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This paper looks at the pressures under which academics in Australia are currently working, with special regard to small regional universities. Some time will be spent in explaining the situation and context of those working in the field of education at Northern Territory University as an example. In many respects small regional universities are under greater pressures than their older and larger counterparts in the major centres of population. Regional universities, however, tend to be the sole providers of educational courses over huge areas, which often gives them greater local community support. Amongst the other pressures one sees at the smaller regional universities are the problems of retaining the educationally desirable diversity of courses in a situation where there is little opportunity for economies of scale. The greater use of technology may provide some relief from these pressures and this is currently being investigated. Here again examples will be given.

The concept of physical and chemical change is far from being the clearest and most self-explanatory concept in the world. If a number of chemists are asked to define physical and chemical change, there may well appear to be a fair degree of uniformity in their answers, until a few examples are suggested. When chemists are asked to place a variety of changes into the category of physical or chemical change, then differences inevitably arise. It is not difficult to demonstrate this by viewing school textbooks and articles about the topic. In spite of this, physical and chemical change is still taught in most in most secondary school courses. The problem arises from the definition and the historical layers of meaning that have grown around the concept, almost by accretion, without teachers being aware of their significance. The purpose of this paper is to describe the answers given by experienced educators to a questionnaire, which attempted to find out what the views of science educators/chemists worldwide about physical and chemical change now are. Four appendixes present: (1) List of Respondents; (2) List of Questionnaires Returned; (3) Physical and Chemical Change: An Information Sheet; and (4) Full Questionnaire: Interview Protocol or Basis for Written Response.

Too often student services have become a provider of discrete assistance in which one-way information transactions take place between the staff/student paraprofessionals providers and the students receiving the services. Students attend academic advising appointments, listen during tutorial or small groups study meetings, and read computer screens of information during career exploration sessions. Transactions seldom lead to transformations of engagement, identity, and deep learning for the students who provide or receive the service. Student leaders involved in student services, Students as Partners partnerships, student organizations, and athletics experience unanticipated personal and professional growth. Case studies from Australia, Belgium, Indonesia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States display global connections among common themes of co-curricular learning events from such rich environments. This chapter provides a conceptual model for an ecosystem of leader identity emergence that can be effective in a variety of student activity venues and recommendations to be more intentional in fostering growth. [This paper was published in: H. Juijser, M. Kek, and F. F. Padro (Eds.) (2021). "University Development and Administration. Student Support Services." Springer Nature.]

The purpose of this study was to examine policy making that led to the National School Reform Agreement and its effects on national and state-level curriculum reforms. Content analysis method was used to reveal the philosophic positions on education held by experts appointed to conduct the national policy reviews and the opinions of education commentators. Survey method was used to elicit information from state-level policymakers and officials about their priorities and to identify key aspects of the decision-making process. The results showed that the recommendations of the national policy reports, in particular the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools, influenced the attributes of the reform directions and national policy initiatives set out in the National School Reform Agreement. The influence of the Review's recommendations on emerging curriculum reforms was limited, since the mission of the National Learning Progressions and Online Formative Assessment Initiative is to develop voluntary resources to support the Australian Curriculum. Evidence that the Review's recommendations affected the reform plans set out in the bilateral agreements is scanty, since the complex decision-making process in each state and territory involving negotiations between the three education sectors as well as the curriculum, assessment and certification board ameliorated any effect. Consequently, there is no evidence that the Review's recommendations influenced current state-level curriculum reforms with the possible exception of the New South Wales Curriculum Review. The findings of the study showed that the influence of the national policy reports was confined to the national level with limited impact on national and state-level curriculum reforms.

