand the median annual work hours for a range of internal and external service activities, and for a range of formal administrative roles. The analysis showed a further categorisation of academic service into operational and strategic activities. Together, the three papers underpin holistic academic workload model development using empirical annual hour allocations from a large and representative national sample of academics. This article provides an essential basis for any future consideration of performance assessment based on output measures such as research expectations, impact or quality.

This study explored academics' and institutional leaders' perception of the empowerment of various actors in Ethiopian higher education institutions. Little is known about university autonomy in Ethiopian higher education in the context of the Bologna Process. Three public universities were selected from the 31 public universities using a stratified sampling technique. A mixed method exploratory research design was employed. The study used descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (ANOVA and Tukey's posthoc test) for the quantitative data analysis while thematic analysis was used to identify the emerging themes and meanings within qualitative data. The findings of this study showed that the Ethiopian public universities are hierarchal (top-down) in terms of autonomy as power is highly centralized, and the autonomy of the academic units is constrained. Both academics and institutional leaders expressed dissatisfaction with the current situation. They noted the need for more autonomy for the University, which they expected would subsequently lead to them having greater academic freedom. From the findings of the study, there is a critical need for a flexible and responsive system of governance, where academics and institutional leaders are empowered to execute their core activities. University autonomy should be supported by more collegial and less hierarchical systems of governance. The study suggests shared governance or consultative governance for mutual accommodation if Ethiopian universities are to maintain their academic freedom and institutional autonomy and optimize their contribution to national development.

This article provides insight into the nature of research workload allocation for Australian academics. It explores the distinction between research performance and research workload allocation. Research performance can be judged at an institutional level, a work group level or an individual level. The process by which an institution's research performance is judged is not necessarily suitable at the level of the individual academic. The research performance of individual academics is based on their 'research output', in the form of publications, grants or supervision of research students, but historically, little attention has been paid to the 'input' or the time required to achieve these outputs. To determine the real costs of research, and to examine academic working conditions, this paper argues the clear distinction must be made that 'output' is about research performance; whereas 'input' is about research workload allocation. Therefore, what is needed is a suite of reasonable time allocations which can be associated with research activities, as is the case for teaching related activities. The paper analyses data from an online survey, circulated to academics across Australia in 2016, in which staff estimated the typical time spent on a wide range of research related tasks. The findings from the 2059 respondents show staff strongly support a transparent and holistic approach to workload planning which acknowledges the full range of activities they undertake. Analysis of the times associated with the research tasks led to the development of a table of suggested time estimates, based on the median values, for many common research activities.

This research effort investigates principal perceptions regarding the impact of science-focused school university partnership programs in primary school contexts. Utilizing a multiple case study design, this research effort analyzed the nature and structure of the partnership efforts across five established science-focused partnership programs in the Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania. Analysis of interview data from principals across twelve separate school partner sites indicated that principals depicted that partnership arrangements increased their staffs valuing of science and was a mechanism for teachers to reflect on their practices. Consequently, principals often viewed partnerships as an additional level of professional development. Most importantly, principals articulated that the partnership programs were an important aspect of the school-based culture and they harbored strong desires to continue the partnerships well into the future. Implications for partnership development and key elements of trust, mutuality and reciprocity are discussed.

This study explored the voice of students in the Ethiopian higher education context. Stratified sampling and an exploratory research design were employed to understand students' voices. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes and meanings. The strength of students' voices was contrasted with other countries that have implemented the Bologna Process. In Ethiopian higher education, students' voices get considerable attention. Students are aware of their rights in terms of influencing decision-making processes. The study recommends inclusive and shared forums where the university, academic units, their staff, and students are expected to participate in participatory governance systems in pursuit of their respective missions within the university. The findings have implications for other countries. To fully implement the intention of the Bologna Process, student participation in university governance should be encouraged, but not at the expense of the participation of academic staff.

Learning to teach out-of-field is a challenge that many teachers worldwide face at some time in their career. Whether they are motivated to seek formal professional development as additional qualifications in this area, however, depends on many factors. Alignment between the specific professional development needs of out-of-field teachers and the planned learning experiences is essential to maximise sustained learning and applicability to teachers' classrooms. This paper reports on a government-funded program designed to support teachers teaching 'out-of-field' in science and mathematics. The initial design of the program drew on existing literature on effective teacher professional learning. Using the theoretical lens of 'boundary crossing' this paper reports on the perceived discontinuities that teachers 'brought with them' in order to understand where the potential for learning lay, and compared this to teachers' perceptions of their changed practice. Growth in teachers' confidence and relational understandings of content, pedagogy and curriculum was evident. Implications for future programs to support out-of-field teachers are provided.

