Curriculum design in higher education environments, namely the consideration of aims, learning outcomes, syllabus, pedagogy and assessment, can often be ad hoc and driven by informal cultural habits. Academics with disciplinary expertise may be resistant to (or ignorant of) pedagogical approaches beyond existing practice. In an environment where…

Mental health consumers in Australia have a basic right of access to high-quality mental health assessment and treatment. Given that universities are the entry point to the training process, they have a responsibility to train high-quality clinicians. Clinical psychology is the sub-discipline of psychology with specialist training in mental health…

Using a mixed-methods approach the authors compared the associated practices of senior physics teachers (n = 7) and students (n = 53) in a 1:1 laptop environment with those of senior biology teachers (n = 10) and students (n = 125) also in a 1:1 laptop environment, in seven high schools in Sydney, NSW, Australia. They found that the physics…

The problem of students entering university lacking basic mathematical skills is a critical issue in the Australian higher-education sector and relevant globally. The Maths Skills programme at La Trobe University has been developed to address under preparation in the first-year science cohort in the absence of an institutional mathematics support…

As in many countries, such as Germany, Turkey, the United States and Japan the history/culture wars of the past two decades have increased public interest in what is taught in schools. This has resulted in rigorous debates in the general community, encouraged and sustained through regular media coverage. Partly as a response to this, History has…

There is a tendency for lecture-based instruction in large introductory science courses to strongly focus on the delivery of discipline-specific technical terminology and fundamental concepts, sometimes to the detriment of opportunities for application of learned knowledge in evidence-based critical-thinking activities. We sought to improve…

Following entry into the workforce, there are limited opportunities for new graduate teachers to engage in critically reflective activities about their educative practice. In an increasingly complex and challenging profession, the need for teachers, administrators and school systems to become involved in professional development activities is ever…

In recent decades, the literature paid attention to students' conceptions of the nature of disciplines. This study aimed to investigate how students' cohesive and fragment conceptions of physics changed with a major change in senior high school physics syllabus. We obtained measures of conceptions of physics by utilizing a 20-item questionnaire…

Today's graduates need the skills to enable them to "persevere in the face of complexity and unresolvability" (McWilliam and Haukka 2008: 660), and to respond creatively in work environments that are increasingly dependent on digital technologies (Cunningham 2006). However, although many higher education institutions (HEIs) acknowledge…

Almost every higher education institution is challenged to develop increasing numbers of staff to teach online or blended modes of learning. The process needs to be rapid, cost-effective and lead directly to practical outcomes. From our experience, we had little time, opportunity or the need to start from scratch, and we chose to adopt and adapt a…

Communication skills are critical for an accountant's workplace success; however accounting education research to date has mainly focused on the writing and presentation skills aspects of communication skills. Research on developing accounting students' interpersonal skills has received scant attention. This paper provides an example of how to…

This paper explores and analyses similarities and differences in ICT curricula, policies, and assessment between the Vietnamese and Australian educational systems for the final years of secondary educational level. It was found that while having a common core set of tendencies, the Australian ICT curricula, policies, and assessments differ…

Although teamwork has been identified as an essential skill for Computer Science (CS) graduates, these skills are identified as lacking by industry employers, which suggests a need for more proactive measures to teach and assess teamwork. In one CS course, students worked in teams to create a wiki solution to problem-based questions. Through a…

With the spread of the Internet, students now have greater opportunities to use Japanese outside of the classroom. For example, they can interact with other Japanese speakers through instant messaging or social networking, or utilize online dictionaries and translation tools to decipher websites in ways that would be impossible with traditional…

Interpreting the image-language interface in multimodal texts is now well recognized as a crucial aspect of reading comprehension in a number of official school syllabi such as the recently published Australian Curriculum: English (ACE). This article outlines the relevant expected student learning outcomes in this curriculum and draws attention to…