The first year of university can be a vulnerable time, especially for students who describe themselves as shy and who may be reluctant to engage socially. Shyness, which can be closely aligned with social anxiety, often reduces opportunities for students to belong. This paper presents the experiences of two students negotiating experiences of…

Schools are critical spaces for young men from refugee backgrounds. They play an integral role in literacy development, educational attainment, and providing a sense of belonging. Inclusive education practices for this group?are?largely absent in Australian schools. Research shows focusing on these young men from a non-deficit position assists…

Purpose: This study identifies gendered disparities among women students participating in work-integrated learning and explores the effects of the disparities on their perceptions on perceived opportunities, competencies, sense of belonging, and professional identity. Design/methodology/approach: A series of semi-structured focus groups were run…

This paper investigates the phenomena of overclaiming -- the propensity for individuals to claim more knowledge about an issue or topic than they really (or could possibly) do. Using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from nine Anglophone countries and over 40,000 young people, we examine teenagers' propensity to claim…

Recent rapid increase in the number of Australians of Asian backgrounds has significantly altered the demographic mosaic in schools. This has major ramifications for Australian classrooms with regards to the transnational exchanges now ubiquitous. In response, this paper proposes a view of cosmopolitanism as "transnational literacy" as…

Adopting a social constructionist framework, the authors conducted a synthetic discourse analysis to explore how people living in Australia with deafness construct their experience of deafness. An online forum facilitated access and communication between the lead author and 24 widely dispersed and linguistically diverse forum contributors. The…

This study developed and tested a new model of the forced choice dilemma (i.e., the belief held by some intellectually gifted students that they must choose between academic achievement and peer acceptance) that incorporates individual-level cultural orientation variables (i.e., vertical allocentrism and vertical idiocentrism). A survey that had…

Background: Positive self-concept is an important educational outcome for individuals with disability. Method: Perceived competence and acceptance of 17 children with intellectual disability, included in mainstream classes, were assessed using the Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children (PSPCSA) and…

Based on theory and research, social aspects like friendship and sense of relatedness are fundamental in the development of children's cultural identity and achievement of outcomes. It is argued that this is a motivational aspect often neglected in research studies focusing on students' motivation and learning. Theory and research on motivation…