Making Sense of Mass Education

This is the fourth edition of Making Sense of Mass Education. It continues the process of covering more issues than each preceding versions of the book: it updates aspects of the data, it discusses more recent research, it offers more nuanced assessment of specific problems and it does all this within a parallel digital environment ߝ one that provides additional ideas, activities and ways of seeing and understanding. While all these elements are significant, they do not really constitute the most important reason for writing a further edition of the book.

Changes to the field of education have not slowed since the publication of the third edition, which introduced new important discussions of Gonski and school funding equity, the debates over NAPLAN and school ranking tables, arguments over the Australian curriculum, the rise in interest in alternative forms of education and global concerns over the ethics of big data use. Of course, this edition offers an updated contemporary assessment of all these topics; however it also provides an extensive discussion of the important and rapidly changing area of schooling and sexuality, as well as a discussion of the field of children’s rights and the increasing marketisation of schools and its relationship with the professional life of teachers.