The aim of this article is to explore the worth of a materialist/posthumanist approach to ethics, specifically affirmative ethics (Braidotti, 2018, 2019a), within the field of education. I work empirical material that 'does' this ethics in classrooms and draw on Deleuze's (1988) ethically guided materialism as taken up by Braidotti (2019b), to…

This paper examines how policy pressure for increased performance on standardised measures of student achievement influenced the teacher learning practices that arose in a school setting in Queensland, Australia. Drawing upon research and theorising of governing by numbers, and applications to the governance of education, and particularly…

Purpose: The central argument in this paper is that ethical school leadership is imperative in a context of increasing performance-driven accountability. The purpose of this paper is to focus on school principals' perceptions of how they understand ethical leadership and how they lead the ethical use of data. Design/Methodology/Approach: This…

Enacting a critical environmental education curriculum theory with 8- to 9-year-old children in 1978 is now "restoried" in a "history of the present/future" like "case study" for prosecuting five interrelated problems confronting progress in environmental education and its research. They are: the intense heat of the…

Educators are increasingly aware that the efficacy of social and emotional learning (SEL) is dependent on implementation factors, not just program content. These include the philosophy underpinning an intervention, the beliefs as well as the skills of facilitators, and the classroom/whole school context in which the intervention takes place. This…

Poor results in Queensland Year Three NAPLAN Numeracy tests have provided a focus to critically review the classroom practices of lower primary mathematics teachers. This paper outlines how pedagogical content knowledge can be strengthened by emphasising conceptual understanding, by utilising dynamic classroom discourse, by an awareness of…

Schools bring people together. Yet for many children there are major discontinuities between their lives in and out of school and such differences impact on literacy teaching and learning in both predictable and unpredictable ways. However if schools were reconceptualised as meeting places, where different people are thrown together (Massey, 2005)…

There has been a major and growing international focus on improving the quality of teaching for decades. In Australia, there have been numerous key national initiatives introduced since 2007 with the aim of improving school, teacher and student performance. These include national testing and reporting of student achievement, national professional…

There is no doubt that the increasing politicisation of education in an economically rationalist climate is contributing to less equity, access, participation and, therefore, social justice for many Australian primary children. This article initially explores how the development of the impending national Australian curriculum replete with a high…

Enabling teachers to talk about their professional practice is an essential element of professional development; however, the types of conversations required for transformative outcomes are not clearly defined. Teachers from eight Australian primary schools (grades 1-7) participated in a collaboratively designed information and communication…

Contemporary commentary notes that students are frequently ahead of their teachers in their ability to manipulate and be creative with the internet, digital programs, and mobile technology. In this context it is important to ask, "What knowledge do teachers need to teach in the contemporary context where texts are elaborately multimodal,…

This paper begins as an initial rejoinder to the ideas expressed by Ross (2000) in The Promise and Perils of E-Learning: A critical look at the new technology. In his article, Ross supports the traditional practices of pedagogy at the primary school level--face-to-face pedagogy--and then critiques what he describes as a "fetishisation"…