This paper reports on an instrumental case study exploring what migrant and refugee-background youth in Australia make of the critical media literacy they learn in school, and what critical media practices they use out of school. It addresses the perennial question of the relationship between school literacy learning and everyday literate lives,…

Purpose: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at increased risk of experiencing difficulties with the development of literacy, including the emergent literacy skills recognized to underpin conventional literacy success. Comprehensive assessment is essential. Characteristics of ASD can make assessment challenging, and this can be…

Research Findings: Young children develop numeracy competencies during interactions with more knowledgeable others. Such interactions typically occur in the home numeracy environment (HNE). In this study a nonintensive intervention procedure was developed to improve both the HNE and numerical competencies. All parents of 113 Australian children…

This paper investigated linguistic practices and choices of Australian children of Indian descent, an under-researched group, who are studying Hindi in primary education. Data was collected using a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with sixty participants across 3 primary schools in the Sydney area. The findings revealed, as expected,…

The increasing use of information and communication technology (ICT) in schools has been largely explored in relation to how students' use ICT at school. In addition students' lives and experiences with technology beyond school have also begun to be explored. However, the nexus between the two is still an underdeveloped research area. Anecdotally…

In Australia, emphasis in early childhood education policy is placed on the importance of the role of the family as a child's first educator, and finding effective ways to raise the effectiveness of parents in supporting children's learning, development and well-being. International studies demonstrate that the home learning environment (HLE)…

The combined impact of social class, cultural background and experience upon early literacy achievement in the first year of schooling is among the most durable questions in educational research. Links have been established between social class and achievement but literacy involves complex social and cognitive practices that are not necessarily…

TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) is an international assessment of mathematics and science at the fourth and eighth grades that has been conducted every four years since 1995, with the most recent assessment in 2011. PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) is an international assessment of reading…

It is well documented that children of middle-class parents generally do better at school than their working-class peers and despite increases in school retention rates in Australia, this remains the case. Social reproduction theories are often used to describe this phenomenon. Social reproduction theory assumes that a family's class position is…