Language and literacy skills are instrumental to success at school and early success with writing is a key factor in literacy development. By eight years of age, children spend up to half of their school day engaged in writing tasks suggesting that those who find learning to write difficult may be disadvantaged. The ability to hear and record…

This study was aimed at identifying the critical interactions within work environments that support the development of early career academics as researchers in institutions with lower order research profiles, that is, environments that differ from research-intensive universities. Ten early career academics, five from Australia and five from the…

Teachers bring a complex array of beliefs and attitudes to the teaching of literacy. The purpose of the study reported in this article was to investigate the nature of teacher attitudes towards the learning and teaching of writing in the first year of school and to identify any broad underlying attitudinal dimensions. The secondary aim was to…

Journal ranking systems are becoming more commonplace and receiving increased attention from academics and their senior managers. The study reported below was designed to examine the relationship between particular background factors (e.g., gender and qualifications) of academics and the rankings of what they perceived as their most significant…

In this study, a sample of Australian academics from two institutions, was used to investigate factors which relate to lecturer self-efficacy. A questionnaire was utilised to obtain responses in three separate areas, namely, research, teaching, and service (i.e., administration/professional engagement). Subsequent factor analysis resulted in the…

The authors of this paper discuss selected literature pertaining to the development of research expertise in university lecturers. Subsequent to this discussion, the authors argue that a model is required to pull together the disparate parts of the literature. They propose that this unifying model draw on three key elements or facets: "selective…

There is a dearth of published information about the Literacy and Numeracy National Assessment (LANNA). This study was designed to explore the relationships among LANNA test scores at Year 7 and, in addition, to examine the predictive capacity of these scores in relation to Year 10 School Certificate English and Mathematics results. As a way of…

The study reported here focuses on the factors that contribute to the production or non-production of refereed publications by academics. A literature review revealed that factors associated with an academic's personal characteristics, attitude to work, and workplace circumstances could influence publication output. Academics from a large…