Identifies students' conceptions that could be categorized as scientifically acceptable and investigates the nature of any possible relationship between these concepts. Investigates 6th and 10th grade students' ideas on whether gravity acted upon a series of moving or non-moving objects in everyday situations. (Contains 41 references.) (Author/YDS)

Various explanations and solutions have been proposed over the last ten years in relation to the ongoing problem of student lack of engagement with the middle years' curriculum in Australia. Identified contributors to this problem include an irrelevant or trivial curricular focus and ineffectual teaching and learning strategies. In this paper we…

Representing Australia, Canada, England, the United States, and Wales, this collection of essays focuses on ways in which teachers can adapt classroom activities and modify writing assignments to encourage personal response and exploration of texts. Essays, their authors, and nationalities are as follows: (1) "The River and Its Banks:…

In this article, the author first reviews a range of concerns about middle schooling in America, most of which are shown to have salience in Australia, to provide a context for a more detailed examination of integrated curriculum as a significant issue in contemporary middle schooling. Two examples of integrated curriculum in the Australian…

Ethnography has the capacity to interrogate and unravel what Geertz called "webs of significance" in respect of difficult and perplexing cultural issues. One arena that is especially troubling at the moment lies in the need to pose questions and explore more robust explanations as to how it is that some teachers of young adolescents seem…

This middle school curriculum guide provides support for teaching and learning about issues related to achieving a fair and just Australian society. An Introduction, the first and core chapter, introduces information, concepts, teaching strategies, and thinking tools used throughout the materials. The materials support learning areas for health…

Investigated the effects of variation in teacher wait-time on science achievement for students (N=733) in 11 Australian middle schools. Conclusions provide evidence that the extension of teacher wait-time produces desirable changes in achievement. (CS)

Examines student discourse in both small and large contexts. Explores the role of shared inquiry and the nature of consensus-building in students' development of explanations from a collaborative knowledge-building stance. Concludes that two forms of discourse (constructive and generative, dialectic and persuasive) effectively promote progressive…

Trinity College is a low-fee independent school in Gawler, South Australia. The college has an enrolment of 3500 students of varied socioeconomic mix, drawn from the northern suburbs of Adelaide. Trinity has recently been restructured into four R-10 schools and one senior school for Years 11-13. The schools share a common mathematics curriculum.…

In Western Australia (WA), similar to practices elsewhere, there has been a strong focus on the need for schools to reconsider their practices to increase opportunities for more equitable and inclusive access for all children. Subsequent to a major review of service provision for students with disabilities in WA (Department of Education and…

The year 2006 has been a year in which a decision on the introduction of middle schools has been made by the Labor government of the Northern Territory. The initial impetus for the change came from the 2003 Secondary Education Review "Future Directions for Secondary Education in the Northern Territory," chaired by Gregor Ramsay. There…

It is widely postulated that school context characteristics and sex may influence students' motivational orientations. However, relatively little empirical evidence exists to support this postulate. Hence the present study sought to examine both the individual and interactive effects of school and sex differences on students' motivational goals.…

The Northern Territory's population commingles Anglo, European and Asian cultural communities. At over 25 percent, it also has Australia's proportionately largest indigenous population. Consequently it presents an amazing proving ground for people-related research projects. One such project is "Boys Business", involving middle years'…

For one middle school teacher, the "functional grammar" approach to narrative writing promised to offer students explicit instruction in how to structure a narrative text to build up suspense, and it could give focus to the types of descriptive language that further engage readers. Her classroom research was built on the teacher…

Investigated were the attitudes of two groups of students in their first year of secondary education at four metropolitan senior high schools in Western Australia. Results indicated that there was little attitude difference between the group which had experienced the new curriculum and those who had not. (CW)