Australian education policies increasingly value equity and diversity, but these policies are not necessarily implicitly supported through curriculum. This study explores the hidden curriculum in senior school Drama and Theatre Studies in the state of Victoria, through an equity audit of texts prescribed through each subject's playlists, solos,…

The Australian education system is culpable in perpetuating, rather than alleviating, inequitable outcomes for First Nations peoples. To address this, the "Culturally nourishing schooling project (2020-2024)" involves eight high schools committed to whole-of-school change in four intertwined domains: learning from Country,…

This paper shares findings from a project that examined how schools serving marginalised communities facilitated students' substantive engagement. Through interviews with students, parents, teachers and school leaders, we determined that substantive engagement was supported by formal and informal strategies that enabled access to rich learning…

While university participation rates among Indigenous Australians have been on the rise in recent years, parity targets remain elusive. In this context, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how aspirations for higher education are formed and nurtured. Studies tend to focus on barriers to access, often in ways that position Indigenous…

The middle-school years (Year 7 to Year 9) is a particular challenge for socially disadvantaged populations, with high proportions of children either repeating school years or dropping out of school. In Australia, a group of particular concern is First Nations children for whom there is a collective effort by all governments to improve education…

In both academic and policy spaces, learning is often cast as lifelong, dynamic, constructive and in particular, agentic. Despite this focus students' voices are rarely privileged in these spaces -- especially in policy. We respond to this oversight by deploying Foucault's theories of knowledge to explore how students understand themselves as…

This paper focuses on the perspectives of minority/racialized students in urban high schools. It is based on findings of interviews with 85 students in six secondary schools in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, and in Melbourne, Australia, during 2016-2019. While there has been increasing attention to closing the racial achievement gap and some…

While attempts to decolonise the school curriculum have been ongoing since the 1970s, the recent Black Lives Matter protests around the world have drawn urgent attention to the vast inequities faced by Black and First Nations peoples and people of colour. Decolonising education and other public institutions has become a front-line public concern…

This research article addresses an important issue related to how teachers can support Aboriginal secondary school students' learning of science. Drawn from a larger project that investigated the study of vertebrates using Queensland Indigenous knowledges and Montessori Linnaean materials to engage Indigenous secondary school students, this…

Australia's colonial past and subsequent propagation of the White Australia policy in the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 has meant that 'Whiteness' remains central to the national imaginary. Consequently, racial-colonial discourses axiomatically regulate scholarly and societal understandings of racial minorities through two unique but…

School belonging is fundamental to the wellbeing and academic success of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) students. While the psychosocial factors associated with belonging have been well articulated, the ways in which schools foster belonging for this cohort is relatively unexplored. This paper discusses a research collaboration that…

In Australia, there are numerous outreach initiatives run by universities for Indigenous high school students that attempt to elevate aspirations of Indigenous students to go to university. The theoretical case for these initiatives is strong as much data exists surrounding the barriers Indigenous students face in entering university. However, the…

Drawing on narratives from young migrant women in their senior year, this paper argues that neo-liberal imperatives congeal around young women from minority backgrounds in particular, through privileging upward mobility and deep engagement notions of educational 'success'. It uses Ahmed's (2014) notion of 'wilful subjectivities' to consider how…

Indigenous Australians are significantly underrepresented in chemistry based professions, which arises from their low participation in physical science subjects in secondary and tertiary education. This is a multifaceted issue with a number of identified solutions, one of which is to link chemistry with aspects of Indigenous culture. Here, four…

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented disruption to higher education across the world. The World Bank estimated that, in April of this year, universities and other tertiary education institutions were closed in 175 countries and communities, and over 220 million post-secondary students had their studies significantly disrupted due to…