Where does it say I have to do that? How can secondary schools enact assessment policy for students with disabilities

This paper describes effective ways secondary school leaders can enact curriculum policy, particularly assessment practices, to support learning for students with disabilities in mainstream schools. Assessment for learning (AfL) as a pedagogic practice, has gained recent importance through inclusion in curriculum policy in Queensland, Australia. AfL is the frequent assessment of student progress that identifies learning needs and informs future teaching and learning. Assessment of student progress of the standards based curriculum has provided challenges for schools attempting to meet the needs of “all” learners. This paper highlights findings of a small case study to model successful leadership practices used in an inclusive secondary school to improve achievement of students with disabilities through assessment. Successful leadership practices that can be generalized to improve achievement of all learners include making sense of policy for staff; developing staff common and shared beliefs and actions; organizing professional learning opportunities and arranging collaborative curriculum planning and co-teaching.

Supporting refugee students in schools : what constitutes inclusive education?

The worldwide rise in numbers of refugees and asylum seekers suggests the need to examine the practices of those institutions charged with their resettlement in host countries. In this paper we investigate the role of one important institution – schooling – and its contribution to the successful resettlement of refugee children. We begin with an examination of forced migration and its links with globalisation, and the barriers to inclusion confronting refugees. A discussion of the educational challenges confronting individual refugee youth and schools is followed by case studies of four schools and the approaches they had developed to meet the needs of young people from a refugee background. Using our findings and other research, we outline a model of good practice in refugee education. We conclude by discussing how educational institutions might play a more active role in facilitating transitions to citizenship for refugee youth through an inclusive approach.

Continuous and pedagogically sound assessment : A new economy of power relations in Australian Law schools

In recent decades, assessment practices within Australian law schools have moved from the overwhelming use of end-of-year closed-book examinations to an increase in the use of a wider range of techniques. This shift is often characterised as providing a ‘better’ learning environment for students, contributing more positively to their own ‘personal development’ within higher education, or, considered along the lines of critical legal thought, as ‘liberating’ them from the ‘conservatising’ and ‘indoctrinating’ effects of the power relations that operate in law schools. This paper seeks to render problematic such liberal-progressive narratives about these changes to law school assessment practices. It will do so by utilising the work of French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault on power, arguing that the current range of assessment techniques demonstrates a shift in the ‘economy’ of power relations within the law school. Rather than ‘liberating’ students from relations of power, these practices actually extend the power relations through which students are governed. This analysis is intended to inform legal education research and assessment practice by providing a far more nuanced conceptual framework than one that seeks to ‘free’ law students from these ‘repressive’ practices, or hopes to ‘objectively’ contribute to their ‘personal development’.

Indigenous studies in all schools

Cherbourg State School is approximately 300 km northwest of Brisbane. It is situated in an Aboriginal community at Cherbourg with approximately 250 students. At the Cherbourg State School, the aim was to generate good academic outcomes for all students from kindergarten to Year 7 and to nurture a strong and positive sense of what it means to be Aboriginal in today's society. In this paper, I will discuss modernism and postmodernism in indigenous studies and how this has impacted on the design and development of the Indigenous Studies Programme at the Cherbourg State School. The programme was designed to provide students with the opportunity to learn about the history of Indigenous people from Indigenous voices and provide an understanding of the impact of invasion and the consequences on the lives of Indigenous people, in the past and present. The stories from the elders and members of their own community provided knowledge that allowed students to challenge Aboriginal identity by taking on existing perceptions so that they could be better processed and understood.

Design on the future: developing and enacting sustainable living programs in primary schools

Sustainable living is high on the international agenda (Ginsberg & Frame, 2004; Sutton, 2004). If education is fundamental to global transformation towards sustainability, then schools are in strategic positions to facilitate this change. Over recent years, schools in Australia have become more active in encouraging sustainability with the implementation of programs such as Science Education for Sustainable Living (SESL) that focus on topics such as energy efficiency, recycling, enhancing biodiversity, protecting species, and managing resources. This paper reports on a government funded Australian School Innovation in Science, Technology and Mathematics (ASISTM) project titled “Integrating science, technology and mathematics for understanding sustainable living” in which teachers, preservice teachers and other science professionals worked collaboratively to plan and enact a range of SESL programs for primary school students. Participants in this study included: 6 teachers, 5 preservice teachers, 2 university partners, 2 scientists, 4 consultants, and over 250 primary students. The findings from this qualitative study revealed a need for: (1) professional development for understanding SESL, (2) procedures for establishing and implementing SESL, and (3) strategies to devise, implement and evaluate SESL units of work.

