Pedagogical documentation has been understood as an important way for early childhood educators to provide high-quality learning environments for children. The authors explore the contested nature of quality and its interpretation in two cultural contexts: in Western Australia, where pedagogical documentation is a relatively uncommon practice, and…

The aim of this work is to learn more about the Expert Review Group (ERG), a small but powerful team of bureaucrats in Western Australia's Department of Education whose role is to inspect the quality and standards of pre-K to year 12 government schools. Critical education policy analysis is utilised. Iterative understandings were developed through…

The national Learning and Teaching Academics Standards Statement for Agriculture (AgLTAS) defines the nature and extent of the discipline and provides a set of Threshold Learning Outcome statements (TLOs) that define what a graduate should know, understand and be able to do on graduation. The Australian Council of Deans of Agriculture have…

Higher education in Australia is currently in a state of flux, with the Federal Government's Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency commencing operations in January 2012. The "After Standards Project" has been working with Australian university history departments and the Australian Historical Association, educating and…

The concept of "learning progressions" has begun to show up in discussions of education policy and research as a potential answer to the question of how to specify what being "on track" might mean. A number of recent NRC (National Research Council) reports on science education highlight the concept (National Research Council,…

There is no shortage of challenges in school education. Some of the biggest challenges we face can appear frustratingly intractable. Despite reform efforts, regular government reviews and ongoing calls for change, progress in addressing our most significant challenges is often slow and solutions continue to elude us. In this paper Professor Geoff…

For many years, the university sector has been the dominant provider of higher education in Australia. However, recent changes in government policy which have broadened access to publicly-funded subsidised student loans have resulted in the emergence of small and large private higher education providers and consortiums offering English language,…

Making Consistent Judgments (MCJ) was a systemic professional development program designed to increase teachers' capacity to make consistent judgments about students' achievement of educational standards in government schools in Western Australia; the MCJ program was in operation from 2004 to 2007 (Department of Education and Training 2007; 2008).…

Educational reform represents a long-term focus of Australian governments. National policy documents have emphasised quality education for all and improved teacher quality for over 30 years. The gaps in achievement among various groups of learners represent a problem for an education system seeking to achieve national quality benchmarks,…

The Government is committed to ensuring that the new National Curriculum compares favourably with the curricula in the highest performing jurisdictions, and sets rigorous requirements for pupil attainment which measure up to the highest standards set internationally. The Government is also committed to slimming the National Curriculum so that it…

This article critically examines two sets of ideas that have influenced educational reform in the recent past: managerialism and market approaches. It is argued that while each can be demonstrated to have led to useful change, neither provides a basis for future improvement in education. A recent example of change within the State School sector of…

Compares the confusion and inconsistencies encountered in trying to raise and establish educational standards in Australia to the situation of "Alice in Wonderland." (DF)

The Victorian school accountability framework is designed specifically for Victorian public schooling in the 1990s. These schools have three chief characteristics: (1) a high level of school autonomy in operational decisions about research allocation, human-resource management, and staff selection; (2) a common framework for curriculum and…

This publication is part of the study materials for the distance education course, Curriculum and Competencies, in the Open Campus Program at Deakin University. It contains 39 papers on the nature, historical development, and delivery of competency-based training (CBT) and on the Australian and international debates surrounding CBT. The following…

The issues of language, literacy, and numeracy (LL&N) in Aboriginal health worker (AHW) training in Australia were explored to determine how these issues interrelate, overlap, and influence the types of literacy practices required in indigenous contexts. Data were collected through two workshops and formal and informal discussions with a…