Day Two, December 2, 2024.

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Decolonising Wellbeing: Insights from a Māori Think Tank

This post is by Mark LaVenia, University of Canterbury

At the recent Australian Association for Research in Education conference, a thought-provoking session titled Decolonising School Wellbeing: A Transnational Collaboration illuminated how Indigenous perspectives can reshape educational and workplace wellbeing. Susie Smith of the University of Canterbury (pictured below) presented findings from a Māori think tank that explored the nuances of wellbeing from a cultural standpoint.

Opening with a heartfelt tribute, the session honoured the late Angus Macfarlane, whose passing just last week deeply resonated with the audience. His vision for strength-based approaches in re-indigenising systems framed the discussion, offering both emotional resonance and practical insight. The session revealed layers of complexity surrounding wellbeing, extending far beyond schools to encompass workplaces and community settings.

Reframing Wellbeing: A Māori Perspective

Central to the session was an exploration of wellbeing and flourishing—concepts that embody what it means for people and spaces to feel good and function well. Māori constructs such as tikanga (custom) and mana (spiritual authority) offer rich frameworks for understanding these ideas, though they often lose depth in translation to English.

While some global policies effectively incorporate Indigenous perspectives, many fail to account for local contexts, creating a disconnection between policy intent and lived realities. Key insights included:

• Authenticity in Wellbeing: Systems must authentically embed Māori values to foster genuine wellbeing. Tokenistic approaches perpetuate inequities.
• Flourishing as a Dynamic State: Wellbeing is fluid, shaped by personal, cultural, and environmental factors. For Māori, flourishing might mean strong ties to whānau (family), whenua (land), or cultural identity.
• Incremental and Context-Specific Change: Small, tailored steps often prove more effective than sweeping, one-size-fits-all solutions.

From Measuring People to Measuring Environments

The session called for a shift in focus: from measuring individual wellbeing to assessing how environments—schools, workplaces, and communities—enable or inhibit collective flourishing. This perspective challenges the reductive tendencies of individual metrics, which can isolate people from their communal and systemic contexts.

The Mana Whānau model from the Ka Awatea study highlights the importance of family, identity, and resilience in fostering wellbeing—a stark contrast to Western individualistic paradigms. Authenticity and connection to place were deemed essential to creating environments where people can truly thrive.

Susie Smith proposed reframing our approach: “changing the focus from ‘measuring wellbeing in the workplace’ to ‘measuring the workplace in light of wellbeing’”. This paradigm shift underscores the need for systemic alignment to nurture collective flourishing.

Global Resonance and the Way Forward

Positioning Māori perspectives within a broader, transnational dialogue, the session drew connections between Indigenous knowledge in Aotearoa New Zealand, Cymru Wales, and Australia. These insights underscored the importance of balancing tradition and modernity, collective and individual wellbeing, and policy with lived experience.

Reflective questions posed during the session included:

• How do our environments align with the values we claim to uphold?
• Where do individuals and communities find belonging and sustenance?
• Are we addressing contradictions in our wellbeing practices?

Decolonising wellbeing requires more than integrating Indigenous practices into existing systems. It demands dismantling colonial frameworks and rebuilding environments that honour local contexts, diverse knowledges, and shared humanity.

A Tribute to Leadership and Resilience

As the session concluded, a lingering question emerged: How do we make this shift—consciously and sustainably? The answer lies in partnerships, shared responsibility, and ongoing dialogue. Susie Smith’s work reminds us that true wellbeing arises from connection—to land, to community, and to purpose.

In remembering Angus Macfarlane, the session served as a tribute to his enduring vision: a future where systems reflect the strengths, resilience, and richness of Indigenous cultures.

Final Reflection

This symposium challenged conventional notions of wellbeing and highlighted the power of Indigenous knowledge to transform systems. As Australia strives to become a wellbeing economy, the insights shared offer a compelling roadmap for shaping policies and practices rooted in authenticity, equity, and respect.

Beyond ATAR: Rethinking Student Success in University Transitions

The following blog post is written by Ben Archer, James Cook University

With less than 5,000 domestic undergraduate students commencing at the University of Queensland in 2023, and only 35% from public schools, Rowena Long and Felicity Moser’s investigation into student transitions comes at a crucial time given the Universities Accord. Their research, inspired by UQ’s Queensland Commitment Roadmap, examines the complex factors influencing student success in higher education, particularly for those from diverse backgrounds.