This paper reports on the STEPS project which addressed international concerns about primary teachers' lack of confidence to teach science, and on-going questions about the effectiveness of teacher education. The five universities involved had each independently established a science education program incorporating school-based partnerships between the university and local schools to enable primary pre-service teachers (PSTs) to teach science. The diversity of the programs enabled an examination of the relevant literature underpinning the approaches and comparison of data from participants to identify key features and success factors for establishing and maintaining working relationships with schools. This preliminary analysis of learning from STEPS uses case studies and feedback from PSTs who participated. These findings indicate that authentic teaching experiences build the confidence of PSTs to teach science. Ultimately, the project will develop an Interpretive Framework which will articulate the characteristics of partnerships to be validated through feedback from other science educators from Australia and overseas.

When Trump was elected as US President and given the opportunity to implement his campaign promise of withdrawing the country from international climate change agreements, it sparked fears of a knock-on effect of non-commitment from other states that could result in the Paris Agreement's dismantlement. This article examines public opinion – which often influences governments' policy decisions – collected in early 2017 in 38 countries on his proposed withdrawal from international climate change agreements. On top of important individual-level predictors, disapproval of his proposal was higher in liberal democracies and countries that depend less on fossil fuels for electricity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a partnership approach preparing pre-service primary teachers to teach science. Partnerships involving pre-service teachers and volunteer in-service colleagues were formed to teach science in the classroom of the colleague, with support from the science education lecturer. Each pre-service teacher collaboratively planned and delivered a sequence of at least six science lessons over six weeks. An earlier paper reported on how the program affected the confidence of the pre-service teachers. Over three iterations, 61 in-service teachers from 23 local schools participated. In this paper the data from the colleague teachers and principals who participated is explored. The evidence indicates that the principals valued the program as an opportunity to improve science in their schools and as science professional development for their staff. The in-service teachers were positive and results show that the triadic partnerships offered professional development that addresses common barriers to teaching science in primary schools. (Contains 4 tables.)

This paper presents a detailed case study of the development and implementation of a quantifiable academic workload model in the education faculty of an Australian university. Flowing from the enterprise bargaining process, the Academic Staff Agreement required the implementation of a workload allocation model for academics that was quantifiable in terms of hours with a stipulated annual maximum. Upon its eventual implementation, evidence emerged of academic workloads well beyond the supposed upper limit to hours. The case study demonstrates the highly political nature of defining academic work. With the emphasis in a modern university on competition driven by reduced funding and limited resources, academics are increasingly held accountable through performance management for teaching and research outcomes. The case study revealed the inherent tensions that arose between academics and managers as the related issues were negotiated. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper presents a professional learning (PL) model that emerged from the authors' involvement with PL processes in several rural and remote schools in the state of Tasmania. As is the case for rural areas generally, young people in rural areas of Tasmania have lower retention rates to Year 12 and lower participation rates in higher education than their urban peers. Schools in these regions typically have less experienced staff, higher staff turnover and reduced access to professional networks compared with urban schools. Four case studies are presented to illustrate the experiences that lead to the partnership model of PL and the authors' insights into the nature of collaborative partnerships in rural contexts are discussed The study makes a contribution to understanding of the development of effective PL partnerships in rural schools as well as contributing to broader debates about the nature of partnership between teachers and facilitators of PL. (Contains 2 figures and 1 footnote.)

This paper reports on a partnership based approach for preparing pre-service primary teachers to teach science. It involved forming three-way or "triadic" partnerships, consisting of a final year pre-service primary teacher and an in-service colleague, to teach science in the colleague teacher's classroom, with the support of a teacher-educator. The pre-service teachers had to collaboratively plan, develop and deliver a sequence of science lessons and take major responsibility for teaching a 90 minute science lesson, at least once a week over a six week period. The data was collected during 2007 and 2008. The pre-service teachers kept a reflective journal of their experiences using a process devised to guide and support them. The results indicated improved attitudes to and confidence in teaching science for the pre-service teachers and their in-service colleagues. The results indicate triadic partnership approach may be an effective way to support teacher professional learning in science. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)

Neo-liberal reforms in higher education have resulted in corporate managerial practices in universities and a drive for efficiency and productivity in teaching and research. As a result, there has been an intensification of academic work, increased stress for academics and an emphasis on accountability and performativity in universities. The paper proposes that while managerialism in modern universities is now the norm, corporate approaches have disempowered academics in their institutions and reduced productivity because they ignore the nature of academic work. Using Foucault's conception of power relations in institutions, policies that directly affect academic work such as workload allocation and performance management are identified as key ways in which power is exercised in universities. The paper reports on a case study in one university which explored the relationship between the academic workload allocation and performance management policies and concludes that a more balanced power relationship is needed in which academics can have more influence over these key processes which control their work so they preserve the self-managed aspects of academic work and the intrinsic motivations driving their careers.

