Search

United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) focuses on education and seeks to promote inclusive, equitable, and quality education, providing opportunities for all. In this context, it seeks to promote intersectionality (gender and ethnicity) as a fundamental factor in education, and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers in particular. Similarly, it aims to support programs that include the gender gap in their studies to mitigate the lack of Indigenous women and/or students from native peoples in STEM careers. The objective of this work was to carry out a categorization of programs aimed at Indigenous students in their processes of access, retention, and follow-up in STEM careers, with the purpose of making visible the variety of approaches and programs that have been created in different regions of the world. A systematic review was conducted to analyze the programs, and the classical content analysis method of scientific production was employed. The main results of the analysis are classified into three main categories: the characteristics of the studies, the programs, and their results. In relation to the study's contribution, the aim is to generate knowledge and understanding of the programs identified to promote the inclusion of this underrepresented population in STEM education.

This article provides a detailed analysis of the various methods used in physics classrooms to teach oscillation and its related concepts. We thoroughly searched reputable databases, including Scopus and Web of Science. We analyzed 50 articles published between 2018 and 2023 using content analysis techniques such as elimination, classification, and grouping into themes. Our unit of analysis was the articles' methods, results, and conclusions. The results of this study are: (1) The trends in the development of research on the topic of oscillation and its derivatives from 2018 to 2023 indicate a declining interest. (2) During the period from 2018 to 2023, Indonesia emerged as the primary contributor to research on the topic of oscillation; (3) From 2018 to 2023, researchers predominantly focused on the topic of pendulum in the field of oscillation research (4) The most prevalent method for imparting oscillation content and its derivatives employed by researchers between 2018 and 2023 was experimentation, and (5) The most prevalent type of empirical research conducted on the topic of oscillation between 2018 and 2023 was pure research involving laboratory experiments. This systematic literature review is a foundation for developing various learning tools such as teaching materials, technology-based instructional media development, and primarily instruments related to oscillation and its derivatives. Overall, this systematic review highlights the need for more research on effective teaching methods for oscillation and provides practical insights for educators and researchers alike.

This article reports on a desktop evidence review of Australian public universities work-integrated learning policies and procedures. The review examined the availability and accessibility of these documents to prospective students with disability, as well as their inclusivity and quality, against three dimensions developed from analysis of equity best practice literature. The findings reveal an inconsistent approach by Australian universities to inclusive work-integrated learning for students with disability. The variability in availability and accessibility of inclusive work-integrated learning materials implies course and university decision-making for future university students with disability may be difficult. Quality concerns included a limited reference to relevant standards, transparent terminology and research evidence in available materials, as well as expired policies and procedures, outdated language and disability theory, and a lack of evidence of industry collaboration. Recommendations from these findings support the development of equitable WIL practices with students with disability across Australian universities.

Contemporary education is being undeniably shaped by datafication, and while new algorithmic and automated decision-making processes can have educational benefits, they also raise issues about children's digital rights and education policy responses to these rights. This study mapped how children's digital right to privacy and related human rights concepts are present in education policy documents of Australia's three largest state government departments of education. A children's rights coding framework was developed from the United Nation's 'General comment No. 25 (2021) on children's rights in relation to the digital environment' and used to code the dataset. Two levels of analysis were then undertaken. Level 1 involved code and subcode frequency analyses of concepts related to children's digital rights in policy documents. Level 2 was a descriptive qualitative analysis designed to understand how digital rights were expressed in policy. The study found that although all state government departments of education reflected some elements of children's digital rights, some states had a more complex, sustained and public-facing commitment to expressing these in policy. The study concluded that Australian government departments of education should work towards providing more transparent public-facing policy on children's digital rights that can empower students and their families to make informed decisions within a rapidly shifting digital environment.

This study reports on a five-year data set about the deaths of 599 individuals in New South Wales Australia, who at the time of their death were living in out-of-home care. Analysis aimed to: i) gain a clearer understanding of place of death for people with intellectual disability; and ii) identify and analyse associated variables to investigate how well they predict place of death for this population. Hospital admissions, polypharmacy and living situation were the strongest standalone predictors of place of death. A hospital death was more likely if the target population were subject to polypharmacy, lived in a group home, had a moderate intellectual disability or had GORD. Death, and place of death, is an issue requiring individual consideration. This study has identified some of the variables that need attention when supporting people with intellectual disability to have a good death.

This paper outlines the development of a new Indigenous research methodology: Indigenous Literature Re-view Methodology (ILRM). In the rejection of the idea that Western, dominant forms of research 'about' Indigenous peoples are most valid, ILRM was developed with aims to research in ways that give greater emphasis to Indigenous voices and knowledges, foregrounding Indigenous ways of being, doing and knowing. The advantages of ILRM include identifying themes as 'relevant' as opposed to 'common'. This method is based on relatedness, which is framed by Aboriginal ontology, axiology and epistemology, or ways of being, ways of doing and ways of knowing. Describing and employing ILRM to re-view Indigenous Australian boarding school literature, it was found there is a modest but robust body of research that has emerged in the past 20 years. Sixty-six written sources (i.e. journal articles, reports, theses and books) which were published in 2000 onwards and focussed on a topic of contemporary Indigenous boarding schooling were analysed. Sources that included a chapter or section on boarding as part of a publication focussed on other topics were not included in this re-view. Seven major themes emerged, including home, student experience, transitions, access, staff, health and evaluation. This paper focusses on the development and use of ILRM as an Indigenous methodology for researchers in Indigenous fields of study.

