Exploring the intentions behind the inclusion of the cross-curriculum priority ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures’ in the Australian Curriculum

The authors of the Australian Curriculum have been required to simultaneously work toward the realisation of economic and reputational goals that are in the national interest whilst also appearing to cater for groups who have traditionally been disenfranchised by such interests. This study explores the explicit and implicit intentions behind the inclusion of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures cross-curriculum priority in the curriculum, and ways in which those intentions are interpreted. Final year pre-service teachers surveyed and interviewed as part of the study shared a widespread belief that the cross-curriculum priority was developed as the result of converging interests, with those of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples appearing to converge with those of the broader community. Numerous documentary data sources were collected and analysed according to a bricolage approach, in order to study apparent intentions and uncover those that were less evident in the Australian Curriculum when read in isolation. Finally, a racial realist interpretation of Critical Race Theory principles was deployed to synthesise the answers to three major questions

Educated in whiteness: good intentions and diversity in schools, by Angelina E. Castagno [Book review]

In Educated in Whiteness, Angelina E. Castagno reveals the damaging effects of an education system that requires those within it to be 'nice' above all else. The central thesis of the text, that current approaches to diversity education in the United States are actually perpetuating the work of whiteness, is successfully developed and supported throughout the book. Ethnographic research conducted by the author in two culturally and socio-economically different high schools within a Utah school district is analysed according to critical race and whiteness theories of education

Making decisions in ‘a bit of a bubble’: relevant Australian Curriculum content for students in the Middle East

The introduction of the Australian national curriculum generated heated debate in Australia. Content that should or should not be required for all students across the country to learn was a contested topic, as was the adaptability of the curriculum to ensure its suitability in schools across the nation. Throughout the development and implementation of the Australian Curriculum, researchers and journalists have reported on the challenges Australian-based school leaders and teachers have experienced when trying to understand the relevance of some curriculum content in their particular context. However, very little attention is being paid to the experiences of staff implementing the curriculum in offshore Australian international schools, despite the fact that schools have been licensed to use Australian curricula and syllabi since the late 1980s. This paper is based on exploratory research undertaken in an offshore Australian international school in the Middle East with a view to gaining insight into teachers’ perceptions of the relevance of Australian Curriculum content for their students. The majority of students at the school are from the United Arab Emirates and the surrounding nations and the majority of teaching staff are not from the region. Many educators interviewed for the research identified students’ ethnicities as a significant influence when teachers interpret Australian Curriculum content and making decisions about what to teach. A key finding from this research is that curriculum decisions, including those made with reference to students’ ethnic backgrounds, are made ‘in-house’ without input from members of the Emirati or broader communities. Teachers indicated that their knowledge of students’ lives and backgrounds is not extensive and that there is scope to build on existing initiatives at the school to increase intercultural understanding and community consultation. Finally, the author calls on scholars to engage with curriculum work occurring in offshore Australian international schools

Inclusive, colour-blind, and deficit: Understanding teachers' contradictory views of Aboriginal students’ participation in education

This paper contributes evidence-based scholarship to how teachers understand the value of Aboriginal student-focussed programmes and how discourses of Indigeneity appear to influence those views. Interviews with n = 22 teachers across n = 3 secondary school sites in New South Wales highlighted teachers’ understanding of Aboriginal programmes as primarily contributing to students’ behavioural and academic improvement. The interviewed teachers spoke positively about Aboriginal students’ current academic achievements and prospects for their bright futures as graduates, albeit from within deficit and colour-blind discourses. Utilising Moodie’s Decolonising Race Theory framework, teachers’ juxtaposing beliefs resonate with existing decolonising education research which indicates a performativity of cultural inclusion through adherence to settler-colonial practices, while at the same time, an intellectual desire to move away from the legacy of Australia’s contentious colonial past

Time to Treat: A System Redesign Focusing on Decreasing the Time from Suspicion of Lung Cancer to Diagnosis

