Education Commons^™

Sexual Minority Youth Perspectives On The School Environment And Suicide Risk Interventions: A Qualitative Study, Philip A. Rutter, Nancy L. Leech

Nancy Leech

This qualitative study explored the experiences of five gay, lesbian, and bisexual adolescents' perspectives on their schools' acceptance of their sexual orientation, and perceptions of these schools' approach to suicide risk intervention. Focus groups were tape recorded, transcribed, and analyzed through constant comparative analysis. Themes that emerged from the data included participants feeling judged by school counselors and teachers, feeling unsafe at school, and concerned about school staff's response to suicide risk and interventions. Implications for school counselors, teachers and administrators are discussed.

Equipping Students For Life After School, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Identifying and developing the knowledge, skills and attributes required for life and work is an ongoing challenge in school education.

Sharing The Assessment Reform Story, Hilary Hollingsworth

Dr Hilary Hollingsworth

A new web-based resource is chronicling the experiences of schools as they undertake assessment reform.

Attracting Top Teaching Talent, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

In some of the world’s highest-performing countries, entry to teaching is now as competitive as courses such as engineering, science, law and medicine.

Towards A Unified Theory Of Assessment, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Attempts to categorise educational assessments as either ‘formative’ or ‘summative’ no longer serve us well and the time has come to develop a more unified theory of assessment.

Leaders Of School Improvement Share The Journey, Sharon Clerke

Sharon Clerke

ACER's evaluation of ‘turnaround’ schools has revealed that strong school leaders do not undertake leadership alone, but build leadership capacity around them. Sharon Clerke reports.

Same Year, Same School, Same Curriculum: Different Mathematics Results, Catherine Pearn

Catherine Pearn

Year 4 students from a large metropolitan school in Melbourne were tested using the One Minute Tests of Basic Number Facts and a paper and pencil Number Screening Test developed by the author and colleagues. Observation of classes during the assessment procedures highlighted the vast difference in the students’ speed and accuracy when recalling basic facts and the types of strategies they used when solving whole number arithmetic tasks. When the results were analysed there were differences noted in the class results and when the results were presented to the teachers their reactions to these results varied considerably. This paper …

Year-Level Expectations Can Impede Learning, Expert Warns, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Some of the ways in which school education is organised and delivered may be contributing to our highest and lowest achieving students making little annual progress in their learning.

Global Perspectives On Commemoration For Schools, Jenny Wilkinson

Jenny Wilkinson

Jenny Wilkinson discusses the nature of the commemoration of war, and similarities and differences of educational programs in memorial sites around the world.

Assessing Maths Literacy: Learning From The Pisa Experience, Ross Turner

Ross Turner

A new book that draws on ACER’s work on one of the world’s largest international surveys is providing educators with important insights about how assessment can be used to improve learning outcomes.

Starting Coaching And Mentoring Conversations, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle

Establishing the right conditions for coaching and mentoring programs helps ensure these conversations play an important role in a school's improvement agenda.

Addressing The Learning Needs Of All Students, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Year-level curriculum expectations in our schools sometimes impose artificial ceilings on student learning, and many of Australia’s most able students are not achieving their true potential as a result. Geoff Masters explains why.

Study Flags Civics And Citizenship Knowledge, Julian Fraillon

Julian Fraillon

The percentage of Australian school students with the skills and knowledge required to be active and informed citizens has remained stable between 2010 and 2013, but there is room for improvement, as Julian Fraillon explains.

Plan To Recruit Our Best And Brightest, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Australia faces a number of challenges over the next decade in planning the future teacher workforce, according to Geoff Masters.

The Future Of Learning Assessments, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

Processes for assessing student learning are undergoing fundamental transformation, according to Geoff Masters.

Review Recommends Tertiary Entrance Changes, Geoff Masters, Gabrielle Matters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

A review by Gabrielle Matters and Geoff Masters of senior assessment and tertiary selection processes in Queensland has recommended changes to meet future education needs.

Bullying In Australian Schools, Kylie Hillman

Kylie Hillman

Recent international surveys of students’ mathematics, science and reading achievement also reveal much about their engagement with schooling, their experience of bullying and their sense of safety at school, as Kylie Hillman explains.

Review Recommends Tertiary Entrance Changes, Geoff N. Masters, Gabrielle Matters

Dr Gabrielle Matters

A review by Gabrielle Matters and Geoff Masters of senior assessment and tertiary selection processes in Queensland has recommended changes to meet future education needs.

