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In this paper, we draw on accounts from students to inform a Middle Schooling movement that has been variously described as "arrested", "unfinished" and "exhausted". We propose that if the Middle Schooling movement is to understand the changing worlds of students and develop new approaches in the middle years of schooling, then it is important to draw on the insights that individual students can provide by conducting research with "students-as-informants". The early adolescent informants to this paper report high hopes for their futures (despite their lower socio-economic surroundings), which reinforces the importance of supporting successful learner identities and highlights the role of schooling in the decline of adolescent student aspirations. However, their insights did not stop at the individual learner, with students also identifying cultural and structural constraints to reform. As such, we argue that students may be both an important resource for inquiry into individual school reform and for the Middle Schooling movement internationally. (Contains 2 notes and 1 table.)

The educational research and policy scene in Australia over the past decade has featured a number of contradictory developments. National policy has sponsored more interdisciplinary and applied research, while moving down a Research Quality Framework pathway which prioritises measurable quality and impact measures. At the same time, recent international and national policies in literacy education have been dominated by a psychological (rather than socio-cultural) view of literacy, wrapped within a discourse that valorises "evidence-based" practice. As literacy researchers coming from an ethnographic, collaborative and critical tradition, we have had to be strategic to secure funding to continue our research agenda in innovative, ethical and scholarly ways. This paper uses the case of a recent research project to explore some of the ways in which our approaches have been contradictorily positioned within this policy context. (Contains 5 footnotes.)

In Australia, as in many western education systems over the last two decades, discourses of accountability and performativity have reshaped education policy that has in turn reorganised the work of school leaders and teachers. One of the effects of this reorganisation is increased attention to the production, analysis and display of student achievement data. In this paper we examine in detail a sequence of the production and reading of literacy assessment data in a small Catholic school. Our analysis uses institutional ethnography's concept of the "active text", the text as occurring in a specific place and time even as it is articulated to social relations beyond its immediate context. Through this process we learn from those involved how their everyday work brings into being formalised, textually authorised processes in a local site that ensure the school meets accountability requirements, while enabling teachers to resist standardisation of literacy teaching and assessment.

In their quest for resources to support children's early literacy learning and development, parents encounter and traverse different spaces in which discourses and artifacts are produced and circulated. This paper uses conceptual tools from the field of geosemiotics to examine some commercial spaces designed for parents and children that foreground preschool learning and development. Drawing on data generated in a wider study, I discuss some of the ways in which the material and virtual commercial spaces of a transnational shopping mall company and an educational toy company operate as sites of encounter between discourses and artifacts about children's early learning and parents of preschoolers. I consider how companies connect with and "situate" people as parents and customers, and then offer pathways designed for parents to follow as they attempt to meet their very young children's learning and development needs. I argue that these pathways are both material and ideological, and that they are increasingly tending to lead parents to the online commercial spaces of the World Wide Web. I show how companies are using the online environment and hybrid offline and online spaces and flows to reinforce an image of themselves as authoritative brokers of childhood resources for parents, which is highly valuable in a policy climate that foregrounds lifelong learning and school readiness. (Contains 2 notes and 5 figures.)

This paper argues for the need for critical reading comprehension in an era of accountability that often promotes reading comprehension as readily assessable through students answering multiple choice questions of unseen texts. Based upon a 1 year study investigating literacy in Years 4-9 the ways strong-performing primary schools develop serious and in-depth reading for learning are explored. School and teacher features which allow for the development of sophisticated pedagogical repertoires and space for critical reading comprehension, without losing the complexity of curriculum offerings, are outlined. How one experienced middle primary teacher operates strategically, ethically and critically in supporting her ESL students to learn to read is illustrated. The teacher's work is situated within the complex accountability demands faced by classroom teachers. This was accomplished by a teacher whose pedagogical repertoire has been assembled across a career teaching in low-SES high ESL communities in a school with a balanced literacy program and high level of collegial support. Risks for schools and teachers whose circumstances work against their capacities for prioritisation and strategic decision-making are identified and discussed.

