While past literature has explored school engagement in older students, there is less research for younger children specifically, and very little which engages children themselves in the research process. This paper provides insight into school engagement for academically at-risk students in the second year of school through a participatory…

In this article we deliberate upon our way of facilitating focus group sessions with teachers concerning their views on inclusive education, by referring also to feedback that we received from the participants when they commented upon their experiences of the sessions. (The teacher participants were from three separate primary schools in South…

This study surveyed perspectives held by school teachers regarding factors that contribute to successful transition to school. In addition, this study explored practices in place to enhance children's transition to school. Participants were self-nominated, preparatory teachers from publicly funded primary schools in Victoria, Australia. From…

In the present study we present a didactic method to help children aged 11 and 12 learn science in such a way as to enable a dynamic interaction between domain general strategies and the development of conceptual knowledge, whilst each type of scientific process has been considered (forming of hypotheses, experimenting and evaluating). We have…

In recent years, there has been an increase in students with refugee experience in the UK, the US, Europe and Australia. These students face many barriers to education, and appropriately educating this diverse student population presents many challenges to schools and education departments. We argue that a whole of school approach that includes…

Despite the importance of behaviour management, many student teachers report being inadequately trained in this area. The aim of this study was to identify the strategies, confidence and reported levels of success in regard to various behaviour management strategies, across 509 first, second, third and fourth year student teachers training to be…

This article reports on a major action research program that experimented with the use of cross-age peer teaching in schools to assist teachers to manage conflict issues in their classrooms, and to re-engage disaffected students in learning. The research, which was conducted in a range of elementary and secondary schools in Australia, was part of…

Grouping students by academic achievement level has been practised in a wide variety of forms and contexts for over a century. Despite a general consensus in the research that between-class achievement grouping provides no overall benefit for students, the practice has persisted in various guises. Between-class achievement grouping is common in…

Current curriculum and assessment reform for schooling in Australia is based on ideas and practices associated with the setting of standards. Detailed descriptions of levels of achievement for each year of schooling are being ascribed the dual role of measuring the effectiveness of school systems and helping teachers to ensure all students are…

This paper uses cultural historical activity theory to examine the interactions between the choices primary teachers make in the use of practical activities in their teaching of science and the purposes they attribute to these; their emotions, background and beliefs; and the construction of their identities as teachers of science. It draws on four…

Effective engagement of young children in the classroom is a critical step toward achieving positive learning outcomes. The Learning and Engagement Questionnaire (LEQ) was developed by the first two authors to identify ways in which teachers strive to engage learners in the classroom. In this study, the factor structure of the LEQ is examined.…

This article defines comprehension as a pragmatic social and intellectual practice. It reviews literature on current approaches to reading instruction for linguistically and culturally diverse and low socioeconomic students, noting the current policy emphasis on the teaching of comprehension as autonomous skills and strategies. The Four Resources…

This paper argues for the need for critical reading comprehension in an era of accountability that often promotes reading comprehension as readily assessable through students answering multiple choice questions of unseen texts. Based upon a 1 year study investigating literacy in Years 4-9 the ways strong-performing primary schools develop serious…

This paper presents the qualitative results of a study of students' reading of multimodal texts in an interactive, online environment. The study forms part of a larger project which addressed image-language interaction as an important dimension of language pedagogy and assessment for students growing up in a multimedia digital age. Thirty-two Year…

This article reports on a study that investigated a professional development initiative in Australia to address a decline in reading comprehension scores in the middle and upper years of Primary school. It describes the professional learning journey of a middle primary teacher and his literacy coach over a period of 12 months as they worked to…