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.

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.

Social citizenship and employment for secondary school students

The project aimed to understand how young people in different socio-demographic categories (age, gender, rurality) conceptualise and negotiate employment relations and the structural mechanisms (education, industry, legislation) through which youth are socialised in employment citizenship. The study extends previous research on youth employment in that it combines data from young people with that from other key actors in education and employment; that is, schools, employers, government, unions and non-government organizations. Despite the disparate nature of these groups there were some common themes regarding young workers. All agreed, for example, that there was a need for a greater level of employment knowledge and understanding among young people and that the current provisions for information dissemination on this subject are inadequate. There was also general consensus that, despite the need for some further clarifications and some potential limitations, the Child Employment Act 2006 (Qld) was beneficial.

Teaching English as an additional language in senior high school : critical discourses in critical times

This paper presents a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of four policy documents currently offering ‘sets of possibilities’ for the teaching of English as an additional or second language (hereafter EAL/ESL) in senior classrooms in Queensland, Australia. The aim is to identify the ways in which each document re-presents the notion of critical literacy. Leximancer software, and Fairclough’s textually-oriented discourse analysis method (2001, 2003) are used to interrogate the relevant sections of the documents for the ways in which they re-present (sic) and construct the discourses around critical language study. This paper presents the description, interpretation and explanation of the discourses in these documents which constitute part of a larger project in which teacher interviews and classroom teaching are also investigated for the ways in which ‘the critical’ is constructed and contested in knowledge and practice.