Lucas Walsh
Biographic Data
| ID | 106012 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lucas Walsh |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lucas |
| FAMILY NAME | Walsh |
| SIGNATURE | WALSH L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7224-2135 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Of course they care! Understanding the caring work of principals in Australian government schools
Some emotional labour performed by school principals can be described as care work. Drawing on data from a broader study into Australian government principals’ emotional labour, this article explores how care is performed by 40 principals who shared their feelings about managing a critical incident via a national qualitative survey. We found that principals’ care could be categorised in five ways: caring about, caring for others, self-preservatio…
The gendered dimensions of principals’ emotional labour: Suppression, self-doubt and self-blame
Research in Australia and globally highlights the emotional complexity and intensity of school leadership as principals navigate the demands of supporting students, staff, parents, and system requirements. This paper presents data from a qualitative survey that was part of a broader Australian study on principals’ emotional labour. It examines testimonials gathered from 40 public school principals (20 women, 20 men) about their response to an emo…
How youth reference groups can contribute to amplify research findings to public discussions and potentially improve policy making
This article examines how Youth-led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) can amplify youth voices in public discourse and policy making, drawing on a case study of young Australians collaborating with academic researchers to analyse survey and interview data for the Australian Youth Barometer. At its core was a Youth Reference Group (YRG), which moved beyond tokenistic consultation by engaging directly in data analysis and knowledge production. I…
Food insecurity among international students’ studying in Melbourne, Australia: Experiences and impacts
Food insecurity among international students at Australian universities is a hidden phenomenon obscured by shame and stigma, exacerbated by the cost-of-living crisis and deprivations intensified by the Covid-19 epidemic. However, there is limited diversity in understanding of young people’s navigations of food insecurity. The aims of this paper are to illuminate the experiences, impacts, management strategies and factors affecting international s…
Young Children’s Play and the Role of Grandparents as Play Partners during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Play involves diverse meaning-making for young children and grandparents. This paper derives from a larger intergenerational family practices project conducted in Australia during 2021–2022 against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research team undertook intergenerational group interviews and filmed family play activities in addition to collecting videoclips and photos of young children’s play from six families. In this paper, vignettes…
Resisting neoliberalism: Teacher education academics navigating precarious times
While the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic upon higher education institutions has been well documented, less is known about how academics themselves responded to these rapid changes. This paper analyses the experiences of teacher education academics from Australia and New Zealand (n = 13) who were interviewed during lengthy pandemic lockdowns. Whilst rarely using the language of resistance, participants revealed multiple ways they navigated…
Negotiating senses of belonging and identity across education spaces
A multitude of educational programs attempt to facilitate young people’s engagement with ideas and practices of active citizenship. For young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander or Indigenous people in Australia, such interventions are often subject to complex experiences of senses of belonging and non-belonging. This paper responds to calls from researchers to develop better understandings of young Indigenous people’s own senses and practices …
Playing the game of selectivity: The normalisation of merit and invisibilisation of advantage in students’ admission into competitive schools
Students’ beliefs in schooling to achieve opportunity have been well documented in the school choice literature. How students make sense of successful entry into competitive and high-demand schools via high-stakes entrance exams is less researched. High-demand schools, including both public and private schools, can utilise entrance exams to enrol their students. This paper aims to contribute empirical and conceptual insights into school selectivi…
About them, without them? figures of youth in Australian policy 2014–2021
This paper considers the multiple and contradictory depictions of young people in youth policy and reflects on how youth engagement is constructed in Australian Federal and State policy. In this journal, researchers have been challenged to critically reflect on 'figures of youth' (Threadgold, 2020) and we take up this challenge and consider how and why 'figures of youth' are deployed in Australian youth policy. Drawing on an environmental scan of…
School Educators’ Use of Research: Findings from Two Large-Scale Australian Studies
Increasingly, there are expectations internationally that schools will use research to inform their improvement initiatives. Within this context, this paper brings together findings from two large-scale Australian studies – the Monash Q Project and the University of Newcastle’s Quality Teaching Rounds Project – to explore educators’ patterns of engagement with research. The combination of these studies provides data from a larger and more diverse…
Public narratives of disadvantage across multiple groups in Australia: A research map and practice reflections
This paper provides the first known “heatmap” representing Australian public narratives across a range of groups experiencing disadvantage developed from a comprehensive literature review of primary Australian studies between 2020 and 2021. Eleven narratives were identified across 14 population groups with the most frequent being deficit narratives , misrepresentation of the issue and ‘absent’ narratives (group being described not represented in …
