Secondary school students’ attitudes towards numeracy: an Australian investigation based on the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN)

International and national testing of numerical and language skills has become a regular part of educational systems in many countries. In Australia, the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) has been used since 2008 to carry out regular tests of literacy and numeracy amongst school students nationally. Since the numeracy components of this program are based on work carried out in school mathematics classes, it seems reasonable that tests represent an evaluation of mathematical ability, albeit at the simpler and introductory levels. However, there has been little investigation of students’ ideas about numeracy, and the role that their attitudes towards numeracy may have on their results on the numeracy components of NAPLAN tests. This study carries out an empirical investigation of ideas about and attitudes towards numeracy, and their relation to NAPLAN scores for a sample of 735 lower secondary students from two schools in New South Wales, Australia. Attitudes are measured using a modified form of the Students’ Attitudes Towards Statistics, (SATS-36) test (Schau in Survey of attitudes towards statistics, http://www.evaluationandstatistics.com, 2003), and conceptions of numeracy are obtained from phenomenographic analysis of an open-ended response item. The overall conclusion, that students’ understanding of the concept of numeracy and their attitudes towards numeracy are related to their performance in numeracy tests, represents a potentially important result both for students and their teachers.     

Missing friendships: understanding the absent relationships of local and international students at an Australian university

In recent years, research on higher education has increasingly examined the realities of internationalisation, with a particular focus on international students’ experiences and internationalisation at home programs. These studies have explored the friendships of international students, including their relationships with both locals and internationals from other countries. However, local students’ perspectives and experiences of friendship are largely absent from this literature. The few accounts examining local students’ lives explicitly focus on improving their cross-cultural knowledge and engagement, or on rare cases of local–international student friendships. The overriding assumption in this literature is that the understandings and social practises of local students are major barriers to their relationships with internationals. This paper addresses this gap by exploring local students’ perspectives on the absence of friendships with their international peers. We utilise findings from a research project on internationalisation at home, involving interviews and focus groups with local and international students and staff at an Australian university. Focusing on locals’ discussions of potential friendships with internationals, we propose that these missing friendships are an important area of study. We find that these friendships are missing for several interrelated reasons: local–international friendships are considered unnecessary and are therefore unimagined by locals, who tend to assume that similarity and affinity naturally lead to friendships, and the structures and spaces that might facilitate friendships are absent. Ultimately, uncovering why these friendships are missing sheds fuller light on how relationships might be facilitated, potentially informing and improving universities’ internationalisation initiatives.     

Not playing the game: student assessment resistance as a form of agency

Within self-regulated learning, learners exercise agency by setting targets, formatively monitoring progress, and evaluating results in ways which inform their own goal attainment. However, in real-world classroom situations, assessment processes can elicit behaviours that are more ego-protective than growth-oriented. Resistance to teacher expectations in assessment can arise from the individual’s need to protect his or her own identity or ego within the psychosocial context of the classroom. In addition, resistance can arise from strategic choices learners make to cope with competing demands on their time and resources. Thus, students may exercise their agency by not following assessment expectations or protocols (e.g. lying, cheating, or failing to give their best effort). These choices seem to undermine assessment validity. This paper shares student voice data from the Measuring Teachers’ Assessment Practices (MTAP) project (n = 46 students in seven focus groups) in New Zealand and the Supporting Student-assessment Success (SSAS) Project (n = 108 first-year university students) in Australia. Both highlight the different ways students resist, subvert, or act in contention with assessment. These data show that students in both sectors do not always act in the growth-oriented ways that educators envision. Students reported exercising potentially maladaptive assessment agency via Assessment dishonesty, Purposeful underperformance, and Doing it alone. These categories were underpinned by three differing rationales: Protection, Strategic prioritisation, and Mini-max. Educators must be mindful of these potential student actions and motives, working to establish psychological safety within the learning environment, and making sure links between learning and assessment are clear.     

