This paper draws on findings from a wider project examining "relational pedagogies" within Australian secondary schools. The paper considers the growing use of the "relationships" concept as a descriptor of specific teaching practices. Normative descriptions of "relationships" (and concordant descriptions of…

Music has been welcomed to juvenile justice institutions as a transformative practice supporting the rehabilitation of youth offenders to citizens. However, acknowledging that such institutions are not neutral instruments of the law but political arenas within which notions of ideal citizenship are imposed and contested, the transformative work of…

Early childhood educators' work is embedded in the complexities of relations and relationships, and this relational work is entangled in care. Care can be difficult to define and is often assumed as an inherent 'good' in education. In heavily feminised work environments such as early childhood education, it is easily assumed to be part of what…

When students feel alienated, they develop various avoidance strategies, such as becoming spectators, blending into the background, faking participation, pretending to be sick or have an injury, or simply not attending class. Consequently, students lose out on opportunities to improve their skills and interact with others, which alienates them…

Policy analysis can be useful for learning about 'what works' in policy. Contemporary policy studies literature highlight that such learning is influenced by power relations in government that shape our ways of knowing the world. This paper offers a critically reflexive narrative account of power relations present during Indigenous higher…

In the context of teaching workforce shortages, this study examined teachers' perceptions of safety, role satisfaction, and their intent to remain in the profession, in Australia. Findings from two iterations of a survey of a total of 8293 teachers revealed that 20% to 25% of participants felt unsafe in their schools. The results also showed that…

There is a body of research that indicates the need for community-driven and culturally responsive pedagogies in sport-based interventions. There is much to learn from the pedagogical approaches and experiences of African Australian refugee-background coaches who work with refugee-background young people toward acceptance and affirmation of their…

This is an inquiry into my experience as a doctoral researcher undertaking an action research/narrative inquiry project investigating the emotion experienced in teacher practice. From the outset, I recognized my position as an active participant of the research -- a protagonist, a story-teller, a listener, a re-teller -- and facilitator. This…

The importance of community has been widely recognised in the field of early childhood education. However, the various ways it has been conceived, together with taken-for-granted notions of education, have made it difficult to actualise the processes involved in contextually meaningful ways. This article draws on cultural models theory to explore…

Research on early childhood mentoring has recognised the importance of collegial, productive and high-quality relationships between early childhood mentors and mentees. This research study adopts a cultural-historical approach to understand the different positions taken by mentors when relating with international pre-service teachers (PSTs). The…

Purpose: Mentor-mentee relationships are important for individual wellbeing, mental health, professional agency and confidence. In the context of an initial teacher education (ITE) programme, these relationships become a key factor. Pre-service teachers' capacity to cope on a professional placement is closely linked to the quality of the mentoring…

Social work globally acknowledges its need to decolonise its education to produce social workers who can work responsively alongside marginalised Indigenous peoples. Yet the problem is that universities have struggled to operationalise the integration of Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing into social work education. Uniquely, this study…

In this paper, we present case study data from research that sought to evaluate the implementation and impact of a Respectful Relationships in Education (RRE) program. The program is part of the Victorian state government's school-based response to ending violence against women and their children. It advocates a liberal feminist aligned 'gender…

Young people are rarely consulted about what and how they are taught in sexuality and relationships education (SRE) at school. The reasons for this are complex and relate to adults' reluctance to acknowledge the need to take account of students' perspectives on personally sensitive matters. In this article, we provide a brief rationale and…

Team supervision has become accepted practice in the supervision of doctoral students in social sciences, humanities and education in Australian universities. However there is great diversity of interpretation of „team? with teams framed in a variety of ways. In a recent qualitative study of cohorts of Australian doctoral students, experienced and…