Playing and Learning with and for Life: Researching Innovative Environmental Education in Primary Schools
This paper examines action research projects in two Queensland primary schools, where parents, teachers, children and the wider community have been working together, through their local actions, to create healthy and sustainable futures. In different ways, both schools have been striving to create play and learning spaces where children can have ‘intractable involvement with nature’ and can build supportive social relations. These have been complemented by developing explicit curriculum programs that provide integrated outdoor learning opportunities; enhancing skills in democratic decision-making; and taking actions for sustainability. 
 
In one project, the ‘health promoting schools’ concept was applied, initially at least, in order to redevelop the schools grounds into ‘learnscapes’. In so doing, the project built partnerships between parents, children and teachers. Later, a democratic health decision-making model was utilised as the basis for student-centred, action-oriented curriculum projects exploring health, social and environmental issues. Examples of these issues, identified by the children themselves, include: Dirty Creeks, Crime in the Suburb, Litter in the School Grounds, Car Park Safety, What’s In Your Lunchbox? 
 
In the second project, the focus was the development of a ‘learnscaping’ curriculum to support the school’s newly landscaped school grounds. This involved extensive interactions over a five year period, culminating in teachers collaboratively developing integrated learning activities based on the outdoor environment and which would involve the school community in learning how to become ‘stewards of the Earth’.
Implementing the IVAC model: lessons from an Australian case
This paper discusses the engagement of a primary school teacher with a democratic approach to the teaching of environmental health education as part of a Health Promoting Schools project The Investigation—Visions—ActionChange (FVAC) model developed by Jensen was used to give students an opportunity to define a local health or environmental problem of significance to them, to acquire knowledge about the problem, to envision possible solutions and then, based on these, to take some action to address the problem. The paper discusses two constraints faced by the teacher when using this model and makes suggestions for ways in which to overcome these.
School Principals and Education Law: What do they know, what do they need to know?
Principals now work in complex and challenging environments where uncertainty and change are the hallmarks of their roles and responsibilities. As such, the knowledge and capability demands on principals have expanded, including those related to education law. While these matters attracted some research interest a number of years ago, there has been little recent work in the area of principals and education law. This article reports on an exploratory study into aspects of the legal knowledge held by Tasmanian government school principals, particularly concerning non-sexual physical contact between teachers and students. The research was undertaken using a small-scale, mixed-methods research design, which required principals to respond to various legal scenarios. Three key findings emerged from the study. First, principals used two different levels of working knowledge about education law  one related to legal problems, and the other to legally-related routine activities. Second, on the particular topic of physical contact, some knowledge held by principals was not legally accurate. Third, for major legal issues, participants indicated that they acquired access to information from legal experts. The situation for routine legal matters was less clear, although in-service training and practical experience were identified as potential sources of knowledge. Participants recognised the importance of a sound knowledge of education law, especially for dealing with security and safety issues and preferred to access further information through in-service training. Notably, the findings of the study are broadly consistent with those from earlier Australian and international research, suggesting that much remains to be done in the area of principals’ education law knowledge.