University of Melbourne

New Super Bureaucracy for Schools: Visionary Reform or Risky Gamble?

ACARA, AITSL, Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, ESA, Jason Clare, , , , , ,

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has unveiled the biggest shake-up in schooling policy in decades, announcing plans to merge four national education agencies—ACARA, AITSL, AERO, and ESA—into a single Teaching and Learning Commission (TLC). The idea is to bring core areas of curriculum, assessment, reporting, teaching standards, research, technology and data under one roof, rather than leaving them fragmented across multiple bodies.

Clare’s agenda is ambitious. At a speech delivered this week, he presented the TLC as a bold and targeted solution to Australian education’s most troubling challenges, including declining Year 12 completion rates, underperformance in disadvantaged communities and deeply entrenched inequities.

He shone a bright light on public schools, highlighting that the proportion of students completing Year 12 has fallen “from about 83 percent to as low as 73 percent” over the past decade. By contrast, completion rates in Catholic and Independent schools have remained high and stable. Public schools, Clare argued, “play an outsized role in educating some of the most disadvantaged children” and must be at the centre of efforts to lift outcomes and close equity gaps.

The proposed TLC is designed to align with the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement (BFSA), the new 10-year national funding deal (2025–2034) signed between the federal government and all states and territories. Clare described the BFSA as “a $16 billion investment” that commits all governments to lift outcomes and tackle inequity.

The BFSA includes a suite of reforms and targets designed to lift student performance, address student wellbeing and mental health, attract and retain teachers, tackle inequalities and improve access to evidence-based professional learning and curriculum resources.

Not exactly a surprise

As bold as this looks, the TLC idea is not entirely new. As David de Carvalho, former ACARA Chief Executive Officer, pointed out this week, the writing has been on the wall for years.

Debate about the suitability of the “national architecture” of Australian schooling has been long-standing. The potential for agency mergers was raised explicitly in the 2019 Review of the National Architecture for Schooling in Australia, led by Simone Webbe. While that review stopped short of recommending one single body, it did explore merging ACARA and AITSL. Ministers showed little appetite for such structural change at the time, but the idea lived on in policy backrooms.

When I conducted research for my book The Quest for Revolution in Australian Schooling Policy, I interviewed more than 80 senior policymakers. Many were deeply dissatisfied with the existing national machinery, describing it as fragmented, duplicative and incoherent. They spoke of blurred responsibilities, overlapping mandates, and uneven power relations when federal, national and state agencies jostle for influence.

I am now conducting another round of interviews with senior policymakers as part of a new project funded by the Australian Research Council, and the same themes keep repeating. Australia has developed a patchwork of multiple national agencies tasked with different aspects of schooling, but it lacks a coherent forum capable of strategically steering the system as a whole. This absence of a national compass for long-term policy design and coordination is precisely what Clare’s proposal seeks to address.

The landslide victory of the Albanese government has created a rare window for bold reform. The TLC proposal comes at a moment where dissatisfaction with existing arrangements, the promise of new policy solutions and favourable political conditions have converged to make once-unlikely changes possible.

But is it a good idea?

For decades it has become increasingly difficult to see “who is steering the ship” of Australian schooling policy. While federal influence has rapidly expanded, so have national organisations that have varying relationships to Australian jurisdictions and schooling sectors. 

Greater national coherence through a TLC could help provide some clarity. But there is also a dangerous flipside.

Diversity across our federation has long acted as a safeguard against over-centralisation and the domination of short-term political agendas. The fact that states and territories retain the constitutional authority to govern schools is at the very core of what it means to be a federation. It ensures that no single level of government can fully dominate and that local contexts and sectoral priorities have legitimate roles in shaping education.

In his classic text Seeing Like a State, anthropologist James Scott provides a compelling set of historical evidence to show the issues that emerge when humans seek to homogenise systems. Scott shows that while the logic of standardisation seems to make sense—because in theory it allows for greater control over inputs and outputs—reality always bites back.

This is the double-edged nature of the TLC proposal. If it delivers, then equity and performance across our schools may finally improve. But if its policies fail, the whole system will feel the impact. In a federated model, policy missteps can often be contained within jurisdictions. In a more national model, the whole nation is at risk. 

A real danger lies in assuming neat designs from above can steer the realities on the ground. Perhaps, in this moment, the government would do well to remember the advice of another TLC (the 1990s R&B pop group): “don’t go chasing waterfalls” and “stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to”—unless, of course, they’re absolutely sure the system is ready for the plunge.

Oh, and then there’s politics

On paper, the political logic behind the TLC is easy to grasp. Clare will have a compelling argument to make to state and territory ministers when they next meet at the Education Ministers Meeting (EMM). A streamlined agency promises national leadership, coherence, less duplication and greater accountability. It also allows Clare to show his government is prepared to be bold on education reform.

Even if ministers agree to progress the TLC, the politics of implementation will be fraught. While Canberra funds schools generously, it does not run them. Schooling is constitutionally the responsibility of the states and territories, and any reform that muddies this division of roles is bound to be politically difficult. Moreover, states and territories rarely speak with one voice, and even when they do, they approach these debates with different histories and vested interests.

The influence states can exert over national agencies is also a major point of debate. The governance of ACARA and AITSL provides an important precedent. When ACARA was established in 2008, it was set up as a co-owned body, with state and territory ministers given the right to nominate board members. Catholic and Independent schooling sectors were also granted representation. 

AITSL, by contrast, is a Commonwealth-owned company with an independent board of experts rather than jurisdictional nominees. 

These contrasting models highlight the delicate politics of shared authority and the constant negotiation required between federal, state, territory and sectoral interests.

A key question is what the governance structure of the TLC will be. Will states retain nomination rights, as with ACARA, or will expertise be privileged over representation, as with AITSL? And what role will Catholic and Independent representatives have at the decision-making table? 

These are delicate politics to navigate, and if ministers or sector representatives feel their role in steering national education is weakened, resistance will be fierce.

The stakes are high

The Albanese government has the mandate, the means, the resources, and the political capital to drive major change in Australian schooling. And the problems to tackle are real. 

Falling Year 12 completion rates, entrenched disadvantage in public schools, teacher shortages, flat results, and declining student engagement are all urgent and pressing. As Minister, why wouldn’t Clare seek to tackle them head on?

Yet more money, new targets and a super agency will not be enough to turn the tide. Reform must also build cultures of collaboration, trust and professional engagement within schools. History shows that reforms which sideline the professional wisdom of teachers rarely produce lasting improvement. If the TLC is to succeed, the teaching profession cannot be an afterthought: it must be in the driver’s seat.

For decades, the default formula of Australian governments has been to set tighter targets and impose more top-down directives. There is little evidence this approach delivers sustained gains.

Regardless of whether the TLC succeeds or fails, it represents another step in a decades-long shift towards federally driven national reform. Any federalism scholar will tell you this runs counter to the principles of federalism and the benefits of subsidiarity.

The creation of a TLC is being sold as a solution. It may well become the foundation of meaningful reform. But it could just as easily centralise risk in ways that make the system more fragile rather than more resilient.

Jason Clare’s gamble is clear. If the TLC works, it could be the engine of a new era in schooling reform. If it sinks, the whole ship goes down with it.


Glenn Savage is a policy sociologist and professor of education futures in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. His research works at the intersection of education policy, strategic design and system change.

Images of Jason Clare from his Facebook page.

Coloured jigsaw representing the diversity of students

Can Thriving Kids now save the NDIS? And what are its risks?

Inclusive Education, , , ,

When the federal government announced its new Thriving Kids program in August, the headlines focused on the NDIS. The minister promised this $2 billion initiative would “secure the future” of the scheme.

But the program will not be delivered through the NDIS. From 2027, children under nine with mild to moderate autism (in itself a concept contested by people with lived experience and advocacy groups)  or developmental delays will no longer enter the scheme. Instead, they will be supported through schools, early childhood centres, Medicare, and community services.

On paper this makes some sense. Best practice in early intervention says children should be supported where they live, learn and play. But this policy was announced without warning to states or schools. When premiers raised concerns about costs, the Commonwealth threatened to withhold hospital funding unless they agreed.

