In 2017, 5019 educators from primary and preschool settings across Victoria, Australia took part in joint professional learning around effective transition to school processes. Upon registering for this professional learning workshop, participants were invited to identify the most significant challenges associated with transition to school. The…

Contrary to popular myth, teachers do not simply deliver a ready-made curriculum. Rather, they interpret and make meaning of the curriculum. The introduction of a capabilities dimension in the formal curriculum in Australia invites a case study of curriculum innovation in action. Drawing on Clandinin and Connelly's narrative inquiry approach,…

Design thinking is often proposed as an educative strategy to enhance growth mindset, problem solving, and creativity, but there are very few evaluations of the impact of experiential design thinking programs. The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether an online design-thinking workshop provided to outdoor education staff could…

Purpose: Despite a growing awareness of the gap between professional expectations and competence, there has been no comprehensive appraisal of sustainable food systems (SFS) education within dietetics and nutrition programs to date. Dietitians and nutritionists play important roles in promoting sustainability yet many perceive themselves to be…

Purpose: This conceptual paper explores the complex, and neglected, area of mentor development in initial teacher education (ITE) in Australia. It focuses on the emotionality of mentoring, drawing on concepts of emotional labour and emotional intelligence to develop a framework of effective mentoring that helps explain the essence of a mentor's…

The need for a new measure of social-emotional wellbeing for children 6--12 years emerged in our collaboration with schools and community agencies in a disadvantaged region of Brisbane, Australia. Our search for an age-appropriate medium led us to develop "Clowning Around", a computer game generating data which was assessed for validity…

This paper describes the research protocol for the Educational and Developmental Gains in Early Childhood (EDGE) Study, which will examine the implementation of two years of funded kindergarten prior to the first year of school in Victoria, Australia. EDGE will examine whether children's language, cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioural…

Background: Coaching is grounded in three knowledge components: professional, interpersonal and intrapersonal knowledge. Coach development research has shown that coaches value contextual, in situ, learning with mentors more highly than formal, mediated programs that are offered by sporting bodies, which often provide generic content. Purpose: The…

There are increasing demands for teachers to continue to improve the quality of education. This focus is evident in the Early Childhood Education and Care sector in Australia where the professionalisation agenda is tied to teacher professional learning. While the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL) has strengthened expectations…

University-based curriculum development often involves adding new content. This 'just add' approach has also been applied to integrating the UN SDGs into curricula, reducing them to a checklist rather than embracing their holistic and transformative aims. This is particularly concerning for SDG 4 and SDG 4.7, which require deep, cross-cutting…

To prepare sport management students, curricula should align with industry. Given recent changes in sport management, the first step in aligning curricula with industry is to review current curricula. This study reviewed Australian sport management curricula using content analysis of the Common Professional Components based on the Commission on…

This practitioner reflection shares insights based on our seven-year journey pursuing an ambitious curriculum transformation espousing partnerships pedagogy within the School of Business (SOB) at Western Sydney University (WSU). With a significant proportion of first-generation and culturally and linguistically diverse students, employability is…

Critical and creative thinking (CCT) was introduced as a General Capability in the Australian Curriculum in 2010, heralded as a call for more explicit teaching of CCT. This study was an online survey of 259 Australian teachers, exploring how they have adopted CCT as curriculum, including how confident they feel about this area of their teaching…

This longitudinal study modeled children's complex executive function (EF) development using the Groton Maze Learning Task (GMLT). Using a cohort-sequential design, 147 children (61 males, 5.5-11 years) were recruited from six multicultural primary schools in Melbourne and Perth, Australia. Race/ethnicity data were not available. Children were…

Play, while complex, is essential for children's learning and development. It is well established in the literature that there is a strong link between children's pretend play abilities and their language skills, particularly in relation to the use of language in social contexts. For many children who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH), pretend…