This paper reports on findings from the first Western Australian Survey of Educators of Sexuality Education, which aimed to assess the state of relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in the state of Western Australia. Key findings show that secondary school teachers provided more hours of RSE instruction than the national average. However,…

Despite an increasing international trend towards integrating linguistics into the mainstream English curriculum, many teachers struggle to find exciting and relevant ways to cover this material with their students. In this article, we describe how nicknames collected as part of a research study of Australian secondary students can be used as a…

Rubrics for assessing student performance are often seen as providing rich information about complex skills. Despite their widespread usage, however, little empirical research has focused on whether it is possible for rubrics to validly meet their intended purposes. The authors examine a rubric used to assess students' writing in a large-scale…

This study explores the longitudinal effect of adolescent volunteering behaviour on young adult volunteering and the completion of secondary school. Utilising data from the Australian sample of the International Youth Development Study, frequency of volunteering in Grade 9 (mean age = 15 years) and in young adulthood (mean age = 21 years), and…

"Blended" and "flipped" pedagogies are becoming more common features of classrooms as the technological revolution continues. While the appropriate use of technology in the learning environment can serve to motivate some students, significant problems surrounding student motivation and engagement remain. As such, the…

A significant body of research documents the negative consequences of dropping out of school for both the individual and society. In attempting to respond to the problem of early school leaving, schools and systems internationally have put in place a range of system-level and local responses such as mentoring, targeted additional career guidance…

In this paper, the authors describe the initial stage of developing a framework designed to support out-of-field, less experiences or isolated mathematics and science teachers to make decisions about the use of resources in their teaching. The process highlighted the complexity and extent of the knowledge on which expert teachers draw in making…

Many current economic and social challenges lead to waves of migrating people. The countries where migrants seek refuge can be ethnically homogeneous and monolingual such as Greece, or more frequently, ethnically diverse with local Indigenous populations which have been subjugated and marginalized, such as the US or Australia. In either context, a…

In this study, we investigated the value of a concept map marking guide as an alternative formative assessment tool for science teachers to adopt for the topic of energy. Eight high school science teachers marked students' concept maps using an itemized holistic marking guide. Their marking was compared with the researchers' marking and the scores…

This study examines whether and how student-perceived parents' and teachers' overestimation of students' own perceived mathematical ability can explain trajectories for adolescents' mathematical task values (intrinsic and utility) controlling for measured achievement, following expectancy-value and self-determination theories. Longitudinal data…

This study examines the association between moral disengagement and cyberbullying using a measure of moral disengagement tailored to cyberbullying. It also examines adolescents' self-beliefs in their competence to engage in cyberbullying (cyberbullying self-efficacy beliefs) and how these beliefs may moderate the relation between moral…

Exploring why more boys than girls continue to study higher levels of mathematics in senior school when there appear to be no gender differences in achievement in earlier years is worthy of investigation. There are potentially many reasons why this occurs including career aspirations, interest, and attitudes. One factor explored in this study was…

Sport is a context that provides positive developmental benefits to adolescents. However, these benefits are not distributed equally to all participants. This study examined whether the motivational constructs of attainment value and ability self-concept were related to positive developmental experiences in sport, and tested intensity of…

The increase in the use of educational technologies in Australian high schools has sparked this investigation into how Year 9 (13 to 14 years of age) students experience and negotiate a new technology enhanced learning environment in a bilingual classroom setting. The paper is about examining the students' language practices in German and English…

During adolescence (e.g. ages 13-15) communication and connectedness with peers is an essential part of adolescents' self-formation; mobiles phones are a conduit that maintains both communication and connectedness among adolescents whereby social interactions and connectedness are not limited by place, context or time. To study mobile phone usage…