This study examined the types of mathematical connections established by four secondary school students while constructing concept maps on transformations of the parabola. The use of concepts maps revealed students' understandings--including some misconceptions--of transformations of the parabola and confirmed the usefulness of a model for…

Completion of higher-level mathematics courses in secondary school is advantageous for success in many university-level science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses. Based on survey data from 942 Year 10 students from Western Australia, the Year 11 mathematics course choices made by girls and boys were compared. Findings indicated that…

In this paper, we analyse results from one classroom session within an 8-week program in which Year 10 students constructed 'trash' puppets of endangered Australian animals. In making the puppets and using them as part of a 'theatre in a suitcase' performance at Melbourne Zoo, students were expected to integrate both scientific and artistic goals…

Many secondary schools sort students into 'ability'-based classes, but research shows that streaming students by ability is inequitable and does not improve student academic results. There has been little qualitative research that considers students' experiences of streaming, with none that compares students' experiences in classes that are…

Concern about declining enrollments in senior school History subjects has been a regular feature of history education discourse in Australia for at least 30 years. This concern is also evident in international discourse about History being a subject "in crisis". In Australia and elsewhere, there has been increased speculation about the…

An explanation for the underrepresentation of women in mathematical fields is the communal goal congruity perspective; that women tend to value communal over agentic goals, perceived to not be afforded by mathematical careers. Less is known about how agentic and communal goals may interact to influence mathematical career trajectories. Analysing a…

Young people tend to have low levels of sexual health literacy. The aims of this work were to explore health professionals' perspectives of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education in Australia and what they considered should be the core components of SRH curriculum, particularly for Year 11 and 12 students. In September and October, 2021,…

In this study, we examined whether generalised mathematics anxiety, application of mathematics in science anxiety, and positive attitudes towards mathematics influenced adolescents' intentions to study biology, chemistry, and physics in Grades 11 and 12. Participants were 477 students in Grades 8-10 from two schools in Western Sydney. Girls…

South Australia's PISA performance has been in constant decline since 2003 with the proportion of PISA participants meeting the Australian national proficient standard dropping from 73% (in 2003) to 50% (in 2018). In contrast, Singapore is a consistently strong performer. To better understand student readiness in answering PISA questions, this…

Understanding students' perceptions of Christian education is essential for schools seeking to make changes that enhance opportunities for students to understand and engage with Christian faith. This study introduces and describes the validation of an accessible survey that probes students' perceptions of the Christian culture of their school and…

As a multifaceted concept, the learning of angle concepts takes years to achieve and is beset with challenges. This paper explores how the processes of constructing and validating a learning progression in geometric reasoning can be used to generate targeted teaching advice to support the learning of angle concept. Data from 1090 Year 4 to Year 10…

This paper investigates students' mathematical modeling activity in data-rich modeling tasks. It aims at gaining insight into how students develop meaning when modeling data-rich situations and the mathematical models produced. A tendency to model a particular dataset, rather than the phenomenon that the dataset is a particular instance of, has…

Australian students exhibit consistent challenges in learning Chinese characters, which inherently affect their Chinese literacy development in the long run. This article outlines a pedagogic intervention, which focuses on improving character recognition and vocabulary growth for students learning Chinese as a second language (L2). With a multiple…

The present study used a unique measure of self-perceived gender typicality to better examine the association of gender with cyber victimization and perpetration. Participants were 297 adolescent males and females recruited from independent schools in grade 8 (M[subscript age] = 13.8) and grade 10 (M[subscript age] = 15.8) who completed a…

Objective: The ability of schools, school leaders and teachers to promote critical health literacy in teaching and learning is central to the development of health literacy in schools. However, research focusing on teachers and planning for health literacy through health programmes in school is minimal. This paper describes how one school Health…