This paper discusses educational insights drawn from a mixed-methods study in Religious Education (RE). The study involved 238 teachers and school leaders, working in 65 Catholic schools in Western Australia (WA). The focus of the study was the educators' perceptions of a large-scale, standardised assessment (LSA) called "The Bishops'…

Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) is widely acknowledged as essential for educational achievement and fostering continuous learning skills (Taranto & Buchanan, 2020). As a result, there has been a marked escalation in embedding SRL criteria within academic curriculums, including primary education (De Smul et al., 2020; Heirweg et al., 2021).…

This article considers how teachers' encounters with a newly built learning space are complicit in the practices performed in that space. It builds on previous research into the relationship between learning spaces and pedagogical change by highlighting the acoustic aspects and how they were perceived by teachers in a primary school. Over two…

This study set out to explore levels of religious affect (measured by the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity) and personal affect (measured by the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire) among samples of Catholic students in the Republic of Ireland attending fifth- and sixth-year classes (N = 3015) and Catholic students in Northern Ireland…

School districts continue to strive to enhance students' academic achievement. Various studies and literature highlight the significance of the role of non- academic subjects, which in Ontario, Canada, are referred to as learning skills. Teachers in Ontario are mandated to report on six learning skills three times in a school year within their…

A higher proportion of students are privately educated in Australia, compared with many other nations. In this paper, we tested the assumption that private schools offer better quality education than public schools. We examined differences in student achievement on the National Assessment Programme: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) between public,…

In recent decades, Ireland has experienced an increase in diversity due to immigration. The purpose of this study is to explore how three Irish-born primary-grade children of Nigerian immigrants in Ireland, one girl and two boys in the 5th and 6th grades, describe experiences of racism and perceive being Irish in a predominantly White, but…

Understanding what contributes to academic engagement is important to effectively support students. This study examines the relationship between sociodemographic factors, anxiety, social support, and academic engagement in elementary and junior high school students. Students in grades 5-9 (N = 1,904) completed self-reports measuring academic…

Notwithstanding dramatically low levels of professed religiosity in Western Europe, the religious school sector continues to thrive. One explanation for this paradox is that nowadays parents choose religious schools primarily for their higher academic reputation. Empirical evidence for this presumed denominational advantage is mixed. We examine…

The bulk of scholarship on multicultural education continues to focus exclusively on U.S. education. Previous studies published in this field also have focused largely on topics that are considered relevant for the United States, whereas little attention has been paid to topics that are less problematized in the United States. In this mixed-method…

This paper discusses gaming in a Western Australian school for boys. The overriding ethos of the school is supportive of the potential of ICT to better engage students and deliver enhanced educational outcomes. The school sees game-based design as at the vanguard of innovation, but also accepts its important duty of care responsibilities. Tensions…

This study of 1,601 students in the middle years of schooling (Grades 5-8, each student measured twice, 1 year apart) from 200 classrooms in 44 schools sought to identify factors explaining gains and declines in mathematics engagement at key transition points. In multilevel regression modeling, findings showed that compared with Grade 6 students…

This paper examines primary school-aged children's lived experiences of the National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests. NAPLAN emulates the neoliberal accountability agendas of English and US education systems, with results published on the My School website. Research on the impact of NAPLAN to date has focused predominantly…

Today's primary schools are being designed in a totally different way from those of only a few years ago. In Australia, both the Victorian Government and the Catholic education authorities have changed their notion of schooling. The most significant change has been the linking of curriculum, pedagogy and the types of spaces in which children…

Empirical research exploring the spiritual lives of young children in Australia is a field in which scholarship is beginning to emerge. This article reports on one particular finding that emerged from an Australian study seeking to identify some characteristics of children's spirituality in Catholic primary schools. The characteristic has been…