With current domestic undergraduate enrolments highlighting broader issues of educational access, Rowena and Felicity’s research demonstrates the limitations of ATAR scores as predictors of university success. Their analysis of first and second-year students reveals that academic achievement involves multiple factors beyond entrance scores. Utilising Broadbent’s Self-regulation for Learning Online framework, they identified key success drivers including metacognition and effort regulation, while negative achievement emotions emerged as significant barriers.

Rowena and Felicity above

The research particularly highlights the unique challenges faced by students from regional, rural, and remote areas. These students often encounter multiple transitions simultaneously – adapting to university studies while managing newfound independence and navigating unfamiliar landscapes, with a degree of culture shocks that come with relocating to a major city.

These insights suggest universities must evolve beyond traditional week-long orientation programmes to provide sustained, customised support systems. The research advocates for early intervention strategies, including project work, peer mentoring, and cohort chat groups, to facilitate stronger student connections and support networks from day one.

This work represents a significant shift in understanding university transitions, moving beyond simple academic metrics to embrace a more holistic view of student success and support needs.

Scholarship from the Poststructural Theory Special Interest Group (SIG)

The following post is written by Tanjin Ashraf, La Trobe University

This is my first year as Co-convenor of the Poststructural Theory SIG, so I was very excited to see the wide range of work being shared. It has been a true privilege to engage in such rich, brilliant discussions about thinking, knowing, and doing differently! I was reminded today why I joined this SIG in the first place, because I felt this space encourages being vulnerable about your research without feeling judged.  

Poststructural Theory SIG paper session 1 

How do you actually do post qualitative research? A tale of one researcher’s attempt to embrace ‘concept as method’.

Alice Elwell, Deakin University

Alice explained that this process creates ‘data that glows’, which acknowledges the processes of doing research rather than just focusing on the research itself. 

Alternative school climates and the affective politics of sound: Sonic violence, neurodiversity, and the ‘beautiful paradox’ of music

Leanne Higham, La Trobe University; Melissa Joy Wolfe, University of Wollongong; Eve Mayes, Deakin University; Rachel Finneran, Deakin University (in-absentia)

Leanne, Melissa, and Eve shared unexpected insights from their affect-led studies in two alternative schools in Melbourne, Australia. They shared an auditory transcript of the ‘soundscape walk’, to describe how they were attuned and misattuned to how sound was experienced differently by neurodivergent students. They juxtaposed the transcript with a sample of a song a student wrote himself, to highlight that sound can be both enabling and disenabling in alternative schools — which one of their student participants termed ‘a beautiful paradox’. 

Teacher response-abilities: Shifting from individuality to ethico-political relationality

Tanjin Ashraf, La Trobe University

The presentations were followed by a discussion on Alice’s word-image-maps, and how researchers connect back with research participants to share their insights.

 Photo, above, courtesy of Stephanie Wescott

Poststructural Theory SIG paper session 2 

Problematising school anti-violence policy in West Java, Indonesia: Where will this take us?

Farieda Ilhami Zulaikha, The University of Sydney

Farieda shared a preliminary analysis of her thesis. She noted how her research project  evolved due to policy changes in West Java, Indonesia. She was originally focusing on a sexual violence policy but that policy was dissolved, so she changed her research topic to bullying and violence in schools instead. Using ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be’ as an analytical tool and methodology, Farieda shared insights from her document analysis and an interview with an individual in charge of a policy on bullying and violence. She explained that the policy has a narrow conceptualisation of school violence and sexual violence, a burden of responsibility on girls, and is a one-size-fits all approach to address school violence. Farieda concluded with emphasising that problems can arise within the policy construction itself.  Frieda’s presentation was followed by a whole-group discussion on the challenges and emotional aspects of changing research foci in response to policy changes. 

Encounters with materiality: Visitor/researcher/maker practice in Foundling Museums.

