Senior Secondary Schooling Research Articles

Enhanced digital learning strategies: A case of a rural senior secondary school

As qualitative research, this paper aims to identify the impact of the necessary significance of enhanced digital learning strategies in rural senior secondary schooling. The main findings about improved digital learning strategies in rural schools are (i) limited availability of digital resources coupled with (i) motivation as a factor for teachers and learners as recipients of the schooling process. As a result, this paper concludes by outlining the necessary significance for teachers and learners to have upgraded skills for viability in the digital world. Therefore, this paper recommends that teachers require more professional support and development to transform teaching strategies.

Dividing practices: Senior English and social inequality in New South Wales

The role and significance of schooling in maintaining and renewing social disadvantage is particularly evident in upper secondary education, and especially so in the high-stakes final examination at the end of Year 12. This paper focusses on Senior English in this context, with specific regard to the Australian state of New South Wales. Building on a recent study of the outcomes of the Higher School Certificate (HSC) in 2017, it analyses what the data reveal about the relationship between Senior English and social inequality in this instance. It does so with reference to a brief account of the history of English teaching and senior secondary curriculum policy in New South Wales and also, comparatively, a now well-established comprehensive study of senior secondary schooling in Victoria. It concludes with some implications of this account for further investigations of Senior English and subject English more generally, as well as of the social meaning of senior secondary education in Australia, in particular with regard to the nexus between curriculum and assessment, knowledge, and power.

Simple experiments with immobilized enzymes as a contribution to green and sustainable chemistry education in the high school laboratory

Abstract Green chemistry became an eminent trend in chemical research and industry since the 1990s, and thus green chemistry is also increasingly suggested to become an issue in chemistry education. One of the principles of green chemistry is to use effective catalysis in general, and enzymatic catalysis under mild conditions in particular. This article presents a set of experiments under catalysis by immobilized lipase that were developed and tested in an action research project for developing a green organic chemistry curriculum for the senior secondary schooling level in Germany.

International students in the first years of senior secondary schooling in Australia: Longing for belonging

Most research on international students’ experiences has focused on tertiary settings and consistently shows that this cohort negotiates significant risks during their time abroad. This paper draws on data from the first year of a three-year Australian Research Council funded study to address the un(der)examined cohort of young people who complete their secondary school education as international students and temporary sojourners in Australia. We analyse the data from the initial interviews undertaken with 60 Year 10 international students during their first year of the senior secondary schooling. Drawing upon the theoretical resources associated with the politics of belonging, we ask if, and in what ways, students felt themselves to be marked as ‘other’ to constructed educational and social norms. We note the significant role that online activity played in helping students deal with feelings of disconnect and exclusion.

Towards a neoliberal education system in Queensland: Preliminary notes on senior secondary schooling reforms

Neoliberalism is often understood as being both an epoch of capitalism and a zealous ideological commitment to the primacy of private property and free markets. In practice, it has tended towards mobilising state power in the interests of capital, remaking societies and individuals in this process. Perhaps inevitably, education systems, the world over, have been reformed in light of neoliberalism’s overarching imperatives. It is in this light that we can best understand and make sense of recent reforms to Queensland’s senior secondary schooling system. While some details continue to be ironed out, the reformed system will revolve around three main planks: (a) an assessment model combining school-based and common external assessment, (b) a process that quantifies and standardises school-based assessment through external review processes and (c) a transition away from the Overall Position (OP) rank towards an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR). These changes to assessment and tertiary admission represent a pivot away from Queensland’s historical commitments to school-based assessment and teacher and curriculum flexibility towards a standardised national system of curriculum and external assessment. Ultimately, the reforms embody the ideological commitments of neoliberalism, perpetuating schools as producers of human capital. Hence, Queensland’s senior secondary schooling reforms ought to be understood through two different frames: firstly, as embodying the dominant ideological imperatives of neoliberalism and, secondly, that education is, within this context, being reconstituted to meet the perceived needs of capital.

Gender bias in households’ educational expenditures: Does the stage of schooling matter?

