Authors:Anna Hogan; Greg Thompson; Sam Sellar; Bob Lingard Pages: 141 - 160 Abstract: This paper explores teachers’ and school leaders’ perceptions of commercialisation in Australian public schools, reporting on findings from an open-ended survey question from an exploratory study that sought to investigate teacher and school leader perceptions and experiences of commercialisation. Commercialisation, for the purposes of this paper, is understood as the creation, marketing and sale of education goods and services to schools by for-profit providers and often includes (but is not limited to) the provision of curriculum content, assessment services, data infrastructures, digital learning, remedial instruction, professional development and school administration support. Our account highlights that commercialisation is prevalent in the day-to-day practice of Australian public schools. The perceptions of teachers and leaders suggest that commercialisation is complex, with both affordances and challenges. Respondents acknowledged that aspects of commercialisation are necessary for successfully running schools and classrooms in the 21st century, but also noted that there is a fine line beyond which these seemingly innocuous services become perilous. Concerns focused on how particular services are leading to the deprofessionalisation of teachers as they have less autonomy over what to teach and how to teach it. Moreover, teachers and school leaders reported being perturbed by the idea that commercial providers and services might work to replace teachers in the future. Drawing on these data we argue that growing commercialisation in Australian public schools clearly requires an ethical debate that schools, education professionals, policy makers and interested publics are yet to have. PubDate: 2018-04-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0246-7 Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 2 (2018)
Authors:Gosia Klatt; Teresa Angelico; John Polesel Pages: 217 - 236 Abstract: School partnerships support the effective provision of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in the senior years of secondary schooling, to a varying degree, in most OECD nations. However, the nature and quality of these partnerships vary considerably from school to school and, indeed, from nation to nation (see Murray and Polesel, Eur J Educ 48(2):233–246, 2013). Given the role of these partnerships in VET provision in the senior years of schooling, it might be argued that there has been limited discussion about the role and nature of these relationships and the challenges associated with their establishment and long-term sustainability, especially in the Australian context (Allison et al. Building learning communities: partnerships, social capital and VET performance. NCVER, Adelaide, 2006). This paper explores the emergence of partnerships in a variety of educational and training contexts in Australia and describes the types of partnerships that have been established to respond to the specific needs of students. It also identifies the benefits and challenges associated with the delivery of VET programs through partnerships and the ways in which these partnerships can be developed and sustained to improve VET provision. PubDate: 2018-04-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0244-9 Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 2 (2018)
Authors:Ernesto Panadero; Heidi Andrade; Susan Brookhart Pages: 13 - 31 Abstract: We have known for a long time that a relationship exists between how learning is assessed and the learning processes and strategies students employ when engaged in those assessments. Black and Wiliam pointed out in 1998 that self-regulated learning should be a primary goal of formative assessment (FA). Since then, a growing body of research on this relationship has been produced. The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss keystone publications that inform our current understandings of the relationship between FA and self-regulated learning. The result is a roadmap of the development of the field and directions for future research. PubDate: 2018-03-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0258-y Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Heather Braund; Christopher DeLuca Pages: 65 - 85 Abstract: This study explored how elementary teachers leveraged and structured student-involved formative assessment to promote metacognition and self-regulation. Research has suggested a connection between formative assessment practices (e.g., self-assessment and peer-assessment) and metacognition. However, this connection has limited empirical support, especially within early elementary contexts (i.e. Grades K-4). In this study, 44 Ontario elementary teachers completed a survey reporting their teaching and assessment practices and beliefs about metacognition. Five participants were then purposefully selected for semi-structured interviews to describe their experiences developing students’ metacognition and self-regulatory capabilities through student-involved assessment processes. Data were inductively and thematically analysed. Participants emphasized the value of assessment as learning practices (e.g., self-assessment and reflective thinking) to develop students’ metacognition and discussed the need for ongoing student feedback regarding metacognitive strategies. However, despite purposefully implementing formative assessment to enhance metacognition and self-regulation, participants articulated the need for additional resources to support the cultural shift towards assessment for and as learning within their classrooms. PubDate: 2018-03-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0265-z Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Carol Rodgers Pages: 87 - 102 Abstract: In this article, the author argues the imperative of critical dialogue between learners and teachers on learners’ experiences in the classroom. This dialogical process is called “descriptive feedback”—feedback given by students to teachers on their (students’) experiences as learners. Drawing on the literature on feedback, descriptive feedback, and student voice, the author contends that descriptive feedback dialogues are not only rich sources of understanding of learning, teaching, and school, but offer a creative counter to a relentless, often dehumanizing, atmosphere of test prep and “coverage.” The results of this study point to the creation of space where students become teachers, teachers become learners, learners become learners of teaching, and both collaborate on creating curriculum. Within this space students develop a heightened sense of their own agency, and acquire new language with which to talk about learning. Teachers develop a curiosity about students’ point of view and come to trust in their capacity to contribute to both curricular content and pedagogical process. PubDate: 2018-03-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0263-1 Issue No:Vol. 45, No. 1 (2018)