This article provides a review of research in applied linguistics published in Australia in the period 2015-2022. Primarily, it is based on articles from Australian publications as material from other sources is more widely available to an international audience. The research has been published in such journals as the "Australian Journal of Language and Literacy," "Australian Review of Applied Linguistics" ("ARAL"), "BABEL," "English in Australia," "Papers in Language Testing and Assessment" and "TESOL in Context." Five key areas of research are discussed: First Nations peoples and their multilingualism, language and migration, language testing and assessment, language curricula and pedagogy, and teacher development, and their identity and pedagogical beliefs.

The quality of graduate teachers is a significant concern for teacher educators, policymakers and the public. Initiatives regarding the quality assurance of initial teacher education (ITE) programs require critical examination to ensure that ITE programs develop proficient graduate teachers to meet the demands of modern classrooms. In this paper, we draw on Biesta's (2015, 2019, 2020) theoretical framing of purpose in education (i.e., qualification, socialisation and subjectification) to analyse the policy texts related to graduate teaching performance assessment from institutions involved in the creation and implementation of the Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) in ITE in Australia. Researchers used document analysis to examine the publicly stated purpose of the TPA. The analysis revealed that the relevant policy texts focused much more on qualification (81%) than socialisation (8%) and subjectification (11%). The findings imply that the TPA policies may contribute to narrowing the ITE curriculum and the subsequent thwarting of teacher subjectification.

Various features of teacher instruction underpin the criteria used for the evaluation of teacher quality. The current study sought to explore whether nativeness/non-nativeness affects the criteria teachers consider for teacher quality evaluation. To this end, the participants were provided with five video clips of teaching, each presenting a 10-min lesson taught in a real classroom environment. They were requested to rate the quality of the teachers and to point out and describe the criteria they used to rate the teachers. Content analysis of the data indicated that preparation, caring, classroom management, and instruction constituted the general criteria the native and non-native teachers employed to evaluate teacher quality. Considerable differences, however, were observed between the two groups regarding a few of the criteria. The native teachers valued teachers' efficient use of learners' L1 more than the non-native teachers, while teachers' linguistic accuracy and fluency of speech were highlighted by more non-native teachers. Besides, issues related to caring, management, and instruction grabbed the attention of both native and non-native teachers, while preparation received substantially less attention. It can be concluded that the use of video-mediated peer observation can provide a platform to uncover the implicit beliefs teachers hold toward teacher quality.

Gifted education has been recognised as a fractured field that can be categorised using varying paradigmatic approaches. Over the past thirty years, Gagne's Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talents (DMGT) has maintained a strong influence in Australia, which means that the paradigmatic assumptions that are present in this model have shaped the Australian policy landscape. With recent changes in the gifted education policy and guidance space in many Australian states and territories, it is appropriate to explore whether there is a paradigmatic shift occurring. This research adopted a document study methodology, and found that the DMGT is still a favoured model, which means that an essentialist vein continues to flow through many of the Australian state and territory gifted education approaches. At the same time, most states and territories are attempting to embrace more dynamic approaches to supporting giftedness, which leads to paradigmatic confusion at the policy and guidance level.

With projections from the Australian federal government indicating an impending exacerbation of the teacher shortage by 2025, it is timely to explore potential approaches that could help mitigate this imminent national crisis. In teaching, there is an historical tendency for the teaching profession to attract more women than men and this study therefore aims to analyse trends in female completion rates of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) degrees. The study objective was to identify the specific teaching degree levels (undergraduate and postgraduate) and modes of attendance that are most likely to continue attracting women to pursue careers in teaching. This research relies on non-identifiable open access data obtained from Australian ITE providers between 2001 and 2021, which have been collected by the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment. The study findings reveal an upward trend in female completions of ITE programs offered through external and multimodal study modes, while the internal mode of attendance show a decline. These findings hold significant implications for policy and practice, suggesting the need to enhance the accessibility of external and multimodal ITE degrees for women.

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the practice of traditional higher education providers (HEPs) and highlighted the need for innovative approaches to education for sustainable development. This research note focuses on online short courses (OSCs)--micro-credentials geared at upskilling or reskilling learners with a competitive application process and cost. It conducts (a) a rapid bibliometric analysis of literature on the nexus between OSCs and sustainable development and (b) an environmental scan of OSCs offered in Australia with a lens of sustainable development. An exploratory approach was adopted to analyze publicly available secondary data on scholarly literature and the courses offered. Findings reveal two key trends: (i) the nascent nature of literature on OSCs and sustainable development globally and (ii) the limited availability of sustainable development related OSCs in Australia. This research note makes broad analytical contributions to posit OSCs as an e-learning innovation to advance business education for sustainable development.

