Rachel Wilson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3701488 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rachel Wilson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rachel |
| FAMILY NAME | Wilson |
| SIGNATURE | WILSON R |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2550-1253 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 53 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 75 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1955 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Tackling teacher workload: A nation-wide analysis of strategies for addressing teacher workload
Speaking metaphorically: System and school images of secondary deputy principals
The significant and influential leadership role of deputy principals is under researched and poorly documented. Whilst the role of school principals has been comprehensively explored and theorized, including metaphorically, literature exploring the roles of deputies is now dated. This qualitative, mixed model study utilized a qualitative survey for seven systems’ and policy leaders and interviews with 16 senior leaders in five school case studies…
Leading with Purpose? New Language and Lenses for Considering Educational Purpose and Analysis of Purpose Statements in Australia, Singapore, Finland and Japan
The purpose of education, viewed as a wicked problem, requires critical examination, particularly in the context of policy that may shape leadership in schools and systems. Given that purpose is a complex and multidimensional construct, it requires multiple frameworks for a comprehensive exploration. We build on Gert Biesta’s three domains of education, qualification, socialisation and subjectification, by developing a novel typology of different…
Between aspiration and reality: Immigrant families, capital constraints, and the path to higher education in Australia
Workload demands, unpaid hours, and concerns about time with children: A survey of Australian early childhood educators
Given the importance of quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) and growing demand for ECEC, the widely reported, but less frequently researched workforce issues across international ECEC services are a substantial social, political, and economic problem. In an effort to build our understanding of educators’ experiences of work in ECEC, this online questionnaire study (N = 570) gathered basic foundational data on Australian educators’ w…
Unraveling the depth-dependent causal dynamics of methanogenesis and methanotrophy in a high-latitude fen peatland
The dynamics of methane (CH 4 ) cycling in high-latitude peatlands through different pathways of methanogenesis and methanotrophy are still poorly understood due to the spatiotemporal complexity of microbial activities and biogeochemical processes. Additionally, long-term in situ measurements within soil columns are limited and associated with large uncertainties in microbial substrates (e.g. dissolved organic carbon, acetate, hydrogen). To bette…
Post-traumatic growth following the death of a parent from homicide: A reflective perspective from adulthood
Although there is considerable research into the impact of homicide on surviving family members, research is limited on subjective experiences of those who lost a parent due to homicide during childhood. Through interpretative phenomenological analysis, we conducted and analyzed in-depth semi-structured interviews, to explore lived experiences and perspectives of post-traumatic growth with adults who lost a parent due to homicide as a child. We d…
Hybrid professionalism: Multilingual cosmopolitan identities of immigrant English teachers
Peer-led online depression support groups: Potentially healthy and unhealthy associated behaviors
Introduction: Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many individuals have turned to peer-led online depression support groups (DSGs) to cope with depressive symptoms. However, relatively little research has articulated how use of DSGs may relate to specific behaviors associated with depression. This study assessed healthy behaviors (healthy support-seeking, healthy normalization, problem-solving) and unhealthy behaviors (unhealthy support-seeking, adverse…
Centering social justice in undergraduate social work education: A scoping review of pedagogical methods of teaching
Social justice is a foundational social work value. Scholars express ongoing pedagogical challenges with how to teach students to embody social justice values. New to the social work profession, undergraduate students are in a pivotal stage to be trained as social-justice oriented future social workers. The aim of this review is to map empirical studies on teaching methods that translate social justice value into teachable curricula. Following Ar…
Issues in staffing and outsourcing in schools. Who’s teaching health and physical education
The staffing and outsourcing of the marginalised curriculum area Health and Physical Education (HPE) has been an area of growing concern, alongside rising concerns for the decline of students’ health due to increased sedentary behaviour and mental health problems, yet there has been little research attention to the staffing and delivery of HPE in Australian schools. This article addresses that gap in understanding with analysis of data from a lar…