Authors:Emily Gray; Linda Knight; Mindy Blaise Abstract: This paper examines a project that developed humorous, irreverent and subversive arts-based interventions into sexism in the academy. Two workshops were run with women currently working in teacher education in Australian universities. The researchers worked with the participants collaboratively and in line with feminist practices and methodologies to develop interventions that were performed at a large multidisciplinary educational research conference. The paper outlines the origins of the project, the feminist scholarship that inspired it, the methodological framework as well as a discussion about three of the interventions and demonstrates that sexism both (re)produces structural disadvantage for women in higher education as well as being characterised by a set of micro practices that shape the everyday experiences of women in the academy. Although this research is set within an Australian context, the paper acknowledges that sexism is systemic within higher education across contexts. PubDate: 2018-05-23 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0274-y
Authors:Mary Ann Powell; Anne Graham; Robyn Fitzgerald; Nigel Thomas; Nadine Elizabeth White Abstract: Until recently, children and young people’s perspectives have been largely overlooked in considering optimal approaches to supporting their wellbeing at school. This article reports student views on the meaning of ‘wellbeing’ and how this is best facilitated, gathered as part of a large, national research project aimed at understanding and improving approaches to wellbeing in schools. The data reported here were gathered through 67 focus groups, involving 606 primary and secondary school students, across three Catholic school regions in different Australian states. Students provided rich accounts of how they view their wellbeing, conceptualised across three interconnected themes of ‘being’, ‘having’ and ‘doing’. They identified relationships with self, teachers, friends, peers and significant others, as central to their wellbeing. The findings point to immense potential in accessing and utilising children and young people’s views for change and reform in schools in the area of student wellbeing. PubDate: 2018-05-12 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0273-z
Authors:Carlinda Leite; Preciosa Fernandes; Carla Figueiredo Abstract: Curriculum contextualisation and the role of teachers as curriculum makers are important for student learning. Building on this idea, this study was developed to understand if teachers from well-ranked schools are motivated to contextualise the curriculum and are using this strategy in their daily classroom routines. Data were gathered through focus group interviews with teachers from three Portuguese secondary schools that were well placed in the national exam ranking. The data analysis showed that teachers are motivated to contextualise the national curriculum in their daily teaching and learning practices to promote their students’ academic success and full development. However, teachers also identified constraints related to the existence of a mandatory national curriculum to be fulfilled, which is necessary for the national exams, and the length of the subject programmes. Despite the constraints, teachers recognised the positive outcomes of curricular contextualisation, mostly regarding the promotion of students’ motivation to learn. PubDate: 2018-04-24 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0271-1
Authors:Tess Boyle; Anne Petriwskyj; Susan Grieshaber Abstract: This paper makes a case for conceptualising transitions from the before school sector to the compulsory years of schooling as continuity practices. It begins by presenting an overview and critique of constructions of transitions to school that contribute to contemporary discourses and agendas (e.g. the conflation of transitions and readiness). Then recent international trends in understanding transitions as continuity are analysed and synthesised into three broad categories: structural, developmental and contextual continuities. These categories are subsequently used to develop a conceptual model for reframing transitions. The model is then used to first, examine a snapshot of familiar Australian transitions practices; second, highlight the interdependence of the practices and the sites in which they are enacted; and third, support the argument to reframe transitions as continuity practices. Finally, contributions the paper makes to transitions to school theory, research and practice are explicated. PubDate: 2018-04-20 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0272-0
