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Insights into local Chinese teacher and student views of an international teaching practicum with Australian pre-service teachers are the focus of this paper. A qualitative content analysis was undertaken on teacher and student accounts captured through individual interviews with four teachers and questionnaire survey with 186 students. The paper uncovers how teachers and students perceived what they experienced in the practice of intercultural communication on teaching and learning. Emphasised in the analysis is the importance of situating discussions within the Chinese social cultural context, acknowledging the influence of traditional Chinese cultural values and educational conceptions on their teaching and learning practice. The findings reveal meaningful insights into intercultural comprehension involving teaching strategies, learning content and assessment and classroom management. The study's findings highlighted that this international teaching practicum was a beneficial and valuable experience for participant Chinese students and teachers. The study also highlighted a potential gap in the preparation of Australian pre-service teachers and the Chinese students and Chinese teachers, regarding culturally specific and culturally aware competencies.

This paper explores the intersection of reflection, journal writing and creativity. Undergraduate students who participated in a residential field camp were required to keep a creative reflective journal to demonstrate their theoretical and practical understandings of their experience. This study reports on the content analysis of 42 student journals and interviews with eight students that explored if and how an invitation to be creative in a reflective journaling assignment was appropriated or rejected (as evidenced by the content analysis) and experienced (as evidenced by the interviews) by students. Content analysis revealed that 14% of journals contained no creativity, 50% had basic levels of creativity, 31% had moderate levels and 5% had high levels. Interviews were analyzed using themes of relevance, ownership, control and innovation and provided insight into reasons why students did and did not use creativity to support their journals. In the discussion, the concepts of deep and surface approaches to learning provide some insightful explanation as to why students were creative in their reflective journal. This paper concludes by providing several support strategies to help students enhance their skills related to reflection, journal writing and creativity.

Rapid advancements in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have afforded numerous variations to traditional chemistry curricula where pedagogical strategies that have been employed have assumed "one-size-fits-all". The translation of print-based instructional resources into multimodal online and digital forms enables greater accessibility, flexibility, and usability to support students in their understanding of complex chemistry concepts. To ideally offer an online learning environment that is accessible by all students to the greatest extent possible, this study employed the principles of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework to analyse the design of online instructional resources for topics in first-year chemistry courses. Through application of UDL principles, students were provided with multiple means of representation of concepts, options for action and expression, and various avenues for engagement within the learning management system (LMS). This paper describes how the UDL framework was used to evaluate three separate independent Cases of tertiary first-year chemistry courses, including one university in the Philippines and two universities in Australia. Evaluation through surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews revealed students' perceptions of the usefulness of the UDL-based features. Students cited benefit from multiple forms of content delivery, animations, interactive simulations, and video recordings because they facilitated processing of information, provided alternative ways of presenting the information, allowed for varying methods for response, navigation, and flexibility, and allowed for self-evaluation of their progress. These results suggest that applying the principles of the UDL framework in instructional design of an online environment in first-year chemistry courses can support and further enhance students' learning irrespective of their individual contexts.

In this paper we review fifty years of articles published in Australian Journal of Adult Learning in its various iterations. We examine the different roles of the journal: to illuminate the history and trends of adult education authors; to be the flagship of the adult education profession in Australia; to reflect on significant national events; and to mirror the changing knowledge base of the discipline. We analyse the authorship of the articles over fifty years, and determine patterns in contribution to the journal by gender, location, institutional affiliation and author numbers. We also examine key themes that have surfaced in the writings on adult education. The articles published in the journal are significant because they are primary sources of the day, unfettered by the perspectives, viewpoints and standards of later periods. Our paper serves as a useful looking glass through which we might be able to view more clearly the shifting research interests of the past and the challenges in the future for the adult and community learning sector. (Contains 11 figures and 6 tables.)

First year accounting has generally been perceived as one of the more challenging first year business courses for university students. Various Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) have been proposed to attempt to enrich and enhance student learning, with these studies generally positioning students as learners alone. This paper uses an educational case study approach and examines the implementation of the IGCRA (individual, group, classroom reflective action) technique, a Classroom Assessment Technique, on first year accounting students' learning performance. Building on theoretical frameworks in the areas of cognitive learning, social development, and dialogical learning, the technique uses reports to promote reflection on both learning and teaching. IGCRA was found to promote feedback on the effectiveness of student, as well as teacher satisfaction. Moreover, the results indicated formative feedback can assist to improve the learning and learning environment for a large group of first year accounting students. Clear guidelines for its implementation are provided in the paper.

