This paper discusses educational insights drawn from a mixed-methods study in Religious Education (RE). The study involved 238 teachers and school leaders, working in 65 Catholic schools in Western Australia (WA). The focus of the study was the educators' perceptions of a large-scale, standardised assessment (LSA) called "The Bishops'…

Exemplary religious education (RE) teachers were identified by school based RE leaders and interviewed as part of an ongoing study of the implementation of a new senior high school religious education program in Catholic schools in NSW, Australia. Contextualisation was provided by examining dominant social influences utilising Dobbelaere's concept…

This replicated research project [see Hine, G. S. C. (2019). Reasons why I didn't enrol in a higher-level mathematics course: Listening to the voice of Australian senior secondary students. "Research in Mathematics Education," 21(3), 295-313. https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1080/14794802.2019.15999982019] explored the reasons why senior secondary…

While consent forms part of the Health, Wellbeing and Relationships strand of the New South Wales (NSW) Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE) curriculum in Australia, it is not consistently or effectively delivered within schools. The recent e-campaign, "Teach Us Consent" in NSW, drew attention to the alarmingly…

While the preference for university by school leavers has been researched extensively, this article seeks to explore if religious influence might also come to play when selecting a university, with particular reference to Australia, a country whose higher education environment is largely made up of public, secular universities. The data used is…

Catholic Studies is a religious education course used in senior high schools in New South Wales, Australia. The course is not counted for university entrance but meets the requirement for students to undertake religious study whilst in catholic schools. This paper examines the perceptions of teachers on why students take the course and what parts…

A higher proportion of students are privately educated in Australia, compared with many other nations. In this paper, we tested the assumption that private schools offer better quality education than public schools. We examined differences in student achievement on the National Assessment Programme: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) between public,…

The OECD's PISA is seen as a 'global yardstick' against which countries measure the quality of their education systems. In 2018 PISA included an assessment of global competence. This paper starts with the premise that in using a single global instrument to 'measure' this phenomenon, PISA claims standardisation over contextually rich data that can…

This school-based study explored the role of collective and proxy efficacy beliefs in the performances of project-based learning teams comprising friends and acquaintances. Participants were 162 male students in Grade 8 who attended a Catholic high school, located in Sydney, Australia. Students were organized into 20 acquaintance groups and 21…

Aspirations are embedded in social alliances and affectively realised. This article presents a longitudinal case study of the support and pastoral care in place for one Samoan-Australian male, Fiamalu, during his final year of compulsory schooling. Fiamalu's path to higher education was precarious for numerous reasons, including losing both his…

Objective: The ability of schools, school leaders and teachers to promote critical health literacy in teaching and learning is central to the development of health literacy in schools. However, research focusing on teachers and planning for health literacy through health programmes in school is minimal. This paper describes how one school Health…

This study examines how access to the academic curriculum creates patterns of inequality in Australian schools. Examining students' access to the academic curriculum gives an indication of how schooling is structured to support students in pursuing higher education opportunities. To date, little research attention has been given to the…

Over recent years there has been a strong emphasis on year 12 completion as an indicator of success in remote First Nations education. The research reported in this article explores what students, school staff and community members say leads to secondary school retention and, ultimately, completion. The research was conducted in the Northern…

The vexed question of how and why some pedagogical practices persist and others do not lies at the heart of sustaining changes that enhance teaching quality. Understanding the role that leadership practices can play in this process is crucial: schools play decisive roles in allocating life chances for young people. This paper draws on findings…

Religious education in Australian Catholic High Schools is the raison d'etre for the Catholic education system and religious education teachers are critical to this mission. This paper offers a framework for investigating the self-efficacy of religious education teachers.We first describe the nature and context of religious education in Australian…