The Australian Educational Researcher最新文献

Despite the growing emphasis on professional learning/development, a significant gap exists in the design and implementation of current professional learning/development programs, often failing to integrate the voices of teachers regarding their learning needs and interests. Our study, conducted across primary and secondary schools in the Greater Adelaide region, reveals that these programs dictated by school improvement plans, often sideline teachers’ perspectives. This paper presents practising teachers’ perspectives on their learning needs. It also examines the perceived barriers to addressing these needs, incorporating insights from teachers and school leaders utilising a qualitative approach through in-depth interviews. While aligning with recent literature, our study’s findings uncover complexities in the educational system that influence meeting teachers’ learning needs, using a unique theoretical framework to interpret the data.

Education has always been in a state of flux because of technological disruption. As schools head towards a present in which digital technology is normalised as part of the fabric of everyday society, a post-digital paradigm, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the educational administration and leadership. It is crucial to find ways to coexist with AI while striving for a human-centric future. While numerous studies advocate for a collaborative synergy between AI and human leaders in educational governance, there is a gap in explicating the precise roles they undertake. This paper aims to address the void by providing a conceptual framework for the symbiotic roles of AI and educational leaders in the administrative decision-making process. This paper views administrative decision-making in schools as a political process involving negotiations among administrators, teachers, students, and parents. Within the framework, AI shoulders informational roles such as collecting and analysing data with its data analysis capability. Conversely, educational leaders are tasked with establishing the vision, disseminating information, managing conflicts, identifying new opportunities, negotiating and allocating decision-making authority to stakeholders. Moreover, educational leaders should encourage and supervise the implementation of AI in schools. The framework serves as a theoretical lens for prospective studies of AI impacts on education leadership and administration and bears practical implications for the preparation of future school leaders, contributing to the creation of a scenario where AI augments, rather than replaces educational leadership.

Australian literacy classrooms are shaped by an unprecedented time of national curriculum reform. Australian teachers follow a national English curriculum with the pressures of national standardised assessment, state interpretation (state-based syllabus and support documents) and localised system requirements influencing their pedagogical practices. It is timely to consider how teachers recontextualise these external pressures in their teaching of writing. This paper uses reflexivity theory to investigate the interplay between social, cultural and individual influences on the materiality of writing classrooms. Through our conceptual framing of reflexive materiality, we analyse video tours created by elementary teachers (Grades 3–6) to highlight classroom components pertinent to their writing pedagogy and practices. Our analysis focused on theoretically-based instruction practices, teacher professional knowledge, opportunities for students to write, and the impact of the external context on the materiality of the classroom environment. Findings demonstrate a reflexive relationship between teachers’ system-based contexts and the substance of classroom objects, spaces, and teachers’ ideas and philosophies regarding writing.

This study responds to an imperative for increased support and recognition of mentor teachers within Australian initial teacher education (ITE) programs in response to recent reviews highlighting mentor teachers’ critical role in preparing classroom-ready graduate teachers. By addressing the recurrent challenges faced by mentor teachers, such as hidden labour, this research aims to bridge the discrepancy between the crucial nature of the mentor role and the inadequate resourcing of this work. Through participatory action research (PAR), the paper reports how eight school-based coaches, as participants, instigated support mechanisms to address the recurrent challenges faced by 78 mentor teachers in one ITE–school partnership. Using qualitative methods, the research underscores the significance of dedicating time to enhance effective mentoring practices within ITE.

More than thirty years on from the United Nations Convention of the Child honouring a child’s right to be heard (Article 12) has unlocked a new frontier in ethical research. In education, children have demonstrated competence to contribute with insight to recent policy development in Australia. This paper provides further evidence of the critical role children stand to play in education reform. A post-structural perspective is adopted and underpinned with Foucauldian theory of discursive power in the context of school-based affordances. Visual and dialogic qualitative methods are used to compare the impact of powerful discourses upon children’s affordances in the first year of compulsory school. Three overarching theses drawn from children’s perspectives are summarised; disparity between adult and child expectations of school, adult influence upon children’s perceptions of school, and children’s power to sustain or disrupt a discourse through dis/engagement. The findings illustrate an urgent need for systematic consult with children on issues relevant to them and calls for a public platform for amplifying their unique views to policy makers for response.

