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This chapter seeks to develop some of the conceptual work in the field, drawing selectively on the body of scholarship addressed to L1 education and the L1 subjects over the past four decades. It is principally concerned with what are identified as three key issues, or ‘problematics’, namely: the idea of ‘nation’, and relatedly, of nation-hood and nation-building; the question of ‘literacy’, as arguably a third term, strategically, with regard to the established ‘language and literature’ dyad; and the problem of ‘paradigm’, as a conceptual and methodological principle organising research in the field to date. The chapter explores what it means to consider a shift from contexualising the L1 subject in the age of nation-building to an era marked by globalisation and its associated features, notably digitalisation, international curriculum and assessment reform, new forms of population flow, ‘Anglification’, and multilingualism. In this regard, it is proposed that nations do matter, but differently now. The chapter asks: what does it mean to re-think the nexus of language, education and nation today? More specifically: what are the implications and challenges for L1 education and the L1 subjects, and accordingly for L1 curriculum change and renewal?

In addition to a short overview of each of the chapter in this book, in this Introduction we present the four distinct and related meta-themes in L1 that the idea of the book started from, and which from the outset have been a reference-point for our contributors. The first and perhaps primary meta-theme is globalization, a process by which national and regional economics, societies, and cultures, and thereby school and curricula, have become integrated through global networks of trade, communication, and dominating political ideologies. The second meta-theme is pluriculturalism, including escalating challenges of migration and population diaspora, worldwide. The third meta-theme focuses on technocultural change, or ‘technologisation’, with regard to changing technologies and their associated cultures and cultural politics. The fourth of these meta-themes, and perhaps more innovative in this context, is educationalization, a historical phenomenon involving the way in which mass popular education came to be increasingly conceived as a key solution to perceived social, moral, economic and political problems, something which remains just as relevant today. These meta-themes are seen as variously informing the chapters that follow, as well as the book project overall.

Reading pedagogy is constantly an object of discussion and debate in contemporary policy and practice but is rarely a matter for historical inquiry. This paper reports from a recent study of the history of reading pedagogy in Australia and beyond. It focuses on a recurring figure in the historical record—the ‘reading lesson’. Presented as a distinctive trope, the reading lesson is traced in its regularity in and through the discourse of reading pedagogy, starting in 1930s Australia and moving back into 19th-century Europe, and with specific reference to the UK and the USA. Teaching reading is expressly identified as a moral project—something that, it can be argued, clearly continues into the present.

This study, funded by the ARC, was designed to identify the nature of successful teacher education and recruitment strategies that made rural teaching an attractive and long term career option at both primary and secondary levels. A set of 20 rural Australian case studies, outlined in this report, identify and describe features of particular schools and communities where the retention of staff appears to be a successful feature.

An opinion is presented that the relationship between teacher education and the sustainability of rural communities is reciprocal. Such a reciprocal relationship is explored using research findings of an Australian Research Council funded project (2008-2010) of schools and communities that identified sustainable practices concerning staff recruitment and retention. The paper discusses the context of the study, its method and conceptual framework as well as emerging themes from twenty case studies across Australia. The implications of these themes in terms of better preparing a future rural teacher workforce are examined.

The complex interconnection among issues affecting rural-regional sustainability requires an equally complex program of research to ensure the attraction and retention of high-quality teachers for rural children. The educational effects of the construction of the rural within a deficit discourse are highlighted. A concept of rural social space is modelled, bringing together social, economic and environmental dimensions of (rural-regional) sustainability. This framework combines quantitative definitional processes with more situated definitions of rural space based on demographic and other social data, across both geographic and cultural formations. The implications of the model are examined in terms of its importance for teacher education.

Doctoral education in Australia is currently under pressure to become more industry focused. This report discusses the relatively recent experience of offering doctoral education through professional doctorate programs as a contribution to the improvement of doctoral education in Australian universities. The evaluation focused on the extent to which such programs had developed practices for sustaining closer collaboration between universities and industry, through: • a review of the general literatures relating to the role of doctoral research in contributing to the growth of knowledge and innovation; • a multi-method exploration of the range of practices and relationships associated with professional doctorate programs; and • the development of strategies and policy recommendations for optimising doctoral education in Australian universities in terms of industry-focused outcomes. When set against the 800-year history of the PhD, the professional doctorate is a young doctorate, the first being set up in Australia within the last two decades. The nature and status of professional doctorates remains unclear to many, including a number of university administrators of research training, as well as government and industry personnel. The fact that 61 per cent of professional doctorate programs fall under the classification of ‘research’ higher degrees is not widely understood. Moreover, the 131 programs we found to exist in 35 of the 38 Australian public universities, exhibit a wide range of structures and features. While there is strong evidence of an increase in the number of professional doctorates being offered in Australian universities, and there is some evidence of innovation in a number of professional doctorate programs, it appears that industry-focused doctoral education is still in its infancy. With a few exceptions, neither industry nor universities were engaging in any significant way to develop sustainable partnerships to serve and support the work of doctor

A documentary history of 'literacy' as an issue, topic and problem in the Australia print media, 1945-1994. The accompanying critical analysis makes the case that 'literacy crises' in Australia have arisen during periods of major socioeconomic, cultural and geopolitical upheaval and change, with schools and teachers, youth and families the object of 'blame' for such changes.