This is not just a disability or health policy story. It is an education story. Because the responsibility for Thriving Kids will land squarely on the shoulders of teachers and early childhood educators, and they need the resources and time to partner with families, and specialists to make this work.

Schools are already at breaking point

Our recent national surveys for Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) show how fragile equity already is in Australian schools.

  • 60% of parents reported their child with disability had been bullied at school – a 10% increase since 2022.
  • More than half said their child had been excluded from excursions or camps.
  • Almost one in three reported restrictive practices such as restraint or seclusion.

The words of parents and students are sobering. One parent told us:

“Several teachers were clearly antagonistic to my son and didn’t believe in ADHD […] Essentially gave the impression they thought we were just pandering to him and he was ‘playing’ us.”

And from a young person:

“Most of my peers don’t have basic and correct knowledge about hidden disabilities…They see me as weird, so they refuse me to join for the group work.”

Children and their families also told us that most teachers want to help, but they lacked training and systemic support. The result is that many children with disability are excluded, stigmatised and harmed in places that are meant to keep them safe.

Now imagine schools becoming the place where they receive the primary or even only support for their disability- a place where many feel scared and excluded.

Mental health is on the line

Children with disability are already at much higher risk of anxiety, depression and distress. The ABS reports that Australians with disability are nearly twice as likely to experience high or very high psychological distress as their peers.

Families in our surveys directly linked bullying and exclusion to mental health crises, school refusal and disengagement from learning. These harms are not caused by disability itself. They are the product of exclusionary environments and under-resourced systems.

If Thriving Kids pushes children into schools and early childhood centres without significant new investment, the likely outcome is not thriving but worsening mental health.

Prevention 

States such as Victoria are trying to build prevention-based wellbeing strategies. Its Wellbeing in Victoria strategy, released this year, positions inclusion, connection and belonging as protective factors against poor mental health. It names racism, ableism and exclusion as risks that harm wellbeing.

This is exactly the kind of upstream thinking we need. But prevention only works if it is backed with training, funding and planning.

Thriving Kids risks turning prevention into rhetoric while shifting the real costs onto schools and services that are already struggling.

This is part of a bigger pattern

Education researchers have been warning that schools are being asked to carry too many responsibilities that sit outside their control. Teacher shortages, rising student distress, and high levels of exclusion are symptoms of a system under strain.

As Martin Mills recently argued on this blog, schools are often left to deal with crises that are not of their own making – from housing insecurity to gender-based violence. Thriving Kids fits this pattern. It is a policy announced in the name of reform, but it pushes responsibility downward without adequate consultation or resourcing-with states, with families, with schools or with teachers..

What should be done differently

If Thriving Kids is to succeed – and if the NDIS is to be made sustainable – responsibility must be matched with resources. That means:

  • Co-design with schools, early childhood educators, families and disability advocates.
  • Funding that supports inclusion – training for teachers, accessible infrastructure, and staffing to meet need.
  • Accountability for equity outcomes – not just access numbers or budget savings.

Without these, Thriving Kids may protect the NDIS’s balance sheet but leave children and families worse off.

Final word

We need to focus on prevention and inclusion. The voices of families and young people remind us it is better to stop a child from being pushed out of school than to struggle to bring them back in, once excluded. Schools and early childhood centres can be powerful places of protection and belonging. But they are already stretched, and too many children with disability are missing out.

Thriving Kids may promise reform. But unless it comes with planning, resources and genuine collaboration, it will not help children thrive – it will simply add to the burden of systems already at breaking point.

Catherine Smith is a senior lecturer in education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne with specialisation in technology, wellbeing, equity, policy and community development.

migration

Is Australia now ready for migrant teachers?

IELTS, migrant teachers, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“We help you get started on your teaching journey in Australia”. — AITSL

Amid the 2025 federal election furor, migration became a central issue. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton  proposed cutting permanent migration and capping international students. He blamed recent arrivals for pressure on housing, healthcare, and education. “Labor’s brought in a million people over two years”, he said, citing record migration and housing strain.

While Dutton stopped short of claiming migrants are “lowering standards”, his rhetoric mirrors a global trend in right-wing populism. In March 2025, the US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the US Department of Education. He fulfilled a campaign promise to return school control to states—raising concerns over equity and federal support.

Both leaders framed migration as a threat to national capacity and cultural values. This revealed a deeper ideological project: the re-bordering of education under the guise of standards and control. Migration becomes a strategic focal point—mobilised to rally electoral support by casting it as both a cultural disruption and a structural burden to national institutions.

A more polished message

In contrast, the AITSL presents a more polished message: “Australia is popular for many things… a safe country with a friendly and relaxed culture… we can help you get started on your teaching journey”. Yet the AITSL portal also codifies a logic of superiority—positioning Australia’s education system as globally exceptional, its teachers as stewards of excellence, and its structures as the source of “evidence-based tools”.

This nation-branding rhetoric appears inclusive on the surface. But as our discourse analysis reveals, it constructs a one-way narrative of giving. Migrant teachers are positioned as beginners—“starting out”—even when they arrive with decades of experience. Their role is not to enrich the system, but to assimilate into it. As Mahati, a respected English teacher from India in Nashid’s doctoral study, reflected: “I had been teaching English for over twenty years across continents—India and Uganda—before I came to Australia. But here, I had to redo everything. It felt like I was invisible”.

The real costs are tangible. Laura, a cherished English teacher from the Philippines and participant in Nashid’s doctoral study, told us: “I took the IELTS test four times plus a review over two years. It cost me nearly four months’ salary in pesos. I had everything else ready—but the language requirement kept holding me back”.

Far from isolated

This issue is far from isolated. Migrant teachers frequently encounter inconsistent and retroactively enforced policy barriers. This occurs even amid a critical shortage of teachers and skilled migrants in education. While not representative of all, the stories of Amarjit, Anya, Reza, and others—such as Archana, Jigna, Joy, Hossein and his wife, Mahesh, Nishni, Samia, and Shurma—reflect recurring themes emerging from our shared work and Nashid’s doctoral research with immigrant teachers. Reza, a science teacher from Bangladesh, completed his Initial Teacher Education in Victoria. When he enrolled, the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) required a lower IELTS threshold. But by the time he graduated, the benchmark had shifted significantly. “Academic IELTS: at least 7.0 in Reading and Writing and 8.0 in Speaking and Listening, on one TRF (Test Report From), taken within 24 months”.

An overall IELTS score of 7.5 or 8.0 can still be rejected if one skill—such as Writing at 6.5—falls below the required threshold. As scholars argue, this rigid, decontextualised format reflects a neoliberal and neocolonial gatekeeping logic. It marginalises qualified multilingual teachers through standardised measures detached from real-world communication.

Reza explained: “I kept failing. One time I got 8 in listening but 6.5 in writing. The next time it was the reverse. After two years, I gave up and returned home”.

One teacher’s journey

He continued teaching—at an international college in Bangladesh—while repeatedly sitting for the IELTS test. Over time, each attempt brought him close, but never across the threshold required by Australian standards. After two years of emotional and financial strain, his family suggested he apply through New Zealand. There a score of 7.0 across all bands was still accepted. He met the criteria, registered with the Teachers Registration Board of South Australia (TRBSA), and used this to apply for skilled migration with family sponsorship—gaining an additional 10 points. From there, he transferred his registration to the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT) and finally settled in Melbourne.

This narrative is part of a broader trend of policy drift: where teacher migration frameworks become increasingly exclusionary, often without recognising their global contributions, lived experiences, and situated knowledge of those navigating them. By contrast, NESA now offers more flexible pathways, including English testing exemptions for internationally trained teachers with relevant experience or English-medium qualifications.

State-level discrepancies

These state-level discrepancies expose a fragmented and inequitable accreditation landscape. Since 2022, our research and public engagement have informed national discussions and policy change. An article by the Australian Associated Press (AAP)—syndicated across 100+ media outlets— amplified the undervaluation of skilled migrant teachers, contributing to recent NESA reforms on English language proficiency test exemptions for internationally trained teachers.

