This short reflection explores both the challenges and potentials of teacher professional learning in contemporary times. It argues that the neoliberal logics of professional development as deployed in many contexts around the world limit and curtail the potential for teachers to engage in generative professional learning that fosters growth and…

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…

The scope and breadth of the field of comparative and international education is vast. In fact, there are few, if any, limitations on theme, method, or data in the field of comparative and international education. Every context or combination of contexts are available for comparative education scholars to scrutinise. The scope of this field brings…

Francesca Beddie asserts that "history … currently plays little part in governmental processes and does not meet its potential as a contributor to wider policy debate." Adopting a book-ends approach in analysing two critical periods of time four decades apart--1974-81 and 2011-16--this paper examines key issues in Australian VET teacher…

This theoretical paper examines the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and explores how it might contribute to conversations around quality teaching and learning in outdoor education. This paper begins by summarizing the historical and contemporary literature, including issues of definitions, curriculum, content, and pedagogy in…

In the 1990s, New Zealand and Australia rolled out new school physical education curriculums (Ministry of Education, 1999, 2007; Queensland School Curriculum Council, 1999) signaling a significant change in the purpose of physical education in both countries. These uniquely Antipodean curriculum documents were underpinned by a socially critical…

A variety of public critiques, reports and government reviews into Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in Australia and globally have called for a rethink on teacher education. Similarly, key researchers such as Hattie (2011), Smith and Lynch (2010) and Ingvarson et al. (2014) have argued for new, innovative approaches to ITE that are able to provide…

Over the last 40 years, teacher education in England has been the focus of a stream of "reforms" with the ultimate aim of placing provision into schools, the justification for such a radical policy being that higher education is alleged to be failing to provide good quality teachers thereby compromising the social and economic…

This paper explores the legacy of Dr Fritz Duras in order to address the issue of whether the implementation of a new curriculum for health and physical education in Australia represents a defining time for the subject. Dr Duras was Director of the first physical education teacher education course at the University of Melbourne during an earlier…

The history and current state of Chinese teaching in Australia has largely been determined by two key factors: first, the country's policy on languages, and in particular its policy regarding foreign language education; and second, its immigrants and overseas students from Chinese-speaking countries and regions. Beginning in the 1980s, Chinese…

A tapestry or "tapisserie" methodology, inspired by Denzin and Lincoln's "bricolage" methodology (2000), emerged during the complex task of re-developing teacher education programs at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. "Tapisserie" methodology highlights the pivotal task of determining…

The Federal Government in Australia has recently established Centres for Excellence in Teacher Education. These Centres represent a power shift towards schools in teacher education and away from centralised bureaucracies and university faculties of education. Given this shift, it is interesting to examine other historical and current school-based…

Currently, Australian teacher education programs include professional experiences as a means of enhancing preservice teacher understanding about teaching and the profession. The challenge the programs face is the lack of places available in schools and, at times, the unpredictable quality of the placements as some teachers are time-poor, are not…

The late nineteenth-century expansion of public schooling in Australia from an initial focus on the elementary phase to post-primary provision, and then to a more systematic secondary education over the early to mid-twentieth century, went hand in hand with the emergence of new populations of children and young people--a new constituency. In turn,…

This paper addresses the roles of Irish Catholic female religious institutes for teachers in the context of the recent debates about education and empire. Nineteenth century colonial South Australia provides an opportunity to examine such institutes, for example the Irish Dominicans from Cabra Dublin, the Irish Mercy Institute from Baggot Street,…