Adele Nye, University of New England; Jennifer Clark, University of Adelaide 

Adele explained how the research project began with an encounter rather than a research question. Her and Jennifer’s encounter was a visit to the Foundling Museum, which used to be a hospital and was converted into the United Kingdom’s first public art gallery. At the museum, they saw a collection of tokens which represent the children who were left at the former hospital during the pre-welfare era. The scholars noticed that there were no pictures of the children and they were primarily identified by numbers. Using a trans-modal arts-based process methodology, Adele and Jennifer created garments for those children to re-humanise and re-imagine them. These garments will be shared at the Foundling Museum at an exhibition for ‘artists in residence’. Adele emphasised the post-qualitative approach of being open to surprise and serendipity, and ‘slow thinking, wondering, imagining’.

An audience member asked why these affective encounters matter in the present day. This provocation was followed by a discussion on connecting to children and issues of today. 

Poststructural Theory SIG paper session 3 

Exploring Women’s Bodily Subjectivities through a Feminist Poststructuralist Lens 

Smridhi Marwah, University of Auckland

She used this activity to analogize dominant notions of knowledge and the poststructural practice of challenging such dominance. In her research, Smridhi found that women experience similar societal body image pressures regardless of sexual orientation. This insight challenges the dominant perception that women in same-sex relationships are shielded from such heteronormative discourses. 

What matter who’s writing? Assessment, originality, and epistemic conflict in the shadow of generative AI

Gavin Hazel, Macquarie University

Gavin proposed  shifting the focus from preventing the misuse of technologies to acknowledging a ‘Author/Writer-Text-Reader’ relationship which prompts, “what else might we be able to bring into be?”. He emphasised that AI produces different ways of working and difference is not a bad thing. 

How One University Transformed Online Teaching

The following blog post is from Ben Archer, James Cook University

Sara Warren’s research at Federation University reveals how ensuring consistent quality across online teaching practices remains a significant challenge in higher education. Through her presentation at the AARE Conference, Warren detailed the university’s pioneering BOLD (Blended, Online and Digital) Learning and Teaching Practices (BLTP) framework, demonstrating how systematic quality improvement in digital education can be achieved at an institutional level.

The six-year journey of implementing BLTP demonstrates how institutional change can be both methodical and transformative. Beginning with basic spreadsheet-based minimum standards in 2018, the framework evolved into an interactive PDF and, by 2023, emerged as a sophisticated multimodal tool enabling staff self-evaluation and reflection.

Central to the framework’s success is its collaborative design methodology. Learning design teams worked alongside academic staff and professional teams, creating a comprehensive ecosystem of resources within SharePoint. This repository houses not only practical teaching materials but also maps industry standards for specific degrees, providing clear alignment between individual teaching practices and broader institutional requirements.

The framework’s implementation through Moodle Learning Management System introduced standardised templates for unit information, assessment, and teaching activities. Perhaps most notably, the bespoke fdlGrades system enables intricate tracking across semesters, disciplines, and coordinators, offering unprecedented visibility into teaching quality metrics.

The results speak volumes: engineering programmes witnessed a remarkable 97% improvement in student satisfaction with teaching quality over just three years. Beyond metrics, the framework has become integral to professional development, with BLTP data now informing promotional decisions and providing centralised evidence for accreditation processes.

This initiative demonstrates how structured quality assurance frameworks can systematically elevate digital teaching standards while maintaining flexibility for individual teaching styles. As universities worldwide grapple with online learning quality, Federation University’s BLTP framework offers a compelling model for institutional transformation.

Educational leadership: a new model

The following post is written by Shelby Stewart, University of Melbourne

John De Nobile first established a model of mentor roles in 2018. Now he’s extended it as the M-G-S-E model (model, supporter, guide, evaluator). It builds on his theoretical model of middle leadership in Australian schools (MLiS) which establishes six roles on a continuum from managing to leading. Through De Nobile’s literature review, he identified mentoring as a core responsibility of those who occupy positions of middle leadership, drawing upon previous research. Mentoring is situated in De Nobile’s body of research among four areas: 1) organisational communication in schools, which is seen as a key component of cultural communication 2) middle leadership in schools, classified as a common leadership behaviour within the staff development role 3) first-level leadership in schools, the reported emergent leader behaviours and 4) mentoring in schools, that is, the M-G-S-E model. 