A great deal of educational policy proceeds as though teachers are malleable and ever-responsive to change. Some argue they are positioned as technicians who simply implement policy. However, how teachers go about their work and respond to reform agendas may be contingent upon many factors that are both biographical in nature and workplace related. In this paper we discuss the work of middle school teachers in low-socioeconomic communities from their perspectives. Referring to reflective interviews, meeting transcripts and an electronic reporting template, we examine how teacher participants in a school reform project describe their work--what they emphasise and what they down-play or omit. Using Foucaultian approaches to critical discourse analysis and insights from Dorothy Smith's (2005) "Institutional Ethnography," we consider the "discursive economy" (Carlson, 2005) in teachers' reported experiences of their everyday practices in northern suburbs schools in South Australia in which a democratic progressive discourse exists alongside corporate and disciplinary discourses. (Contains 2 notes.)

In this paper we consider the place of early childhood literacy in the discursive construction of the identity(ies) of "proper" parents. Our analysis crosses between representations of parenting in texts produced by commercial and government/public institutional interests and the self-representations of individual parents in interviews with the researchers. The argument is made that there are commonalities and disjunctures in represented and lived parenting identities as they relate to early literacy. In commercial texts that advertise educational and other products, parents are largely absent from representations and the parent's position is one of consumer on behalf of the child. In government-sanctioned texts, parents are very much present and are positioned as both learners about and important facilitators of early learning when they "interact" with their children around language and books. The problem for which both, in their different ways, offer a solution is the "not-yet-ready" child precipitated into the evaluative environment of school without the initial competence seen as necessary to avoid falling behind right from the start. Both kinds of producers promise a smooth induction of children into mainstream literacy and learning practices if the "good parent" plays her/his part. Finally, we use two parent cases to illustrate how parents' lived practice involves multiple discursive practices and identities as they manage young children's literacy and learning in family contexts in which they also need to negotiate relations with their partners and with paid and domestic work.

Parents deal with a complex web of choices when seeking and using knowledge and resources related to their young children's literacy development. Information concerning children's learning and development comes in many forms and is produced by an increasingly diverse range of players including governments, non-government organizations and commercial businesses. This study used a survey, interview and artifact collection to investigate mothers' and fathers' reported activities in seeking, accessing, producing and circulating information and resources related to children's learning and development. Differences were found relating to parent gender and level of education. Parents' resourcing activities are also shaped by their particular goals for their children. (Contains 4 tables and 3 notes.)

Since the mid-1990s, government policies in the USA, Canada, England, and Australia have promoted the need to produce an ICT skilled workforce in order to ensure national competitiveness in globalised economic conditions. In this article, we examine the ways in which these policy intentions in 1 state in Australia were translated into a techno-determinist and technocentric plan which focused primarily on getting wired up and connected. We summarise the findings from 2 projects: an investigation of a state-wide principals' professional development programme and an action research study investigating literacy, educational disadvantage, and information technologies. We found significant differences in the distribution of the physical and human capabilities between schools which made the task of engaging with ICT harder for some than others. Nevertheless, we suggest that some school leaders did develop innovative practice. We suggest that policy deficits made it difficult for school leaders to grapple with the dimensions of and debates about the kinds of educational changes that schools and school systems should be making. (Contains 1 figure, 2 notes and 1 table.)

This paper argues that teachers' recognition of children's cultural practices is an important positive step in helping socio-economically disadvantaged children engage with school literacies. Based on 21 longitudinal case studies of children's literacy development over a 3-year period, the authors demonstrate that when children's knowledges and practices assembled in home and community spheres are treated as valuable material for school learning, children are more likely to invest in the work of acquiring school literacies. However, they also show that while some children benefit greatly from being allowed to draw on their knowledge of popular culture, sports and the outdoors, other children's interests may be ignored or excluded. Some differences in teachers' valuing of home and community cultures appeared to relate to gender dimensions.

