The relationship between primary teachers' subject knowledge and their approaches to teaching is an ongoing concern. This study reviews the relationship between prospective teachers' subject knowledge in the topic of area and their approaches to teaching that topic. The research presents case studies of four primary prospective teachers on a 1-year postgraduate teaching course. The strengths and limitations of their subject knowledge are examined, in relation to their selection of teaching activities. The results suggest connections between these strengths and limitations, in relation to espoused teaching activities and pedagogical orientations. This questions the assumption that secure subject knowledge is necessarily transformed into effective teaching and concurs with other research that suggests other factors may be involved, such as knowledge of learners.

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The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is now a global crisis, resulting in the intermittent closure of many schools, worldwide. The school closures are believed to have affected adolescents’ education, particularly for vulnerable adolescents including those from a refugee-background.  The study explores the home learning experiences of adolescent Bhutanese refugees in Tasmania, Australia and draws on social capital theory to interpret findings. Interviews with adolescent Bhutanese refugees revealed four overarching themes: disengagement from learning, the experience of isolation, the complexity of family relationships and motivation through relationships. This article makes an important practical and theoretical contribution to home learning through challenging Putnam’s binary distinction between bonding and bridging and suggesting alternative conceptualisations based on the role of bonding in the creation of bridging social capital.  These findings have potential implications for the development of mitigation measures to support refugee-background students under extraordinary circumstances.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, parents and caregivers were asked to take greater responsibility for their children's education while they were unable to attend school. In this commentary, we report on data sourced from 243 participants in the Tasmania Project in Australia about their experiences of learning from home during COVID-19 lockdown. We engage with ideas about boundaries and bounding processes to understand how participants perceived challenges to their children's learning from home. They identified a lack of physical space for children's work to be performed and a lack of time, skill, and confidence to support them. We explore the bounding processes inherent to understanding and constituting education through identity, space, and place making and consider the ways in which these processes were revealed in the challenges identified by respondents. We argue that home learning disrupted known practices associated with education and schooling and challenged accepted categories and socio-spatial divisions created by institutionalisation. We anticipate that exploring the challenges of home learning during COVID-19 from the perspectives of parents and caregivers will inform future homeschool partnerships.