This paper reports on students' experiences of describing and representing variation in hypothetical data. Fifty-six students (8-9 years-old) experienced collecting and working with quantitative data for two years as part of a STEM education project. The task described here was an end-of-year survey question, with three parts about a hypothetical…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education worldwide as educational systems made the decision to close schools to contain the spread of the virus. The duration of school closures varied greatly internationally. In this study, we use representative trend data from more than 300,000 students in 29 countries to examine whether the cross-country…

There has been considerable research into how children solve single-digit addition problems for more than a century now, which has brought about significant changes to the ways teachers' support children to retrieve single-digit addition facts. In this project, we examine what makes an addition problem difficult to retrieve in light of…

By the end of 2021, more than 168 million students across the globe had missed a year of face-to-face schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In NSW, Australia, most students engaged in learning from home for eight weeks during 2020 and a further 14 weeks during 2021. This study provides robust empirical evidence on how two years of disruptions to…

The intangible concept of data, as part of statistical literacy, can be complex for young children to grasp. Inquiry as a pedagogy has potential for supporting student development of statistical literacy as the investigation process is driven by the inquiry question. The aim of this paper is to gain insight into how a teacher's communication…

The teaching and learning of statistical thinking begins at a young age in Australia, with a focus on data representation and interpretation from Foundation Year (age 5), and the collection, sorting and categorising of items from the natural environment starting even earlier. The intangible concept of "data," as part of statistical…

How might fourth graders address the problem of measuring the size of a leaf? And why might their classroom teachers choose such a shape to measure? One group of fourth-grade students in an urban Australian school were interested in knowing the sizes of leaves on a passionfruit vine growing at their school. The children were excited after a visit…

Drama has the potential to enrich and enliven established approaches to literacy learning, engaging students and expanding their possibilities for meaning-making. Drama-rich pedagogy is well-established as an effective tool in supporting language and literacy development. However, research to date has not explored the possibilities of using drama…

Surveys such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) enable educators, policymakers and the wider community to compare Australian students with each other, as well as their counterparts across the…

Low participation rates of students studying science at the secondary level are of international concern. One of the under-researched factors influencing low participation rates in the sciences in Australia is primary school student stereotypes concerning science and scientists. We explore how Year 4 (9-10-year-olds) students perceive science,…

The shift from additive to multiplicative thinking is challenging for students. A professional learning program was developed that focused on an identified area of need by teachers, namely multiplicative thinking. Program content focused on concepts underpinning multiplicative thinking, pedagogical approaches, challenging tasks, and application to…

Purpose: Using data from 1,868 children from the US, Australia, and Sweden who took a 10-word spelling test in kindergarten and a standardized spelling test in Grades 1, 2, and (except for the Australian children) Grade 4, we examined two questions. First, does the quality of a child's errors on the kindergarten test help predict later spelling…

Therapy dogs can improve the social and mental health outcomes for children and adolescents. School-based interventions that address social and emotional learning (SEL) can promote children's overall wellbeing and educational outcomes. This study used a qualitative approach to explore children's perceptions of a 12-week therapy dog-assisted SEL…

One of the main objectives of international large-scale assessments is to make comparisons between different countries, education policies, education systems, or subgroups. One of the main criteria for making comparisons between different groups is to ensure measurement invariance. The purpose of this study was to test the measurement invariance…

There has been much discussion about the high performance of East Asian students in international high stakes testing, but little attention has been paid to their lifeworlds beyond school. In this article we explore findings from a survey of 627 Year 4 children (nine and ten years old) in three global cities (Hong Kong, Singapore, and Melbourne),…