The Australian Curriculum requires teachers of all learning areas to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples' Culture and History where there is opportunity to do so meaningfully. Despite this requirement, there are few studies considering culturally responsive pedagogy for those perspectives in the teaching of Physical Education…

With the aim of engaging more students in meaningful thinking in mathematics, a cohort of Year 7 students were introduced to a 'Building Thinking Classrooms' framework for learning in mathematics. In this paper, the authors outline the key features of the implemented framework and share reflections on challenges and benefits.

The National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is intended to assess all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 to ensure equity and inclusion. This paper explores the extent to which equity and inclusion are achieved for students with disability through NAPLAN reporting. Document analysis of publicly accessible NAPLAN…

In Australia, it has been observed that there have been significant declines in the proportion of students studying senior sciences over the last two decades (Commonwealth of Australia 2017 & 2018; Steidtmann et.al, 2023). It has been suggested that one of the causes for this decline could be a link between students' literacy achievement and…

Grouping students into separate classes according to their 'ability' is an inequitable practice that does not, overall, improve academic outcomes. Research has continued to show that class ability grouping widens the educational gap between students from disadvantaged and privileged backgrounds. PISA data analysis suggests that class ability…

The middle-school years (Year 7 to Year 9) is a particular challenge for socially disadvantaged populations, with high proportions of children either repeating school years or dropping out of school. In Australia, a group of particular concern is First Nations children for whom there is a collective effort by all governments to improve education…

Students' prior achievements in school have significant correlations with their later achievements. Specifically, students' prior numeracy achievement is the most important predictor of later numeracy success. However, the assessment of this predictor across gender and its trend across students' year levels is often overlooked or not adequately…

This study sought to determine the factors that motivate teachers to differentiate curriculum for gifted students in a case study school in Victoria, Australia. For this purpose, 10 teachers from Year 7-9 mixed ability classes at the school were engaged in interviews about their practice of differentiation specifically for gifted students and the…

This article examines and critiques gap-based education policies that are based on statistical and reductive conceptualisations of success for First Nations students in Australia. The policy desire to achieve social justice underpinned by parity of outcomes across a range of life indicators (including standardised English literacy) between First…

Making connections within and between different aspects of mathematics is recognised as fundamental to learning mathematics with understanding. However, exactly what these connections are and how they serve the goal of learning mathematics is rarely made explicit in curriculum documents with the result that mathematics tends to be presented as a…

The increasing influx into Australia of (im)migrants whose first language is not English has made Australia linguistically more diverse than ever. Despite this, Australia remains a strongly Anglocentric nation, and migrants, in response, tend to abandon their heritage languages (HL) and shift to English relatively quickly. Korean migrants in…

Equal representation as a social issue is about the participation of one social group, in a particular context, in proportion to the numbers in the group within the total population. The proportion of women in parliament, and of the participation rate of students of lower socioeconomic status in higher education, are examples. The aims of this…

Data reporting in the Australian education system produces deficit-based comparisons of academic achievement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Since 2009, data from the National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) have been used by the Australian government to allow it to report on 'Closing the Gap' policy. These…

The dual-factor model of mental health proposes that high wellbeing and low distress are necessary to define mental health. This study used latent profile analysis to identify mental health profiles in a sample of 3,587 Australian grade 6 students and explored the association between mental health profiles and school outcomes measured in grades 7…