Quang, a respected English teacher from Vietnam with four English-medium postgraduate degrees (two from Vietnam, two from Australia, including ITE/Secondary), shared a similar experience. “I passed everything—teaching practicum, assessments, I even got distinctions. But I still had to sit for another English test to register in NSW”.

This was only because two of his Australian degrees did not meet the four-year study requirement.

He started teaching as a CRT later. The principal introduced him to others by saying, “This is our new Vietnamese English teacher”. He wasn’t offended, even when told that others had laughed upon hearing that—but he understood what it signified.

“It shows what people expect: that someone like me isn’t usually seen as an English teacher”.

It’s not just language being measures

What’s being measured isn’t just language. It’s legitimacy. It’s the right to belong.

The AITSL migration guidelines suggest legitimacy flows from only a handful of countries—Australia, Canada, Ireland, NZ, the UK, and the USA—excluding many English-medium post-colonial nations like the Philippines, India, Kenya, Ghana, and Singapore.

Similarly, the “Teaching in Australia” guide constructs the ideal teacher through phrases like “Australian teachers must…”, framing competence as nationalised and native. Even appeals to “multicultural classrooms” fail to acknowledge migrant teachers as co-creators of this richness. Their linguistic and cultural knowledge is seen less as a resource, more as a hurdle.

This mirrors what Sender and colleagues call  epistemic monolingualism: a worldview that centres standardised English and Western pedagogies as the only legitimate forms of knowledge. Yet many migrant teachers resist this framing through what we call Hybrid Professional Becoming. They don’t simply assimilate—they reimagine themselves cosmopolitan teachers of English. They engage in translanguaging, build solidarity, and develop culturally responsive pedagogies.

Natalie, a Bangladeshi teacher, shared:
“Sometimes I switch to English, Chittagonian, Jessore dialect, or what’s called standard or non-standard Bangla—not for fluency, but to build trust. It’s about connection and recognising different ways of knowing”.

Quang, reflecting on his students, said:
“They’d ask me, ‘Is my accent okay?’ I’d say, ‘Your English is beautiful. Don’t worry about it’.”

These teachers are already transforming classrooms

Such affective, relational practices disrupt top-down discourses of “support.” These teachers aren’t waiting to belong—they’re already transforming classrooms.

Yet policy rarely reflects this reality. Instead, it reinforces rigid standards and racialised assumptions. As Anthony Welch notes, fast-tracking applicants from English-dominant nations won’t solve the workforce crisis. Australia must confront the systemic devaluation of those already here.

The AARE Election Statement (2025) calls for equity, multilingualism, and recognition of teaching as a global profession. But first, we must name the problem: Australia’s teaching workforce remains bordered by accent, passport, and memory.

So let’s stop asking whether migrant teachers are “ready for Australia”.

Let’s ask whether Australia is ready to learn from the teachers already here— fluent not only in English, but in empathy, hybridity, and the courage to reimagine education.

Biographies from left to right

Nashid Nigar teaches at the University of Melbourne and brings 20+ years of experience in language and literacy education, academic writing, and teacher development. Her PhD at Monash Education, awarded the prestigious 2024 Mollie Holman Medal, introduced the framework of Hybrid Professional Becoming—advancing research in multilingual curriculum, teacher identity, and curriculum justice. Her work, grounded in epistemic diversity and equity, informs national policy and supports culturally and linguistically diverse educators globally.

Lilly Yazdanpanah is a lecturer in the School of Education at La Trobe University. Her research focuses on equity and social justice in education, with a particular emphasis on teacher and student identity within English as an Additional Language (EAL) contexts. She has extensive experience teaching in undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education programs across the Middle East, Europe, Central America, and Australia. Before joining La Trobe, she held teaching and research positions at the Faculty of Education, Monash University, specialising in TESOL and General Education.  

Sender Dovchin is a Senior Principal Research Fellow and ARC Fellow at Curtin University. Her research focuses on linguistic racism and the empowerment of CALD youth in Australia. She holds a PhD and MA from UTS and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics. Recognised as a leading scholar in Language & Linguistics, she has published six books and numerous papers in top international journals.

Rachel Wilson is a leading scholar in education and social impact at the University of Technology Sydney. With a background in psychology, teaching, and research methodology, her work spans education systems, curriculum reform, equity, and leadership. Rachel has extensive experience in research training, educational evaluation, and policy advising, and is committed to advancing quality and justice in education.

Alex Kostogriz is the professor in Languages and TESOL Education within the Faculty of Education at Monash University. He currently serves as the Associate Dean (International) within the faculty. Alex’s ongoing research endeavours are centred around the professional practice and ethics of language teachers, as well as the realms of teacher education and the early experiences of early career educators.





Open book with two trees, one alive and one dead

Why we need to COP it, for today and tomorrow

climate change, climate literacy, , , , , , ,

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed that if he was re-elected, his party would formally bid for South Australia to host a future International Climate Change Conference in partnership with Pacific Nations.

The recent re-election of the Albanese Labor government in Australia, with a substantial majority in the House of Representatives, marks a pivotal moment for climate policy and education reform. As we at the SWISP Lab (Coleman & Healy) reflect on this outcome, we see a unique opportunity to advance climate education and push for transformative changes in our approach to teaching and learning in the Anthropocene.

The COP31 Opportunity

With Australia’s bid to host COP31 in Adelaide in November 2026, we stand at a critical juncture. This summit presents an unprecedented platform for Australia to:

  1. Demonstrate climate leadership on the global stage
  2. Respond to regional calls for greater climate ambition, particularly from our Pacific neighbours
  3. Accelerate domestic climate policy reforms

To fully realise the promise of COP31, Australia must look beyond policy and infrastructure. It must also invest in cultural and educational transformation. As the climate crisis deepens, the role of education becomes increasingly urgent. This is where SWISP Lab sees a vital opportunity: to align climate action with educational reform that equips the next generation; not just with knowledge, but with the imaginative, ethical, and practical capacities to navigate and shape adaptation and mitigation in a complicated global context.

Educational Reform: A SWISP Lab Perspective

At SWISP Lab, we believe that teacher education in the Anthropocene is central to environmental justice and climate education. Our research indicates that we must reimagine teacher education to prepare educators who can foster multiple futures where children, youth, and families can thrive amidst environmental challenges.

To advocate for justice, SWISP Lab’s philosophy of learner agency and world-centred design, not just in visual arts and design education, but in the core skills of praxis through visual literacy, climate literacy, critical and creative thinking, and digital innovation address environmental inequalities and empower educators to advocate for justice.

As we advocate for educational reform in the context of climate change and COP31, it’s crucial to align our efforts with Australia’s National Cultural Policy, REVIVE. This policy provides a framework that complements and enhances our vision for climate education in partnership with the Asia Pacific Universities Alliance (APUA) COP31 Briefing. As a result, SWISP lab calls on the Australian government, educational institutions, and the broader community to:

1. Invest in Comprehensive Climate Change Education: 

o   Develop and implement climate education programs at all levels of schooling, aligning with the APUA’s emphasis on “building capacity and capability.”

o   Support teacher education programs that emphasise creative climate communication, social justice, environmental justice and creative climate pedagogies.

o   Ensure climate change education reflects diverse Australian experiences and perspectives.

o   Integrate Indigenous knowledge and perspectives into climate education curricula.

2. Foster Multi-Sited Partnerships:

o   Create collaborative networks between educational institutions, climate scientists, artists, data specialists, community organisations, and industry partners.

o   Align with the APUA’s recommendation to “leverage the collective expertise of universities” in addressing climate challenges.

3. Integrate Indigenous Knowledge:

o   Incorporate First Nations’ perspectives, Land pedagogies and knowledge systems into climate education curriculum.

o   Support First Nations-led educational initiatives that combine traditional knowledge with contemporary climate science.

o   Support the APUA’s call to “recognise and respect Indigenous knowledge” in climate action strategies.

