It is well established that international students attending higher education institutions in Australia and other parts of the world face challenges that can affect their state of well-being and connectedness. Higher education institutions have attempted to counter these issues by providing specifically designed programs with varying success. This…

This article introduces an Australian adaptation of an approach to supporting school leadership and improvement pioneered by educationalists David Townsend and Pam Adams, from Alberta, Canada. Referred to as the North Coast Initiative for School Improvement, the adaptation involved school leaders, academics, and government officials who combined…

Establishment of online communities in distance education has been linked to improved engagement, retention, and learning outcomes. This study investigates how online community building was fostered in the text-based Discussion Board (DB) and multimodal VoiceThread (VT) in one of the postgraduate units offered by Open Universities Australia.…

Background: Professional development (PD) in a range of occupations has become increasingly digitised. Numerous digital courses are available, with evidence that social media, blogs and apps are increasingly being used for PD. Yet despite clear benefits, there is little robust evidence on the characteristics of digital PD that impact positively on…

New opportunities for research collaborations within universities are explored through reflection on a recent collaboration between an academic researcher, the library and the eResearch Centre at a regional Australian university. Such opportunities arise from significant changes to the research landscape, including increased emphasis on open…

This article describes the needs analysis, implementation and outcomes of a pilot program aimed at creating books with families in ways that represent their language and culture. "Creating Books in Communities" is part of "Better Beginnings," a state-wide program, developed by the State Library of Western Australia, for…

This paper explores the development of cooperative inquiry as a methodology for nursing research. It commences with a historical overview of Action Research and its use in nursing. The applicability of Action Research approaches in higher education are then discussed in the context of creating partnerships between universities, students and the…

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education globally. Teaching staff have pivoted to online learning and employed a range of strategies to facilitate student success. Aside from offering a testing ground for innovative teaching strategies, the pandemic has also provided an opportunity to better understand the pre-existing conditions that…

This qualitative multisite case study examined how the teachers and school leaders at three public schools in New South Wales State of Australia perceived SpringBoard21 (SB21) influenced their school to become a learning organization. Additionally, the study examined perceptions of what collaboration looks like, what actions foster member…

Background: A key aim of educational research is for findings to inform practice, thereby bringing about improvements in teaching and learning. However, the relationship between research and practice is complex, and there is often no clear link between changes in practice and research findings. One of the challenges for research and practice is…

This case study was designed as one of many pilot projects to inform the scaling-up of Students as Partners (SaP) as a whole-of-institution strategy to enhance the student learning experience. It sought to evaluate the other pilots in order to understand the phenomena of partnerships and how students and staff perceive the experience of working in…

This article reports on an Australian project involving preschool and kindergarten children learning about 'giving' and the environment. Teachers designed learning modules based on the Learning by Design framework, which views pedagogies as knowledge processes, and conducted action research to explore the impact of learning about 'giving' on…

This paper reports on an action research project involving the redesign, implementation and evaluation of a peer tutor program in a first year design studio in higher education. The effectiveness of the revised program, particularly its capacity to support learning for commencing students in the environment of a creative studio, is examined…

This article illuminates major features of high-quality leadership programmes across different education systems. We do so by focusing on capturing commonalities and variations in high-quality pre-service programmes from five differing societies, all of which are high-performing education systems. To this end, we first delineate key profiles of…

In 2012, Australia introduced a new "National Quality Framework" (NQF), comprising enhanced quality expectations for early childhood education and care services, two national learning frameworks and a new assessment and rating system spanning childcare centres, kindergartens and preschools, family day care and outside school hours care.…