Soil incubation methods lead to large differences in inferred methane production temperature sensitivity
Quantifying the temperature sensitivity of methane (CH 4 ) production is crucial for predicting how wetland ecosystems will respond to climate warming. Typically, the temperature sensitivity (often quantified as a Q 10 value) is derived from laboratory incubation studies and then used in biogeochemical models. However, studies report wide variation in incubation-inferred Q 10 values, with a large portion of this variation remaining unexplained. H…
Reducing teachers’ workload or deskilling ‘core’ work? Analysis of a policy response to teacher workload demands
Teacher workload is a growing problem internationally. In this article, we analyse an attempt by the state education bureaucracy of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, to address this through the ‘Quality Time Program’. Drawing on labour process theory and Carol Bacchi’s framework of ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’, we analyse how the Quality Time policy documents conceptualise and aim to address a particular kind of teacher ‘workload probl…
What needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education
The series of responses in this article were gathered as part of an online mini conference held in September 2021 that sought to explore different ideas and articulations of school autonomy reform across the world (Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, the USA, Norway, Sweden and New Zealand). It centred upon an important question: what needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of educa…
Exploring Organizational Learning, Risk, and Psychological Safety: Perspectives of Child Welfare Senior Leaders in Canada
Child welfare workers and organizations are the direct link between legislation and families, thus, key to service effectiveness. However, little is known about the role of organizational learning, risk tolerance, and psychological safety, especially in Canadian child welfare. The aim of this study is to identify senior leaders’ perceptions of these constructs in the context of child welfare service delivery and family outcomes. This qualitative …
Spaces of Refuge: The Clinical Practice of Félix Guattari and Institutional Psychotherapy
Guattari’s prescient final text, Chaosmosis, argues that the conditions of Capital responsible for the current social-psychic-ecological crisis of migration demand modes of analysis capable of grasping their complexity, ones grounded in the ethico-aesthetic. It is a text that draws directly from the therapeutic practice that he, Tosquelles, Oury, and others in the Institutional Psychotherapy (IP) movement developed in their clinics. This work ent…
Triage in teaching: The nature and impact of workload in schools
The work of teachers is often understood primarily in relation to student learning rather than as a form of labour for the worker in question. While such a focus is understandable, it can fail to recognize the relationship between conditions of work and the character or nature of that work. In this article, we engage with the issue of teachers’ work and workload, presenting interview data from 31 teachers across the state of NSW, Australia. Locat…
Collaborating for policy impact: Academic-practitioner collaboration in industrial relations research
Knowledge co-production between academics and practitioners is increasingly a focus for university workplace contexts. While there is emerging interest in how social science academics can engage with industry to generate impact, little attention has been paid to how one form of practitioner organisation, trade unions, engages with academics to influence policy and member outcomes. In this article, we examine a case of research collaboration with …
Labour Commodification in the Employment Heartland: Union Responses to Teachers’ Temporary Work
This article analyses the commodification of professional labour and union responses to these processes within the employment heartland. It explores the category of fixed-contract or ‘temporary’ employment using Australian public school teaching as the empirical lens. Established to address intensifying conditions of labour market insecurity, the union-led creation of the temporary category was intended to partly decommodify labour by providing i…
Assessing early primary students’ growth in a science unit using multiple modes of representation: Investigating the promise of explicit drawing instruction
In order to investigate the impact of science drawing instruction in a first-grade unit on carnivorous plants (CPs), we analysed student-produced drawings after explicit instruction in drawing scientifically (n=38), as well as compared their drawings with students in a previous implementation (year 1) who did not experience explicit drawing instruction (n=31). The year 2 students experienced a science unit using multiple modes of representation (…
