Long reads

The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects' (AILA) Landscape Architecture Awards celebrate the achievements and work of landscape architects. In today’s photo story we take a closer look at the award-winning landscape designs from schools around Australia.

A new research paper, Creative self-beliefs among children and adolescents, published in the Australian Journal of Education, seeks to understand more about young people’s confidence in their creative abilities, as well as their beliefs about whether these abilities are fixed or malleable.

Recruiting career changers into teaching has become a strategy to address teacher shortages in hard-to-staff schools. In today’s article we speak to Dr Babak Dadvand from La Trobe University about his research that aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of how career change teachers navigate challenges in these schools in the early years of switching to the profession.

In our latest reader submission, Dr Lars Andersson ­– Principal of Richmond High School in Melbourne – shares how his school has worked to establish effective Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). In this first article, he explains the thinking behind introducing the PLCs, and the planning and training phase.

In the final article of a series about a 3-year Australian research project into Problem Based Learning in school-based STEM education, 2 of the teachers who are co-researchers in the project – Melissa Gatt and Frank Fabri – discuss student agency as a necessary condition for meaningful STEM learning.

At Brighton Grammar School in Victoria, a year 12 student was given the opportunity to conduct their own educational research project. In this article, we speak with Deputy Headmaster Dr Ray Swann, teacher Oliver Lovell, and student Tim Tso about the process and impact of this project.

Australia’s results in the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) were released last week. In our latest expert Q&A we speak with PIRLS National Project Manager for Australia and ACER Senior Research Fellow Kylie Hillman about some of the interesting findings to come from this cycle.

Australian students’ literacy achievement has remained steady in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to results from the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). In today’s article we look at some of the factors influencing year 4 students’ performance on the assessment, and how their results compare internationally.

In the second of 3 articles about research into Problem Based Learning in schools, teachers involved in the project discuss how it has enabled them to reconsider their classroom practice and the conditions necessary for meaningful STEM learning.

Researchers from the University of York are hoping to address teacher shortages in the UK by recruiting new teacher graduates to the profession using online games and simulations. The 3-year project also aims to build a better understanding of what might attract STEM undergraduates to teaching.