The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is one of the world's leading educational research centres. ACER's mission is to create and promote research-based knowledge, products and services that can be used to improve learning across the life span. This annual report describes ACER's milestones and accomplishments for the 2016-2017…

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is one of the world's leading educational research centres. ACER's mission is to create and promote research-based knowledge, products and services that can be used to improve learning across the life span. This annual report describes ACER's milestones and accomplishments for the 2013-2014…

Modern societies are characterised by forms of acceleration, which influence social processes. Sociologist Hartmut Rosa has systematised temporal structures by focusing on three categories of social acceleration: technical acceleration, acceleration of social change, and acceleration of the pace of life. All three processes of acceleration are…

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is one of the world's leading educational research centres. ACER's mission is to create and promote research-based knowledge, products and services that can be used to improve learning across the life span. This annual report describes ACER's milestones and accomplishments for the 2015-2016…

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is one of the world's leading educational research centres. ACER's mission is to create and promote research-based knowledge, products and services that can be used to improve learning across the life span. This annual report describes ACER's milestones and accomplishments for the 2014-2015…

Since its inception in the late 1990s, STEM has continued to attract attention and sizeable funding in the US, UK, and Australia. This paper narrates the development of the STEM movement both nationally and internationally, and analyses both the influences that have progressed its evolution and those that have stymied authentic STEM practices. The…

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) is one of the world's leading educational research centres. Since it was established in 1930, ACER has built a strong reputation as a provider of reliable support and expertise to education policymakers and professional practitioners. Each year, ACER is involved in a large number of research…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were developed through an unprecedented, state-led initiative that drew on the expertise of teachers, parents, administrators, researchers and content experts from across the country. The Standards define a staircase to college and career readiness, building on the best of previous state standards in English…

Nancy N. Heilbronner, the associate dean for academic affairs at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York, lectures internationally on topics related to gifted and science education. In this article she writes that we have not fully come to terms with two influential factors that will likely impact future STEM outcomes across the planet: (1) changes…

This article charts some of the most notable ways in which the science curriculum has changed over the past 50 years and identifies the influence of members of the Association for Science Education (ASE) in both projects and policy developments. The world is different from that of 50 years ago but there are continuing issues about the teaching,…

In this paper we elaborate and extend the work of the EDUsummIT 2015 Thematic Working Group 7 (TWG7) by proposing a set of indicators on quality Technology-Enhanced Learning and Teaching (TEL&T). These indicators are intended as one component of a set of global indicators that could be used to monitor implementation of the Education 2030…

Across Europe we can observe the reinforcement of monolingual education policies, despite increasing multilingualism. Recent research has shown that the emphasis is on language proficiency in the socially dominant language. This is viewed as the key to educational success. The use of other languages or linguistic repertoires is not valued in…

Around the world we hear considerable talk about creating world-class schools. Usually the term refers to schools whose students get very high scores on the international comparisons of student achievement such as PISA or TIMSS. The practice of restricting the meaning of exemplary schools to the narrow criterion of achievement scores is usually…

Educators in forty-five states and the District of Columbia are hard at work interpreting and implementing the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (CCSSI 2010). This work typically involves teacher participation in professional development activities focused on developing an understanding of the content standards as well as the…

Inferences from recent international comparative data on mathematical attainment, frequently quoted as justification for curriculum change, are critically examined, and the implications are contrasted with expressed curricular aims. Using characterisations by Ball (1990) and Ernest (1991), positions of key actors are analysed in relation to…