The Australian Educational Researcher最新文献

Research studies continue to document the inequitable access to quality careers education and guidance for rural Australian youth, raising questions about these programs in rural schools. A significant proportion of the existing rural careers education and guidance literature focuses on factors of students’ decision-making, with little attention on the role of the careers advisor. This article explores how rural careers advisors develop and leverage their social capital to create place-based careers education and guidance programs. Drawing on narrative interviews with career advisors in western Victoria, the article uses theories of bridging and bonding social capital as an analytic framework to highlight the risks and opportunities in creating place-based programs. It argues that local knowledge and a strong network of relationships across the local communities assists advisors in tailoring relevant and effective careers education and guidance. This is vital to ensuring rural students have access to the quality careers education and guidance they need to have positive post-school outcomes.

In an era of socio-ecological challenges and uncertain times, it is imperative that student voice is supported to enable student transformative agency and desired positive change in their lives and community. Although international policy, the Australian Curriculum, School Strategic Plans, communities, teachers, and students often advocate for student voice, authentic enactment remains a challenge. This paper illustrates a transformative curriculum enactment of student voice and agency as impactful inquiry that resulted in student-desired transformative whole-school change. Conducted in a Melbourne metropolitan primary school following multiple Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, a contextually responsive Year 6 Microorganisms Learning sequence is reported. A student-identified health risk and high microbial load in a Lost Property Box resulted in the students' collective agentic pursuit and implementation of scientifically grounded solutions, processes, and policy changes in the school community. Students, teachers, and school leadership reported student voice and agency as key outcomes of the student-driven inquiry that followed student voice and concerns for positive change. It is argued that it is a critical educative responsibility to support student voice in establishing bearing, which encompasses recognised positioning, direction, and path forward to make a difference in matters that matter to students. This paper seeks to inform and inspire further student voice-responsive impactful inquiry, which develops students' capacity and efficacy for their desired positive impact in their community now and possibly in the future.

Australian policymakers are currently attempting to address an ‘unprecedented teacher shortage’. Through a survey of 905 teachers in Australian government schools, this paper examines some of the key factors influencing the career intentions of teachers in Australian government schools. Drawing upon the concept of the psychosocial work environment from the field of occupational health, this analysis examines the relationship between key workplace demands, workplace resources, teachers’ experiences and attitudes towards work, teachers’ mental health outcomes, and their intentions to either remain in or leave their roles. The results reveal significant relationships between teachers’ intentions to leave their roles and challenging working conditions, adverse work experiences, as well as heightened levels of stress, burnout, and depressive symptoms. In contrast, remaining in their role was associated with factors indicative of a supportive psychosocial work environment, such as job recognition, trust in management, organisational justice, positive work experiences, and lower levels of mental health difficulties. The study underscores the urgent need to understand and assess the psychosocial work environments of teachers, and for multi-level strategies that address both protective and risk factors.

The significant shortfall of staff in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) workforce identifies an imperative not only to recruit educators but to support ongoing qualifications and career advancement of those within. Indeed, Shaping Our Future, Australia’s workforce strategy for 2022–2031 identifies qualifications and career development as key focus areas. Taking this imperative, we asked Who? and How many? within the Australian workforce are committed to ongoing study? Analysing a national survey (N = 1291), we examine characteristics of those studying (20.5%) intending (52.3%) or wavering about further study (18.7%). Study and study intention were associated with being younger and at early career-stage, identifying a positive message for career growth. Those who were older or working part-time were less certain about ongoing training. Those with long tenure in ECEC had higher rates of studying for non-ECEC qualifications. Implications for qualification pipeline, career pathways and workforce strategy are discussed.

As professional learning and development (PLD) for teachers moves online, it is increasingly important to consider what constitutes effective provision. While models of effective PLD abound, online PLD faces challenges to participant engagement. In particular, the critical need to build and maintain relationships in professional learning is complicated by the geographic and temporal distribution of online participants as well as the nuances of the technology in use. We argue that online PLD occurs in collaborative text-spaces within learning management systems, social media spaces and their attendant learning objects such as forums. As such, persistent challenges to engagement in online PLD may be met by considering the language-based interpersonal affordances of these text-spaces. We employ a small-scale corpus study and appraisal analysis to demonstrate the value of Systemic Functional Linguistics in addressing the challenges of online learning, particularly how the meaning making resources of the interpersonal metafunction can be used to improve participant engagement.