Teachers’ professional growth through engagement with lesson study

Lesson study is highly regarded as a model for professional learning, yet remains under-theorised. This article examines the professional learning experiences of teachers and numeracy coaches from three schools in a local network of schools, participating in a lesson study project over two research cycles in 2012. It maps the interconnections between their experiences and their beliefs and practices, using Clarke and Hollingsworth’s (Teach Educ 18(8):947–967, 2002) Interconnected Model of Professional Growth. Analysis of interview data and video-recordings of planning meetings, research lessons, and post-lesson discussions reveals the development of teachers’ collaborative planning skills, increased attention to students’ mathematical thinking, use of orchestrated whole-class discussion based on anticipated student solutions and focused questioning, and the enhancement of collaborative practices for teacher inquiry. Our findings illuminate the interplay between the External Domain, the Personal Domain, the Domain of Practice, and the Domain of Consequence, in the teaching and learning change environment, and the mediating processes of enactment and reflection. Changes in the domains across the period of the lesson study provide evidence of teachers’ professional growth, with the iterative processes of enactment and reflection being critical in mediating this professional growth.     

“I experienced freedom within the frame of my own narrative”: The contribution of psychodrama techniques to experiential learning in teacher training

To prepare Dutch students in education for critical situations in their professional life as a teacher, part of their training is to ask them to reflect upon their own experiences in their life as a child, a pupil and a student – experiences of crucial moments or with significant others which are still of the utmost importance to them. This article underlines the significance of so-called “experiential learning” in student career counselling. In this context, experiential learning is understood as an extension of in-depth reflection on critical incidents and critical persons in the biography of pre-service teachers. This reflection – customary and effective in Dutch teacher training – is a verbal process. However, this technique does not seem to be adequate for many students from other cultural backgrounds (e.g. second-generation descendants of migrant workers). By consequence, some of these students are not able to take newly offered information on board, but remain imprisoned in their own culture-related narrative, their own ethnic society of mind. Research has shown that for these students, psychodrama techniques, focusing on non-verbal and playful aspects of reflection, seem to be more suitable. The author of this article presents a sample case from a pilot study which used one of the psychodrama techniques called the empty chair. The findings of the pilot study are promising in the sense that experiencing different I-positions does seem to help students from other cultural backgrounds to develop agency in responding to hitherto unfamiliar and confusing situations.     

Encouraging Students with Different Profiles of Perceptions to Pursue Science by Choosing Appropriate Teaching Methods for Each Age Group

This research aimed at identifying student profiles of perceptions by means of a clustering method using a validated questionnaire. These profiles describe students’ attraction to science and technology (S&T) studies and careers as a variable driven by school S&T self-concept and interest in school S&T. In addition to three rather predictable student profiles (confident enthusiast, average ambitious, and pessimistic dropout), the fourth fairly well-populated profile called confident indifferent was produced. Our second and third research questions allowed us to describe each profile in terms of the instructional methods to which their population was exposed (including the degree to which they were actively involved) and the instructional methods to which they would like more exposure. An analysis of the evolution of the profiles’ population over time is also presented. The results suggest that pedagogical variety and active involvement in the decision to pursue S&T are important. The perception of the utility and importance of S&T both in and out of school may also play an important role in these decisions. Minor pedagogical preferences were also found in certain age groups.     

‘To be numerate is to be someone…’: Tracing the doings of students labelled ‘at risk’

Scores from the Australian National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) identify students ‘at risk’ of not meeting minimum standards deemed necessary for future success in school and employment. The NAPLAN tests include items related to numeracy but also mathematics content and skills. Research in the area of mathematics education examining the effectiveness of pedagogical interventions in improving student scores on NAPLAN and other international measures is not only shaped by the standardised testing regime, it also effectively corrals the problem within the school context. As such, it is unable to answer questions related to other factors implicated in the lives of those who continue to ‘fail’ in relation to numeracy outcomes. This paper critically examines the type of funded research being done in relation to numeracy and mathematics education, the ‘social’ turn and the disconnect between this research and the widening ‘gap’ in NAPLAN numeracy outcomes. It argues for a research approach informed by institutional ethnography that begins with the ‘doings’ of individual students labelled ‘at risk’.     

