Margaret H. Vickers

Supporting refugee students in school education in Greater Western Sydney

Rarely do refugee students entering Australian schools possess the multiple forms of social, linguistic and cultural capital that are taken for granted in mainstream classrooms. While refugees of high-school age are assisted initially through Intensive English Centres (IECs), the transition from IECs to mainstream classrooms presents substantial challenges. This paper outlines the perceived impacts of a partnership program known as Refugee Action Support (RAS) that assists secondary school students, predominantly African humanitarian refugees, as they seek to make the transition from IECs to mainstream settings. Implemented by the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, the University of Western Sydney and the NSW Department of Education and Training, the program is based on school-based tutoring centres that use pre-service teachers as tutors. The paper explores the perceived effects on refugee students participating in RAS from the perspectives of teachers who assist in the coordination of the program at the various school sites.

University-community engagement : exploring service-learning options within the practicum

Since 1999, pre‐service teachers undertaking the Bachelor of Teaching (Secondary) Program at the University of Western Sydney have participated in an alternate practicum called Professional Experience 3 (PE3). This practicum encourages students to engage in broader educational settings within local communities. Increasingly, a number of service‐learning opportunities have been developed, most notably, senior student tutoring programs and the involvement of students in the Plan‐It Youth project in conjunction with the Department of Education and Training (DET) and the South‐western Sydney Institute of TAFE. A focus of these programs has been to address the issues related to students at risk of leaving school early within the local South‐western Sydney community. In this paper we discuss the benefits of these programs to the university, pre‐service‐teachers, school students and school communities, and the broader local community. Specifically, we examine service learning as a conduit for the development and maintenance of meaningful symbiotic relationships between the university and the educational community, and pre‐service teachers and the local community. Finally, we look towards the future and highlight the challenges and opportunities for service‐learning programs within the practicum.

In the common good : the need for a new approach to funding Australia's schools

This article considers evidence which suggests that Australias current approach to the funding of non-government schools does not serve the common good. Educational provision is now segmented and a majority of private schools have resources that are either moderately or highly superior to those available in public schools. The current funding system has failed to coordinate the activities of public and private providers, leading to duplication of provision, reductions in economies of scale, and increases in per-student costs. Students whose backgrounds and disabilities make them relatively costly to teach are heavily concentrated in the public sector. Private sector recurrent subsidies are tied to public sector per-student costs, forcing Australian taxpayers into an upward spiral of increasing outlays. The article concludes by outlining some proposals for change that would lead to a new approach to funding Australias schools.

Why State Policies Matter: The Influence of Curriculum Policy on Participation in Post-Compulsory Education and Training

This study examines the effects of state curriculum policies on participation in post-compulsory education and training. Whereas studies in the past looking at this issue have tended to focus on school retention rates alone, the present study measures participation in education and training more broadly, taking account of the greater diversity of provision of post-compulsory education. This is achieved by including data on technical and further education (TAFE) and non-TAFE vocational participation as possible equivalents of high school completion. The results show that state policies do matter, that they affect overall participation rates but, more than this, they have a marked and differential impact on participation for disadvantaged groups.

Digital natives, dropouts and refugees: Educational challenges for innovative cities

Abstract However cities respond to the monumental challenges of climate change, trans-national migration, diversity, and scarce resources, one aspect of city life remains certain: children will continue to require an education. How this education is shaped, how its content is formulated and delivered, and how it constructs who a student is, remain open and troubling questions. The larger social and political context in which schools are embedded will also help shape the innovations that will be deployed in an effort to raise the quality of education and encourage innovative citizens of the future.

Neglecting the Evidence: Are We Expecting Too Much from Quality Teaching?

Internationally, “quality teaching” and its close relatives “authentic pedagogy” and “productive pedagogy” have been enthusiastically embraced by policy-makers in education. In Australia “quality teaching” has emerged as a central strategy for boosting the nation’s scholastic performance. This chapter argues that over the past six years State and Commonwealth education ministers have tended to focus quite selectively on research findings that speak to the positive outcomes associated with quality teaching, while neglecting the complexity of this field of research and the role that other factors (such as peer influences, parental involvement, or socio-geographical factors) may play. Drawing on findings from the author’s current research into student engagement in low socio-economic areas the chapter argues that the phenomenon of ‘residualisation’ in particular, whereby disadvantage is concentrated in certain public schools as a result of ‘school choice’, has quite powerful effects on the engagement and achievement of low SES students. Such evidence has, it is argued, been tacitly excluded from governments’ policy arguments.

Equity Buddie s: Building Communities of Practice to Support the Transition and Retention of Students Through Their First Year at University

While in the past, students entering universities tended to come from privileged backgrounds, the expansion of opportunities to enter higher education over the past two decades has led to the inclusion of increasing proportions of students from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds. Students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds or who are first in family to attend university often require additional support as they transition into university to build their academic and institutional knowledge. Peer mentoring programs are one initiative introduced in universities to support the transition and retention of first year students, including those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds or first in family. This chapter discusses the peer mentoring program Equity Buddies Support Network developed at the University of Western Sydney, School of Education as a community of practice designed to support the transition and retention of first year students. It begins with a brief description of the Equity Buddies Support Network, followed by a discussion of how its design incorporated the features of a community of practice. It presents both the formal and informal learning that took place within the Equity Buddies communities of practice finishing with a reflection on Equity Buddies as a community of practice. It also makes connections between the practices of this networked community and the development of students’ cultural capital, in particular institutional capital.

Mentors and Mentees Working Together to Develop Institutional Capital

Naima and other students entering Western Sydney University come from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, for whom university – its systems and procedures – are very challenging. Their admission to the university could be attributed to the Bradley Review’s (2008) targets for expansion and equity in Australian universities.

Supervisor support and work-life balance: Impacts on job performance in the Australian financial sector

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relations between supervisor support (SS), work-life balance (WLB), job attitudes and performance of employees in the Australian financial sector. More specifically, the study explore the impact of SS, WLB and job attitudes on employees’ job performance (JP).,Using an online panel, the data comprised 305 employees working in financial organisations to test a model with structural equation modelling. A list of survey items was tested that replicated extensively in work-life research in the past.,The research contributed to the existing literature by identifying a significant mechanism through which SS was linked to WLB that influenced job satisfaction, life satisfaction and organisational commitment and JP given the paucity of such research in the Australian financial sector.,The study would guide employers, employees and managers involved in the financial sector to implement policies which aim to augment JP and promote balance between work, home and life.

Positive Community Relations: Border Crossings and Repositioning the ‘Other’

Positive psychology examines factors that enable individuals, organisations and communities to develop, be empowered, become self-determining and thrive. Positive community relations, however, are the least developed area of positive psychology. This chapter presents a case study that illustrates how positive community relations can be created, overcoming complex real and symbolic boundaries through the development of joint activities that bring disparate groups together. Through the establishment of an NGO-sponsored in-school programme teaching local Indigenous languages to primary school children, participants including school staff, primary students, Indigenous female elders, Indigenous high-school students and university pre-service secondary teachers, created spaces that allowed new relationships to form. This process led to a repositioning of themselves in relation to each other. The positive relationships and mutual benefits participants created during the programme illustrate how positive community relations can be forged within communities long beset with patterns of differentiated power and exclusion.