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Well-established evidence of the ill-effects of exclusionary school discipline, its disproportionate use on students of colour, and association with the "school-to-prison pipeline" has, in the last decade, led to systemic reforms in the United States, which are successfully reducing exclusion and improving outcomes. Few studies, however, have similarly investigated overrepresentation in Australia, with little attention to systemic reform as a result. In this study, we analysed suspension, exclusion, and enrolment cancellation rates in Queensland (QLD) government schools between 2013 and 2019 and found Indigenous students were consistently overrepresented. Suspension incidents proportionate to enrolments increased for all students, but this increase was faster for Indigenous than non-Indigenous students and driven primarily by steep rises in short suspensions during primary school (Preparatory-6). Exclusions increased--again disproportionately--for Indigenous students, chiefly in secondary school (7-12). During 2019, Physical Misconduct had the highest incident rate for both groups; however, Indigenous students were most overrepresented in suspensions for Disruptive/Disengaged behaviours. Further, while Indigenous students were overrepresented in all QLD regions, one region's Indigenous suspension rate was higher than all others despite no difference in the distribution of Indigenous/non-Indigenous enrolments across regions. The scale and nature of Indigenous overrepresentation in exclusionary discipline incidents in QLD indicate clear need for further research to secure political commitment to systemic inclusive school reform, as well as to produce high-quality evidence capable of guiding that reform.

The term neuromyths refers to misconceptions about learning and the brain. Educator neuromyths may result in inappropriate instruction, labelling of learners, and wasted resources. To date, little research has considered the sources of these beliefs. We surveyed 1359 Australian preservice educators (M = 22.7, SD = 5.7 years) about their sources of information for 15 neuromyth and 17 general brain knowledge statements. Consistent with previous studies, neuromyth beliefs were prevalent. Predictors of neuromyth accuracy included general brain knowledge and completion of university classes addressing neuromyths, although effects were modest. Depending on the belief, participants relied on general knowledge, academic staff, school staff, and popular media. Recommendations for teacher education are presented.

The inclusion of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is increasing, but there have been no longitudinal studies of included students in Australia. Interview data reported in this study concern primary school children with ASD enrolled in mainstream classes in South Australia and New South Wales, Australia. In order to examine perceived facilitators and barriers to inclusion, parents, teachers, and principals were asked to comment on the facilitators and barriers to inclusion relevant to each child. Data are reported about 60 students, comprising a total of 305 parent interviews, 208 teacher interviews, and 227 principal interviews collected at 6-monthly intervals over 3.5 years. The most commonly mentioned facilitator was teacher practices. The most commonly mentioned barrier was intrinsic student factors. Other factors not directly controllable by school staff, such as resource limitations, were also commonly identified by principals and teachers. Parents were more likely to mention school- or teacher-related barriers. Many of the current findings were consistent with previous studies but some differences were noted, including limited reporting of sensory issues and bullying as barriers. There was little change in the pattern of facilitators and barriers identified by respondents over time. A number of implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.

A rich body of research using teacher report has shown that students with disruptive behavior are at heightened risk of experiencing negative student-teacher relationships over time. However, no research has compared how students with and without disruptive behavior remember their own past relationships. We conducted autobiographical memory interviews with 96 participants (M[subscript age] = 12.31 years, SD = 1.75) from three groups: two containing students with disruptive behavior (one in alternative school, one in mainstream) and one with no disruptive behavior (in mainstream). Whereas all students in the nondisruptive group and most (90.0%) in the disruptive-mainstream group could remember at least one strongly positive student-teacher relationship, one third (32.1%) in the disruptive-alternative school group could not. This previously unidentified subgroup may be particularly at risk of negative school outcomes in the future. Interestingly, 40.5% of students in the nondisruptive group also recalled at least one strongly negative student-teacher relationship. Across groups, students attributed these negative relationships to teacher hostility and injustice. Drawing on these findings, we discuss implications for interventions to encourage positive student-teacher relationships for all students.

Research suggests that children with behavioural difficulties exhibit "positive illusory bias" (PIB), in which they overestimate their competencies leading to a perception of self that is more positive than the perceptions held by their peers, parents or teachers. However, research to date has focused on children of elementary school age and none has examined the potential role of oral language competence. This study investigates whether children aged 9-16 years with a history of disruptive behaviour exhibit PIB when compared to students with no such history, and whether there are differences between groups in expressive and receptive vocabulary. We found significant differences between groups in expressive vocabulary, but minimal differences between children's, parents', and teachers' ratings of child behaviour. Differences were also found in self-descriptions: participants with disruptive behaviour were less likely to describe themselves positively than participants without. Our research finds no evidence of PIB among older children with disruptive behaviour and suggests that language competence should be considered more closely in future research.

We report the development of preservice teachers' oral presentation performance based on a technology-mediated video reflection system. Participants video-recorded oral presentations and uploaded them to an online blog to view and reflect on their performance and that of their peers. Four presentations by forty-one participants were analysed using a range of criteria based on what we call the Modes of Communication (voice, body-language, words and alignment between them) and the Constructed Impression of the communication acts (confidence, clarity, engagement and appropriateness). Results indicate a significant improvement across all criteria with a decreased rate of improvement for later iterations.

