Re-engagement in education through community partnerships in south west Victoria

This case study provided policy direction for post-compulsory education. It highlighted the need for a mandated responsibility for the provision of on-going transition advice and re-engagement programs for young people who have left school. It confirmed the complexity of the work of networks formed in order to improve educational pathways.

Governing the Stressed Self: teacher "health and well-being" and "effective schools"

In diverse arenas there is much discussion about the dangerousness of contemporary lifestyles, including the stressful nature of work. These stresses associated with contemporary lifestyles and work are dangerous in so far as they are conceived as placing at risk the emotional, physical and psychic health and well-being of large populations. In this paper we engage with debates about the stressful nature of teachers' work, and the ways in which teacher health and well-being are constructed as being central to the task of delivering more effective schools. In this article we are not so much concerned with the nature of teacher stress as an indication of individual physical, emotional or psychic health and well-being, as with understanding how it is that at this particular historical juncture the self can be so widely conceived in terms of stress. Moreover, what processes make it possible at this moment to link the success or otherwise of a massive institutional process of state-regulated schooling to the health and well-being of teachers and the management of this health and well-being by school managers? We argue that in a policy context that devolves various responsibilities to self-managing schools, the government of the stressed self emerges as an ethical concern for teachers and those who manage them (Foucault, The Use of Pleasure , New York, Pantheon, 1985). Our purpose is to problematise these processes so that responsibilities for delivering on the promise of effective schools might be differently framed and debated.

How schooling, and particular schools, make a difference: values, identities and futures in longitudinal study

Just over a decade ago the authors set out to select and follow a range of young people from the age of 12 and their end of primary or first days in secondary school, to the age of 18 when most of them had embarked on the first steps of the post-school lives. Students from four different types of schools were chosen: a Melbourne high school, a high school in a Victorian regional city, a large non-government school, and a secondary school that had once been a technical school. The students were interviewed twice a year about their views of self, of school, of the future. In this article the authors discuss two aspects of the study: what sense did they get of schools and their effects on the subjectivities being formed by young people today? And, what sense did the authors get of how gender is working in young lives now? The article outlines some of the findings in relation to these two issues.

Social entrepreneurship and partnerships with regional and remote schools

This paper explores how notions of social entrepreneurship have inspired the author to engage in innovative partnerships with two small rural schools in Central Queensland, Australia. It explores practical ways in which to help rural schools contribute to the transformation of their schools, considering that we are now in an information-based society operating in a postmodern world where change happens quickly and continually. The paper explores the mapping of the journeys undertaken both by the schools and by the author as a university lecturer, and analyses how the concept of social entrepreneurship is used to empower schools with these changes. Two partnerships with local schools are examined in terms of helping the participants become social entrepreneurs by deploying innovative problem solving strategies that can provide ways forward to help to begin to revolutionise the regional and rural education 'industry' and in the process engage regional and rural communities.

Factors influencing mathematics and science teachers' self-assessment as teaching 'out-of-field' in rural and regional schools

Teaching 'out-of-field' occurs when teachers teach a subject for which they have no disciplinary or methods qualification. The incidence of out-of-field mathematics, science and technology teaching are particularly high in rural and regional areas. Given that mathematics and science are key areas of policy concern, there is an urgent need to understand teachers‟ position in this increasingly common practice in order to provide appropriate system responses. This paper asks the question, how are mathematics and science teachers‟ professional identities influenced by having to teach out-of-field? Twenty teachers who had taught science or mathematics at some time in their career, two school leaders, and two support staff, took part in semi-structured interviews, which I then transcribed. This paper reports on a thematic analysis of a subset of the data that isolated factors influencing teachers‟ self-assessment of themselves as out-of-field or in-field. Excerpts from the interviews are used to introduce and contextualise these factors within rural and regional settings. These factors are used to generate a theoretical model, the Boundary Between Fields (BBF) Model, that enables analysis of the impact of these factors on identity construction during a boundary crossing event. The Model highlights the influence of support mechanisms, contextual factors and personal resources on the nature of teachers‟ negotiation of subject boundaries and its impact on professional identity. This innovative model provides a platform for re-conceptualising these experiences as opportunities for professional learning occurring within schools as communities of practice, where teachers are supported and enabled to expand their professional identity. These findings provide insight for policy-makers, school leaders and teacher educators, into the complexity of the issue for teachers, as well as the conditions required for such teaching to be considered learning opportunities.

Doing diversity: intercultural understanding in primary and secondary schools

Doing Diversity: Intercultural understanding in primary and secondary schools1 was a three year, multi-method programme of research involving intensive work in 12 diverse profile schools in Melbourne, Victoria, that examined the facilitators and impediments to the intercultural capabilities described in the Victorian and Australian curricula for students and schools.

Law, theology, and the schools: the use of scripture in Ricardus Anglicus’s distinctiones decretorum

The Anglo-Norman canonist Ricardus Anglicus (de Mores or de Morins), as Giulio Silano’s 1982 PhD thesis and provisional edition argues, was as interested in biblical theology as he was in canon law. This wide interest was a product of his time in the Parisian schools. How then did his influential commentary on Gratian’s Decretum, the Distinctiones decretorum, use Scriptural sources to explicate ostensibly canonistic concepts? This paper attempts to explore these issues in the context of the interaction of law and theology in the mid-to-late twelfth-century schools, courts, and ecclesial familiae of Bologna and England.

Schools, health literacy and public health: possibilities and challenges

Health literacy is a concept that can be widely embraced by schools. Schools throughout the world contribute to the achievement of public health goals in conjunction with their educational commitments. In this paper, the interface between a school's core business of education and public health goals is identified, and examples provided in the area of nutrition demonstrating how these links can operate at school level. The structure and function of the health promoting school is described and the author proposes that there is a very close connection between the health promoting school and the enabling factors necessary in achieving health literacy. Major findings in the literature that provide evidence of good practices in school health education and promotion initiatives are described. Also, those factors that make schools effective and which facilitate learning for students are identified. There is a substantial overlap between the successful components of a health promoting school and effective schools. This enables schools to potentially achieve all three levels of health literacy, including level 3—critical health literacy. However, there are three challenges that must be addressed to enable schools to achieve this level: the traditional structure and function of schools, teachers practices and skills, and time and resources. Strategies are proposed to address all three areas and to reduce the impediments to achieving the goals of health literacy and public health using the school as a setting.

Survey of canteens and food services in Victorian schools

Objective: To examine the characteristics of food services in Victorian government primary and secondary schools.

Design and methods: A cross-sectional postal survey of all high schools and a random sample of one quarter of primary school respondents in Victoria. A `School Food Services and Canteen' questionnaire was administered by mail to the principal of each school.

Subjects: Respondents included principals, canteen managers and home economics teachers from 150 primary and 208 secondary schools representing response rates of 48% and 67%, respectively.

Main outcome measures: Responses to closed questions about school canteen operating procedures, staff satisfaction, food policies and desired additional services.

Data analyses: Frequency and cross-tabulation analyses and associated χ²-tests.

Results: Most schools provided food services at lunchtime and morning recess but one-third provided food before school. Over 40% outsourced their food services, one-third utilised volunteer parents, few involved students in canteen operations. Half of the secondary schools had vending machines; one in five had three or more. Secondary school respondents were more dissatisfied with the nutritional quality of the food service, and expressed more interest in additional services than primary respondents. Schools with food policies wanted more service assistance and used volunteer parents, student and paid canteen managers more than schools without policies.

Conclusion: Most schools want to improve the nutritional quality of their food services, especially via school food policies. There is a major opportunity for professional organisations to advocate for the supply of healthier school foods.