Making Australia internationally competitive: driving educational attainment by academic motivation, self-concept, engagement and aspirations. This project will extend and test predictions from motivation theory about educational choice and attainment, using multiple large national/international databases and new statistical models. This will result in better strategies to meet government targets of increasing tertiary enrolments, particularly for disadvantaged students.
Cultivating Capability: Explicating Critical Psychosocial Drivers of Educational Outcomes and Wellbeing for High-Ability Aboriginal Students. Despite emphasis worldwide on enabling high-ability students to realise their potential, little is known about drivers that seed success in educational outcomes and wellbeing for high ability Aboriginal students who underachieve, are under identified and are underrepresented in selective settings. Capitalising on interdisciplinary theory and research, a po ....Cultivating Capability: Explicating Critical Psychosocial Drivers of Educational Outcomes and Wellbeing for High-Ability Aboriginal Students. Despite emphasis worldwide on enabling high-ability students to realise their potential, little is known about drivers that seed success in educational outcomes and wellbeing for high ability Aboriginal students who underachieve, are under identified and are underrepresented in selective settings. Capitalising on interdisciplinary theory and research, a powerful multi-method design and state-of-the-art statistics, the project aims to explicate psychosocial determinants of high-ability Aboriginal students' educational outcomes and wellbeing and test the efficacy of novel research-derived interventions. This aims to advance knowledge, policy and practice to enhance the provision of education to high-ability Aboriginal students ensuring they realise their full potential.Read moreRead less
Learning to write: A socio-material analysis of text production. Contemporary literacy classrooms are places of intense curriculum and technological change. This project will investigate how young children are learning to write as they participate in producing both print and digital texts with a range of tools and technologies. Innovative approaches to teaching writing in early childhood classrooms in four schools situated in low socio-economic communities across two states will be collaborative ....Learning to write: A socio-material analysis of text production. Contemporary literacy classrooms are places of intense curriculum and technological change. This project will investigate how young children are learning to write as they participate in producing both print and digital texts with a range of tools and technologies. Innovative approaches to teaching writing in early childhood classrooms in four schools situated in low socio-economic communities across two states will be collaboratively designed with teachers. The documentation of these classroom design experiments aims to form the basis of innovative practice for other teachers. Employing a socio-material analysis aims to illuminate the affordances of new ways of understanding learning to write in action, in contemporary early childhood classrooms.Read moreRead less
Tracking the experiences of students enrolled in segregated settings for challenging behaviour and their reintegration to mainstream schools. The aim of this project is to better combat school exclusion by understanding the experiences and outcomes of students who have been referred to special schools for challenging behaviour. The project will contribute to the Commonwealth government's national agenda linking educational outcomes with enhanced social inclusion.
Effective Teacher-Based Assessment Adjustments for Students with Disability. The Australian Curriculum and Disability Standards for Education create high expectations for education of students with disabilities. Teachers are to address the diversity of student learning needs in their classes, and make adjustments to school-based assessments that enable students with disabilities to demonstrate their learning. Recent reports identify inconsistent practice in schools and the need for evidence-base ....Effective Teacher-Based Assessment Adjustments for Students with Disability. The Australian Curriculum and Disability Standards for Education create high expectations for education of students with disabilities. Teachers are to address the diversity of student learning needs in their classes, and make adjustments to school-based assessments that enable students with disabilities to demonstrate their learning. Recent reports identify inconsistent practice in schools and the need for evidence-based guidance to inform these adjustments. This longitudinal project involves researcher-teacher collaboration and aims to identify effective assessment adjustments for secondary school students with disabilities, develop system-level protocols for adjustments, and meet national goals of improved education outcomes for these students.Read moreRead less
Which children develop severely disruptive school behaviour? By systematically tracking 250 children through the first six years of school, this project aims to identify factors contributing to the development, perpetuation and exacerbation of disruptive school behaviour. Disruptive student behaviour has been identified as one of the most significant issues confronting Australian schools. Yet common educational responses often inflame rather than reduce problem behaviours. The project aims to pr ....Which children develop severely disruptive school behaviour? By systematically tracking 250 children through the first six years of school, this project aims to identify factors contributing to the development, perpetuation and exacerbation of disruptive school behaviour. Disruptive student behaviour has been identified as one of the most significant issues confronting Australian schools. Yet common educational responses often inflame rather than reduce problem behaviours. The project aims to produce new knowledge about how best to address those factors in the early years while student attitudes and behaviour are still relatively malleable.Read moreRead less
An investigation of school and teacher use of National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) for student learning improvement. This project will examine how schools and teachers use National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) outcomes to improve student learning, the main purpose of such testing programs. The project will include the first comprehensive and large-scale State and Territory survey of school practices.