Australia Association for Research in Education
The importance of networks for career advancement in academia
From the first day I was employed in the university sector I got the impression I was working in a fairly corporatised and business-like environment. There were performance benchmarks, far more conversations about budgets than I expected, and it was clear that exceeding targets could result in a promotion. However, there was also something else. …
Beginner teachers are NOT under prepared and NOT bad at managing behaviour. Here’s the evidence
For years claims have been circulating that newly graduated teachers are under prepared to teach in today’s often challenging classrooms, and that they are bad at classroom management. Thanks to mainstream media interest, and critics within education circles, these claims have led to an increasing array of government interventions in Initial Teacher Education in universities …
What’s not to love in the new Closing The Gap agreement? Well, these two targets
I want to love the new National Agreement on Closing the Gap. I want to be able to …
Changes to career advice needed now more than ever
The recently released report into post-schooling pathways in Australia has presented a challenging picture of how career advice needs to be reconsidered in the current employment and health climate. The Report of the Review of Senior Secondary Pathways into Work, Further Education and Training identifies that many career strategies used in Australian schools rely on …
Is COVID-19 heralding a new way of the media representing teachers?
The sport and politics of teacher bashing, and in particular teacher union bashing, has a long and inglorious history in the Australian media. Whether this is connected to an anti-intellectual bias in Australian society, the glorification of sport and the physical as opposed to the intellect, is unclear. However research suggests that mainstream media plays …
In these pandemic school days handwriting still matters!
During the last 1000 years handwriting has been the prevalent mode of writing. In today’s increasingly digital world, …
The shock of dealing with Covid-19 has made teachers even stronger and better at their craft
Cast your mind back to the end of the first school term for 2020: Australian states and territories were rapidly moving into lockdown because of COVID-19. Political leaders were signaling – often using mixed signals – the likelihood and need to close schools and transition to distance learning. Here in New South Wales schools switched …
Children as content creators: ‘Learning by doing’ during the pandemic using technology
Instructional design in education – that is successfully designing what a student will learn and how they will …
What does ‘back to basics’ really mean? What ‘reforms’ are being signalled this time?
Premier Gladys Berejiklian has been describing the NSW curriculum review as a signal to go “back to basics” despite Professor Geoff Masters, who headed up the review, insisting it is more about decluttering the curriculum. To educators like me the phrase “back to basics” has signalled different education reforms over the years, which begs the …
Prescribed texts studied at school are not engaging our students and don’t reflect our diverse society
High school students read a range of self-selected texts in their everyday lives but they remain disengaged when …