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…

Early childhood education contexts are complex and diverse and thus require leadership approaches that connect with the values and beliefs of that field. Currently the research on leadership in early childhood education is limited and it would benefit from research into innovative approaches employed in very different but comparable locations.…

Aboriginal people in Alice Springs mapped the safe places in their Town Camps. This participatory research led to the implementation of safety features. Safety mapping was developed in response to deficit-based research which pathologized Aboriginal people in Alice Springs. Safety mapping was conducted with Aboriginal people in Town Camps to…

Prejudice towards Muslim people in Western countries is common and increasing. This paper describes an educational intervention aimed at increasing positive attitudes and actions to support Muslim Australians. University students participated in a 12-week educational programme that drew on prejudice reduction principles and a pedagogical approach…

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on poverty, schooling and research and to tease out and discuss some of the concepts that this kind of writing and research work provokes. We frame the issue, briefly introduce each paper and then discuss "keywords" in four sections: living/knowledge, justice/connection,…

Universities serve several important functions in society today through research, education, and community engagement, not least helping people to live meaningfully in society and create a world worth living in. A kind of practice that seems particularly important in fulfilling such responsibilities is "critical educational praxis," a…

The education of students with disability has changed dramatically over the past 50 years. Universal declarations and conventions have underpinned many of these changes at both an international level and within Australia. In the early 1970s, the philosophy of John Rawls provided a theory of justice to preserve social justice and individual liberty…

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Australia has long been associated with the concept of social justice, however, a clear understanding of what it looks like across diverse services and communities is not available. This article reports the process of inquiry, as well as the outcomes, of a small-scale study designed to uncover the…

School autonomy policies have circulated through various modes of educational governance internationally, endorsing the view that more autonomy will improve schools and their systems. When subject to the discourses and practices of marketization, however, school 'autonomy' has been mobilized in ways that generate injustice. These injustices are…

Using constructive grounded theory, this research investigated relational values and practices implemented by Christian early childhood leaders. Data was collected through a survey-questionnaire and four in-depth case studies using semi-structured interviews, observations and document analysis. The findings showed that these leaders placed their…

In this article, we discuss the role of affective learning and arts-based inquiry as a catalyst for providing transformative learning experiences in teaching social justice issues related to Indigenous cultures and histories. The research was conducted with first-year pre-service teachers studying an Indigenous Knowledges course as part of their…

Few would dispute the importance of equity, inclusion and belonging in early childhood education and care, yet translation into meaningful practice rarely centres the priorities of historically divested communities. The national learning framework for early childhood in Australia is the Early Years Learning Framework, positioning the child as a…

In this paper, I explore the importance of incorporating principles of social justice and cultural awareness in 21st century education. Specifically, I explore the utilization of autoethnographic research as a powerful tool for non-Indigenous teachers to enhance their cultural awareness. To illustrate this, I present a vignette featuring an…

The impetus to decolonise high schools and universities has been gaining momentum in Southern locations such as South Africa and Australia. In this article, we use a polyvocal approach, juxtaposing different creative and scholarly voices, to argue that poetry offers a range of generative possibilities for the decolonisation of high school and…

This is a secondary research discussion paper on the issue of non-conforming gender-inclusivity or neutrality in foreign language teaching of gender-based languages. Australian universities welcome increasingly diverse populations of students. One source of diversity among the student population is characterised by the notion of gendered…