In classrooms, the students spend lots of time by interacting each other. This paper debates the role of importance of the schools for rising students' social relations. Interaction between students is inevitable. That is because, they are together in projects, class discussion and peer working groups. Multicultural diverse school climates demand more flexible, meaningful, productive humanly relations. These relations circulate in every age and environment as Bronfenbrener (1979) hierarchy model. Researches for this issue manifest scientific application to this notion (Goleman, 1995; Ellias et al., 1997) from the perspective of social emotional learning. Successful researches have been conducting from all over the world mainly in U.S. and European countries and Australia. Educational psychology researchers have very important mission in this curricula issue.

Educational administration is a continuously evolving and complex methodology that is designed to assist schools to link bureaucratic policy making with theoretical management practices. Within this paper educational management theory and its practice within a local schooling context will be addressed. This will be achieved in two ways. Firstly, by identifying the traditional management theory and examining how this theory has changed and developed into a modern context. Secondly, the struggles and difficulties inherent in the change process will be explored.

Indigenous students in the middle-school years who experience difficulties in basic mathematics are a particularly vulnerable group. During these years gaps in performance between educationally disadvantaged students and their peers widen, potentially leading to ongoing economic and social disadvantage. This proposal reports on a teaching intervention referred to as "QuickSmart," which has been particularly successful with Indigenous students from rural communities who perform in the bottom 30% of the achievement spectrum in Australia-wide tests. Evidence is drawn from the learning progress of Indigenous middle-school students who completed the "QuickSmart" numeracy program. These data show, based on effect-size statistics, academic growth for students of up to two years over the course of a 30-week program. (Contains 2 tables.)

Performance Management clearly illustrates an attempt by the State to control the work of teachers by making them more efficient, more effective and more accountable. This article will critically scrutinise this bureaucratic process and amplify the voices of those being controlled and will highlight first-hand accounts of how teachers employ defence mechanisms ("performativities and fabrications") in order to resist evaluation as a form of bureaucratic and ideological control.

Although generally acknowledged as complex and multidimensional, bilingual education, when successful, plays an important role in maintaining and developing bilingualism, resulting in numerous benefits to those who undertake it. This essay will discuss the necessary components and principles of what is required to make a successful bilingual program by defining what bilingualism is as well as critically analysing the benefits and drawbacks of such a program, with pertinent examples relevant to the overall present education system in Japan and what support is offered to foreign students and migrants to assist them in maintaining their first language. This paper will also address the very need for effective bilingual programs and what a bilingual individual is defined as. A number of major theories such as L1-L2 interdependency, critical period hypothesis, and additive and subtractive bilingualism will be explored to substantiate weak and strong forms of bilingual education. Other relevant social, psycholinguistic and cultural factors will also be discussed as will their implications and how they relate to ensuring bilingual programs succeed for minority and majority language students in their aims and objectives.

One of the aims of each Australian States and Territory Departments of Education and Training is to create a world-class inclusive strategy in schools across the nation. They each see the need to raise awareness, support and change societal expectations for students with Special Needs and Disabilities nationally. This paper aims to investigate the integration of Special Needs children into regular schooling and classrooms and whether the movement has been successful since its amalgamation in the 1970s.

A year-long collaborative action research project used networked technologies to connect researchers at a university-based online professional development program and a group of practitioner researchers based in a range of schools and educational agencies in several countries. They studied the process and effects of online professional development structured by specific research-based educational frameworks, refined a model of systemic educational improvement that includes online professional development, and devised a new approach to collaborative action research to support such work. Their report describes a coherent school improvement model with impacts on teachers, school leaders, students, and educational systems and illustrates the power of networked technologies for 21st century collaborative action research. (Contains 1 figure and 1 footnote.)