This paper presents findings from research conducted in two primary schools in South Australia with New Arrivals Programs (NAPs). The paper considers findings derived from a content analysis of photo elicitation data and a thematic analysis of focus group data in order to elaborate some of the ways in which the uses of, and assumptions about, space and place within the schools negatively impact upon students in NAPs. Specifically, the findings suggest that students in NAPs photographed a less diverse range of school spaces than did students not in NAPs, and that in focus groups students not in NAPs were explicit in stating that they saw school spaces as territory to be claimed. Importantly, the findings suggest that students in NAPs wished that they could roam more freely within school spaces, were they able to do so. The paper concludes with suggestions that may assist schools with NAPs to ensure that school spaces better meet the needs of all students.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore Master of Business Administration (MBA) students' "reflections" and/or "reflection on practice" of sustainability into responsible management education using Bain et al.'s (2002) 5Rs (reporting, responding, relating, reasoning and reconstructing) reflective scale. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopted a case study approach using content analysis and written reflective journals analysis from MBA students' assignments. Findings: This study revealed that responding and relating (emotionally-based reflections) scales are dominant reflections while reasoning (cognitively-based reflections) is a slightly less dominant reflection. The findings confirm that effective management education for sustainability should encourage and motivate students to reflect on their emotional learning to improve leadership values, attitudes and activities. Such reflection can lead to transformative experiences. Research limitations/implications: This study adopted a small-scale content analysis using an Australian university's MBA case. To increase validity and generalisation, researchers will benefit from a wide range of quantitative analyses in different countries and cultural contexts. Practical implications: Curriculum design using reflections and reflective journals should be enhanced in management education for the practice of sustainability and/or sustainable development. Social implications: Higher education should encourage socially and environmentally responsible management in programme and curriculum design with a reflective approach. Originality/value: This study presents a conceptual framework and analysis approaches that can serve as some bases for the development of a more robust analysis in responsible management education.

This paper examines a blended learning context known as book raps where children read and respond to literary texts. In this particular e-literacy environment, readers discuss their opinions of a book under the guidance of a moderator known as a rap coordinator who provides stimulus questions known as rap points. The paper demonstrates how question design as prompts for online interaction is crucial to the success of the discussion. It critiques the pedagogic underpinning of data taken from a book rap where young primary children in Australian schools read the picture book, "Mrs Millie's Painting" (Ottley, 1997), and then interacted using emails. As students use both face2face in the classroom under the guidance of their teacher and asynchronous online discussion in the raps, dialogue is crucial to this learning context. The principles of dialogic teaching are used as an analytical framework to examine support provided by the moderator to develop students' social and cognitive online interactions. The paper argues that the design of the discursive interactions created for the rap impacts on students' critical appreciation of the book they read. (Contains 1 table.)

Cultural diversity is evident throughout schools in Victoria, Australia. Many students are new arrivals from war-torn countries including Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq. To what extent do teacher training courses in Victoria prepare pre-service teachers to cater for the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) students? This paper reports findings from a qualitative study on pre-service preparation for teaching CALD students in mainstream secondary schools. It investigated ways in which CALD student needs are addressed in secondary teaching courses in Victoria. Data included course outlines, questionnaires completed by forty-one final year pre-service teachers, and interviews with four final year pre-service teachers. Findings revealed that the majority of pre-service secondary teachers feel that their teacher education courses lack a focus on cultural and linguistic diversity in schools. Course content analysis supports this. Courses need to be updated to address the needs of teachers of CALD students, and consequently of the students themselves. This paper provides practical ways to begin this process.

This paper reveals how the provision of teacher professional development is conceptualised within the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme (AGQTP) policy text and its predecessors, and uses these texts to infer the nature of the production practices associated with the development of these policies. The paper argues that multiple tensions within these texts gesture towards support for complex and contested approaches to professional development during the policy production process. To make sense of this contestation, the paper draws suggestively upon Bourdieu's field theory, which conceptualises the social world as consisting of social spaces or "fields", and extensions of his theory, which reveal fields as exerting considerable influence upon one another. The paper argues that "Quality Teacher Programme" texts infer support for more progressive, social democratic approaches to the provision of teacher professional development within the educational policy field, as well as more economistic and neoliberal approaches. (Contains 1 table.)

Purpose: This paper aims to report the findings of a study into the automated text analysis of student feedback comments to assist in investigating a high volume of qualitative information at various levels in an Australian university. It includes the drawbacks and advantages of using selected applications and established lexicons. There has been an emphasis on the analysis of the statistical data collected using student surveys of learning and teaching, while the qualitative comments provided by students are often not systematically scrutinised. Student comments are important, as they provide a level of detail and insight that are imperative to quality assurance practices. Design/methodology/approach: The paper outlines the process by which the institution researched, developed and implemented the automated analysis of student qualitative comments in surveys of units and teaching. Findings: The findings indicated that there are great benefits in implementing this automated process, particularly in the analysis of evaluation data for units with large enrolments. The analysis improved efficiency in the interpretation of student comments. However, a degree of human intervention is still required in creating reports that are meaningful and relevant to the context. Originality/value: This paper is unique in its examination of one institution's journey in developing a process to support academics staff in interpreting and understanding student comments provided in surveys of units and teaching.

