Australian High School Research Articles

‘That’s deep bro’: Negotiated readings and democratic education in an Australian high school classroom

ABSTRACT This paper presents data from an Australian high school classroom, investigating how students and their teacher negotiate readings of literature in order to arrive at meanings that are valued by subject English, as well as understood by the students. Subject English acts a vital agent for the transmission of both literacy and literary knowledge in English-speaking countries, and students which do not share the cultural and social orientations valued by the subject and its texts have the potential to be disadvantaged. However, I argue that this clash of socio-cultural perspectives may be positively viewed as an advantage for democratic education, as it allows students’ critical understanding of their world to be challenged, for teachers to include student perspectives, and for students to be empowered to participate in institutional discourses. Implications for teacher practice and educational theory are discussed.

Australian high school students and their Internet use: perceptions of opportunities versus ‘problematic situations’

AbstractThe Internet has, for varied reasons, emerged as a critical mediating tool in the everyday experience for many young people. Opportunities for access and participation are vast and well-documented. There are, however, risks, or more accurately ‘problematic situations’, associated with these online experiences. From a digital youth’s perspective, real and perceived threats, primarily related to content, contact and conduct, all play to policy agendas, and adult fears of how best to protect youth within virtual space where the boundaries of private and public are easily blurred and compromised. Drawing upon a purposive sample of four high schools, in greater Melbourne, Australia, frequency analysis is performed on questionnaire data from 770 students aged 12–18. Adapting the research taxonomy from the EU Kids Online (2014, EU Kids Online: findings, methods, recommendations (deliverable D1.6)) project, this paper extends that work by developing a more comprehensive coding structure to reflect the complex attitudes high school students of this study exhibit with their online practice. In doing so, this research, via a more nuanced classification, supports the ongoing validity of previous research that points to navigation of the Internet as a continuing contestation between balancing opportunity and risk.

On the Impact of Learning Cycle Teaching on Austrian High School Students\u2019 Emotions, Academic Self-Concept, Engagement, and Achievement

Over the past several decades, empirical support for inquiry-based forms of science teaching has accumulated. Critical voices, however, also exist, claiming that minimally guided teaching approaches might be less effective than guided forms; they might even be harmful, particularly for novice students, due to the production of cognitive overload. In this study, a more guided type of inquiry-based forms of instruction was therefore selected, which can be traced back to Alfred N. Whitehead: the so-called learning cycle approach. This approach was applied to science classes with 280 socioeconomically disadvantaged students in lower secondary education at low-track schools in Austria. Using a pre-test post-test experimental-control group design, this study investigated the effects of this instructional approach not only concerning students’ cognitive development but also concerning their state and trait emotions, their behavioral engagement in class, and their academic self-concept. The results indicated that the application of the learning cycle approach had a positive impact on most of the measured students’ trait emotions and state emotions during the romance and generalization phases of a full learning cycle. It further improved the students’ behavioral engagement during lessons and strengthened their academic self-concept. Finally, it was found that the learning cycle approach positively affected the students’ cognitive development after the 2-year treatment. Suggestions for improving the implementation of this teaching approach in science classes are given; some proposals for optimizing future research on learning cycle teaching are also made.

A Bourdieusian analysis exploring the meaning of sport for young women from refugee backgrounds in an Australian state high school

ABSTRACT For young people from refugee backgrounds, schools are often a critical part of their resettlement experience. Currently, there is a lack of research about the role of sport within the Australian school environment in helping these young people address resettlement challenges. Research on community sport suggests that sport can be a significant and effective platform for introducing young people from refugee backgrounds to Australian society during the resettlement process. School sport may play a similar role. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork over a 12 month period, this paper explores the meaning of sport for young women from refugee backgrounds who were students (in years 7–12) at a publicly-funded state high school in Brisbane. A Bourdieusian theoretical framework was used to guide the need for critical awareness of the workings of power in the school environment. The findings show how sport creates tensions of habitus as students must balance their desire to participate in sport against competing sets of values and dispositions toward sport. The gendered nature of sport further complicated this tension in the way it structured different opportunities for participation in sport between young women and men. Our findings suggest the need for a more deliberate reflexive consciousness to inform the practices of educators and policymakers to ensure sport is both inclusive and culturally safe.