Gender gaps in educational outcomes still exist, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This incidence could be attributed to an uneven allocation of household resources towards the schooling of boys and girls. Utilising the household level data from the latest wave of the Ghana Living Standards Survey, the paper sheds light on gender bias in households’ educational expenditures using a ‘Hurdle or Two-Part Model’ estimation strategy. The two-part model unpacks the key sources of gender bias in household’s expenditure allocations. A number of interesting findings emerge: The study established a significant pro-male bias in both the enrollment decision and the conditional expenditure decision among the cohort of individuals in the post-secondary schooling age while only the former source of bias is present in the senior-secondary schooling age cohort. Strikingly, however, no gender bias is found in the positive expenditure decision for boys and girls belonging to the basic education school-going age cohort, even though a pro-male bias operates in the conditional educational expenditure decision for children in the primary school-going age group. Contrary to earlier findings, we find a pro-female bias in a household’s decision of how much to spend conditional upon enrolling boys and girls for the cohort of children in the junior secondary schooling age. These findings have important implications for policy action.

The mathematics of crystallography in senior secondary schooling

The mathematics of crystallography in senior secondary schooling

Promoting assessment for learning through curriculum‐based performance standards: teacher responses in the Northern Territory of Australia

ABSTRACTGovernments in Australia claim that standards‐based reforms to schooling will result in greater use of assessment for and as learning. This study analyses the assessment practices that evolved within the planned curricula for senior secondary schooling in the Northern Territory of Australia during standards‐based reforms. Case‐study methodology was used, with each of the six teachers participating forming one case. The data collected and analysed included the texts created by the six participating teachers from a range of subject areas as they planned to enact the new curriculum. Semi‐structured interviews were also conducted with each of the six teachers. The findings indicate that the inclusion of subject‐based performance standards in the curriculum for senior schooling did not result in teachers planning a curriculum that included assessment practices for actively engaging students in learning.

Curriculum reform and supporting structures at schools: challenges for life skills planning for secondary school students in China (with particular reference to Hong Kong)

Demand has risen for the introduction of career education in senior secondary schooling to enhance students’ transition from study to work. Against such a background, this paper aims to discuss the curriculum reforms and supporting structures in schools and to explore the challenges of life skills planning for secondary school students in China with particular reference to Hong Kong. Literature review and examples from Hong Kong and China indicate that although various Vocational (Career) Development Education and Career and Life Planning Education (CLPE) activities and school-based curriculum development take place at schools, a clear linkage between study opportunities and career choices, enhancement of learning experiences at work through activities such as job shadowing and provision of a curriculum to enhance career and life planning across years as dimensions of intervention, seem not to be found at secondary schools in Hong Kong. This paper will also look into the implications for future development of CLPE.

Understanding the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Evidence from a Quasi‐natural Experiment in China

AbstractThis paper exploits the closure of senior secondary schools in urban China from 1966 to 1971 in order to identify the causal intergenerational transmission effects of education. The paper uses the instrumental variable approach to examine the intergenerational causality of educational transmission at the senior secondary schooling level in urban China. The exogenous variation in parental senior secondary educational attainment both over time and across regions allows us account for selection bias and thus identify the causal intergenerational transmission effect in education. We further show that our conclusion is robust to alternative identification strategies and data sets.

Taking on Bourdieu’s ‘destiny effect’: theorising the development and sustainability of a socially just second-chance schooling initiative using a Bourdieusian framework

This article aims to theorise a storyline account of a collaborative three-year action research project into schooling re-engagement using a Bourdieusian framework. In the article we discuss how we (two teachers and a social worker) developed an alternative senior secondary school that re-engaged a sizable minority of marginalised young people back into formalised learning and consider how this school became a significant and sustainable educational alternative. Our work during this developmental period drew us into community-based activism enacting socially just curricular and pedagogical experiments. Through networked political action for schooling justice in concert with critical friends (our university partners), the marginalised young people we worked with and supportive regional youth stakeholders, we reconstructed our professional habitus as professionals into a more enabling rendering and strived to proffer through our relational, pedagogical and curricular work with students more of a transformative habitus. Our curricular and activist work inside the community extended the field of schooling relations into a more socially just orientation. This more enabling community field merged with our schooling field and enabled us to source political capital engendering secure, recurrent school funding and a purpose-built schooling facility. We claim that the market logics of schooling significantly influenced our beginning enrolment growth trajectory, and discuss how these logics compromised our ability to break through Bourdieu’s notion of the ‘destiny effect’. Since its inception in 2003, the Second Chance Community College has offered a comprehensive senior secondary schooling programme for more than 1000 young people. Throughout its 12-year history, the majority of students have gone on to secure work, apprenticeships and tertiary study but only 10% of students have successfully completed their final year of schooling.

