Foreword Overview and scope Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Part I. The Challenges: 1. World population and pressures on land, water and food resources 2. Issues in inter-basin water transfer Part II. Inter-basin Water Transfer in Australia: 3. Land and water resources of Australia 4. The Snowy Mountains hydro-electric scheme 5. Inter-basin water transfer from coastal basins of New South Wales 6. The Bradfield and Reid Schemes in Queensland 7. Three schemes for flooding Lake Eyre 8. The Goldfields pipeline scheme of Western Australia 9. Supplying Perth, Western Australia with water: the Kimberley pipeline scheme 10. Other schemes in Australia Part III. Inter-basin Water Transfer in Other Selected Countries: 11. Inter-basin water transfer in the United States of America 12. Inter-basin water transfer in Canada 13. Inter-basin water transfer in China 14. India: the National River-Linking Project 15. Inter-basin water transfer, successes, failures and the future Part IV. Appendices: A. Some of the Australian pioneers of inter-basin water transfer B. Construction timetable of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme C. Details of diversion schemes from the Clarence River Basin D. Chronological table of the most important events in the Goldfields Pipeline Scheme, Western Australia E. Flooding of the Sahara depressions F. The Ord River Irrigation Scheme G. The West Kimberley Irrigation Scheme H. Some other water transfer schemes in Australia I. Selected technical features of the Central Valley Project in California J. Selected technical features of the State Water Project in California K. Selected characteristics of some of the completed or proposed inter-basin water transfer projects in Australia, United States, Canada, China and India, in chronological order Glossary Index.

Inter-Basin Water Transfer: Case Studies from Australia, United States, Canada, China and India

Water has played a key role in the development of the Australian inland and the nation. For European colonists, the dry and variable landscape challenged ideas about nature imported from northern temperate regions. I argue first, that colonists brought with them ideas for ordering nature and tools for transforming landscapes that led to inappropriate and destructive water manage- ment and the silencing of local voices and knowledge systems. Secondly, colonial patterns of ordering and transforming landscapes are ongoing, but new ways of governing water, which challenge colo- nialism, are emerging. In the first section of the paper I discuss colonial relationships with water; in particular the methods of irrigation, river diversion, and bore drilling. In the second section I consider contemporary manifestations of colonial relationships between humans and water, focusing on the bureaucratic separation of land and water, the problematic definition of a river, and the ongoing desire to drought-proof the inland. In the third section I examine emerging ways of governing Australian water, which emphasise knowledge and interconnection, and in so doing challenge ongoing colonial relationships. I describe these two ways of governing water as existing in tension; a tension between engineering-based and knowledge-based approaches to water governance.

/pdf/just-add-water-colonisation-water-governance-and-the-e7mmhj57ze.pdf

Just Add Water: Colonisation, Water Governance, and the Australian Inland

Abstract Failing to recognize the role of leaders in quality and equitable schooling is unfortunate and must be redressed. Leadership is fundamentally about organized agency and collective vision, not managerialism, since it is an organizational quality, not merely a positionality attribute. Most important, if change is to be systemic and transformative, it cannot occur uniquely at the individual teachers’ level. School organization is fundamental to circulating and consolidating new innovative actions, cognitive schemes, and behaviors in coherent collective practices. This article engages with the relevance of governance patterns, school organization, and wider cultural and pedagogical factors that shape various leadership configurations. It formulates several assumptions that clarify the importance of leadership in any organized change. The way teachers act and represent their reality is strongly influenced by the architecture of their organization, while their ability to act with agency is directly linked to the existence of flat or prominent hierarchies, both potentially problematic for deep and systemic change. A hierarchical imposition from above as well as a lack of leadership vision in fragmented school cultures cannot determine any transformation. 

/pdf/why-is-school-leadership-key-to-transforming-education-3eyx0jvd.pdf

Why is school leadership key to transforming education? Structural and cultural assumptions for quality education in diverse contexts

The launch of new tools in late 2022 heralded significant growth in attention to the impacts of generative AI (GenAI) in education. Claims of the potential impact on education are contested, but there are clear risks of inappropriate use particularly where GenAI aligns poorly with learning aims. In response, in mid-2023, the Australian Federal Government held an inquiry, calling for public submissions. This inquiry offers a lens onto the policy framing of GenAI in education and provides the object of investigation for this paper. We use the inquiry submissions, extracting structured claims from each. This extraction is provided as an open data set for further research, while this paper focuses on our analysis of the policy recommendations made.
Implications for practice or policy

For practitioners, policymakers, and researchers. the paper provides an overview and synthesis of submission recommendations and their themes, by source type.
For respondents to the inquiry (sources), the paper supports reflection regarding synergies and gaps in recommendations, pointing to opportunity for collaboration and policy development.
For stakeholders with responsibility for aspects of policy delivery and/or those applying a critical lens to the inquiry and recommendation framing(s), the paper offers actionable insight.


Generative AI in the Australian education system: An open data set of stakeholder recommendations and emerging analysis from a public inquiry

Sustainability will only be achieved if it is universally accepted and embraced by the community, rather than remaining the domain of the innovative few, or a plaything of the rich and able. Local planning instruments have a significant effect on the sustainability of the built environment, and the process by which they are made has a big effect on their content and its outcomes. In the Australian local government context, PlanFirst offered an opportunity for the process of making local plans to focus on community consultation and sustainability, using a collection of principles proven in local or international experience, and supported in the literature. While PlanFirst was never implemented as policy by government, a few councils created their local plans in response to it, providing some limited opportunity for study.
Pittwater Council, on Sydney’s northern beaches, prepared a new Draft Local Environment Plan using PlanFirst as a template, which is studied in this research to test the potential of the PlanFirst principles, and to measure their predicted outcomes in the built environment. The process of writing the LEP is analysed using actor-network theory, which assists an understanding of it for future similar processes.
Three ecological impact categories – greenhouse, water demand, and car dependency – are measured in residential developments approved under the old and new planning controls. Measurement tools are used to predict greenhouse emissions, mains supplied potable water demand, and motor vehicle traffic impacts on greenhouse and human amenity.
The research finds that PlanFirst’s principles offer potential for improved sustainability, which is supported indicatively in the case study. Effective community consultation is found to be a vital component of the process, with a targeted education component. An effective means of delivering the relevant planning controls to the designers is also important, and a web based interrogative system is found to be an effective vehicle for this. Policy stability, and bureaucratic stability at the highest levels is also found to be critical to enabling councils and communities to make and execute long term plans.

