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In an era of internationalism, higher education and vocational training have been core to Australia’s nation-building, regional co-operation and public diplomacy. This essay examines what has become of the people-to-people aspect of Australia’s engagements in the Indo-Pacific region, as discussed in the Australian government’s influential White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century (2012). More recently, established patterns of international educational exchange, and their economic, social and cultural benefits, have been disrupted by the global COVID-19 pandemic, shifting international relations and domestic politics, with consequences for international education and public diplomacy.

This essay introduces the scholarly context for a reappraisal of Australian histories of international education within the Indo-Pacific region since the mid-20th century, and the role of NGOs, academia and government in educational schemes and scholarships. It draws on an approach informed by international history, the history of education and diplomatic studies, to provide an overview of key themes and the past and present case studies discussed in the seven articles of this special journal issue.

The little-known histories of international education in Australia, and associated scholarship schemes, are important aspects of soft power or public diplomacy and the nation’s relations with the Indo-Pacific region. We argue that there needs to be greater acknowledgement of the vital role of these interpersonal interactions and the international organisations that facilitated such exchanges in histories of Australia’s internationalism and diplomacy. While Australian governments have initiated scholarship programmes, what is becoming clear is that understanding their significance for Australian–regional relationships demands a research focus on student expectations and experiences that often lay beyond government control.

This essay and the articles in this special issue offer new historic and current insights on international education policy and programmes and Australia’s diplomatic relations. Many of the highlighted case studies have not previously been analysed within this context, and fresh analysis makes an intervention into the field, revealing the complexities and limitations of international education and people-to-people relationships for Australia’s past and present connections with the Indo-Pacific region.

The purpose of this study is to understand the potential of serious gaming as an imaginative and creative method to collect data in disaster studies that address key concerns such as extractive research, power inequalities, and bridging the theory-practice gap in exploring post-disaster recovery.

Novel serious gaming approach deployed to connect theory-practice by identifying and co-analysing post-disaster recovery gaps in a workshop setting.

The serious game has value in bridging theory-practice divides, identifying and exploring gaps/solutions in post-flood recovery, and serving as a novel social science research approach for disaster studies.

Outlining a dialogic approach to knowledge construction between academics, practitioners, policymakers and community voices on post-disaster recovery.

Fostering collaboration and knowledge construction on post-disaster recovery gaps across stakeholders is valuable in improving disaster resilience strategies that benefit communities affected by disasters.

The paper proposes a creative and co-developed serious game method of data collection for disaster studies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Australian universities commemorated the First World War, with a focus on the University of Melbourne as an institution with a particularly rich history of wartime participation and of diverse forms of memorialisation.

A case study approach is taken, with an overview of the range of war memorials at the University of Melbourne. These include memorials which acknowledged the wartime role of individuals or groups associated with the University, and took the form of architectural features, and named scholarships or academic positions. Three cross-campus war memorials are examined in depth.

This paper demonstrates that there was a range of war memorials at Australian universities, indicating the range of views about the First World War, and its legacies, within university communities of students, graduates and staff.

University war commemoration in Australia has not been well documented. This study examines the way in which the particular character of the community at the University of Melbourne was to influence the forms of First World War commemoration.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss whether the availability of qualifications through work‐based traineeships in Australia assists social inclusion.

Industry case studies, of the finance and cleaning industries, were undertaken as part of a national research project on quality in traineeships. The two industry case studies were analysed to provide data on social inclusion aspects. A general discussion on the “pros” and “cons” of gaining qualifications through work, from a social inclusion point of view, is included.

The industry case studies show many advantages of work‐based qualifications for people who have had disadvantaged economic and social backgrounds. The study presents a model showing how work‐based qualifications help to meet the twin social inclusion goals of employment and education. However in economic hard times, the need to have a job may rule out some people. Also, some doubts about quality in work‐based delivery may mean that qualifications gained through work may be of lower value than those gained at least partly through formal study.

The models put forward are tentative, based on the findings in the research study that has been described and the authors’ earlier research. Further research is necessary to establish the social inclusion benefits of this means of gaining qualifications. In particular longitudinal research with disadvantaged people who have gained qualifications through this route is needed to evaluate whether their completion of qualifications through employment has assisted their broader economic and social engagement, and in what ways. In addition, research is needed to compare the quality and utility of qualifications gained through work and those through education providers as a poor‐quality qualification may be of limited long‐term use to an individual.

Work‐based qualifications are shown to be a useful investment of public resources. The research also analyses some shortcomings of this method of gaining qualifications so that they can be addressed by employers and training providers.

The research establishes the social inclusion utility of work‐based qualifications, providing insights useful for education systems and social welfare organisations.

This is one of very few scholarly studies of the large‐scale use of work‐based qualifications.

