There has been a strong narrative in Australia of falling attainment in high school science, with much of the campaign informed by results from international standardised tests such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which shows a year-on-year decline in scientific literacy of Australian 15-year-old students. These results…

At the 2016 Commission in Birmingham, I reported on a Quality Music Education Framework that Dr Emily Wilson and I had developed for the Victorian Department of Education, which was to become a framework for the delivery of "quality" music education across the State of Victoria for the school years, Foundation to Year 10. In this address…

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…

This article addresses the deliberately speculative question of 'What might the school of 2030 be like?', with a specific focus on the influences of digital technologies. The article adopts the methodological approach of 'social science fiction' to explore the ways in which digital technologies might be used in one Australian high school in 2030…

Understanding the gender dynamics in educational transitions can help target policies to support equitable access to education as well as its quality and labour-market outcomes. In almost all OECD countries, the gender gap in favour of women is wider in tertiary education than at upper secondary level. Differences in programme orientation and…

This paper explores the continued cultural consecration of narrow forms of knowledge and literate practice in senior Australian English curricula. Despite the prevalence of Personal Growth approaches to English throughout Australia in the latter decades of the Twentieth century, the analysis of curricula reveals a contradiction between stated…

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…

Aim/Purpose: The purpose is a bibliographic review that seeks to offer a clearer vision of the impact of technological tools on the implementation of the flipped classroom model. Background: This document reviews the flipped classroom and secondary education literature to analyze what technological tools are used to implement this model in…

Despite being long-standing practice among schools across the world, most studies on international school partnerships focus on its benefits and challenges as perceived by teachers and students. Little emphasis has been given to parental perspectives and support, particularly among low-income families. With the increase of community involvement in…

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the…

Amongst Australian EAL specialists there is increasing recognition of the value of incorporating students' home languages and cultural knowledge into teaching and learning. However there remains a need for guiding principles for developing effective multilingual and translanguaging approaches for linguistically diverse students. This paper…

The underrepresentation of males from particular equity groups in Australian universities continues despite recent gains in achievement. This article presents a case study of the transition of one Aboriginal student, Robbie, from a school located in the Western suburbs of Sydney to an urban Australian university. Drawing on recent theorisations of…

This paper outlines current trends, progress, and possibilities for fostering more authentic ways to assess students' competencies and mastery of skills needed for college, work, and civic life in the 21st century. It provides an introduction to performance assessments and their value. The authors highlight efforts to develop such assessments in…

In many scientific contexts, students need to be able to use mathematical knowledge in order to engage in scientific reasoning and problem-solving, and their understanding of scientific concepts relies heavily on their ability to understand and use mathematics in often new or unfamiliar contexts. Not only do science students need high levels of…

This book identifies three types of influential forces that pose challenges to innovations: socio-cultural dynamics, teacher individuality, and local circumstances. It uses languages, cultural traits, and intellectual heritages in the Asia-Pacific region as an example to show the resistance to Western-based pedagogies due to disparities between…