The bulk of literature about education places enhancing teacher professionalism at the core of any educational improvement. In fact, researchers in the field of education have premised their arguments on the assumption that raising students' levels of performance necessitates promoting the professional growth of teachers. It is no wonder, then, that professional developers have designed and implemented numerous PD programs in an effort to bring about positive educational change and improvement. It is incontrovertibly true that the success of any professional development endeavor depends greatly on the willingness and readiness of the target participants, teachers. Since most, if not all, professional development programs in the context where I work are "grounded in a disease model" (Clark, 1992: 79), almost all the teachers flinch at their mention and show great reluctance to get involved. I side with Diaz-Maggioli (2004) to admit that "the term 'professional development day' conjures only images of coffee breaks, consultants in elegant outfits, and schools barren of kids" (p. 1). This negative attitude towards professional development is caused by the assumption "that teachers need to be forced into developing [and that they] have deficits in knowledge and skill that can be fixed by training" (Clark, 1992: 79). Operating on this premise, professional developers find it compelling to adopt a technical-rational approach to professional development cramming teachers with external and ready-made solutions and ignoring their reflective practice. In this research paper, I argue that professional development based on such a premise and such an approach would hardly yield any positive outcomes. Drawing on the work of Dewey (1933) and Schon (1983 and 1987), the notion of the teacher as a reflective practitioner will be brought into the topic in an endeavor to encourage teachers to slot in reflection into their daily teaching practice. My belief is that by doing so, teachers will adopt a self-directed professional development approach that will get them easily involved in the process of lifelong learning.

The purpose of this study was to review policies and inquiries on national curriculum reform, initiated during the federal election campaign in 2007, to identify whether a new phase of national curriculum collaboration, characterised as standards-based reform, is likely to be initiated. A set of ten criteria, defining key features of standards-based education, was applied to analyse the contents of two policy documents and a report from an inquiry. The results showed that the documents reflected increasing refinement of the concept of standards-based education, but were only clear and comprehensive in their descriptions for four criteria. The conclusion recommended that policy making should be conceptualised in greater detail as a process of planned change, which a decision making body could apply to design a standards-based education system in a setting involving large change supported by a low level of knowledge. (Contains 1 table.)

The purpose of this study was to review five initiatives in national curriculum collaboration, which have emerged since the move to national consistency arose in 2003, and to examine reports on these initiatives published by the news media and the education profession. Searches on web sites of education organisations, an electronic magazine, and the Australian Education Index were conducted to identify documents, news reports and educational literature referring to the five initiatives. Content analysis method was applied to summarise and categorise the documents. The results showed that policy making during this phase of national curriculum collaboration has shifted from establishing national consistency to introducing standards-based education, and reports published by the news media and the education profession have increased since this shift occurred. The conclusion indicated that, whilst a national debate has emerged on this issue, only a small proportion of policy makers and leaders within the education community has been engaged in contributing to this debate.

This research paper explores in depth the real causes behind underachievement among students at UAE Model Schools. The researcher suggests practical solutions to turn Model Schools into high-performance schools. He also sets out to discuss the issue of NESTs Vs NNESTs and the implications of such a distinction for the education profession. The aim of the research is to address educational leaders in the UAE to initiate change that yields beneficial results that would enhance student learning. (Contains 3 figures.)

Education is now a global product with institutions worldwide competing for students and finding ever more creative ways to satisfy student needs and preferences. With the continuing rise in the preference for flexible distance learning, educational institutions are finding that when students and faculty have significantly different cultural backgrounds and learning styles that the expectations of the learning experience can be unfulfilled. In Australia, international students have made education Australia's third largest service export, earning $5.8 billion. This means that student populations have moved from being homogeneous and captive to domestic constraints and expectations, to being multi-cultural, dispersed and subject to a plethora of constraints and expectations. Today in Turkey, education is the responsibility of government however, in recent years, the private sector has entered the market providing educational services at all levels. In particular, after the 1990s, private higher education institutions (HEIs) with a commercial focus have mushroomed. In 2007, there are 25 private universities in Turkey with more than 2.000.000 students enrolled in these universities. Of these students, more than 1.000.000 are registered in distance education faculties. With such large student numbers competition between private universities for students has intensified particularly over the last 15 years. As a consequence the need to develop strategies for attracting students has become more important. Marketing strategies in Turkey have tended to concentrate on three distinct categories: strategies between governmental HEIs, private HEIs and distance education HEIs. The contribution of technologies to education processes has been immense with students and faculty each learning to adapt to an environment of continuous change and opportunities. This paper seeks to explore the notion that a competitive advantage in marketing of higher education can be attained by customizing learning experiences for particular student cohorts in a pro-active and constructive way.

