Education Commons^™

Five Challenges In Australian School Education, Geoff N. Masters Ao

Policy Insights

There is no shortage of challenges in school education. Some of the biggest challenges we face can appear frustratingly intractable. Despite reform efforts, regular government reviews and ongoing calls for change, progress in addressing our most significant challenges is often slow and solutions continue to elude us. In this paper Professor Geoff Masters discusses five significant challenges facing school education.

1. Equipping students for the 21st Century, including by increasing reading, mathematical and scientific literacy levels;
2. Reducing disparities between Australia's schools, particularly along socioeconomic lines, by ensuring that every student has access to an excellent school and excellent teaching;
3. Reducing the …

Program Monitoring Practices For Teachers Of The Deaf And Hard Of Hearing In Early Intervention, Anne E. Thomas, Christine Marvin

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Program monitoring is an important and necessary assessment practice within the field of early childhood deaf education. Effective program monitoring requires a focus on both the consistent implementation of intervention strategies (fidelity) and the assessment of children’s ongoing progress in response to interventions (progress monitoring). Teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing (TODs) who provide early intervention services need to conduct regular program monitoring to evaluate the merit of their efforts. However, progress monitoring is a practice often overlooked by practitioners within the field of early intervention. It is recommended that TODs monitor children’s progress “regularly,” but evidence of …

The Kaleidoscope Program: Early Intervention Program For Students With Behavior Challenges, Tianqian Wang, Heidi Renee Cornell, Jeffrey A. Anderson

National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference

The Kaleidoscope program is an early intervention program for students at-risk for school failure because of behavioral challenges. This presentation will highlight findings from a mixed method study exploring how the program functions, the types of services and supports it provides, and broad program outcomes. Implications are important for school professionals designing programs to address the needs of at-risk students.

The Secret Ingredient For Improving Infant/Child Mental Health: Teaching Parents To Play, Geraldine Healy Marini

Occupational Therapy Doctorate Capstone Projects

Disorders in mental health are the highest of all disorders and results in the most common form of disability. Since 2011, mental health disorders have increased at alarming rates. It is estimated that 9.5 to 14.2% of children between the ages of 0 to 5 years have and emotional or behavioral problem. The mental health of parents or caregivers can affect and impact the development of young children (Nelson & Mann, 2011, Zero to Three, 2004).

The over arching goal of this research is to explore issues of mental health within parent-child interactions. Coaching parents during the co-occupation of play …

Teachers' Perceptions Of The Impact Of The Jolly Phonics Program On Students' Literacy, Lorane Evadney Moodie-Reid

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

At 2 primary schools in Western Jamaica, students at the Grade 1 level lacked basic literacy skills of comprehension, letter recognition, letter sounds, and oral communication. The purpose of this qualitative evaluation study was to investigate teachers' perceptions of the Jolly Phonics program implemented to improve students' literacy in Grades 1-3. Guided by Engestrom's activity theory, the effectiveness of the Jolly Phonics approach was examined based on the sociocultural learning theories of Vygotsky, Dewey, and Piaget. The research questions focused on teachers' perceptions of the program's impact on students' literacy improvement and of the strategies used in the Jolly Phonics …