There is little doubt that the modern university is far different to that of the early 90s and the work of academics has changed considerably over this time driven by the efficiency and accountability agenda. In taking stock of the changes, it needs to be recognised that often the cry for efficiency and accountability has been used as a mechanism for control, cost reductions and to drive particular policy agendas. In broad terms, management practices in the tertiary education sector have shifted from a collegial to a corporate or commercial paradigm. A by-product of this has been a shift in power from academia to the hierarchy, with a managerial emphasis on deploying staff to meet strategic goals and cost effectiveness. These values do not necessarily coincide with or include the values of academics, so over time the influence of academics over decision making has reduced. This article presents a discussion of the state of tertiary education in Australia, linked to an account of the recent experiences in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania. The aim of the article is to consider the cumulative effects of many of the changes that have taken place in tertiary education over recent years and to question whether the prevailing management paradigm in higher education, aimed at increased efficiency and accountability is the most appropriate way forward.

Mechanisms underlying the disruption of self-tolerance in acquired autoimmunity remain unclear. Immunoglobulin A (IgA) nephropathy is an acquired autoimmune disease where deglycosylated IgA1 (IgA subclass 1) auto-antigens are recognized by IgG auto-antibodies, forming immune complexes that are deposited in the kidneys, leading to glomerulonephritis. In the intestinal microbiota of patients with IgA nephropathy, there was increased relative abundance of mucin-degrading bacteria, including Akkermansia muciniphila. IgA1 was deglycosylated by A. muciniphila both in vitro and in the intestinal lumen of mice. This generated neo-epitopes that were recognized by autoreactive IgG from the sera of patients with IgA nephropathy. Mice expressing human IgA1 and the human Fc α receptor I (α1KI-CD89tg) that underwent intestinal colonization by A. muciniphila developed an aggravated IgA nephropathy phenotype. After deglycosylation of IgA1 by A. muciniphila in the mouse gut lumen, IgA1 crossed the intestinal epithelium into the circulation by retrotranscytosis and became deposited in the glomeruli of mouse kidneys. Human α-defensins—a risk locus for IgA nephropathy—inhibited growth of A. muciniphila in vitro. A negative correlation observed between stool concentration of α-defensin 6 and quantity of A. muciniphila in the guts of control participants was lost in patients with IgA nephropathy. This study demonstrates that gut microbiota dysbiosis contributes to generation of auto-antigens in patients with IgA nephropathy and in a mouse model of this disease. Editor's summary: How the gut microbiome affects immunoglobulin A (IgA) nephropathy is not fully understood. Gleeson et al. investigated this interaction in patients with and without IgA nephropathy and in mice to show that Akkermansia muciniphila, a species of mucin-degrading bacteria, contributed to autoimmune kidney disease. Human IgA subclass 1 was deglycosylated by A. muciniphila and could travel from the mouse gut to the kidney glomeruli via the circulation. Mice expressing human IgA1 and human Fc α receptor I developed IgA nephropathy when colonized by A. muciniphila. In humans, increased amounts of α-defensin 6 were associated with decreased A. muciniphila in control individuals, but this correlation was lost in patients with IgA nephropathy. After incubation with A. muciniphila, human IgA1 was recognized by autoantibodies in sera of patients with IgA nephropathy. This study demonstrates that A. muciniphila contributes to IgA nephropathy pathogenesis. —Brandon Berry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal reforms in higher education have resulted in corporate managerial practices in universities and a drive for efficiency and productivity in teaching and research. As a result, there has been an intensification of academic work, increased stress for academics and an emphasis on accountability and performativity in universities. This paper critically examines these developments in institutions and draws on evidence from universities across the sector and a detailed case study in one university to identify the impacts of these changes on academic work. Given its ubiquity and the link of academic productivity to institutional experience, the paper argues that assumptions underpinning academic performance management need to be rethought to recognise the fundamentally intrinsic motivational nature of academic work. The paper explores the effects of performance management on individual academics as a case study in one institution and proposes a re-design of academic performance management to improve productivity based on the evidence.

