Abstract: Secondary data analysis in educational research has been an established research method for many years. Yet, few publications outline the “how to” of undertaking the process. This paper presents an analysis framework suitable for undertaking secondary data analysis within the field of education. The framework is a modification and an application of a pre-existing data mining research process known as Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD). The KDD process is interactive and generative and involves a series of sequential steps and decision-making processes. The modified KDD process is described to show how it supports secondary data analysis and provides an example of how the modified KDD process was applied across a secondary analysis in mathematics education. This paper provides educational researchers with a practical and iterative framework through which to undertake secondary analysis that enhances flexibility and encourages depth and saturation. PubDate: 2019-05-18
Abstract: Aspiration for higher education has been a focus of significant policy intervention in Australia for some time, with numerous large-scale research studies investigating the formation of aspiration amongst high school students. However, case studies in particular schools which might provide insights into the complexities and contradictions of aspirations for individual young people are scarce. This paper explores aspirations for particular futures from the perspectives of young women in a single-sex NSW government school in an area of historically lower HE participation. Rather than conventional interview-based methods where researchers ask young people to articulate their plans for the future, the study adopted creative arts-based methods which enabled students to engage with each other and a range of materials to produce multimodal ‘aspiration artefacts’ of their imagined futures. The method assemblage privileged imagination and embodied feelings, beyond the rational information-driven pedagogies that are promoted in widening participation policies. Our close readings of artefacts created by three Year 9 girls demonstrate that aspiration is a process that is relational, embodied, affectively and discursively constituted; and further, that this is inflected by gender, class and other positionalities in elusive and unanticipated ways. Arts-based methods allow us to tentatively trace the work of thinking–feeling–imagining that is entailed in developing and articulating aspirations for particular futures. PubDate: 2019-05-16
Abstract: This paper brings Barad’s agential realism into relation with educational ethnographic work, and longstanding concerns with matters of inequality. We extend previous work that foregrounds time and space in particular places, and that resists approaches to inequality that generalise about ‘best practices’ for schools in communities facing challenging circumstances. An Axminster Jacquard carpet loom—located in a particular place, the City of Geelong—becomes a specific point of entry to a discussion of agential realism, ethnography and inequality. This carpet loom was once a key machine in a thriving Geelong carpet factory employing families intergenerationally; it is now a demonstration machine in the Geelong National Wool Museum, operated by skilled carpet weavers (now employed as demonstrators) formerly employed at the (now closed) factory. We read questions of deindustrialisation and schooling through the carpet loom as apparatus, working with the questions that it materialises about educational research, ethnography and inequalities. PubDate: 2019-05-16
Abstract: This study examines inequalities of school funding as exclusively generated by the parent community in urban public schools, and potentially illuminates a secondary impact of between-school segregation. For schools that are largely understood as free, the substantial injections of private financing into public schools indicate a concerning tension for fairness and equity. Using a census dataset of all public schools in one Australian capital city (n = 150), we compare reported parent ‘contributions, fees and charges’ and how they are patterned by measures of school disadvantage and advantage. We found a statistically significant relationship between private financing and measures of school-based advantage or disadvantage, over a four-year period. Advantaged schools generate up to six times greater income in comparison to disadvantaged schools over a four-year period, and we argue that the substantial gaps function as another form of ‘compounded disadvantage’ for residualised public schools and a tiered effect of segregation. PubDate: 2019-05-11
Abstract: This paper explores the strategies and resources for resilience activated by a cohort of career change preservice teachers enrolled in a graduate entry teacher education program in eastern Australia. Data were collected through focus groups as the preservice teachers prepared for professional experience placements. A social ecological lens is used as a framework to discuss the range of personal and contextual resources and strategies utilised to activate their individual resilience. The findings revealed that preservice teachers perceived teaching as a ‘take home’ job with the intense workload demands and stresses of teaching impacting on their personal as well as their professional lives that precipitated a range of resilient responses. Supervising teachers and professional experience contexts appeared to impact significantly on preservice teacher resilience and their successful adaptation to teaching. PubDate: 2019-05-09
Abstract: As mobile and connected digital practices reshape social, interpersonal and learning relationships, it is increasingly challenging for teachers and schools to keep pace with rapid change. This paper reports on a professional learning project which set out to support teachers to learn more about how students in their classes used technologies, which technologies they used, what they thought about how they and others used them, and what they used them for. Teachers’ research into students’ digital use acted as a necessary intervention and prior step to developing classroom- and school-level responses to young people’s use of digital technologies. The paper reports on teachers’ findings, their responses to what they learnt and the implications for schools. In parallel, it reports also on the processes of the research and its deliverables as a professional learning enterprise, and the operation and value of this approach as professional learning methodology. PubDate: 2019-05-04