The characteristics and content of post-graduate courses in special and/or inclusive teacher education in Australian universities were examined using publicly available material on university websites. Content analysis was guided by a set of content area elements covering desirable skills and knowledge for special educators that were identified in the Australian literature. The presence or absence of these content elements in each course and in core or elective units was coded for 28 courses from 21 universities. All or most courses covered generic content such as teaching strategies and evaluating and using research. However, more specialist content, such as explicit teaching strategies and instruction in literacy and numeracy, was absent from over half the courses. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of the limitations necessarily imposed by the inclusion of only publicly available online information.

News coverage of the Thunberg-inspired student climate strikes in Australia in 2019 and 2020 framed school leaders 'in conversation' with politicians, education system spokespeople, political pundits, the public and student activists. While previous scholarly interest has mainly focused on the student protestors, we examine the intertextual framing of school leaders in the news. While our analysis affirms previous understandings of the politically divided nature of climate change communication, it also reveals that school leaders' agency was constrained by the discursive effects of news reporting. Moreover, the antagonisms and polarisation of views in news and commentary created a circulation of affective intensities that amplified the challenges for principals. We assess the implications of these framings and their effects on the agency of school leaders. We conclude by arguing for more proactive leadership and advocacy by school leaders to support the participation of students in politics and activism for climate justice.

This document analysis sought to examine the nature and scope of articles relating to teaching and giftedness published in Australia's only gifted education journal -- the Australasian Journal of Gifted Education (AJGE) from 1992 to 2024. Utilising the Publish or Perish software program to identify a corpus of related literature published in the AJGE since its inception, 43 articles were chosen as fitting the search criteria. For each article, basic descriptors are provided including the frequency of citing other research from within the AJGE. Previous research has identified limitations in Australian gifted education research but also acknowledged the small and relatively young field's promising achievement of a level of recognition through a developing citation profile (Jolly et al., 2024). Yet this could be enhanced through a more dedicated commitment on the part of Australian researchers to cite relevant Australian research wherever possible, to ensure the continued progression of our citation profile. This study provides insight into citing patterns by AJGE authors in one topic area, in the hope that it will encourage future contributors to more frequently examine and cite local research in the field.

This paper examines the University of Sydney Library's development and piloting of a methodology to survey its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural collections, to enhance catalogue metadata and allow culturally sensitive material to be identified and protected. The research falls broadly within the interpretivist epistemology and draws methodologically on Participative Action Research. The pilot survey was conducted using a qualitative, collection-based approach, more specifically Direct Collection Analysis. A broad syntax was used to identify cultural content within the catalogue metadata, and items individually examined to determine the nature of their contents. The findings surface the benefits and shortcomings of the initial methodology. It is recommended future surveys be conducted using more specific terminology checklists and undertaken by a dedicated team that has received care and handling training for cultural materials and is led by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander expert in cultural collections.

In addition to aligning with context-specific expectations of policymakers, initial teacher education of secondary English teachers can consider schools' needs. Furthermore, schools may decrease attrition when they recruit teachers who meet their role requirements. To explore the learning area-specific role preferences and requirements of Australian non-government schools, a hybrid content analysis of N = 130 job advertisements was undertaken. Findings highlight three related but also distinct role preferences and requirements in relation to experience, qualifications and related knowledge, and English advocacy. It was also found that around one in five jobs were explicitly open to employing recent graduates. Job advertisements typically had poor coverage of learning area-specific role preferences and requirements, and only around a quarter of advertisements were seeking an applicant with suitable qualifications to teach in the English learning area. With reducing teacher attrition a key goal, schools could consider providing more detail in job advertisements to enable applicants to consider their skills and preferences in relation to the diverse needs of the secondary English teaching role.

Accessing high-quality career development to support successful transitions into post-compulsory education and employment can be a challenge for newly arrived students of refugee and migrant backgrounds. In Australia, not-for-profit organisations provide career guidance to students within schools that enrol refugee and migrant families. Through programs, not-for-profit organisations can provide mentoring, support and other career services. This research explores the marketing materials of organisation-provided career guidance programs based in Australian secondary schools. A close textual reading of how the programs engage with the discipline and practices of career guidance reveal a deficit framing of students and their families, with limited focus on promoting agency across programs. In light of the increasing resettlement of refugees and migrants in Australia, these findings highlight a need to balance social justice principles with greater engagement with the discipline of career education when enacting career interventions with vulnerable groups.

Australian schooling is characterised by high levels of choice and competition, and education policymaking promotes the dissemination of information to assist families to choose a school. The aim of this study is to examine whether current information sharing is adequate for informing school choice for young people seeking vocational education and training (VET) opportunities. We examined secondary school websites in Western Australia, a state that is experiencing severe skills shortages, to ascertain the nature and extent to which information about VET in secondary schools is publicly available. Our findings showed that information about VET programs is largely invisible on school websites, as well as on the state jurisdiction's website (Department of Education WA, n.d.).