Quality use of research evidence: Practitioner perspectives
Background: This article comes in response to two gaps within the research use literature: a lack of work on quality of use as distinct from quality of evidence, and a lack of research use models based on practitioner, as opposed to researcher, perspectives. Aims and objectives: The study probes into the views of education practitioners about ‘using research well’, and explores: (1) the extent to which those views align with or differ from a conc…
A visual analysis intergenerational play histories and practices: Five generations of an Australian family
Exploring play and leisure histories and practices in a visual analysis of family photos opens ways to scrutinize intergenerational relationships. In this paper, we explore ideas about interactions between the old and young, and within and across generations through a visual analysis of play and leisure activities. By looking back through five generations of family photos of one Australian family, we examine play and leisure practices of older ge…
In their own words: 41 Stories of Young People’s Digital Citizenship
Digital citizenship and cyber safety are often used interchangeably in the context of young people’s internet use, depicting the young person as passive, vulnerable and in need of adult intervention to navigate an unsafe online environment and perpetuating reductive and deterministic initiatives that rarely respond to young people’s own online perspectives and experiences. This discussion maps recent definitions and debates about digital citizens…
Insights from a cross-sector review on how to conceptualise the quality of use of research evidence
Recent decades have seen widespread efforts to improve the generation and use of evidence across a number of sectors. Such efforts can be seen to raise important questions about how we understand not only the quality of evidence, but also the quality of its use. To date, though, there has been wide-ranging debate about the former, but very little dialogue about the latter. This paper focuses in on this question of how to conceptualise the quality…
Negotiating Vulnerabilities in Space and Time in the Twenty-First Century
Young university students are experiencing a changing relationship with the future as economic and geopolitical anxieties alter the temporal and spatial horizons with which they engage. Du Bois-Reymond and López Blasco suggested almost 20 years ago that 'youth is now [...] a life condition that is marked by unpredictability, vulnerability and reversibility' (2003, p. 20). This situation has only accelerated since then. This paper draws on the aut…
Theorising and preparing students for precarity: How can leaders and educators better prepare students to enter an increasingly insecure workforce
Workforce insecurity has significant implications for the role of school leaders and teachers preparing students for changing worlds of work. Drawing on a study of approximately 2500 secondary school students in the Australian state of Victoria, the figure of homo promptus is presented as a figure of youth to understand the real and imagined characteristics of students as workers-in-the-making. Homo promptus is entrepreneurial and strategic, yet …
Living the dream? University students in mobile times
Geographic mobility shapes the present experience and imagined futures of many young university students. Strong associations between higher education and youth mobility relate both to young people’s relocation to gain qualifications and to ideas about being young. This paper draws on data from a recent study to reflect on how mobility features within the experience and imagined futures of 30 university students in Australia, the UK and France. L…
Wild and tame zones in times of disharmony: Muslim boys and belonging in a primary school in Melbourne, Australia
This paper features stories about disharmony and social cohesion collected via interviews and focus groups conducted with teachers, school leaders, students, parents and the principal in a multicultural primary school located in a suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia. This school is located in a low-SES, historically white and working class area that is now home to large communities of immigrants, many of whom are Muslims. These change…
Flexible ongoing’: The young university student as homo promptus
Drawing from a study of young university students in Australia, France and the U.K., homo promptus represents the authors’ effort to trace how young people are positioned within discourses of higher education and employment to provide a conceptual shape to emergent characteristics of their otherwise diverse lives. We suggest that homo promptus is: entrepreneurial and strategic; plans adaptively for the future while living life in the short-term; …
I’m learning how to do it’: Reflecting on the implementation of a new assessment tool in an Australian Early Childhood
The role of early childhood education and care (ECEC) is to support the learning and development of children in collaboration with families. The notion of inclusion in ECEC provides children with a sense of agency in becoming a learner able to participate fully and actively in their community. This paper illustrates how ECEC assessment approaches risk labelling young children in ‘deficit’ terms. The paper through a case study critically reflects …
An ecological case-study of the benefits and challenges of socially-just leadership engaging in ‘challenging conversations’ about social disharmony
As sites of human social activity, schools must engage in challenging conversations between staff, students and their communities about social disharmonies. This paper presents interview data from a case study of Eucalyptus High School (not its real name), a large multicultural school located in a middle-class area in suburban Victoria (Australia). The paper examines the school’s engagement in ‘challenging conversations’ about socially and politi…
Young People in Digital Society: Control Shift
Imagining Youth Futures: University Students in Post-Truth Times
Young People in Digital Society: Control Shift