This article focuses on how teachers worked to build a meaningful curriculum around changes to a neighborhood and school grounds in a precinct listed for urban renewal. Drawing on a long-term relationship with the principal and one teacher, the researchers planned and designed a collaborative project to involve children as active participants in the redevelopment process, negotiating and redesigning an area between the preschool and the school. The research investigated spatial literacies, that is, ways of thinking about and representing the production of spaces, and critical literacies, in this instance how young people might have a say in remaking part of their school grounds. Data included videotapes of key events, interviews, and an archive of the elementary students' artifacts experimenting with spatial literacies. The project builds on the insights of community members and researchers working for social justice in high-poverty areas internationally that indicate the importance of education, local action, family, and youth involvement in building sustainable and equitable communities. (Contains 4 figures and 4 footnotes.)

In this paper we examine how the figure of the teenager is positioned within the discourses and practices of commercial online media. In particular, we explore how the popular, Australia-based web portal "ninemsn" works discursively to shape the identities of young people. Ninemsn not only constructs and circulates selected representations of teenage media users, but also makes available to them particular kinds of texts and communication practices. At the same time it pursues its own commercial agenda, which aims to attract and expand particular audience segments and niche markets and sell them on to advertisers for a range of media forms and products. Ninemsn's development of "personas" to aid the processes of site design and marketing is especially notable as an attempt to more precisely outline particular subject positions for users and offer detailed representations of imagined consumers to advertisers. (Contains 2 notes and 2 figures.)

Contends that the changing constellation of semiotic and spatial practices associated with new media and online literacies constitutes a very different object of research than has been addressed by literacy researchers. Concludes that literacy researchers need to develop new repertoires of literacy practices in relation to everyday use of information and communication technologies and new media, and in relation to how to research new media and online literacies. (PM)

Explores fiction for adolescents and young adults published by Longacre Press, New Zealand, a small independent publishing house founded in 1994. Notes teenage fiction is a specialist area of this publisher although they also publish general nonfiction, historical, and art books. Discusses works published in the themes of clashes and coping, journeys, love and relationships, compelling characters, and changes and self-discovery. (RS)

Notes that while many adults seem to be rejoicing in the fact that the Harry Potter books have brought the pleasures of book reading to a new generation of young readers, Harry Potter is also entering the realm of popular media culture. Discusses and analyses the effect Harry Potter books have on children and on society. (SG)

Outlines the rise of "young adult" books, and discusses issues related to the appropriateness of books for adolescents. Discusses and reviews 10 books for adolescents and young adults. Notes briefly three books for teachers with ideas for improving the reading and writing skills of students in various content areas. (SR)

Offers an overview of what is "hot" in fiction for young Australians currently (year 2000) from the point of view of an Australian educator with a long history in children's literature. Introduces contemporary key authors and emergent trends. Describes briefly 26 recent popular Australian books of young adult fiction. (SR)

Outlines the authors' ideas on reviewing books for young adults. Discusses including multiple reviews of the same texts, "internationalizing" texts for review and reviewers and opening up the objects of reviews to multimedia texts and formats. Offers eight brief reviews of a single book (William Taylor's "Jerome") for young readers, which opens up the subjects of youth suicide and homosexuality. (SR)

Discusses cyberliteracy and cyberfeminism, offering alternative viewpoints to other articles on the issue in order to prompt further dialogue between educational philosophy, sociology, and cultural studies. The paper focuses on cyberfeminism and citizenship, cyberfeminist conventionalists, avant-garde cyberfeminists, and multiliteracies, examining the issues in relation to education and the development of pedagogy. (SM)

Describes the satirical cartoon television series called "South Park." Discusses who watches this program, noting its immense popularity and the way it has entered the everyday lives of school children the world over. Looks at its cult appeal, and speculates as to reasons why some children might enjoy watching the program. (SR)

As an educational community we know relatively little about the everyday school lives of primary school-aged children attending schools in low socioeconomic communities, about the literacies they are taught, those they engage with, and those they take up and use as their own. This article reports on a school-based research study that aimed to contribute new knowledge in this area., Literacy after the early years: a longitudinal study Internationally, children living in low socio-economic circumstances are statistically more likely to perform at a lower level on standardised measures of literacy [...]