This article addresses the controversy surrounding the Safe Schools Coalition Australia. Certain politicians and media commentators have accused the initiative of harming the students it ostensibly aims to benefit. Those accusations have, in turn, been labelled 'homophobic' by supporters of the Coalition. This article suggests that the term…

This is a reflective opinion piece, on our efforts in Australia to achieve alignment between the goals of Indigenous self-determination, Indigenous studies programmes and decolonising theory for an open and critical dialogue in south-south scholarship agendas. In this spirit, extant approaches to Indigenous studies in the Australian higher…

This article is a response to Kevin Donnelly's article, "The Australian Education Union: A History of Opposing School Choice and School Autonomy Down-Under," and aims to correct specific errors and misrepresentations as found by Susan Hopgood, Federal Secretary of the Australian Education Union. She argues that the article is misleading…

This article is written in response to Lingley's (2016) concept of spiritually responsive pedagogy. To begin with, the word "spiritual", when applied to education, still attracts varied responses. Therefore, I have begun by examining contemporary understandings of spirituality as reflected in current research and literature, which…

Dempsey has provided a commentary on our study (Carter, Stephenson, & Strnadova, 2011) examining the reported rates of use of instructional practices by Australian special educators. Examining this commentary, it is evident that on many issues we are on the same page and agree on many of the fundamental conclusions to be drawn from the study.…

This article presents the author's response to to W.G.K. Duncan's 1961 paper, "Agenda for a national association", in the first number of the "Australian Journal of Adult Education," the journal of the newly established Australian Association of Adult Education (AAAE). The brief has been interpreted in this way. Duncan viewed…

This paper seeks to explain why the policy history of school funding in regard to Australian Catholic Education looks and sounds the way it does today through the production of a genealogy of the subject. The questions addressed are, first, why has the funding of Catholic schools in Australia become an occluded historical site since the 1970s,…

Education is characterised by marked and damaging schisms among its specialties, especially between classroom practitioners and academic members of the profession. While many or most commentators accept this rift as arising from real and significant differences between the groups, this article argues that the schism can be seen as the consequence…

This essay begins by outlining Emmanuel Levinas's radical conception of ethics. Levinas invokes/declares an absolute and primary obligation of responsibility to the human Other, whom he figures hyperbolically as invoked by the epiphany of the encounter with "the face of the Other." This encounter with alterity founds not only ethics, but…

Taking up a theme raised by Stuart Cunningham in a recent issue of the "AUR"--that the innovations of Australia's humanities, creative arts, and social sciences are not getting the recognition that they deserve from the nation's government--this paper, dealing only with the social sciences, offers a cautionary note. If the social…

Ghosts haunt the school curriculum. Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" provides a starting point for thinking about these curriculum ghosts. In the Preface, he states that he has "endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea". In this article, the author seeks to raise the ghost of an idea, and to…

In the latter part of last year a Macquarie University academic aroused outrage with his comments over the supposed links between race and criminality. For his colleagues and the union alike, the case provided a difficult example of the clash of shared academic values and the right to speak. Here four participants in the controversy-- from NTEU's…

Discusses Patricia Wrightson's development as a writer of children's novels and her unique contributions to Australian literature. Highlights characters and/or primary points of interest in her works, especially her Hans Christian Anderson Medal winner, "A Little Fear." (SD)

Discusses the renaissance of Australian film, analyzes films of several Australian directors, and comments on the differences in Australian and American national characteristics and viewpoints. (PD)

In his book entitled "Teaching Defiance: Stories and strategies for activist educators," this author asserted that, although his book was not a discussion of the Iraq war, it was concerned with the way the war has been "waged" in the countries of the three invaders: the USA, the UK and Australia. For him, the fact that each…