Purpose: Higher education institutions are regarded as forerunners and pioneers of sustainability. However, it is to question whether they actually fulfill their role model function. This paper aims to reveal whether selected universities in Australia and Austria meet the reporting expectations about their activities on sustainability in very heterogeneous environments. Design/methodology/approach: Annual reports of selected universities in Australia and Austria are screened by the qualitative text analysis suggested by Mayring to identify their information policy on sustainability. Following the standard definitions, sustainability comprises economic, environmental and social aspects as main categories, which are supplemented further by specifically adapted eight subcategories. Findings: The results reveal that the universities concentrate on economic information, preferably on accounting, whereas social aspects are of second importance. Environmental activities that essentially shape the image of sustainability for the majority of the stakeholders are mostly unattended. Research limitations/implications: For further research, the authors suggest analyzing the reports of additional countries to get a bigger picture on the role of sustainability information in university reporting. Possible limitations are because of language use and time requirements, as each report must be encoded manually. Practical implications: The results reveal the gaps that standard setters should fill by enforcing sustainability content in universities' reports. Originality/value: This paper is the first to analyze the annual reports of international universities in respect to sustainability. Hereby, we further fill a gap by applying a qualitative text analysis on the basis of individually derived categories to reveal the sustainability aspects more precisely.

This paper provides a descriptive historical analysis of the planning and writing of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts which occurred from 2009 to 2013. This process involved extensive consultation across a range of stakeholders, including curriculum research, background reading and analysis that preceded the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority's writing process. The curriculum itself was underpinned by a range of democratic principles, including the importance of developing a socially just curriculum. This necessitated extensive discussion which interrogated the terms excellence and equity to ensure a high-quality arts education was accessible for all students, regardless of their background. The implementation of these principles is then explored through the perspective of the Drama writing team, including the importance of the subject Drama in developing a sense of inquiry and empathy in students by exploring their own and others' stories and points of view. The final curriculum document for the Arts, and specifically for Drama exemplifies the importance of these social justice principles in responding to the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (2008) which advocates for equity and excellence in Australian schooling and for all young Australians to become successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens.

In recent years, educators have begun to use learning portfolios as a means of evaluating student learning in higher education. Research indicates that learning portfolios can help students understand better the learning process as well as enhancing learning outcomes. They promote reflection on the learning experience and encourage students to think critically and make judgments about their own learning. The aim of this paper is to explore how short-answer portfolios can support the development of generic skills. We focus on generic skill because one of the central aims of university teaching is to develop the generic capabilities of graduates. These generic attributes represent the qualities, skills and understandings a university community anticipates its students should acquire at university and display as a graduate professional and citizen. This paper reports the findings of a study of learning portfolios and generic skill development of industrial relations students studying on-line at a remote location. The students completed a short-answer learning portfolio as part of their learning experience. Data were gathered about the performance and views of these students from interviews, a survey, analysis of student work and email correspondence with their teacher. Our research indicates that learning portfolios are an effective way of developing generic skills, although they are very labour intensive from the teacher's perspective. (Contains 7 tables and 1 footnote.)

