The relevance of STEM education has been promoted both in Australia and internationally, arising from increasing concerns with the shortages of a highly skilled workforce and economic pressures to increase national competitiveness. Against this backdrop of the global push to embed STEM in schools, this paper explores how Australian schools and…

Critical and creative thinking (CCT) was introduced as a General Capability in the Australian Curriculum in 2010, heralded as a call for more explicit teaching of CCT. This study was an online survey of 259 Australian teachers, exploring how they have adopted CCT as curriculum, including how confident they feel about this area of their teaching…

This article explores teachers' experiences in preparing to enact a new senior secondary school subject, psychology, in Queensland, Australia, at a time of major curriculum reform. In this study, 62 teachers completed an online survey about their experiences on the eve of enactment. From an ecological lens, data were analyzed via descriptive…

University degrees are usually delivered in defined sessions--by term, semester, or in week-based blocks--whereby students are required to complete their studies by the due date. Term or session-based schedules that require students to complete the study within set timeframes are, however, potentially restrictive. Temporal challenges associated…

This book examines and reports the findings regarding the level of satisfaction by students, teachers and parents with an innovative senior secondary Religious Education curriculum 'Religion, Meaning and Life' (RML). The stimulus for RML is found in the changing profile of students within faith-based schools and the motivation of school…

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic governments across the world closed schools, forcing billions of students to undertake their education remotely. Despite the attention this situation received, learning at a geographical distance from the teacher is not a new form of schooling. Distance learning, or distance education as it is also known,…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to outline the collaborative approach used to craft national learning standards for tertiary programs in the field of environment and sustainability in Australia. The field of environment and sustainability is broad and constituted by diverse stakeholders. As such, articulating a common set of learning standards…

In this paper we report on an aspect of a larger study and explore whether a framework for teacher STEM Capability Sets (SCS) enhanced teacher planning and the implementation of mathematics active STEM tasks. A case study approach was employed to understand how a classroom teacher used the digital resource, Gapminder, to teach a Year 5/6 cohort of…

Design education in Australia is still largely dominated by Westphalian perspectives, values, histories and ways of learning. The focus on Euro-western aesthetics, technologies, timelines and processes marginalises other identities, cultures and places. This signals to students that they should internalise, value and master dominant narratives,…

Background: This paper presents a counter-narrative to the long-held belief that Physical Education (PE) is impermeable to change. Transforming and enacting curriculum is incredibly challenging and sometimes impossible but if teachers have particular resources available to them over time, this makes 'radical reform more, rather than less likely'…

Teachers' beliefs about teaching character values are pivotal in cultivating students' character. This study systematically reviewed teachers' beliefs towards character education in primary school. A systematic review following the PRISMA statement was applied to peer-reviewed papers published between 2011 and 2021. This review paper analyzed…

Although the value of physical activity for physical and mental health is well accepted, benefits for learning are less clear. Research about the incorporation of physical activity in teaching practice and the benefits teachers perceive for student learning and behaviour is sparse. In the current study, Australian teachers (n = 222) completed an…

Teachers play a critical role in the implementation of inclusive education in their schools. In this paper, we report on a study that investigated teacher perceptions of their capabilities to implement effective inclusive practices in their classrooms at an urban, primary (elementary) school in south-east Queensland, Australia. Participating…

In Western Australia ("WA"), teachers are required to undertake 100 hours of professional learning (PL) to maintain their registration. REmida WA Creative Reuse Centre offers Reggio-inspired "100 Languages" workshops as part of its PL programme, thus enabling interested teachers to attain the necessary hours. The purpose of…

This paper will contribute to our understanding of the Block, its pedagogical rationale and value, and explain why, apart from pandemic conditions, these might constitute a compelling alternative to traditional academic calendars. Current research highlights the need for further research on the nature of the Block, driven by an increased global…