Teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of commercialisation in Australian public schools

© 2017, The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc. This paper explores teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of commercialisation in Australian public schools, reporting on findings from an open-ended survey question from an exploratory study that sought to investigate teacher and school leader perceptions and experiences of commercialisation. Commercialisation, for the purposes of this paper, is understood as the creation, marketing and sale of education goods and services to schools by for-profit providers and often includes (but is not limited to) the provision of curriculum content, assessment services, data infrastructures, digital learning, remedial instruction, professional development and school administration support. Our account highlights that commercialisation is prevalent in the day-to-day practice of Australian public schools. The perceptions of teachers and leaders suggest that commercialisation is complex, with both affordances and challenges. Respondents acknowledged that aspects of commercialisation are necessary for successfully running schools and classrooms in the 21st century, but also noted that there is a fine line beyond which these seemingly innocuous services become perilous. Concerns focused on how particular services are leading to the deprofessionalisation of teachers as they have less autonomy over what to teach and how to teach it. Moreover, teachers and school leaders reported being perturbed by the idea that commercial providers and services might work to replace teachers in the future. Drawing on these data we argue that growing commercialisation in Australian public schools clearly requires an ethical debate that schools, education professionals, policy makers and interested publics are yet to have

Husbandry Of Monodelphis Domestica In The Study Of Mammalian Embryogenesis

Monodelphis domestica, commonly called the laboratory opossum, is a useful laboratory animal for studying marsupial embryogenesis and mammalian development. Females breed year-round and the animals can be sustainably bred indoors. The authors draw on their own laboratory\u27s experience to supplement previously published research on laboratory opossums. They describe a breeding protocol that reliably produces timed-pregnant M. domestica. Additionally, the authors discuss general laboratory opossum husbandry techniques and describe how to collect, handle and culture embryos