New educational models such as those involving a third party educational provider linked with an official university for purposes of providing a bridge (a pathway program) into a mainstream university degree, particularly for international students, have become part of the higher education landscape capitalising on the international demand for tertiary qualifications from Australia and other English-language-based universities. The perceptions of teachers employed in one such pathway program are the focus of this current paper--a research area that to date has been understudied. Such data are of great value in furnishing an in-depth view of the challenges involved in an educational model that is highly commercialised and the impacts it has on teaching and learning, especially on academic identity in terms of the specific key relationships--between teachers and third party provider, between teachers and partner university, between teachers and international students. Some of the more concerning issues revolve around the extent to which market imperatives impinge on pedagogical concerns, on teachers' professional commitment to their vocation, on international students' capacity to acquire an authentic tertiary education that supports rather than detracts their transition to mainstream university, and on whether such educational models can be genuinely sustainable long term.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on a study examining the perceptions of secondary principals, deputies and teachers, of deputy principal (DP) instructional leadership (IL), as well as deputies' professional learning (PL) needs. Framed within an interpretivist approach, the specific objectives of this study were: to explore the extent to which DPs are perceived as leaders of learning, to examine the actual responsibilities of these DPs and to explore the PL that support DP roles. Design/methodology/approach: The researchers used multiple perspective case studies which included semi-structured interviews and key school document analysis. A thematic content analysis facilitated qualitative descriptions and insights from the perspectives of the principals, DPs and teachers of four high-performing secondary schools in Sydney, Australia. Findings: The data revealed that deputies performed a huge range of tasks; all the principals were distributing leadership to their deputies to build leadership capacity and supported their PL in a variety of ways. Across three of the case study schools,most deputies were frequently performing as instructional leaders, improving their school's performance through distributing leadership, team building and goal setting. Deputy PL was largely dependent on principal mentoring and self-initiated but was often ad hoc. Findings add more validity to the importance of principals building the educational leadership of their deputies. Research limitations/implications: This study relied upon responses from four case study schools. Further insight into the key issues discussed may require a longitudinal data that describe perceptions from a substantial number of schools in Australia over time. However, studying only four schools allowed for an in-depth investigation. Practical implications: The findings from this study have practical implications for system leaders with responsibilities of framing the deputies' role as emergent educational leaders rather than as administrators and the need for coherent, integrated, consequential and systematic approaches to DP professional development. Further research is required on the effect of deputy IL on school performance. Originality/value: There is a dearth of research-based evidence exploring the range of responsibilities of deputies and perceptions of staff about deputies' IL role and their PL needs. This is the first published New South Wales, Australian DP study and adds to the growing evidence around perceptions of DPs as instructional leaders by providing an Australian perspective on the phenomenon. The paper raises important concerns about the complexity of the DP's role on the one hand, and on the other hand, the PL that is perceived to be most appropriate for dealing with this complexity.

Purpose: Equipping pre-service teachers with the skills and knowledge needed to teach health in socially critical ways requires pre-service teachers to examine and critique individualistic understandings of health. The purpose of this paper is to use Bourdieu's concepts of the bodily hexis (the body as both separate from society (autonomous individuals) and the body as socially mediated (the influence of social forces upon individuals)) and pedagogic work to investigate the challenges of redressing the reproduction of individualistic conceptualizations of health in teacher education. Design/methodology/approach: The paper focusses on an analysis of 31 pre-service teachers' reflective writing in a foundational health education course, which sought to engage students in thinking about health in socially critical ways. A systematic and procedural form of document analysis was employed to examine and interpret data to investigate the ways in which students were engaging with the socially critical health discourses and course content. Findings: The findings evidence that while students attempted to engage with and demonstrate their knowledge of a socially critical view of health, contradictions, or places where students unknowingly slipped into individualistic ways of thinking appeared frequently across the data. Findings are presented to elucidate challenges facing pre-service teachers in teaching the AC:HPE curriculum. Practical implications: Findings suggest the need for teacher educators to employ pedagogic practices that can disrupt previous pedagogic work, serving to challenge and interrogate current constructions of health, and delve deeply into critical discourses through interchange and reflection. Originality/value: This paper extends the current scholarship of Bourdieusian theoretical concepts in relation to critical health discourses and pedagogies.

Background: This paper approaches evidence-informed practice from the perspective of evidence-informed policy-making. Using the findings of a recent study of evidence-use by educational policy-makers to raise questions about evidence-use by educational practitioners, it seeks to explore what such a study might tell us about how to understand and improve evidence-use by educational practitioners. Purpose: The paper aims, therefore, to identify potential connections, shared insights and common issues between evidence-use in policy and evidence-use in practice. It does this by focusing on two specific areas: the nature of the evidence (i.e. "what" evidence is used) and the nature of the use (i.e. "how" evidence is used). The paper outlines what was found about each of these aspects of evidence-use in policy, and then considers what questions and issues these findings might raise for evidence-use in educational practice. Sample: The empirical study on which this paper is based was an in-depth study of the use of evidence within educational policy development in Australia. It focused on the development of three specific education policies within one Australian state education department and involved interviews with 25 policy-makers who were actively involved in the development of these policies. Design and methods: The policy-based study involved the following data collection processes: (i) in-depth semi-structured interviews with 25 policy-makers who were involved in the development of the selected policies; (ii) documentary analysis of policy documents, background research reports and other relevant papers relating to the selected policies; (iii) unstructured observation (where possible) of meetings and events connected with the development of the selected policies; and (iv) feedback from 40 wider policy staff who took part in a verification workshop to discuss the project's emerging findings. Findings: Drawing on the findings from the original policy study, two areas of potential connection to evidence-use in practice are explored. First, in relation to "varieties of evidence and uses", the negotiation of diverse evidence types and the potential for using evidence in multiple and varied ways appear to be features of evidence-use that are common to educational policy-makers as well as educational practitioners. Secondly, in relation to "narrowness of evidence sources", there is potential for both policy-makers and practitioners to use a narrow (rather than broad) selection of evidence, due to a tendency to work with certain evidence types as a starting point (e.g. performance data) and a tendency to draw on certain evidence sources more frequently (e.g. well-known, familiar research sources). Conclusions: This paper emphasises: (i) the need for more integrated (or joined-up) understandings of evidence-use across contexts of practice and contexts of policy; (ii) the importance of continued efforts to understand and represent evidence-use more effectively within educational practices; and (iii) the value of paying careful attention to the quality and qualities of evidence-use within and across the different settings of educational practice and policy.

