Data reporting in the Australian education system produces deficit-based comparisons of academic achievement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Since 2009, data from the National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) have been used by the Australian government to allow it to report on 'Closing the Gap' policy. These…

Objective: There is limited empirical research investigating the relationship between well-being and academic achievement and existing studies are largely conducted using cross-sectional methodology constraining conclusions regarding causality. Method: This study conducted at a South Australian high school addresses this gap by longitudinally…

Indigenous students in the middle-school years who experience difficulties in basic mathematics are a particularly vulnerable group. During these years gaps in performance between educationally disadvantaged students and their peers widen, potentially leading to ongoing economic and social disadvantage. This proposal reports on a teaching…

The Learning and Engagement Questionnaire (LEQ) measures instructional and environmental variables associated with learner engagement. The present study sought to determine the suitability of the LEQ to measure learner engagement with a sample of Canadian teachers and to further investigate the factorial structure in comparison with the Australian…

Early adolescence marks a developmental period during which there is a window of opportunity to explicitly teach and make a significant difference in a young person's development of social and emotional competencies (SECs). All students can benefit from the inclusion of SECs and failing to develop such SECs can result in poor outcomes in several…

Most existing research indicates that working students perform more poorly than do full-time students on standardized achievement tests. However, we know there are wide international variations in this gap. This article shows that national and international contexts help to explain the gap in the academic performance between working and nonworking…

The present study investigated multidimensional motivation and engagement among Chinese middle school students in Australia (N?=?273), Hong Kong (N?=?528), and Mainland China (N?=?2106; randomly selected N?=?528). Findings showed that a multidimensional model of motivation and engagement fit very well for all three groups. Multi-group invariance…

The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model and dimensional comparison theory posit paradoxical relations between achievement (ACH) and self-concept (SC) in mathematics (M) and verbal (V) domains; ACH in each domain positively affects SC in the matching domain (e.g., MACH to MSC) but negatively in the nonmatching domain (e.g., MACH to…

There are ethnic group differences in academic achievement among Australian students, with Aboriginal students performing substantially below and Asian students above their peers. One factor that may contribute to these effects is societal stereotypes of Australian Asian and Aboriginal students, which may bias teachers' evaluations and influence…

In this study, a comprehensive educational effectiveness model is tested in relation to student's civic knowledge. Multilevel analysis was applied on the dataset of the IEA Civic Education Study (CIVED; Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Schulz, 2001), which was conducted among junior secondary-school students (age 14), their schools, and their…

This paper reports partial outcomes from a three-year project that provided professional learning opportunities in mathematics for middle school teachers in rural schools in Tasmania. The educational environment for the study was one of significant system transition. Student change is reported here and was measured with survey instruments…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 13th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2016), October 28-30, 2016, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by the University of Mannheim, Germany, and endorsed by the…

The middle years are a crucial stage of schooling where the range in student achievement widens and progress for some students slows significantly (Cairney, Buchanan, Sproats & Lowe 1998, Hill & Russell 1999). Despite moves towards middle school reform and improved literacy standards, there remains a gap in literacy provision for young…

Age, gender, cultural, and socioeconomic differences in relations between middle school students' motivational goal orientations, their cognitive and metacognitive strategies, and their academic achievement in a variety of curriculum domains were studied. Studies to date typically have used either cognitive or motivational variables to account for…

The relationships between middle school students' multiple motivational goal orientations and their use of multiple cognitive and metacognitive strategies were studied with a focus on relations between these motivational and cognitive variables and students' academic achievement in two curriculum areas. Participants were 602 middle school students…