Policymaking is increasingly being recognised as a valueladen process in which social problems are not simply identified and measured, but discursively produced. The current study examined how the problem of Indigenous disadvantage is produced within the original Closing the Gap policy framework, to identify underlying assumptions and problem representations. Bacchi's "What's the Problem Represented to be?" approach was used as the analytic framework, with critical discursive analysis used for a fine-grained discourse analysis. Findings indicate that the problem of Indigenous disadvantage is produced in culturally limited terms, demonstrates lifestyle drift and relies on deficit-based narratives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, which collectively work to produce disadvantage as a product of individual behaviours, and problematises Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as inherently dysfunctional. Potential lived effects of these discourses are discussed, and future areas of research are identified.

Live simulations in which students perform the roles of future professionals or act as confederates (i.e. student actors) are important training activities in different types of vocational education. While previous research has focused on the learning of students who enact a professional, secondary roles in scenario training, such as student observers and confederates, have received inadequate attention. The present study focuses on student observers and confederates in order to examine how these roles can support the learning of other participants in live simulations and to determine how the experience of performing these roles can become a learning experience for the performers. A total of 15 individual interviews and 1 group interview of students attending Swedish police training were conducted. The study findings indicated that the observer role is characterised by distance and detachment, and the confederate role by directness and sensory involvement. Both roles can support as well as inhibit intentional learning for primary participants and offer learning experiences for those playing the roles. The study theorises these roles and lists practical implications for planning live simulations in vocational education and training.

Vocational education should prepare students for the professional demands of the work. In police education, one way to accomplish this is to simulate specific situations so that students may develop professional knowledge. This article aims to increase the understanding of how simulations support learning of knowledge and skills by investigating how participants make sense of the critical incident they are involved in. To accomplish this, in this study, we have focused on the actions and utterances of the participants. We also used video analysis to analyse the actions of a student police patrol in a simulated critical incident. The participants' passive actions did not fully mimic a critical incident suggesting that they defined the situation as a passive educational situation. The results demonstrated that simulation-based exercises' possibilities for supporting vocational learning depend on such factors as authenticity, role-playing and 'simulation competency'.

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