Perceptions of Black Student Athletes About Academic Mentorship at a Predominantly White Institution in Higher Education

The purpose of this study was to investigate and describe the mentorship experiences of Black student athletes attending undergraduate programs at a Predominantly White Institution in Higher Education (PWI-HE). The research site for this study was a co-educational public research institution (PWI-HE) with an approximate enrollment of 45,000 students. A total of six Black student athletes (five African American and one Jamaican) agreed to participate in this study. Four major interrelated and complex themes emerged from the data analyses. These themes were: (a) mentoring study habits and routines, (b) mentoring academic schedule and time management, (c) personal development within an isolated environment, and (d) family members’ support and encouragements. To better support Black student athletes at PWI-HEs, athletic department administrators, coaches, faculty, and all students should be encouraged to respect, value, and embrace the racial identities, origins, languages, and cultures of the student athletes that are being mentored.     

What Does it Mean to Assess Gifted Students’ Perceptions of Giftedness Labels?

Measuring gifted and talented (GT) students’ perceptions of their GT label might seem to be a relatively straightforward affair. Most of this research uses survey methods that ask GT students to complete Likert scale or open-ended response questionnaires about their perceptions of the label and then presents results in clear and quantifiable terms, such as “X % of students hold positive perceptions of the GT label.” However, our qualitative study of GT students in two middle school social studies classrooms presents findings that not only trouble, but prompt questions about simple proclamations regarding GT students’ perceptions of the GT label. What we found was that given the opportunity to share their thoughts at length, this group of GT students expressed a range of often contradictory perceptions about their GT label. Students expressed multiple interpretations and perceptions of the GT label, as well as both embraced the label and rejected the label.     

Relationships between school climate,bullying and delinquent behaviours

Given that schools are, potentially, powerful sites for influencing adolescent behaviour, it is important that there is greater understanding of the psychosocial aspects of the school climate that can be leveraged for this purpose. The research reported in this article used structural equation modelling (with data from a sample of 6120 students at Australian high schools) to examine the influence of the psychosocial school-level environment on students’ self-reported experiences of bully victimisation (i.e. being victims of bullying) and engagement in delinquent behaviours. Further, we examined whether bully victimisation mediated the relationships between school climate variables and delinquent behaviours. School connectedness and rule clarity were negatively associated with both bully victimisation and delinquency (p < 0.05), and teacher support was negatively associated with bully victimisation (p < 0.01), confirming the importance of these aspects of the school-level environment. However, affirming diversity and reporting and seeking help both had positive influences on bully victimisation (p < 0.05), raising concerns about the ways in which these aspects of the school-level environment might have been promoted. Importantly, bully victimisation was found to mediate the influence of five of the six school climate constructs on delinquent behaviours (p < 0.001). This study advance our understanding of how specific aspects of the school climate influence the prevalence of bullying and delinquent behaviour, adding weight to the call for educators to actively monitor and enhance psychosocial aspects of the school climate in order to improve student behavioural outcomes.     

Team-taught versus individually taught undergraduate education: a qualitative study of student experiences and preferences

Team teaching is becoming more common in undergraduate programmes of study although the relative merits to the more traditional individually taught courses have not been determined for best practice. For this study, 15 final-year undergraduate computer science students were interviewed to gain insight into their learning experiences. A thematic analysis of the interview data identified the perceived advantages and disadvantages of each mode of teaching. The advantages of individually taught courses included: consistency of content delivery and advice, familiarity with the lecturer’s teaching style and better continuity of the subject content. The disadvantage of individually taught modules included missing knowledge, compared to a team approach. Advantages of team-taught modules included: greater insight into a topic delivered by multiple team members. Disadvantages included: content overlap, conflicting messages relating to assessment, team members not taking ownership of their roles and responsibilities and a belief that overall team failure is worse than individual failure to deliver a module well. The results revealed that individually taught modules were generally preferred to team-taught modules. A set of best practice recommendations are proposed to address the challenges when delivering team-taught teaching and become more student focused.     

