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High-stakes literacy testing is now a ubiquitous educational phenomenon. However, it remains a relatively recent phenomenon in Australia. Hence it is possible to study the ways in which such tests are reorganising educators’ work during this period of change. This paper draws upon Dorothy Smith’s Institutional Ethnography and critical policy analysis to consider this problem and reports on interview data from teachers and the principal in small rural school in a poor area of South Australia. In this context high-stakes testing and the associated diagnostic school review unleashes a chain of actions within the school which ultimately results in educators doubting their professional judgments, increasing the investment in testing, narrowing their teaching of literacy and purchasing levelled reading schemes. The effects of high-stakes testing in disadvantaged schools are identified and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-stakes literacy testing is now a ubiquitous educational phenomenon. However, it remains a relatively recent phenomenon in Australia. Hence it is possible to study the ways in which such tests are reorganising educators' work during this period of change. This paper draws upon Dorothy Smith's Institutional Ethnography and critical policy analysis to consider this problem and reports on interview data from teachers and the principal in small rural school in a poor area of South Australia. In this context high-stakes testing and the associated diagnostic school review unleashes a chain of actions within the school which ultimately results in educators doubting their professional judgments, increasing the investment in testing, narrowing their teaching of literacy and purchasing levelled reading schemes. The effects of high-stakes testing in disadvantaged schools are identified and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we explore the relationship between literacy, place, and teacher identity as they intersect around Special Forever, a professional learning program with a focus on environmental communications and place based education. Teachers participating in Special Forever speak from different positions, histories, and alliances as local landowners, farmers, users of Murray-Darling Basin resources, and environmental activists; they teach in places to which they are connected in multiple ways and in which they have particular investments that shape the design of their environmental communications curriculum. We draw on an analysis of the Special Forever Guidelines for schools to discern how the Murray-Darling Basin is represented within the program, and read this alongside interview data in which teachers speak about the complex relationships they have with ‘their place’ in the Murray-Darling Basin. We suggest that the interrelationships between the politics of places, the politics of literacy pedagogy, and the multiple subject positions that teachers negotiate deserve closer attention if we are to develop more grounded approaches to critical literacy and place-based pedagogies. Furthermore, we argue that an important element for making literacy critical is attending to the politics of the places that are important to children and their teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the performance of boys in standardized forms of literacy in Australia. Interventions to literacy programs; Effects of normative models of literacy development on different children; Dispositions of children toward literate practices.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the authors discuss educational issues in Australia and New Zealand involving standardisation of education materials, educational policy and quality audits in schools.

For the past four decades, the question of how long it takes to achieve academically in a second language has been the subject of research. It is a key policy question informing the allocation of resources for the support of English language learners in schools, with the existing research from the United States (US), Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) showing it takes varying lengths of time depending on a range of variables. Until this present study, no research had been done on the trajectories of English language learners in the Australian context, where increasing numbers of English learners form the student population. As part of a broader mixedmethods study designed to address this gap in the research, we present quantitative analyses of longitudinal school data on NAPLAN reading results for two large regions in Queensland from the years 2009–2015. Using two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures, we identified the academic trajectories of EAL students as compared with the trajectories of the same age cohort, most of whom are English as a first language speakers. The findings show that EAL students who had been in schools long enough to sit four NAPLAN tests reached parity by Year 7, suggesting that it takes the whole of primary school for them to achieve at the same level as their English-speaking peers. Those who entered between Year 3 and Year 5 reached parity within two to four years of arrival in Australia. For older learners entering school between Year 5 and Year 7, reaching parity took much longer. The implications of these findings are far reaching for policy, teacher preparation, and the provision of high quality language support programs in Australian primary and secondary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the past four decades, the question of how long it takes to achieve academically in a second language has been the subject of research. It is a key policy question informing the allocation of resources for the support of English language learners in schools, with the existing research from the United States (US), Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) showing it takes varying lengths of time depending on a range of variables. Until this present study, no research had been done on the trajectories of English language learners in the Australian context, where increasing numbers of English learners form the student population. As part of a broader mixedmethods study designed to address this gap in the research, we present quantitative analyses of longitudinal school data on NAPLAN reading results for two large regions in Queensland from the years 2009-2015. Using two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures, we identified the academic trajectories of EAL students as compared with the trajectories of the same age cohort, most of whom are English as a first language speakers. The findings show that EAL students who had been in schools long enough to sit four NAPLAN tests reached parity by Year 7, suggesting that it takes the whole of primary school for them to achieve at the same level as their English-speaking peers. Those who entered between Year 3 and Year 5 reached parity within two to four years of arrival in Australia. For older learners entering school between Year 5 and Year 7, reaching parity took much longer. The implications of these findings are far reaching for policy, teacher preparation, and the provision of high quality language support programs in Australian primary and secondary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]