As primary career influencers, parents must support adolescent children in navigating evolving and increasingly challenging employment landscapes. Using a capitals lens, this study explores secondary school parents' capacity to provide informed career advice and their perceptions on factors known to enhance youth employability and employment…

Educational institutions have been identified as ideal locations to implement health promotion strategies that aim to prevent and treat youth obesity. However, the tertiary training of future health promoters currently lacks health and nutrition instruction. This study sought to investigate attitudes towards youth obesity and perceptions of the…

The aim of this article was to examine how media attention affects the social exclusion of young refugees negotiating their way towards settlement in Australia. Emerging stereotypes and prejudices against young male refugees require new ways of understanding the impact of global, national and local issues on their social exclusion. The article…

A National Curriculum in Health and Physical Education (HPE) has recently been developed in Australia. This new curriculum reflects, among other educational priorities, both environmental sensitivities and a commitment to the enhancement of young people's health and wellbeing. HPE is one of the key sites in the curriculum where a focused…

This paper details the psychosocial changes in a group of gifted and talented middle-years students who engaged in solving a community-based problem--the lack of a teenage-safe space in their regional Queensland town ("N"). Supported by a Knowledge Producing Schools pedagogy, the young people worked with their local council, teachers, a…

This article reports on a study that investigated the education pathways of 464 young people. We were interested in the effects of New Zealand citizenship and Pacific ethnicity on pathways so compared findings for three groups residing in Australia: Pacific youth with New Zealand citizenship, Pacific youth with Australian citizenship, and…

In this paper, we draw upon the experiences of a group of young people who have been excluded from mainstream schools in two Australian states to provide an account of the ways in which they have found their way to education in educational sites that are variously referred to as "flexible learning centres", "second chance…

A strong feature of the widening participation agenda is improving the aspirations of groups that are underrepresented in higher education. This paper seeks to reposition the utility of this as a focal point of educational interventions by showcasing the success of a mentoring program that takes a different approach. The Australian Indigenous…

Many studies have highlighted the capacity of community arts programs to re-engage those young people considered at-risk of disconnection from future education and/or employment. "Evolution" is an artist-guided visual arts program established for young people challenged by mental health and social issues that aims to foster re-engagement…

The largest population of youth at risk for involvement in the juvenile justice system are those with disabilities and mental illness. There has been scant research into the pathways that these students take from home, school and the community to involvement in the justice system in Australia. This paper utilises insights from critical disability…

This paper addresses the vexed educational policy aspects of area-based "interventions (ABIs) in neighbourhoods designated as "disadvantaged" in an Australian context. We find that the way in which the policy of ABIs is supposed to operate and impact education is highly problematic. What we present instead in this paper is a much…

Healthy learning environments for young people are underpinned by respectful relationships. Unfortunately, Australian students who do not form reasonable relationships with peers and staff are unlikely to benefit from being at school. These students tend to disengage and are often excluded. However, a growing number of Australian schools have…

In this paper, the 2001 Australian Census is used to estimate predicted net benefits of education at a small geographic level. These are then linked to youth in the areas to test the associations with high school participation. This is done separately for Indigenous youth, a population sub-group with historically low levels of education…

The public policy of numerous nations, including Australia, articulates a clear expectation that schools will develop young people's capacities to participate in civic society and its democratic structures and processes. A romantic policy rhetoric hides a reality that is both more complex and less well understood than is typically acknowledged.…

In the twenty-first century, a socially just system of schooling prepares all young people to adapt to new technologies, and participate in a global economy that is highly differentiated at the local level. In Australia and other countries where local markets have become heavily dependent on service economies, "working-class" families…