Students in East Asian locations often obtain high academic results in international high-stakes testing, but lower results on affective aspects of their schooling, such as sense of belonging. These findings indicate the need for more holistic research into children's lifeworlds, including their experiences of school. In this article, we draw on a…

Politics and pragmatics are central and inseparable features of curriculum reform. In a federated system like Australia, many individuals and organisations are invested in reform at the national and jurisdictional level. This paper focuses on the policy work and roles of key actors positioned at the interface of national and state-based curriculum…

Artefacts are an important part of policy work, and a means of representation, translation, re-negotiation, and resistance of policy. While research has established their integral role in policy enactment, little research has examined the production and/or dissemination of artefacts by teacher educators. This paper reports and analyses the…

This study analyses how discourses in regional contexts affect the development of curriculum-based literacy standards for adolescents in schooling. A comparative case-study research design enabled the influences of discourses at the regional level to be analysed. The case studies include the development of curricula to define a minimum literacy…

This paper uses Ball's [1998. Big policies/small world: An introduction to international perspectives in education policy. "Comparative Education," 34(2), 119-130] policy analysis and Bernstein's [1990. "The structuring of pedagogic discourse. Volume IV class, codes and control". London: Routledge; 2000, "Pedagogy,…

This paper provides a detailed account of the Queensland education system's engagement with reforming curriculum, pedagogies and assessment. In so doing, it responds to the University College London's Institute of Education report on "high-performing" jurisdictions, of which Queensland, Australia, was identified as one. In this report,…

Traditional ties between "arts" education (that is, discipline-based arts subjects and activities in schools) and an emergent notion of "creativity" in educational discourses and policy documents are loosening, with implications for both. While creativity seems to be on the ascent, the arts may not be as fortunate; creative…

This paper discusses the findings of a study on the production and enactment of physical education (PE) curriculum policy reforms in an Australian context. Over a decade, significant senior school reforms in Western Australia (WA) interacted with the introduction of an Australian Curriculum that rendered curriculum development dynamic and complex.…

Globally, national curriculum policies are up for renegotiation. These negotiations are shaped by international and national top-down accountability regimes, and an increasing turn towards curriculum centralization and standardization. The new Australian Curriculum (AC) is no exception. The AC is an important educational policy event, one in which…

This paper examines teacher accountability and authority in early childhood policy. It reports on data from a study that investigated the influences affecting early childhood teacher decision-making at the preschool level in Victoria, Australia. Using a question raised by Ball "Where are the teachers in all this [policy]?" provided a…

University provision for academic development is well established in the USA, UK and many other countries. However, arrangements for its provision and staffing vary. In Australia, there has been a trend towards professional rather than academic staff appointments. Is this appropriate? In this paper, the domains of academic development work are…

The purpose of this article is to identify some key areas of the Australian curriculum that remain sites of struggle and contestation. We propose that there remain a number of contentious points in relation to the national curriculum. These points relate variously to the content and form of the curricular documents; assumptions about knowledge,…

Recent moves in Australia to institute a national curriculum emanated from federal governments of ostensibly different political persuasions in the period from 2003, building on developments that go back over 25 years. This article traces continuities and new developments, meditating on two questions: whether the current moves are politically…

A curriculum is a knowledge structure outlining what is to be learned in what order. The Australian curriculum for English emphasises creation of a "coherent" and "cumulative" "body of knowledge about how the English language works", with learning that is "portable and applicable to new settings across the school…

The release of the "Australian curriculum: Mathematics" has generated considerable debate in the education community. Some educators warn that this debate has centred on mathematical content and skills, setting the conditions for a "back to basics" movement in line with the political rhetoric that accompanied the national…