Sian Chapman

In response to the growing need for authentic, pedagogically sound assessment in Initial Teacher Education (ITE), this study presents a model of praxis-focused Creative Arts assessment designed to integrate arts-making, critical reflection, and pedagogical theorising. Drawing on a multi-site, collaborative autoethnographic study involving six Australian universities, the research uses document analysis and thematic analysis of student survey data to identify critical characteristics that underpin effective praxis-focused assessment: meaningful context, embodied arts engagement, and critical reflection, which collectively contribute to theory-practice integration. The study results in a theoretically grounded and empirically supported model of praxis-focused assessment that is affirmed as a pedagogical tool for preparing confident, competent arts educators. The model offers a framework for assessment in Creative Arts ITE, enhancing student engagement and classroom readiness while addressing contemporary challenges such as generative AI and online learning.

In the time-poor world of secondary English-L1 (English as first language) teachers, integrating digital technology in the classroom is both a blessing and a curse. English-L1 teachers continually face tensions between delivering digital content, introducing traditional textbooks, maintaining student attention and teaching 21st century skills. The focus of our research is situated in Australian secondary English-L1 teaching and learning. Through personal and professional narratives, this article explores teachers' varied dispositions towards digital technology and technology-enhanced learning (TEL). These dispositions are related to prevailing school and English department cultures, which, in turn, tap into broader social beliefs about the subject English and how it is best taught. Our exploration considers Australian English-L1 teachers' complex relationships with technology and utilises a Vygotskian (1978) perspective to interpret the sociocultural milieu surrounding technology use in education. Findings suggest that the tenor of cultures in schools and their English departments is critical for understanding technology-enhanced learning in secondary English-L1 classrooms and English-L1 teachers’ dispositions towards technology.

This paper presents the challenges faced by Taylor (pseudonym), a young child, with a disability navigating everyday life. These challenges reflect issues that many people with disabilities face where Diversity, Inclusion and Equity are key to disability justice. Highlighting places and spaces of inclusion and exclusion in both formal and non-formal settings, we describe sites where Taylor is both constrained and enabled and consider what that might mean. Informed by the first author’s carer position, eight vignettes provide both context and consideration, making these challenges visible and hence provocations for change. These accounts are considered in relation to key concepts of the social model of disability within a critical disability framework. This exploration highlights how society’s perceptions are largely bound by a bio-medical view of disability that promotes deficit views. By way of contrast, and beyond an impoverished framing, a social model of disability sees Taylor as a vibrant, intelligent young person seeking to live a life rich with meaning and value. What the research reveals is that learning and change are possible in both formal and non-formal settings where an enhanced understanding of places and spaces for engagement and participation means that society becomes more equitable and just.

This book explores the threads between community building and fiber arts. Essays explore a variety of communities, different types of crafts, and the unique spaces and places where those communities exist. Readers will get a sense of how community is established, supported, and deconstructed to better understand the benefits they hold for community members. Thinking about how the communities work and why members join and stay within them offers the reader a rich view into the world of fiber arts and the communities within.

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.).

Disability awareness is an issue that can inform societal understanding of marginalised groups. Contemporary literature continues to show the importance of inclusion in society and the impact inclusion has on people with disabilities and society more broadly. The importance of disability awareness is important in the context of the daily challenges faced such as discriminatory practices, stigma, stereotyping and exclusion and manifested in areas such as access to buildings, educational opportunities, and visibility in the media. Given the importance of disability awareness and the significant influence of media, especially on children today, this research investigated the inclusion of disability as one element of ‘awareness’ in one ‘made-for-children’ (2–5 years old) television programme. Drawing on a social model of disability, three key concepts of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity were used to explore the way that disability is portrayed for early learners. Analysis of 265 episodes (2015–2021) revealed that inclusion of disability appeared in fewer than 15% of episodes and was not representative of the community broadly speaking. This lack of representation exposed the limited potential that the media currently has as an educative function for preschool children in disability awareness and understanding of disability as part of contemporary society. Including more people with disabilities in made-for-preschool children's programmes is one way to both build awareness and progressively ameliorate this position.

Creative practice inspires exploration, personal expression, and learning, and can be understood from a variety of perspectives. Traditionally, these perspectives have been through the process of learning where doing is important, and through the product of learning where practice has outcomes serving a diversity of purposes. In recognising these critical links between practice and learning, we consider this entanglement of process and product through complexity theory as more than binary opposites where the key ideas of ‘knower and knowledge’ helps to untangle a multiplicity of understandings. Identifying complexity practice as developmental, transactional, and organisational, we outline how in Australia, this complexity produces tension in schools as teachers grapple with developing arts process skills as a significant achievement themselves, the production of arts works as important outcomes of arts learning, and broader social outcomes as elements of change. In helping to make these interactions clear it is possible to see complexity as both enabling and constraining change, providing direction and focus for future creative practice in both teaching and learning.

For preservice teachers, inclusive education practices are daunting, highlighting concerns around confidence, individualisation, and student behaviour. To explore this issue further, this study examined the perceptions of preservice Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers on inclusion using a sequential, explanatory mixed-methods research design. Preservice HPE teachers (n = 44) completed a compulsory course on inclusion and a 10-week school internship. Sentiments, attitudes, and concerns were examined using the Sentiments, Attitudes and Concerns about Inclusive Education-Revised Scale (SACIE-R) and reported a Total Scale Score (TSS) and respective Sub-Scale Scores (SSS) for Sentiments, Attitudes and Concerns across three time points. Linear mixed models showed a significant improvement in TSS (p = 0.005) over time from course participation to internship. In addition, the SSS for Concerns was significant over time (p < 0.001) resulting in reduced Concerns about inclusion as time progressed. Qualitatively, six students participated in semi-structured interviews that examined views of inclusive education practices. Findings suggest an improvement in attitudes towards inclusive practices through participation in specific courses that provide direct opportunities for preservice teachers to practice inclusion. Implications for preservice teacher education programmes include the importance of direct experience with and without the pressure of school environments.

Teacher wellbeing is important, not least for the role teachers play in supporting students' social, emotional, physical and academic wellbeing. Effective teachers need to remain both physically and mentally healthy. This paper examines how teacher wellbeing is conceptualised through research to identify the influential ecological influences that support and sustain teachers. Through a scoping review methodology, this examination starts with a conceptualisation of teacher wellbeing, and is then organised into three interrelated themes. This thematic approach provides a basis to examine, first, the influential individual factors shaping teachers' wellbeing; second, the relational factors that characterise teachers' work; and, third, the contemporary contextual factors associated with enhancing or eroding teacher wellbeing. These themes highlight that many approaches to enhancing teachers' wellbeing are often short-term band-aid fixes, and the authors argue that attention must be given to longer-term bridge-building strategies that place teacher wellbeing at the heart of teaching.

Arts specialist teachers have a unique place in primary schools. They are often the sole teacher responsible for an entire learning area and hence commonly provide leadership and drive the curriculum implementation of the arts in and for their school. This responsibility finds us asking questions about the ability of arts specialist teachers to create professional agency in an increasingly challenging school environment. Using a narrative portraiture approach, and seven propositions for professional agency, we focus on a single teacher in order to consider how both individual and structural elements are understood from the perspective of an arts specialist. Conditions explored include relationships, time, purpose and constraints, work-related identity, experiences, and work communities. Challenges such as isolation, ongoing support and the development of community are highlighted as potential difficulties in the process of developing agency. The study contributes to an understanding of the personal cost and potential growth the development of professional agency provides.