This article reports on a critical policy analysis of discourses related to school exclusions. The management of problematic student behaviour is one of the intractable problems facing education systems today. Despite being ineffective, school suspensions and exclusions are commonly used in many countries as a discipline strategy to manage student…

Keeping a good disciplinary climate is a key to student learning and well-being. Disciplinary norms need to be clearly established and applied fairly and consistently. Yet, strictness alone cannot optimise student outcomes: students need support and understanding.

Although a growing body of research has been conducted on student misconduct in universities, quantitative data on disciplinary action undertaken by institutions against student transgressions are largely absent from the literature. This paper provides baseline quantitative data on disciplinary action against students in the universities. It is…

In the context of institutional concern with academic misconduct by university students, this paper reports on research into disciplinary decision making by universities in respect of students. Through semi-structured interviews with student advocacy staff, the paper explores experiences of the quality and approach of university disciplinary…

Countless cases of plagiarism are detected across the Australian higher education sector each year. Generally speaking, policy and other responses to the issue focus on punitive, rather than on educative, measures. Recently, a subtle shift is discernable. As well as ensuring appropriate consequences for plagiarists, several universities are…

This paper considers the discursive production of violence in the context of educational markets. Drawing on a larger study of sexually violent incidents that occurred in an elite private boys' school in Sydney, Australia, in 2000, the paper examines disciplinary traditions and communicative practices surrounding these events. Insights from Michel…

Every day, decisions are made in universities that affect students. When a decision adversely affects a particular student, what means of redress does that student have? The circumstances in which a student has a legal claim against their university are generally unclear. Courts have traditionally tended to draw a distinction between "purely…

Describes how the Education Department of Victoria, Australia, formulated policies to: (1) integrate disabled and/or disruptive students into regular schools, and (2) revise suspension regulations and limit the proliferation of off-site facilities for disruptive students. To avoid marginalizing disruptive students, educators must look beyond…

Although devolution (decentralization) policies assume that school communities will work collaboratively to make decisions appropriate to the local context, cooperative processes do not occur automatically. This paper outlines a case study of a school committee's efforts to develop a discipline policy at an Australian elementary school. Committee…