A failure at 6? Children go from playing to being tested in the blink of an eye, reports researcher Martina Tassone. Children’s early years from birth to the age of eight are crucial for their social, emotional and intellectual development. However, early years education in Australia...
Yes, Australia’s PISA test results may be slipping, but new findings show most students didn’t try very hard, reports Stewart Riddle Most Australian students who took part in the last OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) said they would have invested more effort if the...
Alexandra de Gendre and Nicolás Salamanca, tried to find out why. Who you go to school with matters. Almost all of us, as children or parents of children, have felt the influence of good, and bad, classmates at school. There is a large body of research...
Jane Nursey, Professor Helen Cahill, Professor Jim Watterston and Professor Lisa Gibbs look at the changes to schooling needed to respond to the current challenges in learning. Since early 2020, Australia’s bushfires and then the pandemic have rapidly altered our ways of living and learning. As...
It’s a trustworthy source writes Rachel Cunneen and Mathieu O'Neil At the start of each university year, we ask first-year students a question: how many have been told by their secondary teachers not to use Wikipedia? Without fail, nearly every hand shoots up. Wikipedia offers free...
Is there any benefit for my child? Asks Leon Benade Some schools around Australia, and elsewhere, have replaced individual desks with circular booths and shared tables for collaborative work. But what does the evidence actually say? Do flexible learning spaces improve students’ ability to work together, as...
Queensland school students have reportedly been bullied after being diagnosed with COVID-19 and have struggled to return to school as a result, write Brian Moore and Stuart Woodcock The Queensland Department of Education stated it hasn’t heard of any bullying related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Given...
John Munro, Australian Catholic University, writes about giftedness. This is a longer read with links to videos. Enjoy! The beginning of the 2022 school year will be a time of planning and crystal-gazing. Teachers will plan their instructional agenda in a general way. Students will think about...
Fiction authors are pretty good at writing sentences with striking images, worded just the right way. Writes Brett Healey We might suppose the images are striking because the author has a striking imagination. But the words seem just right because the author also has a large...
Dr Glenn Melvin examines the issue of depression in young people. Sarah* was 12 when her mother noticed she appeared sad, was crying excessively, wasn’t enjoying time with her two close friends, and had problems in sleeping. She was lethargic and had lost her appetite. She...
