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Keywords: Australian Curriculum

  • AUSTRALIA

    The spirituality of KFC

    • Michael McGirr
    • 22 November 2024

    There’s this other place that is neither heaven nor earth but which you might find in the car park of the third busiest KFC in Melbourne, waiting for your son to finish his shift. A bin beside the car is overflowing with all the packaging that comes with fast food, not to mention the remains of poor dead chooks whose life it is hard to imagine. 

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  • EDUCATION

    Degrees of discontent

    • Erica Cervini
    • 14 November 2024

    At an ACU graduation event, students walked out in protest as Joe de Bruyn gave an address condemning abortion, single-parent IVF, and same-sex marriage. The event highlights tensions for Catholic institutions trying to balance traditional Catholic values while also embracing often opposing perspectives a diverse, pluralistic society.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Colonisation studies expand horizons

    • Bruce Pennay
    • 25 September 2024

    From 2027, NSW students will undertake a mandatory study of First Nations Peoples’ experiences of colonisation. This is welcome in the wake of the failed national referendum and the increasing insistence on reconciliation at the local level.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The silent epidemic: Our hidden child abuse crisis

    • Smeeta Singh
    • 06 September 2024

    Australia is quietly confronting a national crisis: one in every four Australian children has been a victim of child sexual abuse, but you would never guess the scale of this crisis, given the lack of urgency from our national discourse.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    40 Days: Generosity

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 07 March 2024

    Generosity is most heartwarming when it is a habit. We see it in people whose first inclination is to give something to a beggar, to stop and listen to a hard luck story, to think first of persons affected by war and economic crises and only secondly to policy, to welcome people into their homes and to go out of their way to help.

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  • EDUCATION

    Declining staff-to-student ratios reveal sorry state of higher ed

    • Erica Cervini
    • 06 March 2024
    2 Comments

    By 2012, when the federal government first started reporting on staff-to-student ratios in universities, there was one academic for every 20 students. The most recent data, from 2021, shows that figure had increased to 23. As Australian students return for the new academic year, it will surely come as no surprise to find that ratio has worsened.

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  • RELIGION

    What is the purpose of the RE classroom in a secular world?

    • Ann Rennie, Bernadette Mercieca
    • 09 February 2024
    5 Comments

    Today, the claims of Christianity are no longer common knowledge among a Catholic student cohort that comes from many faith traditions and none, but the Catholic school has a place for them all. Has the classroom become the ecclesial face of the Catholic Church in the 21st Century?

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  • EDUCATION

    Why we need a new approach to school bullying

    • Ben Lohmeyer
    • 07 February 2024
    2 Comments

    In a hierarchical society, we routinely celebrate and reward various dominating and competitive behaviour. When children and young people replicate this in the playground, we call it bullying. Anti-bullying measures may be more effective shifting the focus away from perpetrators and on the social and institutional context. 

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  • EDUCATION

    Widening the Catholic educational tent

    • Michael Furtado
    • 28 September 2023
    38 Comments

    As Australia grapples with educational inequality, those in the Catholic education system must ask: how do we test for a clear commitment to Catholic Social Teaching and the seminal role it plays in enunciating the guiding principles of Catholic education, particularly in regard to it being offered, ‘first and foremost … to the poor’?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    New heresy: In conversation with Richard Dawkins

    • David Halliday, Juliette Hughes
    • 03 March 2023
    2 Comments

    In the world of science and rational inquiry, few names loom as large. The often-controversial evolutionary biologist has spent decades exploring the mysteries of the natural world and ruffling feathers in religious and secular movements alike. Speaking to Eureka Street, Richard Dawkins discusses the difficulties in public discourse and what constitutes modern heresy.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Reassessing assessments in an era of anxiety

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 03 October 2022
    4 Comments

    Assessments serve a valuable purpose: they give us a way to measure what students are learning. The problem is, they don’t seem to be learning. According to the Australian Council for Educational Research, recent results confirm that Australian 15 year-olds continue to show significant declines in math, reading and science when measured against their international counterparts. Australian students are learning less, and at the same time, never have we seen such an emphasis on assessments in schools. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Conferences, summits, talkfests

    • Julian Butler
    • 13 September 2022
    1 Comment

    Those who suggest that gatherings like the Jobs Summit are not worth the time overlook the possibility of long-term solutions being found through people coming together and talking. Much of the talking was done, of course, prior to the Jobs Summit. But the date in the diary focusses the mind; preparatory conversations start to refine a common understanding of what is being sought, and maybe even why.

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