The poor outcomes in education, training and employment achieved by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia have been well documented. The transition from a traditional Indigenous society to the statuses of mainstream Australian society has been, and continues to be problematic for Indigenous Australians. The participation in vocational education and training (VET) and employment outcomes for Indigenous Australians has been historically much lower than for non-Indigenous Australians. The aim of this paper is to undertake a targeted review of the existing literature and research into the participation and engagement of Indigenous Australians in VET through a content analysis of three VET based journals, nationally funded VET research and a VET database. The findings point to the publishing of very little research in academic journals however research funded through the National Centre for Vocational Education Research appears to be a prime source of published grey literature. The paper proceeds to discuss the findings in the light of a proposed future research agenda.

This paper explores teachers' and teacher assistants' self-efficacy of delivering PrepSTART, a classroom based, oral language and early literacy program for five-year-old students. In the current study, speech pathologists developed, provided training and monitored program implementation. Teachers and teacher assistants (n = 17) shared their experiences of delivering PrepSTART through a series of focus groups. A content analysis was conducted to determine key themes in participant responses. These themes were then analysed in relation to the four self-efficacy components (mastery, experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and emotional arousal). Differences in levels of understanding about oral language development, communication between professionals, and the importance of building networks emerged as key themes. An improved understanding of the self-efficacy of professionals regarding the implementation of oral language programs will further facilitate the interdisciplinary approach that is needed to promote early academic success for students.

Design and Technologies challenges students to think differently: to think critically and creatively. Yet, how, when and why students are exposed to Design and Technologies curriculum in school classrooms is at the prerogative of their teacher. For this reason, it is imperative that pre-service teachers are inspired by and engaged through relevant, rigorous and responsive courses throughout their undergraduate teaching program. Situated within the Bachelor of Education (Primary and Middle) degree at the University of South Australia, Australia, this study captures pre-service teachers' emerging beliefs, attitudes and understandings of Design and Technologies. Drawing on the comparative responses of pre-service teachers collected at the commencement and conclusion of an undergraduate Design and Technologies course, this paper highlights how immersion in a curriculum area can transform pre-service teachers' theoretical, conceptual and practical understandings and how this may influence how, when and why they incorporate the learning area in their subsequent teaching experiences.

This paper explores the lived experiences of a diverse student cohort enrolled in a master's degree educational-leadership program. The program's global focus was on the quality of teacher education, prospective teachers' workplace preparedness and leaders in the workforce in higher education. Internationalization, real-life experiences and student voice served as an enacted intervention curriculum for an educational leadership course designed to reveal the gap between theory and practice. An epistemological diversity lens stimulated critical reflection on students' participation in the course design and its connection to realities in the field. Diverse higher-education classrooms pose specific challenges for educational leadership programs in including effective internationalization, workplace relevance and improving the generalizability and content validity of the educational leadership course. This small qualitative exploratory investigation provides an in-depth understanding of the value of student voice in informing course and program design. Interviews, observations, two surveys and a document analysis triangulated the data and provided information on the complexities in higher-education classrooms. The findings focus on teacher-educators and higher-education classroom management as well as on the value of critical inquiry, reflection and intervention for existing course designs and transformation.

University programs are currently faced with a number of challenges: how to engage students as active learners, how to ensure graduates are "work ready" with broad and relevant professional skills, and how to support students to see their potential as agents of social change and contributors to social good. This paper presents the findings from a study that explored the impact of an authentic, interdisciplinary project with health, architecture and landscape students. This project facilitated students' entrée into the lived experience of women and children requiring refuge services as a result of homelessness and/or domestic violence. Students collaborated with stakeholders from the refuge sector, visiting sites, undertaking individual research, exchanging ideas and problem-solving, to develop a design guide for a women's refuge. Focus groups were conducted at the conclusion of the activity to gauge students' perceptions of the value of the activity. Results indicated that the "hands-on" and collaborative nature of the learning experience in a real-world context was valued, primarily due to its direct relevance to professional practice. Architecture and landscape participants reported an increase in their understanding and knowledge of refuge clients, and many expressed a commitment to further learning and contribution to the sector. Nursing students felt that the authentic learning experience helped prepare them for the "real world" of practice and that it aided development of their professional identities and capacity to effect real-world change. The learning activity had a positive impact on knowledge acquisition and students' confidence to act as agents of social change.

