Strengths-based initiatives for university students to identify and develop their strengths are increasing in popularity in the tertiary sector. An understanding of strengths provides students with greater resilience in their transition in and out of university. While such strengths-based initiatives have been studied among first-year student…

Holistic and ecological approaches to mental health support have been identified by many as best-practice approaches for creating and sustaining well-being. Those who experience mental health challenges including, for example, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), often struggle to find adequate, sustainable and ongoing care from clinical…

In 2020, following the disruption of COVID-19, we rapidly moved the interprofessional Peer Teacher Training (PTT) program, traditionally delivered via blended learning to 'online only' format. Consisting of seven modules, the PTT program is designed to provide health professional students with opportunities to develop skills in teaching, feedback,…

This study examines undergraduate student attitudes to acting as peer-leaders in Applied Mathematics computing workshops. Through the use of data from end-of-trimester surveys and an on-line reflection worksheet, it is shown that students had positive attitudes to being leaders and were engaged in the experience. Benefits mentioned by students…

Peer-assisted learning (PAL) involves a student peer providing some form of support to a student mentee, usually participating at an earlier point in the same programme of study. PAL has been shown to have benefits for on-campus students. However, differences in on-campus and online programme delivery make it difficult to generalise these benefits…

This study explores the impacts of popular music education in classroom practices from different aspects such as learning by ear, motivation, musicianship, peer learning and creativity. The Sing by Ear approach was created based on the concepts of informal learning in singing a cappella. A total of 323 participants aged 11-14 were invited to…

For students to engage in mathematical thinking, a greater emphasis is needed on the expectations of students, by themselves and others, as active listeners and explainers. As student responsibility for mathematical thinking and participation increases, the roles of the teacher and learner change. A qualitative study of changing classroom…

Since November 2018, Australian high school climate strikers have become leaders in the movement for climate action, giving rise to a new generation of young people who have learnt how to lead change. This article focuses on the question of leadership across social movements and in global youth movements. It then investigates the different forms…

This paper discusses the impact of a series of professional development workshops for peer leaders to enhance the student learning experience at an Australian enabling education institution over the period of three years (2019-2021). It reports the impact of these workshops on peer leaders' professional development and, more importantly, on…

Across Australia many young people are taking action to address the issue of climate change and educating others through leading grassroots activism on local and global issues of sustainability. This paper discusses findings from an online document analysis that investigated three case studies of how youth-led organisations in Australia are…

Background: Negative attitudes remain a major barrier to the equality of people with disability, especially when coupled with the lack of autonomy imposed on many people. This paper analyses how disability self-advocacy groups seek to change community attitudes and work towards systemic change by mobilising knowledge from their lived experience.…

In Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) programmes, students provide academic and social support to fellow students. Recent PAL iterations include drop-in programmes to improve higher education students' general academic literacy in an open, non-judgemental, learning environment led by experienced students. The majority of the PAL literature, however,…

Little is known about mentoring programs that focus on peer to peer mentoring as a leadership program or peer and school connectedness within Australia in the last ten years. In fact, according to Nora and Crisp (2016), 'research in the last 15 years on assessing mentoring programs was mainly focused on the academic success of students' (p. 339).…

Peer mentoring programs are commonly used to facilitate the transition of new students into higher education settings. Peer mentors' experiences and emotions during mentoring are important but under-researched. We report exploratory work to address this gap in a two-phase study using a grounded theory approach. In Phase 1 mentors in an Australian…

In response to the paucity of clinical placements available in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, alternate options for prelicensure students were necessary in order for them to complete the fieldwork required for graduation. In response, Curtin University replaced a faculty-led fully-simulated placement with a peer-assisted learning model. This…