Declining participation in post-compulsory secondary school mathematics: students’ views of and solutions to the problem

This study examined student perspectives about declining participation in mathematics in senior secondary schooling: what do students see as the causes of and solutions to the problem? 92 students, aged 15 to 17 years, from two large Australian comprehensive secondary schools were interviewed. Students’ comments were analysed in the light of prevailing discourses surrounding mathematics. The reasons students gave for declining participation included: mathematics is boring; difficult; not useful; not well taught; and students are unaware of the importance of mathematics. Students’ solutions included making mathematics more enjoyable and relevant; ensuring that students understand mathematics in earlier years; making students aware of the importance of mathematics; and making mathematics compulsory for the final years of schooling. Students argued that ‘optional’ senior mathematics significantly affects student motivation and effort in earlier school years. For some students, ‘choice’ may paradoxically lead to lost opportunity.

Wellbeing and retention: A senior secondary student perspective

Non-completion of senior secondary schooling continues to be a matter of concern for policy makers and practitioners in Australia today. Despite the efforts of governments to improve participation and retention rates, 30% of students drop out of school before completing Year 12. Further, some students remain at school, just biding their time until graduation. Within this context, we investigate whether the wellbeing of the students is a key factor in supporting senior students in deciding to continue at school. The article reports on the first phase of a two-year study of factors impacting on quality retention and participation of 250 Year 11 students from two school communities. This initial phase focuses on the senior students’ perspective of their wellbeing in Year 11, and includes our development of a suite of scales to measure the impact of students’ social connectedness and academic engagement on academic achievement and retention. Data from the survey of students are enriched through student focus groups. The article identifies critical dimensions of what students regard as a healthy senior school culture; that is, a culture conducive to a positive and productive experience in terms of their retention, participation and achievement. Implications for school and system policy and governance are proposed.

The Intersection of Vocational Interests with Employment and Course Enrolments

This paper examines the relationships between interests and subject choice in senior secondary schooling, and between interests and occupational choices. Career interest results (N=7477) were obtained from the Career Interest Test (Version 3.1) administered on the Federal Government's My Future website ( http://www.myfuture.edu.au ) and were then compared with the nature of high school course enrolments and structure of employment. Work-related interests were fairly evenly spread across Outdoor, Practical, Scientific, Creative, Business, Office and People Contact activities. In contrast, employment in Australia was skewed towards Business and Practical activities (48.6%). On the other hand, Mathematics courses (20.1%) and Science (17.1%) dominated senior secondary school enrolments. It is possible that the interests and preferences of Australians are not satisfied either by the curriculum offered to them or by the work opportunities available.

Reform and reaction: creating new education and training structures in Italy

Despite concerns regarding Italy’s high levels of early school‐leaving, regional differences in educational outcomes and persistent inequalities, efforts to reform the country’s complex system of senior secondary schooling have been repeatedly frustrated. Regarded by the left as contributing to the reproduction of social inequalities, Italy’s dual‐track system of academic and vocational secondary schools has been the focus of many reform efforts, for the most part unsuccessful. Recent proposals for reform, initiated by the recently deposed right‐wing Government coalition, reflected a very different approach to change, reinforcing the division between the academic and the vocational in Italy’s schools and largely devolving responsibility for vocational education and training to the regions. This article examines the proposals and concludes that, like past initiatives, they were largely ideologically driven, focusing on the structures of schooling rather than teaching and learning. The article points to the need for the current Government to base change on a strong theoretical foundation and on focused research into the outcomes of schooling for different student groups.