Marine education research designs are discussed, and student learning outcomes while monitoring a coral reef is evaluated. Changes in environmental knowledge and attitudes, ecological intention to act, and direct reef experience were investigated. Differences between student pre-test and the post-test responses were observed, and analysis is considered consisting of empirically generated results and student accounts. Environmental knowledge, environmental attitudes and intention to act were evaluated using a multi-method quasi-experimental design, and their affect by reef experience is investigated. Initial environmental knowledge scores were low and were most changed by a classroom presentation and reef monitoring trip combination, the reef learning experience elicited the largest positive shift in environmental attitudes as well as ecological intention to act, and students who had never been to the reef showed the greatest amount of change. This article reports on methodologies developed for evaluating marine education and investigating outdoor marine learning with Australian high school students. Research limitations are also discussed, and information is provided for researchers interested in evaluating education programs.(Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

The purpose of this study was to review national and state level initiatives in curriculum reform to identify whether the move towards greater national consistency in curriculum outcomes confirms the dominance of outcomes-based education or reflects a shift from outcomes-based to standards-based education. Policy documents were examined, and the content of curriculum documents developed at both the national and state levels in Australia was analysed to identify whether the philosophical and theoretical bases of curriculum reforms derived from outcomes-based or standards-based education. The results indicated that the principles underpinning the national statements and profiles, which were published in 1994, derived initially from the national curriculum being developed at that time for England and Wales, although outcomes-based education increased in its influence. However, outcomes-based education became the predominant educational philosophy underpinning the curriculum frameworks and syllabuses developed by the states and territories from the national statements and profiles. The development of the statements of learning, commenced in 2003, represented an attempt to circumscribe the increasing diversity among state and territory curriculums, but also gave greater acknowledgement and recognition to the principles of standards-based education. The results showed that whilst curriculum developers are giving greater attention to setting clear and measurable outcomes in curriculum documents, the lack of a strong tradition of independent evaluation of these documents makes it difficult to judge their quality. As well as recommending the need for independent evaluations of curriculum documents, policymakers and curriculum developers need to consider alternative approaches to curriculum planning to ameliorate divisive debates. The document includes two tables, a bibliography and a glossary.

This paper is a history of the adoption and implementation of "The Web of Life", an inquiry based biology course for senior secondary students in Western Australia. It focuses on the period from 1965 to 1990, outlines the issues at the time, events, and timeline of implementation and reflects on inquiry teaching and learning. It is a historical record written from the first hand experience of key people who provided comment to be quoted and were proud of their association with the "Web". There is no other such record for "The Web" in the West. Inquiry remains today an important goal, across all years of school education, both as a way of teaching science and as a student outcome skill and value. Since the halcyon days of inquiry around the introduction of "The Web of Life" there has been regression to a path of lesser teacher support for the teaching and learning of biology and many of the perceived and potential benefits arising from the introduction of "The Web of Life" have been lost. Experienced biology teachers, now retired or currently teaching, claim students and teachers have been let down by the lack of adequate on-gong support specific for inquiry teaching and learning of biological sciences. They also claim that shared professional dialogue and motivation has suffered. Much the same can be said also for other school sciences. From 1985 System support shifted away from subjects to school development and more recently to the clarification of student achievement. Support for science teacher knowledge and understanding of biology and of science teaching methodology has been severely neglected. Thus there exists an even bigger gap now than ever before between the inquiry intent of "The Web of Life" and current biology teaching and learning. A consequence is that there is opportunity for both biology teachers and students to do inquiry better, much better. There is also a need to record more recent history of biology teaching and learning. Forty five years after the introduction of the Web in the West inquiry remains both a relevant and powerful biology (science) teaching strategy and a significant intellectual outcome for students to master.

