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This article reports on a national study commissioned by Tennis Australia to assess the positive role that sport, specifically tennis, has on the lives of LGBT+ people in Australia. It explores specifically the role of tennis in building social solidarity and community capital through leisurely and organised sporting activities. Theoretically, this paper is anchored in the work of Putnam, where we demonstrate how sport promotes and bridges social capital. Scholarship that explores how sport can be a source of celebration and enjoyment for LGBT+ people remains underexplored. To gain comprehensive insights into the perceptions and lived experiences of LGBT+ tennis players, we employed a qualitative research design drawing on the methods of semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. In total 27 interviews were conducted, 3 focus groups and over 50 hours of observations at various LGBT+ tennis clubs and tournaments in Sydney, Hobart, Perth and Melbourne. Our paper makes a significant contribution to scholarship by assessing the ways in which sport can advance inclusion efforts for LGBT+ people, and positively impact their lives and overall wellbeing. Our research clearly indicated that those who play tennis reported improvement in their mental and physical health whilst also enhancing their social capital.

This paper reflects on the recounts of a group of 'old boys' about their transition from elite schools to university. Analysis of semi-structured interview data reveals that this transition was not always straightforward. Although educational background has traditionally determined access to, and progress through, university, this paper details the challenges that confronted a group of old boys as they negotiated a landscape that did not align with the positionality they had assumed in their schooling. Defining this as a 'bubble bursting' moment, the participants relay how negotiations of their positionality provoked a reflexive accounting of what to keep and what to reject in the formation of undergraduate identities. The discourses that surround the educational choices made by elite school students indicate how tightly bound notions of achievement and academic excellence define expectations and concomitant senses of Self. Exposure to a larger, and more diverse student population, as well as changed social strata, resulted in the questioning of the elite school environment and the preparation that it provided. This paper explores a currently under-theorised aspect of the literature to detail how the emotions and feelings that elite school alumni experience frames the transition to university.

Background: Non-communicable diseases (NCDs), also known as chronic diseases, now constitute a major proportion of ill-health across most adult and older populations including in people with intellectual disability. The current paper is a comparative analysis of prevalence of NCDs across mid-aged and older-aged people with mild intellectual disability. Method: Comparative data comes from two cross-sectional surveys using similar methodology and timeframes. The analysis sample comprises mid-aged group (30-50 years, N = 291) and older-aged group (=60 years, N = 391). Results: People with mild intellectual disability start developing NCDs in early to mid-adulthood and increases with age. The mean number of NCDs in mid-aged group was 0.86 (SD, 0.84) compared to 3.82 in older group (SD, 2.67). Conclusion: There needs to be early identification and management of NCDs using relevant health promotion and preventative measures at optimal intervention points. The training of healthcare professionals needs improvement.

Although the presence of intellectual disability (ID) per se is not usually regarded as a health problem, the biopsychosocial implications of cognitive impairment contribute to the vulnerability of adult patients with ID in any healthcare system. The adult patient with ID differs from a patient in the general population in terms of health determinants, morbidity and mortality profiles, and in the ability to access quality healthcare. These differences represent a risk for adverse health and well-being outcomes in this population, and for increased costs of health services, particularly in the hospital setting. This paper focuses on addressing the issues facing the adult patient with ID, their caregivers, and health professionals, specifically in the setting of secondary and tertiary level healthcare systems. The authors argue that a specialist hospital service for adults with ID urgently needs to be established in major public hospitals along the lines of a paediatric model. The model of existing paediatric developmental disability units within hospitals is an example of a successful specialised system of care within a generic system. The authors propose that a similarly designed system of specialised care for the adult patient with ID also be introduced into the generic adult hospital system. (Contains 1 table.)

Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium is higher in the United States than in any of the other comparison countries, despite the fact that the U.S. has a larger share of workers in STEM jobs. We also find evidence that the premium varies significantly across STEM sub-fields and education levels, and that the premium tends to be higher in countries with lower unionization rates, less employment protection, or a larger share of employment in the public sector.

