Equity and marketisation: emerging policies and practices in Australian education

The conjunction of equity and market logics in contemporary education has created new and different conditions of possibility for equity, both as conceived in policy discourses and as a related set of educational practices. In this editorial introduction, we examine how equity is being drawn into new policy assemblages and how, in the context of marketisation, equity is evolving and being enacted in new ways across education sectors. Different conceptions of equity are considered, including the increasingly influential human capital perspective promoted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We argue that, separate from critiques of neoliberalism and its deleterious effects on equity in education, it is necessary to analyse carefully the increasing rationalisation of equity agendas in economic terms, the associated effects on education governance and policy-making, as well as on the work of educational institutions and educators. Providing an overview of the contributions to this Special Issue, we direct particular attention to the multiple, complex and often contradictory effects of the current education reform agenda in Australia, which has prioritised equity objectives and intensified performance measurement, comparison and accountability as means to drive educational improvement and reduce disadvantage.

The politics of public sector change: trends in health and education sector change in South Australia

BACKGROUND: As the changes underpinning the Coordinated Care Trials in South Australia have become more apparent, similarities have emerged between the rationalisation of public schooling in the mid 1980s and the transformation of public health in the 1990s.

OBJECTIVE: This article aims to discuss the evolution of health services in South Australia and help us answer the question of how best to manage our public and private health infrastructure in a changing economic and social context.

DISCUSSION: Both strategies in education and health share common elements of cost cutting, attempts at improving efficiencies, a flirting with the private sector and the attendant risk of reduced quality of services to the public. This situation in both sectors is indicative of a shift in public policy and a growth in the belief that private management of public sector infrastructure can help resolve the funding crises around our education and health systems.

Education business leadership in Australia: interrogating imperatives, elements and implications

This paper interrogates the historical, political, economic and educational rationale behind the development and rapid expansion of Australia’sfirst postgraduate course in Education Business Leadership

Perceptions of Character Education in a Seventh-Day Adventist School

Character education has been viewed by many educators as having significant historical, academic, and social value. Many stakeholders in education argue for character development as a curricular experience. While understanding the degree to which character education is of worth to stakeholders of institutions is important, understanding students, teachers, and administrators perspectives from their lived experiences is likewise significant. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to gain a deeper understanding of character education within a Biblical framework environment by examining the lived experiences of students, administrators, and teachers of a Seventh-day Adventist School. Phenomenology describes individuals’ daily experiences of phenomena, the manner in which these experiences are structured, and focuses analysis on the perspectives of the persons having the experience (Moustakas, 1994). ). This inquiry was undertaken to answer the question: What are the perceptions of students, teachers, and an administrator toward character education in a Seventh-day Adventist school setting? Ten participants (seven students and three adults) formed the homogeneous purposive sample, and the major data collection tool was semi-structured interviews (Patton, 1990; Seidman, 2006). Three 90-minute open-ended interviews were conducted with each of the participants. Data analysis included a three-phase process of description, reduction and interpretation. The findings from this study revealed that participants perceived that their involvement in the school’s character education program decreased the tendency to violence, improved their conduct and ethical sensibility, enhanced their ability to engage in decision-making concerning social relationships and their impact on others, brought to their attention the emerging global awareness of moral deficiency, and fostered incremental progress from practice and recognition of vices to their acquisition of virtues. The findings, therefore, provide a model for teaching character education from a Seventh-day Adventist perspective. The model is also relevant for non-Seventh day Adventists who aspire to teach character education as a means to improving social and moral conditions in schools.