The profession of urban planning contributes to the design and spatial arrangement of cities, and has been recognized as a key potential facilitator of action on climate change. Yet, there has been limited research to understand if, or how, urban planning students are being educated for climate change competency. This paper investigates the coverage of climate change in the curriculum of professionally accredited urban planning university degrees in Australia. Climate change coverage was assessed across three fields: (1) explicit climate change issues; (2) sustainable urban form issues (e.g. contributing to climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions), and (3) education for sustainability (with links to professional competencies relevant to climate change action). A content analysis was undertaken of: (1) the Planning Institute of Australia's "Policy for the Accreditation of Urban Planning Qualifications," and (2) a sample of nine accredited urban planning degrees. Limited coverage of explicit climate change issues and sustainable urban form issues was found. Coverage of education for sustainability themes (liberal education; civics; interdisciplinarity; cosmopolitism) was stronger. Results indicate that the professional accreditation policy, and the content of urban planning degrees should be revised to include greater coverage of explicit climate change issues.

Secondary school English is shaped not only by complex institutional and discursive forces but also by the mundane reality of available resources. Among the resources used by teachers are commercial textbooks. Classroom textbooks can play a significant role in determining what gets taught in English lessons. They can also influence assumptions about the larger purpose and goals of English. Despite this influence, there have been few recent attempts to analyse rigorously the makeup of English textbooks. This paper describes a method of content analysis that offers a detailed anatomy of the manifest and latent content of English textbooks. We show how the claims of publishers and the rationales offered by textbook authors can be tested against content, activities and design-work in the textbook itself. We also show how a detailed quantitative analysis of textbooks can be used to assess their alignment with official curricula and with prevailing philosophies of English.

While a great deal of research has focused on children's experiences as they start school, less attention has been directed to their experiences--and those of their families and educators--as they start school age care. This paper draws from a recent research project investigating practices that promote positive transitions to school and school age care. Data were generated through questionnaires, document analysis, visits to sites and conversations with a wide range of participants. In this paper, data related to school age care are reported. The results emphasise the importance of communication in the development of strong positive relationships among all those involved in transition. The practices identified as effective reflect the principles of My Time, Our Place: Framework for School Age Care in Australia, and are aligned with the Transition to School: Position Statement, which focuses on the opportunities, expectations, aspirations and entitlements for all during educational transitions. Drawing on these practices, possibilities for enhanced professional practice are explored.

This paper explores how a group of undergraduate Human Movement Studies (HMS) students learnt to know about the body during their four-year academic programme at an Australian university. When students begin an undergraduate programme in HMS they bring with them particular constructions, ideas and beliefs about their own bodies and about the body in general. Those ideas and beliefs are often challenged, disrupted or reinforced according to discourses and practices to which students are exposed and which they experience throughout their programme of study. The courses that these students take in their in HMS degree programme present to them different perspectives about health and the body. Some perspectives take the status of taken-for-granted truths and others are dismissed or ignored. Taking a Foucauldian perspective, this paper explores the dominant discourses and practices to which this group of students was exposed during their four years of academic formation, and the influences that this exposure might have upon their construction of the body and their formation as pre-service Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers. The participants in this study were 14 students, 11 females and 3 males, aged between 18 and 26 at the time of the first interview. The data used for this paper were taken from a larger study and were analysed using a content analysis approach. Results suggest that some students may be heavily influenced by certain practices and discourses during their programme of studies, and that they embody dominant discourses of health. Furthermore, a possible change of thinking may occur across their academic programme, as a consequence of their engagement with a few alternative discourses presented during their academic programme, disrupting some of their previous beliefs and knowledge.

This article reports how "invented tradition" [Hobsbawm, E. (2012), "Introduction: Inventing traditions." In E. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (Eds.), "The invention of tradition" (pp. 1-14). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press] as a long-term process has contributed to Indigenous students experiencing physical education (PE) within Eurocentric curricula that largely ignores their own culture. The study was undertaken at three high schools within the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) which come under the remit of the ACT Education and Training Directorate. Documentary evidence was the main data source and figurational sociology was used to inform the study and analyse the data. Central to figurational sociology is the notion of the figuration which refers to how individuals are located interdependently in social structures characterised by relationships of power. Historical and contemporary documents were analysed using content and thematic analysis according to the premise that the document writers are themselves included in figurations and their inclusion or presence has to be taken into account [Dolan, P. (2009)," Using documents: A figurational approach." In J. Hogan, P. Dolan, & P. Donnelly (Eds.), "Approaches to qualitative research: Theory and its practical application" (pp. 185-208). Cork: Oak Trees Press]. The paper identifies key events and long-term processes mainly linked to Australia's colonial past that have shaped contemporary PE curricula. Despite intent within historical PE curricula to include Indigenous perspectives in PE these have largely not translated to actual teaching. The final part of the paper suggests additional research to find ways to embed these perspectives. This is important because current curriculum requirements at a national level emphasise these perspectives.