In an ever-changing world of work, workers are expected to maintain currency of changes through lifelong learning to sustain employment and transition into new jobs or occupations - as the need arises. Adult workers rely on affordances from societal, workplace, community and educational institution sources that offer opportunities - intentional or sometimes unintentional. Productive engagement in these opportunities leads to positive outcomes in terms of learning and employment, although adults' personal epistemologies, agency, and intentionality determine which affordances they engage with, in what ways, and for what purposes (Billett, Choy and Le, 2023). Moreover, working age adults' learning is largely and necessarily premised on their own constructive efforts albeit with guidance from those with whom they work closely. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the working age population is defined as those aged 15 to 64 (OECD, 2023). In Australia, the working age can be extended to 74 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2023). Working age adults' worklife learning is sustained through permutations of lifelong learning and lifelong education that enables them to navigate different kinds of transitions that may arise due to institutional or personal factors such as life stages, employment status, occupations, re-locations, health and personal preference or trajectories (Billett, Choy & Le, 2023). This means that lifelong educational provisions need to extend beyond those from educational institutions to include experiences in workplaces and the community. The growing realisation of the potency and importance of learning experiences in workplaces and other social settings is now attracting a greater consideration of these sites for ongoing learning of working age adults. This calls for learning in the course of everyday work to be acknowledged and systematised around work practices. In this paper, we illuminate and elaborate on workplace contributions to learning that support individuals' employability across working life. Drawing on the worklife history interviews (n=66) and a survey (n=678) data from an Australian Research Council funded project [DP 190101519], we report and discuss working age adults' perspectives of workplace affordances. The findings from the interviews indicate that three work-based models suggested by Billett et al. (2016) are most appropriate for supporting workers' learning in their work settings. These are wholly work-based experiences, work-based experiences with direct guidance and work-based experiences with educational interventions. The affordances and practices of workplaces are central to supporting workers' lifelong learning in workplaces, but they also need access to lifelong education provisions to maintain currency of knowledge and skills to sustain employment.

In this article, the author comments on the paper "On the need for a specialist service within the generic hospital setting" (Wallace & Beange, 2008), which raises critical issues regarding effective models of healthcare delivery for individuals with intellectual disability (ID), particularly within a hospital setting (but not necessarily limited to that setting). The problem, as well as the solution proposed in the paper, address both broad and very individualised questions about effective models of healthcare delivery for this population. The creation of a supportive specialised unit within a generic healthcare environment can be viewed as an ethical and philosophically sound response to principles of normalisation and a desire for inclusionary models of healthcare. It can also be viewed as a pragmatic way to maximise the impact of scarce specialised resources. As the extensive literature cited indicates, reaping the benefits of medical advances on behalf of individuals with ID has often resulted from a push towards increased civil rights and a reduction in patterns of discrimination, especially in healthcare. There have been fewer examples of promoting structural change in methods of healthcare delivery. This author contends that the structural change advocated in the paper focuses on the attainable within a defined context, while also stressing the potentially critical impact on the healthcare experience of a very vulnerable population. The specialised consultation role proposed by Wallace and Beange would minimise the need for change in other areas of the healthcare system, whether within the hospital setting or within the wider community care environment, in order to achieve measurable success. However the success of this model should provide the impetus for broader systemic change.

This article presents the authors' response to the invited commentaries on their paper (Wallace and Beange, 2008). On the point of "specialism", the authors emphasise a fundamental premise of their argument: the proposed "specialist" hospital-based service is inherently enmeshed within generic services at the hospital level, rather than being a separate entity. Its aim is to ensure that patients with intellectual disability (ID) receive the "same" quality of healthcare as that received by patients in the general population accessing generic hospital services. This means, for example, that if a patient with ID has a serious gastroenterological health problem which would normally require specialist attention, then access to the gastroenterologist in the hospital will be facilitated and supported by the specialist service. The authors are "not" advocating a model in which the specialist service would have its own gastroenterology service. Furthermore, in contrast to other specialist disciplines in medicine, such as a cardiologist who deals with diseases of the heart, the specialist in ID does not routinely deal directly with diseases of the brain. Rather, the specialist physician deals with those health conditions that are associated with the biopsychosocial circumstances of having ID. Thus, future research on the impact of such specialist health services should look towards evidence of the impact of specialist health services for other disadvantaged groups (such as the indigenous population), rather than their impact on cardiac mortality (where the evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of cardiac services).

In recent years, interest in the therapeutic potential of yoga for people recovering from trauma has flourished. To date, much of this research on yoga for trauma adopts a quantitative methodology that positions yoga as a medicalised intervention to understand if yoga is 'effective' for trauma recovery for adults. This paper seeks to contribute to an emerging body of qualitative literature by drawing on the voices of eight Iyengar yoga teachers with experience teaching adult students with trauma. It reveals that the teachers do not hold themselves out to be specialists in trauma, nor do they rely on formulistic principles or knowing a person's trauma narrative. Rather, they draw on the pedagogic skills they have developed more generally through their considerable experience of teaching yoga as an embodied practice to tailor their approach for their students. Of central interest is the way the teachers use their own bodies, particularly their sensory perceptions, to 'read' the bodies and emotional capacities of their students within each teaching session. The teachers also reflect on the way they use adjustments as part of their embodied pedagogic skills in nuanced ways that challenge the dominant no-touch discourse on teaching students with trauma. These pedagogic approaches offer important insights for movement teachers more generally, particularly those teaching vulnerable students.

