This study examines similarities and differences between mentor teachers' and student teachers' perceptions of the components of a positive mentoring relationship and its impact on the identity formation of student teachers. In addition to the interview data, the participants were asked to use metaphors to describe the mentoring relationship. The…

Policy implementation at school level is often recognised as transformative enactment. Positioning school leaders as gatekeepers in this enactment is limiting. This study of one Australian school explores the complex contextualised agency of school leaders showing that their role, far more than gatekeeping, can be enabling and transformative.…

Objects that sit between intersecting social worlds, such as Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) tests, are "boundary objects"--dynamic, historically derived mechanisms which maintain coherence between worlds (Star & Griesemer, 1989). They emerge initially from sociopolitical mandates, such as the need to ensure a safe and efficient…

Recent research has produced evidence to suggest a strong reciprocal link between school context-specific language constructions that reflect a school's vision and schoolwide pedagogy, and the way that meaning making occurs, and a school's culture is characterized. This research was conducted within three diverse settings: one school in the Sydney…

In Australian faculties of education, retention and progression issues are paramount within the current neo-liberal climate which emphasises student degree completions. This is particularly the case in regional universities, where many students--often the first in their families to attend university--are from rural, regional and low socio-economic…

The article reports on a study investigating influences on Australian politicians' decision making for early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy. The astronomical concept of dark matter is utilised as a metaphor for considering normalising, and therefore frequently difficult to detect and disrupt, influences implicated in politicians'…

This paper explores teaching in higher education through poetic transcription in order to illustrate the range of influences that shape the ways in which we teach. Through using poetry, this paper examines dimensions such as the past, emotion, humour and uncertainty, which are important aspects of teaching that are sometimes sidelined by more…

A grounded theory study was undertaken to understand how general practitioners (GPs) experience the death of their patients. Eleven GPs participated in semi-structured interviews. The participants explained their experience of a patient's death using the "death journey" metaphor. This journey, the Journey with the Dying, could be…

Sociolinguists have recently employed the notion of spatiotemporal scales to explain the changing social status of linguistic codes across social and geopolitical domains. Scales enable us to address the portability of semiotic resources in migration with great insight. In addition, unlike romanticized orientations to globalization and…

This article looks at women's efforts to construct an academic leadership career. It is not a study of women's leadership in general but one that takes place in what Bourdieu calls the academic field. Drawing from an in-depth interview study of 31 women from faculties of education who occupy managerial positions in universities in Canada,…

In this article, the "researcher" narrates the issues faced by novice researchers in choosing the correct lenses to conduct research when searching for the truth via the use of qualitative methodology. It is argued that choosing an appropriate research approach and methodology can be described as an "arduous" journey. For the…

Research with young people who "do not fit the mould" requires innovative and unconventional methods, but what are the implications of such methods for scholarly representation? This paper reports on the development of such a method with students diagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and offers one view of the borderland…

This paper examines data drawn from interviews with homeless people who were undertaking a "Clemente" programme offered by the Australian Catholic University in the Vincentian Village in East Sydney. The "Clemente" programme, conceptualised by Shorris, is based on the belief that an education in the humanities empowers people…

Metaphors can be powerful teaching and learning tools which may help us to understand novel, complex or abstract concepts using familiar language and thought structures. Academics routinely use metaphors in their university teaching to explain new or difficult ideas to students. In this article the authors argue that tertiary teachers' metaphors…

Teaching and learning online is one of several risky practices in higher education today that threaten to disfigure academics' work and identity. For many academics, accustomed to the tempo and practices of face-to-face teaching, it threatens disorientation. In this article the author examines the teaching beliefs of a computer science lecturer,…