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…

Background: Research on academic development has mainly focused on early time periods with less attention on individual differences in development in the later school years. Methods: To improve our knowledge of how students develop academically during later school years, this study used a multivariate growth model to investigate the developmental…

This paper provides evidence that a short, fully online, well-constructed diagnostic test based on research literature can give teachers information about their students' thinking and strategies that is sufficiently accurate to use for formative assessment purposes. The example is a test for students beginning to learn to solve equations. The main…

This study examined the extent to which boys fell into clusters comprised of different levels of motivations and costs. In turn, the antecedents of these clusters and associations with engagement and wellbeing outcomes were considered. Based on survey responses from 168 students across Years 5, 7 and 9 from an all-boys' school in Sydney,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

In explaining academic achievement, school climate and social belonging (connectedness, identification) emerge as important variables. However, both constructs are rarely explored in one model. In the current study, a social psychological framework based on the social identity perspective (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) is…

The effect of early adolescent alcohol use on antisocial behavior was examined at 1- and 2-year follow-up in Washington State, United States, and Victoria, Australia. Each state used the same methods to survey statewide representative samples of students ("N" = 1,858, 52% female) in 2002 (Grade 7 [G7]), 2003 (Grade 8 [G8]), and 2004…

The primary aim of this study was two-fold: 1) to identify salient psychosocial features of the classroom environment that influence students' motivation and self-regulation in science learning; and 2) to examine the effect of the motivational constructs of learning goal orientation, science task value and self-efficacy in science learning on…

Chronic victimisation in adolescence is a traumatic experience with potential negative long-term health consequences. Given that victimisation has been shown to increase over the transition from primary to secondary school, longitudinal data from 1810 students transitioning from primary to secondary school were used to identify victimisation…

There is a dearth of published information about the Literacy and Numeracy National Assessment (LANNA). This study was designed to explore the relationships among LANNA test scores at Year 7 and, in addition, to examine the predictive capacity of these scores in relation to Year 10 School Certificate English and Mathematics results. As a way of…

A study was conducted to determine the influence of family background and attitudinal factors on occupational aspirations of Year 9 students in Victoria, Australia. A survey was made of all Victorian Year 9 students and comparisons were made between groups of students who aspired to different occupations. Discriminant function analyses were…