Background: The Reef education evaluation: environmental knowledge and reef experience report concerns PhD research about marine education, and the investigation of learning with high school students and the effect of coral reef monitoring marine experiential education interventions. The effectiveness of classroom learning and reef trips were investigated, as well as strategies to enhance high school students' environmental knowledge towards coral reef sustainability. Purpose: The work evaluates an outdoor marine education project, and if students' learning outcomes were altered. It discusses techniques used to explore links between coral reef environmental knowledge and reef monitoring experience. Setting: The marine education research took place in Queensland high school classrooms and offshore sites in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia from August 2002 to November 2003. Study Sample: Survey data was collected exclusively from a convenience sample of high school students attending five Queensland coastal area schools. The sample was composted of 389 students from grades 11 and 12. Their mean age was 16.0, 39% female, with 57% of the high school students being enrolled in marine studies classes. Intervention: Changes in students' environmental learning outcomes were evaluated when visits to the reef are added to students' classroom curriculum, so the learning interventions were a classroom presentation and reef monitoring experience. Research Design: Quasi-experimental; Statistical Modeling; Statistical Survey; Qualitative; Interview. Control or Comparison Condition: The study compared results of four groups with differing interventions, including a contrast/control group, which participated in none of the interventions. Data Collection and Analysis: The data were collected with pre/post-test survey questionnaires and limited student interviews. The quantitative analysis included SPSS exploratory statistics, Spearman's rho, t-test, one-way ANOVA and comparison of means. The interview responses were collected in situ, after the coral monitoring exercise, and a total of 118 students were interviewed. Transcripts of student responses were sorted into thematic categories and analyzed. Findings: The process is described that investigates the relationship between, environmental knowledge, reef experience and student groups. This investigation compared the results from groups whose experiences varied. The students' mean environmental knowledge score was a low 4.87 correct out of 9 on the pre-test. Group 1, having a reef ecology classroom presentation and reef monitoring experience, had the most change in environmental knowledge and the highest post-test score, while Group 4 (contrast group with no educational interventions) had the lowest. Students who had previous reef experience performed higher on the knowledge pre-test. Previous reef experience was significantly correlated to original environmental knowledge and change in environmental knowledge. Structured interviews: 1) presented the voices of student participants; and 2) added to the quantitative study validity. The students' voices enabled recognition of transformations in learning, and development of critical thinking. Student perspectives created an understanding of the extent direct reef experience makes in achieving changes in environmental knowledge or an ecological vision. Conclusion: An investigation procedure found evident increases in environmental knowledge responses with marine experiential education and previous reef experience is presented. The empirical and interview data substantiated that students who had direct reef experience at outdoor coral reef sites showed the highest environmental knowledge scores. Previous experience at a coral reef had positive influences on student responses. The combination of a classroom presentation and reef visit had the highest positive effect on environmental knowledge, and the student interviews substantiate this finding. Showing underwater experiences of coral reefs change students' relations of proximity. Once a reef substrate has been monitored, the student subjectively feels a knowing of it. Reefs are physically located offshore and underwater, and far from land, conceived as far away. However, the experience of observing and recording brings a direct contact with the myriad living bodies creating a reef, thus creating a learning situation. "The space of relation", an imaginably conceived space between differing bodies, changes for student learners in this study. Citation: Stepath, C. M. (2005). Reef education evaluation: environmental knowledge and reef experience [Electronic version]. Presentation to National Marine Education Association Conference 2005, Maui, Hawaii, USA, July 14, 2005. Retrieved from http://saveourseas.org/stepath.htm. (Contains 3 figures and 1 table.)

