The Australian Educational Researcher最新文献

In Australia coeducation dominates government schooling, with single-sex institutions usually being the preserve of selective government schools and private, often elite, institutions. For marginalised young people who ‘drop out’ or are forced to leave the coeducational mainstream system, flexible and/or non-traditional schools provide alternative pathways. Such schools are primarily coeducational. This paper draws upon data from two flexible/non-traditional schools in Australia that attempted to address the issues of educational disengagement via the provision of single-sex schooling: Fernvale Education Centre and Lorem School. The data are insightful with regard to these two very different gender and education paradigms and to their associated discourses about masculinity and femininity. The paper will identify the ways in which these schools both reproduce and challenge dominant constructions of gender within the context of responding to disenfranchised/disengaged young people.

The role of the school climate in buffering disengagement remains relatively underresearched. The present study examined transitions between classes of early adolescents’ school engagement and relational school climate factors influencing classes of students’ (dis-)engagement, and how these were linked with academic achievement in mid-adolescence. A representative sample of 3,643 early adolescents (48.72% females) from the Growing Up in Australia cohort study was utilised. Latent transition analyses indicated three classes of school engagement, namely mostly disengaged, moderately engaged and highly engaged. Significant transitions were found between classes with fewer students becoming moderately engaged and mostly disengaged. Having a positive teacher–student relationship and higher feelings of school belonging predicted membership to the highly engaged classes. Highly engaged students were fewer by age 12 but had the best achievement only in numeracy, writing and spelling tests at age 14/15. The study underscores the importance of positive relational school climate for fostering school engagement and achievement.

The global 2020 COVID-19 pandemic impacted teaching and learning in all education institutions. The unprecedented and rapid shift from classroom based to fully online teaching raised unfamiliar dilemmas for educators, requiring immediate operational and pedagogical changes to meet previously unimagined demands. This study reports how an Australian school harnessed this experience and the teacher professional learning which ensued. Online focus groups were conducted with 50 teachers. The theoretical lens of Pedagogical equilibrium was used to explain the sense of unrest, curiosity, uncertainty and perplexity evident in teachers’ responses as they began to address unfamiliar challenges. Data analysis revealed such disequilibrium provided opportunity for teachers to work together to socially construct new professional knowledge in three key areas: teacher agency, community collaboration and teacher well-being. The findings demonstrate the importance of positioning such disruptions as opportunities for teacher professional growth and strategically encouraging teachers to reflect, articulate and share their learnings. When done effectively, these processes can embody a dynamic, collaborative community culture based on respect, reciprocity and trust. Such a culture shift not only supports the construction of both individual and collective professional knowledge but also enhances teacher well-being.

Abstract

Immersive virtual reality (VR) is anticipated to peak in development this decade bringing new opportunities for 3D multimodal designing across all levels of education. The need for students to gain capabilities with multimodal texts—texts that combine two or more modes, such as spoken, written, and visual—is emphasised at all levels of education from P-12 in the Australian Curriculum. Likewise, the use of technology-supported pedagogies is increasing worldwide, rendering multimodal texts ubiquitous across all knowledge domains. This original, qualitative classroom research investigated students’ 3D designing of multimodal texts using an immersive VR head-mounted display. Upper primary students (ages 10–12 years, n = 48) transferred their knowledge of ancient Rome through 2D drawing, writing, speaking, and 3D multimodal designing with VR. The application of multimodal analysis to video data, screen recordings, and think-aloud protocols, and the thematic coding of student and teacher interviews yielded four key findings: (i) VR gaming supported 3D multimodal designing through haptic and embodied experience, (ii) VR improved performance through creative redesigning, (iii) VR-supported knowledge application, consolidation, and transfer, and (iv) pedagogical strengths of VR were situated and transformed practice. This research is timely and significant given the increasing accessibility and affordability of VR and the need to connect research and pedagogical practice to support students’ advanced knowledge and capabilities with multimodal learning across the curriculum.

Abstract

This paper explores young people’s understandings of gender and investigates their gender-based experiences in high schools in Australia. The discussion is based on qualitative research including focus groups and interviews with 47 recent high school leavers from diverse linguistic, socioeconomic, religious, ethnic, gender and sexuality backgrounds, who attended a broad range of high school types in New South Wales (NSW). We found that young people are critically engaging in gender issues and are often challenging binary gender and associated inequitable practices in schools and beyond. They are taking a leading role in educating adults about gender—that is, they are ‘teaching up’, as young people conceptualised it, to their families and teachers about gender, gender-related issues and doing gender differently in contemporary times. Their views on gender are often in contrast to those institutional views that currently prevail in NSW schools, which often still reflect stereotypes that perpetuate gender inequalities.

