The disproportionate focus on classroom teachers and their instruction--teacher effectiveness--in order to confront and address under-achievement and disadvantage appears as a contemporary education policy theme in Australia. Phrases such as "high performing schooling systems","the best teachers", "high performing…

Within literature relating to the broad field of boys' education attention is regularly drawn to the significant difference between essentialist and anti-essentialist accounts of "the boy problem" and the limitations of gender-based educational reforms which rely upon deterministic notions of what boys are "really" like…

Teacher assessment literacy is a phrase that is often used but rarely defined. Yet understanding teacher assessment literacy is important in an international curriculum and assessment reform context that continues to challenge teachers' assessment practices. In this article situated examples of classroom assessment literacies are analysed using…

From 2001 to 2004 Education Queensland undertook significant literacy reform in schools through the Literate Futures Project. Research into the impact of this reform has revealed that significant demands were placed on women at all levels, from those producing resources to those leading change within schools. Although the reform was a government…

The phenomenon of summer slide or setback has gained a great deal of attention in the USA. It is understood to account for as much as 80% of the difference in achievement for students between low and high socio-economic families over their elementary schooling. In a mixed method longitudinal study of reforms in low socio-economic school…

Teacher education is in a state of uncertainty around the world including the more wealthy and less wealthy countries. If it is generally accepted that teacher education can make a difference in the educational lives of all students regardless of cultural and educational background, then how exactly to arrange the detail of schooling is not. Under…

Expansion of higher education has been perceived as the major tool through which China can raise its international competitiveness. To raise educational quality, the Ministry of Education initiated a new employment reform and a Teaching Quality Assessment for Undergraduate Programs. In this research, we employed a qualitative method to investigate…

This paper is the outcome of research conducted between June 2010 and January 2011 as part of understanding the building the education revolution (BER) a major policy initiative of the Australian Federal Government which commenced when Julia Gillard, now PM, was the Federal Minister of Education. The BER policy initiative was part of an economic…

In recent years, there has been an increase in students with refugee experience in the UK, the US, Europe and Australia. These students face many barriers to education, and appropriately educating this diverse student population presents many challenges to schools and education departments. We argue that a whole of school approach that includes…

These are changing times in Australia for teachers and their students, with the introduction of a national curriculum and standards driven reform. While countries in Europe such as England, and in Asia such as Singapore, are changing policy to use assessment in the support of and improvement of learning it appears that we in Australia are moving…

Debate over educational reform in many countries has addressed the question of how to attract and retain teachers. As part of a multiple case study that includes eight beginning English language teachers in Hong Kong, this paper offers an in-depth analysis of the experiences of two participants, Christine and Samuel, during their initial year of…

Current curriculum and assessment reform for schooling in Australia is based on ideas and practices associated with the setting of standards. Detailed descriptions of levels of achievement for each year of schooling are being ascribed the dual role of measuring the effectiveness of school systems and helping teachers to ensure all students are…

This article addresses the issue of affective labour in education in the context of standards-based reforms and accountability. In particular, it focuses on neoliberal strategies of rationalization and control that produce a number of social pathologies, such as alienated teaching and learning and reified social relations between teachers and…

This paper is about changing concepts of equity in UK higher education. In particular, it charts the moves from concepts about gender equality as about women's education as a key issue in twentieth century higher education to questions of men's education in the twenty-first century. These changing concepts of equity are linked to wider social and…

The proportion of students enrolled at university from the lowest quartile of socio-economic position has remained static at around 15% for at least the past 15 years (DEEWR, "Transforming Australia's higher education system," 2009). This paper argues that the apparent lack of progress towards equity of access has been exacerbated due to how…