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This is a longitudinal study to investigate whether there is a correlation between the methods for completion of homework and the incentive levels with academic achievement. The method adopted in this study is the t-test statistical analysis to assess the relationship between the use of compulsory homework on achievement and the influence of intervening and moderating variables. The findings are as follows -- Cohort 1 which completed homework in the traditional pen and paper style (with a mean of 13.278) performed better than the Cohort 2 which completed homework online They also performed better than Cohort 2 which completed homework online (with a mean of 11.851). Cohort 3 that had no incentive and subsequently no compulsion to do the homework (with a mean of 11.851) performed better than Cohort 2 which completed homework online (with a mean of 9.658).

The aim of the present study is to reconcile previous findings (a) that testing mode has no effect on test outcomes or cognitive load (Comput Hum Behav 77:1-10, 2017) and (b) that younger learners' working memory processes are more sensitive to computer-based test formats (J Psychoeduc Assess 37(3):382-394, 2019). We addressed key methodological limitations in past cognitive load research by employing a repeated measures design with 263, year 9 (aged 13-14) science students in Western Australia. Question difficulty (intrinsic cognitive load) and test mode (extraneous cognitive load) were manipulated to measure changes in test performance, cognitive load and scratch paper use on equivalent paper and computer-based versions of an Ohm's Law revision quiz. Hierarchical linear modelling indicated significantly higher paper-based test performance on difficult questions in addition to greater cognitive load and scratch paper use for all paper questions. Testing mode effects on test score, as well as both measures of cognitive load, were not significant when controlling for working memory capacity, although the testing mode*question difficulty interaction remained significant. Together, these results contradict previous findings that computer-based testing can be implemented without consequence for all learners. With the increased use of computer-based testing in national and international-level assessments, these findings warrant further research into the effect of different testing modes on school-aged students.

The increasing inclusion of students with disabilities in regular classes still leads to debate and many advocate for full inclusion of all students. Arguments for full inclusion are generally rights-based, but proponents also claim research supports the effectiveness of full inclusion over specialist provision for all students with disabilities. In this article, we analyse and critique the use of the research literature in an Australian advocacy paper as an example of the broad claims made concerning full inclusion. We examine the extent to which the sources used provide conclusive evidence about the merits of full inclusion. We find the advocacy paper relies heavily on opinion and non-peer-reviewed literature, with little use of quantitative research that compares outcomes for students in different settings. We suggest that policymakers should treat the conclusions drawn in this paper cautiously and give due consideration to the literature that is not supportive of full inclusion.

This paper discusses key themes of the 15th biennial conference of the Association for Language Awareness (2020), with a focus on increasing digital engagement in language education. The COVID-19 pandemic occasioned an abrupt transition to emergency remote language teaching and learning (ERLTL) worldwide. The ALA 2020 conference was also affected by this transition; originally planned as a located conference in Geelong, Australia, it was eventually held online, a first in ALA's conference history. The current paper engages with contemporary debates of language teaching and learning in two ways. Firstly, it traces recent discussions by presenting key findings from five papers given at the conference, and secondly, via a scoping review of literature focusing on critical lessons from the pandemic regarding language teaching and learning. The review captures recent research from the Australasian region. Key debates identified in the literature include the needs of teachers and learners during the transition to online learning, and how student engagement was affected. The literatures highlight that both educators and students have been developing new practices in teaching and learning resulting from the shift to online and blended modes, which may continue to shape language education and new pedagogies in the future.

This paper examines the personal and professional experiences of the five arts leaders who co-wrote the foundation document for Australia's first national curriculum in the Arts. Their personal and professional backgrounds, which were explored during in depth interviews, drove the complex collaborative process that informed the first iteration of the "Australian Curriculum: The Arts." Though each couched their responses in the context of their background and arts discipline, they shared an awareness of the important role of the Arts in providing the analytical tools for children and young people to identify and subsequently challenge social injustice. The findings, which are presented as a group narrative using a Narrative Inquiry approach, reveal how the five arts leaders' individual lived experience, disciplinary experience and expertise, and commitment to collaborative leadership informed their approach. It was one driven by their shared belief that all Australian students, regardless of their background, are entitled to a quality arts education.

The importance of engaging students with complex societal challenges has led to the adoption of various interdisciplinary teaching and learning practices in both K-12 and higher education. However, interdisciplinary learning is one of the most complex domains of contemporary educational practice, and, despite its significance, remains significantly undertheorized and under-researched. This Special Issue highlights empirical research efforts toward understanding interdisciplinary learning in its complexity. It simultaneously aims to (1) advance ecological perspectives that encompass concepts and methodologies for studying complex heterogeneous learning practices and (2) apply these perspectives to the research of interdisciplinary learning - of how people learn across and beyond disciplines. This introduction provides a historical context for interdisciplinary learning, introduces an ecological stance toward researching learning across and beyond disciplines, and reviews critical theoretical and methodological challenges within interdisciplinary learning, arguing that the field of the learning sciences is well-positioned to address these challenges. It discusses how the contributions presented in this special issue shed light on theoretical, methodological, empirical, and design aspects of interdisciplinary learning and offer a basis for further design work and research.