Little is known about what academics focus on when providing assessment feedback to international students for whom English is an additional language (EAL). This study examines written assessment feedback provided to 11 EAL-speaking international students throughout a two-year Master of Social Work programme and investigates their perspectives of this. Content analysis of written feedback revealed considerable variations in the volume, format and focus of feedback; this was also reflected in data provided by participants in interviews. Feedback was mainly content-focused, with a low chance of wider transferability, while language and academic skills had a limited focus. Participants' attitude toward feedback and their reported engagement with it is in alignment with the process view of feedback. This study concludes with suggestions to further facilitate student engagement with feedback and improve consistency across the Social Work programme.

This study theoretically aligns with research that purports that nature play positively contributes to sustainability stewardship. Early childhood teachers can plan for and nurture children's capabilities and dispositions for sustainability stewardship. Initial teacher education programs contribute to the professional learning of preservice early childhood teachers' perceptions regarding nature play. This article details the findings of content analysis to explore and uncover the existence of nature play in online, publicly available documents representing twenty-two early childhood teacher qualifications. In what ways is nature play evidenced in early childhood initial teacher education programs in Australia? The findings highlight potential discrepancies between the values related to nature play in the early childhood field and the content in initial teacher education programming. The article concludes with implications for teacher education programs and proposed recommendations for ongoing research.

This research investigated the typical grammatical structures, topics, and address terms for the victims in the news of Tham Luang cave rescue on Twitter published by four broadcasters: Bangkok Post, CNN International, BBC World News, and ABC News. The sample was 454 news tweets posted by the broadcasters between June 25, 2018 and July 15, 2018. The instruments were a syntactic analysis table, a topic analysis table, and an address term analysis table. The results showed that (1) the most typical grammatical structure used in the news by all broadcasters, except BBC World News, was simple sentence, (2) the most frequently-addressed topics in Bangkok Post and BBC World News were settings, while those in CNN International and ABC News were victims, and (3) the most frequently-used address terms for the victims in the news by Bangkok Post and BBC World News were address terms associated with age and gender combination and those associated with occupation, while this frequency order was in reverse in the news by CNN International and ABC News. Certain statistically significant correlations were also witnessed. The findings provided insights into certain similarities and differences in typical grammatical structures, topics, and address terms in the news tweets posted by the four broadcasters, and they also reflected English-language news publication on Twitter in general.

During 2020 and beyond, coronavirus disease has profoundly disrupted global economic, health and higher education systems. As universities shuttered campuses and businesses locked down, Australia's export education sector stalled. Many international students who were able to return home, did so, while those who could not, would experience varying levels of support and exclusion. Government policies and practices during 2020 are analysed alongside research literature and media reports to provide an overview of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the Australian higher education sector and international students. Specifically, the analysis addresses the emerging and emergent impact of this pandemic on the public higher education sector and its international education activities and proposes corresponding recommendations for systemic and institutional recovery. These recommendations call for increased government fiscal and welfare support, strengthened regulatory safeguards, extended post-study work rights, progress regarding foreign qualifications recognition, and institution-level strategies. A long and varied list of sources chronicles events.

Recognizing that university statements about equity, diversity, and inclusion are often cosmetic, performative, or at best, aspirational, rather than indicative of on-campus realities, this project analyzes interpretations of student identity and diversity through publicly available materials. The primary purpose of this research was to investigate how university messages about equity, diversity, and inclusion, available through public websites, are interpreted by faculty and students. Using a students-as-partners approach, we identified and analyzed themes based on our own perceptions and understandings of each of five university websites: University of Calgary (Canada), University of Alabama (USA), Deakin University (Australia), University of Exeter (UK), and Portland State University (USA). While equity, diversity, and inclusion are signature initiatives at many universities, we found that analyses of their websites suggest that the ways in which those are operationalized differ. The patterns identified suggest that messaging through university websites can promote or detract from equity, diversity, and inclusion in university settings, and we observed differences in the ways in which institutions operationalized and represented initiatives related to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Exploring how these efforts at our five institutions are messaged to and interpreted by students provides a better understanding of the institutional priorities and the assumed values identified by student co-researchers. The use of student co-researchers proved an especially valuable contribution to this analysis to gain perspectives about presentations of student identity and diversity. Using this form of embedded research, we identify the limited presentations of and perceptions around diversity at institutions of higher education cited by student co-researchers.

The global mobility of students is on the rise and the recruitment of international students is high on the agenda of institutions in higher education. By communicating a distinctive corporate identity on their websites, universities can distinguish themselves from competitors and generate a positive image to attract talented international students. In this study, the online corporate identity of top universities in 12 countries is compared by semantic network analyses. This cross-country comparison demonstrates that universities in different countries create a distinctive online corporate identity by using different (combinations of) frames within four identified themes: internal characteristics, student resources, external position and affairs, and corporate citizenship. These insights are useful in the development of communication strategies by universities and national governments.