This study contributes to research on the doctoral experience of international students who are parents, and for whom the temporary experience of living elsewhere is both a challenge and a resource for all members of the family. The study investigated how a group of these students positioned themselves to their children’s English and home language during their study abroad. A group of 12 international doctoral students from one Australian university and one primary school teacher took part in the study. The doctoral students were from a number of non-anglophone countries. Membership Categorisation Analysis was used to examine the identity categories invoked during focus group discussions. The categories bilingual, student, parent, tutor and spouse, the category devices family, study, nationality/language, time and location, and the attributes responsibility and inadequacy that emerged in the analysis, suggest that language issues are important considerations for international students with families, and need focused attention.

To prepare young people for the increasingly complex and fluid world of their future, many countries have begun introducing digital technologies concepts and skills into their curricula. In 2017, the New Zealand National Curriculum was updated to incorporate digital technologies concepts in both the indigenous Māori-medium curriculum and the English-medium curriculum. This study investigated the long-term impact of three different models of digital technologies in professional learning and development on primary and intermediate schoolteachers’ knowledge and efficacy beliefs (value beliefs, self-efficacy beliefs and teaching efficacy beliefs). Professional learning and development were found to have a positive long-term impact on teachers’ digital technologies knowledge and efficacy beliefs, yet no one professional learning and development model was found to be more effective than another. Post professional learning and development, teachers were found to want more support on how to plan for Digital Technologies curricula implementation and fully adopt twenty-first-century pedagogical practices. School environments were shown to influence efficacy beliefs, and a lack of time in the classroom to plan for and upskill in digital technologies was reported. Limitations of the study are discussed, and areas for future research are identified.

This study examines pre-service teachers (PSTs) from two Australian universities regarding their involvement in rural professional experience (PE) placements and their potential impact on future career choices. The objective was to gain insight into the diverse teaching and learning experiences PSTs had during their rural PE, and what impact these had on their interest in working in country schools. This paper focuses on findings from urban and rural-based PSTs who undertook rural, regional and remote PE. PSTs reported that these experiences helped them develop rewarding pedagogical approaches and contributed to significant personal and professional growth. They reflected that their growth as a teacher arose from encountering diverse student cohorts, the school cultures they experienced, and the relationships they formed within the school community. However, despite these positive aspects, the PSTs’ intentions to pursue employment in rural areas remained diverse and personal. This suggests that while rural PE was highly valued, it was not sufficient to override individual circumstances and preferences when considering rural employment. It also seemed that the experiences may have inadvertently attracted PSTs open to change and adventure who utilised the support of rural mentors and communities, only to ultimately teach in metropolitan schools.

Despite efforts to foster a more equitable gender representation, Australia's higher education sector and workforce continue to be highly segregated. This article focusses on the gendered experiences of first-in-family (FIF) students—many who are from low-socioeconomic communities—transitioning to Australian universities. In terms of the gendered nature of widening participation, we know students who are FIF will often study disciplines which align with traditional gender norms. Drawing on the First-in-Family Project (n = 48), we present the analysis of our findings in two parts. First, we provide an overview of the cohort where we analyse the gendering of degree choice of FIF students. Second, underpinned by theoretical work focussed on student gendered and classed subjectivities, we address how FIF young people negotiated classed and gendered norms during the transition to university. Our data suggest that young people engage in ‘gender work’ and ‘class work’ which informs their identities and how they make choices about their futures. Based on our research, we argue that to achieve social justice there is a need for a renewed attention to gender within the widening participation agenda.

The persistent deficit positioning of Indigenous students has meant that the combined terms ‘Indigenous education’ and ‘excellence in education’ have been kept separate in mainstream discourse. Excellence in education is an under-theorised concept that must consider intercultural and diverse perspectives. Consequently, this paper aims to understand excellence in education through Indigenous peoples’ perspectives regarding how excellence in Indigenous education is (or could be) enacted in schools. This paper reports on findings from a pilot study with Indigenous community members, principals, teachers, and support staff. The research aimed to address the question: How do Indigenous education practitioners define excellence in Indigenous education? This qualitative study used appreciative inquiry, which allowed for an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon and multiple contextual and localised examples from everyday community members, educational practitioners, and leaders. The data show that employing a language underpinned by strengths can change the conversation, expectations, and aspirations in Indigenous education, as framing through excellence may shift the ideology of policy and, thus, the interpretation of enactment in Indigenous education.