Discourses in Interaction: The intersection of literacy and health research internationally

Literacy and health are deeply influential in social participation, utilisation of social resources and quality of life. This paper discusses interacting discourses and common conceptual points shared by the adult literacy and public health fields and situates how the sub-field at the intersection of these two domains, known as ‘health literacy’, is constructed and enacted. Emerging approaches that recognise the convergence of education and health within international policy, research and in practice are articulated. The paper argues a case for re-thinking the literacy-health connection from a cross-sectoral perspective and for more effective approaches furthering the interests of both life-long learning and wellbeing.

Touching the future: building skills for life and work

This edition of Australian Education Review explores the goals of Australian education and of how schools should prepare young people for work and life. This book brings together two stories: one relating to the ways in which young people’s worlds have changed radically over the last three or four decades; the other relating to the growing gap between the skills that we try to equip young people with, through processes of formal education, and those skills that they need to build a future for themselves. Image: _ambrown / flick

Non-completion of school in Australia : the changing patterns of participation and outcomes

Non-completion of school in Australia is the concern of this report. Non-completion refers to the numbers of young people who do not complete Year 12. It includes the young people who do not continue at secondary school beyond Year 10 and Year 11 as well as those who leave during Year 12 without obtaining a Year 12 certificate. This is a broader category than the one associated with the term ‘early school leavers’ which is often restricted to young people who leave by the end of Year 10. There have been substantial changes in rates of non-completion over the past 20 years. Non-completion rates fell from about 60 per cent in the early 1980s to 41 per cent in the late 1980s and 24 per cent in the early 1990s. The rates have increased by about 6 percentage points during the 1990s. Non-completers may now comprise a minority of young people, yet as a group they persist and remain important. Non-completion is likely to be an option which a sizeable minority of young people will continue to take for the foreseeable future. This report uses data from national longitudinal surveys to help understand why this group is important, the policy issues raised by non-completion and what action needs to be taken to address the issues raised. The analyses were based on data from the Australian Longitudinal Survey (ALS) and the Australian Youth Survey (AYS). Together the two data sets provide extensive information on groups of non-completers from across the 1980s and 1990s. To compare these groups, the ALS and AYS data were used to construct samples of students based on school year-level cohorts. Three samples were built. The first comprised 1635 students in the equivalent of Year 10 in 1980 or 1981. The second contained 1676 students in a matching sample for 1988 and 1989, and the third an equivalent sample of 1935 students for 1992 and 1993

Young people, wellbeing and communication technologies

This 2005 report was commissioned to provide an overview of the role of ICTs on young people\u27s social relations, to provide a framework for understanding the ways in which ICTs impact on their health and wellbeing and to recommend possible initiatives within the Mental Health Promotion Framework.Information and communication technologies (ICTs) play an increasingly significant role in the key social and economic determinants of young people?s mental health that have been identified by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation in its Mental Health Promotion Framework, 2005 ? 2007. ICTs create new processes of social inclusion, can contribute to ensuring freedom from discrimination and violence and facilitate access to economic resources. ?Cyberspace? represents a new sphere for action. This 2005 report was commissioned to provide an overview of the role of ICTs on young people?s social relations, to provide a framework for understanding the ways in which ICTs impact on their health and wellbeing and to recommend possible initiatives within the Mental Health Promotion Framework. Authors: Johanna Wyn and Hern?n Cuervo, with Dan Woodman and Helen Stoke

Young people's politics and the micro-territories of the local

In spite of the late modern interpellation of youth as mobile and globally oriented, and a perception of social and political issues as increasingly playing out in a transnational arena, young Australians exhibit strong local and individualised tendencies in expressing politics. They are bounded by the 'micro-territories of the local'; that is, their political thinking and acting takes place within the spaces of home, friendship groups, school and neighbourhood. This paper draws on an ARC project with nearly 1000 mainly 15-17-year-old Victorians to examine the relationship between young people's embeddedness in their local worlds and their views of themselves as efficacious political actors. It considers how their competency within such micro-territories opens up neglected sites and strategies for political expression and engagement while limiting their sense of sense of political efficacy, and it asserts the significance of considering this age group, not for what these young people will become in the future, but for their particular location, socially, physically and politically in the present

Youth Research in Australia and New Zealand

This article draws selectively on youth research in Australia and New Zealand to illustrate the distinctive nature of this emerging field. It reveals a vibrant, interdisciplinary field, which has developed rapidly from its derivative beginnings in the post-war period to a significant and distinctive field that is challenging theoretical and methodological traditions and providing new approaches to understanding youth, society and social change. The article highlights distinctive approaches to youth research that are characterized by two key elements. These are: (a) local conditions under which young people are growing up in Australia and New Zealand, including the ongoing shaping of meaning of indigeneity; and (b) active engagement with international debates on youth. The article first explores the traditions dominating the early conceptualization of youth in Australia and New Zealand, including the Birmingham school in the UK and psychological theories of development from the US. Next, the article describes how these traditions have resulted in a reconceptualization of youth in Australia and New Zealand. This is illustrated in discussions of the way in which discourses of youth and indigeneity and of health have been rethought. The paper also discusses emerging research traditions in the area of new identities and youth subjectivities, on young people’s participation in civic society and their engagement with global and virtual youth cultures