Students' prior achievements in school have significant correlations with their later achievements. Specifically, students' prior numeracy achievement is the most important predictor of later numeracy success. However, the assessment of this predictor across gender and its trend across students' year levels is often overlooked or not adequately…

An explanation for the underrepresentation of women in mathematical fields is the communal goal congruity perspective; that women tend to value communal over agentic goals, perceived to not be afforded by mathematical careers. Less is known about how agentic and communal goals may interact to influence mathematical career trajectories. Analysing a…

In this study, we examined whether generalised mathematics anxiety, application of mathematics in science anxiety, and positive attitudes towards mathematics influenced adolescents' intentions to study biology, chemistry, and physics in Grades 11 and 12. Participants were 477 students in Grades 8-10 from two schools in Western Sydney. Girls…

Australian children from regional, rural and remote (RRR) areas exhibit lower educational outcomes than their peers in metropolitan areas. The mechanisms driving the comparatively poorer educational outcomes of children in RRR areas, however, are not well understood. This paper proposes and tests two sets of factors that may be responsible for…

This research sought to explore the main factors affecting young people's image-sharing behaviors, particularly in the context of peer relationships and norms. Ten focus groups were held with young people aged 13 to 14 years (Grade 9) with a total of 68 participants (39 females and 29 males) across 15 Australian schools contributing to the…

The dual-factor model of mental health proposes that high wellbeing and low distress are necessary to define mental health. This study used latent profile analysis to identify mental health profiles in a sample of 3,587 Australian grade 6 students and explored the association between mental health profiles and school outcomes measured in grades 7…

There is growing interest in the introduction of Einsteinian concepts of space, time, light and gravity across the entire school curriculum. We have developed an educational programme named 'Einstein-First', which focuses on teaching Einsteinian concepts by using simple models and analogies. To test the effectiveness of these models and analogies…

Among a sample of 472 Indigenous high school students, juxtaposed with 15,884 non-Indigenous students from the same 54 schools, we investigated variation in motivation and engagement from school to school, and the role of motivation and engagement in predicting various academic outcomes (aspirations, buoyancy, homework completion, and…

The barriers to school attendance that affect young Aboriginal people in Australia are diverse, immense and well documented; however, except for a handful of studies, Aboriginal students' voices receive no platform for policy makers to hear them. In this paper, we present results from yarning circles about barriers to school attendance conducted…

Sports participation and elite sporting success are fundamental to Australian culture and a prominent source of national pride. As sport is a major part of day-to-day living in Australia, it is not surprising that many young people aspire to careers as sportspersons. While such aspirations are often dismissed as fanciful and unattainable, the…

Purpose: The consequences of problematic alcohol consumption fall heavily on Australian adolescents, with this population at increased risk of death, serious injury and other harm. Research regarding whether gender, socioeconomic status (SES) or locality play a role in young people's alcohol consumption and related harm is limited in Australia.…

Declines in the scores of Australian 15-year-old students from the Programme for International Student Assessment are a matter of policy interest. Some of the declines may have resulted from shifts in the age-grade distributions of students in the Programme for International Student Assessment samples. We use multiple regression methods to model…

This study examines the development of self-esteem in a sample of 138 Australian adolescents (90 males; 48 females) with cognitive abilities in the lowest 15% (L-CA) and a matched sample of 556 Australian adolescents (312 males; 244 females) with average to high levels of cognitive abilities (A/H-CA). These participants were measured annually…

Exploring why more boys than girls continue to study higher levels of mathematics in senior school when there appear to be no gender differences in achievement in earlier years is worthy of investigation. There are potentially many reasons why this occurs including career aspirations, interest, and attitudes. One factor explored in this study was…

This paper contributes to the literature by separately analysing the course enrolment and completion effects of vocational education and training (VET) as well as higher education. Moreover, we investigate the persistence of these wage effects over time while controlling for two potential selection biases. We take advantage of the Longitudinal…