Authors:Paul Ginns; Andrew J. Martin; Tracy L. Durksen; Emma C. Burns; Alun Pope Abstract: Personal Best (PB) goals are defined as specific, challenging, and competitively self-referenced goals involving a level of performance or effort that meets or exceeds an individual’s previous best. Much of the available research underpinning arguments for PB goal-setting is self-report-based; thus, the causal effect of PB goals on learning outcomes remains in question. The present experiment examined the impact of PB goal-setting (against a no-goal condition) on 68 Year 5 and 6 schoolchildren’s problem-solving during an arithmetic fluency-building activity, SuperSpeed Math. Equivalence of the two conditions was established across a range of prior ability and self-report motivational variables, including prior mathematical ability; Personal Best, Mastery, and Performance goal orientations at the individual and classroom level; mathematics self-concept; and valuing of and interest in mathematics. Controlling for initial problem-solving performance, students who set PB goals in subsequent rounds showed a small but reliable advantage over students in the control condition. These results suggest PB goals may provide a way for students to experience both challenge and success in a range of classroom activities. Suggestions for future research based on these initial findings are made. PubDate: 2018-04-09 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0268-9
Authors:Michael Rowan; Eleanor Ramsay Abstract: In this article, we map the extent of educational inequality within Tasmania, and between Tasmania and the rest of Australia, using National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and senior secondary attainment data. This analysis yields some surprising findings, showing the success of Tasmanian primary and high schools and that Tasmanian educational inequality is most strongly expressed at the senior secondary level. We conclude that using such publicly available data to identify differential achievement within and between jurisdictions would strengthen public policy and practitioner interventions aimed at achieving more equal educational outcomes for students in all schools. Our findings also have implications for research directions in this field, suggesting that by analysis of NAPLAN and My School data across individual schools and jurisdictions academic researchers could assist practitioners gain a deeper understanding of inequalities reproduced by the systems they are working within, while finding examples of schools and systems which show a greater level of success in ameliorating disadvantage. PubDate: 2018-04-07 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0267-x
Authors:S. L. Rogers; L. Barblett; K. Robinson Abstract: Stories appear frequently in the Australian media regarding parent and teacher perceptions and attitudes towards the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy. However, thorough empirical investigations of parent perceptions are sparse. This study presents a survey of 345 parents across Years 3 and 5 from a sample of Independent schools in Western Australia. A representative sample of teachers from these schools were also surveyed in order to compare and contrast parent and teacher perspectives about the transparency and accountability associated with testing, the usefulness of results for helping individual students, and the perceived clarity of communication of results. Findings reveal mixed positive and negative views that reside within an overall prevailing low opinion of the testing. Some ways for improving the perception of the testing with the general public are discussed. PubDate: 2018-04-03 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0270-2
Authors:Julia E. Morris Abstract: This study draws on student engagement factors to examine the relationship between students’ non-school-based arts experiences on their intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy to participate in visual arts responding tasks. Visual arts responding in the curriculum includes learning about artists and artworks, decoding art and making critical judgements, and is important in building twenty-first century learning skills such as critical thinking and communication. A total of 266 Year 10 to 12 students from 18 schools in Western Australia (WA) participated in the quantitative research, which explored outside-school arts engagement as well as cognitive and psychological engagement factors in their current year of secondary schooling. The findings showed that while being an art consumer appears to impact on intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy, producing art as a hobby outside of school does not appear to do so. The research raised questions about links between practice and theory, and how to promote students’ engagement in responding. PubDate: 2018-03-28 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0269-8
Authors:Margaret Heritage Abstract: Assessment for learning (AfL) is integral to teaching and learning, and has as its central foci (i) pedagogical intervention in the immediacy of student learning, and (ii) the students’ agency in the learning and assessment process. The role that students adopt in AfL is consistent with the idea of self-regulated learning, which involves students as metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally active agents in their own learning. Through an analysis of an extended sequence of classroom interaction for the purpose of obtaining evidence of learning, this paper demonstrates that self-regulation is supported through a temporary process of co-regulation between teacher and student in the context of AfL. Co-regulation is a construct derived from Vygotsky’s concept of socially mediated learning, and the neo-Vygotskian perspective on human learning as a culturally based communicative process, through which knowledge is shared and constructed. Specific features of co-regulation illustrated through the analyses presented in the paper are (i) goal orientation, a focus on the learning to be achieved; (ii) scaffolding, the assistance the teacher provides to achieve a goal that is currently beyond students’ unassisted efforts; (iii) intersubjectivity, a shared understanding based on a common focus of attention; (iv) the active construction of knowledge by students, rather than transference of knowledge from the teacher to the student; and (v) temporary support, provided through scaffolding and other external supports that students can ultimately appropriate as their own. PubDate: 2018-02-07 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-018-0261-3
