A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
By Helen Joanne Adam, Edith Cowan University Gifting children books can be about more than just giving them something to read. Books are portals to adventure, imagination and new experiences. Importantly, books can help children understand and appreciate themselves, and those around them. Sadly, books normalising racial, cultural, family or gender diversity and diverse abilities [...]
By Dr Piers Gooding, Dr Rys Farthing and Emily Painter In 2018, a Melbourne high school mistakenly released the personal digital records of hundreds of students. Among the records were details of students’ “mental health conditions, medications, learning and behavioural difficulties”. This was bad enough but globally breaches of privacy like this can be much [...]
Education itself cannot solve the challenges facing humanity, but it’s difficult to imagine we can address them without transforming education. With this in mind, UNESCO two years ago created the Futures of Education initiative, which has recently launched a major report with the title Reimagining our futures together: a new social contract for education?. The [...]
By Ilana Finefter-Rosenbluh, Monash University; Melissa Barnes, Monash University, and Tracii Ryan, The University of Melbourne Education departments have been investing in feedback-based tools to assess school performance. These include student perception surveys, where students provide feedback on the quality of their learning and their experiences in the classroom or at school. The hope is [...]
By Kalervo Gulson, University of Sydney; Claire Benn, Australian National University; Kirsty Kitto, University of Technology Sydney; Simon Knight, University of Technology Sydney, and Teresa Swist, University of Sydney Algorithms are becoming commonplace. They can determine employment prospects, financial security and more. The use of algorithms can be controversial – for example, robodebt, as the [...]
By Marie Yap, Monash University; Anthony Jorm, The University of Melbourne, and Mairead Cardamone-Breen, Monash University Headlines about the impact of the pandemic on youth mental health have left many parents worried about their children and unsure what they can do to help. Now, as restrictions are eased – and school, home and social lives [...]
By Maria Corkin, University of Auckland The possibility that screen time during early childhood could cause poorer attention later in a child’s life is a major concern for both parents and researchers. Earlier studies have suggested links between preschoolers’ screen time and difficulties with attention. But there is by no means consensus among the research [...]
By Andrew Norton, Australian National University Every year in Australia school leavers suffer ATAR anxiety, worrying about whether they will get into their preferred course and university. New research by the Commonwealth Department of Education, using Australian Taxation Office earnings data, examines in detail how much difference what a person studies, and where, makes to [...]
By Dot Dumuid, University of South Australia and Tim Olds, University of South Australia For students, as for all of us, life is a matter of balance, trade-offs and compromise. Studying for hours on end is unlikely to lead to best academic results. And it could have negative impacts on young people’s physical, mental and [...]
By Alexandre Wadih Raffoul, Uppsala University; David Fopp, Stockholm University; Emma Elfversson, Uppsala University; Helen Avery, Lund University, and Ryan Carolan, Swinburne University of Technology Young people across the world have taken to the streets again, demanding decision-makers at COP26 listen to the science. But if science is to live up to these expectations, a [...]