Abstract: Research strongly suggests that learning outcomes improve with increased parental involvement in school settings, and policy in Australia aligns by encouraging schools to work in ‘partnership’ with parents and communities. The Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership endorses the requirement of graduate teachers to ‘engage with the parents/carers’ and encourages parents in classrooms. However, a research gap exists regarding exactly what it is that parents might contribute to the classroom and how these contributions improve learning outcomes for all children. This case study reports on a parent-instigated program in one school, affording deeper insight into the potential of parent contributions to support learning outcomes for all students. An ecological stance on learning (applying theory from both ecological and environmental psychology) frames the research, and findings reveal some insights into the legitimacy of parent contributions that can support teachers to engage parents in pedagogical ways, enabling functional parent–school partnerships at the local community level. PubDate: 2019-05-04
Abstract: Traditional rationalism has treated cognition and emotion separately. Pre-service teachers’ emotional experiences during teacher preparation programmes have not been sufficiently discussed in research. This study uses Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory perspective to analyse the nature of the emotion-cognition nexus of pre-service teachers during professional experience. Sociocultural theory regards emotions as originated from social interaction and playing a catalytic role for teachers’ development. Data were collected from questionnaire surveys and pre-service teachers’ narratives. The findings indicate that the prominent factors impacting on the participants’ emotional patterns are their students and supervising teachers. In addition, this study reveals the dialectical relationship between pre-service teachers’ emotion-cognition, which impact on the development of their professional personality as teachers. During this process, the creation of tools and support from others play key roles in their conceptual and emotional development. The findings imply that pre-service teachers’ emotional experience can be used as a resource for their professional growth and development. PubDate: 2019-04-17
Abstract: This study examines associations between Australia’s regulatory ratings of quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC)—the National Quality Standard (NQS)—and two research-based quality rating scales. The analytic sample consisted of 257 ECEC services across three Australian states. Results indicated (1) modest positive associations between NQS ratings and scale scores; (2) some specificity between NQS quality areas (educational programs and practice; relationships with children) and one research scale—the Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Wellbeing (SSTEW) scale; (3) variability in quality scales scores within each NQS designation; and (4) mitigation of these associations when the time-gap between ratings exceeded 24 months. Findings suggest NQS and research scales tap some common core of quality, yet capture different aspects of quality, suggesting both could be used to raise standards of quality in Australian preschools, where the research scales potentiate raising quality to even higher levels than NQS. PubDate: 2019-04-16
Abstract: In the original publication of the article, the author name “Cathie Burgess” was inadvertently missed in the author group. PubDate: 2019-04-11
Abstract: In the original publication of the article, the author group was incorrectly published without the co-authors. The correct author group is “Greg Vass, Kevin Lowe, Cathie Burgess, Neil Harrison, Nikki Moodie“. PubDate: 2019-04-11
Abstract: This research used the responses of 187 Tasmanian teachers to a questionnaire comprising 52-Likert-type items, two multiple-choice items, and two open-response items to investigate differences in teachers’ beliefs about aspects of schooling related to students’ secondary school completion. Exploratory factor analysis of responses to the Likert-type items identified 3 factors underpinning teachers’ responses. These were (1) Student and parent aspirations, (2) Teacher and school quality and support, and (3) Expectations for continuing education. Two-way ANOVAs showed that primary school teachers scored higher on average than secondary teachers for student and parent aspirations, and that there was an interaction between level of schooling and Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) for this factor. Descriptive statistics were used to compare responses to the multiple-choice items of teachers at different levels of ICSEA and schooling. Open-response items were categorised in two ways (1) as related to pastoral, academic, or engagement matters, and (2) as negative or positive in relation to each of students, parents, and teachers. The results highlighted less academic and more pastorally focussed cultures in Year 7–10 schools compared with Year 11–12 schools and relatively low expectations for university study across the levels of schooling. The findings implicate teachers’ beliefs about students and their families as crucial to influencing educational aspirations and attainment. PubDate: 2019-04-10
Abstract: This paper explores how cultural and migrant backgrounds affect boys’ and girls’ high-school academic performance. Scores from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment are analysed for Australian children from migrant and non-migrant families, conditional upon a measure of gender equity in secondary education in their country of ancestry. Australia is a particularly pertinent case study as it has the third highest migrant (foreign-born) proportion among OECD countries (27.4% of population). We find that children from migrant backgrounds affording lower schooling access to children of their own gender achieve lower scores on PISA reading, mathematics and science tests. This holds when the sample is restricted to children born in Australia, providing strong evidence that the effect is cultural, with further analysis showing this effect to be more pronounced for boys. PubDate: 2019-04-05