Definitions of adulthood for people with intellectual disability are often complicated, with milestones being markedly different for this population. This is then associated with difficulties for both the people with intellectual disability and their parents, who are closely involved in this transitional period. This paper aims to report on parents' perception and experience of adulthood for their son or daughter with an Intellectual Disability (ID). Qualitative data were collected through 30-60-minute phone interviews with eight parents of a person with an intellectual disability aged 15 or older (mean parent age = 60; mean child age = 23). Thematic analysis found that Perception of Adulthood encompassed themes of Independence and Normality. Experiences of Adulthood were categorised under Government Services, Responsibility and Social Supports. Findings of this research provide information for the growing literature around adulthood for people with intellectual disability, as well as how to amend policies and procedures for services that cater to people with intellectual disability and their parents during this transition.

This paper gives a brief summary of Halliday's theory of how children learn to talk, illustrating the development of children's language from the microfunctions through the macrofunctions and into the metafunctions of adult language. The paper points to a possible source of the misinterpretation of Halliday's theory in the work of Frank Smith (1983), which appears to have "trickled down" into some of the textbooks written for pre-service teachers in Australia. Links are made to teachers' knowledge about language (KAL) and the current Australian Curriculum English (ACE). It is suggested that while any number of functions of the language of school-aged children may be described, it is perhaps misleading to refer to the microfunctions as "Halliday's functions".

The aim of this systematic review was to investigate what is currently known about autistic adults' participation in physical activity and sedentary behaviour and explore any associated correlates of these behaviours. The databases EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed, and SPORTDiscus were searched for relevant literature. The review was registered with PROSPERO (No. 189187). The search identified 2834 papers, with 12 meeting the criteria for inclusion. Correlates of physical activity and/or sedentary behaviour were reported in eight included studies. The limited evidence identified suggest that autistic adults are unlikely to meet Australia's physical activity guidelines. Future research should use device-derived measurement to more accurately quantify activity levels within the autistic adult population.

This paper presents data from interviews undertaken with teachers and parents of children who attend Australian bush kinders (kindergartens). The bush kinder approach is a recent adaptation of the European and UK forest school approaches, one that continues to gain momentum as increasingly teachers and parents come to understand the benefits associated with this type of outdoor learning environment. The research was undertaken using ethnography (Delamont, 1992; Madden, 2012), a useful method of research in this type of setting as ethnography enables a deep understanding of how children 'notice' in nature over time. The paper applies a discourse analysis (Gee, 2011) of teacher and parent interviews critically exploring the learning and development benefits children experience from attending a bush kinder program. Findings reveal that through their noticing, preschool children make a transition from being nature novices to nature experts. The data demonstrate the benefits preschool children can gain from learning and being 'in' and 'with' nature and the important role adults play recognising young children's noticing in nature.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify correlates of tobacco smoking behaviour across various socio-demographic segments of the Australian population. Design/methodology/approach: Data from two nationally representative, probability samples of persons 18 and over, surveyed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2001 and 2017-2018 were analysed using multinomial logistic regression. Findings: Overall, the prevalence of current smokers declined from 24.3 to 15%. More than half of the population had never smoked. The prevalence of ex-smokers increased slightly to 30%. Prevalence of current smoking was higher among older age groups and among those with lower educational achievement, lower income, living in a disadvantaged area and experiencing increasing stress. Females were more likely than males to be never-smokers. Males were more likely than females to be current smokers. Research limitations/implications: The findings are based on two cross-sectional surveys conducted 17 years apart. It is not possible to draw any conclusions about the actual trajectories of the changes in the values reported or any correlations between those trajectories. Nor is it possible to make any meaningful forecasts about likely future trends in smoking status in these various segments based on these data sets. The classifications used in the surveys generate some heterogeneous groups, which can obscure important differences among respondents within groups. Data are all self-reported, and there is no validation of the self-reported smoking status. This might lead to under-reporting, especially in a community where tobacco smoking is no longer a majority or even a popular habit. Because the surveys are so large, virtually, all the findings are statistically significant. However, the increasing preponderance of never-smokers in many categories might mean that never-smokers could come to dominate the data. Practical implications: The findings from this paper will help tobacco-control policy-makers to augment whole-of-community initiatives with individual campaigns designed to be more effective with particular sociodemographic segments. They will also assist in ensuring better alignment between initiatives addressing mental health and tobacco smoking problems facing the community. Originality/value: The examination of smoking behaviour among individual population sub-groups, chosen by the authors, is commonplace in the literature. This paper uses data from two large surveys to model the whole, heterogeneous population, measured at two different points in time.

