The logics of policy privatisation in schooling, including decentralisation, school autonomy, and discretionary funding mechanisms, shift responsibility for particular types of students onto individual schools and their staff. Burch (2021) asks to what extent the most disadvantaged students in government schools are able to access services most…

There are many young people playing brass band instruments in Australia, yet there is generally an expectation in secondary education, and almost always in higher education, that students will play orchestral brass instruments. This article explores how schools and tertiary music educations in Australia are equipping students to be 21st century…

In 2014, the Australian Government established the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group (TEMAG) to advise on how teacher education programmes could ensure new teachers were adequately prepared for the classroom. Following this, the Australian Government endorsed a key recommendation of the TEMAG Action Now: Classroom Ready Teachers report,…

The purpose of this study was to consider the role of sport specialisms in contributing to local and community culture, and in supporting student-athletes to become 'better people'. Research questions focused on why schools are adopting sport specialism and whether community organisations value the sport specialism. The study was phenomenological…

Over the past decade, there has been unprecedented regulation of initial teacher education (ITE). The objective of this study was to generate an in-depth understanding of the structural challenges faced by tertiary educators as they responded to a federal policy and a related state government policy in teacher education. The policies imposed on…

The inclusion of jazz ensembles within extra-curricular instrumental music programs in secondary schools in Australia has grown exponentially in the past two decades. Despite this growth, there is a deficiency of specialist teacher training in jazz education and pedagogy in Australian tertiary institution instrumental music courses. This lack of…

Recent reforms in Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Australia have called for primary pre-service teachers to graduate with a specialisation in a priority learning area. This represents a significant change to the way that primary teachers are prepared. In this paper, we use Carol Bacchi's What's the Problem Represented to be? approach (WPR) to…

Background: Persons with intellectual disability (ID) face significant health challenges. Nurses provide health care to this population in many settings, including general practice, community care, acute care, reproductive health, and palliative care. However, since the demise of the specialist training model in the 1990s, the extent to which…

Traditionally Australian primary school teachers have been viewed as generalists responsible for instruction across all content areas. Adopting self-determination theory as a lens, the aim of the study was to explore the extent to which generalist primary school teachers are interested in becoming subject matter specialists. Questionnaire data…

Out-of-field teaching of mathematics is a reality in many secondary schools in the world. The incidence of out-of-field teaching generally occurs in low socio-economic communities and, in Australia, in schools located in rural and remote locations. The theory of boundary crossing enables positive perspectives of teaching out-of-field to be…

How a sample of university educators described STEM, expected outcomes of STEM, expertise of STEM educators, and STEM learning environments were investigated through drawing- and text- based responses. Data were examined by applying the "Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) Specialisation" plane (Maton, 2014). Participants generally held…

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers identify a range of supposedly demonstrable capabilities for graduate teachers. Elaborations privilege the realization of Standards through mentoring, and feedback from senior colleagues. As manifestations of the logic of neo-liberalism they operate as audit technologies for pre-service teachers…

The widely held view that higher education constitutes a gateway to employment has underpinned the dramatic widening of access to university in recent decades. However, globalisation and technological development have complicated the task of enhancing the employability of students, as the future world of work has become ever-more dynamic and…

In recent years, there has been substantial interest in micro-credentials in post-secondary education. In November 2019, Australian skills ministers agreed to fast-track work exploring micro-credentials in the national vocational education and training (VET) system, with the aim of ensuring that the system responds more effectively to the needs of…

Evaluators play a central role in assessments of researchers' performance for reward, but the nature of their role and influence is not well understood. Ongoing reliance on evaluator judgement is typically justified as a need for referees in contests for reward, because quantitative performance measures alone can be subject to distortion. Yet, if…