Students’ Views of Scientific Models and Modeling: Do Representational Characteristics of Models and Students’ Educational Levels Matter?

The aim of this study was to examine the potential impact of the representational characteristics of models and students’ educational levels on students’ views of scientific models and modeling (VSMM). An online multimedia questionnaire was designed to address three major aspects of VSMM, namely the nature of models, the nature of modeling, and the purpose of models. The three scales of representational characteristics included modality, dimensionality, and dynamics. A total of 102 eighth graders and 87 eleventh graders were surveyed. Both quantitative data and written responses were analyzed. The influence of the representational characteristics seemed to be more salient on the nature of models and the purpose of models. Some interactions between the educational levels and the representational characteristics showed that the high school students were more likely to recognize textual representations and pictorial representations as models, while also being more likely to appreciate the differences between 2D and 3D models. However, some other differences between educational levels did not necessarily suggest that the high school students attained more sophisticated VSMM. For instance, in considering what information should be included in a model, students’ attention to particular affordances of the representation can lead to a more naive view of modeling. Implications for developing future questionnaires and for teaching modeling are suggested in this study.     

Shopping for Shoes: Teaching Students to Apply and Interpret Mathematics in the Real World

This article reports the findings of classroom research exploring the potential of posing challenging mathematical problems situated in real-world financial contexts to activate mathematical knowledge, skills and reasoning. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 mathematical literacy assessment framework (OECD, 2013) provided theoretical framing for the study, which examined the use of a “financial dilemma” titled Shopping for shoes in a Year 5/6 composite class in a suburban Australian primary school. The social and mathematical dimensions of the task, together with a particular lesson structure, successfully engaged 10 to 12-year-old students in exploring mathematics through a financial problem-solving experience. The findings reveal that students’ notions of friendship and fairness guided the way they formulated the problem and employed mathematics. Strategies intended to encourage students to interpret the alignment and reasonableness of their social and mathematical thinking against the problem context were critical to the lesson.     

Digital technologies for promoting “student voice” and co-creating learning experience in an academic course

“Student voice” (SV) refers to listening to and valuing students’ views regarding their learning experiences, as well as treating them as equal partners in the evaluation process. This is expected, in turn, to empower students to take a more active role in shaping their learning. This study explores the role played by digital technologies in creating a space for SV in academia. The qualitative study was conducted in an academic course, which combines face-to face, synchronous lessons with a variety of asynchronous self-directed and group learning activities. The participants were 54 Master’s students in education. We analyzed the pedagogical design of the course, as well as interpretations of teaching, learning, assessment, and the role of technology as experienced and presented by the students. The findings demonstrated that students functioned as co-designers of the course content, co-creators of teaching and of their own learning experience. Students perceived the requirements of active learning, teamwork, and community participation (i.e., an advanced way of conveying SV—leadership; Mitra International handbook of student experience in elementary and secondary school, Springer Publishers, The Netherlands, 2007), as both challenges related to overload and stress, and benefits related to the gains of meaningful learning, innovative pedagogical design, and diverse instructional methods. The equalization effect of the digital environment, which diminishes status cues changed the power dynamic, promoted students’ active participation and their pedagogical partnership with the instructor. Based on the findings, our conceptualization of SV and its implications for academia includes: (1) co-design of content, (2) co-teaching, (3) co-creation of learning experience and outcomes, and (4) embedded co-assessment for learning.     

Educational inequality in Tasmania: evidence and explanations

In this article, we map the extent of educational inequality within Tasmania, and between Tasmania and the rest of Australia, using National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and senior secondary attainment data. This analysis yields some surprising findings, showing the success of Tasmanian primary and high schools and that Tasmanian educational inequality is most strongly expressed at the senior secondary level. We conclude that using such publicly available data to identify differential achievement within and between jurisdictions would strengthen public policy and practitioner interventions aimed at achieving more equal educational outcomes for students in all schools. Our findings also have implications for research directions in this field, suggesting that by analysis of NAPLAN and My School data across individual schools and jurisdictions academic researchers could assist practitioners gain a deeper understanding of inequalities reproduced by the systems they are working within, while finding examples of schools and systems which show a greater level of success in ameliorating disadvantage.     

