This article examines the place of evolutionary science in protestant and Catholic residential colleges associated with Australian public universities across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Although faith-based universities are a relatively recent phenomenon in Australia, a quasi-federal model of secular teaching and accrediting…

This paper argues that Aboriginal children's engagement with education in the central Australian region of the Northern Territory in the mid-twentieth century can be understood as strategic engagements with formal western education systems and assimilation policies. It addresses a methodological problem stemming from a project that focuses on the…

A recent global reconnaissance of Christian higher education found a number of key themes that shaped current developments, such as the pressing challenges of secularization and nationalization but also the advantages of privatization and massification. This article provides an update to this older analysis by taking a birds-eye view of trends…

In the years either side of Federation in 1901, Australia's Irish Catholics balanced two often contradictory impulses: their determination to retain their cultural and religious links with Ireland in the face of an often unsympathetic Protestant majority, and the desire to become 'good' Australians in order to make 'a go' of their lives in the new…

While the preference for university by school leavers has been researched extensively, this article seeks to explore if religious influence might also come to play when selecting a university, with particular reference to Australia, a country whose higher education environment is largely made up of public, secular universities. The data used is…

Drawing on data from the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey (NCLS), this study was designed to assess peer and parental influence on frequency of church attendance, attitude toward church, and attitude toward Christianity among a sample of 6256 young churchgoers between the ages of eight and 14 years, attending a range of denominations,…

This article explores commonalities in the lives and work of women head teachers in Malawian secondary schools and women principals in Australian Lutheran schools. In both Australia and Malawi women are under-represented in school leadership and often appointed to complex schools and communities. We commence with a brief discussion of Malawi and…

Australian Protestant schools have often been depicted as sites that restrict knowledge. This paper presents the findings of a 2010-2013 field study of 137 teachers, exploring the nature and extent of Protestant School English teacher self-censorship when excluding and selecting texts to teach. In both survey and interview data, I find that the…

Drawing on data from the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey, this study was designed to assess the connection between religious affect (as a measure of Christian commitment) and global happiness (as a measure of personal well being) among a sample of 6,194 young churchgoers in Australia between the ages of 8 and 14 years, attending a…