Half of Australia’s young male offenders have a clinically significant, previously unidentified language deficit. It’s a shocking figure that comes after ten years worth of research into the oral language…
Teachers are taking their own steps to learn more about their profession through social media networks.
Flickr/Corey Leopold
It’s been a long time since I have been in a pub at 10.30am but that’s where you would have found me last Saturday at the Great Northern Hotel in Chatswood, Sydney. I wasn’t there to get on the punt or…
Universities campuses need to adapt to the new reality of mobile students and online education.
Flickr/Jill
FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: We continue our series on the rise of online and blended learning and how free online courses are set to transform the higher education sector. Today Victoria University’s David…
Are you motivated or do you need a social setting and role models to keep you driven?
Exercise bike image from www.shutterstock.com
FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: The rise of online and blended learning and the development of free online courses is set to transform the higher education sector. We’ve asked our authors how to remake the…
The evidence to support brain-training programs is too thin to be trialling them in our school system.
Brain image from www.shutterstock.com
The Catholic Education Office in Sydney has announced that from 2013 it will trial the controversial Arrowsmith Program for children with learning difficulties. Arrowsmith is one of a number of “brain-training…
John Hattie: Welcome to The Conversation. My name is John Hattie from the University of Melbourne and I have here today, Pasi Sahlberg from the Department of Education in Finland. It’s certainly exciting…
There may be a new way to assess students’ ability to collaborate and problem solve.
Flickr/Lars Plougmann
Prime Minister Julia Gillard recently announced a new goal for Australian schools – they would reach the top five ranked school systems in the world for reading, mathematics and science by 2025. The ranking…
There is a widespread belief amongst teachers that it is part of their duty of care, even a defining aspect of their of professionalism, that all views expressed in the classroom are to be treated equally…
Education minister Peter Garrett along with his state counterparts have agreed upon some pretty big changes to teacher development.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Finally, perhaps the time has come. The Australian Charter for the Professional Learning of Teachers and School Leaders and the Australian Teacher Performance and Development Framework, both signed off…
Overcrowded Australian universities must find a way to promote small-group learning if they are to revive education standards, says the incoming vice-chancellor at the University of Adelaide. In his inaugural…
We should not be looking to East Asia as a model for our education system.
EPA/Vincent Jannink
Results from the Chinese university entrance exam, the Gaokao, were released last week. For students, it’s the long culmination of years focusing on tests and learning by rote. Again and again, East Asian…
Students from the next generation are heading to university, how should we teach them?
Flickr/iwouldstay
Narcissistic, lazy, and overly confident – this is the way some see the new generation of young people starting to go to our universities. According to teacher Lynn Van Der Wagan, who sparked an online…
A simple desire to understand the way the world works has landed some Iranian researchers in hot water.
On a given day, your typical physicist is mainly preoccupied with trying to understand the intimate secrets of the universe. As with most academics, we get to visit one another in parts of the world to…
The ANU music school cannot replace live one-on-one teaching with online lessons.
Flickr/Orangedrummerboy
The Australian National University (ANU) has recently announced serious changes to the School of Music in Canberra. Students will receive fewer hours of one-on-one performance lessons, and the current…
Teacher bonus schemes are yet another example of education reform with the wrong focus. They narrowly look at teachers and their performance, and not the needs of students and their learning. It’s the…
Congratulations class of 2011, you’ve been given the opportunity to have real-life professors – future classes might not.
Flickr/Pauls Creative Cakes
The University of Melbourne was founded in 1885 with five professors teaching 15 students. In 1952, at the start of the post-war tertiary boom, there were around 3,000 Australian academics teaching 30,000…
The Federal government has secured rare uniform cooperation from the states on its early years learning reform.
AAP/Paul Miller
Would you pay the equivalent of a coffee a day to guarantee a system whereby Australian children got the best start in life? From January this year, the Australian education system is changing its approach…
Deputy Associate Dean (Academic), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; Associate Professor of Educational Psychology, School of Education, The University of Queensland