Editorial.

One way to judge research into Australian educational policy and practice is to measure whether and how well it informs educational policy and practice. This is no mean feat when you account in the first place for the many intersecting policies and practices that, through their interplay, shape the 'educational' field, and when measurement can be a tricky business in the second. It's safe to say, however, that educational research, at least in this issue of the Australian Journal of Education, addresses matters to do with teaching, from the mechanics that determine the appointment and retention of teaching staff in schools to larger questions about the way education does and should work in a globalised market economy. It's safe to say, as well, that educational research addresses matters to do with learners and learning, and with the measurement of educational performance in some shape or form.

Two papers in this issue address matters to do with teaching, in terms of the supply of personnel. In 'Cloning their own: Aspirant principals and the school-based selection game', Peter Gronn and Kathy Lacey report on their research on school principal recruitment in three Australian states. Their research focuses on the ways school-based processes of application and selection operate, according to principal aspirants, as a game where there's a bias towards internal candidates--described by Gronn and Lacey as a form of personnel cloning, a bias which they suggest may not be viable when there's a likely shortage of principals.

Also on matters of supply, Elizabeth Webster, Mark Wooden and Gary Marks, in 'Reforming the labour market for Australian teachers', examine the relation between wages and shortages of qualified teachers in specialised teacher labour markets as well as the relation between wage incentives and the retention of the most able teachers. Their conclusion? Higher wage rates for teachers with scarce skills will alleviate shortages and reduce attrition of the most able teachers.

Looking at the bigger picture, but still in terms of the education market, Beverley Axford and Terri Seddon examine how lifelong learning has fared in practice as Australian government policies, including those related to education and training, have moved more and more to a market orientation. Their paper,' Lifelong learning in a market economy: Education, training and the citizen-consumer', questions whether the policy objectives of a more highly trained labour force have been met or whether in fact the concept of lifelong learning has become uncoupled from the nation-building exercise of preparing Australia for the 'information age'. Seddon and Axford develop their analysis against the broad social and economic background to examine how students young and not so young are faring when they make the transition from schools, universities and other learning institutions into work and other social activities.

Shifting the focus to the more particular, Glenn Russell, in 'Globalisation, responsibility and virtual schools', looks at the effects of new learning environments. Where the spatial and temporal distance between student and teacher is mediated by information technology, he argues, you can expect to see changes to the ways ill which individuals and groups are able to share responsibility for students' learning. It's a change, in Russell's analysis, that should prompt a reconsideration of accepted practices, including questions of how responsibility should be apportioned.

Some of the answers to questions about teaching and tile learning of our students depend on an understanding of those students ill terms of their background and experience. Craig Applegate and Anne Daly report on their research on the student experience that examines the transition from school to university. Using data collected from a survey of" students at the University of Canberra, they report, in 'The impact of paid work on the academic performance of students', on the effects of paid employment on average grades, finding that: students who do well at school also tend to do well at university; that private study improves grades; and that some paid employment improves grades slightly, although working more than twenty-two hours per week has a negative effect.

Still on the nest of factors to do with background and experience that account for the way students experience learning, at least as measured in terms of educational qualifications at secondary level and beyond, David M. Fergusson, L. John Horwood and Joseph M. Boden report, in 'Birth order and educational achievement in adolescence and young adulthood', on their research into the relationship between birth order and later educational outcomes in a birth cohort of over 1,000 New Zealand young adults studied to the age of twenty-five. They report a statistically significant association between being later born and a lower likelihood of obtaining educational qualifications, concluding that the intra-family dynamics initiated by birth order may have a lasting effect on the individual in terms of later educational and achievement outcomes.

Drawing conclusions about student achievement, say, or the performance of schools and school systems, of course, depends oil the accuracy with which you're able to measure them. Chris Ryan and Louise Watson take a ruler to retention ill terms of secondary school completion rates across Australian States and Territories to measure already acknowledged measurement problems. Their research, reported in 'Why does Year Twelve retention differ between Australian States and Territories?', identifies a pattern of mismeasurement of national Year Twelve retention over the 1990s. They conclude that, by their estimates, the Year Twelve retention rate inaccurately measured national school completion in the early 199()s, when retention officially appeared to peak, yet Year Twelve retention was no lower in the late 1990s than it had been in the early 1990s. Their conclusion? Governments should be cautious about using official Year Twelve retention rates as a measure of the performance of Australian school systems.

Our aim is to publish papers in tile AJE that inform educational researchers as well as educators, administrators and policymakers about issues of contemporary concern m education, drawing upon research conducted in universities, education systems and other institutions both in Australia and internationally. We'll continue to publish research studies that contribute to educational knowledge, that review findings of research studies or that investigate methodologies. In doing that, we wish to encourage contributors whose research embraces all fields of education and training, but in addition to publishing research studies about education, we're also interested in publishing articles that address education in relation to other fields.

We hope that the research reported in this issue of the AJE will usefully inform educational policy and practice. We wish AJE readers good reading and call for more papers that report on research into the many intersecting policies and practices that, through their interplay, shape the 'educational' field.

John Ainley

Steve Holden 

Australian Council for Educational Research