This paper establishes that system-generated data profiles are influencing the work of principals in three Queensland state schools. Drawing upon Foucault's notions of governance, as well as research emphasising performative cultures and the importance placed upon numbers and data in education, this paper uses the tale of the Emperor's map as a…

Students who have followed routes to Western universities other than the 'traditional' one--that is, an uninterrupted path from school to university--face greater challenges to their democratic participation in higher education than their "traditional" counterparts. Until recently, universities have predominantly expected students with…

This study investigates knowledge structures and scientific communication using bibliometric methods to explore scientific knowledge production and dissemination. The aim is to develop knowledge about this growing field by investigating studies using international large-scale assessment (ILSA) data, with a specific focus on those using Programme…

Public education is commonly perceived as a social good endowed with the capacity to equalise western citizens' chance of 'success'. In 2008 Australia introduced standardised testing and reporting procedures to improve educational quality and equity through two policy tools (NAPLAN/MySchool). Ensuing public debate culminated in two Senate…

This article responds to and reflects upon the articles in this special issue. Specifically, it deals with the usage of theory in each of the articles, what we might see, as examples of re-descriptive usage in autonomous theorizing. The articles utilize different theories and varying intellectual resources--Foucault and Deleuze (Richard Niesche),…

Educational reforms have largely been analysed from the perspective of the effects on students, teachers and schools, their practices and performance. While there is also a large body of literature that draws on the rhetoric and discourses found in policy documents, there has been little attention given to the organisations in which the…

School curriculum change processes have traditionally been managed internally. However, in Queensland, Australia, as a response to the current high-stakes accountability regime, more and more principals are outsourcing this work to external change agents (ECAs). In 2009, one of the authors (a university lecturer and ECA) developed a curriculum…

There is a growing interest in pre-service teacher education programs on how to maximise the learning benefits of professional experience. This study attempts to discover how action research can be used as a vehicle to bridge the divide between theory and practice and to support pre-service teachers in the development of authentic professional…

This article reviews relevant literature to provide a rationale for the use of collaborative learning for first year music practice courses at an Australian regional university. Higher music education is still grappling with the challenges posed by the Dawkins Review and ongoing reforms in the sector. These challenges include increased public…

A strong level of funding is important for Australia's school system. The Government has further committed to a new, simpler and fairer funding model that distributes this funding on the basis of need. However, while funding is important, evidence shows that what you do with that funding matters more. Despite significant funding growth in the past…

School leaders in Queensland, Australia, are working in a rapidly shifting policy landscape, expected to work towards system-defined improvement measures involving increasingly higher external accountabilities. This article analyses a group of long-term case studies of the effects of school improvement expectations on principals since the…

Basil Bernstein wrote extensively about official educational knowledge, pedagogic recontextualisation and pedagogic identities. However, his theoretical oeuvre tended to focus on the textual rather than the affective aspects of policy recontextualisation. In addition, his work on the realisation of official pedagogic identity positions at the…

Many universities today are businesses, embracing the priorities and values of any other consumerist enterprise. There is an argument that, insofar as the phenomenon of marketisation is a function of what (Michaels, F. [2011]. "Monoculture: How one story is changing everything". Red Clover Press) terms a global economic…

A striking feature of contemporary Australian higher education governance is the strong emphasis on centralized, template style, metric-based, and consequential forms of performance measurement. Such emphasis is indicative of a low degree of political trust among the central authorities in Australia in the intrinsic capacity of universities and…

With the increasing casualisation of the teacher labour force, there is little written on the experiences of casual teachers and the challenges they face in brokering professional identities within constantly shifting and uncertain work contexts. Being a category bound casual teacher (a product of category boundary work) is a complex subject…