Background: Research on post-secondary training for individuals with intellectual disabilities has generally focused on programs, with little consideration of the structures and mechanisms that give rise to them. This article adopts a critical realist perspective to comparatively analyse and theorise about the contextual structures contributing to…

Promoting teacher professionalisation has become a key policy agenda in Australia and internationally. Professional learning is often invoked as a means to achieve this goal. In this paper, drawing on findings of a series of studies we conducted on the topic in the Early Childhood Education and Care sector, and guided by a range of theoretical…

The identities of Indigenous young people in Australia have increasingly been recognized in the health and education research literature as being significant. Over half of the Indigenous population in Australia is under the age of 25 years, emphasizing the importance of centering the voices of this cohort. In this paper, two Indigenous scholars…

In the field of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) schools have an important role to play, but precisely how policy actors and educators should best respond to extremism within their schools remains uncertain. Reporting on data from a broader study, this article draws on semi-structured interviews with three participants. The…

Inadequate risk assessment has been implicated as a contributory factor in the deaths and injuries of participants on led outdoor activity (LOA) programmes in both Australia and overseas. The identification and assessment of risks is a required component of LOA programmes, and multiple risk assessment methods and techniques are available to the…

Taking an interpretive approach to evidence-based policy, this article illustrates the rhetorical and situated uses of evidence in two case studies of local cultural policy. Broadly defined as policy-relevant knowledge, evidence is selectively used by council officers in the development, delivery, and evaluation of arts programmes at two…

This paper analyses some contemporary educational contexts that teachers should consider for their puberty education programmes and/or curricula, for primary and secondary school students. The educational contexts addressed here include significant international puberty education framework documents, socio-biological factors including earlier…

The worldwide marketization of higher education has resulted in a growing pressure on universities' accountability, particularly in terms of more tangible learning outcomes directly related to paying higher tuition fees. Covering globally diverse perspectives, "Innovate Higher Education to Enhance Graduate Employability" uses a range of…

There is a universality to the sight of groups of children celebrating public events. These groups might be large or small but teachers and students put much time and effort into preparing performances for appreciative audiences. These events occur across cultures and countries, are commonplace and expected but also highly memorable to…

Nearly two decades have passed since Kaplan and Baldauf [1997. "Language planning from practice to theory." Clevedon: Multilingual Matters] drew attention to the dearth of language policy and planning (LPP) in higher education. Despite the continuing inflow of English as an additional language students into Anglophone universities, and a…

This article seeks to provide a school perspective on the nature and quality of the partnerships which schools form with businesses in order to deliver work placements and workplace learning in Australia. It found that the ability of schools to engage with external partners depended on the ability of school leaders to define and communicate the…

Reflecting an international trend, Australian education policy increasingly charges schools with fostering active citizens who have the will and capacity to improve the democratic fabric and drive needed social change. This policy prescription also resonates with some teachers' critical commitments to pedagogical practices that encourage young…

Encouraging older workers to stay in the workforce has become a policy priority, not least because the life expectancy of Australians has increased dramatically over the past several decades, effectively inserting a new stage in life, often called the "third age." This report explores the possibility of using that third age to embark on…

This paper reveals how the provision of teacher professional development is conceptualised within the Australian Government Quality Teacher Programme (AGQTP) policy text and its predecessors, and uses these texts to infer the nature of the production practices associated with the development of these policies. The paper argues that multiple…

The demand for workers (employers, self-employed people and employees) having research training extends beyond the researcher workforce itself and is increasing. The research workforce is not uniform but segmented according to disciplines and the economic and sectoral contexts in which researchers work. The growth of cross-disciplinary and…