Multilingual pedagogies in practice

Amongst Australian EAL specialists there is increasing recognition of the value of incorporating students’ home languages and cultural knowledge into teaching and learning. However there remains a need for guiding principles for developing effective multilingual and translanguaging approaches for diverse educational contexts. This paper presents some classroom approaches and suggest principles for effective multilingual curriculum and pedagogy.An ethnographic study in an Australian high school revealed that students used their multilingual repertoires to support learning individually, collaboratively and through access to external information. Teachers responded by rejecting, accepting or actively engaging students’ multilingual resources.Analysis of these teaching approaches suggests some principles for effective multilingual classroom practice. Successful multilingual pedagogies require both teachers and students to challenge the “monolingual mindset” (Clyne, 2008) of Australian education. Attention to both vertical and horizontal dimensions of multilingualism (Heugh, 2018) is also crucial. Additional principles include affirming multilingualism, attending to affect, developing shared learning outcomes, defining a social purpose and addressing practical considerations. A key to success is that multilingual and translanguaging pedagogies are developed from students’ existing multilingual practices.It is hoped that proposing these principles can extend discussion and research around the use of multilingual resources in school-based learning.

What might the school of 2030 be like? An exercise in social science fiction

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the deliberately speculative question of ‘What might the school of 2030 be like?’, with a specific focus on the influences of digital technologies. The article adopts the methodological approach of ‘social science fiction’ to explore the ways in which digital technologies might be used in one Australian high school in 2030 (Lakeside), and what this might mean for the people whose lives are enmeshed with these technologies. Through the co-construction of five social science fiction ‘vignettes’ about life within Lakeside, the article considers the increasing prevalence of dataveillance, digital deskilling and the de-territorialization of schooling. The article then goes on to consider changing relationships between time/place, material and coded structures, as well as the increasingly platformized and data-driven nature of schooling in the 2020s. The article ends by considering the ways in which critical scholars can continue to use the methodological approach of social science fiction writing with regard to unpacking the politics of digital education futures.

Teen Mental Health First Aid as a school-based intervention for improving peer support of adolescents at risk of suicide: Outcomes from a cluster randomised crossover trial.

The aims of this study were to assess evidence for a novel, universal mental health literacy programme in the school setting (teen Mental Health First Aid) as an intervention to improve peer support towards adolescents at risk of suicide and to examine whether participation in a school-based programme dealing with suicide was distressing to participants. In a cluster randomised crossover trial, Australian high school students aged 15-17 years (N = 1605, 44.74% female, Mage = 15.87) received either teen Mental Health First Aid or a matched control physical first aid course. Data were collected before, immediately after and 12 months after training through online surveys assessing correct recognition of suicidality and intentions to help a fictional peer (John) who was depicted as experiencing depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts in a vignette. Students were also asked whether any information in the training or surveys was found distressing and completed a validated measure of psychological distress (the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale). Students receiving teen Mental Health First Aid training were much more likely to report an increase from pre- to post-training in recognition of suicidality (OR = 1.97, 95% CI = [1.14, 3.39], p = 0.02) and appropriate first aid intentions towards a peer at risk of suicide than students receiving physical first aid (OR = 35.40, 95% CI = [19.86, 63.14], p < 0.001). Twelve months after training, most effects were still significant. Although a greater proportion of teen Mental Health First Aid participants self-reported feeling briefly distressed after the training, there was no evidence of greater distress at 12 months on the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale. teen Mental Health First Aid is effective in increasing recognition of and intentions to assist a suicidal peer. Although the open discussion of mental health first aid for a suicidal peer was distressing for some students, results suggest this was transient and not associated with harm. Future studies are required to ascertain whether these increases are indeed associated with better provision of support and prevention of youth suicide.

Light pollution – an interesting context for teaching and learning optics

Physics as a school subject is in general very unpopular. This fact is especially true for the situation in Austria. PISA results show that motivation, interest and self-efficacy of Austrian highschool students are significantly lower than the OECD average. In addition, a significant gender-gap in disadvantage for girls was shown. In general, one reason for low interest which was identified by previous research is that physics instruction is frequently decontextualized and students can hardly see any relevance of understanding physics for their lives. On the contrary, science and technology play a crucial and increasingly important role in our lives and in our globalized society. At the same time, edutainment focusing on science topics is booming. Interest studies like the ROSE-study may give reasons for this discrepancy: the choice of contexts does often not meet students’ interests. This contribution reports the development of a context-oriented learning environment on light pollution to stimulate learning processes and at the same time interest in introductory optics.

