STEM education is viewed as being vital for economic prosperity and productivity; and can contribute productively to changing technological, economic, and social demands of the twenty-first Century. However, there is limited consensus on how STEM education is understood and taught, and inadequate discussion around its role in addressing global…

Making accurate judgements and interpretations about student growth and progress in mathematics can be problematic when using open-ended assessments. This study reports on the development of a class-based assessment instrument and marking key designed to assess Year 2 students' mathematics competence to reflect their learning of mathematics…

We present research that explored digital coding in an Australian early years learning centre and how it impacted on a focus group of 3 and 4-year-old children's creativity. The questions that guided the design experimental method were: (1) how do young children develop and demonstrate creativity when learning through play with digital coding…

Snowflakes falling in Brisbane, Australia would likely make news headlines during any season of a given year, even during winter. Year 8 students at Ormiston College which is located in Brisbane, have made their own snowflakes--of a kind. Using the programming language Scratch, all Year 8 Mathematics students wrote code to construct Swedish…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe students' self-reported learning from engaging in an experiential learning task designed to develop their understanding of sustainable food systems and dietary practices. Design/methodology/approach: In all, 143 first-year students enrolled in an entry level food and nutrition subject undertook a…

This article investigates the perceptions of 156 students who were victims of both traditional and cyberbullying (117 female, 45 male), ages 10 to 17 years, as to which form of bullying was more hurtful. Overall, students perceived traditional victimization to be more hurtful than cyber victimization. Reasons identified in the data to explain the…

This paper considers the responses of 115 school students to two problems based on information provided in two-way tables. In each case the question asks if one of the variables involved depends on the other. Contextual knowledge might suggest a dependent relationship in both but in one problem the data show independence while in the other the…

To succeed within scientific disciplines, using representations, including those based on words, graphs, equations, and diagrams, is important. Research indicates that the use of discipline specific representations (sometimes referred to as expert generated representations), as well as multi-representational use, is critical for problem solving…

Spatial reasoning--the ability to visualise and play with shapes in one's mind--is essential in many fields, and crucial in any Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics [STEM] discipline. It is, for example, the ability that the engineer needs to build bridges; the chemist to see the three-dimensional structure of a molecule; the architect to…

The importance of mathematical visual images is indicated by the introductory paragraph in the Statistics and Probability content strand of the Australian Curriculum, which draws attention to the importance of learners developing skills to analyse and draw inferences from data and "represent, summarise and interpret data and undertake…

Australian and Singaporean students have been exposed to different forms of teaching due to cultural differences in education. In each country, varying degrees of importance has been placed on explicitly teaching problem-solving heuristics. This paper highlights the different strategies employed by students from each country when solving a word…

Although teamwork has been identified as an essential skill for Computer Science (CS) graduates, these skills are identified as lacking by industry employers, which suggests a need for more proactive measures to teach and assess teamwork. In one CS course, students worked in teams to create a wiki solution to problem-based questions. Through a…

In May 2008, the first National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test was administered across Australia to determine the standard of literacy and numeracy achievement of Australia's students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Some students did very well on the tests and some did not. This type of test can tell a great deal about…

Effective instructional leadership demands that leaders address the inevitable problems and concerns that exist in any educational organization. Unfortunately, much evidence suggests that many important concerns, including teacher performance issues, continue to be unaddressed and unresolved. This article portrays the nature of concerns facing 77…

This article describes a procedure which has proven useful in facilitating narratives about experience of everyday family situations in order to provide insights into the inner world of children around five-seven years. The Windows to Attachment in Young Children (WAYC) consists of the procedure itself and scoring frameworks through which the…