Editorial.

The great majority of contributions to the Australian Journal of Education report research about students, essentially focusing on teaching and learning to better understand what teachers believe, think and do in terms of students. That the focus of educational research is on teaching and learning is no bad thing, as the papers published in this issue illustrate, since that focus addresses the ways policies and programs play out in educational settings. While that's the focus of the majority of papers published in this issue, several papers report on research that drills deeper into the teaching experience itself in terms of the ways teachers think about the teaching role, the ways they think about discipline-specific and generic skills and knowledge, and the ways they experience and handle stress.

Reesa Sorin and Rosemary Iloste report on their research into the effects of student mobility on successful schooling. Given that student mobility rates are on the rise, their study of a regional area in northern Queensland where mobility rates increase each year offers a better understanding of the factors that lead to mobility, the impact of mobility on students and strategies to address issues that arise from mobility. They identify, amongst other things, the usefulness of a central data collection agency to pass on information from one school to the next. While mobility might at first glance suggest students move from school to school as families move from city to city or state to state for employment purposes, Sorin and Iloste's research indicates that student mobility is a complex issue to do with family breakdown, cultural and family ties, and behavioural problems, and that piecemeal strategies that rely on the goodwill of teachers are likely to be inadequate.

Rosemary Suliman and Dennis M McInerney likewise report on their research on factors that affect successful schooling, in this case in relation to cultural background, examining the school achievement of Lebanese-background students and the major motivational factors that affect that achievement. Suliman and McInerney's findings suggest that most of the goals held by Lebanese-background students, driven by competition, say, or social concern, or recognition, are not predictive of their school achievement, while some goals, driven by valuing of education, say, or perceived family or teacher support, which are predictors of school achievement, are not strongly held by the students. That finding has some significant implications for the ways schools develop programs. Schools might consider, for instance, ways by which parents and teachers can provide more support for students and need to investigate ways they can use goals that are strongly held by the students, driven by competition and power, as predictors of school achievement. Opportunities for competition, for students to be in charge, to be leaders, and to gain public recognition and reward, for example, may prove to be successful techniques for improving school achievement. While the education of Aboriginal children in Australia has been extensively examined and reviewed, most investigations have not critically conceptualised current approaches to the delivery of education for this highly disadvantaged group. For that reason, Quentin Beresford and Jan Gray report on their work to develop an analytical framework that identifies seven discrete models of Aboriginal education that have guided policy and practice. Beresford and Gray use that flame-work to show why existing discrete models of Aboriginal education that generate an ad hoc approach to policy development and review need to be integrated in pursuit of more systematic approaches.

Lyn Yates examines contemporary Australian government policy on vocational education and training programs in schools and finds little uniformity. Research by Yates indicates different visions of schooling and vocational knowledge are evident at different levels of school systems, but also between teachers involved in the same formal structure and even between students within the same classes. Far from being uniform, Yates says, significant ambiguities exist in vocational education and training in Australian schools in terms of what teachers and students are expected to do, and in terms of different ideas about what knowledge counts, and what attributes are valued within school-based vocational subjects.

Wee Tiong Seah and Julie Edwards turn the research focus from students to educators, examining the international picture to better understand the impact on educators of the relatively new phenomenon of university education faculties providing offshore offerings. They find that the experience of flying in, flying out' can work as a form of professional development in terms of approaches to curriculum planning and pedagogy in ways that formalised professional development does not.

Rosaria Burchielli and Timothy Bartram round out the research on educators in this issue, reporting on their research that finds high levels of stress amongst school teachers and evidence of professional bureaucratic conflict. Teacher stress can be attributed, say Burchielli and Bartram, to a combination of factors. The work of teachers is typically affected by unique school characteristics that are not fully acknowledged by the governing bureaucracy; a professional-bureaucratic conflict ensues as a result of that lack of acknowledgment and inadequate resourcing; and tensions relating to professional values and standards follow from that. How do teachers cope with the stresses that result? Burchielli and Bartram find that stress is ameliorated by the use of proactive teacher and whole-school responses, but that any further reduction of stress requires a systemic response.

Since research reported here ranges from the student experience of teaching and learning to the teaching experience itself, it's our hope that this issue of the AJE will continue to inform educational policy and practice. We wish AJE readers good reading.

John Ainley

Steve Holden 

Australian Council for Educational Research