Public education is not just a way to organise and fund education. It is also the expression of a particular ideal about education and of a particular way to conceive of the relationship between education and society. The ideal of public education sees education as an important dimension of the common good and as an important institution in…

During the last decade or so, schooling policy has had to increasingly grapple with processes that have a global reach. One significant aspect of globalisation has been the global flows of asylum seekers and refugees. Although Australia has a long history of accepting asylum seekers and refugees, in recent times, concerns about national security…

Reforming schooling to enable engagement and success for those typically marginalised and failed by schools is a necessary task for educational researchers and activists concerned with injustice. However, it is a difficult pursuit, with a long history of failed attempts. This paper outlines the rationale of an Australian partnership research…

In this paper we explore the possibilities for redesigning pedagogy in the middle years of schooling. We think that the middle schooling movement in Australia is unfinished because the pedagogical reforms promised have been patchy, not well researched and difficult to sustain. As well, middle schooling is a little exhausted because it has failed…