This book argues that there is a fundamental divide between young people's digital practices and the ways in which these practices are understood by many parents, policymakers and other adult stakeholders. As a consequence, young people's online lives are contained and controlled
Speed, International Security, and "New War" Coverage in Cyberspace
n\t\t\t\t\tMass media representations foster a view that the "War on Terror" is taking place both everywhere and nowhere, presenting Western governments with an opportunity to mobilize public support in new and ubiquitous ways. Starting with Virilio's critique of technology, speed, and de-territorialization, this article discusses the ways in which mass support is mobilized by the state in conventional pursuit of geopolitical objectives. Drawing …
Flexible ongoing’: The young university student as homo promptus
Drawing from a study of young university students in Australia, France and the U.K., homo promptus represents the authors’ effort to trace how young people are positioned within discourses of higher education and employment to provide a conceptual shape to emergent characteristics of their otherwise diverse lives. We suggest that homo promptus is: entrepreneurial and strategic; plans adaptively for the future while living life in the short-term; …
Understanding evidence use within education policy: A policy narrative perspective
There are growing calls for improved understandings of the role of evidence within policy development. There is long-standing recognition of the role of narratives and narrative processes in public policy. The aim of this paper is to explore the potential of policy narratives as a way to make sense of evidence use in policy. Drawing on an exploratory study of evidence use by Australian education policymakers, we describe how policy narratives eme…
Theorising and preparing students for precarity: How can leaders and educators better prepare students to enter an increasingly insecure workforce
Workforce insecurity has significant implications for the role of school leaders and teachers preparing students for changing worlds of work. Drawing on a study of approximately 2500 secondary school students in the Australian state of Victoria, the figure of homo promptus is presented as a figure of youth to understand the real and imagined characteristics of students as workers-in-the-making. Homo promptus is entrepreneurial and strategic, yet …
Young people’s perceptions of power and influence as a basis for understanding contemporary citizenship
Persistent simplistic binary discourses of young people’s citizenship portray them either as civically deficit and disengaged citizens or the creators of new democratic modes and approaches. This paper draws on field research with two groups of young people in Australia to better recognise the nuance of young people’s experiences of citizenship, power and influence. The study investigated the extent to which different groups of young people belie…
About them, without them? figures of youth in Australian policy 2014–2021
This paper considers the multiple and contradictory depictions of young people in youth policy and reflects on how youth engagement is constructed in Australian Federal and State policy. In this journal, researchers have been challenged to critically reflect on 'figures of youth' (Threadgold, 2020) and we take up this challenge and consider how and why 'figures of youth' are deployed in Australian youth policy. Drawing on an environmental scan of…
School Educators’ Use of Research: Findings from Two Large-Scale Australian Studies
Increasingly, there are expectations internationally that schools will use research to inform their improvement initiatives. Within this context, this paper brings together findings from two large-scale Australian studies – the Monash Q Project and the University of Newcastle’s Quality Teaching Rounds Project – to explore educators’ patterns of engagement with research. The combination of these studies provides data from a larger and more diverse…
Wild and tame zones in times of disharmony: Muslim boys and belonging in a primary school in Melbourne, Australia
This paper features stories about disharmony and social cohesion collected via interviews and focus groups conducted with teachers, school leaders, students, parents and the principal in a multicultural primary school located in a suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia. This school is located in a low-SES, historically white and working class area that is now home to large communities of immigrants, many of whom are Muslims. These change…
I’m learning how to do it’: Reflecting on the implementation of a new assessment tool in an Australian Early Childhood
The role of early childhood education and care (ECEC) is to support the learning and development of children in collaboration with families. The notion of inclusion in ECEC provides children with a sense of agency in becoming a learner able to participate fully and actively in their community. This paper illustrates how ECEC assessment approaches risk labelling young children in ‘deficit’ terms. The paper through a case study critically reflects …
Non-linear Transitions: An Intergenerational Longitudinal Study of Today’s Young Women in Education and Work
Labour markets are characterized by uncertainty and youth transitions by change. This longitudinal study of three generations of Australian women from nine families suggests something more nuanced, featuring continuities and discontinuities threaded throughout the lives of daughters, mothers, grandmothers and aunts interviewed over three decades. Discussion focuses on the most recent generation of interviewees, following some of the threads of th…
Engaged but Ambivalent: A Study of Young Indigenous Australians and Democratic Citizenship
In 2016, data was collected from eighty-one Indigenous young people in Australia through surveys and focus groups, which provide insight into the experiences of citizenship and democracy by young Indigenous Australians. This paper examines the attitudes of these young Indigenous Australians in relation to conventional political, economic and cultural domains of citizenship. Discussion highlights young Indigenous Australians' perceptions of their …
Speed, International Security, and "New War" Coverage in Cyberspace