Sport and academic performance in Australian Indigenous children
Objective Sport may promote academic performance through physiological and psychosocial mechanisms. We aimed to examine the association between sports participation and academic performance in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Methods Participants were from four successive waves of Australia’s Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children ( n = 303, baseline age 5–6 y). Cumulative sports participation was regressed against academic perf…
Teachers, fixed-term contracts and school leadership: Toeing the line and jumping through hoops
Fixed-term contracts are a relatively recent, yet growing category of employment for teachers in the public school system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. In this article, we draw on quantitative and qualitative data from a large state-wide survey (N = 18,234) of members of the public-school teacher union, the NSW Teachers’ Federation, in order to explore the workload reports of teachers in temporary employment. We find that overall, these te…
Work in early childhood education: Protocol of a systematic review
Questioning the prevailing narrative about elementary science teachers: An analysis of the experiences of science teacher enthusiasts
The purpose of this study is to challenge the prevailing negative narrative related to elementary science teaching by investigating the experiences of elementary teachers who identify as science teacher enthusiasts (STEs). Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, and Cain (1998)'s conception of identity as an ongoing production or construction in a socio‐cultural context served as a theoretical framing for exploring structural and personal supports and const…
Lifestyle clusters and academic achievement in Australian Indigenous children: Empirical findings and discussion of ecological levers for closing the gap
Participation in sport and physical activity can improve academic outcomes and has been identified as a potential mechanism for addressing educational disadvantage and 'closing the gap' in Australian Indigenous communities. To explore this possibility in relation to sport and lifestyle we performed a cluster analysis on data from the Footprints in Time study (also known as the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children), using data from Waves 3-6 …
Trust but verify: Ministerial policy advisors and public servants in the Government of Canada
Political advisors in Canada are comparatively numerous and highly differentiated in role. Based on a recent survey, this article examines how senior ministerial policy advisors, a subset of the political staff community, perceive their support for ministers and their relationships with public servants. It finds that they increase ministers' policy capacity, encourage greater responsiveness from public servants, and generally feel that they enjoy…
Research Note: A Profile of Ministerial Policy Staff in the Government of Canada
Although ministerial political advisors are prominent and influential actors within the core executive in Canada and elsewhere, information is scarce with respect to their personal and professional backgrounds and career trajectory. This article uses recent survey data and publicly available biographical information to analyse the demographic composition of senior ministerial policy advisors within the Government of Canada. It finds that, while m…
The International Baccalaureate in Australia: Trends and issues
The presence of International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes in Australia has grown significantly over the past decade. Despite this, little critical research exists on the IB in Australia. This article provides an analysis of the IB currently in Australia, outlining the trends in growth across the various IB programmes over the last decade and compares this to international trends, including those of the Asia-Pacific region in which Australia is …
Academic Momentum at University/College: Exploring the Roles of Prior Learning, Life Experience, and Ongoing Performance in Academic Achievement across Time
In the context of “academic momentum,” a longitudinal study of university students (N = 904) showed high school achievement and ongoing university achievement predicted subsequent achievement through university. However, the impact of high school achievement diminished, while additive effects of ongoing university achievement continued. Deferred entry to university also predicted achievement through university
Teachers, fixed-term contracts and school leadership: Toeing the line and jumping through hoops
Fixed-term contracts are a relatively recent, yet growing category of employment for teachers in the public school system in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. In this article, we draw on quantitative and qualitative data from a large state-wide survey (N = 18,234) of members of the public-school teacher union, the NSW Teachers’ Federation, in order to explore the workload reports of teachers in temporary employment. We find that overall, these te…
The work of Canadian political staffers in parliamentary caucus research offices
