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Purpose: Globally, countries with both developed and developing economies are struggling to secure sufficient participation in vocational education to generate the range and quantum of skills required for their communities and realising national social and economic goals. In an era of high aspiration, vocational education and the occupations it serves are increasingly seen as being a less than desirable outcome by young people and their parents. Hence, there is a need to identify means by which to inform and engage young people in considering vocational education and the occupations it serves. The case study discussed in this paper is contextualised within the Australian state of Queensland, which, like many other countries is struggling to have a workforce sufficient to meet communities' healthcare needs as its population both grows and ages. Methods: The study data were collected from 1) interviews with healthcare-related stakeholders including health industry representatives, teachers or practitioners, and healthcare providers, 2) focus groups with senior secondary students, and 3) surveys with these participant groups. It provides a descriptive analysis of efforts to secure greater participation by young people in allied health roles, and, in particular, young Australian Indigenous people. Findings: The study participants included those from regional and metropolitan centres and from state and independent schools, and in all of which the focus on engagement was central. Findings indicated that engagement was necessary to advise young people about these occupations, the effective preparation for them, and likely retention in the workforce. Conclusion: This study highlights the need for intentional strategies to engage young people, their parents/guardians and with those efforts likely needing to be organised and enacted at the local level. This requires collaboration and engagement from education, industry, and local communities. Essentially, a systemic approach is required, specifying roles for government, employers, educational systems, and teachers and parents who engage directly with young people. In all, engagement, advice and opportunities locally are all emphasised in the study reported here.

Work-integrated learning (WIL) has been suggested as a potentially beneficial addition to modern doctoral education. However, there is little research outlining the specificities of WIL aimed at PhD students. This paper explores the range of WIL opportunities available to PhD students through a review of secondary data. The findings indicate that WIL opportunities are non-homogenous and vary widely across their structure and implementation. Patterns emerge to indicate that WIL opportunities tend to be optional, paid, short-term, focused on horizontal learning development, and provide opportunities for boundary crossing outside of academia. These findings imply that WIL has the potential to complement doctoral education by providing opportunities to experience cross-sector or cross-discipline learning and development. However, higher education institutes might consider becoming more involved in the design and implementation of WIL for PhD students. Additional research is required to understand how WIL opportunities fit into doctoral education and to evaluate existing WIL opportunities.

Providing behavioural support to all students is increasingly recognised as an integral part of teaching and learning in schools throughout the world. This small-scale, qualitative study reports on the perceived challenges faced by staff in implementing school-wide behavioural support at two remote Indigenous primary schools in Queensland, Australia. Individual semi-structured interviews held with two administrators and six teachers revealed implementation barriers to be clustered around four themes: staff turnover and leadership change; staff training; consistency in teaching and responding to student behaviour; and involvement of parents and remote community. These initial findings highlight the need to extend investigations into barriers associated with implementing and sustaining this behavioural approach in other remote schools throughout Australia, as student behaviour influences student learning, and lifting educational outcomes for Indigenous students is a national priority.

Partnerships with local public sector agencies, enterprises and tertiary institutions offer a means to inform young people about post-school pathways into working life and occupations that schools alone cannot achieve. Informing about those pathways is an important, yet, complex educational goal for schooling. This is because much of schooling effort privileges and is directed towards higher education entry. Often advice provided to young people through schools is by teachers and administrators who are, understandably, unacquainted with the range of post-school pathways other than higher education. School guidance officers report being ill-equipped and unable to provide students personalised advice. Consequently, sources of advice and experiences beyond the school are now being utilised, particularly through the growing role of partnerships. These partnerships take diverse forms and comprise different kinds of institutional alignments and are increasingly being viewed as essential bases for supporting effective and informed post-school transitions. This article presents and discusses a review of literature and a recent investigation to advance principles and practices of how such partnerships can be best initiated, enacted, and sustained over time and they can meet the goals of informing and guiding young people's pathways, including options other than progression to higher education.