In this paper, we report on a participatory oral history study documenting the lives of late-diagnosed autistic adults in Australia. We interviewed 26 autistic adults about their life history and the impact of late diagnosis. All were diagnosed after the age of 35, growing up in an era when autism was not well known. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we uncovered a rich body of reflections on shared Autistic identity and identified three major themes within that data set: 'conceptualising the Autistic family', 'creating Autistic community', and 'contesting Autistic identity'. Overall, the study provides insights into the active creation of shared Autistic identity and the importance of Autistic community to these late-diagnosed autistic adults.

BACKGROUND: It is unknown whether questionnaires measuring psychosocial constructs related to low back pain (LBP) that were originally designed for adults are suitable for adolescents, and if paper and web-versions have similar measurement properties. OBJECTIVES: To examine selected psychometric properties for the paper- and web-based Back-Beliefs Questionnaire (BBQ) and the Fear Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ-phys) among adults and adolescents in two diverse countries and to determine whether differences existed between countries and pain groups. METHODS: A sample of 156 adults (Hong Kong, n = 75; Australia, n = 81) and 96 adolescents (Hong Kong, n = 61; Australia, n = 35) participated in this cross-sectional study. RESULTS: Main effects for country and administration mode were observed in adult BBQ scores, where Australian adults reported significantly higher BBQ scores than Hong Kong adults (mean difference (MD); 95% CI: 2.85; 0.96-4.74) and significantly higher scores were recorded on the web mode compared to the paper mode (MD 0.74; 0.10-1.38). Similarly, Hong Kong adults and adolescents reported higher FABQ-phys scores than Australian adults and adolescents (MD; 95% CI: 3.40; 1.37-5.43 and 4.88; 0.53-9.23, respectively). Internal consistency values were mostly acceptable (α⩾0.7). CONCLUSION: Differences exist between cultures for LBP-related beliefs. The BBQ and FABQ-phys have acceptable measurement properties in both administration modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with an intellectual disability experience a protective regime when it comes to their sexuality. Families, carers, services and others mediate their experiences and act as gatekeepers through policies and practices that focus on the regulation and management of sexuality. Sex education has traditionally been 'for' people with intellectual disabilities provided 'by' health professionals, teachers and other professions who position themselves as experts with the power to shape the sex education, information and learning opportunities that people with an intellectual disability access. This paper presents an alternative programme developed in collaboration with people with intellectual disabilities, which uses the stories of people with an intellectual disability and is facilitated by people with intellectual disabilities as peer educators. Crip theory rejects approaches to understanding the disability experience that privilege particular characteristics of disability experience over others including cognition. This paper argues this idea can offer a 'way in' for people with intellectual disabilities to research, debate and progress sexual rights within the current sexual rights vacuum in international law and policy. The paper demonstrates how an Australian peer education programme provides a liberating sex education for those involved through a focus on rights and use of peer education.

The study reported in this paper was conducted in Australia and was situated in the context of starting school. The focus of the inquiry was on determining and understanding the processes that adults engage with when coming together to support children making the transition to school. The theoretical lens of the cultural interface was used as a tool for analysis. Findings suggest that as adults come together to support the learning of young children they engage in specific processes. These processes are embedded in the action of locating the contextual self, and they take place at different times in the establishment and maintenance of adult relationships, and the formation of a working partnership. In this paper, these findings are shared and future research directions in family-educator partnership work are offered.

Results of international achievement surveys such as the Programme in International Student Assessment have consistently reported an achievement gap between immigrant and non-immigrant student populations around the world. This paper unpacks this persistent achievement gap by examining key characteristics that influence the performance of first- and second-generation immigrant students as well as the policies and practices that are associated with enhanced educational outcomes. A multi-layered framework is proposed to help policymakers juxtapose key characteristics of their immigrant students' achievement against individual, family, school, community, and host society characteristics and policies. The discussion also underscores the importance of connecting this multi-layered framework with other important sectors within governments such as those responsible for the economy, health, social protection, and immigration. This paper also examines limitations with current large-scale data sets and the implications for research and policy analysis.

