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This article explores the practices of 'Acknowledgement to Country' in Australian early childhood education contexts. Acknowledgement is a process of seeking out and honouring local Aboriginal Country and knowledge and investing in local resources of language, art, stories, nature and songs. Twenty educators across six early learning centres participated in semi-structured interviews to explore the experience, processes and resources that supported the implementation of Acknowledgement practices. Acknowledgement practices were not limited to a daily protocol but embedded in each centre's physical place and programming. Wanting to be respectful yet fearing offending Aboriginal people, most educators expressed feelings of uncertainty and under-confidence about what to do. Developing relationships with local Aboriginal people and identifying resources were also concerns. Acting from the heart with good intentions was regarded as a way forward together, with commitment, resources and a strong distributed pedagogical leadership culture, where educators felt supported to take small yet foundational steps.

While much is known about transgender students’ experiences of high school, less research has explored their experiences in primary/pre-schooling settings. This paper presents an analysis of parents’ (N = 15) recounts of their transgender children’s (N = 12) experiences in Australian early childhood education and care (ECEC) and primary schools. The research is situated in a trans-emancipatory theoretical framework that recognises the impact of cisnormativity in educational spaces. We find that the early years play-based approach contrasts with primary school settings, where children are regularly organized by binary gender categories. Whilst early childhood settings are child centred and often celebrate transgender children’s individuality using a trans-accommodative approach, they can simultaneously reinforce cisnormativity through enforcing binary gendered norms. Binary norms erase transgender identities while, paradoxically, making the transgender child hypervisible. Findings can inform a whole-of-school approach to the inclusion of transgender identities and the wellbeing of trans children in ECEC and primary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ways in which current affairs related to diversity and difference, nationally and globally, are represented to Australian children in children's digital news media and through family discussions. The discussion is based on qualitative research that explores parents' views and practices in addressing news media and diversity and difference issues with their children. In addition, this project includes a discursive analysis of stories found in "Behind The News" ("BTN"), the primary digital news media source for Australian children, aged 8-13 years, from 2015-2018. The news stories are related to three significant topics: the marriage equality debate, refugees and terrorism. Within feminist post-structuralist, post-developmentalist and critical theorist frameworks, a focus is given to examining the dominant discourses that prevail in the stories, which provide insight into how childhood and children's access to certain types of knowledge is viewed and regulated through media and family practices. Drawing on thematic and Foucaultian discursive analyses, the pilot study findings demonstrate that children's news media is closely scrutinised and regulated, with major news stories framed within dominant discourses of childhood innocence, as well as the agenda and particular interests of the producers of children's new media. These topics, which have dominated news in recent years, are frequently considered by some adults as inappropriate or difficult topics to discuss with children.

The COVID pandemic has had an uneven impact on families and communities, exacerbating existing structural disadvantage. We demonstrate that the construction of the pandemic by policymakers as primarily a medical problem has shaped the public health response in such a way as to hide the resulting lack of access to necessities for many and deterioration in people's wellbeing. We interviewed social welfare service providers in an urban area of high cultural and linguistic diversity and low socioeconomic advantage, about their experiences in the 2021 lockdown period. Our findings highlight the unanticipated impacts of the public health response on people who cannot be recognised in the normative subjects constructed by policy. We bring to the fore the hidden experiences behind the government-reported COVID health statistics and explore the (dis)integration of services that support survival. To avoid worsening structural disadvantage, policy responses to crisis require conceptualising the problem and its solutions from diverse standpoints, built on an understanding of the different elements that shape who we are and the way we live. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opinion. Presents the author's view about the gender debate with an analysis based on stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. Factor which leads to the effectiveness of gender role enforcement; Cultural perception of society's attitude to lesbians and gay men gender.