Learner discipline: An Australian perspective
Australian schools by and large are safe schools. Nonetheless discipline problems do exist – including bullying behaviour. For this kind of problem schools should have management policies in place. As traditional behaviour-management practices – including corporal punishment – are largely prohibited in Australian schools, contemporary practices centre on management through supportive school programmes, including appropriate curricula and school-support structures. This article supports the belief that measures such as the exclusion of misbehaving learners should be treated with caution. Measures such as this might not reflect accepted international principles and practices and should only be exercised in the most extreme circumstances. The article also supports the view that it is part of the school’s role to ensure that all learners are aware of the reality that while they have rights, they also have corresponding responsibilities. This awareness is more likely to be achieved in a supportive school culture where each learner is recognised as having unique qualities that can mature and grow in an appropriate learning environment.
Beginning teachers' perceptions of their work, well-being, and intention to leave
Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from 123 graduate teachers six weeks after they first commenced full-time teaching in 2002 in the Australian state of Queensland and again six months later. Standard surveys indicated graduate teachers were experiencing relatively high levels of work pressure and emotional exhaustion, and increasing frequencies of emotional exhaustion and depersonalizing behaviour through the year. Almost a third of respondents indicated a serious intention to leave their current employment after the first 8 months teaching and this intention to leave was significantly correlated with burnout. Qualitative analyses of teacher feedback about issues of major concern to beginning teachers supported the results of the quantitative investigation and depicted increasing concern with a lack of support in an emotionally demanding work environment. Mentoring programs, where implemented, did not ameliorate concern about the absence of support or influence burnout symptoms. Findings were consistent with calls to implement effective programs to support teachers during their first year of employment.
Religion and school
The report presents and argues in favor of the thesis that the secular school offers no alternative in modern society. Simultaneously, the author displays the basic contours of spiritual physiognomy of such a modern school which in many ways differs from the, school we know in this country. The school the author pleads for does not decide among various contents that influence forming of the young, within which the line is established between theism - atheism, but, on the contrary, pleads for the principle of humanistic education. The predominant here is the notion of methodological skepticism which marks the principle by which the process of education should be realized as though there were no God, or - which is on the same level - as though there were God. Out of this basic principle any others upon which the concept of modern secular school the author pleads for is established can be drawn. It ought not to neglect the rich, scientifically confirmed knowledge on the phenomenon of religion and atheism, which should be, presented in all school subjects where the contents allow for it as well as the Religious Culture should be introduced as a compulsory subject. By introducing this subject as a collection of knowledge on the phenomenon of the, religious, we would avoid imposing a particular religious culture as an attitude, behavior, belief and evaluation.