In this article we focus on two women, Catherine Francis (1836‐1916) and Dorothy Dolling (1897‐ 1967), whose lives traversed England, New Zealand and South Australia. At the beginning of this period the British Empire was expanding and New Zealand and South Australia had much in common. They were white settler societies, that is ‘forms of colonial society which had displaced indigenous peoples from their land’. We have organised the article chronologically so the first section commences with Catherine’s birth in England and early life in South Australia, where she mostly inhabited the world of the young ladies school, a transnational phenomenon. The next section investigates her career in New Zealand from 1878 where she led the Mount Cook Infant’s School in Wellington and became one of the colony’s first renowned women principals. We turn to Dorothy Dolling in the third section, describing her childhood and work as a university student and tutor in New Zealand and England. The final section of our article focuses on the ways in which both women have been represented in the national memories of Australia and New Zealand. In so doing, we show that understandings about nationhood are also transnational, and that writing about Francis and Dolling reflects the shifting relationships between the three countries in the twentieth century.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of vocational education for girls, focusing on how curriculum and pedagogy developed to accommodate changing expectations of the role of women in the workplace and the home in mid-twentieth century Australia. As well as describing how pedagogical changes were implemented through curriculum, it examines the way a modern approach to girls’ education was reflected in the built environment of the school site and through its interactions with its changing community.

The paper takes a case study approach, focusing on the example of the J.H. Boyd Domestic College which functioned as a single-sex school for girls from 1932 until its closure in 1985. Oral history testimony, private archives, photographs and government school records provide the material from which an understanding of the school is reconstructed.

This detailed examination of the history of J.H. Boyd Domestic College highlights the highly integrated nature of the school's environment with the surrounding community, which strengthened links between the girls and their community. It also demonstrates how important the school's buildings and facilities were to contemporary ideas about the teaching of girls in a vocational setting.

This is the first history of J.H. Boyd Domestic College to examine the intersections of gendered, classed ideas about pedagogy with ideas about the appropriate built environment for the teaching of domestic science. The contextualized approach sheds new light on domestic science education in Victoria and the unusually high quality of the learning spaces available for girls’ education.

In this chapter, the authors discuss how school counselors may create a college-going environment for African American males in middle school. The authors use Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) Ecological Systems Theory to explain how environmental influences impact African American males’ college trajectory, both positively and negatively. Moreover, they use Ecological Systems Theory to discuss how multiple stakeholders (e.g., school counselors and parents) and various structured activities that align with the Eight Components of College and Career Readiness (NOSCA, 2010) may promote college preparation among Black male middle school students. The authors also present two case vignettes as examples of how school counselors may assist African American males for postsecondary options. In closing, the chapter concludes with implications for educational policy, research, and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how faculty, staff and students at one American University define the term sustainability.

The authors analyze student, staff and faculty definitions by comparing word frequency counts to a list of the 25 most frequently found words in over 100 definitions of sustainability. Next, the authors analyze the definitions through content analysis, producing a list of emergent themes.

The authors find that our definitions do not rate highly when compared to a list of the most frequent words from published definitions, but examining them more closely highlights nuances in understanding.

These results can only speak to one university’s population, but may be similar to that of comparable schools. Further studies should include comparisons to a range of campus communities, including environmental leaders and laggards.

Administrators and educators at institutes of higher education must determine whether an ambiguous understanding of sustainability is sufficient for their own goals in producing an educated citizenry.

When a community fails to understand sustainability, it impacts how they conceptualize environmental problems and make decisions to solve them.

This study shows that unless one has polled a campus population, one cannot know how its members understand a fundamental concept such as sustainability. It also shows that the work of sustainability education is just beginning.

Challenges traditional models and approaches to performance management and presents an alternative methodology for developing performance objectives and managing performance. Argues that existing approaches generally do not succeed in meeting their objectives, are flawed in implementation, act to demotivate staff, and are often perceived as forms of control which are inappropriately used to “police” performance. Suggests that the alternative approach utilized in the case study organization, the British School of Osteopathy, is particularly appropriate for professional staff in the not‐for‐profit sector. Attempts to incorporate ethical concerns over performance management and, using a stakeholder approach, involves those affected in a dialogue over the design of performance measures and methods for performance improvement. Addresses four main ethical principles, namely: respect for the individual, mutual respect, procedural fairness and transparency of decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to canvass debates arising from encounters between architectural and educational history and to introduce a themed section of four papers exploring aspects of the history of school design and the spatial arrangements of Australian schooling across the twentieth century.

This is an interpretive introductory essay that characterizes trends in historical and sociological studies of school space and materialities, and synthesizes the arguments and contributions of the four companion papers.

A case is made for greater exchange among educational, architectural and social historians and key insights and findings from the four papers concerning school space, design and educational ideas are summarized. Themes of community, citizenship and progressive education are highlighted.

The value of the paper lies in introducing the context and scholarly debates framing a collection of four papers that seek to open up new avenues for investigating the history of modern schooling through studying intersections between school space and design and educational purposes and aspiration.