Institutional ethics review procedures aim -- in principle -- to minimise harm and evaluate risks, providing an important space to consider the safety of participants and researchers. However, literature has questioned the effectiveness of the process, particularly for reviewing 'risky' topics in a risk-averse environment. This article reports the…

This article presents a descriptive, critical analysis of the comparability of information concerning students, teachers, and school resources gathered by organisations within government jurisdiction, and the pitfalls for the unwary researcher using government data banks. Differences in the method of compiling information about citizens, and…

It was fundamental to Martin Thrupp's politics that he would work with teacher unions and assist them in their struggles against government policies that were anti-teacher and educationally unsound. I made contact with Martin even before he had arrived back in New Zealand to ask him to do a piece of work for PPTA and NZEI on standards for…

Policy analysis can be useful for learning about 'what works' in policy. Contemporary policy studies literature highlight that such learning is influenced by power relations in government that shape our ways of knowing the world. This paper offers a critically reflexive narrative account of power relations present during Indigenous higher…

A considerable scholarship now describes the increasing neoliberalization of universities and the accompanying impacts on academic research and researchers. However, less attention has been devoted to issues of research project leadership, especially for academics with feminist commitments. This article reports results of a qualitative study of 12…

This paper explores perceptions of work intensification around the world. Underpinning this analysis is C. Wright Mills' (1959) argument that many personal troubles are public issues, and the notion that a significant dimension of the privatisation of public education, a concern of public education advocates worldwide, is the ways in which school…

In the past decade, notions of teacher professionalism have been associated with increased accountability, standards, performance assessments, and teacher testing, and impacted by alternative pathways into the profession that downplays professional education and foreground subject content knowledge expertise and opportunity to learn on the job.…

In contemporary educational settings, school leaders and teachers face increased accountability and pressure to raise student performance. Utilising professional learning to develop individual and collective capability is a common feature of these settings. In Australia, there is evidence that many schools have implemented action research to…

Over the past thirty years universities have increasingly extended their offerings of vocationally oriented degrees and have recruited into academe, practitioners from the professions. This paper reports on a qualitative study that investigated the experiences of 20 professionals-turned-academics in Australia; their expectations of academe and how…

This article reveals how educational policies and policy contexts in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Australia establish the circumstances which enable and constrain individual and collective teacher professional development as praxis. We provide insights into existing partnerships between universities and schools, and, municipalities and the state as…

Examines how early childhood teachers in one Australian state use child observations. Argues that the current economic/political climate has produced changes for early childhood settings and that how teachers respond to changes regarding child observation depends on their work context. Suggests that the purpose of observation is changing and that…