This article explores the role of affect in addressing the advantage conventionally accorded to high socio-economic status (SES) in higher education (HE) and how this advantage plays out for students from low SES backgrounds. Positioned as the 'other' to an assumed norm, the capacities of these students can be considered the 'wrong' capacities,…

Early childhood educators with higher qualifications are more likely to demonstrate quality in their practice; but few studies have explored the underlying factors that contribute to this relationship. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory, this article proposes that the relationship arises from social, as well as educational, inequality. Educators…

Internationally, vocational education and training (VET) is intended to fulfil important economic and social objectives. There is, however, a concerning discourse relating to funding, esteem, reputation and quality, and questions have been raised about whether social mobility aspirations of the sector's students are achieved or achievable. This…

This article examines the institutional and market treatment of the profession of interpreting in the English-monolingual context of Australia. Based on qualitative interview methods with 67 healthcare interpreters in Australia, the study aims to explore the impact of the linguistic hierarchies in favour of English on the financial and…

Adult literacy provision began in Australia during a radical education era in the 1970s, and yet in recent decades, social class as a construct has been largely absent in the academic literature on adult literacy. We argue however that social class is essential to understanding adult literacy provision and furthermore that working class people…

This article looks to three inspirational Black women, bell hooks, Stacey McBride-Irby and Patricia Williams, in the pursuit of radical curriculum. While today curriculum is critiqued as racialised, gendered, sexualised and classed, the formats of curriculum documents such as text books, units of work and lesson plans have changed little. These…

The global middle class (GMC) is a theoretical construct that seeks to globalise a set of attributes identified in studies of school choice in the global north, and to a lesser extent in developing nations in Asia. As theorised by Ball a mobile middle class with cosmopolitan sensibilities drives international education options in global cities.…

The notion of raising the aspirations of socially disadvantaged students is a key policy strategy in for enhancing such students' participation in higher education. However, this strategy runs the risk of being simplistic and ineffective unless it is informed by research on the links between aspirations and such students' changing life experiences…

In order to understand working-class education, it is necessary to study ruling-class education. A study of private girls' schools in Australia shows the interrelated forces that result in practices constructed mainly within the schools. (JN)

For years in Australia some form of public examination has been regarded as the test of the 'good' school or student. As a direct consequence, the examination exerts an influence upon the curriculum that makes reform difficult. An open admissions policy is discussed. (MLW)

A case study was made of the implementation of an innovative measurement program. In this instance, curriculum implementation was seen as a process in pedagogical, occupational, and sociocultural contexts in which social groups with unequal power, and in contradictory ways, contended for control. "Beyond academic achievement" emerged as…