In pronouncements of early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy the importance of quality appears as a seemingly irrefutable concept. Yet, attention to ECEC policy history reveals tensions between discourses that construct quality in ways that endure whereas other ways are ostensibly forgotten. Drawing on a Foucauldian-influenced…

The paper deals with the concept of 'Critical Literacy' in the context of VET teacher education. It focuses on the question of whether and how critical literacy can be developed drawing on elements of discourse research. This is illustrated by means of a higher educational setting, dealing with business administration textbook usage and research.…

Contemporary anti-Islamic discourses in Australia construct Islam as an uncivilised belief system and its Muslim followers as homogenous unassimilable Others. Within these discourses, the diversity among Muslim women has been overshadowed, and they are constructed as a monolithic "veiled" woman. Drawing on 20 conversational interviews…

Quality assurance is a major agenda in tertiary education. The casualisation of academic work, especially in teaching, is also a quality assurance issue. Casual or sessional staff members teach and assess more than 50% of all university courses in Australia, and yet the research in relation to the role sessional staff play in quality assurance of…

School leaders in Queensland, Australia, are working in a rapidly shifting policy landscape, expected to work towards system-defined improvement measures involving increasingly higher external accountabilities. This article analyses a group of long-term case studies of the effects of school improvement expectations on principals since the…

This paper engages with the early childhood-school relationship. The relationship has a long-standing history of being defined by a series of divisions and separations. Research has identified the divisions and separations to be largely determined by differences around concepts of learning and pedagogy. Discursive analyses of these differences…

This article explores the construction and shifting of "expert" and "novice" roles between and within two languages (Japanese and English). Taking a language socialization perspective while drawing upon insights from conversation analysis on epistemics in interaction, it analyzes seven hours of audio recordings of dinnertime…

Many governments in Western democracies conduct the work of leading their societies forward through policy generation and implementation. Despite government attempts at extensive negotiation, collaboration and debate, the general populace in these same countries frequently express feelings of disempowerment and undue pressure to be compliant,…

What is it that teacher-educators "do"? This paper draws on interview data with Deans/Heads of Schools of Education in the Australian context to explore this question by asking: How is the teacher-educator produced as a category of academic worker? Using critical approaches to discourse analysis, the paper presents two interlocked…

This paper interrogates discourses of Aboriginality about, and by, early career Aboriginal teachers as they negotiate their emergent professional identity in specific Australian school contexts. These discourses position the respondents via their ethnic and cultural background and intersect with self-positioning. This relates to the desire to be…

Implementing environmental activism at school can be socially risky business. This paper explores the narratives of three women who undertook award winning environmental projects in two regional Australian schools. Tara (student, age 15) and Andrea (principal, age 42) document the complex and courageous social negotiations they were forced to…

This paper suggests that complex practice dilemmas call for thick stories of masterful practice that don't ignore the tensions and ambiguities involved. The paper draws on an Australian study of policing as a fruitful example. Academic commentary suggests policing is beset with practice dilemmas unique in their complexity. However, empirical…

This paper explores the construction of classroom contexts facilitative of student engagement in Mathematics. Employing a form of discourse analysis framed within a participation approach to learning, the paper provides insights into the construction of such contexts. The affordances and constraints of constructing such a context are discussed in…

Universities' aims for educating global citizens are rarely supported by a theoretical underpinning or evidence of outcomes. This study explored how international higher education experts conceptualize the global citizen or related terms representing the "ideal global graduate." A global notion of citizenship was accepted by the majority…

Recent conservative reviews of Australia's national English curriculum argue for a return to less critical approaches to English language education and a stronger emphasis on traditional, functional approaches to provide adequate English learning experiences for school-age students. This neoliberal shift poses a threat to adolescent learners from…