An important topic of study in secondary mathematics is non-linear functions, including quadratic equations. In this study, findings from 25 Year 11 students indicated that difficulties with critical prerequisite concepts such as algebraic conventions impeded students' success in understanding and working with quadratics. Analysis of student errors identified misconceptions associated with the null factor law, and the nature of quadratic equations. This paper proposes that these findings are a result of limited timeframes nominated for learning quadratic topics outlined in the enacted curriculum. The implication of this is that the enactment of the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics F-10 did not support the development of conceptual understanding or procedural fluency with key mathematical concepts for these students. Without purposeful attention to prerequisite knowledge, and suitable time allocated to develop understanding and fluency, students' proficiency with topics such as quadratics is negatively influenced. A mastery approach to the hierarchically organised curriculum is supported by findings of this study.

Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) is perceived as important by universities and industry for equipping students with employability skills. This study contributes to the literature by using a methodological approach that visualises the sustained underinvestment in WIL by both universities and industry, which leaves professional staff who administer WIL placements with the burden of maintaining and stabilising the WIL system. Consequently, WIL administrators feel burnt out. Through a systems thinking methodology, extant literature is combined with empirical data collected from WIL administrative staff across multiple disciplines at 12 Australian universities. Influence diagramming visualises how WIL administrators are positioned in a burnout loop within a Growth and Underinvestment systems dynamic archetype. As such, no matter how hard WIL administrators strive to deliver quality WIL experiences, their efforts are systemically undermined by an underinvestment in job resources, insufficient industry placement opportunities, unproductive relationships with colleagues, and poor student preparedness for WIL.

Students' level of engagement and approach to learning can significantly impact their overall success in a course. This study used the student course engagement questionnaire (SCEQ) to assess the engagement levels of first-year undergraduate students studying three different introductory units (chemistry, biology and nursing) at a regional Australian university. No significant differences in engagement were found between genders, or for students studying different units. One of the most notable factors influencing engagement was student age, with students under 20 years of age scoring significantly less than mature age students across nearly all measures of engagement. Tertiary educators could use several complementary approaches to improve engagement in younger students, including the use of interactive multimedia and social media to connect with students, making the unit content relatable and relevant to students' lives, providing authentic and engaging assessment items, and pursuing interactive approaches to lectures and tutorials. Given that many university students take an introductory science course during their first year, these results are likely to be relevant across a range of disciplines.

Publish or perish is the cautionary aphorism reminding academics to produce academic work for career longevity. For communities historically excluded from tertiary institutions, this aphorism can also signify a responsibility to ensure their voices are heard. Tertiary institutions recognise the importance of fostering productive writing opportunities; and writing retreats are a valuable approach. This article demonstrates the importance of writing retreats from the perspective of Indigenous postgraduate scholars in Australia. Two writing retreats were held off-campus in 2018-2019. To identify the impact of the writing retreats, we (the participants in the retreat) used an active participatory approach to explore our experiences using data collected from Yarning circles and written critical self-reflections. We identified three key themes: (1) writing retreats as supportive spaces for academic writing, (2) the development of an ongoing community of practice and (3) the importance of managing cultural risk in Indigenous programs. The findings demonstrate the importance of providing culturally grounded opportunities that support Indigenous scholarship.

University governing bodies, especially academic boards, play a crucial role in policy formation. However, due to the predominance of managerial values over academic values in the policy-making process, a persistent divide exists between policy formulation and implementation. This divide results from the marginalisation of academics and the dominance of managerial authority figures within these bodies. Our study investigates the latter to determine the precise Foucauldian apparatus used by authority figures to influence policy-making meetings. Using an innovative arts-based method, we analyse ethnographic vignettes through a Foucauldian lens and transform them into collages depicting the apparatus used by authority figures: Strategic Managerial Monumentalism, Managerial Historical Revisionism, Managerial Discursive Dominance, Managerial Panoptic Surveillance, and Managerial Normalisation. We contend that only a well-defined separation of governance powers can effectively counter the encroachment of managerialism and uphold the democratic representation of academic values in university policies to bridge the policy-practice divide.

