People participate in vocational education and training (VET) for a variety of reasons and at different stages of their life. Some undertake VET to gain the vocational skills necessary to enter the labour market for the first time, while others enter in order to upgrade existing skills, learn new ones, or simply for personal interest. Successful…

Higher education institutions globally are acknowledging the need to teach communication skills. This study used the Science Student Skills Inventory to gain insight into how science students perceive the development of communication skills across the degree programme. Responses were obtained from 635 undergraduate students enrolled in a Bachelor…

This research examines the issue of transnational academic mobility of academic staff, those choosing to migrate to higher education institutions in different countries as part of their career development, and performs a comparative study between the characteristics of academics examining Australia as a possible migratory destination with those…

It is commonly understood that democracies need actively engaged democrats and that adolescence is a significant period in life for educating engaged citizens. Whereas previous quantitative studies in the field have primarily focused on the relationships among participation-related variables, the research reported here aims to categorize secondary…

Background: Senior secondary physical education courses for certification continue to evolve with curricula reform occurring to ensure content is contemporary, student learning outcomes are maximised and assessment practices are valid for determining certification of students. The content of examinable senior secondary physical education courses…

The internationalisation of higher education generates several issues related to quality, uniformity of subjects taught across campuses and the role of differences in English-speaking ability, which may affect student learning and skills development. This study used a self-assessment survey framework to investigate Australian (native English…

Pre-service teachers enter teacher education with beliefs about teaching and ideas on pedagogical approaches. This research focuses on monitoring the pedagogical beliefs of a cohort of pre-service teachers' pre-existing pedagogical beliefs on important/relevant pedagogy for secondary teaching and how these beliefs changed over the course of their…

Building active and informed citizens is a major part of civics and citizenship education in order to enhance and sustain democracies. Civic learning and civic action opportunities within school contexts are commonly claimed to promote an active and informed citizenry. In the present research, we examine the meaning of formal civics education and…

Feedback is known to have a large influence on student learning gains, and the emergence of online tools has greatly enhanced the opportunity for delivering timely, expressive, digital feedback and for investigating its learning impacts. However, to date there have been no large quantitative investigations of the feedback provided by large teams…

Child development for a cohort of urban Aboriginal children was assessed at three time points: 12 months, 3 years and 4.5 years. This paper reports developmental findings and explores the impact of child, family, home and community variables over time. Overall, child development at 4.5 years was significantly below the standardised mean. Female…

This article reports on a study that investigated the education pathways of 464 young people. We were interested in the effects of New Zealand citizenship and Pacific ethnicity on pathways so compared findings for three groups residing in Australia: Pacific youth with New Zealand citizenship, Pacific youth with Australian citizenship, and…

In 2010, second-year physiology (n = 165) had a traditional single 3-h end-of-semester exam. To provide diagnostic feedback earlier, for students enrolled in 2011 (n = 128), we incorporated an in-class exam at 3 wk in addition to the final exam. Based on initial analysis and positive student comments, for the 2012 cohort (n = 148), we expanded…

The benefits attributed to field trips by science educators are: social development; observation and perception skills; giving meaning to learning; providing first-hand experience and stimulating interest and motivation. Arguably, the "real value" of field work is attributed by students. In this study, 100 first-year students took part…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on a study examining the existence and perceived influence of "generational collide" for teachers and leaders across three generations--Baby Boomers, Generation X (Gen X) and Generation Y (Gen Y). The study sought to further determine if a teacher's generation, gender, school level or…

In this study, the Science Student Skills Inventory was used to gain understanding of student perceptions about their quantitative skills and compare perceptions of cohorts graduating before and after the implementation of a new science curriculum intent on developing quantitative skills. The study involved 600 responses from final-year…