Both government reports and academic literature concur in claiming that the low standing of vocational education and training (VET) and the occupations it serves in the community is a major problem for increasing the engagement in this educational sector in an era of high aspiration. An initial analysis from a project capturing school students,…

There are theoretical arguments and empirical studies to support the benefits of early participation in an online course. However, little research has been conducted to investigate the relationship between students' early start in online learning and their course performance, which limits its application to online education research and practice.…

In communication between first (L1) and second (L2) language users, the default has long been for L2 speakers to assume most, if not all, responsibility for adjusting their speech to accommodate their interlocutor. This not only places an undue burden on the speaker, but also furthers the assumption of listener passivity in communication. One…

Multimodal discourse analysis (MMDA) has been instrumental in the evolution of English curriculum and pedagogy. However, it is unusual for educators to direct the tools of multimodal inquiry to their own text productions. In the context of prioritising accessibility within the new Queensland Certificate of Education in Queensland, which has…

Educators struggle to select evidence-based practices (EBPs) for autistic students, which is an important skill to develop for special educators in training (SETs). To examine how these SETs learn and begin to make decisions about instructional practices for autistic students to attain their goals, we interviewed and surveyed 11 SETs before and…

Purpose: The aim of the study was to determine the integrity of fast mapping among adults with developmental language disorder (DLD). Method: Forty-eight adults with DLD or typical language development (TD) were presented with 24 novel words and photos of their unfamiliar referents from the semantic categories of "mammal,"…

Understanding speech in adverse conditions is affected by experience--a familiar voice is substantially more intelligible than an unfamiliar voice when competing speech is present, even if the content of the speech (the words) are controlled. This familiar-voice benefit is observed consistently, but its underpinnings are unclear: Do familiar…

Reading science has reached consensus that background knowledge is essential for reading comprehension. What remains an open question for the science of reading, however, is how and when this background knowledge ought to be developed. Teachers often include activities meant to activate background knowledge immediately prior to read-alouds.…

Investigations of face identification have typically focussed on matching faces to photographic IDs. Few researchers have considered the task of searching for a face in a crowd. In Experiment 1, we created the Chokepoint Search Test to simulate real-time search for a target. Performance on this test was poor (39% accuracy) and showed moderate…

Leisure reading is a main contributor to print exposure, which is in turn related to individual differences in reading and language skills. The Author Recognition Test (ART) is a brief and objective measure of print exposure that has been used in reading research since the 1990s. Life span studies have reported contradicting results concerning age…

This study explored community college librarians' engagement with the "Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education." A national online survey with 1,201 community college librarian respondents reveals limited familiarity with and integration of the "Framework" into community college instruction to date. Findings…

Unique socio-behavioural phenotypes are reported for individuals with different neurodevelopmental disorders. Here, the effects of adult familiarity and nature of interaction on social anxiety and social motivation were investigated in individuals with fragile X (FXS; n = 20), Cornelia de Lange (CdLS; n = 20) and Rubinstein-Taybi (RTS; n = 20)…

One argument for the inclusion of children with special education needs (SEN) is that they will benefit from the interactions and relationships with their typically developing peers. However, students with SEN tend to be more rejected than their non-SEN peers. Considering the negative consequences of peer rejection on socioemotional development…

The study explores the attitudes of undergraduate Flagship students in the United States towards Arabic-accented speech in English. It examines the Familiarity Principle among these students and analyzes their attitudes based on socio-intellectual status, aesthetic quality, and dynamism of Arabic-accented speech. The study also discusses the…

The present studies examine whether and how 18-month-olds use informants' accuracy to acquire novel labels for novel objects and generalize them to a new context. In Experiment 1, two speakers made statements about the labels of familiar objects. One used accurate labels and the other used inaccurate labels. One of these speakers then introduced…