In this recent study, a thematic analysis of 124 research articles was able to narrow the literature of mentoring as a responsibility of middle leaders into four key themes. 

The four roles are broken into: 

• the model role – which encompasses role modelling, example setting and demonstrating specific skills and ‘how to’; 
• the supporter role – including providing encouragement, giving praise and affirmation, sharing experiences to reassure, sponsoring the mentee and protecting the mentee; 
• the guide role – giving advice, tutoring, coaching, challenging and directing; 
• and the evaluator role – where the middle leader is assessing competence or skills level, observing the mentee and evaluating performance. 

With a further analysis through the theory of planned behaviour, there may yet be a fifth theme emerge outside the four areas of M-G-S-E.

The quantitative data from De Nobile’s  survey  of 2608 middle leaders across NSW schools aligned closely with qualitative data from his previous research, meaning that this study has found that middle leadership behaviours are congruent with the mentoring roles in the model. 

Understanding teachers’ professional learning lives in a changing digital world

The following blog post is written by Steven Kolber, University of Melbourne

There are difficulties in keeping accreditation, where more is asked of teachers in less time. How and when do teachers engage with professional learning?  The presenters were all from the University of Wollongong: Claire Rogerson, Kellie Buckley-Walker and Shirley Agostinho

By completing an online survey (n=299, and closer case studies (n=35), the team worked with professional associations across Australia to produce a national sample. The sample skewed towards secondary settings and middle leaders and principals. 

Digitalisation of work was viewed negatively, with teachers being ‘always on’ and never able to ‘switch off’ within a ‘24/7’ teaching cycle. 

They are less likely to attend conferences, but yet are more able to follow developments in the field by using online means.

Being deeply reflective was a core greater and a drive to lean more and attain further qualifications was a feature of the sample. 

Further exploration will look at what ‘more’ exactly they are doing.

By looking at the closer case studies, we note that the pseudonym-ised Principal Ben sees a need to constantly pass down new policies and new practices that negatively impact upon teacher workload – and views this with sadness.

An English teacher is invariably the viewer and listener of PD rather than being activated in the process. Whereas a Head of Learning sees the end of day professional development as being challenging for her staff and instead has found a way to remove a class session to allow mid-day discussions of teachers working on a shared problem. The goal of such a group is to produce ‘something’ to demonstrate an outcome.

For a Primary AP, we see rotating groups where empowerment takes place – no external providers, as they suggest that teachers themselves are not the holders of knowledge, but rather the empty vessels. 

The Australian Professional Standards for Teachers Professional Learning frameworks allows for greater flexibility and shows the micro forms of professional learning that occurs within the teaching day.

Exploring the role of racial literacy in educational research

The following blog post is written by Mikayla King, University of South Australia

Students’ experiences of racisms in education are well-documented globally, and increasingly within Australia. The colonial project is facilitated by schools which inflict violence on Aboriginal and other marginalised children and their knowledge systems. It has a detrimental impact on students’ cultural safety within education settings, and correspondingly longer-term impacts across a wide range of life domains. 

The need for social, cultural, and political change within education has never been more pressing. Margaret Lovell briefly discussed their PhD research which explores the concept of racial literacy as a lens to understand how teachers reproduce the colonial logics in Australian schooling. The presentation drew upon Decolonising Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Theory as frameworks to guide a critical qualitative research study. 

In the study, Margaret noted Aboriginal young people have shared experiences of racisms at school. They also shared what they wished teachers knew, felt, and could do.

The students also engaged in professional dialogue with non-Aboriginal teachers to explore teachers’ thoughts, feelings, values; and pedagogical reflections upon the Australian curriculum. Through thematic analysis, the ongoing reflexivity of the insider/outsider educational researcher has also emerged strongly within the study. 

Margaret spent a significant amount of time expressing the complexity of engaging with racial literacy in educational research and its immediate implications on Margaret as white person, teacher and researcher. The responsibility of the education researcher not only to participants and the data of the study but also to critical self-reflection and racial literacy has become clearer. The interrogation of whiteness as a system and structure is so easily reproduced without the ongoing examination of self. 

