Australia Association for Research in Education
How we talk about teachers is changing. Does it matter?
The way teachers are talked about in the public space is important. It affects teacher morale and how people might interact with them both professionally and socially. It even affects the way new teachers perceive their career pathway unfolding, or not. As an educator working in teacher education I am especially interested in the way …
Economic thinking is corrupting education in Australia
There is a growing trend in education of proposing and enacting policy ideas that are based primarily upon …
The strange world of medical school for working-class and Indigenous students: doing extreme social mobility
What happens when becoming a doctor is a battle between staying true to yourself and fitting in to …
Toddler risky play: how we got up the research project and what we found
It isn’t often you see the terms ‘teacher research’ and ‘toddler risky play’ in the one sentence. So …
Let’s stop talking about school choice and reconfigure what we are doing in Australia
In a perfect world, public schooling would be able to honour its mission to provide access to high …
Learning to write should not be hijacked by NAPLAN: New research shows what is really going on
You couldn’t miss the headlines and page one stories across Australia recently about the decline of Australian children’s writing skills. The release of results of national tests in literacy and numeracy meant we were treated to a range of colour-coded tables and various info graphics that highlighted ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ and that dire, downward trend. …
How children’s aspirations change as they grow up: latest research
Two research findings from our University of Newcastle large-scale longitudinal study of the career aspirations of Australian children …
Educating teachers to be researchers: three surprising gaps in what we are doing in Australia
Much is asked of teachers these days. Governments and school systems seem to regularly increase their expectations of …
Arts-based approaches to teaching literacy: stop all the testing and do this
Millions of dollars have been spent on targeted programs to improve literacy and numeracy learning outcomes around Australia. However this year’s NAPLAN data shows stagnation in terms of data improvement, with a downward shift in performance levels for writing. We don’t believe this lack of movement in data is matched by a lack of impact …