Social realist theorising about curriculum and social justice in higher education has emphasised the importance of providing equity of epistemic access to powerful knowledge. However, there has been little discussion about what constitutes powerful knowledge and how students can use it for social good. In the science disciplines, the traditional…

This article considers how students, reflecting on a pedagogy combining academic literacies and critical analysis, emphasised the importance of the learning community it promoted. The pedagogy drew on insights from the work of Theodor Adorno. Through qualitative research, the students confirmed their experience of a vibrant, productive learning…

The transformation of higher education provision by neoliberal values has been well documented. However, recent criticisms and even attacks upon higher education indicate a new politics extending beyond neoliberalism. This article draws on the sociology of conventions to unpick the distinctions at work in these new criticisms of universities. By…

Critiques of international education policy frequently take issue with how it stabilises neoliberal values at the expense of the progressive aims of education. Yet the humanism underpinning these debates can work to exclude environmental concerns from the remit of educational policy. This article offers a posthuman critique of the "Australian…

This paper illustrates how unbundling has progressed from university-controlled approaches to incorporating partnership organisations into the delivery of university functions, specifically teaching. In this paper, we limit the scope of unbundling to the management of online teachers using three Australian case studies. In the first section, we…

Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) has changed considerably over the past 40 years. This paper uses a personal memoir to trace the influences on PETE over the years. In particular, the memoir describes the early criticisms of PE as a university study and how such criticism spawned the development of what we now know as human movement…

Academics working in higher education institutions often take part in research activities as part of their role and are often under pressure to publish papers and source grant funding. In addition, academics going through the peer review process often experience negative feedback, criticism, and rejection on a regular basis. In this initial,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the work-based learning (WBL) ethos of a professional studies doctoral program, a higher degree by research program implemented in Australia. Design/methodology/approach: This is a preliminary case study of one higher degree by research program and two doctoral candidates participating in the…

Blended learning is often viewed as a teaching mode that integrates a combination of online interactive activities with face-to-face learnings. This includes a mixture of different types of teaching and learning techniques, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools. In this study, we undertook an experiment to ascertain what…

This paper presents a critique of an article that explores the internationalisation of the curriculum. First, to facilitate critical reflection, the main Western paradigms of positivism, interpretivism, critical theory and postmodernism are described and the differences between them emphasised. The article focused on in this paper can be situated…

This article presents the authors' successful experiences with Cirrus, a purpose-built Digital Humanities teaching and learning platform developed at The University of Queensland between 2016 and 2018. Our case studies in teaching the crafts of close reading, critical analysis, and writing show that Cirrus's annotation tools enable teachers to…

This paper examines responses to the trend for increasing participation in tertiary education, linking developments in higher education with those in apprenticeship systems, in Australia and the United Kingdom. In both sectors, expansion proceeded for several decades, but was robustly criticised in both countries. The expansion of access to these…

The final report of the Australian Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse comprises 17 volumes, one of which addresses its findings in relation to schools. In this article, I raise two key questions in response to the devastating details of the allegations made by survivors of their abuse: how was any of this possible,…

A government report criticised Australian universities for low proficiency in commercialising epistemic production (research and knowledge). A critical omission was a comparable measure of academic productivity to substantiate whether underperformance correlated with the commercialisation value of research output or whether academic productivity…

Universities are seldom lauded publicly for maintaining good processes and practices; instead, media stories commonly focus on shortcomings. Furthermore, universities, even when doing everything right, sometimes are unfairly targeted for criticism in circumstances in which making a public defence is difficult. A prominent case at the University of…