4. Promote Interdisciplinary Research and Education on climate change:

o   Develop interdisciplinary curricula that integrate speculative thinking and critical inquiry about the Anthropocene across disciplines.

o   Align with the APUA’s emphasis on “interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches” to climate challenges.

5.   Prioritise Arts and Design in Creative Climate Education:

o   Retain and expand art and design teacher education programs to nurture creativity and interdisciplinary thinking.

o   Develop climate education programs that incorporate artistic and cultural elements, aligning with REVIVE’s emphasis on creativity.

o   Create partnerships between educational institutions and cultural organisations to enhance climate literacy through arts and culture.

o   Encourage the development of climate-themed artistic works and cultural events as educational tools.

o   Develop pedagogical responses to shifts in local Land-technology-human relations.

o   Support the development of innovative communication strategies for climate action, as highlighted in the APUA briefing.

6.  Enhance Regional Collaboration on climate change:

o   Develop educational exchange programs and collaborative research initiatives with Asia-Pacific partners.

o   Invest in digital infrastructure across regional and Asia-Pacific schools that allows for innovative, engaging climate education experiences and connection.

o   Support the APUA’s call for “regional cooperation and knowledge sharing” in addressing climate challenges.

o   Create pathways for students and educators to engage directly with policymakers and contribute to climate policy development.

o   Equip pre-service teachers with the tools to recognise injustice and advocate for social, cultural, racial, economic and environmental equity.

o   Align with the APUA’s recommendation to “bridge the gap between research, policy, and action.”

8.   Foster Climate Data Literacy and Engagement using Revive – A New National Cultural Policy 2024 Pillars:

o   First Nations First: Centre First Nations data sovereignty and ecological knowledges to ensure climate data literacy is grounded in deep time, Country, and custodianship.

o   A Place for Every Story: Foster inclusive climate narratives by equipping all Australians to critically engage with, interpret, and share data-driven stories of environmental change.

o   Centrality of the Educator and Artist: Empower educators and artists as key translators of climate data, making complex information accessible, affective, and action-oriented through creative practice.

o   Robust Data Infrastructure for Culture: Invest in the tools, platforms, and protocols that enable open, ethical, and creative engagement with climate and environmental data across education and the arts.

o   Engaging Audiences through Data Storytelling: Support compelling and participatory forms of climate data storytelling that resonate locally and globally, building public understanding and motivating collective action.

9.   Invest in Climate-Resilient Infrastructure:

o   Support the development of climate-resilient educational facilities and campuses.

o   Utilise cultural institutions as hubs for climate education and action.

o   Contribute to the APUA’s goal of “developing climate-resilient infrastructure” through educational initiatives and research.

10.  Promote Climate Finance Literacy:

o   Integrate climate finance education into relevant critical and creative curriculum to support the APUA’s emphasis on “mobilising climate finance.”

o   Develop programs that prepare students to engage with and innovate in the green economy.

11.   Advocate for a ‘Whole-of-Society’ Approach on climate change:

o   Encourage educational institutions to lead by example in climate change practices.

o   Implement creative research methodologies that develop teachers and student’s climate languages and literacies to be agents of change.

o   Support interdisciplinary collaborations between artists, scientists, and educators.

o   Support the APUA’s call for a “whole-of-society approach” to climate action through educational outreach and community engagement.

The rejection of the Coalition’s nuclear-over-renewables policy signals a public mandate for progressive climate action. This political landscape provides fertile ground for educational reform that aligns with the urgency of our climate crisis.

Call to Action

As we approach COP31, we call on the Australian government and educational institutions to:

  1. Invest in comprehensive climate education programs for all levels of schooling that incorporate artistic and cultural elements, aligning with REVIVE’s emphasis on creativity.
  2. Support teacher education programs that emphasize environmental justice and creative climate pedagogies.
  3. Foster partnerships between educational institutions, climate scientists, and community organizations.
  4. Develop curricula that integrate speculative thinking and critical inquiry about the Anthropocene.
  5. Prioritise the retention and expansion of art and design teacher education programs to nurture creativity and interdisciplinary thinking.

The Anthropocene can and should be integrated and embedded into all subjects in teacher education and in turn school-based learning, emphasising the importance of an interdisciplinary approach. The Anthropocene encourages creative and critical thinking about being in the world, politics, society, culture, colonisation, language, economy, human-land-technology relations, justice, ecosystems, life on Earth, ethics, and sustainability.

Seize the moment

The Labor government’s re-election and the potential hosting of COP31 provide a unique moment to redefine Australia’s role in climate action and education. At SWISP Lab, we stand ready to contribute our research and methodologies to this vital cause. Embracing transformative educational practices can prepare the next generation to navigate and shape our climate future with creativity, critical thinking, and a commitment to justice.

By aligning our educational reform efforts with REVIVE, we can create a more holistic, culturally rich approach to climate education. This integration of culture, arts, and climate action will not only enhance our educational outcomes but also contribute to a more resilient, creative, and sustainable Australia as we approach COP31 and beyond.

This blog post is a call to action from SWISP Lab in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne advocating for educational reform considering Australia’s recent election results and the potential hosting of COP31. We invite educators, policymakers, and climate activists to join us in this crucial conversation about the future of education in the Anthropocene.

Kate Coleman (right) is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne and co-lead of SWISP Lab with Sarah Healy. Kate is the current President of Art Education Australia and a CI on Learning with the Land SSHRC project. Sarah Healy (left) is a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne and co-lead of SWISP Lab with Kate Coleman. Sarah serves as a World Councillor for the International Society for Education through Art (2023–2025).

evidence based policy

Here’s how to ensure a healthy future for universities

election priorities, research-informed policy, Uncategorized, , , ,

This is the third day in our series of posts on AARE’s education priorities for the 2025 federal election. Today’s posts are about research-informed policy.

If you regularly read the news, you can be forgiven for thinking these are far from halcyon days for Australian universities. Their relationships with governments and public appear increasingly fraught. Few people are happy with them: not their students, not governments and not their own staff. There are lots of opinions about what it is that these institutions should and should not do. If there is one thing that seems to unite both major political parties, it is that something needs to be done about university governance, quality of education and the number of international students enrolled each year.

That Australian universities are subject to so much criticism can seem puzzling when looking from afar. It is hard to escape the fact that the country’s universities are in robust shape compared to many places around the world. It is not hype to say Australia has one of the better higher education systems around. Most students have been consistently happy with the quality of education as measured by the national Student Experience Survey. Many staff working in universities are remunerated highly compared with their peers internationally. On a per capita basis, Australia performs well in terms of the quantity and quality of the research.

Longstanding and significant issues

While some of the complaints about universities are probably misplaced and outside observers are right to point to many successes, there are also longstanging and significant issues that both sides of politics will need to address sooner or later if Australia is to continue to have healthy universities.

Domestic students are paying more and student debt is a problem. The previous government’s policy to increase the cost of humanities, communications and human movement degrees is starting to bite. Combine the cost of an undergrad Arts degree and a professional master’s qualification, such as in Law, and high debts become the norm rather than an outlier. The days of $100,000 HELP debts are well and truly here. The problem for any future government is that this is a very expensive problem to fix when there are many calls on the federal budget.

A tough ask

A straight reversal of the Job-ready Graduates changes that increased fees would be north of one billion dollars a year, every year, from now on. The last time we had such a large single year increase in student funding was at the height of the demand driven system in 2011-12, when universities could enrol as many students as they liked. In inflation adjusted dollars there was a similar sized increase in funding in 2011-12 that brought around 50,000 extra students into the system. Reversing the Job-ready Graduates policies would bring in no new students for roughly the same cost to the public purse. A tough ask for any government is an issue the recent Universities Accord did not offer a full answer to solve.

It is not just student debt that is an issue hard to fix but also hard to continue ignoring. Australian universities do a large proportion of the country’s research. As a proportion of GDP in recent years, spend on research in higher education institutions has been second only to Canada of our major peer countries. Yet the majority of these funds do not come from public grants or research contracts, they are from what are often termed ‘general university funds’, which usually means funds from international student revenue.

