Media accounts of school performance: Reinforcing dominant practices of accountability

Media reportage often act as interpretations of accountability policies thereby making the news media a part of the policy enactment process. Within such a process, their role is that of policy reinforcement rather than policy construction or contestation. This paper draws on the experiences of school leaders in regional Queensland, Australia, and their perceptions of the media frames that are used to report on accountability using school performance. The notion of accountability is theorised in terms of media understandings of ‘holding power to account’, and forms the theoretical framework for this study. The methodological considerations both contextualise aspects of the schools involved in the study, and outline how ‘framing theory’ was used to analyse the data. The paper draws on a number of participant experiences and newspaper accounts of schools to identify the frames that are used by the press when reporting on school performance. Three frames referring to school performance are discussed in this paper: those that rank performance such as league tables; frames that decontextualise performance isolating it from school circumstances and levels of funding; and frames that residualise government schools.

Academic achievement among recently arrived Chinese adolescent migrants: The role of social support, school belonging, and acculturative stress

Factors contributing to academic achievement among recently arrived Chinese adolescents in Australia remains relatively underexplored. Previous studies focused on Asian migrants, including Chinese, but did not distinguish Chinese from other Asian migrants. The current study specifically looks at Chinese migrants who have recently arrived as opposed to Asian migrants. This study aims to explore the role of social support, school belonging, and acculturative stress on academic achievement of recently arrived Chinese adolescents (n = 55). Questionnaires were administered to this sample. The results indicated that school belonging, interestingly, was negatively associated with academic achievement. Perceived social support and acculturative stress were not significantly associated with academic achievement. The findings provide insights into risk and protective factors influencing academic achievement of Chinese migrants. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Early school-based parent involvement, children’s self-regulated learning and academic achievement: An Australian longitudinal study

Parent involvement is widely accepted as being associated with children’s improved educational outcomes. However, the role of early school-based parent involvement is still being established. This study investigated the mediating role of self-regulated learning behaviors in the relationship between early school-based parent involvement and children’s academic achievement, using data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (N = 2616). Family socioeconomic position, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander status, language background, child gender and cognitive competence, were controlled, as well home and community based parent involvement activity in order to derive a more confident interpretation of the results. Structural equation modeling analyses showed that children’s self-regulated learning behaviors fully mediated the relationships between school-based parent involvement at Grade 1 and children’s reading achievement at Grade 3. Importantly, these relationships were evident for children across all socio-economic backgrounds. Although there was no direct relationship between parent involvement at Grade 1 and numeracy achievement at Grade 3, parent involvement was indirectly associated with higher children’s numeracy achievement through children’s self-regulation of learning behaviors, though this relationship was stronger for children from middle and higher socio-economic backgrounds. Implications for policy and practice are discussed, and further research recommended.

Assessing the effectiveness of school-based sexual abuse prevention programs

This article highlights the importance of systematic reviews for research synthesis, with the strength of this approach demonstrated through the authors’ recent Cochrane review into the effectiveness of school-based programs for the prevention of child sexual abuse. It describes the features of evaluation studies and the differences between systematic reviews and more traditional literature reviews, before summarising the findings of their recent Cochrane review.

Problem-based learning in an e-learning environment: A case study at Griffith University School of Medicine

Increasing numbers of medical schools in Australia and overseas have moved away from didactic teaching methodologies and embraced problem-based learning (PBL) to improve clinical reasoning skills and communication skills as well as to encourage self-directed lifelong learning. In January 2005, the first cohort of students entered the new MBBS program at the Griffith University School of Medicine, Gold Coast, to embark upon an exciting, fully integrated curriculum using PBL, combining electronic delivery, communication and evaluation systems incorporating cognitive principles that underpin the PBL process. This chapter examines the educational philosophies and design of the e-learning environment underpinning the processes developed to deliver, monitor and evaluate the curriculum. Key initiatives taken to promote student engagement and innovative and distinctive approaches to student learning at Griffith promoted within the conceptual model for the curriculum are (a) Student engagement, (b) Pastoral care, (c) Staff engagement, (d) Monitoring and (e) Curriculum/Program Review. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Transport-related fatalities and injuries leading to hospitalisation in pre-school children

Pre-school children grow and develop rapidly with age and their changing capabilities are reflected in the ways in which they are injured. Using coded and textual descriptions of transport-related injuries in children under five years of age from the Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit (QISU) this paper profiles the modes of such injuries by single year of age. The QISU collects information on all injury presentations to emergency department in hospitals throughout Queensland using both coded information and textual description. Almost all transport-related injuries in children under one year are due to motor vehicle crashes but these become proportionately less common thereafter, while injuries while cycling become proportionately more common with age. Slow-speed vehicle runovers peak at age one year but occur at all ages in the range. Bicycle-related fatalities are rare in this age group. If bicycle-related injuries are excluded, the profiles of fatal and non-fatal injuries are broadly similar. Comparison with a Queensland hospital series suggests that these results are broadly representative.

Does gender moderate the relationship between polydrug use and sexual risk-taking among Australian secondary school students under 16 years of age?

Introduction and Aims This study examines the association of alcohol and polydrug use with risky sexual behaviour in adolescents under 16 years of age and if this association differs by gender. Design and Methods The sample consisted of 5412 secondary school students under 16 years of age from Victoria, Australia. Participants completed an anonymous and confidential survey during class time. The key measures were having had sex before legal age of consent (16 years), unprotected sex before 16 (no condom) and latent-class derived alcohol and polydrug use variables based on alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, inhalants and other illegal drug use in the past month. Results There were 7.52% and 2.55% of adolescents who reported having sex and having unprotected sex before 16 years of age, respectively. After adjusting for antisocial behaviours, peers' drug use and family and school risk factors, girls were less likely to have unprotected sex (odds ratio = 0.31, P = 0.003). However, the interaction of being female and polydrug use (odds ratio = 4.52, P = 0.004) was significant, indicating that girls who engaged in polydrug use were at higher risk of having unprotected sex. For boys, the effect of polydrug use was non-significant (odds ratio = 1.44, P = 0.310). Discussion and Conclusions For girls, polydrug use was significantly associated with unprotected sex after adjusting for a range of risk factors, and this relationship was non-significant for boys. Future prevention programs for adolescent risky sexual behaviour and polydrug use might benefit from a tailored approach to gender differences.