Social identity is an important social determinant of student outcomes such as mental health and well-being. Currently, no validated social identity measures exist for adolescents in secondary school settings. A new 'Adolescent Social Identity' measure was developed by adapting two social identity dimensions from a validated reputation enhancement…

Young people's confidence in their creative abilities, as well as their beliefs about whether these abilities are fixed or malleable, play potentially important roles in educators' efforts to foster creativity. This study explores a multidimensional model of young people's creative self-beliefs that comprises creative self-efficacy,…

According to creative writing pedagogies academic Susanne Gannon ("English in Australia, 54"(2), 43-56, 2019), and the Federal government-commissioned NAPLAN review (McGaw et al., 2020), NAPLAN has restricted how writing is taught in secondary schools. A NAPLAN-influenced structural approach to teaching writing has subsumed the…

This paper provides evidence that a short, fully online, well-constructed diagnostic test based on research literature can give teachers information about their students' thinking and strategies that is sufficiently accurate to use for formative assessment purposes. The example is a test for students beginning to learn to solve equations. The main…

Understanding students' perceptions of Christian education is essential for schools seeking to make changes that enhance opportunities for students to understand and engage with Christian faith. This study introduces and describes the validation of an accessible survey that probes students' perceptions of the Christian culture of their school and…

This study investigates consistent and inconsistent respondents to mixed-worded questionnaire scales in large-scale assessments. Mixed-worded scales contain both positively and negatively worded items and are universally applied in different survey and content areas. Due to the changing wording, these scales require a more careful reading and…

While there is increasing recognition of the need to go beyond measures of mental ill health, there is a relative dearth of validated tools for assessing mental well-being among adolescents. The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) is a promising tool for use in this context, and this study evaluated its use in an Australian context.…

A significant body of research documents the negative consequences of dropping out of school for both the individual and society. In attempting to respond to the problem of early school leaving, schools and systems internationally have put in place a range of system-level and local responses such as mentoring, targeted additional career guidance…

In recent decades, the literature paid attention to students' conceptions of the nature of disciplines. This study aimed to investigate how students' cohesive and fragment conceptions of physics changed with a major change in senior high school physics syllabus. We obtained measures of conceptions of physics by utilizing a 20-item questionnaire…

After passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, states assumed greater responsibility for designing their own accountability and assessment systems. ESSA requires states to measure "higher order thinking skills and understanding" and encourages the use of open-ended performance assessments, which are essential for…

Traditional resources for ascertaining risk and protection for disengaged youth are often unsuitable, due to the stamina and skill required to complete them. Many of these tools assess risk without considering participants' potential for personal growth. The present study outlines the development and initial validation of a tool titled the…

We recently developed a multiple-choice conceptual survey in mechanical waves. The development, evaluation, and demonstration of the use of the survey were reported elsewhere [A. Tongchai et al. Int. J. Sci. Educ. 31 2437 (2009)]. We administered the survey to 902 students from seven different groups ranging from high school to second year…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opened up new possibilities for how student and school success are defined and supported in American public education. States have greater responsibility for designing and building their assessment and accountability systems. These new opportunities to develop performance assessments are critically important…

This study developed and empirically tested two related models of the occupational/career decision-making processes of gifted adolescents using a competing models strategy. The two models that guided the study, which acknowledged cultural orientations, social influences from the family, occupational/career values, and characteristics of…

This study investigated the use of text-message abbreviations (textisms) in Australian adolescents and young adults, and relations between textism use and literacy abilities. Fifty-two high school students aged 13-15 years, and 53 undergraduates aged 18-24 years, all users of predictive texting, translated conventional English sentences into…