Values education and environmental education for sustainability are both spheres of education research that have manifested rapid and overlapping development in recent years. An independent primary school located in the Perth metropolitan area of Western Australia participated in research on both values education and environmental education for…

Much of the research regarding the effectiveness of drama as a teaching tool is evaluated using qualitative analysis. This collaborative action study applied quantitative research techniques to assess the usefulness of drama as a teaching tool. The aim was to discover what happens to children's understanding of verb tense when taught using drama…

How teachers respond to a new syllabus, what they say and do within the challenging landscape of educational reform and curriculum implementation in the contemporary postmodern world attracts considerable research interest from scholars. The analysis of teachers' perceptions and actions presented here is set within the context of significant…

This research investigates the use of cognitive organisers as a self-regulated learning strategy by gifted and talented science students in a Year 9 class at a metropolitan high school in Perth, Western Australia. The case study research design incorporates three primary methods of data collection including participant observation in classrooms,…

Outcomes based education (OBE), which emphasises a radical reinterpretation of the enterprise of education, is a phenomenon enveloping the Australian compulsory education sector. This paper examines the theoretical tenets of OBE as articulated by its chief exponent, William Spady. It then explores the effects that OBE implementation is having on…

This paper presents a positivist quantitative case study of four rural Queensland schools implementing the Queensland Studies Authority's outcomes based education curriculum. Queensland's school-based management system means that these schools are operating at distinctly different points along their implementation phase. This research shows how…

This paper is concerned with research into early school leaving. A narrative interview approach was used to document and analyse the experiences, processes and decisions that a small sample of boys made prior to leaving school, in this case, before completing year 10 and 11. Data collected in 2004 indicate that schools along with students…

Home education is a well established phenomenon in Australia but little is known about the movement of students between home schooling and formal education and how students view and handle the transitions. A sociocultural theoretical framework has been used to explore student perceptions of their transition experiences between formal education and…

Studies of the use of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approaches in foreign language classrooms have frequently raised doubts about the adequacy of elementary and secondary teachers' understanding of CLT and their use of this approach in classrooms at those levels. Reasons for this alleged state of affairs are reviewed, with one potential…

Practicing teachers and principals in selected Government schools in Victoria provided data on their levels of emotional intelligence and teacher efficacy beliefs. The data supported the theoretical expectation of a linkage between emotional intelligence and teacher self efficacy. Regression analyses showed that neither gender nor age moderated…

There is considerable evidence of impending teacher shortages throughout Australia and indeed most nations. Research so far has generally concentrated on how to improve the satisfaction of the current teachers and reduce the resignation rate, especially of early career teachers. This paper looks at the factors that influence the decisions of…

Lifelong learning encompasses formal and informal learning aimed at personal fulfilment, active citizenship, flexibility of employability and social inclusion (European Commission, 2001). Policy is often framed on the importance of skills in the new economies. Knowledge, being the foundation of modern economies, means learning is the central…

This paper examines some of the research for outcomes-based education in Australia. It does not claim to be a comprehensive review--only indicative of the sorts of research behind a movement that has frequently been dismissed as being only ideologically driven. It traces the genesis of the OBE movement in the USA, how it developed in Australia in…

Since the development of the Keating Government's national statements and profiles, during the early to mid 90s, all Australian states and territories, to a greater or lesser degree, have adopted an outcomes-based education approach to school curriculum. Drawing on the writings of the US academic, William Spady, and in opposition to the more…

In the context of the critical role of self-efficacy in educational achievement, this present research examined students' and teachers' efficacy in use of learning strategies in mathematics, and the relationship with achievement. The second phase of a multi-method doctoral study, ninety-two students and ten teachers from a diverse secondary school…