Current school students, citizens of the future, will inherit urgent, complex, ethically challenging real world problems affecting social and environmental sustainability, such as anthropogenic climate change. Therefore, they must be prepared at school to understand the diverse issues underpinning anthropogenic climate change so they can make…

In the late nineteenth century, adult and public learning pedagogy were the key instruments utilised in the campaign to achieve Victorian Women's Suffrage. The democratic process of changing state government legislation on franchise demanded multiple pedagogical methods. Through the actions of Bessie Harrison Lee (1860-1950), this paper identifies…

The focus of this paper is whether type of Australian school attended makes a difference in student engagement in political and civic culture. Recently private schools have been said to "undermine cohesion" in Australian society. Similarly, it was argued over two decade ago that Australian private schools have skimmed the elite students…

Purpose: Lave and Wenger's Communities of Practice is presented as a conceptual framework for examining extracurricular activities as a part of democratic schools' contribution to students' civic engagement. Data from the IEA Civic Education Study is analyzed to investigate research questions on the association between participation in two civic…

This article reports on an action-research project designed to investigate the effect of a technological intervention on the complex interactions between student engagement, participation, attendance and preparation in a large lecture delivered as part of a compulsory first-year law course, a discipline which has not been the focus of any previous…

A quick polling initiative was tested in finance classes using multiple choice questions to determine whether it can improve student interaction and engagement in a large class. Students (n = 446) responded using either a smartphone app (53%) or by using pen and paper (47%). Immediate feedback was provided to students using charts that were…

A secondary analysis of the "1987 Australian Election Study" examined differences in levels of partisanship, political interest, campaign media use, and the importance voters attach to media use, for voters who make up their minds during and before the campaign. Results suggest that voters who make their choice during the campaign are…

The public reaction to the proposal that the Australian government should reintroduce fees for tertiary education was surveyed in 1985. The influence of the proposal on the way people would vote in a federal election was also investigated. The fee would be between $900 and $1,500 per year for full-time tertiary education. As part of a McNair…

This article offers a strategy for using Australian women's history in a United States women's history survey course. To develop the theme of gender relations in settler societies, the author recommends using transnational categories, such as gender frontier and settler colonialism, direct comparisons between Australian and American women's…