Wendy Cumming-Potvin

The Bloomsbury Handbook of LGBTQIA+ Inclusion in Educational Contexts brings together international contributions in scholarship and coverage, mapping the discipline through theoretical explorations, personal narratives and empirical studies. The handbook focuses on themes that examines Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer issues including: inclusion in action, engaging teaching spaces, social justice standpoints, student/teacher agency, preservice teacher education, criticality in educative spaces and children and agency. The book provides a crucial lens into educational contexts that fuel or hinder human flourishing, the power of learning spaces and institutional educative standpoints and teaching approaches. Cultural, social and economic injustices that perpetuate cycles of disadvantage and oppressive narratives are explored using different theoretical frameworks that underpin equitable and inclusive educative landscapes.

Human participant recruitment is often a critical part of the research process. However, this aspect of research method is often glossed over in the literature, despite being common to all research approaches involving human participants. In this study, which explored how preservice teachers view the importance of media literacy pedagogy in teaching, we surveyed and interviewed a cohort of Gen Z BEd students drawn from across three public universities in WA. Recruiting from this mythical cohort of digital natives proved onerous, and we report on the pragmatics of implementing the research design and its data collection phases. Traditional participant recruitment methods, which have been systematically employed for decades in some cases, are often unquestioned. Similarly, problem-solving skills are key to developing a researcher's sense of self-efficacy to overcome unforeseen challenges to research design plans.


We report that in the postdigital era, conventional participant recruitment methods appear to have become less effective for some cohorts of participants. Because participant recruitment often occurs in crucial early stages of a project, challenges can affect the doctoral candidate's self-efficacy and resilience. However, positivity is key, bootstraps are pulled, and agile recruitment solutions can be found.

For more than a decade, Australia has faced intense teacher shortages. To address this issue, the Australian Government has proposed a strategy of expanding the number of migrant teachers. In the light of growing xenophobia and anti-immigration discourses, this study seeks to understand how the international teacher recruitment is received in Australia. Of equal concern, little is known about the lived experiences of migrant teachers as they navigate an Australian education system characterised by multilayered bureaucracy, complex pedagogical demands, increasing student violence and abuse, and limited resources.

This presentation is based on a qualitative study that showcases the narratives of secondary school migrant teachers. Building on themes of identity, belonging, power, networking and resilience, emergent interview data from Western Australia will provide insight into the experiences of migrant teachers.

The postdigital landscape, with its shifting relationships between humans and technologies, has widened the visibility of feminist discourses, including for issues of sexual consent. But paradoxically, as feminist activism has gained traction through movements such as #MeToo, misogyny has intensified across everyday practices and many aspects of media. This contradiction has led to polarizing discourses and increasing anti-feminist backlash through networks such as the Manosphere. Focussing on the case of rape survivor Gisèle Pelicot, who became a global feminist icon and drawing on examples from the sexual assault trial of French actor Gérard Depardieu, who continually denied any wrongdoing, this article explores the nexus between sexual consent, feminist activism and misogyny in a postdigital landscape. Underpinned by an intersectional approach to feminism, the article discusses issues of sexual consent, feminist activism, gender-based violence and public survivorship in a society underpinned by rape culture. Whilst much media attention has been paid to judicial and victim-survivorship narratives in an increasingly complex postdigital world, the article calls for education about issues of sexual consent, sexual assault, misogyny and the Manosphere to go beyond the judicial system across multiple disciplines.

Mainstream media has a long tradition of depicting sexual violence through stereotypes and misrepresentation. However, digital technology has recently highlighted alternate narratives that feature the stories of survivors of sexual violence. Although some scholars have welcomed digital narratives as facilitating activism that combats sexual violence through social media, for others, the online world is peppered with sexual abuse, sexism, and negative consequences for feminist activists. Underpinned by intersectional feminist theory, this chapter adopts the premise that sexual violence is an alarming narrative in many countries, including Australia. For migrant, refugee, bisexual, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, or transgender and gender diverse people, the risks of being attacked through sexual violence, online and offline, are exacerbated. Examining a highly mediatized case, the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in Australia’s Parliament House, this chapter unpacks the politics of complaint towards postdigital feminist inquiry. The discourse is guided by reflections about: Who is allowed to complain, how does a complaint generate a digital narrative or transform into a messy, postdigital narrative? The chapter concludes by looking to the future of sharing narratives of sexual violence in contexts where politics, law, and social activism collide with the power of technology corporations.

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.