The National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLaN) is an annual literacy and numeracy test for all Australian students, and results from the test are disaggregated into a number of categories including language background other than English (LBOTE). For this and other categories, results on each section of the test are aggregated into…

Although most of the initial research on self-regulated learning focused on cognitive and meta-cognitive aspects, there has been a growing interest in the emotion and motivation domains of self-regulation. This article reports on research undertaken to investigate specific motivation and emotion regulation strategies used by middle school students…

In this research a number of strategies including physical experiences, physical stories and lab school with guided reflection were used with pre-service physical education teachers in an attempt to foster more critical and inclusive approaches to teaching physical education in the middle years. The strategies were used to illustrate the complex…

Globally, science curricula have been described as outdated, and students perceive school science as lacking in relevance. Declines in senior secondary and tertiary student participation in science indicate an urgent need for change if we are to sustain future scientific research and development, and perhaps more importantly, to equip students…

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 article examines a Victorian high school's implementation of a new Year 9 program which was intended to interrupt a traditional academic curriculum and to create an imagined oasis of care and personal development for students. It explores ways in which (1) the existing culture and context of the school continues to frame the subjectivities of…

This paper identifies the ways in which the Productive Pedagogies framework has been refined as a research tool for evaluating classroom practice within a current study into issues of school reform in Queensland. Initially emerging from the landmark Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study (1998-2001), the Productive Pedagogies has been taken…

This paper presents (i) a purpose-built conceptual model for professional learning and (ii) a leadership framework designed to support a large-scale project involving diverse sites across the state of Queensland, Australia. The project had as its focus teacher-capacity building and ways to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes for students at…

In this paper, we draw on accounts from students to inform a Middle Schooling movement that has been variously described as "arrested", "unfinished" and "exhausted". We propose that if the Middle Schooling movement is to understand the changing worlds of students and develop new approaches in the middle years of schooling, then it is important to…

In this paper we explore the possibilities for redesigning pedagogy in the middle years of schooling. We think that the middle schooling movement in Australia is unfinished because the pedagogical reforms promised have been patchy, not well researched and difficult to sustain. As well, middle schooling is a little exhausted because it has failed…

In Australia, and internationally, integration is a widely promoted middle school curriculum reform strategy. Integration is claimed to engage students by providing opportunities to work on a few cross-disciplinary objectives, to apply knowledge across the subject boundaries and to work on tasks with meaning and relevance. While these curriculum…

Integrative curriculum design promises much for middle level teachers who wish to develop classroom programmes that will encourage early adolescents to actively engage in their learning (Beane 1990, 1997). Beane's model is highly responsive to the educational and developmental needs of young people. In contrast, multidisciplinary curriculum design…

Teacher education programs focussing on the development of specialist teachers for "the middle years" have proliferated in Australian universities in recent years. This paper provides some insights into middle years' teacher education programs at the University of Queensland, Edith Cowan and Flinders Universities with regard to their:…

The middle years are a crucial stage of schooling where the range in student achievement widens and progress for some students slows significantly (Cairney, Buchanan, Sproats & Lowe 1998, Hill & Russell 1999). Despite moves towards middle school reform and improved literacy standards, there remains a gap in literacy provision for young adolescent…

As a new reform in Australian education, middle schooling has been gaining momentum. The rationale behind middle schooling is to bridge the traditional primary-high school gap and provide a more developmentally appropriate educational experience for young adolescents. Middle schooling in the USA has gone through a "boom-to-bust" cycle and is…