In 2017, 5019 educators from primary and preschool settings across Victoria, Australia took part in joint professional learning around effective transition to school processes. Upon registering for this professional learning workshop, participants were invited to identify the most significant challenges associated with transition to school. The…

The need for a new measure of social-emotional wellbeing for children 6--12 years emerged in our collaboration with schools and community agencies in a disadvantaged region of Brisbane, Australia. Our search for an age-appropriate medium led us to develop "Clowning Around", a computer game generating data which was assessed for validity…

This paper describes the research protocol for the Educational and Developmental Gains in Early Childhood (EDGE) Study, which will examine the implementation of two years of funded kindergarten prior to the first year of school in Victoria, Australia. EDGE will examine whether children's language, cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioural…

Parents have the option of enrolling their children in the first stage of early childhood education (from 0 to 3 years of age). However, not all parents decide to do so, waiting until the second stage of early childhood education to enrol them in the education system (from 3 to 5 years of age), or even until compulsory education when their…

Moral reasoning and theory of mind (ToM) are two distinct but related aspects of social cognition. While past research has clearly documented serious delays in ToM development for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) both cross-sectionally (e.g. Happe, 1995) and longitudinally (Peterson & Wellman, 2020) much less is known about the…

This article discusses findings from the first 10 years of the Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with Hearing Impairment (LOCHI) Study, which includes more than 450 deaf and hard of hearing Australian children whose hearing losses were identified variously through newborn hearing screening or later paths to confirmation and intervention.

The purpose of the study was to investigate how knowledge of giftedness impacts self-concept of gifted adolescents. Guided by Sirgy's (1997) Self Congruity Theory and Shavelson et al.'s (1976) multidimensional hierarchical self-concept model, data collection was undertaken using semi-structured interviews with 11 Australian gifted adolescents and…

Student engagement research in university students has been scarce, despite its major positive role on performance, degree completion and mental health. Social and emotional competencies, which are currently called twenty-first-century skills, exert some impact on student engagement in youth. Since engagement is cultural-sensitive, individual…

Current research around the middle grades has brought a heightened attention by teachers, policymakers, and researchers recognizing that this stage is a time when a students' health and social and emotional well-being directly impacts their academic progress. To date, school leaders and teachers have not been well served by explicit resources for…

Teachers have the ability to influence a child's sense of belonging and peer relationships in the classroom which are important for a child's social development. Currently, little is known about the ways in which they do this. Vygotsky's concept of the social situation of development and Hedegaard's model for learning and development were used to…

The social and emotional wellbeing of all students, regardless of setting, is recognised as a fundamental requirement for successful learning and social development. The COVID-19 pandemic of the past two years has witnessed disruptions to teaching and learning and peer relationship development for students. Societies have been in lockdown;…

Research increasingly acknowledges the importance of high quality interactions that support and extend children's thinking. Few measurement tools currently exist, however, to capture this specific aspect of process quality. The Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Wellbeing (SSTEW) scale was developed to assess interactional quality in early…

Developing and nurturing resilience is critical to the social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) of Indigenous Australian adolescents and their continuing life trajectories. The attendance of many Indigenous adolescents from remote communities at boarding schools creates a need to prioritise and proactively create opportunities that build and nurture…

Introduction: The global trend of new curricula in many OECD countries indicates that social interaction skills are becoming increasingly important. Educators need to start fostering the development of learners' social competences, which requires development of their own knowledge and skills. This study investigated the possible change in…

In recent years, preschooler's self-regulation has been extensively researched. This systematic review deals with the overlaps and differences among the many different terminologies and definitions of self-regulation in childhood and the association with preschooler's social-emotional and behavioural development. A systematic literature search in…