Western Australian Institute for Educational Research 41st Annual Research Forum at Murdoch University on Saturday 15 August Forum 2026 Abstracts Listed alphabetically by first author [ Invitation ] [ Program ] [Panel discussion] This page is updated as new abstract submissions are processed

Working mothers and the ethics of educational institutions

Shoshanna Allnutt
Curtin University
Email: s.allnutt@curtin.edu.au

Teaching is a unique profession, with teachers expressing a high level of care for the holistic development of young people. However, despite the centrality of care to a teacher's work, this labour is often gendered, invisible, and structurally undervalued. This presentation will explore the experiences of five working mothers who are teachers in Western Australia, underscoring how their professional care work compounds the invisible labour performed at home.

The study explored how teachers who are working mothers navigate the intersecting demands of professional care, maternal responsibility and emotional labour, struggling against ideal worker norms created by institutional expectations. Data was collected through a demographic questionnaire then through semi-structured interviews. Data was analysed through first and second cycle coding. Through an exploration of the study's emerging themes, this presentation will explore how teachers' identities and perceptions towards the profession develop contextually as a result of life history, family background and personal school experiences, highlighting the shift in professional identity as motherhood significantly reconfigured their view towards work-life balance. Drawing on this, the presentation will provide recommendations for educational institutions to support working mothers' careers.

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"Nothing about us without us": Co-designing consent education for young people with disability

Kim Andreassen, Cindy Smith and Jacqueline Hendriks
Curtin University
Email: kim.andreassen@postgrad.curtin.edu.au

Young people with disability face disproportionate rates of sexual violence yet remain largely excluded from the design of consent education. This PhD research aims to reframe how consent is taught by co-designing accessible, inclusive teaching and learning materials for students with disability aged 12-16, guided by participatory action research and design justice principles.

This presentation explores findings from two scoping reviews. The first, centering youth voice, identified that young people with disability prefer pedagogical approaches that combine structural clarity with relational safety - explicit instruction alongside trust, autonomy, and affirmation. Building on this, a broader review of 110 consent education resources revealed significant gaps in resources which align with the pedagogical approaches youth with disability want, as well as in skill domains young people and sexuality education experts identify as essential, including enthusiastic consent, empathy, media literacy, and coping skills. Together, these findings illuminate both what is available and what is critically missing in consent education for disabled youth, with implications for educators and researchers across Australia. This research contributes new horizons for inclusive sexuality education, informing curriculum design, teacher training, and disability-affirming educational practice.

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How do lecturers really feel about teaching online in higher education?

Bobby Victoria Cooper, Cindy Ann Smith and Sonja Kuzich
Curtin University
Email: bobby.cooper@curtin.edu.au

Online learning in higher education continues to expand rapidly, creating exciting opportunities for new research and innovation. This presentation will share some early insights from a nationwide questionnaire completed by lecturers across Australia, offering a first look at emerging trends, challenges, and possibilities in online teaching/learning.

As a participant, you'll be invited to take part in interactive activities where you will have the opportunity to discuss some of the key findings and respond to prompt questions. This session introduces the questionnaire as a core component of a larger PhD project, and you will gain a preview of the broader research direction and hear more about the next stages of the study as it evolves.

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Daddy wouldn't let me drive the BMW: Privilege, capitals and the elite schooling experience

Jen Featch
Murdoch University
Email: jenfeatch@gmailcom

Elite schooling is positioned in Australian education as a pathway to opportunity - institutions in which model citizens are incubated, while also functioning as a site for the reproduction of social inequality. In this presentation, I use autoethnography to critically examine my experiences of attending an elite private girls' school in Perth, Western Australia during the 1980s. This presentation is drawn from a paper of the same name, that is the first journal article within my doctoral thesis by compilation. In it, I use personal vignettes as sociological data to interrogate how privilege, belonging and exclusion have operated within elite schooling. The analysis is informed by Bourdieu's ideas of capital, habitus and symbolic violence, alongside sociological critiques of meritocracy and the neoliberal, normalisation of school choice. While access to cultural and institutional capital ultimately enabled my academic success(es), there are also deeply felt ethical contradictions of elite schooling - marginalisation within privilege, shame alongside advantage, class disavowal, and the everyday practices through which inequality is normalised and legitimised.

Methodologically, I position autoethnography as both a sociological and ethical research practice. I examine the un-asked for privileges of attending such a school that have emerged through the decades and consider ways in which this ongoing analysis can contribute towards a more critical, nuanced and conscious understanding of power and oppression, particularly in the education space. In choosing autoethnography for this narrative, I seek to situate my elite schooling experiences and subsequent emotions within a broader, sociological framework. I argue that sociological research has an ethical responsibility to interrogate privilege as well as disadvantage, including my own complicity within formalised systems of inequality. By making visible the ordinary, embodied workings of elite schooling, this work contributes to sociological understandings of education as a powerful mechanism through which inequality is reproduced and contested.

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Perceptions of principals and faith leaders regarding the transmission of Presentation charism in Australian Presentation schools

Gemma Thomson
University of Notre Dame Australia
Email: Gemma.Thomson@cewa.edu.au

In the current demographic context of the Australian Catholic Church, where many religious congregations are ageing and diminishing, the transmission of charism has become both a significant and urgent responsibility and challenge for lay leadership. We are fast moving towards a world where the Presentation Sisters; a religious congregation, will be known 'more on paper than in person, remembered in history, rather than encountered in relationship.'

The study explored the perceptions of principals and faith leaders nationally regarding the transmission of Presentation charism in Australian Presentation schools. Using a qualitative instrumental case study, the research investigated how principals and faith leaders perceive the nature of Presentation charism, how it is evidenced in their leadership approaches in Presentation schools, and the perceptions of principals and faith leaders as to what is required to transmit Presentation charism in Australian Presentation schools. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, researcher field notes and a document search. The presentation will provide several recommendations pertinent to the profession and for further research regarding transmission of charism in Catholic education settings.

[Scheduling for this presentation]