n\t\t\t\t\tMass media representations foster a view that the "War on Terror" is taking place both everywhere and nowhere, presenting Western governments with an opportunity to mobilize public support in new and ubiquitous ways. Starting with Virilio's critique of technology, speed, and de-territorialization, this article discusses the ways in which mass support is mobilized by the state in conventional pursuit of geopolitical objectives. Drawing …
E-Election 2007? Political competition online
This paper examines the use of new media in the 2007 election. This election is commonly seen as a breakthrough for the use of Internet in electoral campaigning due to the high profile use of Internet channels in the ‘Kevin 07’ campaign and its association with the change of Government. The paper examines the impact of the technology on the presentation of political campaign messages in the campaign. In this election, the Internet played a more v…
Educating Generation Next: Young People, Teachers and Schooling in Transition
Is the current industrial model of schooling capable of preparing young people for modern working life? This book provides an unsettling picture of the challenges young people face following the uncertainty of the Global Financial Crisis. It asks whether teachers and schooling are able to provide the skills needed in a contemporary global economy
Young people’s perceptions of power and influence as a basis for understanding contemporary citizenship
Persistent simplistic binary discourses of young people’s citizenship portray them either as civically deficit and disengaged citizens or the creators of new democratic modes and approaches. This paper draws on field research with two groups of young people in Australia to better recognise the nuance of young people’s experiences of citizenship, power and influence. The study investigated the extent to which different groups of young people belie…
Realising the Potential of Universities as Significant Development Actors in Post-conflict Societies: A Case Study of the Solomon Islands National University
Interest in the transformational potential of education has seen development partners prioritise support for basic education. Tertiary education has tended to be considered in narrow and instrumental terms focused on supporting economic growth through vocational education and training. Development partners have largely overlooked the much broader potential of the sector to engage with a wide range of development challenges. This article focuses o…
Understanding evidence use within education policy: A policy narrative perspective
There are growing calls for improved understandings of the role of evidence within policy development. There is long-standing recognition of the role of narratives and narrative processes in public policy. The aim of this paper is to explore the potential of policy narratives as a way to make sense of evidence use in policy. Drawing on an exploratory study of evidence use by Australian education policymakers, we describe how policy narratives eme…
Imagining Youth Futures: University Students in Post-Truth Times
Young People in Digital Society: Control Shift
This book argues that there is a fundamental divide between young people's digital practices and the ways in which these practices are understood by many parents, policymakers and other adult stakeholders. As a consequence, young people's online lives are contained and controlled
Non-linear Transitions: An Intergenerational Longitudinal Study of Today’s Young Women in Education and Work
Labour markets are characterized by uncertainty and youth transitions by change. This longitudinal study of three generations of Australian women from nine families suggests something more nuanced, featuring continuities and discontinuities threaded throughout the lives of daughters, mothers, grandmothers and aunts interviewed over three decades. Discussion focuses on the most recent generation of interviewees, following some of the threads of th…
Whose risk and wellbeing? Three perspectives of online privacy in relation to children and young people's wellbeing
During the course of applied research into the challenges of providing integrated government services to support children and young people (CYP) at risk, a school principal recounted an incident involving an attempted suicide by a pupil who had recently arrived at the school and had a documented history of mental health issues and previous attempts to take his own life; however, this was not communicated to the school in part because of privacy c…
Engaged but Ambivalent: A Study of Young Indigenous Australians and Democratic Citizenship
In 2016, data was collected from eighty-one Indigenous young people in Australia through surveys and focus groups, which provide insight into the experiences of citizenship and democracy by young Indigenous Australians. This paper examines the attitudes of these young Indigenous Australians in relation to conventional political, economic and cultural domains of citizenship. Discussion highlights young Indigenous Australians' perceptions of their …
Living the dream? University students in mobile times
Geographic mobility shapes the present experience and imagined futures of many young university students. Strong associations between higher education and youth mobility relate both to young people’s relocation to gain qualifications and to ideas about being young. This paper draws on data from a recent study to reflect on how mobility features within the experience and imagined futures of 30 university students in Australia, the UK and France. L…
Wild and tame zones in times of disharmony: Muslim boys and belonging in a primary school in Melbourne, Australia
This paper features stories about disharmony and social cohesion collected via interviews and focus groups conducted with teachers, school leaders, students, parents and the principal in a multicultural primary school located in a suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne, Australia. This school is located in a low-SES, historically white and working class area that is now home to large communities of immigrants, many of whom are Muslims. These change…
Flexible ongoing’: The young university student as homo promptus