Children's picture books contribute to children's development of gender identity and can impact aspirations and expectations of roles in families and society. However, the world represented in children's books reflects predominantly middle class, heterosexual, male heroes and characters. This paper reports on a cross-cultural study investigating gender representation in frequently read picture books across eight early learning centres in the United States and Australia. Forty-four educators working with 271 children participated. Data were collected from book audits and observations. Unique to this study is the presentation of a new data analysis instrument, Harper's Framework of Gender Stereotypes Contained in Children's Literature. The majority of the books shared by educators in this study promoted traditional, binary and stereotypical viewpoints of gender and gender roles. These findings are concerning as the evidence shows that gender development is a critical part of the earliest and most important learning experience of young children and a requirement of educational policies rooted in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

This paper focuses on a document analysis for an Australian case study, which contributes to a larger international study on teacher leadership. The aim of this paper is to ascertain how teacher leadership is understood and conceptualised from an Australian documentary perspective spanning the national, state, regional, and local education administrative levels. A document analysis framework stipulated by the larger study identified the attributes of teacher leadership. Twenty-one documents were analysed and the attributes in relation to five considerations impacting teacher leadership are discussed. Results indicated differences of dominant attributes across each of the levels: however, accountability and advocacy are consistently represented. Accountability filters through all four levels. The system is beginning to advocate and acknowledge pathways to leadership. At the state level, teacher leadership is strengthened through professional and collaborative practices. However, this paper suggests this is not consistently evident at the regional and local levels due to a number of pertinent organisational issues.

Early childhood teachers are well-positioned to maximise preschoolers' development in oral language and emergent literacy; both of which are vital predictors of academic success at school. Research investigating their pre-service training in language and emergent literacy remains limited. This issue is addressed in the present study, with the first nation-wide review of the oral language and emergent literacy course content across all 84 Australian early childhood teacher pre-service courses. Qualitative Content Analysis was employed to gain an overview of language and emergent literacy teaching content reported in publicly available course documents. Study findings demonstrated large variation in the oral language and emergent literacy course content reported. The results showed that course content on the structure of language and code-related skills including phonological awareness and concepts of print, do not feature prominently across pre-service course documents. Further, course content on evidence-based strategies to foster children's oral language and emergent literacy development, such as dialogic book reading, and intentional adult-child interactions were also limited. Findings are discussed with respect to their implications for preparing early childhood teachers to support the oral language and emergent literacy growth of preschoolers.

The aim of this study was to determine the examination of the researches about the use of technology by fine arts teachers. The study was conducted according to the content and citation analysis model. In this context, Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection indexes were included. In the document scanning in the WOS environment, the keywords 'Fine arts', 'Teachers' and 'Technology' were searched. In total, 169 documents were examined and analysed one by one. They were analysed according to year, document type, WOS content category, country, source title, organisation and citation, authors, publication language and categories. As a result of this research, the first study was conducted in 2004, while the most studies were conducted in 2016. It was concluded that the published studies had the most Proceedings papers as the document type. The area where the studies of fine arts teachers on the use of technology are mostly carried out is Education Educational Research, according to the Web of Science content category. The most researched title in the distribution according to the Source Title field is 'International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conferences on Social Sciences and Arts.' The university with the most studies is Kazan Federal University. The 19 authors who conducted the studies have a large number of studies in this field. It was concluded that other authors had only one study in the field. Again, when we look at the distribution of the countries and documents according to the language of writing, the country with the most studies is China and the language of the documents is English. The area continues to evolve.

Background/purpose: The current study aims to analyze the thematic structures and trends of scientific publications that examine the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and education, while presenting a roadmap for future research on this topic. Materials/methods: The data were obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) bibliographic database by identifying the publications that examine the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and education, then were analyzed using bibliometric methodology and content analysis. VOSviewer, GraphPad softwares, and visualization maps were used to analyze the data and to present the findings. Results: The results of the study show that publications examining the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and education focused on "online education" and "teacher education," while the countries that contributed the most to publications on this issue were USA, United Kingdom, Canada, and Spain. It was determined that most publications preferred the "theoretical model" and the majority of the research data were obtained through "scale/interview forms." Furthermore, the findings of this study revealed that during the COVID-19 pandemic period, the editorial/refereeing processes of the articles submitted to academic journals were carried out very quickly and the articles were published unusually quickly. Conclusion: This study indicated that the majority of scientific studies on COVID-19 are focused on the field of health, and that there is limited edition research on COVID-19-related education. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the current study is the first research article in the international literature to examine the thematic structures and trends of scientific publications on the relationship between solely education and COVID-19 through bibliometric and content analysis; and contributes to the knowledge base on COVID-19-related education by mapping the existing knowledge.

A recent survey of the home-education community in Australia sought to identify the reasons why parents/guardians made the decision to home educate their children (Slater et al., 2022). Within the broader sample of 385 parents/guardians of 676 currently home-educated children in Australia, the parents/guardians of 81 children cited the child being gifted as a reason for the child being home-educated. Completed survey data returned by these parents/guardians were analysed. Thereafter, a sub-sample of these survey participants, comprising 16 parents/guardians of home-educated gifted children, were interviewed. Thematic and content analysis of all collected data indicated that the educational and emotional wellbeing of the child was a key motivator for home-educating. The reasons cited included the belief that there was a lack of provision of an appropriate curriculum, failure to appropriately differentiate and/or provide acceleration options, and a lack of understanding and ability to cater to the psychosocial and emotional needs of gifted students, in schools.