Vocational education and training in schools : career advisers' perceptions and practices

This paper explores the currently highly topical issue of Vocational Education and Training in Schools (VETiS). Specifically, it focuses upon career advisers' perceptions of VETiS, their advising practices as pertaining to this program and their views of others' perceptions of VETiS. It draws upon a national research project and data derived from interviews conducted with career advisers during the course of the project. The paper demonstrates that career advisers perceive VETiS in a favorable light on the whole, and they advocate the practice of advising all students to do VETiS if students desire to do so. That said, the paper goes on to highlight tensions apparent in the career advisers' perceptions of, and subsequent advice-giving practices regarding VETiS - particularly in terms of the potential benefits it affords all students. It becomes clear that careers advisers have different agendas for advising different students - academic and non-academic students - to undertake VETiS as a course of study. Finally, the paper demonstrates the ways in which career advisers become complicit in the marginalisation of VETiS programs and the status of VET.

Addressing bullying and cyberbullying in schools: Translating theory into practice

Overviews of research are clear that bullying occurs in every school, and that there are significant negative physical and mental health outcomes associated with it (Beaty and Alexeyev, 2008; Carter, 2011). As such, it is imperative to develop successful intervention strategies to help students cope with bullying, including the emergent form of cyberbullying. Research suggests, however, that students have a very limited repertoire of strategies for dealing with bullying generally (Owens, Shute, and Slee, 2004). In this paper the authors outline what is currently known about bullying, including cyberbullying, its impact on students, how theory can assist in developing interventions to assist and support students to cope with bullying, and some of the implications for schools.

Facilitating growth in prospective teachers’ knowledge : teaching geometry in primary schools

This paper reports on a study that focused on growth of understanding about teaching geometry by a group of prospective teachers engaged in lesson plan study within a computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. Participation in the activity was found to facilitate considerable growth in the participants’ pedagogical-content knowledge (PCK). Factors that influenced growth in PCK included the nature of the lesson planning task, the cognitive scaffolds inserted into the CSCL virtual space, the meta-language scaffolds provided to the participants, and the provision of both private and public discourse spaces. The paper concludes with recommendations for enhancing effective knowledge-building discourse about mathematics PCK within prospective teacher education CSCL environments.

Leadership and the rise of the corporate psychopath: What can business schools do about the ‘snakes inside’?

Purpose: Leadership styles are reviewed and reassessed given recent research that links destructive leadership behaviours exhibited by unscrupulous executives with traits commonly identified as indicators of corporate psychopathy. Method/approach: A review of the literature describing the various theories dealing with the nature of leadership styles and the rise of interest in corporate psychopathy and destructive leadership. Implications: This paper offers a psychological perspective for future research which provides both impetus and additional support for further analysis and exploration of such leadership styles in the business environment. One distinct advantage of this extrapolation is the articulation of insights into aspects of decision making by leaders, providing further insight into the formulation of leadership development programs in organisations and courses in business schools training future leaders.

Exceptional teachers for disadvantaged schools

This article reports on the first year of the Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools project, a teacher education approach designed to prepare high quality teachers for low socio-economic schools. The Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools (ETDS) project is an innovative way to prepare high-quality teachers for employment in low-SES schools. The program, based at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), offers a specialised curriculum, designed to equip high-achieving pre-service teachers for work in the schools that need them most. Selected pre-service teachers at QUT are invited to take part in the trial course, based on their academic performance over the first two years of their four-year Bachelor of Education degree, and on a demonstrated commitment to social justice. These participants undertake a modified version of QUT's B Ed on-campus curriculum. They have their practicum/field experience at one of a range of disadvantaged schools throughout Queensland which have agreed to partner with QUT in the program. In the past, teacher education for disadvantaged schools has been described as applying a 'missionary' or deficit model (Larabee, 2010; Comber and Kamler, 2004; Flessa, 2007). The principals of schools participating in the ETDS react strongly against such an approach, and have explicitly asked project staff not to send them anyone who 'thinks they can save the world'. The ETDS project has moved well away from such a model, towards a position that is explicitly centred on notions of academic excellence. The project is now at the end of its first trial year.