Drawing from a study of young university students in Australia, France and the U.K., homo promptus represents the authors’ effort to trace how young people are positioned within discourses of higher education and employment to provide a conceptual shape to emergent characteristics of their otherwise diverse lives. We suggest that homo promptus is: entrepreneurial and strategic; plans adaptively for the future while living life in the short-term; …
I’m learning how to do it’: Reflecting on the implementation of a new assessment tool in an Australian Early Childhood
The role of early childhood education and care (ECEC) is to support the learning and development of children in collaboration with families. The notion of inclusion in ECEC provides children with a sense of agency in becoming a learner able to participate fully and actively in their community. This paper illustrates how ECEC assessment approaches risk labelling young children in ‘deficit’ terms. The paper through a case study critically reflects …
An ecological case-study of the benefits and challenges of socially-just leadership engaging in ‘challenging conversations’ about social disharmony
As sites of human social activity, schools must engage in challenging conversations between staff, students and their communities about social disharmonies. This paper presents interview data from a case study of Eucalyptus High School (not its real name), a large multicultural school located in a middle-class area in suburban Victoria (Australia). The paper examines the school’s engagement in ‘challenging conversations’ about socially and politi…
Young People in Digital Society: Control Shift
Insights from a cross-sector review on how to conceptualise the quality of use of research evidence
Recent decades have seen widespread efforts to improve the generation and use of evidence across a number of sectors. Such efforts can be seen to raise important questions about how we understand not only the quality of evidence, but also the quality of its use. To date, though, there has been wide-ranging debate about the former, but very little dialogue about the latter. This paper focuses in on this question of how to conceptualise the quality…
Negotiating Vulnerabilities in Space and Time in the Twenty-First Century
Young university students are experiencing a changing relationship with the future as economic and geopolitical anxieties alter the temporal and spatial horizons with which they engage. Du Bois-Reymond and López Blasco suggested almost 20 years ago that 'youth is now [...] a life condition that is marked by unpredictability, vulnerability and reversibility' (2003, p. 20). This situation has only accelerated since then. This paper draws on the aut…
Theorising and preparing students for precarity: How can leaders and educators better prepare students to enter an increasingly insecure workforce
Workforce insecurity has significant implications for the role of school leaders and teachers preparing students for changing worlds of work. Drawing on a study of approximately 2500 secondary school students in the Australian state of Victoria, the figure of homo promptus is presented as a figure of youth to understand the real and imagined characteristics of students as workers-in-the-making. Homo promptus is entrepreneurial and strategic, yet …
In their own words: 41 Stories of Young People’s Digital Citizenship
Digital citizenship and cyber safety are often used interchangeably in the context of young people’s internet use, depicting the young person as passive, vulnerable and in need of adult intervention to navigate an unsafe online environment and perpetuating reductive and deterministic initiatives that rarely respond to young people’s own online perspectives and experiences. This discussion maps recent definitions and debates about digital citizens…
Quality use of research evidence: Practitioner perspectives
Background: This article comes in response to two gaps within the research use literature: a lack of work on quality of use as distinct from quality of evidence, and a lack of research use models based on practitioner, as opposed to researcher, perspectives. Aims and objectives: The study probes into the views of education practitioners about ‘using research well’, and explores: (1) the extent to which those views align with or differ from a conc…
A visual analysis intergenerational play histories and practices: Five generations of an Australian family
Exploring play and leisure histories and practices in a visual analysis of family photos opens ways to scrutinize intergenerational relationships. In this paper, we explore ideas about interactions between the old and young, and within and across generations through a visual analysis of play and leisure activities. By looking back through five generations of family photos of one Australian family, we examine play and leisure practices of older ge…
Young Children’s Play and the Role of Grandparents as Play Partners during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Play involves diverse meaning-making for young children and grandparents. This paper derives from a larger intergenerational family practices project conducted in Australia during 2021–2022 against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. The research team undertook intergenerational group interviews and filmed family play activities in addition to collecting videoclips and photos of young children’s play from six families. In this paper, vignettes…
Resisting neoliberalism: Teacher education academics navigating precarious times
While the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic upon higher education institutions has been well documented, less is known about how academics themselves responded to these rapid changes. This paper analyses the experiences of teacher education academics from Australia and New Zealand (n = 13) who were interviewed during lengthy pandemic lockdowns. Whilst rarely using the language of resistance, participants revealed multiple ways they navigated…
Sociology (28 works) · Political science (26 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics (16 works) · Public relations (15 works) · Gender Studies (13 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Children's Rights and Participation (9 works) · Pedagogy (9 works)