/pdf/planning-controls-and-sustainability-planfirst-s-potential-5cjot1335b.pdf

Planning controls and sustainability : PlanFirst's potential seen through a case study of Pittwater 21

ABSTRACT Background There are growing expectations internationally that schools and systems will use research evidence to inform their improvement efforts. Such developments raise important questions about what it means to use research evidence well in education. Purpose To date, there has been wide-ranging debate about what counts as quality evidence, but very little dialogue about what counts as quality use. In response, this article presents a conceptual framework to define and elaborate what quality use of research evidence might mean in relation to education. Method The framework is informed by a cross-sector systematic review and narrative synthesis of 112 relevant publications from four sectors: health, social care, education and policy. The review explored if, and how, quality of evidence use had been defined and described within each of these sectors in order to inform a quality use framework for education. Findings Based on the cross-sector review, quality use of research evidence is framed in terms of two core components: (1) appropriate research evidence and (2) thoughtful engagement and implementation, supported by three individual enabling components (skillsets, mindsets and relationships) and three organisational enabling components (leadership, culture and infrastructure), as well as system-level influences. Conclusions There is potential for this framework to inform current approaches to the use of research in education. There is also an important need to test and refine its components through further empirical investigation, theoretical inquiry and intervention development.

A framework for understanding the quality of evidence use in education

Talking water: an Australian guidebook for the 21st century

This chapter discusses the development of evidence-informed practice in Australian education. It highlights growing system-wide aspirations and support for Australian teachers, school leaders, and jurisdictions to be engaging productively with research and evidence. Our aim here is to step back from these developments and consider them in the context of: (1) the nature and distinctive characteristics of the Australian school system; (2) what is known (and not known) about Australian educators' use of research and evidence; and (3) recent insights into enablers and barriers to research use in Australian schools. We argue that the development of evidence-informed practice in Australia needs to take careful account of the complex history and fatalist nature of the wider school system. This will make it possible to identify and work with the productive places that exist within a system of this kind. It is also important to recognize that research use in schools is a topic that has been investigated surprisingly little in Australia relative to other countries internationally. Current policy aspirations around evidence-informed approaches therefore need to be matched by greater efforts to understand the dynamics of research engagement in Australian schools and school systems. 

Evidence-Informed Practice in Australian Education

ABSTRACT Background Rapid reviews involve a streamlined approach to knowledge synthesis. They are used to identify high-quality evidence for the purpose of informing decisions and initiatives, completed over relatively short timeframes, and have been found to reach conclusions that do not differ extensively from full systematic reviews. Although common in the health sector, rapid reviews are not as widespread in education. Purpose This paper reflects on the experiences of conducting a rapid review that applied review guidance from the health sector to a topic situated within education: effective Professional Learning (PL) for school-based educators. Our purpose is not to share the rapid review’s findings: rather, our interest lies in exploring the process of undertaking the review. We sought to investigate the methodological decisions we made for the education context as we carried out the review. Methods As part of a large-scale investigation focusing on practitioner use of research evidence in education, we undertook a rapid review to understand what is known about effective PL. Drawing on methodological literature from the health and education sectors, we documented the procedure involved in conducting our rapid review in education. At each step, we reflected on methodological issues encountered, decisions taken and the procedural adjustments we made to align the process to the education context. Findings Our reflections identify the key adaptations we made to ensure that review guidance was carefully attuned to the context of the education field and the wider purpose of the review: in our case, to inform an initiative in education. Considerations highlighted by our procedure also included the role of reviewer judgement in quality appraisal and attending to collaborative review team processes. These reflections support the notion that the use of research to inform decisions in education needs to be a dynamic, contextualised, and collaborative process. Conclusion Rapid reviews have a crucial part to play in efforts to strengthen evidence-informed practice in the education sector. Our methodological exploration offers insights for those conducting, using, and commissioning rapid reviews to provide systematic and transparent evidence-based guidance for initiatives in education.

Reflections on conducting rapid reviews of educational research

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.
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 conceptual framework of quality research use; and (2) whether and how practitioner views can provide deeper insights into quality use of research in practice.
The article draws on open-text survey (n=492) and interview (n=27) responses from Australian teachers and school leaders, which were analysed in relation to components of the Quality Use of Research Evidence (QURE) Framework.
There was considerable alignment between the practitioners’ views and the QURE Framework, but greater recognition for certain enablers such as ‘skillsets’ and ‘leadership’, as compared with others, such as ‘relationships’ and ‘infrastructure’. The practitioners’ accounts provided nuanced descriptions and elaborations of different aspects of using research well.
The findings suggest that: the QURE Framework has empirical validity as a way of conceptualising quality research use; practitioners’ views on using research well can inform future capacity building efforts; and research use as a field needs far more work that is focused on the quality of use and the perspectives of users.

Quality use of research evidence: practitioner perspectives

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

J Gleeson

Author Tools

Chat about Author