A virtuous circle

For a long time, many people have argued this was a ‘virtuous circle’ where universities invested in research with the fee income from international students, which led to better international rankings, which in turn attracted international students, which funded more research. This bounty did not just go towards research: it also helped replace capital stock and facilities, support programs and generally ‘grow the pie’. But to argue this is sustainable in the long term is optimistic at best. As Covid showed, the fortunes of international education can change fast.

Which is all part of the reason many universities are nervous about where policies to cap international education might lead. Australia has had fee-paying international students for many decades, though their numbers remained small until recently. One in twenty enrolments in the late 1980s was an international student. Within two decades, one in four students in Australian higher education was an ‘overseas student’ as they were once called. At its peak a decade later, one in three, making the country one of the most internationalised in the world in terms of its student make-up. Capping international student numbers at current levels might be sustainable, assuming that demand holds over the longer term.

Safe and sunny

Viewed as safe and sunny, Australia has benefitted from being an English-speaking nation with a high-quality education system in the neighbourhood of many Asian countries where international study is popular. At times there has been the added incentive of generous post-study immigration policies. If Australia seeks to send signals that we do not welcome students or our education quality is seen to be slipping, the future might not be so sunny. The major source countries of China and India are building their domestic systems. China has invested vast sums in educating its population.

No matter who forms government after May 3, these issues – student debt, sustainable research funding and setting for international education are only going to become more fraught. There might be a lot of misplaced complaints about universities, but there are real policy issues that are going to require attention.

Gwilym Croucher is associate professor and the deputy director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne.

White writing on green background: Well, here we are in 2025 and no closer to the top of the OECD’s league tables than we were fifteen years ago when the boast was made

Why AERO should take a long hard look at itself

Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), , ,

How AERO’s failures fail us all: part one published yesterday

To look at AERO’s teaching model is to wonder whether the organisation is living in some other reality, a world in which there are no students who refuse to go to school, or leave school as soon as they can, or last the distance but leave with not much to show for it, or wag it, or bully and harass or are bullied and harassed, sometimes in the classroom often outside it, or have little or no sense of “belonging” at school or “attachment” to it. Why on this crowded stage is AERO putting the spotlight solely on what the teacher is doing in the classroom? Can teaching be expected to change the whole experience of being at school? Or is that somebody else’s problem?

And what about kinds of knowledge other than formal, out-there, discipline-derived knowledge, the staple that has launched a thousand curriculums — know-how, for example, knowing how to learn, how to work in groups, how to think through complicated life and ethical questions? And what about students’ knowledge of their own capabilities and options? The suspicion arises that what AERO is after is schooling for the poor, for the denizens of the “long tail of attainment,” cheap, narrowed down and dried out, a something that is better than nothing.

AERO is misconceived

As well as misconceiving, AERO is misconceived. Its job is to gather research from up there and packaging it for consumption down below. It wants teaching to be based on research evidence — on just two kinds of research evidence, in fact — as if what teachers and school leaders know from experience, debate and intuition isn’t really knowledge at all, as if it’s research evidence or nothing. That most teachers and others in schools don’t use research evidence very often is taken not as a judgement about priorities but as an “obstacle” to uptake.

AERO claims that “evidence-based practices are the cornerstone of effective teaching” without providing or citing evidence to support the claim. More, it implies that the “how” of teaching is the only thing that teachers should concern themselves with, that teaching and schooling are free of doubts and dilemmas, of messy questions of judgement, decision and purpose.

A deeply hierarchical idea

AERO’s deeply hierarchical idea of the relationship between researchers and practitioners is of a piece with its conception of the relationship between teacher and taught. It is, in fact, the kind of institution that John Hattie feared. “There’s a debate going on about building an evidence institute for teaching,” he told Larsen in 2018. “My fear is that it will become like [America’s] What Works Clearinghouse and people will be employed to take academic research and translate it into easy language for teachers.”

At the risk of an apparent sectarianism, let me suggest that Martin Luther had the necessary idea: the priest should not stand between God and the flock but beside the flock reading God’s Word for themselves and finding their own way to salvation. AERO should stand beside teachers and schools, and it should help them stand beside their students. But that is not what AERO was set up to do.

What is AERO?

Nominally the creation of the nine ministers of education and their departments, AERO is actually the handiwork of the NSW Department of Education, long the bastion of the “traditional” classroom, and Social Ventures Australia, or SVA, an organisation privately funded to “influence governments and policymakers to create large scale impact.”

SVA was much taken by Britain’s Education Endowment Foundation, and pitched to the Commonwealth the many benefits that would flow from an Australian equivalent. The pitch included some words about new things to be learned in new ways but more about a “robust evidence ecosystem” serving the cause of “continuous improvement” that would boost school performance. SVA wanted the new organisation to be independently funded and established through a tendering process. As the proposal made its way through the machinery of the “national approach” it was shorn of the progressive talk along with the independent funding and the creation by tender.

The organisation that emerged is indistinguishable from the NSW Department of Education in its underlying assumptions about “evidence-based teaching,” its “teaching model,” its definition of “evidence,” and its view of the relationship between theory and practice and of the control of schools. AERO’s board is chaired by the former chief executive of the Smith Family, a charity so committed to “explicit teaching” that it has taken ads in the mainstream media to urge its universal adoption. The chief executive is a former senior officer of the NSW department and AERO references the department’s Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation (“the home of education evidence”). AERO’s “partner,” Ochre Education, a not-for-profit provider of “resources [that] support effective, evidence-based practices,” has one “partner” larger than all the rest put together, the NSW Department of Education.

Embedded in its own dogma

AERO is deeply embedded in its own dogma and in the national machinery that was supposed to deliver “top 5 by ’25.” Well, here we are in 2025 and no closer to the top of the OECD’s league tables than we were fifteen years ago when the boast was made. To the contrary, as the former head of Australia’s premier research organisation and of the OECD’s mighty education division concluded recently, inequality is rising, quality is falling, and the system is resistant to reform. What reason is there to expect that another fifteen years doing the same thing will produce a different result?

AERO is not going to go away, but perhaps it can be pressed to lighten up. It should be persuaded, first, to accept that teaching is a sense-making occupation and that schools are sense-making institutions. Schools should not be treated as outlets applying recipes and prescriptions dispensed by AERO or anyone else.

Second, AERO’s evidence should bear on the system in which schools do their work as well as on the schools and their teachers. That should include evidence about whether and how Australia’s schooling system should join schools and teachers as objects of reform.

Rethink the conception of “evidence”

Third, AERO should be pressed to rethink its conception of “evidence.” Schools do and must use many kinds of evidence, including some that they gather formally or informally themselves. Evidence derived from academic research may well be a useful addition to the mix, but that is all. It is — and AERO should say so — provisional and contingent, not altogether different from other kinds of evidence schools use. The contrary idea, that evidence generated by formal academic research is scientific and therefore beyond debate and disagreement is encouraging the gross misconstructions of effectiveness research described by John Hattie.

AERO should also expand the range of academic sources it draws on and the kinds of evidence it embraces, going beyond the “how” to include the “what,” “why” and “whether to” — debates over evidence and evidence-use, and evidence from educational philosophy, sociology, economics and history as well as from that dubious disciple psychology (the source of both the effectiveness paradigm and cognitive load theory) and from beyond the all-too familiar Anglosphere.

The lens must be widened

And, most important of all: while many teachers are no doubt grateful for at least some of AERO’s output, and perhaps particularly for the resources distributed by AERO’s partner, Ochre, those resources go no further than helping teachers do a job in need of a fundamental rethink. The lens must be widened to include the organisation of students’ and teachers’ daily work and the organisation of students’ learning careers as well as what teachers can do in the classroom as it now exists. AERO should identify schools working to organise the curriculum around each students’ intellectual growth and the development of their capacities as individuals and as social beings. It should put those schools in touch with one another, and work with them on a different kind of research, on finding ways through an essential but immensely difficult organisational and intellectual task. •

This is part two of the story by Dean Ashenden on AERO. We published part one yesterday. This was first published in Inside Story. We are republishing with the permission of both Dean Ashenden and of Peter Browne, editor of Inside Story.

