Teaching the General Capability of Intercultural Understanding is an Australian government mandate, but an ongoing challenge for teachers, many of whom may have little or no experience dealing with the teaching of intercultural understanding and lack confidence to embed this focus in their classrooms. Hence, teacher preparation is a priority to…

Global policy development in schooling often looks to solutions that embrace technology and articulate a 'what works' approach to practice. This paper takes as a case study the Australian Government's "Through Growth to Achievement" report on achieving school excellence. It analyses the report through the lens of 'sublimes', which…

The government school has held an integral part in the Australian idea of progressive society, a locus of community definition and pride that is the backbone of social infrastructure. Yet, it took decades from the establishment of the Australian British colonies from 1788 to establish a system of general education. The Australian school had modest…

When most people think "King Island," they think of a place synonymous with premium Australian dairy products. But hidden away from the lush, green pastures of grazing cows is an island teeming with invertebrate and plant species. You could probably eat some of those too, but that wasn't the intent of the Bush Blitzers who set off to…

Three Australian Government commissioned reports from 2011-2017 convey a longstanding child development theory-practice gap in early childhood education. This study explores what informs mentors' discussions of theories of child development with early career preschool teachers. Grounded in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, themes relate to…

The Australian governments' centrepiece Indigenous strategy, the 'Closing the Gap' framework, established in 2008 to address systemic Indigenous disadvantage, is underpinned by the concept of 'school readiness', which expects Indigenous families to bring their children to school ready to learn. The education system commonly blames Indigenous…

Amid this global landscape for education and policy, this paper focuses on the subject of teacher quality through the lens of teacher education reform and one particular Australian policy initiative: The "Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education" (LANTITE). Introduced by the federal Australian government in 2016 as a…

Learning abroad is a primary dimension of internationalization of higher education, but little is known about the social impact of learning abroad. While a significant body of the literature in international education has examined learning abroad from the student and academic perspectives, how host communities, especially in the Indo-Pacific,…

Educational and socioeconomic disadvantage in remote communities, and the inadequacies of government action to bring about significant change needs to be addressed. This article presents a descriptive study examining the complexities of staffing remote and very remote schools in Australia with appropriately-qualified teachers. The findings of…

The Bologna Process (BP) was used as an instrument to construct a European Higher Education Area that would be competitive in the world and to attract foreign students and academics to Europe. For a country such as Australia, this higher education innovation process constituted a possible challenge, especially since Australian HE is a marketized…

This study explored school Australian teachers' beliefs towards, and comfort around, socialising with same-sex attracted and trans and gender diverse people, as well as beliefs about inclusive school-based policy and other school strategies to enhance the wellbeing of same sex attracted and trans and gender diverse students. Teachers (n = 109) in…

In the context of the "Higher Education Standards Framework (Threshold Standards) 2021" (HES Framework), 'scholarship' refers to those activities concerned with gaining new or improved understanding, or appreciation and insights into a field of knowledge, or engaging with and keeping up to date with advances in the field. The Australian…

Skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are promoted by the Australian government as pivotal for Australia's economic prosperity. Research on equity groups suggests that group membership is associated with several factors linked to 'leakage' from the STEM pipeline of school, university and transition to work. In this…

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected children's care and education worldwide. This article reports on patterns of participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) across Australia as influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and national policies. Using ECEC data from Xplor -- a software platform used across Australian childcare…

Streamlining the vocational qualification development process in Australia is a current priority of the skills ministers of both the Australian Government and state and territory governments. This research summary explores the development processes associated with vocational qualifications in selected countries and compares them with the current…