Teacher education research and education policy-makers: an Australian perspective

As teacher educators, we want our research to be influential in contributing to educational policy and practice, but there remains little understanding about ways in which teacher educators might more productively engage with each other and policy-makers so as to maximise their research impact. Drawing on an empirical study and policy document analysis, this paper seeks to foster a generative ‘researcher-policy-maker dialogue’ by understanding more about policy-makers’ perspectives of what shapes their decision-making and the current role of research evidence in those decisions. Using a research utilisation theoretical framework and discourse analysis, data revealed various factors that served as barriers or enablers to using research in making education policy decisions. Results indicated that policy-makers largely position research as key to solving their policy problems. As such they sought better communication strategies to utilise research findings in a timely, free and publicly accessible, user-friendly manner. Overall, they called for a greater dialogue and engagement at all stages of the policy process and criticised what they perceived as a ‘fly in-fly out’ research approach. Recommendations suggest new collaborative approaches and genres are needed for the teacher education research community to have a greater impact in influencing policy.     

Instructions for authors

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for authors     

Business cycles and state governmental finances: Implications for higher education

The national economy has been increasingly subject to macroeconomic fluctuations in the 1970s. This paper demonstrates that these fluctuations have an important impact on state public finance. Tax revenues for these governments are directly related to the aggregate level of economic activity. However, the uncontrollability of such expenditure components as welfare, and the inflationary pressures in all program areas may increase expenditure levels in the face of declining revenue.Since public institutions of higher education rely heavily on financial support from state governments, the cyclical budgetary conditions of these governments have important implications for higher education. Historically, a financial crunch in higher education has resulted in most program areas being restricted to a similar extent, which reflects the fact that administrators have not adjusted expenditure levels to effectively deal with cyclical financial problems. This paper documents the severity of cyclical fluctuations in higher education finance and suggests ways to cope with these problems.     

Tertiary education in the Noughties: the student perspective

The psychodynamics of learning and teaching at a time of changing funding arrangements and priorities are explored and discussed through students’ accounts of their experience of university. The contextual, organizational and socio‐political characteristics implicated in these psychodynamic processes are considered. Among the psychodynamic issues that emerged from students’ accounts were organizational distancing, expressed in the physical and symbolic distance between students and teachers as well as a perceived distance between lecturers and their teaching responsibilities, and transference evident in the students’ struggle between dependence and independence.     

The Leaking Pipeline: Women Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers in Australia

This paper explores the leaking pipeline in women's participation rates from Bachelor to postgraduate research programmes. In examining projects at two Australian universities to identify and implement strategies to improve women's participation in research higher degrees, it focuses on three points of leakagebetween Bachelor and Bachelor with Honours degree programmes, Bachelor degree with Honours and postgraduate research programmes, and completion of postgraduate research and taking up a postdoctoral position, and the links between them. It examines three important consequences of women not undertaking or completing postgraduate research: entering academia at lower levels or in casual positions, often while doing postgraduate research part-time; tending to focus on teaching rather than research; and, due to under-representation at middle levels, not achieving a critical mass in senior academia. The paper suggests ways in which university policy may impact on women's participation in postgraduate research programmes through implementation of university-wide and departmental policies encompassing the strategies identified in these studies.