In today's data-centric world, knowledge and skills in business analytics (BA) have become critical for business professionals to the extent that Foundation BA courses are increasingly being recognised globally as the core component of business programs. However, these courses are characterised by large cohorts of students from diverse backgrounds where deep engagement among students is hard to achieve. This article presents the design and implementation of Threaded Case Studies premised on the Community of Inquiry model to deepen engagement in a Foundation BA course with large and diverse cohorts of students enrolled in online and hybrid modes. The cases were developed with a focus on the social presence, cognitive presence, and teaching presence. The quantitative and qualitative data indicated that the Threaded Case Study approach not only increased learners' pass rate and overall satisfaction with the course, but also increased enthusiasm for the course and optimised their learning by engaging them in authentic case studies while minimising intrinsic cognitive loads. In short, there was a substantial and measurable improvement in student performance, student retention, and student satisfaction. Teaching suggestions are provided for practitioners who intend to maximise learner engagement in similar contexts.

In Queensland, Australia, there has been a major reform shifting Year 7 from Primary to Secondary Schools and implementing the Junior Secondary initiative for Years 7-9 in government schools. Six Guiding Principles, including establishing a Distinct Identity, provide the framework. This study examined 317 students transitioning from Year 6 to 7, with a focus on how, and to what extent, they established a Distinct Identity, evident in their sense of belonging and connectedness, and of feeling safe and confident in their school. This longitudinal study was conducted in two Phases with data collected over a year. Phase 1, pre-transition, involved 471 Year 6 students in 18 primary schools. Phase 2, post-transition, involved 317 matched respondents now in Year 7 in 11 secondary schools. Student voice is featured in this study as a key point of difference to previous studies about young people's transitions. The findings reveal that students' sense of belonging at school remained mostly stable and positive across the Year 6 to 7 transition, with a small decline in mean scores. This finding is a positive reflection on the effectiveness of the Junior Secondary initiative, which set out to address declines previously reported in the literature.

Understanding the drivers of student dropout from higher education has been a policy concern for several decades. However, the contributing role of certain factors--including student mental health--remains poorly understood. Furthermore, existing studies linking student mental health and university dropout are limited in both methodology and scope--for example, they often rely on small and/or non-representative samples or subjective measures, and focus almost exclusively on main effects. This paper overcomes many of these shortcomings by leveraging unique linked administrative data on the full population of domestic students commencing undergraduate studies at Australian universities between 2012 and 2015 (n = 652,139). Using these data, we document that approximately 15% of students drop out of university within their first academic year. Critically, students receiving treatment for mental health problems are 4.3 (adjusted) to 8.3 (unadjusted) percentage points more likely to drop out of higher education. This association remains in the presence of an encompassing set of potential confounds, and is remarkably uniform across segments of the student population determined by individual, family, and programme characteristics. Altogether, our findings call for increased policy efforts to improve student mental health and to buffer against its deleterious effects on retention.

University institutional policy is poorly understood. While policy is required by law for universities to accept funding and is revered for articulating values, mitigating risk, and guiding practice, policy is frequently considered absurd and resisted in practice. This is the policy-practice divide. To gain a better understanding of this divide and the nature of the resistance, we asked policy actors to describe their experiences with policy development, implementation, enactment, and review. We asked: "If policy is absurd, what is the nature of the relationship between policy and university management, and how do those who enact policy deal with this absurdity?" We discovered that university management has an infinitely regressive self-fulfilling relationship with policy because they intentionally exclude the workforce from policy-making and see themselves as solely responsible for policy interpretation and implementation. However, when Kierkegaard's concepts of absurdity, faith, hope, and doubt are applied to policy actors' experiences, we see that resistance can be characterised positively as a "leap of faith," where those who enact policy overcome their doubts and reinterpret it to achieve some semblance of good. This is an unintended consequence for managerialism, as deliberately creating a policy-practice divide solicits resistive "good" practices from policy actors.