This commentary discusses whether a sufficient case has been made for specialism in hospital services as a viable alternative to existing generic services. The impact of developments in specialist care such as those outlined by Robyn A. Wallace and Helen Beange should be assessed as a means of reducing inequality. In particular, model services require assessment for reproducibility. However such developments do not negate the need to also strive to improve generic care. Indeed they cannot, for as things stand, there is no workforce planning to produce such specialists, so they will continue to be important isolated islands of skill, as well as focuses of leadership and quality development. This author contends that Wallace and Beange have raised an issue of importance to people with intellectual disability (ID) and those who work with them, if equal outcomes are indeed to be achieved. It is an issue that needs debate, and a debate that needs to occur quickly, lest an inadequate and inequitable status quo is simply maintained.

Results from the Survey of Adult Skills, also known as PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies), were recently made available for 24 participating countries. PIAAC involves several developments in relation to the earlier international "adult skills" surveys (IALS in the 1990s and ALL in the 2000s), notably the use of computer administration of the survey. In this paper, I focus on understanding these studies, by considering conceptual issues, methodological validity of research design and execution, and presentation of results. I consider several of the sample items for numeracy published by OECD (2012). And I discuss illustrative results from Australia made available in February 2013, by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The paper shows when and how to be sceptical when reading international survey reports. It also opens up questions concerning the relevance of the results, and the other types of research that may be needed, in different national and local contexts.

The overarching aim of this paper is to "talk up" learning in the Australian neighbourhood centre sector, realising this aim is premised on a need to understand neighbourhood centres themselves. Hence, the paper tentatively offers a mapping of the sector by first asking: "What is a neighbourhood centre?". Next, the paper provides an introductory scoping of learning in centres in an effort to invite further consideration. Two important conclusions are made. The first is that centres' capacity for continual re-shaping, while retaining some very particular values, marks them in ways that differ from organisations for which adult education is the primary purpose. The second is that the range of learning possibilities in centres is far-reaching, and makes significant and valuable contributions to individuals and communities, and ultimately to the Australian nation. (Contains 1 endnote.)

There is limited research examining the inclusion of autistic people in their local communities. This paper reports on two Australian studies which explored this gap, focusing on both autistic people's experiences and non-autistic people's attitudes towards autistic individuals. Study One was conducted with primarily non-autistic people (n = 2,383), and Study Two with primarily parents and carers of autistic people (n = 1,297 people). The majority of non-autistic adults perceived discrimination against autistic people in the community; consistent with the experiences of autistic people and their carers. Of particular concern was more negative attitudes towards, and experiences of, autistic adults. There is an urgent need to improve society's acceptance and inclusion of autistic people of all ages.

In this final, collaborative paper in the "Learning to be drier" edition, we reflect on and draw together some of the key threads from the diverse narratives in our four site papers from across the southern Murray-Darling Basin. Our paper title, "Wicked learning", draws on a recent body literature (Rittel & Webber 1973) about messy or "wicked problems" as characterised by Dietz and Stern (1998). It picks up on our identification of the difficulty and enormity of the learning challenges being faced by communities, associated, at best, with a decade of record dry years (drought) and severely over-committed rivers. At worst, drought is occurring in combination with and as a precursor to recent, progressive drying of the Basin associated with climate change. Our research is suggestive of a need for much more learning across all segments of the adult community about "... the big picture, including the interrelationships among the full range of causal factors ..." (Australian Public Service Commission, APSC 2007: 1) underlying the presenting problem of drying. We conclude that solutions to the messy or wicked problem of drying in an interconnected Basin will lie in the social domain. This will include building a wider knowledge and acceptance of the problems and likely future risks across the Basin including all parts of communities. The problem of drying as well as its causes and solutions are multidimensional, and will involve comprehensive learning about all five key characteristics of other "wicked" policy problems identified in previous research in the environmental arena. The narratives that we have heard identify the extreme difficulty in all four sites of rational and learned responses to being drier as the problem has unfolded. All narratives about being drier that we have heard involve a recognition of a combination of the five characteristics common to wicked problems: multidimensionality, scientific uncertainty, value confect and uncertainty, mistrust as well as urgency. All narratives identify the importance of social learning: to be productive, to be efficient, to survive, to live with uncertainty, to be sustainable and to share. Combating the extent and effects of drying, causality aside, will require new forms of learning through new community, social and learning spaces, apart from and in addition to new technological and scientific learning. (Contains 1 figure.)