There is clear evidence that Indigenous education has changed considerably over time. Indigenous Australians' early experiences of 'colonialised education' included missionary schools, segregated and mixed public schooling, total exclusion and 'modified curriculum' specifically for Indigenous students which focused on teaching manual labour skills…

In 2023, researchers from the Batchelor Institute worked with staff, students and families from the Nawarddeken Academy in West Arnhem Land, which offers bicultural, community-driven education. Together, they engaged in a series of yarning circles as interviews with staff, students and families. The focus of the study was on retention, attendance…

Schooling has been a site of harm for Indigenous people in settler colonial contexts, as a tool of dispossession, assimilation and separation from country and kin. However, schools have simultaneously been sites to work against this and build alternatives to settler colonial systems that nourish Indigenous futures. This article centers the…

Our past shapes our present. However, do Australian universities understand the ways historical discourses continue to shape them? Provoked by the findings of our empirical study implemented in Western Australia's Kimberley region in 2018-2019, we conducted a critical text analysis of recent and past policies to seek historical explanation. As a…

Education in Victoria, Australia not only underwent significant change in the 1970s, but was witness to a widespread educational reform project. Whilst exploration of the more widespread alternatives has been of some interest, the smaller progressive traditions that emerged in some ways "alongside" the broader reforms have rarely been…

This paper reports on the findings from a multi-site case study conducted in Australia, Finland and Jamaica which explored the conditions that enabled and constrained the autonomy of school principals. Systematic data collection was carried out in the form of interviews of school principals and the data was analysed using a qualitative approach.…

Contributing to the understanding of Steiner education as a localised practice, this paper traces the creation of two "second generation" Steiner schools in 1980s Victoria. A period of expansion for Steiner education in Australia, the 1980s saw the number of Steiner schools increase from 5 to 31. These schools were started mainly by…

This article critically examines definitions of policy 'success' in the context of historical Indigenous higher education policy in the Northern Territory (NT), Australia. We begin by summarising applications of the often-used but arbitrary, rarely-critiqued terms 'policy success' and 'what works'. The paper chronologically articulates what…

In an era of globalization, internationalization of higher education (IHE) has been constructed as an almost inevitable trend and has become a common pursuit of many nations in their higher education (HE) policies. This study focuses on two nations, China and Australia, in terms of this trend. The broadest aim of this research was to find out the…

There is now a plethora of writing around science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, in addition to the scholarship and practitioner domains, that includes policy and strategy statements both domestic and international, public and private. In overview, this article argues that STEM as the neologism for science education is…

This paper highlights the need for studies to be undertaken on Irish women who became 'female religious' in Roman Catholic religious communities and who taught in Australian schools up until 1922. The paper is structured in three parts. It opens by outlining the international context that gave rise to the existence of these personnel in Australia.…

The number of Indigenous people enrolling in and completing higher education courses in the Northern Territory slowly continues to climb. Since the first policies supporting the Australian Government's self-determination policy that encompassed training of Indigenous teachers in the Northern Territory, Charles Darwin University and Batchelor…

Purpose: Soon after its establishment in 1863, the Board of Education -- the body responsible for administering public education in Victoria -- determined that a system of universal mixed (coeducational) schooling would be adopted in the colony. Existing single-sex departments were "encouraged", or compelled, to amalgamate, and no new…

The progressive democratisation of Australian higher education has numerous causes including the increase in the number of universities and therefore university places across the later 20th and into the 21st century, as well as initiatives by governments of different ideological hues to increase the total percentage of the population with a…

Current practices regarding inclusive education vary enormously depending on a wide range of issues, specifically the context and culture of an education system. To maximise the validity of data, and to avoid contextual confusion, this review focuses on one state in Australia, that of Western Australia. By applying a review of five-decade archival…