Dean Ashenden is a senior honorary fellow in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, the University of Melbourne. He has worked in and around, over decades, as a teacher, academic, commentator and consultant: He is co-author, with Raewyn Connell, Sandra Kessler and Gary Dowsett, of the 1982 classic Making The Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division. Unbeaching the Whale: Can Australian schooling be reformed? was published last year.

AERO: Hand with chalk about to write on an empty blackboard

AERO: Why and how its failures fail us all

Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), , ,

The Vatican has the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith. Australian schooling has AERO.

New, not very important but very symptomatic, the Australian Education Research Organisation fits snugly into the elaborate machinery of Labor’s “national approach” to schooling. As an “evidence intermediary,” its task is to make a certain kind of research finding more available to teachers and schools. But its key sponsors hope it will proclaim the doctrine in a system dependent on prescription, surveillance and compliance.

The doctrine is this: schooling is first and foremost about knowledge; teaching is first and foremost about getting prescribed knowledge into young heads; research has established the relative effectiveness (“effect size”) of teaching techniques and “interventions”; learning science has reinforced this evidence by showing how to “harmonise” teaching with the brain’s learning mechanisms; teaching must be based on evidence supplied by this research.

The faith: that in this way the long slide in the performance of Australian schools will at last be arrested and reversed.

AERO’s “gold standard”

In AERO’s view, though, there is no doctrine or faith. “Gold standard” research into effective teaching and findings on the workings of the brain have established scientific facts, clear and definitive.

Of AERO’s two intellectual pillars, effectiveness research is the much larger and stronger. Long-established and buttressed by a vast literature, it has become the lingua franca of education policy (including the policies promoted by the national approach) and has been absorbed by many teachers. But effectiveness research and its uses have also concerned and sometimes enraged many, including, surprisingly enough, John Hattie.

For many years Hattie has been by far the most influential exponent of the effectiveness idea in Australia, and perhaps around the world. But in a series of conversations with Danish philosopher Steen Nepper Larsen (published as The Purpose of Education in 2018) Hattie looks back over a formidable body of effectiveness research and his own work with schools and involvement in national policymaking to find flaws and limitations in the research itself, and gross misinterpretation and misuse of it by policymakers and schools alike.

Education research has (Hattie says) “privileged” quantitative studies over qualitative, and has been “obsessed” with the technical quality of studies at the expense of their importance and value. The focus of so much effectiveness research on basic outcomes (80–90 per cent of it by Hattie’s estimate) has been salutary, but has also obscured much of what schools do and should do.

“I want more,” Hattie says. He emphasises: “I want broader. I want schools and systems to value music, art, history, entrepreneurship, curiosity, creativity, and much more.”

Many ways of skinning the cat

In much the same way, measuring “effect size” was useful but has ended up being the reverse, Hattie argues. It helped teachers and school leaders to accept that there are many ways of skinning the educational cat and to rely less on habit, hunch and assumption. But the “effect sizes” summarised in his celebrated Visible Learning (2009) and many publications following are averages, he points out, and too often the fact, extent and causes of variation are forgotten — along with the importance of context. Effect-size tables have been taken as a kind of installer’s guide — policymakers look at them and say “tick, tick, tick to the top influences and no, no, no to the bottom,” thus missing the point entirely.

The point? To inform and prompt thinking, interpretation, explanation: what is this evidence telling us? What do these numbers mean? What’s going on here, and why? What, for example, should we do with evidence showing that smaller classes have not produced better performance? Just say: no more smaller classes? Or ask why smaller classes aren’t being used more effectively?

A sustained failure of policy

How can we actually do what effectiveness research has made possible? Research can go only so far; it reflects schooling as it is, not how it has to be; the rest is up to government and policy. Properly interrogated, Hattie concludes, the evidence first assembled in Visible Learning (2009) reveals a sustained failure of policy.

Hattie’s criticisms cover much but not all of the ground on which effectiveness research stands. He and others were convinced that education research could do for schooling what medical research had done for medicine. Research of the “gold standard” medical kind would reveal what worked in the classroom (or as Hattie later put it, what worked best). They were also convinced that the teacher was the crucial variable in the schooling equation, which made teachers and teaching “quality” the central objects of policy.

Not medical practitioners, not patients

But teachers are not like medical practitioners and students are not like patients. Teachers try to enlist students in their cause; students might or might not join in. They might do their best to make sense of what the teachers seems to want, or pretend that they’re trying to, or subvert or resist the teacher’s efforts in myriad ways. Much of what students learn is not what is taught but what students think has been taught; often it has not been taught at all, for students learn all kinds of other things in the classroom and everywhere else at school. They learn about themselves, the world, how the world treats them, and how they can and should treat others. Students are, in other words, co-producers of learning, of themselves, and of each other. They learn, and they grow.

What students learn and how they grow, taken in its full extent and complexity, depends partly on what teachers do but mostly on the circumstances in which they and teachers meet. Producing learning and growth is in many ways just like producing anything else. Any form of production combines people, time, space, task, expertise, objectives, rewards and sanctions in a specific way. The central question is not how to make teaching more effective (as effectiveness research assumes) but how to make schools more productive. Which combination of the many factors of production is most productive of what kinds of learning and growth for which students? The failure to ask what the evidence is telling us about what is going on and what could go on is the seed of the policy failure Hattie points to.

A less reliable vessel

“Learning science” is an even less reliable vessel. There is in fact no such thing as “learning science.” The learning sciences (plural) include experimental psychology, social and affective neuroscience, cognitive anthropology, developmental psychology, robotics and AI, and neurology, systems theory and many others. AERO relies on a particular subset of a particular branch of the learning sciences, cognitive load theory, or CLT, which is held in low esteem by many for its failure to take into account “the neurodynamic, attitudinal, social, emotional and cultural factors that often play a major, if often invisible and unsung role in every classroom.”

Learning scientists who do pay attention these “often invisible and unsung” factors reach conclusions very different from AERO’s. Two prominent psychologists for example, concludedafter career-long research that learners thrive when they feel competent and successful, challenged, purposeful, connected to community and culturally safe, working collaboratively on things relevant to their lives. A neuroscientist studying the relationship between young people’s behaviour, circumstances and neural development found that “support, safe spaces, and rich opportunities [to] think deeply about complex issues, to build personally relevant connections, and to find purpose and inspiration in their lives” is crucial to the brain’s development. Indeed, “the networks in the brain that are associated with these beneficial outcomes are deactivated during the kinds of fast-paced and often impersonal activities that are the staple of many classrooms” (emphasis added).

What about other kinds of classroom teaching?

One of the consequences of AERO’s use of CLT and effectiveness research is the assumption that teaching “knowledge” is the only game at school and there is only one way to play it. Of course knowledge is core business in schooling: knowledge of reading, writing, maths and science are “basic”; didactic teaching is for most kids and some purposes the shortest route between a fog and an aha! moment; the precepts of “explicit” teaching may well help to improve didactic teaching; and “effectiveness” research and its “effect sizes” can indeed make teachers and school leaders more aware of options and less reliant on hunch, habit and anecdote.

But what about other kinds of classroom teaching? And other ways of learning? Is AERO’s “teaching model” a one-punch knockout? The sovereign solution to the many things that students, teachers and schools contend with?

Tomorrow: How AERO can (and should) take a long hard look at itself.

This story by Dean Ashenden on AERO was first published in Inside Story. We are republishing with the permission of both Dean Ashenden and of Peter Browne, editor of Inside Story.

Dean Ashenden is a senior honorary fellow in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, the University of Melbourne. He has worked in and around, over decades, as a teacher, academic, commentator and consultant: He is co-author, with Raewyn Connell, Sandra Kessler and Gary Dowsett, of the 1982 classic Making The Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division. Unbeaching the Whale: Can Australian schooling be reformed? was published last year.

