Research has shown that an audience can make a great difference to a musical performance but limited research has explored this with primary school-aged children. Using an action research study, participants from a primary school choir, students in fifth and sixth class formed into a choir through a compulsory singing programme, were surveyed to…

Affective engagement, as one facet of the engagement model, takes on the role of activating other aspects to facilitate continued action in partaking in learning activities. Recognising the silences of Bernstein's theoretical oeuvre on the affective aspect in the process of cultural transmission, this paper applies his concepts of classification…

Purpose: Children who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH), their parents, Teachers of the Deaf, and other community stakeholders were involved in co-designing a web-based resource to support students' social-emotional well-being. The resource was designed to provide families and teachers with strategies to enhance the social and emotional…

A young person's sense of belonging at school can affect their level of motivation, academic achievement and wellbeing. During the transition from primary to secondary school, one's sense of belonging may be affected by the changes and challenges encountered. This paper reports some of the findings from a larger qualitative longitudinal study that…

Building on recent research into the importance of positive teacher emotions for student learning experiences, the current study involved five upper primary teachers at a Victorian government school developing integrated mathematics units built around topic areas of personal interest or passion. Respective students (n=88) elected to participate in…

This study draws on a survey of 800 upper primary school students concerning their knowledge of certain 'new media' applications. The findings concur with other studies in suggesting that students' relationship with technology is more complex and nuanced than is conveyed by a simple branding of 'digital native'. Some differential experiences…

Primary school teachers are often tasked with puberty/sexuality education for students who are undergoing sexual maturation at ever-earlier ages. This study explores the changing trajectories of the pre-service learning and teaching of primary school puberty/sexuality education at an urban university, including student-teachers' childhood…

Increasingly, children today are becoming disconnected from the natural environments resulting in a diminished sense of self, place and community. In an attempt to find out their perceptions, attitudes and values about the natural world, twenty-five Year 6 and 7 students from a northern Adelaide primary school participated in a nature-play case…

The rapid growth of research on Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) over the past decade has paid little attention to research methodology. This paper redresses this lack of attention to research methods and reports on a study conducted on children's personal experiences of Game Sense. The study focuses on the use of year six students'…

This paper draws on Matthew's story to illustrate the conflicting discourses of being a boy and being a student. Matthew is 12 years old and in Grade Six, his final year at Banrock Primary (a K-6 Australian State School). School is far from a happy place for Matthew--his tearful accounts of his combative relationships with his peers and his…