Using new vocabulary in writing: Exploring how word and learner characteristics relate to the likelihood that writers use newly taught vocabulary

Understanding academic vocabulary is essential to student success in school. Use of academic vocabulary words in writing is considered one of the strongest measures of how well a reader understands a given word. In theory, willingness to use academic vocabulary in writing indicates the complexity of acquiring representations of the word’s orthography, phonology, and semantics based on the word’s characteristics. In addition, a learner’s overall literacy skills should relate to whether they attempt to use words. In the present study, sixth graders (n = 66), seventh graders (n = 60), and eighth graders (n = 41) learned 25 academic vocabulary words in a supplementary academic vocabulary intervention and were then asked to use those words in short persuasive essay drafts. We measured whether these students attempted to use a word (a binary uses outcome) and the number of times a student used a word (a continuous attempts outcome) and used cross-classified random effects models to examine how (a) the orthographic, phonological, and semantic characteristics of words and (b) the students’ literacy-related characteristics related to their uses and attempts. For word characteristics, students were more likely to use and attempt high frequency than low frequency words. For student characteristics, students proficient on the state exam were more likely to use and attempt the words, and students learning English were less likely to attempt the words. Implications for vocabulary intervention and writing instruction are discussed.     

Manipulative Use and Elementary School Students’ Mathematics Learning

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) 1998/1999, we examine the relationship between elementary students’ (K–5) manipulative use and mathematics learning. Using a cross-sectional correlational analysis, we found no relationship between manipulative use and student mathematics achievement. However, using a longitudinal analysis, we documented a positive relationship between manipulative use and student mathematics learning during their elementary school years (K–5). From a teaching and learning perspective, these findings provide important evidence of the influence of long-term manipulative use on students’ overall learning. From policy and methodological perspectives, these findings provide evidence for the importance of modeling student learning (as opposed to achievement) when studying the effectiveness of instructional strategies.     

Conditional cooperators: student prosocial dispositions and their perceptions of the classroom social environment

A common problem in education is getting students to cooperate effectively in groups during learning. Because interdisciplinary research has established that cooperation is sensitive to specific contextual factors such as reciprocity, friendship and benefit, similar factors could be shaping student interactions in contemporary classroom environments. The present article reports an initial investigation of this idea by examining how student perceptions of their classroom environment relate to their willingness to expend energy and resources on classmates (through helping). This was accomplished through the structural equation modeling of survey data collected from 845 undergraduate life sciences students from 41 laboratory classrooms at a research-intensive university. Characteristics of the classroom social environment previously associated with benefits in other contexts also predicted (reciprocity β = 0.576; friendship β = 0.156) the educational benefit that students perceive as coming from their classmates. This perceived benefit in turn was highly associated (β = 0.605) with student willingness to expend resources on classmates (i.e. their prosocial disposition). Also both reciprocity (β = 0.298) and perceived benefit (β = 0.403) concurrently predict a student’s support for enforcing cooperation in the classroom. Potential insights into the contribution of classroom social environment to student dispositions towards cooperation are discussed.     

Exploring the Changes in Students’ Understanding of the Scientific Method Using Word Associations

A study is presented that explores how students’ knowledge structures, as related to the scientific method, compare at different student ages. A word association test comprised of ten total stimulus words, among them experiment, science fair, and hypothesis, is used to probe the students’ knowledge structures. Students from grades four, five, and eight, as well as first-year college students were tested to reveal their knowledge structures relating to the scientific method. Younger students were found to have a naïve view of the science process with little understanding of how science relates to the real world. However, students’ conceptions about the scientific process appear to be malleable, with science fairs a potentially strong influencer. The strength of associations between words is observed to change from grade to grade, with younger students placing science fair near the center of their knowledge structure regarding the scientific method, whereas older students conceptualize the scientific method around experiment.