In 2005, Alberta's Minister of Advanced Education initiated a comprehensive review of the province's advanced education system. To assist in the development of the vision and policy framework, discussion documents have been prepared. Each discussion document identifies key issues, outlines challenges to achieving policy objectives, and identifies advanced education system opportunities. This paper supports three discussion documents: "Ensuring Affordability in Alberta's Advanced Education System"; "Investing in Alberta's Advanced Education System"; and "Advanced Education in Rural Alberta: Challenges and Opportunities" by providing a brief overview, citing both national and international examples of programs and policies that other jurisdictions are using (or contemplating using) to ensure accessibility, affordability and quality within their respective advanced education systems. This overview, however, should not be considered an endorsement of any one system or model, but merely a starting-point for discussion. Although accessibility and affordability are discussed separately throughout this document, it is important to note that affordability and access are closely linked since student financial assistance provides support to learners facing financial barriers to access. A review of affordability must also consider policies regarding tuition, which not only impact learners' costs but also the resources available to advanced education. (Contains 13 endnotes.) [This document was produced by the Business Policy and Analysis Branch of Alberta Advanced Education.]

The work-based learning model of human resource development has captured a great deal of attention and has gained increasing importance in higher education in recent years. Work-based learning is a powerful phenomenon that attempts to help policy-makers, managers and curriculum developers improve the quality of the decision and organizational behavior. This paper tries to clarify the experiences of a "work-based learning" project and training model for the professional development of twenty-four decision-makers and curriculum developers at the Ministry of Education-Organization for Educational Research and Planning-in partnership with the University of Western Sydney of Australia from 2000 to 2002. The case study method is used to examine the role of the work-based learning model as an effective scheme for the professional development of human resources, enrichment of decision practices, and improvement of organizational activities and environment of workplace. This study illustrates that the examination of the work-based learning model offers the possibility for Iranian decision-makers and curriculum developers to integrate work and learning at the workplace and help each other develop the skills, knowledge and attitudes required for changing workplaces. (Contains 1 table, and 20 notes.)

In the global market place the value of education takes on many meanings. In transnational education forums it relates to the market's assessment (in dollar terms) of a qualification. But can we measure the value-addedness of tertiary education in existential terms? Can we measure the value that tertiary education provides to the enhancement of societies as a whole? This study attempts to investigate what values are characteristic of Australian lawyers in their last year of law school. It is part of a larger longitudinal study, which aims to determine how values develop or degrade over time and what effect, if any, tertiary education can have in building and perpetuating "appropriate" professional values? Results show that differing values sets do significantly predict behavioural choices on ethical questions presented to participants. The implications of results are discussed in the contexts of ethics education in a tertiary context, and applications for the professions. (Contains 5 tables and 4 footnotes.)

The purpose of this study is to provide case studies of co-operation between education and industry in the Northern Territory in particular; the study also provides exemplars of co-operation between education and industry in Australia and worldwide. The existence of such co-operation is not surprising as education and industry share many common interests. Industry requires the competently trained students, particularly in science, and these students are the products of the education system at various levels: industry wants them to have positive attitudes and to be hard-working and enthusiastic. Industry has the capacity to help promote these positive outcomes whilst the students are still being educated: in fact, the more that industry helps education at all levels the more positive student attitudes towards industry will be. The Northern Territory has very small population for its land area (about one sixth the area of the Australian continent) with a population of about 160,000 people. The study indicates that there are a comparatively large number of examples of co-operation between education and industry for such a small population and is optimistic about the future of such co-operation.

Chemical change is a central theme of Chemistry which has itself been called the central science. This was the title of a popular American text book. I am thus putting forward the idea that chemical change is an idea central to science as a whole, so that it would be one of the ideas children should understand clearly whilst at school. This is both because that understanding is important to handle chemistry at higher levels and also because in the world outside schools it is essential to the understanding of the great issues of our time. The article goes on to consider methods of introducing the concept of physical and chemical change, comparing the differences between physical and chemical changes; it includes some literary and anecdotal evidence about physical and chemical change, children's science and other research about physical and chemical change, models of physical and chemical change and practical experiments to illustrate physical and chemical change. (Contains 5 figures.)