There has been a call for effective professional learning to improve the quality of the science teaching of primary teachers in Australia. It seems from the literature that teaching science effectively is a challenging endeavour for primary teachers. Professional learning based on the instructional core framework is an emerging approach that has been utilised sparingly in teacher professional learning in Australia. This paper reports on a case study that investigated the outcomes of one instance of a professional learning programme for primary science teachers based on the instructional core. Using a case study methodology, the current study collected data from multiple sources, including video-taped lesson observations, teacher interviews, field notes and transcripts of the teacher learning sessions. The study shows a number of positive outcomes with reference to the three areas of the instructional core framework: content, pedagogy and student skill outcomes. The findings of the paper are especially relevant to teacher educators, coaches and mentors who are interested in professional learning approaches that achieve positive outcomes in student learning.

Purpose: The health promoting school model is rarely implemented in relation to sexuality education. This paper reports on data collected as part of a five-year project designed to implement a health promoting and whole school approach to sexuality education in a five campus year 1-12 college in regional Victoria, Australia. Using a community engagement focus involving local and regional stakeholders and with a strong research into practice component, the project is primarily concerned with questions of capacity building, impact and sustainability as part of whole school change. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach: Using an action research design, data were collected from parents, students, teachers and key community stakeholders using a mixed methods approach involving surveys, interviews, document analysis and participant observation. Findings: Sexuality education has become a key school policy and has been implemented from years 1 to 9. Teachers and key support staff have engaged in professional learning, a mentor program has been set up, a community engagement/parent liaison position has been created, and parent forums have been conducted on all five campuses. Research limitations/implications: The translation of research into practice can be judged by the impact it has on teacher capacity and the students' experience. Classroom observation and more longitudinal research would shed light on whether the espoused changes are happening in reality. Originality/value: This paper reports on lessons learned and the key enabling factors that have built capacity to ensure that sexuality education within a health promoting, whole school approach will remain sustainable into the future. These findings will be relevant to others interested in building capacity in sexuality education and health promotion more generally.

This paper shares a health and wellbeing partnership, modelling implementation of physical education (PE) advocated by the United Nations (UN). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) exemplifies global efforts towards equality, specifically Goal 3 and 4 address health and wellbeing. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into cross sector "partnerships", identified as essential for the implementation of the SDGs. This is significant as the UN acknowledge a present gap of information on partnerships in action and a need for reporting from the ground level. The project "Best Start: A community collaborative approach to lifelong health and wellness", began as a partnership between a university and nearby schools and quickly grew to involve Australian Registered Training Organisations, the local health industry, Education departments and sport governing bodies. The collaborations involved pre-service teachers teaching Health and PE lessons to children in a disadvantaged socio-economic area, creating valuable learning experiences for stakeholders. Local and global communities were involved in research and reform. The project creatively optimised resources available through state, Australian and international connections. International partnerships enabled identification of unique contextual opportunities. Programme planning was strengthened with data gathered from an England and Wales Ofsted awarded Primary Physical Education course. Various methods, including: semi-structured interviews, reflective journal, observations, document analysis, and Student Evaluation of Teaching Units (SETU) were adopted. SETU is valid and reliable data collected by the university for the purposes of research. The findings support that partnerships enable SDG implementation and the research paper offers direction for localisation.

Online learning is increasingly ubiquitous in higher education. However, research regarding online teaching often focuses on the affordances of the online environment rather than on the quality of pedagogy. In this paper we consider how online learning could be enhanced using rich pedagogical models that are consistent with a wealth of existing knowledge on pedagogy for face-to-face settings. To do so, we apply an established framework, the Quality Teaching model, to explore pedagogy in the online environment and illustrate its potential benefits using a case study of 60 students in a tertiary mathematics teacher education program. We conclude that the use of an evidence-based pedagogical model can help guide online instructors in the development of high quality online courses.

The acceptance of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) as a legitimate form of scholarly investigation and the shape that it takes in post-secondary education are inherently discipline-specific. This paper examines how the character and heritage of public administration influence the acceptance of SoTL, and the form that it takes. It argues that the applied nature of public administration and its interdisciplinary character have influenced SoTL in the discipline. This study concludes systematic self-reflection by disciplines may be needed to identify potential factors that limit the acceptance and/or direction of SoTL in a discipline.

