In Australia, it has been observed that there have been significant declines in the proportion of students studying senior sciences over the last two decades (Commonwealth of Australia 2017 & 2018; Steidtmann et.al, 2023). It has been suggested that one of the causes for this decline could be a link between students' literacy achievement and…

The shift from additive to multiplicative thinking is challenging for students. A professional learning program was developed that focused on an identified area of need by teachers, namely multiplicative thinking. Program content focused on concepts underpinning multiplicative thinking, pedagogical approaches, challenging tasks, and application to…

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…

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…

Literacy interventions are a common educational response for supporting students with literacy difficulties. Australian schools historically offered such programs,, though recent studies were not found in the research literature. This paper reports on school-level and literacy intervention data for a randomly selected sample of 366 schools, from…

Leading school mathematics is a complex task and the responsibilities and activities involved are not always clearly defined. School mathematics leaders (SML) in Australian schools are often expected to lead improvement in mathematics teaching and learning. Previous research typically focuses on the qualities of effective leaders rather than the…

In this case study, Angela Helsloot, Principal at Allambie Heights Public School, on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, uses data from standardised tests and benchmark reading assessments across the school to show the positive impact that Sounds-Write instruction has had in Kindergarten and Year 1. [For the complete volume, "Systematic Synthetic…

National Assessment Program for Numeracy and Literacy (NAPLAN) is the national assessment programme for literacy and numeracy in Australia administered to children in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 each year. The testing process was introduced in 2008 and is described by the developers as low stakes, however, research has highlighted that this is not the…

Drawing upon recent theorising of numbers and data, and applications to schooling, this paper reveals how tensions between more accountability-oriented logics, and more contextually-situated conceptions of engagement with data, played out in one school in a regional community in northern Queensland, Australia. The research reveals that at the same…

Researchers and policy makers agree that all children can learn mathematics and that teachers play an important role in student learning. This phenomenological study interviewed 12 primary school teachers, providing insights into their experience and perspectives of mathematics education, highlighting the challenges and successes experienced by…

Privatisation and commercialisation in education encompass a range of interrelated practices, including the outsourcing of educational services as well as increased reliance on commercially produced resources for the delivery of learning and assessment. An increase in these practices has accompanied the shift from centralised systemic management…

The complex nature of multiplicative thinking can be challenging for students and teachers to navigate. We report on the impact on student learning of school-based professional learning that targeted teachers' pedagogical content knowledge related to Multiplicative Thinking. Analysis of Year 4 students' longitudinal data indicated greater growth…

Socioeconomic status at the individual- and school-level are positively related to literacy achievement in all English-speaking countries. The components of socioeconomic status -- income, parent education and parent occupation -- are each statistically significant predictors of school literacy achievement but they are primarily a proxy for more…