Background: This paper investigates Australian parents' child care decision-making, including the motivational and influential factors that they attribute to their choice. Research demonstrates that child care decision making is multifaceted, involving a combination of child-related, personal, familial and contextual considerations. Existing research has tended to compare centre-based child care users with those using family-based options, and has not examined differences in the decision-making of parents who using different centre-based options. Objective: This study compared the characteristics and child care choices of parents using long day care (LDC) with those using preschool services to determine (1) whether they differ demographically and (2) if their reported child care decision-making motivations and influences diverge. Method: Participants were 1418 parents who completed a nationally-distributed survey in which they provided demographic information, specified their reasons for choosing to use child care, and rated the importance of factors that influenced their child care choice. Results: LDC parents had, on average, younger children, worked longer hours and resided in areas with lower socioeconomic resources than preschool parents. When compared with preschool parents, those using LDC were more likely to nominate pragmatic factors as influencing their child care decision making. External pressures, mainly related to educational outcomes, were more salient for preschool than LDC parents. However, both groups of parents similarly rated child-centred factors as the most important overall influence. Conclusion: Our findings add complexity to current understandings of parents' child care decision making by showing that parents should not be treated as a homogenous group by policy makers, providers, and researchers.

Research into the effect of questions asked during storybook reading in preschool settings has rarely investigated questions that elicit higher order thinking. In the current study, Blank et al.'s Four Levels of Abstraction were used to code teacher questions and child responses from 177 individual storybook reading sessions with eight intellectually gifted 3- and 4-year-old children. The aim was to investigate the level of cognitive response gifted preschoolers made to lower and higher order questions during shared book reading. As expected, lower order questions, the most frequent form of teacher questions, elicited mainly lower order responses. Significant cognitive correspondence was also found for higher order questions, which elicited higher order child responses 88% of the time. This suggests that higher order questioning would be a valuable addition to preschool storybook reading, particularly to extend the thinking of young intellectually gifted children.

Background: Empowerment is regarded as an important outcome in service provision to families of individuals with disability. Nevertheless, data on psychometric characteristics of measures related to empowerment are often inadequate, and limited data are available on the Enabling Practices Scale (EPS). Method: The EPS was completed by 128 families enrolled in a support program for children with disability in childcare centres. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis failed to affirm the original factor structure of the EPS. Subsequent exploratory factor analysis suggested an alternative 3-factor structure (Comfort and Reciprocity, Autonomy, and Support). Internal consistency of these factors was acceptable to high. Conclusions: The EPS is a potentially useful instrument to evaluate service practices that may be related to family empowerment, but further examination of its psychometric characteristics is suggested.

Students with disruptive behaviour in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) are increasingly being educated in separate "behaviour" schools. There is however surprisingly little research on how students view these settings, or indeed the mainstream schools from which they were excluded. To better understand excluded students' current and past educational experiences, we interviewed 33 boys, aged between 9 and 16 years of age, who were enrolled in separate special schools for students with disruptive behaviour. Analyses reveal that the majority of participants began disliking school in the early years due to difficulties with schoolwork and teacher conflict. Interestingly, while most indicated that they preferred the behaviour school, more than half still wanted to return to their old school. It is therefore clear that separate special educational settings are not a solution to disruptive behaviour in mainstream schools. Whilst these settings do fulfil a function for some students, the preferences of the majority of boys suggest that "mainstream" school reform is of first-order importance.

This article reports findings from an empirical study examining the influence of student background and educational experiences on the development of career choice capability. Secondary school students attending Years 9-12 (N = 706) in New South Wales, Australia, were invited to participate in an online survey that sought to examine factors influencing their readiness to make a career choice. The survey included questions relating to student demographics, parental occupation, attitudes to school and to learning, career aspirations, and students' knowledge of the further education or skills required to achieve their desired goal. We found no significant differences in the proportions of students who were 'uncertain' of their future career aspirations with respect to their individual characteristics, such as age and gender. There were, however, significant differences in relation to students' family background, and their perceptions associated with their own academic abilities and self-efficacy.

Motor competence and physical activity (PA) patterns are established during the early childhood years. Early childhood education (ECE) settings are an important context for children's engagement in physically active play. This paper reports the findings from an online survey examining resources, spaces and affordances for PA and risk-taking in outdoor play provision at 245 ECE centres across Australia. Centres were generally well resourced to promote physical play and provide a diverse range of experiences that support PA and motor development, although varied in terms of opportunities for risk-taking in play. Most respondents believed the environment at their centres supported children's engagement in moderate to vigorous PA, however, regulatory restrictions relating to recommended height limits on climbing apparatus and having insufficient space were identified as factors limiting opportunities for challenging, physically active play. Outdoor space and teacher support are identified as important factors in childhood settings to promote PA and risk-taking. The emphasis on outdoor environments as a mediator of physically active play should be beneficial in directing limited resources to the provision of environments that are most likely to produce positive PA outcomes.