There is an identifiable gap between Australian government policy aspiration and curriculum guidance found in the content of the renewed Australian Curriculum (2018) that has been designed to support the cross-curriculum priority (CCP) of "Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia." We have employed an inductive, interpretative research methodology to analyse the curriculum guidance as data to examine how the Australian government's policies that are predicated on strengthening its partnerships with Asia are being supported by the Australian Curriculum and its State and Territory derivatives. We found that Australian Curriculum content that has been included to support the CCP "Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia" is minimal, unevenly distributed across the key learning areas, and that the inclusion of content is different between the overall Australian Curriculum and its State and Territory derivatives across key ideas, learning areas, and explanatory materials. Identifying a gap, we critically discuss two aspects of our findings: content real estate and its location, and the skills and knowledge assumed of teachers.

Purpose: Considering the relevance of education for sustainable development (SD) to enhancing engineers' abilities to contribute towards sustainability-related issues, this study aims to help understand the global context of the insertion of SD into engineering education and to provide guidelines to further evolve research and efforts towards implementing Engineering Education for Sustainable Development (EESD). Design/methodology/approach: This study performed a longitudinal analysis using bibliometrics and a content analysis via Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate standards. SciMAT software was used to support the bibliometric analysis. Findings: In addition to an increase in the practical aspects presented due to a change in the approaches taken to examine key topics, evidence on important concepts such as "life cycle assessment" and "digitalisation" increased in more recent years. However, it was possible to show that, despite the evolution observed throughout the years, several important opportunities exist for engineering programmes to improve and, for researchers, to fill the related gaps in the research. Originality/value: This study can be used as a guide for future research and as a source of insights for EESD implementation and improvement.

Across Australia many young people are taking action to address the issue of climate change and educating others through leading grassroots activism on local and global issues of sustainability. This paper discusses findings from an online document analysis that investigated three case studies of how youth-led organisations in Australia are leading and developing human rights-based education for sustainability (EfS) to empower others to enjoy and exercise their rights in keeping with the guidance of the 2011 UN Declaration on Human Rights Education and Training. This paper discusses how these organisations represent their activism online to empower young people to lead democratic action to achieve climate crisis justice. Drawing on a conceptual framework developed by Jensen & Schnack, the authors argue that the data suggests that the young activists in these case studies demonstrate high levels of 'social action competence' through raising awareness and taking action.

Blended learning (BL) applications, which are defined as a combination of online and face-to-face education processes and created with the strongest aspects of various teaching approaches, have attracted increasing attention particularly in recent years with the effect of the pandemic. Although blended learning studies, which have a wide range of content and variety of applications in the literature, have been examined by content analysis in many scientific studies, bibliometric studies that provide a comprehensive review of studies on BL and reveal a general map of scientific studies are extremely limited. The purpose of this research is to conduct a systematic analysis of BL studies around the world and to reveal general research trends by bibliometric method. In the scope of the research, 4,059 publications searched in the Scopus database between the years 1965-2022 were analyzed by VOSviewer and Leximancer software; the publications were examined from aspects such as year, subject, fund, citation, journal, country, common word, etc. An analysis of the research results reveals that studies on BL have increased in number in the literature since 2006; it has been found that the fields of social sciences, computer, medicine and engineering come to the forefront in the categorization of publications by subject, and the USA, UK, China and Australia are the most cited countries. As revealed by the findings of common word analysis, the studies mostly focus on the use of technology during the pandemic, current trends in education and technology, online learning environment and learner characteristics, teaching approaches, social media, motivation and medical education. Furthermore, it is understood that the most common terms in abstracts-keywords and titles of the studies reflect the learning process, the learner, the classroom environment, the model adopted, the system designed and medical education.

For more than a decade, Australian higher education has engaged with open educational practice (OEP). This paper presents findings from a study investigating the institutional approaches to OEP in Australian universities. Interviews were conducted with representatives from 10 Australian universities. The findings of a thematic analysis reveal organisational context, business processes and educational design as key themes through which OEP is enacted within Australian universities. Together, these themes document Australian universities experiences of and with OEP and contribute to addressing the need for translational research in Australian higher education. This research contributes to a growing evidence basis to construct an understanding of the dimensions of OEP for practical action.

Earlier research has not explicitly emphasised the dynamic integration of entrepreneurship imperatives and transformation in developing the entrepreneurial university. The purpose of this research is to examine the linkage between the strategic intents articulated by universities and their corresponding level of entrepreneurship transformation. This article develops a theoretical framework to examine transformational imperatives, applying a data analytical approach to assess strategic documents using automated content analysis and complex algorithms. Australian universities were chosen for the research given the specific context of the higher education sector and the availability of strategic documents on the institutions' websites. In the research context, the findings show that, while there are some variances with specific institutions, Australian universities in general, and several groups of universities in particular, expressed different levels of determination, ranging from moderate to moderately strong, to transform themselves into being entrepreneurial. Universities' management can benefit from the theoretical framework developed in this research to craft strategies to further adopt entrepreneurship imperatives. Implications are also provided to inform universities, industry and government with regard to enhancing the dynamics of entrepreneurship ecosystems.

