The question of professional trust urgently needs closer attention in relation to teacher recruitment and retention, as this research shows it has significant bearing on the symbolic capital that may help to attract, motivate, and sustain high quality teachers. In Australian schools, teachers are frequently subject to initiatives to improve their practice, address their perceived limitations, and hold them accountable for failing students, schools, or systems. We argue that teachers, in the advent of these reforms intended to improve them, come to believe they are distrusted in their professional roles. Denying teachers the sense of themselves as capable professionals risks contributing to the problems of retention that are becoming ever more urgent in the Australian context and elsewhere in the world. This article explores the impacts of discourses and policy directions on teachers’ perceptions of professional trust. Drawing on case study data from two schools in the state of Victoria, Australia, we highlight the ways discourses of professional distrust emerge through policy directives that position teachers as ‘the problem’ in education.

There is now widespread acceptance of the importance of differentiated instruction in today’s classrooms. However, much of the research regarding differentiated instruction takes place in primary and middle years environments, with very little focussed on the senior secondary years. This article explores differentiated instruction practices in senior secondary high stakes environments. Specifically focussed on the experiences of teachers in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) in Hong Kong and Australia, where the IB is predominately taught in high-fee-paying institutions, the article explores some of the current practices and concerns of teachers involved in the programme. In exploring differentiated instruction in the IBDP it asks the questions 1) How do teachers employ differentiation in their approaches to teaching in IBDP environments?, and 2) What factors inhibit or enable differentiation in their classrooms? Results from the study indicate that teachers of the IBDP provide several differentiation opportunities within the content and product areas. However, the areas of process and environment were more problematic, with the amount of content that needed to be covered impacting on the approach to teaching and learning adopted by both the teachers and the students. The IB prides itself on its Learner Profile attributes which support the students to become “inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.” (IB, 2019a). However, in this study questions were raised regarding the amount of time students are given to think, reflect, or inquire. This is something that all senior secondary years programmes will need to consider as we move through the twenty-first century.

Differentiated instruction has been shown to meet the needs of diverse learners, and can meaningfully improve individual student learning, however many teachers find it challenging to implement. This paper reports on a targeted professional development programme which was undertaken as a collaborative action research project. Results show many participants adapted their classroom pedagogy to provide further supports for students through differentiated instruction. We argue that this study’s use of a collaborative action research approach to provide teacher professional development, along with a focus on evidence using a differentiation observation instrument, were important stimuli for reflection and pedagogical experimentation. This targeted approach to professional reflection and exposure to research-based and other colleagues’ teaching practices led to enhanced differentiated instruction among participants. These findings contribute to understanding the processes that lead to teacher development.

This paper highlights troubling patterns within the Australian School-based Apprenticeships and Traineeships (SBATs) by analysing statistical data of 21,000 of 15–19 year old apprenticeship/traineeship learners engaged in Vocational Education and Training in School (VETiS). It confirms the alignment of social groups to certain qualification fields and levels and provides a compelling picture of the learner profile of SBAT including the type of occupations and qualifications being undertaken at school level. In a complex policy environment, where VET in Schools has been assigned the important task of preparing ‘workforce job-ready’ students for the ‘high skill and high earning roles our economy demands’, we argue that the SBAT pathway is not yet adequate to meet these high expectations. It is not an effective apprenticeship pathway as it potentially ‘locks-in’ already disadvantaged young people to precarious pathways, and reinforces the nature of an already highly gender-segregated Australian labour market. The paper helps to focus attention on endemic weaknesses in the Australian VET system that serve to entrench disadvantage in Australian society.