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,…

Completion of higher-level mathematics courses in secondary school is advantageous for success in many university-level science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses. Based on survey data from 942 Year 10 students from Western Australia, the Year 11 mathematics course choices made by girls and boys were compared. Findings indicated that…

This paper presents an analysis of the prescribed text list for senior school English (including English as an Additional Language or Dialect, EAL/D) in Queensland, Australia. Queer understandings about the normalization of cisgender and heterosexuality provide a framework to analyze prescribed texts for adolescent learners. Hetero-cisgender norms…

Young people aged >15 years (Years 11 and 12 students) in Australia are unlikely to receive school-based sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education. The aims of this study were to gather the perspectives of young people regarding their experiences of school-based SRH education and explore what they considered should be the core components…

This paper is a retrospective exploration of the long-term and deep-reaching impact of an educational aspirations program, "Burunga M Gambay (Learning together)" (BMG, 2012), on the career pathways and life-long learning of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander high school students. The current project, "where are the Ghundus…

This article explores the education experiences of Syrian and Iraqi refugee children, specifically girls, enrolled in high schools in Australia, Lebanon and Sweden. Symbolic interactionism frames the analysis of in-depth interviews, demonstrating the adolescent girls' ability to take perspectives on their home environment, school, community and…

Transplanting non-Western religions to Western nations results in first-generation migrant attempts to transmit faith in vastly different contexts. Especially as adolescents, second-generation migrants tackle mediating their personal religious beliefs in a society with diverse religions and ideologies as well as negotiating membership of their…

The higher education participation and success rates of students in low socio-economic status (SES), regional, rural, remote, and isolated areas -- who often attend university later in life -- is a persistent concern in Australia and beyond. This article focuses on mature-aged students in low SES, regional and remote areas in Tasmania, Australia,…

Pre-university bridging programs can address the significant under-representation of Indigenous students in Australian universities by providing culturally supported alternative pathways into undergraduate study. However, successful completion of bridging programs does not always correlate with university enrolment for Indigenous students. This…

This paper explores how cultural and migrant backgrounds affect boys' and girls' high-school academic performance. Scores from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment are analysed for Australian children from migrant and non-migrant families, conditional upon a measure of gender equity in secondary education in their country of…

This paper explores the continued cultural consecration of narrow forms of knowledge and literate practice in senior Australian English curricula. Despite the prevalence of Personal Growth approaches to English throughout Australia in the latter decades of the Twentieth century, the analysis of curricula reveals a contradiction between stated…

In Australia, many Year 10 students choose not to enrol in Year 11 and 12 intermediate and advanced mathematics courses, despite having the ability to complete these courses successfully. Girls, in particular, remain significantly underrepresented in such courses. In this study, Year 10 students identified by their teachers as capable of…

This article examines various meanings of the term landscape. It advocates a deep engagement with the concept to enable high school students to carry out a range of thought-provoking geographical inquiries. Each aspect of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority's definition of landscape, shown below, is examined by reference…

'Asian whiz kids' perfect test scores.' 'Selective schools and tiger parents.' These types of headlines highlight the increased visibility of academically successful students from Asian migrant backgrounds, in Australia and other Western countries. They also point to anxiety about the perceived aggressive 'tiger' parenting often associated with…

This paper reviews the literature on best practices to engage parents in order to equip them to support their children's higher education aspirations. Parents from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds, in common with other parents, report that they want "the best" for their children's future. Getting a good education is a part of…