This article scrutinises pedagogical practices undergone in sexuality education as recorded with two intergenerational groups of former Australian schoolgirls. It discusses the surprising widespread use of the plastic, white, circumcised banana penis in sexuality education experienced by the younger group. The normalisation of the white,…

This research article addresses an important issue related to how teachers can support Aboriginal secondary school students' learning of science. Drawn from a larger project that investigated the study of vertebrates using Queensland Indigenous knowledges and Montessori Linnaean materials to engage Indigenous secondary school students, this…

International students are important for creating a multicultural learning environment in their host countries. Most studies on the internationalisation of education have focused on students at the university level and given scant attention to international students in the Australian school sector. This paper reports on a study that utilised a…

Language learning applications (LL Apps), especially those that can be downloaded to a mobile device, are popular, widely available and represent a potentially useful tool for language teachers and their students. However, concerns exist that many LL Apps are inadequately aligned with second language acquisition (SLA) theory, and/or poorly suited…

This paper describes the development and implementation of a three-pillared model for teaching socioscientific issues: teacher professional development; curriculum resources; and classroom support. A professional development program and curriculum resource based on the socioscientific issue of climate change was trialled with 75 Western Australian…

Queensland second language immersion programs have been in existence for three decades, and are part of a growing number of additive bilingual education programs in Australia. Most prominently, many new Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programs have been established particularly in Victoria over the past few years. This focus on…

In this article the authors report on the use of a scaffolding pedagogy (Gibbons, 2009), informed by systemic functional linguistics, to support the writing of English language learners in middle years curriculum learning. They focus on the work of one teacher and her English class across the first 18 months of a longitudinal design-based literacy…

This study analysed the extent to which student-led inquiry is supported by fieldwork booklet design. Roberts' (2003) framework for learning through inquiry was used as lens for analysing the presence of student-led inquiry in the design of nine fieldwork booklets. Observations of teaching practice from two fieldwork activities were also analysed…

This design-based study examines the creation and development of audio-visual Chinese language teaching and learning materials for Australian schools by incorporating users' feedback and content writers' input that emerged in the designing process. Data were collected from workshop feedback of two groups of Chinese-language teachers from primary…

Insights into teachers' planning of mathematics reported here were gathered as part of a broader project examining aspects of the implementation of the Australian curriculum in mathematics (and English). In particular, the responses of primary and secondary teachers to a survey of various aspects of decisions that inform their use of curriculum…

The focus of this article is a school-based respectful relationships (RRs) pilot project involving grade 8 and 9 students. The project sought to develop a primary prevention approach to gender-based violence (GBV) in Australia. Of particular concern is the curriculum delivery component of a whole school approach that was piloted over a 10-week…

In this article, we report on a teacher-researcher collaboration that emerged from a large study on literacy strategies for diverse classrooms. Using the example of one Year 9 class of ten English as an Additional Language (EAL) students, we trialled language-focussed materials on the topic of Ecosystems as an alternative or adjunct to the…

The Australian Federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has funded a rollout of the STELR (Science and Technology Education Leveraging Relevance) Stage One Project to 150 secondary schools in 2010. Participating schools will receive, at no cost, curriculum materials, class sets of supporting laboratory equipment, two…

The purpose of this project was to provide innovative and cutting edge genetics materials for 14-17 year olds (Year 10-12) in Australian schools, which aimed to engage students and encourage evidence based decision-making. In 2008, an Australian School Innovation in Science, Technology and Mathematics (ASISTM) project called "Genetics…

This paper reports on the outcomes of a pilot project to support secondary teachers of science in rural and regional Tasmania. The pilot project involved eight regional schools and was based on the provision of a kit of materials and an associated learning program that used brine shrimp or "sea-monkeys" to test for water quality. The…