An online survey of workload activities was circulated to academics across Australia seeking estimates for the time to undertake a range of academic-related tasks associated with teaching, research and service. This article summarises the most important findings from the teaching data of the 2059 respondents. This detail of workload data has not been reported before across the Australian university sector. The findings showing that most academics work more than 50 h per week are consistent with previous studies. Although the estimates of the individuals varied greatly, statistical inquiry indicated the median time required does not vary by experience and online teaching generally requires more preparation time than on-campus teaching. The paper proposes this methodology as a credible means to derive realistic time-based standards for other aspects of academic work and will assist university managers by providing an external benchmark upon which to develop local academic workload models.

A systematic approach to collect, peruse, and summarize the available information relating to the potential benefits of consuming dietary microbes was pursued in this scoping review. This review focused on the research endpoints, experimental designs, and microbial exposure in experimental as well as observational research work. Using a structured‐ set of keywords, scientific databases were systematically searched to retrieve publications reporting outcomes pertaining to the use of dietary microbes in healthy, nonpatient populations. Searches were further tailored to focus on eight different health categories, namely, "antibiotic associated diarrhoea" (AAD), "gastrointestinal health" (GIH), "immunological health" (ImH), "cardiovascular health and metabolic syndrome" (CvHMS), "cancer prevention" (CanPr), "respiratory health" (ReH), "weight management" (WtMgt), and "urogenital health" (UrGH). Quality of evidence available in each publication was assessed using the Jadad scoring system. The search yielded 228 relevant publications describing 282 experimental cases comprising 62 research endpoints overall. A microbial dose of ≥2×109$\ge 2\times 10^9$ CFU.day−1 was associated with non‐negative reported outcomes. Older population groups with a median age of 39 years were associated with positive outcomes. More high‐quality research is required investigating the role of dietary microbes in maintaining general health, particularly in the health categories of UrGH, WtMgt, and CanPr. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the evolution of long-term trends in the prioritization of environmental protection in Britain over a period of four decades. It does so by compiling comparable questions tapping into the same underlying environmental dimension from a range of sources, including historical polling data that has only recently been made available to the research community. At the aggregate level, prioritization largely tracks changing economic conditions as well as key environmental events, with the winter of 2019 showing the highest recorded levels. Furthermore, trends in individuals' willingness to prioritize the environment may not always go in tandem with trends in environmental salience. At the individual level, educational attainment is the only consistently significant demographic correlate over time. However, there is evidence of increasing politicization of the environment, with left–right orientations only becoming an important correlate of environmental prioritization in recent years, in line with rising divergence on the issue at the elite level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental issues are an important aspect of party competition and voters' political preferences. Yet political behaviour research often considers environmental attitudes as a component of a broader 'second‐dimension' and either subsumes it into this or omits it. Using data from the fifth wave of the European Values Study, we demonstrate through factor analysis that environmentalism loads as a separate dimension across Western Europe, that environmentalism has somewhat different social predictors and that it has important associations with party preference that differ from those of other second dimension issues. Our findings have crucial implications. Firstly, not accounting for environmentalism in studies of political behaviour misses an important part of the picture. Secondly, subsuming environmentalism into a broader 'cultural' dimension may lead to incomplete conclusions about both social predictors and the electoral consequences of political attitudes and values. Thus, allowing for a separate environmental dimension opens up novel perspectives on political representation in Western democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British and English national identities have long been considered to have porous boundaries whereby English individuals consider the terms more or less interchangeable. However, there is no empirical evidence to demonstrate whether primary feelings of either Britishness or Englishness are highly fluid within-individuals or whether individuals are consistent in their perceptions of their British or English identity. This is especially relevant in the post-Brexit referendum context where national identity is highly correlated with Brexit attitudes. Using panel data, we demonstrate that there is a notable degree of fluidity between identifying as British or English. This is higher than the fluidity between other national identities in the UK as well as more fluid than moving between any partisan or EU referendum identities. Remainers are more fluid than Leavers in their Englishness, whereas they are similar in the fluidity of their Britishness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demands on academic staff are increasing to the point where effective mechanisms for the allocation of their work are now necessary. Despite the inherent difficulties of categorising academic work, nearly all enterprise agreements at Australian universities include a clause designed to avoid work overload. Through a questionnaire, the investigators sought feedback from academic staff about their perceptions of the operational effectiveness of the workload allocation models and their opinions concerning transparency, fairness and ability to regulate workloads. The conclusion reached is that an effective workload allocation process requires academic staff to be fully involved in its development and implementation to ensure its credibility and fairness. Effectiveness is increased with a standardised university-wide approach, applied transparently and incorporated into the budget and resource allocation processes of the university so that increasing pressure on academics to meet a range of performance expectations is linked directly to realistic workloads.