Purpose: The paper aims to develop a coherent understanding of literacy assessment, one that draws on current conceptualising of assessment generally while accounting for the complexity of literacy and literacy development. It responds to The Foundation for Learning Literacy Touchstone #8, offering a view of assessment as an "eco-system"…

This study outlines an approach that captures the messy landscape of the learning opportunities on which teaching focused academics draw. The Activity Centred Analysis and Design framework was employed to analyse data from a focused ethnographic study of seven TFAs in a research-intensive university. The Activity Centred Analysis and Design…

In Australia, where initial teacher education is offered both on-campus and in a fully online mode, future primary-school generalist teachers study teaching across the school curriculum. This includes the arts curriculum where opportunities for future teachers to engage in authentic arts learning themselves are generally seen as essential for…

The use of extended reality (XR) technology in education offers many advantages for transferring knowledge and practical skills training at the higher education level. As a result, many Universities over the past 5 + years have undertaken pilot programs to both develop XR content and assess how to best implement it within existing teaching and…

This article discusses the relationship with time in early childhood practice and research. It is based on a 2-year study, Slow Knowledge and the Unhurried Child (2020-21). The study was underpinned by a concern about time pressures, testing, and measurement within the early childhood education and care sector and a desire to seek alternative…

Teaching staff play a pivotal role in the prevention, detection and management of cheating in higher education. They enact curriculum and assessment design strategies, identify and substantiate suspected cases, and are positioned by many as being on the 'front line' of a battle that threatens to undermine the integrity of higher education. Against…

When lecturers integrate feature films and TV series (FF/TV) into their teaching, they are not always fully aware of how these media achieve their effects on students. Regardless of discipline, lecturers need a working knowledge of film literacy to effectively enable student learning through FF/TV representations. This study surveyed and…

In this "Reflection on Practice" paper we reflect on an early childhood Work Integrated Learning course redesign that explored new ways of developing and applying playfulness theory to higher education instructional approaches. Our experience was that the higher education students required more support to deepen their understanding of…

Innovative changes to online teaching practices are becoming increasingly important with the rise of e-learning across the higher education sector. Such innovations ideally become part of teaching repertoires rather than reverting to prior approaches. This study investigated the sustainability of a centralised approach to online learning design.…

This paper outlines the rationale for, and some elements of, a particular approach to teaching and learning mathematics in the early years. The researchers worked with two school systems to offer both centrally delivered and school-based teacher professional learning, which included the application of illustrative teaching resources. The project…

This paper considers the pedagogical collaborations between early childhood teachers in kindergarten (4 years) and the first year of school (5 years) in one Australian State. We report on a year-long project that brought these early childhood teachers together as we asked them to design STEM learning ecologies that would not only support new…

Purpose: This paper reports on how micro-learning design principles are being trialled in an Australian and a Malaysian university to make online courses more accessible and attractive, and a more positive experience, with the aim of increasing student success. Central to this approach is segmenting materials into "bite-size" instalments…

In response to increasing teacher interest in how to design and implement effective challenging tasks, James presents the Launch/Explore/Discuss model that builds on the work of leading Australian educators and researchers Peter Sullivan, Doug Clarke, and Charles Lovitt.

Sector-wide research has shown the benefits of student-staff partnerships in course design whilst highlighting the complexity of this work, and the difficulties in gaining traction to create sustained ways of working. Reflections by academic developers on the roles and partnerships in course design at one Australian university reveal the critical…

It is well accepted and understood amongst the mathematics education community that numeracy is the responsibility of all teachers, across all levels of schooling. However, the way numeracy is understood and actioned across the Early Childhood, Primary and Secondary contexts is different. This paper reports on a case study of secondary school…