It is important that teachers are conscious of and reflect upon their views of writing in order to support students to achieve writing outcomes. This study examined teacher views about which aspects of writing they considered most important in years one and two and explored how these views came to be formed. Four West Australian teachers…

This study examined the longitudinal relationship between early handwriting skills and the growth of spelling and reading skills in a large sample (N = 569) of 5- to 6-year-old children unselected for ability. The quality of children's handwriting was assessed using five indicators (letter form, slant, rhythm, ability, general appearance).…

Foreign language programs in schools have a strong focus on the development of communicative language ability and, increasingly, assessment tasks are designed to capture communicative abilities required for real-world situations. In communicative test tasks, sociolinguistic and discourse components, which are beyond grammatical accuracy, target…

Background: The Performance Indicators in Primary Schools On Entry Baseline assessment for pupils starting school includes an item which aims to assess how well a pupil writes his or her own name. There is some debate regarding the utility of this measure, on the grounds that name length may constitute bias. Purpose, method and design: The…

Academic self-efficacy is the degree to which students believe they are capable of learning or accomplishing an academic task within a specific area of education. High academic self-efficacy has been associated with positive education outcomes such as enhanced learning, motivation, self-determination, and ultimately academic performance. The…

The internationalisation of higher education generates several issues related to quality, uniformity of subjects taught across campuses and the role of differences in English-speaking ability, which may affect student learning and skills development. This study used a self-assessment survey framework to investigate Australian (native English…