The Australian Educational Researcher最新文献

In many classrooms across the globe, students are expected to comprehend and produce handwritten and computer-generated texts as soon as they start school. As we progress towards digitalisation in education, it has become necessary to understand the effects of writing modality on students’ literacy performance and development. The current meta-analysis integrates findings from 22 international studies involving 6168 participants, comparing the effects of handwriting and keyboarding on the writing and reading performance of primary-aged students. Moderator analyses were executed to determine if grade level, keyboarding experience, timed measurement of letter writing, types of tasks measuring letter writing fluency, and study design moderated modality effects on writing outcomes. Results revealed a significant effect size when comparing writing quality between handwriting and keyboarding, with students producing better quality passages via handwriting than keyboarding (ES = 0.53). Results also revealed that only grade level significantly moderated the effect size for letter writing fluency and written word production. Findings indicated that handwriting and keyboarding practices are associated with improvements on specific reading skills in primary education, with no clear superiority of modality. We discuss implications for literacy research and teaching both locally and globally.

Student experience of Assessment for Learning (AfL) pedagogies ideally provides multiple entry points for students to take past learning forward into future learning. In practice, points of disconnection may confound the accessibility of AfL’s repertoire of practices. This paper investigates the AfL experiences of students with likely language and attentional difficulties and their peers in three Australian secondary schools. Ninety-two students shared their insights in interviews and focus groups, with data analysed abductively through a conceptual frame of six dimensions. Common practical effects for students included recognition and value of a range of teacher practices. Students with language and attentional difficulties indicated more uneven recall of processes, especially when teacher practice of AfL was fragmented and classroom routines prioritised summative assessment. Fragmentation in turn compromised the emotional and evaluative dimensions of experience that catalyse continuity in learning. Critical insights from students about how they searched for and secured cohesive experiences points to how AfL offers agentic possibilities for learning beyond the immediate activities of the classroom.

The educational approach known as positive education emerged from positive psychology and frequently attributes its conception of flourishing to Aristotelian eudaimonia. This is a point of contention between scholars who see positive psychology’s flourishing as an epithet of Aristotelian virtues and others who have identified critical divergences between the philosophical foundations of positive psychology and Aristotle’s normative ethics. Few scholars have examined whether adolescent understandings of flourishing reflect Aristotelian eudaimonia, and whether this is different in positive education students. This paper explores notion of the good life through the writings of 226 adolescents, 93 of whom attend a school that has implemented positive education. These are analysed through an Aristotelian lens, finding more similarities than differences between the groups. Both groups discussed relationships, emotions, and accomplishments, but moral goodness and virtue were not prominent. Conclusions are drawn about the implications of this for ‘positive’ education and the role it plays in nurturing flourishing.

This paper offers an analysis of data from the second phase of a project entitled Understanding and Addressing Everyday Sexisms in Australian Universities, which involved interviewing key stakeholders with an understanding of and/or experiences of ‘Everyday Sexisms’ within the academy. The paper demonstrates how women understand themselves as inherently unwelcome within higher education in Australia, and illustrates how this manifests through experiences, complaints procedures and seemingly banal everyday gendered and racilaised interactions. The authors show how complaints procedures often operate to further harass women who have experienced sexist harassment at work. The paper concludes by considering how the shared experiences of minoritised people within universities can pave the way for new ways of understanding diversity and working together to co-create a more equitable Higher Education.

This paper presents research that examined teacher talk about moderation of English, mathematics and science assessment across Years 4, 6 and 8 as part of a broader inquiry into the use of scaled exemplars to support consistency of teacher judgement. The paper draws on Dorothy E Smith’s sociological work, including the process of mapping textual connections to research everyday practices. We illustrate how moderation activities were shaped by systemic policy and related documents. We further illustrate how teachers used artefacts that they were created as part of the research project to leverage the value of moderation discussions. In the project, teachers generated artefacts that were written commentaries or texts explicating their judgement decisions (cognitive commentaries). Our analysis demonstrates how teachers then took these cognitive commentaries and independently embedded them into their everyday work. Teachers described how they used the artefacts in their moderation discussions as a means of improving their own practice, as well as their students’ learning. We argue that when teachers are provided with the time and space to share their assessment and pedagogic knowledge and practice with school colleagues, including via cognitive commentaries, they are able to expand their field of professional impact and build their professional knowledge and practice.

The Australian Early Years’ Learning Framework aspires to put democratic participation at the centre of policy and practice by positioning children and families as able, and children as contributing citizens from birth. Examination of current pedagogical efforts to achieve this aspiration are needed to expand knowledge of the supports and challenges experienced in positioning early childhood education settings as democratic learning spaces. This paper contributes to this endeavour by exploring the participatory pedagogies exercised by adults and children to re-imagine mealtimes in an Australian birth-five setting. The research employed relevant aspects of Dewey’s experiential education theory, case study and multiple perspectives to provide a holistic view of participants’ various lived experiences. The paper critically examines elements within early childhood educators’ professional identities and discourses that enabled and constrained one setting’s reimagining and transformation of their micro-everyday practice of mealtime. Findings demonstrated how bringing multiple perspectives into dialogue was significant to participants’ journey in prioritising democracy in mealtime experiences. This research also highlights the importance of recognising the pedagogical role of the physical environment, and the leveraging of positional leadership.

Scholars in critical masculinities studies argue that we need men involved and engaged in gender equity movements for gender justice to be realised. Yet we need to know more about how different groups of men are understanding gender equity and what the barriers might be. Amidst significant media interest in elite private boys’ schooling and its possible (re)production of sexist cultures, this paper explores how 13 men who attended such schools in Australia between the 1970s and the 2000s understand gender justice, revealing a diversity of positions and practices across the different generational groups. We argue the men’s engagements with gender justice are shaped by a broad ‘curriculum of privilege’ including school and non-school based experiences that mediates their lives. Further research with both elite boys’ schools and their alumni is needed to better understand generational change in their engagements with gender justice.