Editorial introduction.

Volume 45, Number 2 of the Australian Journal of Education demonstrates again the broad range of disciplines, methodologies and techniques that are brought to bear on questions of education. For the most part, the articles are concerned with matters of policy, organisation and management. These matters include long-term resource planning, curriculum structure and social stratification, quality assurance, the university student experience, and systemic responses to problems of the abuse of children and young people. Between them, the individual authors draw on demography, cultural politics, quantitative and qualitative sociology, psychometrics, political science and policy analysis, and philosophy.

In providing a comprehensive analysis of the demographic prospects for school education over the next two decades, Graeme Hugo demonstrates that the school-age population will increase more slowly than the Australian population as a whole, and the most likely scenario is one of modest demographic change in schooling, as was experienced in the 1990s. The only element that would upset these expectations is a much higher rate of net migration than is current. Fertility rates will remain low by historical standards and might be moving towards the very low levels experienced in some European countries, though public policies designed to facilitate the workforce participation of parents of young children might modify the rate of fertility decline. So far, this all appears to be good fiscal news for governments. However, a major increase in retention to Year 12 would augment resource needs. So would reduced class sizes (in policy terms, a time of demographic decline or slow growth is the optimum time to improve real resources per student). Hugo also notes that the age structure of the teaching workforce will lead to a major turnover in teacher numbers, with implications for both teacher training and school employment. More than half of the current teacher workforce retires during the next two decades. Other issues touched on are: the growing heterogeneity of the school-age population, in terms of both cultures and family structures; residential mobility; and increasing social inequality.

Pam Gilbert takes us to the upper secondary curriculum in Queensland, where the local language is provided in two unequal streams: a traditional literary-inspired English taken by the overwhelming majority of students, and the vocationally oriented English Communication, designed for those who do not aspire to university studies. Two-thirds of the students in English Communication are boys. It is a weaker and weakening option, premised on a low level of capacity for initiative and a surprisingly limited engagement with information and communications technologies. Gilbert finds that, in Queensland, `literacy practices become complicit in the social differentiation of young adult learners', and `both syllabus constructions here are problematic in their narrowness'. The two subjects have been developed as opposites to each other. This is not a recipe for raising student achievement, or for preparing students for a global knowledge economy. `Little serious attention is given to competence to write and speak across a variety of contexts and in a variety of modes'. The preferred approach is to introduce one multiple syllabus and thereby close the dual.

Stephen Lamb, David Hogan and Trevor Johnson are also interested in social stratification and its relationship to curriculum structure. Their study of secondary education in Tasmania approaches the issue using different techniques from those from Gilbert, those of population analysis and multi-level modelling. Drawing on data on the levels of study of 5491 Year 10 students, they find that students are socially segregated by sector location, residential location, curriculum track and subject selection, so that learning opportunities are stratified by social background. Because school completion rates have become less explanatory as an indicator of social difference, in analytical terms the curriculum has become more significant. Lamb, Hogan and Johnson set out to measure the extent to which `the organisation of the curriculum ... operates as a source of social differentiation'. They argue that the middle-school curriculum mediates the relationship between social background, earlier student achievement and later outcomes. At the same time, they also find that individual schools can make a difference, even when school sector, residential location and the socioeconomic status composition of the school are held constant. In drawing the study of curriculum structures together with school sectors, student backgrounds and patterns of unequal student achievement, they reach similar conclusions to those of Richard Teese (2000) in Academic success and social power. Teese focused on patterns of both subject choice and student achievement, and also the socially differentiated student experience of the cultural content of the curriculum. The different projects on social differentiation and the curriculum by Gilbert, Teese, and Lamb, Hogan and Johnson could be supplemented by comparative research which pin-pointed the cultural dynamics more closely. How does a socially differentiated curriculum play out in actual teaching and learning situations? How do the practices of classroom and school organisation vary in different schools, sectors, residential locations and among distinct groups of students?

Grant Harman uses frameworks from political science, those of interest group theory and public policy process theory, to investigate the genesis and operation of the 1993-1995 Commonwealth Government assessment of quality assurance in Australian higher education. He provides significant new data on the quality policy experience and particularly on the momentous decisions to extend the process to teaching and research outcomes (and not just quality assurance processes), to draw up and publicise a `league table' of institutions, to publish the institutional assessments, and to introduce performance-based funding which at one stage was to be confined to only half the institutions. Generally these approaches were not taken in the European systems of quality assurance that were put in place at much the same time. The outcome of the norm-referenced and summative Australian approach, which exacerbated competitive pressures and strengthened the position of the large research-intensive universities, was a quality assessment process which could not but hurt the reputations of many other institutions. Harman describes differences in the stances of ministers Baldwin, Beazley and Crean, and the involvement of the Higher Education Council (which had a relatively high-minded view of quality assurance), the Vice-Chancellors' Committee, and the members of the Commonwealth Government committee which administered quality assurance.

Russell Waugh also takes us to higher education, and is also interested in `quality': in his case, the quality of the student experience. Extending the large body of American research in this area, he develops and trials a psychometric instrument for measuring aspects of the expectations and the experiences of students, and for drawing contrast between the two. The outcome is an instrument that stands up well in the measurement of academic, personal and group experiences in relation to course, teaching, library, intra-student relationships and vocations--though problems were encountered in measuring experiences of the arts, sciences and some aspects of writing. The results of the trial suggest that the university concerned could improve student-lecturer interaction and student involvement in relation to certain areas including the discussion of current issues, research and university matters, assignment comments, and career paths. A feature of the article is the discussion of the Rasch measurement process and the explanation of the assumptions involved.

Finally, Judith Bessant opens a discussion about trust in the context of the growing attention to allegations and instances of sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children and young people. Her reflections on the nature of trust, following Luhmann (1979) and others, sets the stage for the practical proposals that follow. The matter goes to the core of the work and responsibilities of government schools and welfare agencies as well as many non-government organisations. Bessant identifies five conditions for restoring and sustaining trust: shame as a form of recognition, offering an apology, reparation and moral responsiveness, restitution and listening to victims, establishing preventative and monitoring strategies. She demonstrates that strategies that have arisen in relation to reconciliation with indigenous Australians, such as the tendering of an apology--and also blockages to the action, such as denial and time lapse--have a wider policy relevance.

References

Luhmann, N. (1979). Trust and power. New York: Wiley & Sons. Teese, R. (2000). Academic success and social power. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.

Simon Marginson
Monash University