The Australian Educational Researcher最新文献

University policy setting and implementation has the potential to significantly affect the quality and delivery of teaching and learning by effecting academic wellbeing and performance, particularly during times of significant change. Existing research predominately focuses on student wellbeing, largely overlooking academic wellbeing. This article presents a study which illustrates how university decision making can affect academic wellbeing. Fifteen academics were interviewed in June 2023 to explore how change shaped their teaching. Applying the lens of Self Determination Theory (SDT), the data were then analysed to identify how the university’s response to environmental change affected academic wellbeing and performance. The findings suggest that how institutions implement policy decisions, particularly in high stress environments, is critical to understanding how academics respond. This study provides a rationale for why, in times of significant change, clear upper management decision making, and effective resource management systems are essential to support academics in adopting wellbeing and coping behaviours. The authors conclude by recommending that the application of SDT may offer a structured approach for higher education policy makers and management decision makers to identify possible impacts of change on academic motivation, wellbeing and decision making.

The recruitment and retention of teachers in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia remains a persistent challenge. Greater awareness of and experience in regional, rural and remote schools is a common strategy adopted by initial teacher education providers to mediate this challenge. This paper examines the quality of connection between preservice teachers and a regional community developed through a multi-university placement program. The program adopted a multi-faceted approach to building quality community connections—fostering preservice teacher connections to a cohort of preservice teachers, to regional schools, and to a regional area. Findings suggest this tripartite approach enhanced the quality of all connections, positioning the program as a useful model for developing a pipeline of preservice teachers to regional schools struggling to find teaching staff.

In Australia, there is a growing concern about the well-being of teachers with many expressing their intention to leave the profession or indeed have already left. Various reasons have been suggested for this trend, with burnout being identified as one of the factors. This study investigates burnout in Australian teachers as one of the constructs which make up compassion fatigue (CF), a reduced ability to empathise with others. Moreover, it explores secondary traumatic stress (STS), which also contributes to CF and occurs when a person learns about the traumatic experiences of someone under their care. Both constructs may severely impact the ability of teachers to form close relationships with their students. As part of the present study, 1939 Australian teachers were surveyed about their quality of life, well-being, classroom efficacy, and trauma awareness. Findings demonstrate that teachers with higher levels of well-being and with higher perceived classroom efficacy are less prone to burnout, reducing the risk of emotional exhaustion and disengagement often associated with this phenomenon. Conversely, connections were found between lower well-being of teachers and educators' awareness of trauma and their susceptibility to STS. Recommendations are made for further research exploring the barriers and enablers of compassion fatigue as well as positive teacher well-being, in order to develop targeted initiatives to better prepare and protect teachers to work with a cohort of students who are increasingly demonstrating symptoms of trauma and poor well-being.

Professional learning communities (PLCs) actioned through collaborative action research (CAR) have been found in the literature to be beneficial for both teachers and students. However, previous studies mainly examined teachers’ perceived effectiveness of CAR-based PLCs, as well as identified steps and elements involved in such PLCs, either self-initiated by teachers themselves or by university researchers in a school-university partnership model. Few have focused on a whole-of-school teaching improvement initiative based entirely on PLCs through CAR. In this study, we provide preliminary evaluation of a 3-year whole-of-school teaching improvement initiative (the SETaRI), based on PLCs through CAR at a regional primary school in NSW, Australia. Analysis of students’ various assessment measures (N = 206), teachers’ survey (N = 44), observation of professional learning team meetings, and various types of student artefacts revealed that students showed general and consistent improvement in both their reading and maths performance over time following the implementation of the SETaRI model, with greater progressive learning effects for those whose initial learning outcomes were lower than their peers. The findings also highlighted data-driven decision making, teacher collaboration, and school leadership as potent elements underlying teachers’ positive attitudes toward the implementation of the model as well as student learning outcomes and improvement. This study provides useful implications for a school improvement agenda focused on action research communities.

In 2023 the Australian government mandated reforms to initial teacher education (ITE) courses across Australia. The key rationale of the Strong Beginnings Report is to better prepare teachers for the classroom and help stem the flow of teachers leaving the profession. This article suggests that the Strong Beginnings Report mobilises forms of evidence that privilege bureaucratic intervention over teachers’ insight and capacity. Using Bacchi’s ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach to policy analysis, I argue that the Report selectively draws on evidence to position teachers as underprepared for the classroom and in need of reform. It does this by (i) suggesting that one of the main reasons teachers leave the profession is because they have inadequate skills, (ii) downplaying the broader social, economic and political context in which teacher attrition occurs, and (iii) deprofessionalising teaching by casting it as a technical process. Building on works that critique the impacts of standardisation, regulation and oversight in educational reform, I contend that the proposed reforms will do little to improve ITE or address teacher attrition. More than this, they will work to further discredit teachers and undermine the value of public education.

This article considers differences and similarities in curriculum form between the senior secondary certificates offered across Australia, drawing on three different understandings of curriculum form, one focused on the grid or map of the curriculum and its core categories and levels of specification, one on the cultural assumptions underpinning significant policy reforms, and one on the internal relations between curriculum contents and the divisions evident in the curriculum assigned to particular groups of students. It highlights differences between these perspectives and the value of engaging them collectively to understand the various senior secondary systems operating across Australia, how they have changed over time and their equity implications. It shows that the certificates continue to be different in multiple ways despite decades of standardising reform but that shifts have occurred within states once defined as progressive, with practices changing to align with larger states’ conservative agendas. The differences which do continue are also shown to be in some respects arbitrary, with common patterns evident in relation to the knowledges valued and the distinctions enforced between university and non-university pathways which are obfuscated by the highly complex rules and requirements evident in each jurisdiction. Further research and analysis considering the enactment of these requirements within schools is needed to better understand the equity implications of different requirements and approaches and to think about what kind of curriculum form might be needed to enable an equitable educational system in Australia.

While there is a body of literature monitoring Indigenous Australian post-secondary school experiences, research investigating aspirational development in this life stage and Indigenous youth success as defined by Indigenous youth is severely lacking. Too often academic, government and public discourses portray Indigenous youth experiences through deficit frames of representation, completion and performance. By sharing the insights, reflections and aspirations of 15 young Indigenous Australian participants this paper calls for Indigeneity to be centred in ideations and indicators of Indigenous youth success. Findings confront institutionalised and hierarchical ideals of Indigenous Australian success premised on dominant neoliberal ideation and the accumulation of White cultural and social capital. Through an Indigenist Research lens this paper presents aspirational development and achievement as a complex and raced space where Indigenous Australian secondary school leavers articulate ambition and agency in developing successful careers, rich in cultural wealth and with their identity intact.

Students with English as an additional language (EAL) comprise approximately a third of the government school population in Australia’s second most populous state of Victoria. While the broad impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on teachers and students has been the focus of recent studies, there is a lack of information on how EAL educators adapted to meet the needs of this diverse cohort of students during periods of emergency remote teaching (ERT). In this mixed-methods study, eleven EAL educators from diverse educational contexts in Victoria completed a Q-sort of 49 statements followed by in-depth interviews. The by-person factor analysis resulted in a three-factor solution that revealed the transition to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic brought both challenges and opportunities for EAL educators. Some students who struggled in traditional classrooms engaged more effectively in remote learning, while others experienced significant anxiety. Additionally, some educators experimented with digital tools and strategies, gaining valuable insights into effective approaches for students with EAL. These findings render a nuanced picture of educators’ experiences during this time, enhancing our understanding of transformative educational practices for linguistically diverse students.