Individuals with autism have difficulty generalising information from one situation to another, a process that requires the learning of categories and concepts. Category information may be learned through: (1) classifying items into categories, or (2) predicting missing features of category items. Predicting missing features has to this point been little used in special education. Children with autism were taught novel category information through either classification or feature prediction tasks. Both methods resulted in successful category learning. Furthermore, feature prediction learning resulted in better performance when predicting missing features of items at test. These results suggest that while both tasks are valuable tools for teaching categories to children with autism, the feature prediction task provides more successful post-learning use of the information acquired.

This paper contributes to conversations about school, post-compulsory and further education policy by reporting findings from a three-year study with disaffected students who have been referred to special "behaviour"schools. Contrary to popular opinion, our research finds that these "ignorant yobs" do value education and know what it is for. They also have aspirations for a secure, productive and fulfilled life, although it may not involve university-level study. Importantly, we found that students who responded negatively with regard to the importance of schooling tended to envision future lives and occupations for which they believed school knowledge was unnecessary. The implications of this research for school, post-compulsory and further education policy are discussed.

The number of students in special schools has increased at a rapid rate in some Australian states, due in part to increased enrolment under the categories of emotional disturbance (ED) and behaviour disorder (BD). Nonetheless, diagnostic distinctions between ED and BD are unclear. Moreover, despite international findings that students with particular backgrounds are over-represented in special schools, little is known about the backgrounds of students entering such settings in Australia. This study examined the government school enrolment data from New South Wales, the most populous of the Australian states. Linear and quadratic trends were used to describe the numbers and ages of students enrolled in special schools in the ED and BD categories. Changes between 1997 and 2007 were observed. Results showed an over-representation of boys that increased across the decade and a different pattern across age for boys and girls. Consistent with international findings, these results indicate that trends in special school placements are unrelated to disability prevalence in the population. Rather, it is suggested that schools act to preserve time and resources for others by removing their more challenging students: most typically, boys.

This study investigated the perspectives of early childhood teachers and parents regarding the importance of provisions afforded by child-teacher and peer relationships in early childhood centres. Participants were 200 parents and 71 teachers of children aged 0-5 years who responded to an online survey containing a series of relationship function statements that were rated according to their perceived importance. Results demonstrate that most functions were rated as more important in the context of child-teacher relationships than peer relationships, although statements reflecting the provision of friendship were regarded as more important in the domain of peer relationships. Ratings for particular provisions of infant relationships were significantly lower than those for older children; a result generated largely by variation in the ratings of teachers in comparison to those of parents. Findings are discussed in relation to differences between parent and teacher perspectives and implications for the development of inclusive, relationship-based pedagogies. (Contains 7 tables and 3 figures.)

The overrepresentation of students from minority ethnic groups in separate special education settings has been extensively documented in North America, yet little research exists for Australian school systems. The authors of this study systematically analyzed 13 years of enrollment data from the state of New South Wales and found stark, increasing differences in patterns of enrollment between Indigenous students, students from a language background other than English (LBOTE), and non-Indigenous English-speaking students. Although enrollments of Indigenous students in separate settings increased faster across time than did enrollments of Indigenous students in mainstream, enrollments of LBOTE students in mainstream increased faster than did enrollments of LBOTE students in separate settings. (Contains 3 tables and 5 figures.)

The last few decades have witnessed a broad international movement towards the development of inclusive schools through targeted special education funding and resourcing policies. Student placement statistics are often used as a barometer of policy success but they may also be an indication of system change. In this paper, trends in student enrolments from the Australian state of New South Wales are considered in an effort to understand what effect inclusive education has had in this particular region of the world. (Contains 10 notes and 5 figures.)

Quantitative approaches to defining and measuring quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) have provided a key platform for policy development. Yet their strengths and limitations as informants of high-quality ECEC have not been tested. In this study we examine two sources of quantitative data collected over a five-year period for 74 long day care centres: (1) the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised and Infant-Toddler Environment Rating Scale instruments which are well-established observational measures; and (2) Australia's nationally administered Quality Improvement and Accreditation System which involves a self-study and validation process. Correspondence over time and across measures was more consistent for the centres identified as providing lower quality ECEC. Variability in ratings of quality was more evident in lower quality centres, whereas high-quality centres showed less variability over time. High quality, however, was less consistently identified across measures. Discussion focuses on the strengths and limitations of these measures of quality, and the implications these have for policy development and future research. (Contains 6 tables.)

This article examines the increase in segregated placements in the New South Wales government school sector. Using disaggregated enrolment data, it points to the growing over-representation of boys in special schools and classes, particularly those of a certain age in certain support categories. In the discussion that follows, the authors question the role of special education in the development of new and additional forms of being "at risk". In effect, they invert the traditional concept by asking: who is at risk of what? In focusing on the containment of risk, are modern practices of diagnosis and segregation perpetuating risks that already disproportionately affect certain groups of individuals? Do these perceptions of and responses to risk in local schools now place these students at greater personal risk of school failure and a future marked by social exclusion? And, finally, is that risk worth the cost? (Contains 1 table, 3 figures, and 4 notes.)