Changing identities and performance of post-compulsory educational providers

This Special Issue of The Australian Educational Researcher explores how and why new cross-sectoral arrangements in post-compulsory education are reframing the performance and identities of further and higher education in Australia and internationally. This context poses new challenges for educational policymakers and for the practices of the participants and the next generation of students and teachers and lecturers as well as for us as educational researchers. It also provides new opportunities for better positioning educational institutions in what are ad hoc and illformed competitive markets after more than a decade of unparalleled and poorly focussed change. The question the papers in this Issue pose is whether these arrangements involve institutional shifts so that existing paradigms of delivery, pedagogy and assessment are altered in favour of better outcomes for students, staff and their communities. No unequivocal answers are possible yet, but these are key questions for our time.