School Improvement On Australia’S Horizon, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

While Australia has seen a steady decline in 15-year-olds’ reading literacy achievement over the past decade, Geoff Masters identifies promising signs at the primary level that this trend may soon be reversed.

Measuring Learning Growth In A World Of Universal Education, Ross Turner

Ross Turner

ACER is leading the development of new ‘learning metrics’ – tools for measuring learning growth – as Ross Turner explains.

Stretching To Reach High Standards, Geoff Masters

Prof Geoff Masters AO

In order to raise achievement, teachers need to stretch their students with tasks that are neither too easy nor difficult, according to Geoff Masters.

Australian Students Prepare For Digital Future, Julian Fraillon

Julian Fraillon

The world’s first computer-based international study into computer and information literacy shows that Australian students are developing the skills necessary for successful participation in the digital world. Julian Fraillon reports.

Helping Kids With Disability, Katherine Dix

Dr Katherine Dix

A Comparison Of Temporal Speech And Text Cueing In Educational Multimedia, Christopher Newhouse, Jeremy Pagram, Alistair Campbell, Bruce Mann, H Schultz

Alistair Campbell PhD

This research focused on the prediction that children in their school setting would learn more from educational multimedia when critical information was presented as spoken instead of textual cues. Analyses of a study (n = 42) showed that 12-year-olds did not learn any more from temporal speech cueing than from temporal text cueing. The findings suggest that multimedia learning for children is a different kind of learning experience than for adults or older adolescents. The results indicate underdeveloped executive control of the referential connections in the children's working memory between reading screen text while listening to spoken cues, and between …

Cultural Diversity And The School-To-Work Transition: A Relational Perspective, William Feighery

William Feighery

Drawing on evidence from the European tourism sector and adopting a Bourdieusian approach, this chapter embraces a relational perspective on the school-to-work transition. Taking account of macro public policy, as well as meso organisational and micro individual social spheres, the reported study sought to develop insights on the perceived value of, and demand for, diversity in the European tourism sector. Based on data from three research instruments, it is suggested that in the European tourism sector, the school-to-work transition is in a process of transformation as a number of forces, including neoliberalism, globalisation and the “democratisation” of education, mitigate against …

Grey Literature In Australian Education, Gerry White

Dr Gerald K. White

Gerald White discusses the need to better organise the proliferation of non-commercially published reports and documents of particular importance in the area of public policy.

Aligning Practice And Philosophy: Opening Up Options For School Leaders, Kathryn Moyle

Professor Kathryn Moyle

The educational use of digital technologies such as mobile devices, computers, and the Internet are progressively replacing pens, books, and the physical spaces known as libraries. Both online synchronous and asynchronous learning modes are emerging as part of the learning styles used with children physically attending schools. Consequently schools and school districts deploy various sorts of software applications to meet the range of teaching, learning, and management functions they perform. As leaders of schools, principals have heightened responsibilities concerning the philosophical directions of schools, as well as aligning the uses of technologies across all facets of their organizations. Set against …

Education Research With Electronic Focus Groups, Kathryn Moyle, R Fitzgerald

Professor Kathryn Moyle

An emerging trend in education research methods is to integrate digital technologies into the research process. Electronic focus groups represent one such innovation. Drawing on four examples of research and practice undertaken using a synchronous, digital system, this chapter reflects on how an innovative tool can assist in focus group research in the fields of school and higher education. The examples presented illustrate how some of the theoretical, practical and ethical problems that have arisen with traditional approaches to focus groups research can be overcome. It is anticipated that reflecting on such experiences and building upon the findings of these …

Evaluation Of An Online Community: Australia's National Quality Schooling Framework, Elizabeth Hartnell-Young, Keryn Mcguinness, Peter Cuttance

Dr Elizabeth Hartnell-Young

This chapter considers the development and implementation of Australia’s National Quality Schooling Framework (NQSF), created particularly for teachers and others involved in improving school education. This large-scale, highly structured, and outcome- focused community space, funded by the Australian government, was developed as a means of building and testing knowledge. Using Wenger’s infrastructure for communities of practice, the chapter evaluates the NQSF in light of its capacity for engagement, imagination, and alignment. Although these three are often intertwined, we conclude that firstly, users value the space for engagement and that this needs to be supported by a national telecommunications infrastructure. Secondly, …