This article addresses the question of how global citizenship, often an aim of international schools, is conceptualised as interculturalism by students and teachers. It presents selected findings of global citizenship expressed as interculturalism and perceptions of learning through interculturalism, from a larger empirical study which…

Previous research into the teaching and learning of surface area emphasises the use of nets and formulae to calculate the total surface area of three-dimensional objects despite enduring student difficulties. This study investigated an instructional intervention for Year 8 mathematics students (n = 47; 13-14 years old) designed to elicit multiple…

Understanding mechanisms underpinning formation of convection currents is pivotal for developing explanations of plate tectonics when teaching Geoscience topics. While student generated diagrams explaining convection currents may be used to evaluate student conceptual understanding and alternative conceptions in this topic, students may need…

Current research around the middle grades has brought a heightened attention by teachers, policymakers, and researchers recognizing that this stage is a time when a students' health and social and emotional well-being directly impacts their academic progress. To date, school leaders and teachers have not been well served by explicit resources for…

Background: An overarching goal of school science education is to prepare young people for a rapidly changing and complex world. Middle school science students need more than a basic understanding of science concepts in preparation for further study. Rather, they need the skills to question and evaluate evidence and make decisions about complex…

The vocational experiences and skills of young adolescents could be infused into formal education by identifying career competencies to be taught within the academic curriculum. Such curriculum practices that embed educational and career pathways must also include the perspectives of students and the community, particularly those from marginalised…

The professional lexicons of middle school mathematics teachers in communities around the world were documented as part of The International Classroom Lexicon Project. This vocabulary captured teachers' naming of classroom pedagogical practice. Reported in this paper are attributes of the lexicons of teachers from Australia and Chile. A comparison…

This paper examines the interplay of creativity, education, and the expressive arts. We begin by presenting a narrative literature review focusing on the use of artistic tools to promote creativity, self-expressiveness, and meaningful aspects of emotional and social learning. This review reveals strong connections between the different components…

This paper reports on the development and use of a "Blueprint for Rural Mathematics" (herein referred to as the "Blueprint") in a study of middle-primary mathematics teaching. The study presented a counter-narrative to the deficit discourse around rural education outcomes through an emic perspective of middle-primary…

This study fills a gap with TPACK instrumentation by validating a survey instrument for use specifically with secondary mathematics in-service teachers in the United States using an instrument originally developed in Australia (Handal et al., 2012). A comparable national sample was surveyed in the U.S. to the original Australian instrumentation…

Teachers, pre-service teachers and teacher educators in Australia are predominately European Australian with a small minority of First Nations people. Those with limited first-hand understanding of First Nations ways of knowing can find it difficult to embed these knowledges across learning areas. This is particularly complex for pre-service…

Grassroots reform, particularly in the private educational sector, has had a noticeable impact on the Australian middle years of schooling landscape. Middle years' grassroots reform however, has often been implemented in ad hoc ways, which has meant it has not always resulted in meaningful change that is aligned with middle years' research and…

The challenge of climate change means that school education is more important than ever in preparing young people for an uncertain future. The focus of this research is climate change education and its status in the compulsory middle school years (approximately years 7-10) across six countries (Australia, Israel, Finland, Indonesia, Canada and…

Improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Australian students is a key strategy to helping Indigenous people reach their full potential. This has resulted in well-intentioned efforts by Australian educators and governments to ensure Indigenous children have positive school experiences. However, Indigenous students still lag behind their…

There has been a lot of media attention about 'out-of-field' teaching, but much of it does not capture the complexities of the term or account for the range of knowledge, experience, and attitudes relevant for teaching mathematics in the middle years. In this paper we report on a survey conducted to better understand the diversity of the…