Current teacher attrition in Australia and globally has created an untenable situation for many schools, teachers and the profession. This paper reports on research that examined the critical issue of teacher attrition from the perspective of former classroom teachers and school leaders. Although there is extensive national and global research related to teacher shortages and intentions to leave the teaching profession, minimal research has sought insights from those who have left the profession in Australia, including ascertaining what they are doing now. Using an online survey, data were collected from 256 former teachers from all states and territories, sectors and career stages who had left the profession between 2016 and 2022. Using descriptive statistical and thematic analysis, this study highlights the potential loss to teaching and the education profession more broadly due to teacher attrition. For these participants, the reasons for leaving were often multifaceted and the process of leaving was often protracted. Many of these former teachers have maintained links to the education profession occupying various associated roles and positions. We call for a reconsideration of the ways that strategies to ameliorate teacher attrition are conceptualised and implemented.

Research in STEM education has focussed on integrated STEM projects that combine knowledge and skills across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These integrated STEM projects are typically designed by teachers or researchers addressing a limited range of topics that do not always cater well to the diversity of interest among children and adolescents. By contrast, self-selected projects where students have more choices and autonomy in selecting their own projects are relatively rare. Consequently, there is a gap in the literature on students’ learning experiences when they choose and develop their own STEM projects. This study aims to examine the classroom experience and enactment of a high school STEM course designed for Grade 9 and 10 students (14 to 16 years old) to carry out a project of their choice aligned with the theme of sustainability. A case study methodology was used to investigate eight students’ lived experiences in making connections to STEM. The study reveals the nature of students’ self-directed learning experiences as they chose their own topics of exploration and subsequently developed their respective STEM-related projects. It also illuminates the alignments and tensions between STEM integration and various aspects of students’ self-directed learning, including intrinsic motivation, open-ended tasks, goal setting, design thinking, collaboration with external partners, curriculum constraint, and time management. The implications of the study encompass student autonomy and agency, the significance of authentic problems and themes in STEM education, and the role of curriculum in facilitating self-selected projects.

Abstract

Contemporary education is being undeniably shaped by datafication, and while new algorithmic and automated decision-making processes can have educational benefits, they also raise issues about children’s digital rights and education policy responses to these rights. This study mapped how children’s digital right to privacy and related human rights concepts are present in education policy documents of Australia’s three largest state government departments of education. A children’s rights coding framework was developed from the United Nation’s ‘General comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment’ and used to code the dataset. Two levels of analysis were then undertaken. Level 1 involved code and subcode frequency analyses of concepts related to children’s digital rights in policy documents. Level 2 was a descriptive qualitative analysis designed to understand how digital rights were expressed in policy. The study found that although all state government departments of education reflected some elements of children’s digital rights, some states had a more complex, sustained and public-facing commitment to expressing these in policy. The study concluded that Australian government departments of education should work towards providing more transparent public-facing policy on children’s digital rights that can empower students and their families to make informed decisions within a rapidly shifting digital environment.

School uniforms are proliferating as a staple in figurations created of successful students around the world. In Australia the uniform as compulsory formal school wear is a growing phenomenon in both public and private education sectors. School uniforms have often been adopted as unproblematic, by schools, parents, policymakers, and students themselves. It remains unclear from the previous limited and often contradictory research, precisely how uniforms materially affect student academic and social outcomes. Research that considers how students themselves not just perceive but feel about their uniforms is scarce. I focus on the affective response of students to their school uniforms at one government co-educational selective science high school. A PhEmaterialist approach deprivileges human agency, accounting for matter as dynamic, affective and of consequence in activities, performances, and events. The school uniform as matter is explored as a dynamic and powerful affective force in education and is situated as an integral part of a school’s iteration of binary gender differentiations. Uniforms matter twofold, as a conception that materializes what matters and the differential affect on the bodies that wear them. Bodies respond affectively to the uniform with a sense of comfort or discomfort, consciously and unconsciously. Bodies that do not fit easily with the required uniform hurt as students undergo everyday activities at school. This paper considers the affect of the uniform, with a filmic response from one high achieving ‘smart’ girl through a fine-grain analysis of her feelings of belonging and dis/comfort with and through her school uniform.