Alison L Hilton EdD

Royal commissions are powerful symbols of truth-telling, underpinned by restorative justice, aiming to address historic mishandling by giving voice to survivors of prejudice, abuse, and institutional injustice. The Australian Federal Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (2019–2023) exposed routine violence, abuse, and exploitation of people with disability. The Commission made recommendations to federal and state governments in Australia that, if accepted and implemented, will bring about far-reaching changes. Previous royal commissions resulted in high acceptance rates: 79% for Aged Care and 85% for Child Sexual Abuse. However, the response to the Disability Royal Commission (DRC) has been disappointing, with only 8% of recommendations accepted. This paper focuses on government responses to DRC recommendations related to Volume 7: Part A: Inclusive Education, using critical discourse analysis to highlight how empty language promotes inclusivity whilst maintaining ableist cultural hegemony and normative policies.

This research paper explores the experiences of pre-service teachers (PST) with disability undertaking high-stakes teacher tests in Australia. In increasingly diverse classrooms, teachers are expected to provide a range of differentiation strategies in their learning and teaching to ensure all students are included in classrooms. This need for appropriate classroom differentiation is mandated to PSTs who are undergoing their initial teacher education studies. However, our research highlights how high-stakes teacher tests that all Australian PSTs must pass in order to graduate, fail to differentiate for disability. Our research findings shed light on how PSTs with disability have a passion for differentiation and are developing disability identity and advocacy. Yet ableist practices, including the costs of disclosure and inadequate assessment accommodations, marginalise and exclude these valuable teachers.

Professional Experience placements provide invaluable opportunities for pre-service teachers to connect their expanding knowledge to teaching practice. When done well, these experiences are underpinned by purposeful and continuous guidance from experienced mentor teachers. Significantly, the participation and engagement of Australian mentor teachers in this process is voluntary in nature, meaning the system relies on teachers ‘opting-in’ to mentoring. This research examines mentor teacher participation within Secondary-level initial teacher education courses and highlights issues relating to overall mentor teacher (and host school) engagement. Analysis of placement data over a five-year period to 2021 illustrates a significant change in participation with a dwindling number of mentor teachers participating in placement activity. Other insights include a declining rate of school and mentor teacher participation and an over-reliance on a portion of the teaching workforce to sustain these preparatory experiences. These findings highlight structural and systematic gaps negatively impacting on the delivery and quality of initial teacher education, which in turn have broad implications for the current national workforce shortage in Secondary teaching.

There is an unprecedented worldwide shortage of teachers that is expected to reach beyond 40 million by 2030. In Australia, this number was reported to surpass 4,000 in 2025. One strategy being promoted to fill the gaps in the workforce is utilising unqualified teachers who are studying an initial teacher education qualification. Conditions for unqualified teachers within Australia vary depending on the state, and Western Australia has had unique requirements in comparison with the remainder of the country. The call to utilise unqualified teachers relies on little evidence of impact and outcomes for those involved and the system overall. Little evidence is currently available on why undergraduate pre-service teachers choose this pathway, the impact the role has on them and their course progression, and ultimately, their retention in the workforce. This longitudinal qualitative research seeks to understand what motivates pre-service teachers to undertake teaching before course completion within the Western Australian context from a participant’s perspective. Key motivations are identified and explored, leading to further research directions and links to evidence to support unqualified teachers in the future.

Australian schooling is characterised by high levels of choice and competition, and education policymaking promotes the dissemination of information to assist families to choose a school. The aim of this study is to examine whether current information sharing is adequate for informing school choice for young people seeking vocational education and training (VET) opportunities. We examined secondary school websites in Western Australia, a state that is experiencing severe skills shortages, to ascertain the nature and extent to which information about VET in secondary schools is publicly available. Our findings showed that information about VET programs is largely invisible on school websites, as well as on the state jurisdiction's website (Department of Education WA, n.d.).

This paper offers a brief yet evocative glimpse into marginalised pre-service teachers’ (PST) experiences of teacher testing in Australia’s High-stakes Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education Students (LANTITE). Utilising Critical Disability Theory (CDT)in particular, Goodley’s (2016) concept of neoliberal-ableism, we problematise teacher testing as a gatekeeping tool for students undertaking teacher education. The article highlights how neoliberal education policies in Australia have disempowered and turned away talented and empathetic future teachers. By illuminating their embodied experiences of stress and anxiety, we interrogate neoliberal discourses of power and how teacher testing is used as a blunt instrument to solve complex problems and funnel public funding to private corporations. As part of a larger longitudinal research project, we offer four narrative portraits giving voice to vulnerable PSTs who have become unwitting victims of the high-stakes test juggernaut. This article focuses on five emergent themes from the research: (a) the embodied impact of stress and anxiety on test-takers, (b) withholding of information regarding testing processes and support, (c) the lack of differentiation available to PSTs (d) impacts of edu-businesses and the business of education on vulnerable participants and (e) a passion for differentiation.

Australian schools are diverse, and support students from a wide range of racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, as well as students with disability. Ironically, efforts to ensure equally diverse teacher workforces have been ineffective. Attempts to improve broader representation in teachers have been hampered by a homogenous approach to teacher recruitment and education. In 2016, Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE) became a graduation requirement for teachers. The aim of this research is to explore the test-taking experiences of students (pre-service teachers) from diverse backgrounds, and the stakeholders who support them. A thematic analysis of data from a larger mixed methods study revealed additional tensions for students from diverse backgrounds including unintended consequences such as traumatic experiences and having to encounter additional hurdles to be successful. This study provides unique insights into additional pressures and hurdles students from diverse backgrounds experience when completing this high-stakes test.

This article investigates pre-service teachers’ experiences of undertaking LANTITE, a high-stakes literacy and numeracy test for initial teacher education students. In this mixed methods study, 189 initial teacher education students from 28 Australian universities participated in an online questionnaire, with 27 students going on to take part in semi-structured telephone interviews. Indicative findings give voice to those most impacted by the implementation of LANTITE in 2017, revealing student concerns about the processing and return of results, and test anxiety. This study provides a unique insight into the experiences of completing this high-stakes test.