In Queensland, Australia, there has been a major reform shifting Year 7 from Primary to Secondary Schools and implementing the Junior Secondary initiative for Years 7-9 in government schools. Six Guiding Principles, including establishing a Distinct Identity, provide the framework. This study examined 317 students transitioning from Year 6 to 7,…

With the global increase in forcibly displaced populations, understanding and improving educational opportunities and outcomes for refugee youth is of paramount importance. This scoping review focuses on understanding the extent and nature of evidence related to school engagement among refugee parents and students. The review's scope was limited…

Schools have a key role to play in promoting healthy wellbeing and in teaching the skills important in protecting against mental illness. However, navigating the array of wellbeing practices, initiatives, and programs with a view to deciding which of these are appropriate in any school setting is a challenge. Although current best practice is to…

This paper reports on a participatory action research project that investigated how a resource called the Index for Inclusion was used by a secondary school community to improve school connectedness at a whole school level. The researchers worked with the Australian case study school over one year to engage in review, development, and change. This…

School belonging, sometimes referred to as school belonging or school connectedness, involves dimensions like positive affect towards school, relationships with teachers, and feeling socially valued. Previous research points to immediate benefits for students' mental health and wellbeing; however, evidence on the potential long-term benefits of…

Current social and political arrangements of higher education are inequitable for students from asylum-seeking backgrounds. In many countries, their access to university is limited and if they are accepted, their status as forced migrants puts them at multiple disadvantages. This inequity is in contrast with the universal aim of higher education…

In Australia, only two-thirds of doctoral students finish their degrees, with underrepresented students completing at even lower rates. Students who successfully complete still experience many challenges throughout their degrees. In this narrative literature review, we use "preparation and readiness for the doctorate" as a framework to…

This paper explores the associations between different types of social capital and other measures including wellbeing, school connectedness, and pragmatic language. Seventeen adolescents who were deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) from Australia and the United Kingdom completed an online survey and their results were analysed to answer research…

When conversations about Aboriginal student educational success emerge, they are usually focussed on the high levels of underachievement and disengagement. School leadership is seen as critical to contributing to student outcomes. For Aboriginal students, creating inclusive learning environments that support culture and identity, and building…

Background: Schools are increasingly recognized as key facilitators of child and youth well-being. Much attention has been directed to the school social environment and the areas of school climate or school connectedness/identification. Drawing on the social identity approach and related work, it has been argued that school social identification…

Effective collaboration between key stakeholders increases the educational opportunities and outcomes of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Although the value of collaboration between the central members of a student's network has been widely cited, how collaboration occurs between different stakeholder groups in the education of…

Despite clear evidence detailing the academic and psychosocial benefits resulting from a sense of school belonging, there is currently no consistent global consensus about the strategies that can be employed to promote school belonging. In addition, existing research is primarily derived from democratic and developed countries. The current study…

For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Jarjums (children), the cultural and world views they bring from their home life can be very different to those in school, creating an additional layer of adjustments in the Early Years pathway. We describe an Early Years Transitions Framework that demonstrates how changing transition from a process to…

This paper explores two concepts. Firstly, it explores how child-led photography was effectively used by as a research methodology with young children, aged three and four. Twenty children at two Australian preschools were given the opportunity to express how they experienced place at their early childhood educational. Each child was given a…

While numerous studies have reported the effect of school socioeconomic status (SES) on achievement, the factors that can cause this relationship are not well established. This study is, therefore, an attempt to understand school SES and students' mathematics achievement relationship by assuming that this relationship occurs through a correlation…