Australia Association for Research in Education
Messages from teachers at the coalface as COVID-19 changes everything
I am a university teacher and researcher who studies the art and science of good school leadership. Most of my students are mature age, full-time teachers and deputy principals from around Australia who want to become principals, and who believe studying my units will help them with that goal. (And it often does.) Part of …
School closures and COVID-19 – what the research says we should be doing
Schools in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia will go pupil free from Monday, taking only children of essential workers. I have been having a close look at the available research and evidence on school closures and the COVID-19 pandemic, and I am wondering why there is no urgent national call to close all Australian …
Online schooling and distance ed? Don’t be afraid, we’ve been doing and improving it for 100 years
Amid all the concerns about closing schools and setting up online learning In Australia it is important to note that Australia is actually a world leader in school distance education. Indeed, distance learning is not only achievable for Australian students, but very normal for many students around our large island continent. In rural and remote …
Death by TEEL: Are formulas for writing harmful?
Teachers in Australia currently experience extraordinary pressures to teach to the test. In this post we want to take a closer look at how that pressure is affecting the teaching of writing. Tickbox template writing is now sought by external assessors in Australia where the focus is on basic skills and imitation of standardised practices. …
Gender respect: how can we better engage boys and men?
It is September 2016 and I have been invited to speak on a panel with Rosie Batty, former Australian of the Year. We are speaking about the role of education in preventing violence against women and children. The conference title is pertinent: Prevalent and Preventable. The panel is mostly education leaders. One by one, they …
New research shows we trust and appreciate our teachers – but overworked teachers aren’t feeling it
Teachers in Australia are struggling with workload and feeling underappreciated, and almost six in ten say they intend to leave the profession. These are just some of the many findings of the two large-scale parallel surveys we conducted in the second half of 2019. We asked a nationally representative sample of 1000 members of the …
Early childhood help for children of deployed military personnel
One parent shared with me that she was told ‘You’re just on your own until they go to …
Universities are exploiting their sessional academics. We need to do better for our precariously employed
As the 2020 academic year begins, this will be the first in my seven years of working in universities that I have a permanent position and am not relying on contracts or sessional work. I know how privileged I am to be in this position, but I also know first-hand what precarious employment feels like. …
Video-based educational research: Remembering David Clarke
Video has been used as a method for researching teaching and learning for decades. It offers significant and …