Educational software in english to the awareness in a preschool education supervised context

Information and communication technologies play an increasingly important role in society, in the sense that all areas and professions make use of digital resources. The school can not be brushed off this reality, aim to create full subjects and integrated in society today. Educational software can be used very early in the education of children, but they must be carefully and monitoring. This article aims to present the results of the use of educational software in English to the awareness of context with children of pre-school education in kindergarten, nursery center Redemptorist Fathers - The smallest fox in White Castle, a 21 group children under 5 years. Early awareness of foreign language such as English can be started with digital multimedia capabilities and various software available on the market. However, the small study described the case reveals some resistance from parents and educators, in the preparation of these to choose and monitor the use of ICT by children, in addition to also highlight the self-interest of the children involved and their learning a few words in English language in different contexts of daily worked. The study opens perspectives on close monitoring needs of such uses and training of educators in the field of use of resources multilingual awareness in pre-school education.

The use of digital educational resources : the contribution of research in the supervised teaching practice in basic education

This article aims to reflect on the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the educational context, focusing on the potential contributions of the use of Digital Educational Resources (RED) in the process of teaching and learning. For this purpose, the results of the use of the RED will be presented:. Digital Classroom - The World's 1st Year Carochinha The study was accomplished in a class of the 1st grade of the 1st CEB, composed of 27 students, aged 6-7 years in Castelo Branco City Schools Group within the Supervised Teaching Practice. The results obtained after the analysis and processing of the data showed that when using this RED students show they have acquired the content covered by the fact that they enhanced levels of greater interest, commitment, motivation, commitment and initiative in the course of activities proposals. But, perhaps because they are students of 1st year of the 1st CEB, do not neglect the presence and monitoring of the teacher and the use of paper-based resources. This means that there should be a complementarity that reconciles the human factor (teacher), with the use of digital media resources and paper support resources (Manual).

"Going outside": discussing the connection between pedagogical practices with digital tools and outdoor learning in early childhood and primary education

Technology has an important role in children's lives and education. Based on several projects developed with ICT, both in Early Childhood Education (3-6 years old) and Primary Education (6-10 years old), since 1997, the authors argue that research and educational practices need to "go outside", addressing ways to connect technology with outdoor education. The experience with the projects and initiatives developed supported a conceptual framework, developed and discussed with several partners throughout the years and theoretically informed. Three main principles or axis have emerged: strengthening Children's Participation, promoting Critical Citizenship and establishing strong Connections to Pedagogy and Curriculum. In this paper, those axis will be presented and discussed in relation to the challenge posed by Outdoor Education to the way ICT in Early Childhood and Primary Education is understood, promoted and researched. The paper is exploratory, attempting to connect theoretical and conceptual contributions from Early Childhood Pedagogy with contributions from ICT in Education. The research-based knowledge available is still scarce, mostly based on studies developed with other purposes. The paper, therefore, focus the connections and interpellations between concepts established through the theoretical framework and draws on the almost 20 years of experience with large and small scale action-research projects of ICT in schools. The more recent one is already testing the conceptual framework by supporting children in non-formal contexts to explore vineyards and the cycle of wine production with several ICT tools. Approaching Outdoor Education as an arena where pedagogical and cultural dimensions influence decisions and practices, the paper tries to argue that the three axis are relevant in supporting a stronger connection between technology and the outdoor.

An exploration of students’ perceptions and attitudes towards creativity in engineering education

Thesis (Master, Mechanical and Materials Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2016-09-29 17:45:16.051

The politics of disagreement in critical education policy studies: a response to Morsy, Gulson and Clarke

This paper engages with Morsy, Gulson and Clarke's response to the recent special issue of Discourse (Vol. 34, No. 2) that examined evolutions of markets and equity in education. We welcome Morsy, Gulson and Clarke's supplementation of the special issue with the genealogical analysis they provide of private school funding in Australia and the attention they draw to elisions of race, ethnicity, Indigeneity and whiteness in contemporary framings of equity in policy and research. We also clarify and expand on some of the aims and arguments that framed the special issue. However, we feel that any response adequate to the ‘event’ that Morsy, Gulson and Clarke hope to stage – that is, a ‘debate redux’ and politics of dissensus in education as an antidote to depoliticisation – must extend beyond the rehearsal of pre-existing positions; it cannot stop at endorsing or critiquing the points raised in their paper, or reiterating the rationales and arguments of the special issue. We therefore respond by gesturing towards possibilities for ‘disagreement’, in the sense that Jacques Ranciere gives this term, about the political vocation of critical policy sociologists, and the modes of doing and being that can be seen as ‘critical’ and ‘political’ in academic education research. We do not disagree with Morsy, Gulson and Clarke in the usual sense; for that reason, we engage seriously with their call for a politics of dissensus in education.