Abstract: In Australia, debates around school funding tend to focus on comparisons of funding between school systems and what this means for equity. In this paper, while we look at school-level funding between systems, our emphasis is on private funding in public schools with a particular emphasis on the relationship between private funding and ICSEA. Using data provided by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, we present a series of analyses that document the current funding arrangements of Australian schools. In particular, we focus on how private income and parental contributions are mediated by sector (Government, Catholic and Independent), system (States and Territories) and educational advantage. These analyses show that government schools are generating notable private funding per student with the majority coming from parental fees, charges and other contributions. We further demonstrate that these private contributions advantage may exacerbate inequalities within public systems across Australia. PubDate: 2019-04-02
Abstract: In this paper, the experiences and aspirations of seven students who are members of an excellence program at a large Australian university are foregrounded. The theoretical concepts of performativity and responsibilisation are drawn on to highlight (1) how these students responsibilise themselves and (2) how they are responsibilised by the program—in ways that reflect and reproduce an existence of calculation. This existence of calculation was directed towards particular academic and employment outputs. The strong predominance of a neoliberal framing of responsibilisation in the lifeworlds of these students is recognised. Also recognised are alternative forms of responsibility based on relations of care exemplified in the high levels of social consciousness and concern for the welfare of others expressed by the students. The paper examines how care relations within the excellence program are anchored in a technical rationality focused on meeting performative targets. These targets are at odds with the relations of care prioritised by students and stifle their social and political agency. Against this backdrop, the paper argues for the ongoing significance of re-aligning universities with the ideals of the public good where the values of inclusion and equity are prioritised. PubDate: 2019-04-02
Abstract: School systems and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have long acknowledged the levels of social, cultural and epistemic conflict that has historically existed between teachers and schools, and Aboriginal students, families and their local communities. This relationship is both symptomatic and causal of the broader and highly complex field of issues and policies found to underpin the fraught histories existing between many Aboriginal communities and schools. This systematic review of the research literature reports on findings and insights into the everyday environments of these interactions and the possibilities of Aboriginal communities being able to affect the establishment of genuine and productive interactions with schools. The review looks to focus on those factors seen to either enable or act as barriers to this process, and comment on their impact on Aboriginal communities, their students and schools’ capacity for purposeful engagement. PubDate: 2019-03-21
Abstract: The import of professional learning in support of quality teaching is well established. Moreover, demonstrating active engagement with ongoing professional learning is now a requirement of maintaining teacher accreditation. For example, within an education policy climate that monitors the achievements of Indigenous learners closely, the evaluation and efficacy of educators with constructively addressing the experiences of these students is under increasing scrutiny, and hence, the significance of professional learning is further heightened. But, what sort of professional learning is well suited and effective in contributing to this undertaking' This systematic review investigated the veracity of the evidence underpinning professional learning research projects that aimed to make a positive change in the approach and abilities of schools to effectively improve the learning experiences of Indigenous students in Australia over the last 10 years. The themes that emerged from the review emphasise the import of future professional learning practices finding ways to more genuinely ensure that Indigenous peoples contribute to leading these activities, explicitly address issues to do with culture, (anti) racism, power and relationships in schooling, and localise the politics of knowledge construction through the alignment of curriculum, pedagogy and context. PubDate: 2019-03-04
Abstract: One of the aims of a systematic literature review (SLR) is to test the weight of historical perception against the reality of research and practice. A second aim is to identify approaches to knowing in schools (defined as curriculum) that might help us to identify possibilities for improvement in Indigenous student engagement and achievement in Australian schools. Given that education is representational practice, this SLR explores various representations of the world and how these might be taught in schools in ways that support “successful learning” for Indigenous students. We focus on how the curriculum might allow for multiple stories to be told, and how it can support the multiplicity of social and cultural identities. The question for this segment of the SLR is, how does curriculum govern learning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in Australia' A comprehensive search of the research literature produced over the period 2006–2017 highlights how the Australian government’s focus on numbers contrasts radically with the ways in which many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and their parents conceptualise the goals of education. PubDate: 2019-03-04
Abstract: The ‘Aboriginal Voices’ project is a consortium of researchers invested in seeking long-term solutions to the many and varied issues that have been identified as factors contributing to the underachievement of Indigenous students in education across Australia. The Aboriginal Voices systematic review project established an agreed methodology and protocols in order to map ten reviews to an overarching question: ‘What are the issues affecting the underachievement of Indigenous students in Australia and how can research inform solutions to the complex and inter-related issues needing to be addressed'’ The Project focuses on bringing clarity to the overarching question by applying a rigorous process with an Indigenous methodology to undertake these unique reviews. This introductory paper outlines the development of a critical Indigenous methodology used in these discrete but inter-linked systematic investigations. Using a consistent systematic methodology facilitated the re-aggregation of separate review findings to achieve new whole-of-systems insights into the complex issues affecting the educational opportunities of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. PubDate: 2019-03-04
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