This article engages with discard studies scholarship to interrogate findings from a study that set out to deliberately follow wastepaper in an early childhood setting. The study, which used participatory methods positioning teachers and children as research partners, began with purposeful noticing and attunement to paper's movements and materiality. This attentiveness defamiliarized paper and the ways in which it is known and experienced. It led to questions about the wider systems in which paper is entangled. In this article, thinking with discard studies provokes us to consider the relational systems that involve paper in early learning settings and leads us to question the reduce-reuse-recycle maxim which allows some systems to flourish by diverting attention away from them. The article concludes by suggesting that if we are to discard well, we must become aware of systems that are maintained by taken-for-granted waste practices such as reducing, reusing, and recycling.

Introduction Roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco is a popular choice in Australia, with some people who smoke finding these products more attractive than factory-made cigarettes (FMC). Differences in visual and tactile properties and in the feel and taste of the smoke may contribute to this attractiveness. These differences may be driven by variation in tobacco constituents and wrapping paper permeability. However, to date, there has been no comparison of RYO and FMC products on the Australian market. Aims and Methods Chemical constituents, pH, flavorants, and paper permeability were compared in unburned RYO tobacco and tobacco from FMC. RYO and FMC products from matched brands were compared, as were products from the most popular FMC and RYO brands on the Australian market in 2018. Results RYO tobacco had higher moisture and humectant content (glycerol and propylene glycol) than FMC tobacco. RYO tobacco also had higher amounts of total and reducing sugars and lower nicotine when comparing the most popular brands. RYO papers were less permeable than FMC papers. Both RYO and FMC tobacco contained many chemicals identified as flavorants, including fourteen with known potential health risks. For most measured constituents and flavorants, RYO tobaccos had more in common with other RYO than FMC, with the commonalities remaining even when matched brands were compared. Conclusions Higher levels of moisture, humectants, and sugars in Australian RYO tobacco compared to FMC may be increasing attractiveness of RYO by reducing the harsh taste of the smoke and increasing the moist feel of the tobacco. Implications While price is the main factor driving the use of RYO tobacco, some people who smoke find these products more attractive. This study has shown that Australian RYO tobacco contains higher amounts of glycerol, propylene glycol, and sugars than FMC. These chemicals may be improving the taste of the tobacco, as well as creating a moist feel that is falsely perceived as indicating that the tobacco is "fresh" and "less chemically." Ironically, it may be that higher amounts of some added chemicals in RYO contribute to false perceptions of a more natural and less harmful product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how data from a biology paper, which analyzes the relationship between mass and metabolic rate for two species of marine bryozoan, can be used to teach a variety of regression topics to both introductory and advanced students. A thorough analysis requires intelligent data wrangling, variable transformations, and accounting for correlation between observations. The bryozoan data can be used as a valuable class example throughout the semester, or as a dataset for extended homework assignments and class projects. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

As humanity reaches the 5.0 industrial revolution, education plays a critical role in boosting the quality of human resources. This paper reports bibliometric research on emerging TiP during 1993-2022 in the educational field to analyse its development on any level of education during the last three decades. This study employed a Scopus database. The findings are that the trend of TiP publication in educational fields has tended to increase every year during the past three decades and conference paper became the most published document type, the USA is the country which produces the most publications; "Students" being the most occurrences keyword and total link strength. The publication of the TiP is ranked to the Quartile 1, which implies that a publication with the cited performance is a publication with credibility because the publisher has a good reputation. Researchers can find the topics most relevant to other metadata sources such as Web of Science, Publish, and Perish.

Learning statistics can be challenging for many students, due to their inability to engage in statistical reasoning and application of techniques. This challenge becomes compounded in online learning contexts where students are spatially and temporally separated from the teacher. This paper describes and explains a case of theory-driven interventions designed to enhance the learning experiences of students enrolled in two similar business statistics units, one for undergraduate and the other for postgraduate programs. The paper based its claims primarily on the analysis of data from a student evaluation of teaching survey. This study affirmed the importance of a pedagogy-first approach. It argued that the interventions, which were effective in enhancing the student learning experience, were underpinned by a robust pedagogical analysis of the teaching and learning issues using both constructive alignment and transactional distance theory lenses.

The rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020 disrupted and changed higher education across the world, and into the future. Campuses were shut down, almost overnight. International and State borders were closed and business models that relied heavily on high-paying international students collapsed. University leaders and academics were forced to find new ways of attracting, engaging with, and retaining students. This paper describes a project that was undertaken in Australia in 2021 which investigated the implications of, and scope for online assessment in this "new virtual world" of learning and teaching in higher education. After extensive research and consultation, the project developed a Digital Assessment Framework dubbed DASH C21, which stands for Digital Assessment Stretching Horizons for the 21st Century. The Framework is based on a set of underpinning principles and values; the Inputs. The Inputs feed into four Dimensions. These Dimensions are Practices and Pedagogies, Strategies, Emerging Technologies and Stretching Horizons. The Outputs are a series of authentic, innovative, experiential and forward looking, digital assessments, reinforced by academic integrity values. This paper will be of particular interest to higher education senior managers, academics, learning and teaching specialists, staff professional developers and curriculum designers.

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, universities were already exploring the potential of online education. Colleges and universities throughout the world became more reliant on online learning management systems (LMSs) and videoconferencing tools like "Zoom" and "Microsoft Teams" during the 2020-2021 campus' lockdowns. The transition from traditional face-to-face teaching to online learning presented significant difficulties for universities, particularly those that depended heavily on international students. The project reported in this paper was undertaken in Australia in 2021 at the request of a private higher education institution. A new student-centric version of the Moodle learning management system (LMS) was created to maximise the platform's pedagogical, communicative, and informational capabilities. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how online learning platforms that are flexible, utilise embedded interactive features and resources, and are freely available can enhance and support the delivery of quality online education. The paper discusses how well-designed learning management systems have the capacity to motivate, engage and retain students in online learning. Academics, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as those working in curriculum development and information technology at institutions of higher learning, may find this article to be of interest and value.

The notion of "professional" is built on a concept of traditionally male professions and patriarchal social orders. ECEC (early childhood education and care), however, is a female-dominated field characterised by its unique caring practice. This study investigated how a group of Australian early childhood preservice teachers presented themselves professionally on social media, in relation to respective infant (0-2) and kindergarten (3-5) practica. Data were drawn from focus group discussions about how the participants shared their practicum experiences on Instagram. The paper is guided by Foucault's concepts of self writing. Findings are organised around four themes of self-writing processes: collecting, selecting, annotating, and managing time and tasks. Two narratives are revealed. In the context of the kindergarten placement, the posts constituted a journey of continuous improvement against all odds. In contrast, the infant placement experiences evoked a sense of struggle and renunciation. The paper concludes with implications for further study beyond the Australian context.

The present study aims to identify the most productive countries, journals, authors, institutions and the most used keywords in the field of special education during 2011-2020, based on the WoS database. The widespread effects of the papers and how they are related were analyzed with the bibliometric analysis method. The findings of the study showed that the USA is inarguably the most productive country, followed by England and Australia. On the other hand, there was a very strong positive correlation (r = 0.929) between the number of papers published by countries and their h-index, a similar finding was also found to be present between the countries' h-index and GDP per capita (r = 0.790). Moreover, it was found that the journals with the highest quartile (Q1 and Q2) in the field of special education published significantly more papers than the journals with the lowest quartile (Q3 and Q4). Matson, JL (USA), Sigafoos, J (New Zealand) and Lancioni, GE (Italy) were determined as the most prolific authors, respectively. Autism, intellectual disability, and Down syndrome were the phrases most frequently used as keywords. Our findings provide key information regarding the developments that the research direction of special education field has recently taken. This study also serves a potential roadmap for future studies.

University degrees are usually delivered in defined sessions--by term, semester, or in week-based blocks--whereby students are required to complete their studies by the due date. Term or session-based schedules that require students to complete the study within set timeframes are, however, potentially restrictive. Temporal challenges associated with work and life can impede progress and add to the specific problem of student attrition in online learning. As universities seek to deliver innovative options for their students, increased attention is being paid to alternate models of delivery. This paper reports on the development of a hyperflexible online Master of Business Administration (MBA) course by a regional university in Australia, which has grown to more than 1,000 students since its launch in 2017. Delivered entirely online, the degree was specifically designed to address an inequity; MBA programs are traditionally expensive, and in Australia, the requirement for students to travel to attend residential schools and examinations adds significant cost to already expensive tuition fees. This paper analyzed enrollment data, course analytics over a two-year period, and student surveys conducted at the end of the second year of delivery (n = 98) to evaluate the development and implementation of the course as a hyperflexible course whereby students have almost complete control over their study at the postgraduate tertiary level. Results highlight the potential for the model to enable student success through flexibility.

