This article describes the findings of an undergraduate Ethnography of the University Initiative (EUI) course in which students examined the university's efforts to improve the racial climate of the campus. These institutional efforts are intended to create a more comfortable environment for under-represented minority students who often comprise a…

Agile learning spaces have the potential to afford flexible and innovative pedagogic practice. However there is little known about the experiences of teachers and learners in newly designed learning spaces, and whether the potential for reimagined pedagogies is being realised. This paper uses data from a recent study into the experiences of…

The Federal Government's recent Building the Education Revolution program resulted in, among other features, the creation of over 600 new school libraries in Queensland alone. This paper reports on a component of a research project carried out with students in six primary schools and one secondary school that benefitted from the program,…

At a time of substantial change, globalization, and ubiquitous access to information, educators struggle to change even the most basic aspects of their classrooms. This is especially true for those in challenging contexts where many perpetuate the "mind numbing" practice of rote instruction. This paper describes a collaborative…

This manuscript contributes to a discussion of how to meaningfully engage issues of sexuality in the curriculum. Noting the struggle to create social change through the inclusion of LGBQ people and events, the manuscript is premised on what we might learn about equity and change by locating the study of inequity in how it is etched into and…

The mobile learning literature, particularly studies that focus on interaction or context, has the tendency to be top-down and highly scripted. Mobility is designed into learning scenarios and spaces. In this article, I proposed a practice perspective for research as an alternative starting point to "set in motion" all modes of learning…

Traditional examination accommodations include extra time, scribes, and/or separate venues for students with disabilities, which have been proven to be successful for the majority of students. For students with non-apparent disabilities such as sensory defensiveness, where sensitivity to a range of sensory information from the environment can…

Disneyland is work disguised as play; school disguised as vacation. While Walt Disney's curriculum deploys across all of its products, it literally engulfs the approximately 50 million "guests" who visit the Disney Parks each year. Drawing on Sarah Ahmed's phenomenological reading of orientation in Queer phenomenology, this…

This article addresses the position of community art practices and the role of practitioners in urban cracks. Community art practices raise possibilities for a reconceptualisation of the concept of community and an extension of the concept of art in public space. Urban cracks are conceptualised as spatial, temporal and relational manifestations of…

This collaborative study aims to investigate aspects of school playgrounds in the city of Denizli, Turkey and in the state of Victoria, Australia. Using a survey designed for a recent study in Victoria, data was collected from a large number of schools in both settings and analysed in light of international research findings. The most significant…

The representational space of teachers and children in schools has changed beyond all recognition. Drawing on the idea that the school is a socio-spatial landscape, a highly significant institutional space with which children engage, we can understand forms of educational inequality as consequences of spatial production. This article contributes…

The fifth grade students in this project were part of a yearlong ethnographic study in an urban elementary school. They engaged in a student initiated inquiry project combining bakeries and mysteries, which culminated in the production of an original film. Situated in a socio-spatialized stance on literacy involving networks of participation and…

Non-traditional open-plan schools and classrooms are currently enjoying a resurgence in Australia, with proponents arguing for the necessity of educational spaces that more readily accommodate the needs of twenty-first century learners. However, these learning environments can pose considerable pedagogic challenges for teachers who must balance…

We examined whether interword spacing would facilitate acquisition of new vocabulary for second language learners of Chinese. Participants' eye movements were measured as they read new vocabulary embedded in sentences during a learning session and a test session. In the learning session, participants read sentences in traditional unspaced format…

This paper identifies common timetabling issues and options as experienced in Australian universities, and develops a rationale to inform management decisions on a suitable system and the associated policies, procedures, management structure and resources at the University of Newcastle, to enable more effective timetabling in line with the needs…