A Tribute to Lise Meitner (1878-1968)

Physics is irresistible. Though prepared to become a teacher of French at an Austrian highschool, Lise Meitner, daughter of a lawyer, could not help coming under the spell of physics. By lucky coincidence she followed courses dispensed by no one less than Ludwig Boltzmann, whose wit and humour proved contagious. After her PhD, under Franz Exner, she moved on, not to Paris to work with Marie Curie, but to Berlin, to consult with Max Planck on future contingencies. Before leaving for Berlin, however, she was introduced to ‘radioactivity’ by Stefan Meyer.

Growth orientation predicts gains in middle and high school students’ mathematics outcomes over time

Academic growth constructs, such as growth mindset and various forms of growth goals, have been of substantial focus in psycho-educational research. Recent research has sought to identify how such growth constructs are inter-related, finding that an underlying growth orientation (comprised of growth mindset, self-based growth goals, and task-based growth goals) was cross-sectionally associated with more positive outcomes for students. However, for such a construct to have meaningful relevance to education and educational research, it must be associated with actual growth in academic outcomes. Accordingly, using two-wave longitudinal structural equation modeling in a large sample of Australian middle and high school students (N = 2949), we examined the extent to which students’ growth orientation predicted growth in academic outcomes. We hypothesized that students’ growth orientation would be positively associated with gains in students’ mathematics engagement and achievement, while controlling for student demographic covariates (e.g., gender, age) and prior variance in each substantive factor measured one year prior. Results demonstrated that students' growth orientation in mathematics was a significant positive predictor of students' gains in mathematics engagement and achievement, above other sources of influence. Findings are discussed in terms of improving researchers’ understanding of how growth constructs are inter-related and how to promote students’ academic success in mathematics.

CHRONIC LACK OF SLEEP IS ASSOCIATED WITH INCREASED SPORTS INJURY IN ADOLESCENTS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS

Background:Although sleep has been identified as an important modifiable risk factor for sports injury, the effect of decreased sleep on sports injuries in adolescents is poorly studied.Purpose:To ...

Understanding Factors Affecting Positive Education in Practice: an Australian Case Study

Positive education is characterized by applying positive psychology interventions (PPIs) within educational settings. Increasing evidence suggests that PPIs can help increase well-being and reduce depressive symptoms in general and clinical populations. However, there is less evidence that PPIs are similarly effective within complex school environments. The study aimed to (1) examine the effectiveness of an evidence-informed positive education pilot program (PEPP) delivered within an Australian public high school and (2) use an implementation science framework to explore factors impacting the planning, delivery, practice, and success of program activities. The study used a non-randomized waitlist design (n = 143), and provider (teacher), recipient (student), intervention (PEPP), organizational (school), and contextual factors were systematically explored through a mixed methods approach. Findings suggest the PEPP was not related to increases in well-being or resilience, but may have buffered students from declining mental health during the school year. Recipient outlook, organizational support, stakeholder input, and provider enthusiasm and understanding were all thought to impact program outcomes. By exploring the practice of a positive education intervention from an implementation perspective, challenges and opportunities of positive education in the real world can be identified.

A Rasch Analysis of the Personal Well-Being Index in School Children.

The personal well-being index-school children (PWI-SC) is designed as a cross-cultural instrument to measure subjective well-being among high school-aged children. Several published cross-cultural studies have confirmed adequate psychometric performance in terms of reliability, validity, and measurement invariance. This study adds to this literature by applying the Rasch approach to estimate invariant comparison in a cross-cultural context, applied to both Australian and Portuguese high school students. Participants were an age- and gender-matched convenience sample of 1,040 adolescents (520 cases in each group, 51.54% male) who ranged in age from 12 to 18 years (M = 14.25 years, SD = 1.71 years). It is found that both Portuguese and Australian data fit the Rasch measurement model, with excellent levels of reliability at a country level. However, when all of the data were combined, a slight misfit was found. This was resolved by removing some issues with item thresholds in standard of living among the Australian data and splitting the data by country on health. This allowed both Australian and Portuguese cases to differ on the health item. We conclude that the PWI-SC is unidimensional, with some evidence of mild, but acceptable local dependency. This study further supports the cross-cultural validity of the PWI-SC and the use of this measure in the Australian and Portuguese context but also indicates a potential direction that development of the PWI-SC might proceed.

