A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
The most recent research on brains & learning shows that we all have different patterns of processing information. This confers upon the human race a great advantage, in that collectively we are smart in different ways. Some people are more ‘neurotypical’ while others think in vastly different ways. This means that we need to focus [...]
A major international report says the “disciplinary climate” in Australian schools is among the “least favourable” in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). On Tuesday, the OECD released a profile on education in Australia. Its findings follow headlines about student behaviour and a federal parliamentary inquiry into “increasing disruption in Australian school [...]
Sarah Jefferson, Edith Cowan University Many Year 10 students are beginning to think seriously about what subjects they might pick for years 11 and 12. These are important decisions – not just because they may form the basis of further university study and career paths. They will also be the focus of the final years [...]
Sally Larsen, University of New England If students have poor academic results early in school, do they continue to fall further and further behind as they move through their education? The intuitive answer to this question is yes. This perception is fuelled by relentless media reporting about falling standards in Australia, and claims about “widening [...]
Tracey Muir, Australian Catholic University and Peter Liljedahl, Simon Fraser University Australian students’ performance and engagement in mathematics is an ongoing issue. International studies show Australian students’ mean performance in maths has steadily declined since 2003. The latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2018 showed only 10% of Australian teenagers scored in the [...]
Margaret Kristin Merga, University of Newcastle Reading is a critical skill for school and life beyond it. Young people need strong reading skills to learn and demonstrate their learning. Reading skills are not just about performing well in subjects such as English. They are related to performance in subjects like science and maths. When [...]
Andrew Miller, University of Newcastle; Jenny Gore, University of Newcastle, and Leanne Fray, University of Newcastle Students from schools in low-income communities did not suffer significant “learning loss” during the pandemic years of 2020-2021, but instead improved in certain areas of study. That’s one key finding from our research, published recently in the journal The [...]
The experiment began – pre-COVID-19 – as a way for Monash researchers to study the way kids and teachers move around open-plan classrooms. It was hoped the findings would add to the research on education in modern school rooms with no walls and large groups. But then the pandemic suddenly intervened, as it did [...]
Gavin R. Slemp, The University of Melbourne; Dianne Vella-Brodrick, The University of Melbourne, and Jacqui Francis About three quarters of Australian teachers experience substantial stress in a typical work week, according to a 2021 survey. Another 2019 Australian study showed more than half suffer from anxiety, and about one in five meet the criteria [...]
Oliver Baumann, Bond University After a long day of work or study, your brain might feel like it has been drained of energy. But does our brain burn more energy when engaging in mental athletics than it does during other activities, such as watching TV? To answer this question, we have to look at the [...]