"Go to temples of science and ideas of Europe. Imitate the Tugendbund, 'the Union of Virtue', of which thousands of German youth are the members. Always keep the rule of 'Fit soul is in fit body' in mind" (Petrov, 2013, p. 72). This study aimed to show the similarities, in terms of expression, emphasis, and implication, in the about/mission/vision/goals/objectives of various science centers from around the world and in the basic themes derived from Snellman's statement above, namely, Science for all, Science Centers for all, and Human welfare that he made as a challenge to not only his people but to everyone. Document and content analyses were applied in the study. Within the scope of these analyses, this study investigated the about/mission/vision/goals/objectives sections of websites of science centers from around the world (Asia, Europe, Global, Latin America/The Caribbean, North America, Africa). From this investigation, similar basic themes, derived from Snellman's statement challenging his people/everyone to adopt this devotion to science, were found in the areas of i) expression in ASTC, CIMUSET/CSTM, CASC and SAASTEC; ii) emphasis in ECSITE, ASDC, ASCN and NSCF; and iii) implication in ASPAC, ASTEN, NCSM, ABCMC and Red-POP. These basic themes, as found in the about/mission/vision/goals/objectives of science centers, can, in effect, be narrowed down to the one theme of "cultural institutions will be a big part of human life" (Madsen 2017, p. 68) science centers in the global village (Touraine, 2016, p. 121) of the future.

This cross-national study aimed to examine gender bias and stereotypes in Australian, Singaporean and Turkish elementary mathematics textbooks. Content analysis approach was used to provide descriptive statistics about the number of male/female and gender-neutral characters in the textbooks. Findings indicated that total frequencies in textbook contents including no gender bias was under nine percent in all textbooks. No gender bias was more prevalent across the grade levels in Australian textbooks. Singaporean mathematics textbooks had more discrepancy between the percentages of boys' and girls' representations than the representations in Turkish and Australian textbooks. In terms of math-gender stereotypes, all textbooks across grade levels were generally neutral. Social roles in mathematics textbooks across the countries had more variation for men than women with higher frequencies in all countries. The masculine roles were commonly attributed to men with more technical and intellectual tendency while domestic roles were ascribed to females.

Rapid advancements in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have afforded numerous variations to traditional chemistry curricula where pedagogical strategies that have been employed have assumed "one-size-fits-all". The translation of print-based instructional resources into multimodal online and digital forms enables greater accessibility, flexibility, and usability to support students in their understanding of complex chemistry concepts. To ideally offer an online learning environment that is accessible by all students to the greatest extent possible, this study employed the principles of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework to analyse the design of online instructional resources for topics in first-year chemistry courses. Through application of UDL principles, students were provided with multiple means of representation of concepts, options for action and expression, and various avenues for engagement within the learning management system (LMS). This paper describes how the UDL framework was used to evaluate three separate independent Cases of tertiary first-year chemistry courses, including one university in the Philippines and two universities in Australia. Evaluation through surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews revealed students' perceptions of the usefulness of the UDL-based features. Students cited benefit from multiple forms of content delivery, animations, interactive simulations, and video recordings because they facilitated processing of information, provided alternative ways of presenting the information, allowed for varying methods for response, navigation, and flexibility, and allowed for self-evaluation of their progress. These results suggest that applying the principles of the UDL framework in instructional design of an online environment in first-year chemistry courses can support and further enhance students' learning irrespective of their individual contexts.

A sense of belonging is an important factor for the persistence of girls in the study of physics. Content and imagery that presents the field as a masculine domain will undermine belonging and make it more difficult for girls to establish a physics identity that is congruent with their gender identity. The physics syllabus, final examinations and commonly used textbooks associated with the New South Wales Higher School Certificate were examined for gendered content. It was found that an emphasis on the history of physics in the syllabus has resulted in content and images in which male figures significantly outnumber female figures. This gendered content will be counter-productive to other efforts to increase the participation of girls in physics and suggestions on how this can be addressed are made.

Recent understandings of 'design' and, in particular design education have become entrenched within schools and higher education as approaches to provide students with opportunities to develop creativity and imagination, and the skills needed for a globalized future. Drawing from Australian curriculum documents, this paper presents a content analysis that locates representations of design and establishes whether current representations support the building of twenty-first century capabilities. The development of curriculum is positioned within the paper as an ideological act that establishes normative discourses of design and compares them with 'the other'. Our findings demonstrate that design is represented in multiple ways across the Australian Curriculum and that teachers are presented with a specific discourse of design in curriculum documents from different key learning areas. We argue that a dominant re-constructed representation of design within curriculum has the potential to standardize currently discipline specific understandings of design with implications for the enacted curriculum in the classroom and the key discipline design capabilities acquired by students.