Rewarding Commitment to Attend School: A Field Study with Indigenous Australian High School Students

We introduce a novel incentive program aimed at decreasing school absenteeism based on the effect of voluntary promises in motivating desirable behaviour. In contrast to a standard program, in which students receive a reward conditional on having achieved a school attendance rate of at least 90 percent, in the promise program, they receive the reward up front, conditional on their commitment to invest their best efforts to reach the attendance target. We assess the effectiveness of the promise program through a field study involving Indigenous Australian high school students, a population who tends to have lower education achievement and socioeconomic advantage than their non-Indigenous counterparts. We find that the promise program significantly decreased unexplained absences compared to the standard program but that it did not influence overall school absences. Our findings suggest that voluntary promises coupled with small gifts are effective in influencing behaviour of disadvantaged students. At the same time, we need further research on how to best design such programs to achieve positive effects in reducing school absenteeism.

Beyond ‘chalk and talk’: educator perspectives on design immersion programs for rural and regional schools

Twenty-first century education needs to be re-envisioned to equip citizens for a lifetime of rapid change and complexity. Design has been proposed as a pedagogical framework that develops the required foundational literacies, competencies and character qualities citizens need to thrive in this new creative knowledge economy. However, widespread adoption will require systemic transformation of practice, and recognition of the value of formal and informal ‘connected’ learning environments and experiences. This paper explores the potential of design immersion outreach efforts in fostering design capabilities and building educators’ pedagogical repertoires to support twenty-first century learning. It documents educators’ experiences of goDesign, the first three-day place-based travelling design immersion experience for regional and rural Australian high school students and teachers. Drawing on observational data, and in-depth interviews with participating principals (n = 3) and teachers (n = 14) from six regional schools, educators believed goDesign provided new ideas for their classroom practice. They felt it broadened horizons for both themselves and their students, through: personally inspiring experiences and career aspiration; engagement in design thinking process, skills and mindset; and providing a valuable opportunity for community building. As educators in regional and rural areas often experience geographical, social and professional isolation, this paper argues that place-based informal design immersion programs might be an innovative way to engage and educate both students and teachers with design, thus building the competencies required for successful twenty-first century futures.

Developing Pre-Service Teacher Professional Capabilities through Action Research

There is a growing interest in pre-service teacher education programs on how to maximise the learning benefits of professional experience. This study attempts to discover how action research can be used as a vehicle to bridge the divide between theory and practice and to support pre-service teachers in the development of authentic professional knowledge. In this paper, we share the experiences of four pre-service teachers who undertook an action research study whilst on a ten-week professional experience placement in an Australian High School. The findings of the study indicate that pre-service teachers see the benefit of being able to conduct an authentic study not only in terms of developing research skills, but also in order to reflect upon their strengths and areas of development in their own teaching. We argue that with a growing attentiveness to raising accountability across the sector, this approach prepares pre-service teachers for the Teacher Performance Assessment and the classroom.

Student Motivation in High School Physical Education: A Latent Profile Analysis Approach.

Guided by the principles of self-determination theory, the purpose of this study was to identify latent profiles representing high school students' motivational regulations for physical education (PE) and to model putative predictors and outcomes of profile membership. A sample of 532 Australian high school students, age 12-16years (M = 13.83, SD = 1.13), reported their motivation for PE, perceptions of need satisfaction in PE, and effort expended in PE. Latent profile analysis revealed evidence of 3 distinct profiles that were consistent with continuum expectations outlined in self-determination theory (i.e.,the moderately autonomous, moderately controlled, and highly autonomous profiles), alongside 2 profiles characterized by levels of introjected regulation that aligned with autonomous motives (i.e.,the mixed motivation and amotivated profiles). Analyses also revealed that, on the whole, greater need satisfaction predicted membership of more autonomous profiles and that membership of such profiles was predictive of greater self-reported effort in PE. Analyses revealed evidence of qualitatively distinct motivation profiles that were differentially predicted by students' psychological need satisfaction and predictive of in-class effort. This study is not only the first to use latent profile analysis to explore the role of psychological need satisfaction in predicting PE motivation profiles. It also provides practical information regarding the prevalence and potential outcomes of students' motivation profiles.