This paper is the outcome of a collaborative endeavour between mathematics and science educators where the insight from each field mutually informed one another. Specifically, building on the knowledge base from mathematics education research, this study analyses the ways in which percent is interpreted by first year university students in general chemistry. The content analysis of the chemistry problems reveals six categories of situations where percent is distinctly used. Within each category, we unfold the mathematical structure of the chemistry problems to feature the inherent complexity in setting the functional relationship among quantities. Our analysis also highlights how percent is used as an intensive quantity involving an implicit referent that conceals its interpretation. The strategies used by the students included the unitary analysis method, the equation method and the proportion method. Furthermore, percent was commonly interpreted as a fraction, ratio and operator. Although inadequate conceptual knowledge of chemistry explained some of the errors observed in the percent problems, the procedural meaning attached to percent in terms of its operator interpretation tend to be equally influential. Importantly, our study highlights how the knowledge base from mathematics and chemistry education can productively be used to further our understanding of the mathematical knowledge for learning chemistry.

Fieldwork is viewed as integral to geography teaching and acclaimed benefits often include holistic, student-driven learning, where all the senses are engaged and the impacts are more than cognitive. While these benefits are often assumed, in this paper, I argue that geography fieldwork in schools is often teacher-led and focused on the intellectual task of knowledge acquisition and skill development. Based on a qualitative content analysis of examples of fieldwork in a state geography teachers' journal, I assert that the affective and sensory dimensions are often used to promote the benefits of fieldwork, but seldom are explicitly addressed through fieldwork pedagogy and learning activities in school geography. I contend that this is a missed opportunity for a deeper, more embodied and critical engagement with, and response to, the places visited.

Lullabies have existed since ancient times, and are sung across all most all cultures to soothe babies and lull them to sleep. As screen media use pervades contemporary familial lives, it is perhaps inevitable that lullabies have been adopted and adapted as repertoire. This recording of lullabies in audiovisual modes has transformed the ways in which these songs are learned, transmitted, experienced and used within young children's lives. As part of a larger study investigating music and screen media in the lives of young children, this paper reports on evolving lullaby practices in the lives of Australian children. Using an ethnographic methodology, content and production of, and responses to, lullabies presented via YouTube, Apps and television have been analysed. Findings indicated that lullabies presented via YouTube clips and Apps tend to be economically produced, and demonstrate a lack of understanding of young children's social and/or developmental needs. Televised lullabies tend to function as signals for settling, rather than for lulling babies and young children to sleep, and their use plays an increasingly significant role in families' everyday routines.

The capacities of early childhood educators to function well in their work environments are critical to providing high-quality programs for children. Few studies have investigated work-related wellbeing of educators from an organisational perspective. This paper reports findings from a qualitative study that investigated the perspectives about the wellbeing of educators through interviews with nine senior managers employed in ECEC organisations in Australia. Data were drawn from individual interviews and analysed using principles of conventional content analysis. Four themes were identified in the data: health and safety issues (e.g. supports needed to ensure physical and emotional safety); operational challenges (e.g. issues related to work-related stress and importance of recruiting and retaining well-qualified educators); invisibility (e.g. complexities in educator's work for which the impact on personal wellbeing may not be easily evident to others); supportive adult work environments (e.g. aspects of workplace design, work and staffing practices). The key stakeholders interviewed also identified strategies used to address workplace challenges that impact on educator wellbeing.

The present study aims to examine the leadership research in higher education in order to shed light on its development during the last two decades by revealing the evolving trends in research on leadership in higher education, the most prominent scholars working on related research, the most popular topics in related research, and the countries in which the related studies are based. Bibliometric method was employed in the analysis of the original research and review papers published in five prominent higher education journals between 1995 and 2014: "Higher Education," "Research in Higher Education," "Studies in Higher Education," "The Journal of Higher Education" and "The Review of Higher Education." The results of this bibliometric analysis show that the majority of the related articles come from three countries: the U.S.A., the UK and Australia. It is also found that the leadership research in higher education is still very scarce and has not shown any meaningful increase during the last two decades. In addition, content analysis is used to provide more in-depth information about the topical focus, purpose and methodology of the selected articles. The results of content analyses are discussed in detail, and suggestions for the future research are provided.

This paper examines Catholic RE curriculum documents from 2 jurisdictions to assess how well they present Jews and Judaism. It finds that their representations of Jews and Judaism rely on structures of thought, reinforced by normative Catholicism, that enable the conditions to reproduce supersessionist thinking and attitudes. Its conclusion argues that current Catholic RE curricula must confront the question of how to coordinate strong and generous presentations of Jews and Judaism with Christian teachings on fulfillment. No less, they must also confront the question of how to consider Judaism and Christianity as different only in kind, and not by degree.