This article explores the issues associated with developing ideas of informal inference and introduces the software package, TinkerPlots, as a tool to facilitate this development. The activities suggested in this article are intended for use with middle and secondary students (grades 6 to 10). The data and suggestions presented have arisen mainly…

Schools bring people together. Yet for many children there are major discontinuities between their lives in and out of school and such differences impact on literacy teaching and learning in both predictable and unpredictable ways. However if schools were reconceptualised as meeting places, where different people are thrown together (Massey, 2005)…

For those who are committed to Lesson Study as a means of developing teacher capacity and bringing about innovation of mathematics teaching and learning, there is value in looking at related strategies, now widely in use in several countries, which aim to achieve similar goals. In this paper, three related strategies will be examined alongside…

As part of a larger project, "Task Types in Mathematics Learning," through the use of a questionnaire, we sought middle years mathematics teachers' insights into the task types they chose to use in mathematics, the reasons for these choices, and the ways (if any) in which their choices had changed as a result of their involvement in the…

This paper reports partial outcomes from a three-year project that provided professional learning opportunities in mathematics for middle school teachers in rural schools in Tasmania. The educational environment for the study was one of significant system transition. Student change is reported here and was measured with survey instruments…

The following paper describes the development of an instrument designed to assess middle school students' interest in statistical literacy. The paper commences with a review of the literature as it relates to interest in this context and then proposes a theoretical model upon which the proposed instrument is based. The Rasch Rating Scale model is…

Recent scholarship has identified the emergence of a new modality of policy work: the mediatisation of policy. This paper provides an Australian case study which reports on the tactics of an Australian Federal Minister of Education and a media commentator who both engaged in public pedagogical work for the purpose of spinning education policy. In…

Teacher education programs focussing on the development of specialist teachers for "the middle years" have proliferated in Australian universities in recent years. This paper provides some insights into middle years' teacher education programs at the University of Queensland, Edith Cowan and Flinders Universities with regard to their:…

It is over 12 years since "APMC" published Bob Perry and Peter Howard's research on the use of mathematics manipulative materials in primary mathematics classrooms. Since then the availability of virtual manipulatives and associated access to computers and interactive whiteboards have caused educators to rethink the use of mathematics…

This paper reports on the first stage of a study that used "Young People as Researchers" to investigate the phenomenon of middle-year student engagement and disengagement. The first stage of the study focused on a two-day workshop that provided training for students and teachers from four secondary schools in conducting research in their…

The professional practice of teachers is shaped and directed by their sense of identity (Beijaard, Verloop, & Vermunt, 2000). All teachers have some conception of themselves as pedagogues, but they also have identities which relate to the disciplines that they are required to teach. Here we report on a project that explored the nexus of…

The success or failure of a school reform can be measured by whether the reform has become an accepted, effective, and sustainable part of the school's culture. For example, as the National Middle School Association (2003) argued, "new programs must become integral to the school culture" (p. 11) before a school can call itself a…

The purpose of this study was to examine students' psychosocial perceptions of their science classroom learning environment in order to identify exemplary teachers. This mixed-method study used the valid and reliable What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) questionnaire with over 3,000 middle school students in 150 classrooms in Australia.…

In this paper we explore the possibilities for redesigning pedagogy in the middle years of schooling. We think that the middle schooling movement in Australia is unfinished because the pedagogical reforms promised have been patchy, not well researched and difficult to sustain. As well, middle schooling is a little exhausted because it has failed…

Background: Teachers of sexuality education can often be uncertain about what theoretical basis and pedagogical strategies to use in their teaching. Sexuality educational programmes designed by teachers can often show few evident theoretical principles that have been applied in its construction. Thus, there seems to be a dearth of evidence of ways…