Climate schools plus: An online, combined student and parent, universal drug prevention program

Early initiation of substance use significantly increases one's risk of developing substance use dependence and mental disorders later in life. To interrupt this trajectory, effective prevention during the adolescent period is critical. Parents play a key role in preventing substance use and related harms among adolescents and parenting interventions have been identified as critical components of effective prevention programs. Despite this, there is currently no substance use prevention program targeting both students and parents that adopts online delivery to overcome barriers to implementation and sustainability. The Climate Schools Plus (CSP) program was developed to meet this need. CSP is an online substance use prevention program for students and parents, based on the effective Climate Schools prevention program for students. This paper describes the development of the parent component of CSP including a literature review and results of a large scoping survey of parents of Australian high school students (n = 242). This paper also includes results of beta-testing of the developed program with relevant experts (n = 10), and parents of Australian high school students (n = 15). The CSP parent component consists of 1) a webinar which introduces shared rule ranking, 2) online modules and 3) summaries of student lessons. The parent program targets evidence-based modifiable factors associated with a delay in the onset of adolescent substance use and/or lower levels of adolescent substance use in the future; namely, rule-setting, monitoring, and modelling. To date, this is the first combined parent-student substance use prevention program to adopt an online delivery method.

The technique of probing acceptance as a tool for teachers' professional development: A PCK study

AbstractThis article presents a study that examined an innovative short‐term program (two sessions of 3 hr each) for the professional development of teachers. The program design is based on the technique of probing acceptance, which is aimed at investigating student learning processes. It relies on students' evaluation, paraphrasing, and adaptation of information presented during a one‐on‐one interview with defined student‐centered interview phases. During the professional development program, teachers were introduced to a novel learning unit that focuses on the subatomic structure of matter. In addition, the teachers were instructed in how to use the technique of probing acceptance during one‐on‐one interviews to evaluate the concepts of the unit. The rationale of the professional development program is that the preparation and execution of, and reflection on the one‐on‐one interviews based on the technique of probing acceptance should have an impact on dimensions of teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Four teachers from one Austrian high school participated in this exploratory study, and each teacher conducted two one‐on‐one interviews with two different grade‐6 students. Postintervention interviews were conducted with all the teachers to document the potential influences on the teachers' PCK. The interviews were transcribed word for word, and a category‐based content analysis was applied to the transcripts. Our results indicate that during the professional development program, all the teachers revisited their existing knowledge about the subatomic structure of matter and left with an enhanced PCK, especially regarding their knowledge of learners and of instructional strategies. Overall, we show the technique of probing acceptance to be a promising tool for short‐term professional development programs, and we suggest that our findings have implications for both professional development designers and educators.

Young Adults’ Perception of Mandatory Cpr Training in Australian High Schools: A Qualitative Investigation

Introduction Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) can be performed by any member of the public who witnesses a cardiac arrest and has the knowledge, training and skills to perform it. Even though bystander CPR has been shown to greatly improve the victim's chance of survival, its training and performance rates are alarmingly low. Methods One potentially effective intervention to tackle this issue is to implement mandatory CPR training programs in high schools. We undertook in-depth qualitative interviews with 28 recent Australian high school graduates. The interviews were transcribed and then analysed, with participants’ answers used to draw conclusions on the acceptability of mandatory CPR high school training. Results Results suggested those that had undertaken basic first aid training in high school would be more open and confident to perform bystander CPR. Among those who had not undertaken training, cost and access were identified as the key barriers. Regardless of whether participants had or had not previously undertaken training, they understood the importance of CPR for the treatment of cardiac arrest victims. Conclusion Among our sample, there was overwhelming support for the concept of mandatory CPR training being implemented in high schools. Should such a program be applied, there is the potential for this to have an impact on bystander CPR provision, and hence cardiac arrest survival rates, within the wider Australian community.