Online learning has been widely adopted in higher education but there is a need to better understand the nature of student engagement with online courses. For example, there are questions about whether students engage with courses as educators intend and what features of online courses engage students to enhance learning. Bringing together student and educator perspectives, this article reports on a study that identified ‘pedagogical touchpoints’ – opportunities within online courses for student engagement – to ascertain whether a better understanding of these could improve online course design and student engagement. Data were collected across three undergraduate online courses. Data analysis produced three key findings: mapping pedagogical touchpoints against dimensions of engagement reveals patterns that may inform enhanced course design, students’ engagement with pedagogical touchpoints varies according to their learning needs and desires, and mapping pedagogical touchpoints can inform course design at both conceptual and practical levels. Discussion of the findings highlights that purposeful design of online courses, including strategic planning for pedagogical touchpoints, can maximise the potential for student engagement and consequent learning.

This paper presents a case study of one mother’s experience of engaging with her children’s schools after leaving a long-term relationship characterised by years of family violence perpetrated by the children’s father. We interviewed Bernadette as part of an ongoing study of parents’ experiences of school engagement during family separation and divorce. Her family circumstances and the role the children’s schools played in that story merit consideration by educators, school leaders and education policy makers. Informed by theories of everyday cultural practices and sociological studies of gendered power relations in education, we argue that gender politics and organisational strategies for keeping parents ‘in their place’ can significantly contribute to systemic failures and school cultures that reinscribe the effects of family violence.

Names are used every day in classrooms across the world as an important marker of personal and social identity but educators will, from time to time, encounter names that are unfamiliar or perceived as difficult to pronounce.The present study explores teachers' and students' language dispositions towards names and how naming practices impact learners and the social space of the classroom. It presents a collection of vignettes collected in an Australian primary school through critical ethnography. The vignettes illustrate the significance of naming for teacher and learner identities. Using analytical insights from Pierre Bourdieu and Jim Cummins, the discussion identifies naming as a pedagogical practice for empowering learners and it challenges the currently held notion of teachers as non-agential in naming practices. The study urges teachers to learn how to properly pronounce their students' real names and it offers recommendations for future research on naming practices and learner identities.

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Around the world, favourable social and political circumstances have encouraged the development of academically non-traditional ways of researching. This article explores the recent proliferation of research approaches from Pacific and Pasifika communities which, in some Australian and New Zealand contexts, are attracting increased interest from policymakers and researchers. We present a socio-historical account of how the Pacific research paradigm emerged and some key contemporary Pacific research approaches within this paradigm. We then critique aspects of the paradigm's development by discussing opportunities and challenges. Our main argument is for researcher reflexivity and dialogue, important for the development and sustainability of research inspired by Pacific ways of knowing and being. We believe this will lead to research in which Pacific communities will recognise themselves and their aspirations for the future.