The Civic School : Australian-Indonesian professional collaboration to model and audit the development of democratic primary classrooms and teacher language using the index for inclusion

The study is a pilot project in Australian-Indonesian institutional collaboration for the professional development of primary school teachers in West Sumatra in citizenship education. Senior staff in the department of Pancasila and Citizenship Education at the State University of Padang (UNP), West Sumatra initiated the project. UNP staff sought the collaboration of the Faculty of Education at the University of Tasmania for bringing about and sustaining changes in teacher practice needed to implement the new civic goals in the 1999 Suplemen. The Index for Inclusion was used to model and audit the development of democratic primary classrooms and language use in a cluster of Padang schools in West Sumatra. The paper describes the background to the project and how the Index for Inclusion was understood during the initial two-week implementation phase by teachers and school principals. The significance of the study lies in the potential of the Index for Inclusion internationally to citizenship education, a field of education that was not considered in the initial development of the Index project and the contribution of the multiple fields of inquiry to the evolving theoretical understandings of inclusive education.

Raunch culture goes to school? : young women, normative femininities and elite education

Public concern about popular culture’s sexualisation of women and girls is regularly voiced in the Australian media. Young women grow up against a backdrop of ‘raunch culture’ (Levy, 2005), which for some scholars represents a ‘new’ femininity (Gill, 2007), in which ‘hyper-sexual’ forms of (hetero)sexual expression are now expected of young women and girls, despite ostensibly being about choice and personal empowerment. In this article, I explore the constructions of girlhood and femininity amongst young women attending an elite, single-sex, private school in Melbourne, Australia. Elite schooling for girls is often associated with highly classed notions of (hetero)sexual modesty and propriety, epitomised in the reality television program Ladette to Lady. Here I consider how hyper-sexualities are configured within students’ constructions of themselves and others, and I explore their relationship to classed expectations of identity for privileged girls. I examine the role that classed norms of identity play in mediating these girls’ negotiations of hyper-sexualities.

Promoting active transport to school : evaluation of the Ride2School program

This study involved an evaluation of the Ride2School program, promoting active transport to school. The study found inconsistent evidence of a program impact, and identified the importance of addressing barriers to active transport among individual schools, parents and students; and building the capacity of schools to implement active transport initiatives.