According to creative writing pedagogies academic Susanne Gannon ("English in Australia, 54"(2), 43-56, 2019), and the Federal government-commissioned NAPLAN review (McGaw et al., 2020), NAPLAN has restricted how writing is taught in secondary schools. A NAPLAN-influenced structural approach to teaching writing has subsumed the…

This article offers a systematic review of the evolution of research impact assessment in Australia and the UK. We consider its inception and detail the development of relevant policy and procedures in each country. The article sets out the results of a comparative analysis of public policy documents, newspaper commentary, and academic literature…

In 2016, following a request from the Minister for Education and Training, the Higher Education Standards Panel (HESP, 'the Panel') delivered 14 recommendations to achieve greater transparency in the admissions information for higher education. This report presents the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency's (TEQSA's) summative…

This is the first study that examines the comparative validity of the Chinese National College Entrance Exam (known as Gaokao) to a Western end-of-secondary-school performance measure, Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR), as admission criteria to an Australian undergraduate degree programme. The study offers a strong warning about using just…

The aim of this paper is to map the pattern of awards for research degree supervision in institutions in Australia and the United Kingdom. In particular, it explores the scope of such awards, their objectives, the criteria for nomination, the evidence required to be submitted, the composition of award panels, the criteria for award, and the…

Although diversity at universities has increased dramatically over the past 150 years, many groups are still under-represented relative to their proportion in the general population. Initiatives to improve diversity have included the increased use of entry pathways other than direct admission from secondary school. As admissions via these…

The music industry is built on a system of expert evaluation focused on sound, but the foundations are challenged by recent research, which suggests that sight trumps sound. This presents a challenge to music educators, who train the next generation of expert performers and listeners. The aim of this study is to investigate students' perceptions…

Assessing student learning in university courses is commonly done using a rubric that arranges the assessment criteria and standards descriptors in a matrix style or grid format. This paper introduces an alternative style of grading tool known as the continua model of a guide to making judgements, which arranges assessment criteria based on a…

This work asks one simple question: "how reliable is the method used by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) to estimate projected rates of VET program completion?" In other words, how well do early projections align with actual completion rates some years later? Completion rates are simple to calculate with a…

This article illuminates major features of high-quality leadership programmes across different education systems. We do so by focusing on capturing commonalities and variations in high-quality pre-service programmes from five differing societies, all of which are high-performing education systems. To this end, we first delineate key profiles of…

This study presents a comparative evaluation of analytical methods to allocate individual marks from a team mark. Only the methods that use or can be converted into some form of mathematical equations are analysed. Some of these methods focus primarily on the assessment of the quality of teamwork product (product assessment) while the others put…

The history of universities in the twentieth century is, at least from the perspective of growth, a massive success. Australian higher education is no exception. Prior to the Second World War, Australia had six universities and approximately 10,500 students. Now there are in excess of one million students attending 39 institutions. In each phase…

This article reports the findings from a study that compares the assessment criteria used to measure pre-service teachers' professional competencies at Rustaq College of Applied Sciences in Oman, and at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. The study adopts a discourse analytic approach to deconstruct and critically compare the assessment…

In line with expanded conceptualizations of validity that encompass the interpretations and uses of test scores in particular policy contexts, this report presents results of a comparative analysis of institutional understandings and uses of 3 international English proficiency tests widely used for tertiary selection--the "TOEFL iBT"®…

The criteria of effective teaching in higher education are understood to comprise particular skills and practices applied within particular contexts. Drawing on the literature and using Australia's understanding of effective teaching, this paper examines the notion of effective teaching. The paper specifically compares dimensions derived from…