Since 2008 Australia has held the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (known as NAPLAN) for all students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Despite the multilingual character of the Australian population, these standardized literacy and numeracy tests are built on an assumption of English as a first language competency. The capacity for…

The PISA 2000 study found large differences between countries in terms of quality of learning. In some countries, students prefer rote learning to meaningful learning. However, such memorisation of the material does not lead to recallable and usable knowledge in the long run. Ausubel's (1968) well-known theory serves as a basis for several…

This paper reports on a national study, involving a mixed-method research design comprising a randomised controlled trial (RCT), text analysis, student and teacher interviews and lesson observations. It set out to investigate whether contextualised teaching of grammar, linked to the teaching of writing, would improve student outcomes in writing…