Reflecting an international shift from punitive to more rehabilitative responses to youth offending, many Australian youth justice systems are undergoing significant revision and reform. The urgency of these changes are intensified by longstanding inequities pertaining to the gross overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth…

Care in the early years entails more than childcare. This paper has three major sections. In the first section, I begin with an introduction and a quick overview of the ECEC system in Australia. This snapshot of the Australian ECEC system presents a messy map of the care and education system for young children under a neoliberal political economy…

This article provides a critical analysis of policies from two education systems that support the education of students from migrant backgrounds. This analysis examines the highly political policy context of multiculturalism to reveal how education systems acquiesce to or resist social and political forces. In making this case, the article…

Research to date has criticised the policy on education that evolved under a federal Labor government during the period 2007-2013. These analyses suggest that a global neoliberal agenda dominates, with the effect of constructing limited and damaging concepts of equity and social justice. The research presented here offers an alternative…

In 2016 the world witnessed a consolidation of a western brand of political 'populist authoritarianism' that is anti-globalisationalist and creates 'shared objects of loathing' in the popular imagination. This article engages with the implications of this affective and masculinist 'post-truth' era for higher education and analyses the narratives…

Almost 20 years ago the Australian government released "Gender Equity: A Framework for Australian Schools" (1997). It was adopted by all states but almost immediately disappeared from sight after a conservative change of government. This was followed by the dismantling of gender equity units in each state, and a turn to boys' education…

The notion of responsibility makes a significant appearance in a range of Westernised education policy documents concerned with student conduct, welfare and values. While policies may differ in the extent to which responsibility is explicitly defined or generally assumed, most seem to emphasise an ideal social subject who is accountable,…

In this paper we reflect on the challenges of engaging in social justice work within elite schools. Drawing on experiences collaborating with an elite school in a justice-oriented research project, we consider the theoretical resources that informed this work. We demonstrate how Freire's work has been critical in forming the kind of relations that…

This article presents the findings of a qualitative research study on student teachers' perceptions of sustainability, specifically influenced by ecological citizenship and political solidarity. Research was conducted with 18 Graduate Diploma of Education (Primary) student teachers at one university, as they only have one year in which to train as…

As sites of human social activity, schools must engage in challenging conversations between staff, students and their communities about social disharmonies. This paper presents interview data from a case study of Eucalyptus High School (not its real name), a large multicultural school located in a middle-class area in suburban Victoria…

This paper explores the reception of Indigenous perspectives and knowledges in university curricula and educators' social responsibility to demonstrate cultural competency through their teaching and learning practices. Drawing on tenets of critical race theory, Indigenous standpoint theory and critical pedagogies, this paper argues that the…

In Australia, a distinct political-educational imagination drives contemporary policy and praxis. This imagination finds root in the social governance models of British Third Way policy and can be considered "social capitalist". Central to such politics is a view that social governance is capable of pursuing and achieving the social…

Equitable access, success and quality in higher education are examined from a variety of ideological perspectives. "Quality" is positioned as a complex generic concept while "access" and "success" are identified as key concepts in the social inclusion domain, supplemented by the concept of "participation."…

This paper examines empirical data with regard to recent theorizing and conceptualizing of children's citizenship. It draws on a doctoral study where the author told social justice stories to one class of children aged five to six years to investigate the active citizenship that the stories set in motion. By imagining this action research study…

This paper argues that under the influence of neoliberalism the role of schooling has been narrowly redefined as helping students to gain the knowledge and skills to "get a job". Drawing on the recent policy pronouncements of the new Rudd Labor Government in Australia, the paper examines how the advocates of human capital theory have…