Autistic children experience a high rate of sleep problems, which have been associated with maternal mental health difficulties. However, the directionality of these relationships has received little attention. The extent to which children's sleep problems influence maternal mental health difficulties and vice versa remains unclear. The aim of this study was to examine the bidirectional relationships between the sleep problems of autistic children and maternal mental health difficulties over 12 years. Six biennial waves of longitudinal data from when children were 4 to 5 years old were drawn from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The sample comprised 397 child-mother dyads. Maternal mental health was assessed with the Kessler-6, while sleep problems were assessed through a series of questions relating to common sleep problems in children. The results demonstrated significant bidirectional effects between maternal mental health and child sleep problems at key developmental transition time points. Specifically, when children transitioned from preschool to primary school and again when the children transitioned from primary school to high school. These findings highlight the need for increased support for both the child and mother at these critical time points to reduce the negative impact of maternal psychological distress on child sleep problems and vice versa.

Objective: To investigate the longitudinal associations between COVID-19 induced stress (related to COVID-19 restrictions/changes), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, oppositional symptoms, and mental health outcomes (negative affect, anxiety, depression, and irritability) in children with ADHD during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: Parents of 140 Australian children with ADHD (aged 5-17 years) completed an online survey in May 2020 during stay-at-home restrictions and 12-months later. Results: Baseline COVID-19 stress was associated with increased total ADHD symptom severity ([beta] = 0.21, p = 0.007) and hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms ([beta] = 0.23, p = 0.002) at 12-months, after accounting for covariates (i.e., child age, gender, ADHD medication, socio-economic status, and baseline symptoms). Despite some indication of associations between baseline COVID-19 stress and 12-month oppositional symptoms and negative affect, these were attenuated when adjusting for baseline symptoms. Conclusions: The study provides initial evidence of the medium-term impacts of pandemic-related stress for children with ADHD.

This article examines how the 'teacher quality' agenda, evident in the globalised discourse on education policy, constructs changes to teachers' work and teacher education. We undertake a critical policy analysis of two reports from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), addressing three issues. First, we discuss the global and national context in which 'teacher quality' policies have emerged. We examine implications of policy enactment in Australia and analyse how the OECD documents construct understandings of teacher quality. We link our analysis to a recent government inquiry into the teaching profession in Australia, looking specifically at the impact of the teacher quality discourse on teacher education. The OECD documents constrain what is perceived as acceptable curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation in teacher education. We argue, with others, that changes in response to the teacher quality discourse are narrowing what it means to undertake quality teaching work, especially in contexts of disadvantage.

The study characterised differences in costs associated with raising a child between four rare disorders and examined the associations between these costs with clinical severity. Caregivers of 108 individuals with Prader-Willi, Angelman (AS), Chromosome 15q Duplication and fragile X (FXS) syndromes completed a modified Client Services Receipt Inventory and participants completed intellectual/developmental functioning and autism assessments. AS incurred the highest yearly costs per individual ($AUD96,994), while FXS had the lowest costs ($AUD33,221). Intellectual functioning negatively predicted total costs, after controlling for diagnosis. The effect of intellectual functioning on total costs for those with AS was significantly different to the other syndromes. The study highlights the significant costs associated with these syndromes, particularly AS, linked with severity of intellectual functioning.

Academics report feeling unable to cope in the managerialised university. To confirm these feelings are symptoms of managerialism's tightening grip, we use Bourdieusian concepts of field and capital to compare academics and professional staff experiential statements in an Australian university. We compare their field conditions and examine how their differences enable or hinder the accumulation of capital that defines their field. Findings show that managerialism requires professional staff to share work tasks and be on-campus, which enables them to accumulate the capital they require. Managerialism also permits and resources academics to working out-of-office to accumulate their required capital. Consequentially though, university operational knowledge becomes informal and only accessible to professional staff who accumulate the required social capital to access it. Professional staff are thus fish-in-water; easily accumulating social capital through day-to-day activities. But academics become fish-out-of-water (office); they flounder to access operational knowledge, which leads to feelings of not coping.