IntroductionMultiple investigations often result in a lengthy process from the onset of lung cancer–related symptoms until diagnosis. An unpublished chart audit indicated suboptimal delays in patients' courses from onset of symptoms until diagnosis of cancer.MethodsThe Time to Treat Program was designed for patients with clinical or radiographic suspicion of lung cancer. Pre- and postimplementation data on median wait times were compared.ResultsFrom April 2005 to January 2007, 430 patients were referred. After Time to Treat Program implementation, the median time from suspicion of lung cancer to referral for specialist consultation decreased from 20 days to 6 days, and the median time from such referral to the actual consultation date decreased from 17 days to 4 days. The median time from specialist consultation to computed tomography scan decreased from 52 days to 3 days, and the median time from computed tomography scan to diagnosis decreased from 39 days to 6 days. Overall, the median time from suspicion of lung cancer to diagnosis decreased from 128 days to 20 days. Of all patients in the Time to Treat Program, 33% were eventually diagnosed with lung cancer.ConclusionsTime to Treat Program was effective in shortening the time from suspicion of lung cancer to diagnosis and reduced time intervals at each step in the process. Earlier diagnosis of lung cancer may allow increased treatment options for patients and may improve outcomes

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Interest convergence in Australian education

This paper utilises the late Derrick Bell's (1980) theory of interest convergence as an explanatory tool to understand Queensland secondary schools' lack of consultation with Indigenous communities. Past education initiatives are analysed through a lens of interest convergence theory in order to provide an alternative reading of some moments in policy history, particularly those related to community consultation. These analyses also provide the conceptual context in which the findings of a recent research project can be understood. This recent study explored the capacity of teachers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies to engage in consultation. These analyses suggest that Bell's theory warrants further investigation as to its relevance in an Australian education context, and its usefulness to critical scholars in this field

It's a bit hard to tell isn't it: identifying and analysing intentions behind a cross-curriculum priority

The inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures within the Australian Curriculum should not have been a surprise to anyone with even a passing interest in education policy. It is now an expectation that such content will be included in curricula, but the degree to which histories and cultures are accepted as relevant across the curriculum is a matter of current debate. Interviews with final year pre-service teachers were conducted for a major research project upon which this paper is based. Those responses suggested that the intentions behind the inclusion of this content are often taken for granted and tend to revolve around notions of inclusion and social justice. This paper examines these and other findings from that research project, working backwards from the interviews, through an examination of the Australian Curriculum, a visual analysis of components of the Australian Curriculum website, and a summary of a critical analysis of documents closely associated with the development of this curriculum. When compared with the text of the curriculum itself, these analyses uncover motivations significantly out of line with the interviewed pre-service teachers' expectations. Finally, a critical race theory lens is applied to the results in order to illuminate aspects of the curriculum that often go unnoticed, and to offer an alternative perspective on the intentions behind the cross-curriculum priority

What if racism is a permanent feature of this society? Exploring the potential of racial realism for education researchers

Race critical education research is often undertaken as a response to inequitable schooling. Consequently, education researchers and those who use their publications to inform policy and curricula tend towards solutions designed to address aspects of racially discriminatory practices or policies. Regular deployment of piecemeal ‘solutions’, often on a large scale (e.g., within national curricula or policy deployment), can be erroneously used by proponents as evidence of transformative social progress and indicative of significant efforts to address inequality (Bell, 2004; Curry, 2008). Implementation of such policies can be similarly used by conservative commentators who find in them reason to denounce apparently rapid and significant cultural shifts that undermine interests of traditionally powerful racial groups for the benefit of traditionally ‘minoritised’ (Harper, 2012, p. 9) people (Salter & Maxwell, 2015). A common thread of this research and its conversion into policy or curricula is the focus on the partial and the incremental, on the various components of education systems that contribute to or encapsulate inequity. Consideration of the whole is less common

The inherent vulnerability of the Australian Curriculum's cross-curriculum priorities

National curriculum development is a complex and contested process. By its very function, a national curriculum serves to organise diverse interests into a common framework, a task fraught with cultural and political tensions and compromises. In the emergent Australian Curriculum these tensions are manifest in and around the cross-curriculum priorities (CCPs): sustainability, Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. These priorities have been under fire since their introduction to the curriculum and the announcement of a review of the emerging curriculum prompted fears of a renewed attack. Studies from diverse fields of education research suggest that a lack of high-level institutional support for initiatives such as the CCPs places them in jeopardy. This paper focuses on two priorities: Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. It employs interest convergence theory as a framework to understand connections between the intentions behind the inclusion of the CCPs and the outcomes of the Review of the Australian Curriculum. Furthermore, this paper draws on interview-based research that explores how the priorities are constructed by those who are expected to work with them, from pre-service through to experienced teachers. This theoretical framework provides an explanation for the perennially precarious nature of these kinds of curriculum initiatives