Since 1970, recognized political parties in the Canadian House of Commons have received funding for caucus research offices. Staffed by political partisans, research offices provide policy, communications, research and administrative support to party leaders and their parliamentary caucuses. This research note examines the evolving organization, work and function of these offices. It demonstrates, first, that the tendency towards centralization, …
Another slice of Pisa: An interrogation of educational cross-national attraction in Australia, Finland, Japan and South Korea
Cross-national attraction is the first stage in international policy borrowing and analysis of its indicators provides insight into shifts in educational policies. We analyse cross-national attraction within the media discourse on the OECD’s PISA in four countries: Australia, Finland, Japan and South Korea. Using the largest circulation English language newspapers in each of these countries (2001–2015), we analyse references to the other three co…
Minister's Caucus Advisory Committees under the Harper government
In 2010 Prime Minister Stephen Harper quietly created a system of Minister's Caucus Advisory Committees (MCACs), requiring ministers to consult with their backbench colleagues before taking policy proposals to cabinet. Based on interviews with Conservative MPs, ministers, political staffers and public servants, the paper argues that MCACs increase MPs' influence over government policy and enhance cohesion within the government's parliamentary cau…
Reducing teachers’ workload or deskilling ‘core’ work? Analysis of a policy response to teacher workload demands
Teacher workload is a growing problem internationally. In this article, we analyse an attempt by the state education bureaucracy of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, to address this through the ‘Quality Time Program’. Drawing on labour process theory and Carol Bacchi’s framework of ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’, we analyse how the Quality Time policy documents conceptualise and aim to address a particular kind of teacher ‘workload probl…
Physical activity among indigenous Australian children and youth in remote and non-remote areas
Classroom displays—Attraction or distraction? Evidence of impact on attention and learning from children with and without autism
Paying attention is a critical first step toward learning. For children in primary school classrooms there can be many things to attend to other than the focus of a lesson, such as visual displays on classroom walls. The aim of this study was to use eye-tracking techniques to explore the impact of visual displays on attention and learning for children. Critically, we explored these issues for children developing typically and for children with au…
Indigenous Participation in Australian Sport: The Perils of the 'Panacea' Proposition
The argument that participation in sport among disadvantaged populations can produce positive outcomes in wide range of areas has been a consistent theme in academic literature. It is argued that sport participation can promote women's empowerment, sexuality, lifestyle, peacemaking, youth development, poverty reduction and conflict resolution. Similarly, in Australia, participation in sport among Indigenous Australians has been proffered as a 'pa…
Labour Commodification in the Employment Heartland: Union Responses to Teachers’ Temporary Work
This article analyses the commodification of professional labour and union responses to these processes within the employment heartland. It explores the category of fixed-contract or ‘temporary’ employment using Australian public school teaching as the empirical lens. Established to address intensifying conditions of labour market insecurity, the union-led creation of the temporary category was intended to partly decommodify labour by providing i…
Elite Women in Ascendancy Ireland, 1690-1745: Imitation and Innovation
The late seventeenth and early eighteenth century was a period of great social and political change within Ireland, as the Protestant Ascendancy gained control of the country, aided by the English government and aristocracy, with whom the ruling class in Ireland mixed through marriage and travel. The resulting Anglo-Irish elite, with its distinct transnational identity, differed markedly from the preceding Irish elite, but, at the same time, beca…
Positioning within a cultural context: Using Ricoeur’s preunderstandings as a heuristic for narrative data analysis in exploring identity, structure, and agency
I argue that Ricoeur’s preunderstandings can be used as a heuristic to aid researchers who collect narratives as data (1) to identify cultural meanings that become resources for participants’ positioning work, (2) to ground the identified cultural meanings in participants’ experiences, and (3) to understand participants’ interpretations of constraint and agency within that context. I outline how the philosophical hermeneutics of Ricoeur is consis…
Hybrid professionalism: Multilingual cosmopolitan identities of immigrant English teachers
Ovid through Shakespeare: The Divided Self