Turning points playlist

Your hottest 100: I’m so excited. And so much more

higher education, , , , , , , ,

Mark Selkrig, Nicky Dulfer, Ron ‘Kim’ Keamy, Troy Heffernan and Kristiina Brunila announce the “Academic Turning Points” Playlist Collection: Academics’ Journeys Expressed Through Music 

Many readers of this blog would know that higher education continues to be an ever-shifting landscape where constant change prevails. Academics worldwide who work inside higher education are navigating a myriad of profound changes and complexities. At the same time, they are grappling with increasing accountability measures and compliance requirements. The professional and personal pressures academics face can be immense. The impact is evident, with academics being overworked, exhausted, and on the verge of burnout. Alarmingly, many of these behaviours have become normalized. 

To better understand how academics are adapting to these evolving environments, our research team launched an innovative global study: “Turning Points: Changes Academics Make to Shape Their Working Lives.” The key research question driving this project was: How do academics articulate and represent the turning points that caused them to change course professionally, as well as the enduring impacts of those shifts?  Using multi-modal, arts-based methods, we invited participants to not only share written experiences about a pivotal moment where they elected to ‘do something different in their work practices’, but also describe an image and select a piece of music representing their evolved professional approaches. 

Your turning point playlist

Based on responses from over 120 participants in this study, some of whom may be readers of this blog, our findings reveal powerful windows into the nuanced realities of academic life. Drawing from the academics’ insightful musical selections, we’ve curated the “Academic Turning Points” Playlist Collection – a series of thoughtfully crafted playlists that audibly capture professional journeys across the globe. 

We are launching the first instalment: “Academic Turning Points 1: Reframing Perspectives on Work-Life Balance.” This resonant playlist explores the profound need for balance, perspective and self-compassion amid academia’s relentless demands. Tracks like “Don’t Worry Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin and “Sunrise” by Norah Jones reflect participants’ experiences re-evaluating unsustainable work practices and realigning priorities, with lyrics urging listeners to slow down, be kinder to themselves, and gain clarity on what’s important.  As one participant shared, a particular track helped them “realise that the way I was working was not sustainable, and I needed to make some changes to find more balance”.

From identity shift to finding purpose

We invite you to immerse yourself in this playlist and reflect on your own experiences. You may even want to consider the song you would choose to represent your own journey towards better work-life balance and sustainable practices. This is just the beginning. In the coming months, we’ll unveil additional playlists, each offering a unique perspective through the powerful lens of music. From grappling with identity shifts to finding purpose, these collections will resonate with anyone impacted by academia’s demands. By centring multi-modal expression, our research aims to foster deeper understanding of academic life’s nuances. In this era of constant change, listening to academics’ voices is crucial. 

The “Academic Turning Points” playlist collection invites you to embark on an auditory exploration of professional journeys, struggles, triumphs and pivotal moments. To access the first playlist on in the collection on Spotify click on the QR code or follow the hyperlinked text to experience “Academic Turning Points 1: Reframing Perspectives on Work-Life Balance” .

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Remember to stay tuned for more releases in this powerful series. For academics worldwide, may these playlists remind you that you’re not alone, and that the path to balance and fulfillment is one we navigate together, one note at a time.

The evocative AI-generated playlist image (shown in the top image for this blog and also right) is based on descriptions of images that represented their academic turning point are also striking visual representations of the complex emotional terrain academics navigate daily. 

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If you would like to  know a little bit more about the project, or access a catalogue of whole collection of playlists as they are released, be sure to look at our Turning Points project website

Meet the Turning Points Team

Mark Selkrig is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. His research and scholarly work focus on the changing nature of educators’ work, their identities and lived experiences of these events. He has been the recipient of awards for publications in this field and acknowledged for his leadership, outstanding work and advocacy for arts development and education. Mark is on Linkedin.

Nicky Dulfer is a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Nicky’s research agenda is driven by a social justice imperative and seeks to make a significant change to the ways in which marginalised students experience education. Her research explores educational curriculums and institutions and the ways they both shape, and are shaped by, those who work and study in them.

Ron “Kim” Keamy is an associate professor and a teacher education researcher in the Assessment & Evaluation Research Centre, Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne. Kim’s research and scholarly work traverses educational and academic leadership, initial teacher education and teachers’ professional learning.

Troy Heffernan is a Fulbright Scholar and currently a visiting fellow at All Souls College, University of Oxford. As a sociologist of higher education administration and equity, his work examines issues such as those related to precarious employment, the implication of academic networks, and the factors involved in hiring and promotional decisions. He also examines ways to enhance student equity and experience. 

Kristiina Brunila works as professor in the University of Helsinki where she directs the research centre of AGORA for the study of social justice and equality in education. With her AGORA research community she has studied educational transformations in global and glocal contexts including reforms in universities as well as questions related to inequalities and education.

Focus

Your focus isn’t broken, it just needs time

Educational research, PhD education, PhD work, , , , ,

My recent book, Writing Well and Being Well for your PhD and Beyond  includes a chapter on thinking towards writing which includes a focus practice using a rubber duck, a walking practice, and more information about focussed and diffuse thinking modes; and another chapter on recharging that gives advice on what to do when your brain gets tired after practising some deep thinking. For years, I advised students and researchers who were convinced their brains were broken because they couldn’t do eight hours of deep work every day, five days a week. I’ve never been able to focus like that, and my research suggests that’s normal and fine–which might be reassuring for you too!

We all know that it’s a challenge to focus, to go deep and still and clear and to stay there, to think hard thoughts or read long books or write longform. Many books, podcasts, news articles and research careers tackle this issue, from classics like Cal Newport’s Deep Work, or Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow, to recent work like Gloria Mark’s Attention Span. 

A number of recent panicked bestsellers claim our focus has been stolen, our children’s brains rewired, and that our ability to concentrate is deeply broken. Most prominently among these are  Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus. They argue modern inventions like our phones and the internet and traffic are why it’s hard to concentrate. 

But fear we have lost the ability to focus is as old as civilisation. 

So what can do to help ourselves focus?

Anyone who has ever worked in a bustling office, or cared for children, or taught in a classroom knows interruptions come from other humans. That’s why, across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe, societies keep inventing hacks to help us focus, whether that’s hermitages, meditation, pilgrimages or libraries. 

HERE’S how you can use each one of those techniques to help you and your students relearn to focus in everyday life. 

1. Become a hermit

Hermits withdraw from society, they give up power and responsibility, and the pursuit of a comfort, profit, or prestige. Some hermits live on their own, and others with a small group of like-minded people. They live in country huts, caves, or up on pillars. You can be a hermit for a shorter period of retreat. Cal Newport famously tells the story in Deep Work (2016) of the person who bought a first class round trip plane ticket to Japan. And then there’sSarah McLachlan who spent months in a cabin before she was ready to write the songs for Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (Pitchfork 2017). 

Writing retreats and writing groups give us examples of how we can do this in our everyday life. We set aside a time and a place to focus, we remove distractions of the the day-to-day demands of life, and we wait. Being a hermit is supposed to be uncomfortable, restrictive and ascetic – so if it feels difficult or itchy, we are doing it right. If we persist, eventually the hermitage becomes a place where we can find focus. 

2. Learn to meditate

Meditation is a practice of focus. Itt is different from  mindfulness, which can be more of aboutawareness and intention. When you learn to meditate, you have to learn how to hold a thought, image or phrase in your mind. And then how to bring yourself back to the thought every time your brain wanders. And it will wander. This is why most traditions use all of the senses to help hold and return to focus: songs, breath, bells, candles, incense, intricate images or patterns, beads on strings. 

We don’t do a lot of just sitting and thinking in every day life, so it helps to start short and slow and build up to more challenging practices. In this case, we are learning to focus to have our own thoughts and insights, so classes or a guided meditation recording may not  be so useful.

If we are practising on our own, then, it helps to surround ourselves with as many focus tools as we need. Have the right chair, the right fidget toy, a picture of the thing we want to think about, thinking music, a colouring in book or some knitting. Set a timer for 2 minutes. I find the first 30 seconds are always a mess, and you may too. Keep breathing and wait. After 2 minutes, get up and stretch. Come back tomorrow. Start being small but consistent, and then once you can do that, start extending the time. You’ll be fine. 