Authors:Jacinta Maxwell; Kevin Lowe; Peta Salter Abstract: This paper focuses on the ‘problem’ of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education represented in the Australian Curriculum’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures cross-curriculum priority. Looking beyond particular curriculum content, we uncover the policy discourses that construct (and reconstruct) the cross-curriculum priority. In the years after the Australian Curriculum’s creation, curriculum authors have moulded the priority from an initiative without a clear purpose into a purported solution to the ‘Indigenous problem’ of educational underachievement, student resistance and disengagement. As the cross-curriculum priority was created and subsequently reframed, the ‘problem’ of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education has thereby been manifested in policy, strategised as curriculum content and precipitated in the cross-curriculum priority. These policy problematisations perpetuate contemporary racialisation and actively construct Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, histories and knowledges as deficient. PubDate: 2018-01-09 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0254-7
Authors:Tracy L. Durksen; Robert M. Klassen Abstract: Education authorities in Australia are calling for valid tools to help assess prospective teachers’ non-academic attributes, with a particular need for identifying those attributes necessary for effective teaching in specific contexts. With the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education, we aimed to develop a scenario-based tool to help assess the non-academic attributes necessary for beginning teachers working in rural and remote settings. Using a situational judgement test (SJT) methodology, we worked with experienced teachers (n = 19) to develop scenario-based items, which were then reviewed by school principals (n = 13). The teachers also adapted items previously developed and piloted in the UK. Next, prospective NSW teachers (n = 99) tried 32 new and adapted items targeting four clusters of attributes: empathy and communication, resilience and adaptability, organisation and planning, and culture and context. Item quality analyses revealed 22 acceptable items. We conclude by suggesting SJTs for promoting non-academic growth of prospective and beginning teachers. PubDate: 2017-12-09 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0248-5
Authors:Helen Flavell; Lynne Roberts; Georgina Fyfe; Michelle Broughton Abstract: This qualitative study reports on findings from interviews with ten academics in an Australian university six to twelve months following academic workforce reshaping and the widespread introduction of teaching academic roles. The research aimed to determine how the workforce reshaping impacted on the capacity of academics with teaching responsibilities to engage in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Findings indicate that whilst academics were willing to undertake SoTL, participants’ capacity to engage was hampered by the workload model, middle academic leaders’ capacity to define and lead SoTL, and a perceived lack of SoTL value. A major concern for participants was that shifting goal posts (in relation to roles and expectations) would make it difficult to successfully apply for future academic work. The research indicates the need for the sector to consider the selection criteria for middle leadership roles, as well as ongoing academic leadership development to support adaptability and change agility. PubDate: 2017-12-05 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0247-6
Authors:Chris Hickey; Amanda Mooney Abstract: There is a rich, albeit chequered, history around single-sex schooling providing an educational option for nurturing the particular educational interests and needs of boys. While all-boys’ schools continue to position themselves at the forefront of contemporary masculine endeavour, they are simultaneously forced to fend off accusations that they are proverbial hot beds for the reproduction of gendered hegemony. Whereas some boys’ schools appear content with their ‘masculine’ profile, others appear more eager to present themselves as projecting tolerant and inclusive environments wherein respectful gender relations are actively encouraged. Situated within a wider case study, this paper examines how one all-boys’ school sought to foster gender inclusivity through a strategic initiative to increase the number of female teaching staff and the appointment of a female deputy principal. The data presented here focus on qualitative research interviews undertaken with key members of staff around 5 years after the initiative was introduced to the school. Our interpretation of the data draws largely on selected works of Michel Foucault to explore the discourse-power relations that sustain enduring hypermasculine and heteronormative values within the school. This lens provides a framework to interrogate how gendered constructions of professional identity are framed within such a context, and the spaces that exist for them to be challenged. PubDate: 2017-12-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0249-4
Authors:Helen Egeberg; Andrew McConney Abstract: Students’ views about teaching, learning, and school experiences are important considerations in education. The purpose of this study was to examine students’ perceptions of teachers who create and maintain safe and supportive learning environments. To achieve this, a survey was conducted with 360 students to capture students’ views on their classroom experiences. Follow-up focus group discussions were used to further elaborate and clarify students’ perceptions. Despite varying school contexts, students provided consistent reports that effective classroom managers meet students’ needs by developing caring relationships and controlling the classroom environment while developing student responsibility and engaging students in their learning. PubDate: 2017-12-01 DOI: 10.1007/s13384-017-0250-y
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