United States: The Reassessment of Liberalism
The International Law Standard in Treaties of the United States
United States: The Reassessment of Liberalism
Narrative Reflexivity in Shakespeare
Shakespeare's plays contain many narratives; indeed, in several important respects, they are narrative. Recent scholarship has emphasized the general understanding in the Renaissance both of narrative techniques and of the overwhelming power that stories possess when they have been skillfully told.1 For a Renaissance writer, narrative would have been deeply woven into his cultural background, inscribed in the dominant rhetorical tradition, and ro…
Dionysus Reborn: Play and the Aesthetic Dimension in Modern Philosophical and Scientific Discourse
Ovid through Shakespeare: The Divided Self
Infants can use distributional cues to form syntactic categories
Nearly all theories of language development emphasize the importance of distributional cues for segregating words and phrases into syntactic categories like noun, feminine or verb phrase. However, questions concerning whether such cues can be used to the exclusion of referential cues have been debated. Using the headturn preference procedure, American children aged 1;5 were briefly familiarized with a partial Russian gender paradigm, with a subse…
Radiocarbon evidence that carbon from the Deepwater Horizon spill entered the planktonic food web of the Gulf of Mexico
The Deepwater Horizon (Macondo) oil spill released large volumes of oil and gas of distinct carbon isotopic composition to the northern Gulf of Mexico, allowing Graham et al (2010 Environ. Res. Lett. 5 045301) to use stable carbon isotopes (δ ^13 C) to infer the introduction of spilled oil into the planktonic food web. Surface ocean organic production and measured oil are separated by 5–7‰ in stable carbon isotope (δ ^13 C) space, while in radioc…
The Social Construction of the Microfinance Industry: A Comparison of Donor and Recipient Perspectives
Microfinance has been one of the fastest growing 'industries' of the new millennium, with the sector now containing over 10,000 microfinance institutions (MFIs) worth an estimated USD with over $60 billion in assets (Microfinance Information Exchange 2011). This expansion has stimulated interest from both scholars and the mainstream media. There is a growing volume of academic research which broadly centres on two approaches: an 'institutionalist…
Seeing eye-to-eye on ICT: Science student and teacher perceptions of laptop use across 14 Australian schools
As schools start investigating and investing in the idea of 1:1 iPads and tablets, are there any lessons that can be learnt from recent 1:1 laptop deployments? In Australia, since 2008, 1:1 laptops have been introduced into every secondary school. This study reports on a survey designed to investigate frequency and type of laptop use, and the alignment of teacher and student perceptions of that use. Data was obtained from 14 secondary schools fro…
Academic Momentum at University/College: Exploring the Roles of Prior Learning, Life Experience, and Ongoing Performance in Academic Achievement across Time
In the context of “academic momentum,” a longitudinal study of university students (N = 904) showed high school achievement and ongoing university achievement predicted subsequent achievement through university. However, the impact of high school achievement diminished, while additive effects of ongoing university achievement continued. Deferred entry to university also predicted achievement through university
Positioning within a cultural context: Using Ricoeur’s preunderstandings as a heuristic for narrative data analysis in exploring identity, structure, and agency
I argue that Ricoeur’s preunderstandings can be used as a heuristic to aid researchers who collect narratives as data (1) to identify cultural meanings that become resources for participants’ positioning work, (2) to ground the identified cultural meanings in participants’ experiences, and (3) to understand participants’ interpretations of constraint and agency within that context. I outline how the philosophical hermeneutics of Ricoeur is consis…
Minister's Caucus Advisory Committees under the Harper government
In 2010 Prime Minister Stephen Harper quietly created a system of Minister's Caucus Advisory Committees (MCACs), requiring ministers to consult with their backbench colleagues before taking policy proposals to cabinet. Based on interviews with Conservative MPs, ministers, political staffers and public servants, the paper argues that MCACs increase MPs' influence over government policy and enhance cohesion within the government's parliamentary cau…
Elite Women in Ascendancy Ireland, 1690-1745: Imitation and Innovation
The late seventeenth and early eighteenth century was a period of great social and political change within Ireland, as the Protestant Ascendancy gained control of the country, aided by the English government and aristocracy, with whom the ruling class in Ireland mixed through marriage and travel. The resulting Anglo-Irish elite, with its distinct transnational identity, differed markedly from the preceding Irish elite, but, at the same time, beca…