3. Walk it out

Going on a journey, preferably on foot, changes us. Whether we take our horses to Canterbury as Chaucer’s characters did in medieval England, or we walk the Narrow Road to the Deep North as Bashō did in Edo Japan, we not only leave our everyday lives behind, but we have the repetitive rhythm of steps and the physical experience of progress to get our thinking moving. There’s a reason that traditional universities have gardens, courts, avenues, and other walkable spaces: places for people to pace and stride and wander, as they talked it out with a colleague or worked it out in their head. 

I find the pilgrimage is a useful model for focus because it reminds me that focus is hard work and I can’t do it indefinitely. By the time my legs are tired, my brain will also be tired. So then I am reminded to stop focussing and recharge instead. 

We do not need to walk to go on a pilgrimage, but we do have to get up from our desk and move elsewhere. Some people find that they think well in the car or on trains. Or we might replicate the enclosed centrifugal journey of university courtyards in laps of a pool or velodrome. But this is not merely moving for exercise. It is important to start your journey with a clear intention: a problem to solve, an idea to generate, words to find. At the going out and at the coming home, return to your intention and check that you have made progress, even if you have not fully arrived. 

4. Go to the library

Obviously we go to the library for a whole range of activities and services: we borrow books, consult archives, attend story-times, use the computers, consult librarians etc.  But we can learn from the many students who pack into libraries just before their final exams to study, because libraries are a fantastic place to focus. Libraries are thinking infrastructure. Need a quiet place to put your head down? Need a place where other people are also putting their heads down? Need something to put into your brain first so it has something to chew on? Need a reminder that thousands of other people have also had ideas and the persistence and focus to think them and then write them down? Libraries have you covered.

Favourite way to focus

My favourite way to focus in a library is to use a book to think with/against/alongside. As a writer and an academic, I’m often reading and reacting to other people’s ideas. It’s easy enough to read in snippets, or to let myself get sucked into a fascinating fictional world when I’m on holiday, but if I’m tired and busy and bored, I find my brain keeps sliding off a difficult text I need to read.

I deal with that problem, by going to a library with the book and a notebook. I take notes about what the book says, but also about my feelings, my reactions, my original thoughts sparked by the book. I have pages of notes with marginalia expressing how annoying someone’s writing style is, how shoddy their research is, or how wrong their conclusions. The library helps me focus long enough to clarify and explain what I don’t like about the book, which is important as when I need to explain why I think a book is great. 

Each of these ‘tricks’ makes focus easier, but none of them make it effortless. Focus takes time, there’s friction in the process. It can’t be sustained indefinitely, because focus is hard work, 

It’s not magic

Focus is not a magic trick. And not everything is worthy of the magic of focus. Keeping a vague eye on the pot of soup bubbling on the stove and the songs on the radio and the chatty Teams messages from your colleagues does not need deep thinking. Save your brain for the hard, serious, chewy stuff.  

When you need to go deep, you don’t need to wait for the lightning of inspiration to strike you, or the panicked hyperfocus of a looming deadline. You can detach yourself briefly from the world, set up your environment to support your focus, and practise learning how to pay attention. 

In this post, I’m arguing that there’s nothing wrong with our ability to focus, but we can take some sensible steps to support deep focus, including (re-)learning how to do it. Focus feels hard and messy because it is hard work, and it’s where we address the hard problems. As we practise it more often, we’ll build up our focus muscles and increase our focus tools, but we will always have to practise falling in and out of focus. What matters is not our diamond mind, but our commitment to returning to try again. 

Katherine Firth is the inaugural Head of Lisa Bellear House, a residential hall at the University of Melbourne, and a senior lecturer in research education and development at La Trobe University.

AARE conference

What I learned from my first AARE conference

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Just days after the week-long AARE 2024 conference, I’ve had time to reflect on the experience. A walk through Lane Cove National Park helped me process the insights and challenges discussed during the Conference.

Attending back-to-back sessions was intellectually exhausting, especially when focusing on my research interests of teacher shortages and working conditions. The persistent challenges facing Australian educators prompted some critical questions:

  • How can we translate conference discussions into meaningful progress?
  • Are we more focused on researching problems or solving them?
  • How innovative and uncertain of their outcomes are our research approaches?

Despite the draining content, the conference was ultimately uplifting. I felt the AARE community demonstrated a shared commitment to collaborative problem-solving. It was a valuable opportunity to connect with teachers, school leaders, union leaders, researchers, and even colleagues from my own university whom I’d never previously met.

As an early career researcher, meeting renowned ‘rock star’ researchers I’d extensively cited in my thesis and teacher education assignments was both intimidating and inspiring —they too wrestle with the complexities and struggles of teaching and research.

I felt prepared for the conference. I read The Thesis Whisperer‘s books. I also attended the AARE PGS & ECR Online Event: Making the Most of Your Conference Experience. And I have some insights for fellow researchers, especially ECRs, based on my enjoyable experience.

AARE Conference Tips for Early Career Researchers

1. Attend Diverse Sessions, and as many as possible

Even if a session doesn’t directly align with your research, you’ll gain insights into presentation styles, methodological approaches, and potential interdisciplinary connections. It is also a great opportunity to meet other attendees.  I research the teacher shortage and teachers’ work, so Monday and Tuesday’s program was packed with relevant sessions.

The following days offered fresh perspectives on concepts familiar to most teachers. I was already aware of concepts like ‘time poverty’, ‘toxic leadership’ and the treatment of teaching as ‘women’s work’ but hearing from academics specialising in these areas provided deeper insights.

2. Attend Graduate Researcher and ECR Sessions

Just like large music festivals, you can be torn between a headline act on the main stage or the potential of discovering the next big thing “before it is cool”! I found ECR sessions offered some raw, engaging discussions. Craig Skerritt’s presentation provoked discussion about whether toxic leaders knowingly and intentionally harm organisational culture. Similarly Matthew Brown’s innovative study on principal decision-making also raised questions about whether ‘rational’ decisions are inherently better to ‘emotional’ ones.

3. Don’t Underestimate Poster Presentations

I don’t know whether everyone attending viewed the AARE conference posters when they were up some steep stairs and all the food was on the ground floor, but I did see a few researchers have a near-continuous stream of visitors during the designated poster time. 

I really enjoyed making my poster. The people who did stop by during the poster time gave me some great ideas and feedback I am going to act on. I recommend anyone with a new project make a poster. The format encourages discussion and can potentially have more impressions than a short concurrent talk. It would signal respect and commitment from senior researchers to submit posters too and stand by them as a medium, literally!

The posters that really stood out to me were the ones that did not try to cram a whole paper into a poster format. Instead they used plenty of space and graphics to lead the viewer’s gaze through the different sections. 

Khalifah Aldughaysh’s poster on barriers to implementing practices for students with autism and Tamitha Hammond’s study on Pasifika students, stood out with striking graphic and vibrant colours. Jeroen Koekoek and Wytse Walinga used a creative analogy of a professional coloured lighting setup in their study of decision-making in Dutch physical education. Though unrelated to my research, their compelling designs drew me in. 

4. Be Early, and Stay Until the End

I recommend being early to sessions, partly to get a good seat. But I also found that there was a better chance to chat with the presenters and other audience members before the session than afterwards. 

Not everyone can attend the entire conference. But people presenting on the last day are very grateful for patronage. There are strong opportunities for new insights, especially if conference organisers place hard to categorise presentations then. They can have the most unique methodological and topical insights.

5. Act on the ideas and connections

This reflection emerged from me transcribing my copious handwritten notes to a word document. When we spend so  much time doing busy work with emails or at screens, taking a whole week out to connect with people in the flesh and to get some perspective before the new year really helped me work out some new projects.

It was a great week, and I look forward to next year’s conference in Newcastle already. Fingers crossed it is as warm as last week in Ryde so we can hit the beach!

Hugh Gundlach is a lecturer and researcher in the Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne. He teaches in the Master of Teaching (Secondary) and is the Commerce Coordinator. He is one of the ABC Top 5 Media Residents (Humanities) for 2024. There are intakes for the ABC Top 5 in the Arts, Humanities and Sciences. Early career researchers are encouraged to apply in 2025.