It was clear that this reflexive process is ongoing and the critical lens will continue to be of great focus for the remainder of Margaret’s PhD project. The transformational process of a novice educational researcher developing racial literacy may contribute to the macro system of education transforming into the future. This presentation clearly demonstrates the need for teachers and educational researchers to not defer responsibility simply because the systemic nature of racisms is evident or has significant affective implications. Margaret’s presentation demonstrates the importance of critical reflection of self as educational research and larger systems of whiteness that are reproduced unconsciously and continue to inflict pedagogical violence in educational settings.

Every person, every day: Creating Cultural Change from Vulnerable to Thriving in Regional, Remote and Rural Schools Across Queensland

The following blog post is from Ben Archer, James Cook University

The challenging landscape of regional, remote and rural (RRR) education in Queensland is undergoing a remarkable transformation, led by Principals who are redefining success through connection and cultural change. This insight emerges from compelling research by Amelia Olsen, a PhD student at the University of the Sunshine Coast, whose engagement with rural education as a teaching Principal  brings a unique perspective to the challenges and triumphs of these distinctive learning environments.

Through extensive interviews with ten diverse Queensland principals, ranging from teaching principals in small schools to leaders of complex regional institutions, Amelia’s research reveals a critical need for authentic connection in RRR contexts. Her work challenges educators to consider a pivotal question: “Are you a fish out of water or a committed sardine?”

The research highlights stark contrasts in rural educational settings. While some communities grapple with high domestic violence rates and weekly student turnover of up to fifteen new enrolments, others face different challenges, such as connection-poor students whose parents’ work commitments limit family time. Despite these varying contexts, successful Principals consistently prioritise building trust, emphasising values, and fostering collaborative relationships through every interaction, every person, every day.

Amelia Olsen presenting her methodology

These leadership approaches, however, come with significant personal costs. Principals navigate multiple vulnerabilities, including professional isolation, unsustainable workloads, and the constant challenge of maintaining personal wellbeing. Amelia’s research reveals that effective leaders demonstrate high self-esteem coupled with low need for external validation, while actively modelling and communicating boundaries to ensure sustainability in the role.

Most significantly, Amelia suggests that Principal wellbeing is intrinsically linked to distributed leadership within the school community. By actively involving staff in decision-making processes, asking “What do you need me to do?”, Principals not only foster a collaborative culture but also create support networks that help alleviate their own isolation and workload pressures. This shift from a traditional hierarchical approach to shared leadership marks an important transition from viewing rural schools through a deficit lens to celebrating their capacity for positive change and collective achievement. Because, as Amelia puts it: “You only need another 5 or 6 sardines to start moving the whale”.

2024 Radford Lecture: Professionalising Professional Learning

This is an overview of some of parts of the 2024 Radford Lecture, delivered by Wayne Sawyer at the AARE Conference at Macquarie University. Photos by Steven Kolber

What we see is the value of collaboration in professional learning between teachers and also between teachers and academics. We have teachers who are very definite about the benefits that they get out of that collaboration.

We used a particular example, The HSC Strategy. It was a project run by the NSW Department of Education, designed to improve results in the HSC in NSW  public schools. It worked with almost 8,000 teachers over time . 

The work itself fell into a number of streams. The two I’m going to be talking about today are around the stream on professional learning and then the stream around action learning or action research.

The professional learning stream consisted of presentations, discussions and Q and As and video classroom work based on and led by expert subject teachers. It also included time where different teachers worked with each other, particularly around teacher artefacts and samples of student work that they brought along with them in order to have discussions around where those students were in their classrooms; and an analysis of that work. This was a collaborative professional learning project.

The professional learning itself cultivated what we call an action learning mindset or an action research mindset.

The HSC Strategy was very successful in terms of results. 

I refer to the work of Professor Jo-Anne Reid, which I thought connected to the notion of teachers talking to us about refamiliarising themselves with the work they were already doing with a new understanding – a new recognition – of the kinds of strategies they were already using. It’s the distinction between knowing and understanding  and the combination of how they do the work they do and why they do the work they do.

What advice would I give for future professional learning?

I would really emphasize the notion of an action learning mindset –  the idea of people focusing on the the work that comes out of their classrooms and thinking about what it’s telling them about their own work and where they could go next with their students.

But I would also emphasise the idea of collaborative work based on the professional judgment of teachers – the combination of teachers working together and working with academic teams, working with academic partners.