The University of Sydney has introduced a program of engaging engineering students throughout their degree program in diverse forms of exposure to, and engagement with, professional practice. As part of this program students are required to write detailed reflections on each activity. These reflections provide a rich source of information regarding students' level of conceptual understanding and the extent of consideration of different professional competencies. This article reports on research that uses this data in exploring the relationship between students' academic performance and the nature of their reflections on a broad range of professional engagement activities. A large set of student reflections (N=8,628, totalling approximately 3.5 million words) completed by N=1,633 students was thematically coded against both Blooms taxonomy and the Engineers Australia Stage 1 Competency standards. These results were then compared to students' academic results. Reflections were dominated by verbs associated with level 3 (apply) and level 6 (create) of Blooms taxonomy, reflecting the focus on making within the Engineering discipline. Reflections related to design activities exhibited the highest levels of cognitive complexity, whereas activities emphasising understanding tended to rank the lowest in complexity. Surprisingly, there wasn't a significant correlation between the dominant Bloom level of the students' reflections and the academic performance (or improvement) of the students, nor was their academic performance correlated with a stronger tendency towards undertaking activities that emphasised particular competencies. The results highlight the importance of design during professional engagement activities in encouraging higher levels of reflection.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore Master of Business Administration (MBA) students' "reflections" and/or "reflection on practice" of sustainability into responsible management education using Bain et al.'s (2002) 5Rs (reporting, responding, relating, reasoning and reconstructing) reflective scale. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopted a case study approach using content analysis and written reflective journals analysis from MBA students' assignments. Findings: This study revealed that responding and relating (emotionally-based reflections) scales are dominant reflections while reasoning (cognitively-based reflections) is a slightly less dominant reflection. The findings confirm that effective management education for sustainability should encourage and motivate students to reflect on their emotional learning to improve leadership values, attitudes and activities. Such reflection can lead to transformative experiences. Research limitations/implications: This study adopted a small-scale content analysis using an Australian university's MBA case. To increase validity and generalisation, researchers will benefit from a wide range of quantitative analyses in different countries and cultural contexts. Practical implications: Curriculum design using reflections and reflective journals should be enhanced in management education for the practice of sustainability and/or sustainable development. Social implications: Higher education should encourage socially and environmentally responsible management in programme and curriculum design with a reflective approach. Originality/value: This study presents a conceptual framework and analysis approaches that can serve as some bases for the development of a more robust analysis in responsible management education.

The diversity of student populations globally is increasing more rapidly than the diversity of the teaching workforce. Concerns are that beginning teachers are ill-prepared to meet the needs of the diversity of students in their classrooms. This lack of preparedness has been partially attributed to inadequate preparation within teacher education programs. We advocate that preservice teachers need to understand how their prior intercultural experiences can be utilised to better prepare them for teaching diverse groups of learners. This qualitative study (n = 40) draws on Hammer's (2009) Intercultural Development Continuum to explore the impact that these experiences have on shaping preservice teachers as teachers of diversity. We use the data to illustrate the breadth of positioning on the IDC of these preservice teachers. Findings indicate that prior quality engagement with diversity over time enhances preservice teachers' intercultural competence. We describe how teacher education can better prepare preservice teachers for engaging diverse learners.

New educational models such as those involving a third party educational provider linked with an official university for purposes of providing a bridge (a pathway program) into a mainstream university degree, particularly for international students, have become part of the higher education landscape capitalising on the international demand for tertiary qualifications from Australia and other English-language-based universities. The perceptions of teachers employed in one such pathway program are the focus of this current paper--a research area that to date has been understudied. Such data are of great value in furnishing an in-depth view of the challenges involved in an educational model that is highly commercialised and the impacts it has on teaching and learning, especially on academic identity in terms of the specific key relationships--between teachers and third party provider, between teachers and partner university, between teachers and international students. Some of the more concerning issues revolve around the extent to which market imperatives impinge on pedagogical concerns, on teachers' professional commitment to their vocation, on international students' capacity to acquire an authentic tertiary education that supports rather than detracts their transition to mainstream university, and on whether such educational models can be genuinely sustainable long term.

This study examines student experiences of Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) at Western Sydney University (WSU), investigating attendee and facilitator perceptions of the relationship between peer-learning and employability. It defers to contemporary higher education scholarship and related sector definitions of employability as an objective criteria for evaluating outcomes which may result from student experiences with PASS. This investigation observes the extent to which such definitions are evident in the skills and attributes students have acquired via their participation in PASS through both quantitative and qualitative research. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected across two consecutive semesters at WSU (Autumn and Spring) in 2015. Survey responses were collected from 297 PASS attendees and 45 PASS facilitators, further incorporating data collected via focus groups with 46 PASS attendees. The evidence allowed the researchers to examine how students perceived they had gained attributes from PASS that render them more employable. The research results highlight the benefits and limitations of the methods utilised to collect data from PASS participants, and this article elaborates key insights gained as a result of the research process that may be useful to peer-learning practitioners beyond WSU. The study found that attendees and facilitators of the WSU PASS program perceive that the program contributes to student employability in a variety of ways such as improving participants' core technical skills, organisational skills, social skills, professionalism and business acumen, appreciation of mentoring, and critical thinking skills.