Systemic racism: the hidden barrier to educational success for Indigenous school students

Explanations for poor educational experiences and results for Australian Indigenous school students have, to a great extent, focused on intended or conscious acts or omissions. This paper adopts an analysis based on the legislation prohibiting indirect racial discrimination. Using the elements of the legislation and case law it argues that apparently benign and race-neutral policies and practices may unwittingly be having an adverse impact on Indigenous students' education. These practices or policies include the building blocks of learning, a Eurocentric school culture. Standard English as the language of assessment, legislation to limit schools' legal liability, and teachers' promotions.

School students and part-time work: Workplace problems and challenges.

This paper uses data from a large national project on student-working to examine problems and challenges for school students working in part-time jobs. While literature has identified some potential problems and challenges, and some potential difficulties can be extrapolated from the nature of a young teenage workforce and the nature of the workplaces, these were largely absent in the two companies researched because the companies already had policies in place that addressed the potential problems. Some suggestions are made about how problems and challenges could be avoided in a wider range of adolescent workplaces.

Career development and personal functioning differences between work-bound and non-work bound students

We surveyed 506 Australian high school students on career development (exploration, planning, job-knowledge, decision-making, indecision), personal functioning (well-being, self-esteem, life satisfaction, school satisfaction) and control variables (parents’ education, school achievement), and tested differences among work-bound, college-bound and university-bound students. The work-bound students had the poorest career development and personal functioning, the university-bound students the highest, with the college-bound students falling in-between the other two groups. Work-bound students did poorest, even after controlling for parental education and school achievement. The results suggest a relationship between career development and personal functioning in high school students.

Elementary school students’ learner self-concept, academic self-concepts and approaches to learning

The present study investigated the relationships between academic selfconcepts, learner self-concept, and approaches to learning in elementary school students. A sample of 580 Australian Grade 6 and 7 school students with a mean age of 10.7 years participated in the study. Weak negative correlations between learner self-concepts and surface approaches to learning were identiŽ ed. In contrast, deep approaches for both boys and girls showed the highest positive correlations with school self-concept and learning self-concept. Only slight variations in these Ž gures were found between boys and girls.

Schools' guide : How to select providers of road safety education programs for senior school students

Road safety education is not just about safe driving. Best practice road safety education seeks to improve knowledge and change attitudes relating to being safe, and making sure others are safe on the road. Typical topics might include: • Strengthening attitudes toward safe road use behaviours and avoiding risks • Supporting behaviours to ensure others are safe • Promoting knowledge of traffic rules.

Students' and teachers' perceptions of adolescents' problems and coping strategies

In an investigation of the problems and coping strategies of Australian high school students, comparisons were made between the responses of 1664 students enrolled in years 8 to 12 in 1988, 1620 students enrolled in the same year levels in 1993, and 178 high school teachers in 1993. The subjects completed the High School Stressors Scale and the Adolescent Coping Strategies Scale. Data analyses using MANOVAs, ANOVAs, and t- tests revealed close similarities between the responses of the 1993 students and those of the 1988 students, but a considerable amount of incongruence between the responses of the students and those of the teachers. In particular, the teachers generally seemed to regard their students' problems as being more serious than was acknowledged by the students, and the teachers generally seemed to project a less positive view of adolescents' coping strategies than did the students. These discrepancies are discussed in terms of the different orientations that students and teachers bring to the student- teacher relationship. It is suggested that teachers and counsellors need to take cognisance of the differences between adolescents' perspectives and their own if they are going to be effective in assisting students to develop positive coping strategies and in creating more positive learning environments.

School-related stressors in adolescents

The aim of this study was to investigate high school students' perceptions of school-related problems. Some 1583 high school students responded to the 35 item High School Stressors Scale, published by Burnett and Fanshaw in 1997, which measures nine areas of problems experienced by adolescents in schools. These are teaching methods, student-teacher relationships, school workload, school environment, feeling vulnerable, personal organisation, achieving independence, anxiety about the future, and relationships with parents. The results and implications for educators, guidance officers and school psychologists working in high schools are presented.

Measuring school-related stressors in adolescents

Some 1620 high school students responded to 68 items that measure adolescent stressors. Thirty-five of the items were based on J. P. Kohn and G. H. Frazer's Academic Stress Scale [1(1986) An Academic Stress Scale: Identification and Rated Importance of Academic Stressors, Psychological Reports, Vol. 59, pp. 415–426] developed in the United States, while the remaining 33 items were developed from P. Strutynski's [(1985) A Survey of Queensland Year 10, 11 and 12 Student Attitudes to Schools and Schooling, State Planning Committee, International Youth Year, Brisbane] lists of the most frequently named problems of 2336 Australian high school students. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to test and develop a measurement model developed from an extensive review of previous scales. The High School Stressors Scale emerged from the analytic process and measures nine school-related stressors. For researchers focusing on school-related problems and stressors among adolescents, the HSSS promises to be a very useful instrument. It has sound construct and predictive validity and adequate reliability, as demonstrated by the goodness-of-fit indices the squared multiple correlations.

Homework for refugee middle school students with backgrounds marked by low levels of engagement with English school literacy

Homework presents many challenges for refugees from Africa who are arriving in Australian schools with histories of little, no or severely interrupted schooling. This is evident in the emergence of school- and community-based homework help, clubs and tutoring programs for the students. The aim of this article is to describe the homework support options accessed by eight students from Burundi, Rwanda, Eritrea and Sudan who participated in a study of pedagogy for middle school-aged African refugees, and the views on homework of their parents and teachers. The article shows some tensions between family and school expectations and the dilemmas that arise for teachers in a broader context of public concern about and official policy statement on excessive and repetitive homework. It is argued that application of policy guidelines needs to account for disadvantages that potentially accrue to students who cannot design their own independent study programs. Further, it is suggested that integration of skills and meaning-based pedagogy inherent in recent approaches to literacy education has potential for ensuring that students receive the forms of homework they require.

Students’ perceptions of a blended web-based learning environment

The enhanced accessibility, affordability and capability of the Internet has created enormous possibilities in terms of designing, developing and implementing innovative teaching methods in the classroom. As existing pedagogies are revamped and new ones are added, there is a need to assess the effectiveness of these approaches from the students’ perspective. For more than three decades, proven qualitative and quantitative research methods associated with learning environments research have yielded productive results for educators. This article presents the findings of a study in which Getsmart, a teacher-designed website, was blended into science and physics lessons at an Australian high school. Students’ perceptions of this environment were investigated, together with differences in the perceptions of students in junior and senior years of schooling. The article also explores the impact of teachers in such an environment. The investigation undertaken in this study also gave an indication of how effective Getsmart was as a teaching model in such environments.

Milk : students building mobile learning games in everyday places

This paper explores how mobile games can transform everyday places into dynamic learning spaces filled with information and inspiration. It discusses the motivation inherent in playing games and creating games for others, and how this stimulates an iterative process of creation and reflection and evokes a natural desire to engage in learning. The use of MiLK at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens is offered as a case in point. MiLK is an authoring tool that allows students and teachers to create and share SMS games for mobile phones. A group of South Australian high school students used MiLK to play a game, create their own games and play each other’s games during a day at the gardens. This paper details the learning processes involved in these activities and how the students reflected on their learning, conducted peer assessment, and engaged in a two-way discussion with their teacher about new technologies and their implications for learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the needs and requirements of 21st Century learners and how MiLK can support constructivist and connectivist teaching methods that engage learners and may produce an appropriately skilled future workforce.