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This research applied qualitative and narrative methodology to investigate police officers' professional practice and learning. Analysis of the data revealed three thematic frameworks of power-knowledge relations, practice and knowledge, and gender and (dis)embodied practice that harboured doubtful matters (aporias) and blind spots (lacunae). The potential for change and the possibility of different perspectives and new learning was evident. Paradigmatic shifts in thinking, learning and practice are needed for police officers to develop reflexive practice that is social, relational, agential, and embodied, however, limitations and constraints exist based on the strength and resilience of dominant pedagogies influenced by social, cultural, institutional and occupational practices and discourses.

This ethnographic research project explored the application of selected ideas relating to grammar from M.A.K.Halliday's theory of systemic functional linguistics in the context of developing the academic writing skills of upper secondary students studying English in West Jakarta in 2009. Results showed significant development in students writing and grammatical awareness.

This paper provides a temporal snapshot of two midterm PhD candidates as they both grapple with paradigms and methodology, research questions, external challenges within the research field, locating their voices as doctoral students, and maintaining energy and focus to continue their doctoral journey. These two candidates, one of whom is interstate, share the same supervisor and have come to know each other through telephone reading groups, email communications, and face-to-face meetings with their supervisor, and attending conferences and other collegial opportunities. The catalyst for this paper was a reading group discussion of a paper by Pirrie and Macleod (2010, p. 367) applying the descriptors of ʻjourneyman, wayfarer, fellow traveller or craftsmanʼ to the conceptualisation of the identities of researchers at temporal moments in the research process. We were also inspired by Kamler and Thomsonʼs (2001) paper where they respond to each otherʼs emails in a conversation formulating ideas and perspectives about ʻwriting upʼ research. Additionally, we have considered the work of Ryan, Amorim and Kusch (2010) and Lindsay, Kell, Ouellette and Westall (2010). We have linked their work on reflective learning to our experience of reflecting ʻaloudʼ in a supportive learning community and our subsequent individual reflexive learning. At the heart of our reflections is a relationship between supervisor (Jennifer) and doctoral candidates (Christine and Cheryl); the relationship is a fluid community of practice (Wenger, 1998). A community of practice that depends not so much on direction from the supervisor, but rather as a space where concepts and ideas can be spoken aloud in a safe, critical and supportive environment. Members are able to listen, both to themselves and to each other, before reflecting and finding their own way. At other times each juggles their own professional and personal identities as they become teacher, journeyman, fellow trav

This thesis critiqued the professional practices of an Institute’s graduates in order to establish the effectiveness of a teacher education innovation in Pakistan shaped in partnership with Australian educators. The research findings show that relevant, high quality teacher education, capable of effecting positive changes in schooling, is achievable within Pakistan.

In the Australian educational context, the International Baccalaureate Diploma has had a measurable effect on both state and independent schools. This globally recognised international program has fostered and encouraged national curriculum innovation through standardization in assessment, criteria based reporting, content rich staff development and whole school change.

This paper reports on the 2002 pilot phase (in a provincial city) of a continuing study of pregnant and parenting young people and their movements in and out of school (and other educational) settings. It presents an overview of methodological approaches employed and dilemmas encountered, data collected and readings of that data, and an indication of how issues identified from the pilot study have informed the directions and emphases of an expanded investigation for 2003 and beyond. The paper draws on specific cases to identify how young people negotiate their way in and out of school during this phase of their lives. It offers an insight into how young people see themselves ''becoming somebody'' in and around other identity work they engage in while pregnant and parenting at school. The research provides knowledge about the intersection between the institutional and individual complexities of leaving and staying-on at school, including an account of the academic and social reasons for leaving or returning to school and school responses to student pregnancy and parenting.

This paper explores student and teacher understandings of what it means to be 'at risk' in a Northern metropolitan Melbourne school located in the area of high cultural diversity and unemployment. The research team undertook a range of interviews with 20 Year 10 students and their teachers as part of a research project investigating teacher and student attitudes to the role of the school in how at risk young people understand their futures. Drawing on Bourdieu's notion of habitus for a conceptual framework, we describe three 'anecdotal cases’ that exemplify the 'static' nature of the relations between the school, the teachers, the students and the community. The cases highlight the following paradoxes: (i) a teacher discourse of care that fails to address student motivation and attempts to change; (ii) a lack of agency for both teachers and students when dealing with at risk categories and attempts to best manage post school options; and (iii) the apparent alienation from the school of parents in an otherwise cohesive local community. These tensions were manifestations of staff composition and dynamics, cultural attitudes, and a limited sense of location that worked against resilience, mobility and capacity building for the students.

This paper maps the policy shifts around the education and training of youth that frame how schools respond to issues of youth' at risk'. These shifts have occurred with the move from the self managing schools marked by market discourses of competition, autonomy and image management that supplanted earlier discourses of welfare and community, through to recent policies in Victoria arising from the Kirby Review of Post compulsory Education and Public Education, the Next Generation undertaken by the Labor government. These reports, and the policies emerging out of them, are producing new discourses about youth and schooling focusing on wellbeing, learning networks and more systemic support for schools at the same time as there is increased accountability and expectations of schools. Drawing on the school exclusion literature from the U.K, and using Bourdieu's notion of habitus, we examine the findings from a recent study undertaken on the Geelong Pathways Planning project, funded through a Victorian government strategy, to discuss how schools respond to such initiatives. The project explored the ways in which students in the Geelong region understood and worked with the job planning pathways program, and how service providers (schools, community education facilities, job networks etc) coordinated to meet the needs of individual youth. There was a disjuncture in the participating schools between the discourses of care and welfare for students at risk, and the actual practices and policies that ignored or excluded such students. This paper concludes with a discussion of what might be required systemically, in schools and in their relations to other education providers, to build the capacity to respond more effectively to all students.

This research project investigates how the experiences of full-time employees undertaking part-time tertiary study influence perceptions of the value of undertaking part-time study whilst working full-time.