Research Note: A Profile of Ministerial Policy Staff in the Government of Canada
Although ministerial political advisors are prominent and influential actors within the core executive in Canada and elsewhere, information is scarce with respect to their personal and professional backgrounds and career trajectory. This article uses recent survey data and publicly available biographical information to analyse the demographic composition of senior ministerial policy advisors within the Government of Canada. It finds that, while m…
Indigenous Participation in Australian Sport: The Perils of the 'Panacea' Proposition
The argument that participation in sport among disadvantaged populations can produce positive outcomes in wide range of areas has been a consistent theme in academic literature. It is argued that sport participation can promote women's empowerment, sexuality, lifestyle, peacemaking, youth development, poverty reduction and conflict resolution. Similarly, in Australia, participation in sport among Indigenous Australians has been proffered as a 'pa…
Equine Assisted Therapy and Learning
This study examines the practices of Equine Assisted Therapy and Learning in Australia. Among Equine Assisted Therapy ( eat ) and Equine Assisted Learning ( eal ) centers there is a large degree of variation in practice worldwide. The current study outlines a range of practices in two states in Australia where eat and eal have arisen and evolved from models developed elsewhere. The philosophical foundations, training and certification processes f…
Trust but verify: Ministerial policy advisors and public servants in the Government of Canada
Political advisors in Canada are comparatively numerous and highly differentiated in role. Based on a recent survey, this article examines how senior ministerial policy advisors, a subset of the political staff community, perceive their support for ministers and their relationships with public servants. It finds that they increase ministers' policy capacity, encourage greater responsiveness from public servants, and generally feel that they enjoy…
Manuscript recipe books as archaeological objects: Text and food in the early modern world
Manuscript recipe books as archaeological objects: text and food in the early modern world." Irish Studies Review, 25(3), pp. 400–401
Classroom displays—Attraction or distraction? Evidence of impact on attention and learning from children with and without autism
Paying attention is a critical first step toward learning. For children in primary school classrooms there can be many things to attend to other than the focus of a lesson, such as visual displays on classroom walls. The aim of this study was to use eye-tracking techniques to explore the impact of visual displays on attention and learning for children. Critically, we explored these issues for children developing typically and for children with au…
Aspects of Irish aristocratic life: Essays on the FitzGeralds and Carton House
Aspects of Irish aristocratic life: essays on the FitzGeralds and Carton House." Irish Studies Review, 26(2), pp. 267–268
The International Baccalaureate in Australia: Trends and issues
The presence of International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes in Australia has grown significantly over the past decade. Despite this, little critical research exists on the IB in Australia. This article provides an analysis of the IB currently in Australia, outlining the trends in growth across the various IB programmes over the last decade and compares this to international trends, including those of the Asia-Pacific region in which Australia is …
Another slice of Pisa: An interrogation of educational cross-national attraction in Australia, Finland, Japan and South Korea
Cross-national attraction is the first stage in international policy borrowing and analysis of its indicators provides insight into shifts in educational policies. We analyse cross-national attraction within the media discourse on the OECD’s PISA in four countries: Australia, Finland, Japan and South Korea. Using the largest circulation English language newspapers in each of these countries (2001–2015), we analyse references to the other three co…
Physical activity among indigenous Australian children and youth in remote and non-remote areas
Media neglect of Indigenous student performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) 2001–2015
This research explores media reporting of Indigenous students’ Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results in two national and 11 metropolitan Australian newspapers from 2001 to 2015. Of almost 300 articles on PISA, only 10 focused on reporting of Indigenous PISA results. While general or non-Indigenous PISA results featured in media reports, especially at the time of the publication of PISA results, there was overwhelming negle…
Gendered Differences in Australian Toddlers’ Clothing
Political science (26 works) · Psychology (22 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Pedagogy (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Public relations (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works)