A gallery walk: 'drawing out' understandings of collaborative self-study in teacher education

The Collaborative Reflective Experience and Practice in Education (CREPE) Research Group formed mid 2014 as a group of eight teacher educators interested in working collaboratively to improve our teaching practice through self-study methodology. Located at distance across the three campuses of Deakin University in Victoria, Australia and from the disciplines of mathematics, science, visual arts, performing arts, and curriculum and pedagogy, we aimed to better understand, improve, and share our practices as teacher-educators. While a few of us had engaged in self-study previously, all were comfortable with observing some kind of professional reflective/reflexive practice. We shared the intention of engaging in the scholarship (teaching practice and research) of self-study methodology via community of practice approaches, focusing on our collaborative (overarching) research as well as engaging in focused research simultaneously. It is our efforts towards collaborative research that are the subject of this chapter.

Rhetoric and reality: critical perspectives on education in a 3D virtual world

The emergence of any new educational technology is often accompanied by inflated expectations about its potential for transforming pedagogical practice and improving student learning outcomes. A critique of the rhetoric accompanying the evolution of 3D virtual world education reveals a similar pattern, with the initial hype based more on rhetoric than research demonstrating the extent to which rhetoric matches reality. Addressed are the perceived gaps in the literature through a critique of the rhetoric evident throughout the evolution of the application of virtual worlds in education and the reality based on the reported experiences of experts in the field of educational technology, who are all members of the Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group. The experiences reported highlight a range of effective virtual world collaborative and communicative teaching experiences conducted in members' institutions. Perspectives vary from those whose reality is the actuation of the initial rhetoric in the early years of virtual world education, to those whose reality is fraught with challenges that belie the rhetoric. Although there are concerns over institutional resistance, restrictions, and outdated processes on the one-hand, and excitement over the rapid emergence of innovation on the other, the prevailing reality seems to be that virtual world education is both persistent and sustainable. Explored are critical perspectives on the rhetoric and reality on the educational uptake and use of virtual worlds in higher education, providing an overview of the current and future directions for learning in virtual worlds.

The Support Educational Commitee Participation in the Pedagogical Approach of an Educational Integration

Educational services are essential to social and economical development of people, mainly to the progress of all sectors of society. Establishing actions that can promote the participation of various social groups is essential to improve their quality of life and building more respectful and fair human rights without any discrimination or exclusion. In recent years, the Costa Rican education system has undergone significant changes due to the pedagogical approach of inclusive education in which students with educational needs may require different support and specialized resources for training and development. For this, the Basic Educational Division of the Center for Teaching and Research in Education, generated a concern of investigating the participation of the Committee of Educational Support in the process of educational integration, thus, determine the functions performed in the educational context, under the rules of the 7600 Equal Opportunity Act for people with disabilities, which is the entity that corresponds to regulate access to education by identifying the support required for students with educational needs and, advice and trains, administrative staff in schools both public and private in the country. In addition, there is also a concern for exploring the role of the Special Education teacher for this Committee, as well as learning the perceptions of teachers and parents about the functions performed by the committee.

Conversation Circles as a Teaching Strategy: An Experience to Reflect on and Implement in Higher Education

The experience approached in this paper aims at reflecting, reasoning, planning and implementing the “Conversation Circles” as a teaching strategy in the PF-4237 course “Theory of Education: Multiculturalism and Education” of the Latin American Doctoral Program in Education, University of Costa Rica. This training experience, based on the communicative action theory, intended to integrate the assistance of the teacher, the confrontation to otherness and the building of knowledge, skills and social attitudes in higher education.