Panic buying of toilet rolls in Australia began in early March 2020. This was related to the realisation that the novel coronavirus was spreading across the country. To the general population the impact of the virus was unknown. Gradually the federal government started closing the country's borders. The panic buying of toilet rolls was not unique to Australia. It happened across all societies that used toilet paper rather than water to clean after defecation and urination. However, research suggests that the panic buying was most extreme in Australia. This article argues that the panic buying was closely linked to everyday notions of Western civilisation. Pedestal toilets and toilet paper are key aspects of civilisation and the fear of the loss of toilet paper is connected to anxiety about social breakdown, the loss of civilisation. This is the fear manifested in the perceived threat posed by the virus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although visual arts pedagogies are considered central within early childhood education programs, teacher self-efficacy has a direct impact on the quality and delivery of visual arts curricula. Until recently, the visual arts self-efficacy, pedagogical knowledge, and practice of in-service early childhood teachers have remained largely unexplored. The authors of this paper present a qualitative, iterative re-analysis of their three PhD studies which broadly focussed on early childhood visual arts praxis and specifically examined the visual arts beliefs and pedagogy of early childhood teachers in Australia and New Zealand. A thematic analysis of the intersecting self-efficacy findings raised in the three studies identifies the powerful influence of self-efficacy on teaching practice in the visual arts domain and offers new understandings about visual arts self-efficacy amongst early childhood teachers. The combined findings reveal several factors that restrain or enhance teachers' visual arts self-efficacy across time, including the impact of childhood experiences, pre-service training and epistemological beliefs. The paper also identifies several enabling conditions that appear to support teachers to develop and maintain positive visual arts self-efficacy beliefs, including practical engagement with materials, sustained professional learning, relational trust and intentional leadership. These enabling conditions offer practical strategies and research recommendations in service of positive visual arts self-efficacy to enhance quality visual arts teaching in early childhood contexts.

Research on violence in schools has been dominated by 'bullying' discourse and methodologies that place individualised pathos at the centre of problematic behaviours. This focus has resulted in the neglect of broader structures of power such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and class in the violence enacted and encountered by young people. As a result, institutional solutions to school violence have often failed to acknowledge and respond to the ways that gender and sexuality might operate in the lives of young people, instead offering simplistic strategies to reduce ubiquitous forms of 'bullying'. Simultaneously, political discourses and research challenges further prohibit young people from contributing to targeted and critical interventions into the socio-cultural practices of gender- and sexuality-making in schools. As outsiders to these nuanced, complex, and dynamic spaces, university-based researchers often lack vocabulary and literacy, especially in relation to always-shifting meanings around gender and sexuality. In this paper, I argue for the need to actively include young people in research praxis to co-investigate school cultures of gender and sexuality using a Community-Led Research (CLR) approach. Reporting on work with ten student co-researchers that formed two groups in two schools in Australia, the paper details some of the ways that they impacted and benefitted the early phases of a three-year project, including through impacting methods, participant engagement, data analysis and the implementation of new strategies to improve school cultures of gender and sexuality. This article also illustrates some of the challenges and opportunities that CLR methodologies produce when working in less structured settings, including ethical and social challenges that emerge in iterative research praxis. Findings argue for the rights of young people to exert their hopes for their school cultures that relate to gender and sexuality, particularly through research-based empowerment. While often slower and more difficult, co-researching with young people can produce opportunities for transformation and change not only of research processes, but also of researchers and their communities.

In Australia coeducation dominates government schooling, with single-sex institutions usually being the preserve of selective government schools and private, often elite, institutions. For marginalised young people who 'drop out' or are forced to leave the coeducational mainstream system, flexible and/or non-traditional schools provide alternative pathways. Such schools are primarily coeducational. This paper draws upon data from two flexible/non-traditional schools in Australia that attempted to address the issues of educational disengagement via the provision of single-sex schooling: Fernvale Education Centre and Lorem School. The data are insightful with regard to these two very different gender and education paradigms and to their associated discourses about masculinity and femininity. The paper will identify the ways in which these schools both reproduce and challenge dominant constructions of gender within the context of responding to disenfranchised/disengaged young people.

This paper presents the findings of a ten-week research project exploring the intricacies of a co-located intergenerational program in Southeast Queensland. The research involved an early learning centre, North Early Learning, operated by a large not-for-profit organisation, Queensland Child Learning, and an aged care residence, Aged Care Living (pseudonyms). The research question underpinning this paper focused on identifying the views of educators, children, and families currently attending the early childhood education and care centre who will participate in the co-located intergenerational program. Employing a community-based participatory research approach, the study explores the perspectives of educators, children, and families participating in the program through visual children's surveys, facilitated interviews, and online surveys. The findings highlight positive attitudes from educators and families toward intergenerational programs, leading to the development of an implementation timeline aligned with the needs of educators, children, and families that are reflective of the unique context of the centre.