Vertical schools are a new type of school in Australia, with little research available to guide designers and school leaders how to address the physical and social challenges that density and interiority add to the students’ schooling experience. As students capably communicate their experiences and perspectives about school spaces for wellbeing, pioneering students in three new vertical schools demonstrated the power of student voice in the Thriving in Vertical Schools project, a 3-year mixed-methods Australian Research Council Linkage project. Young people showed adults how their school spaces enable them to be, feel, and do activities where they feel capable, and how the vertical school environment contributes to wellbeing. Students communicated their voice through multiple layers: the student voice processes (methods), stories with sensory atmospheres (experience), and participating in impactful discussions with adults (action/influence). Adult designers and education leaders were interviewed several weeks after listening to students, identifying how student perspectives had influenced their work. This paper demonstrates how the combination of participatory voice-inclusive methods enabled students to communicate immersive experiences that brought light to interactions for school wellbeing at a level of granularity that adults had not had access to before to influence future designs. This paper argues for the value of attending to student voice and sensitivity in providing choice and options when doing so, so that students are supported to express themselves and their rich experiences in ways of their choosing and ways comfortable to them.

Simulation technologies are emerging as a possible solution to prepare Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students for the classroom and reduce undue pressure on supervising teachers. This paper presents a scoping review that reports on what is currently known regarding simulated technologies and their application to ITE programs. The review scoped the literature published between January 2013 and March 2023, with 16 studies identified for inclusion. Using descriptive statistics and a narrative synthesis method, this review maps the response to different types of simulation technologies and the impact of simulation on ITE students’ teaching skills and pedagogies. Unanimously, the studies agree that simulation is beneficial to ITE students as an authentic preparation tool to strengthen teaching skills and pedagogies. Conversely, ITE student responses to simulation are mixed. The research identifies the need for continued research and development in this emerging field. Longitudinal impacts of simulation in ITE programs are yet to be reported. This review recommends that future research builds upon the initial evidence, including larger participant numbers, clarifying the ideal duration of simulation for ITE students, and taking up a universal definition of simulation.

Supervision plays an integral role in the success of higher degree by research (HDR) students. A vital component of a successful research degree is quality supervision. In this paper, we explore supervisors’ understanding of Indigenous HDR students’ expectations and compare them with Indigenous HDR students’ expectations of their supervisors. This study is part of a larger study which included six phases of data collection, however, this paper focuses mainly on phase five of the study and at times refers to phase four. In phase five, we surveyed 33 supervisors across Australia who have experience supervising Indigenous HDR students. We also refer to phase four which included 32 Indigenous HDR students. To analyse the data, we conducted a thematic analysis using NVivo software. We found that supervisors need to be more supportive of Indigenous HDR students’ work and provide opportunities for students to succeed through the completion of their research degree. Our findings demonstrate that supervisors may understand Indigenous HDR students’ expectations of quality supervision; however, there are other expectations that were not accounted for, such as discussion of working styles and clear expectations from the beginning of a supervisor-student relationship, supervisors’ practices of cultural safety and awareness, and access to research training for Indigenous HDR students. The implications from this research include strengthening supervision strategies and fostering mutually-respectful supervisor-student relationships.

In education discourse, student retention and Grade 12 or equivalent attainment are considered strong predictors for young people’s future workforce participation, economic prosperity and wellbeing. However, not all students are well supported in mainstream education, with an increasing number of youths becoming disenfranchised with the schooling system. Flexible and inclusive learning programs are developing as an alternative option for young people to access secondary education in Australia. To better understand young people’s experiences of engaging with these emerging alternatives to mainstream schooling, a review of current empirical literature was undertaken. Focusing on students’ perspectives on learning in flexible and inclusive education environments, 28 qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria for this review. These studies captured the voices of young people as they navigated and experienced learning in these non-conventional education programs. The findings documented in the sample studies emphasised the value of providing holistic learning experiences, which integrate relational and interest-based pedagogies with personalised socio-emotional support. Cultivating communities of learners, characterised by positive relationships and a sense of belonging amongst students was also highlighted as being valuable for student engagement and learning. This synthesis contributes to the literature about learning and teaching in flexible and inclusive schooling and highlights new possibilities for student engagement across all education environments.

The importance of incorporating digital technologies into early childhood education is now widely accepted to help position children as creative producers and not just consumers of technology. Early childhood educators in turn have a key role to play in developing technology-related skills and competencies such as coding and computational thinking (CT). In response, internationally a range of tangible coding technologies (TCTs), or digital toys, have been created to foster the development of young children’s coding and CT skills. However, to what extent are children’s developing skills and knowledge encouraged by the design of the TCT itself, and the educators’ pedagogy? This article reports on a study into the impact of one TCT, Cubetto, on the CT of a group of young children in an Early Years Learning Centre in Australia, and how educators encouraged coding and CT using Cubetto. The study revealed that Cubetto not only promoted children’s understanding of the nature of digital technologies but encouraged CT skills such as sequencing, cause-and-effect, and foundational numeracy in a collaborative, constructivist way. This was mediated in turn by the educators’ ability to utilise Cubetto effectively in an inquiry-based STEM learning context. Accordingly, this study notes that the incorporation of TCTs can be beneficial but need careful consideration as to their educational purpose and should be supported by developmentally appropriate pedagogical practices to maximise their potential in developing coding skills and CT in young children.