Research consistently shows that many students become disengaged in their schoolwork as they move further into the middle years of high school. As students become disengaged, they participate in class less often, enjoy school less, become less interested in schoolwork, ...
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#TeachersofInstagram a different kind of viral sensation
You've surely heard of dogs or cats of Instagram, but have you seen the teacher variety? Granted, they're not as adorable, but in lieu of hilarious 'caught on camera' moments and puppy eyes, they offer and seek advice, personal stories and, of ...
More »Why relatable gamification is the obvious next teaching frontier: opinion
How often have we heard kids (our own, others' and even our past selves), whining that the maths they’re learning isn’t ‘useful’ and they’ll ‘never use it’? Too many to count. According to the IET, 203,000 people with engineering skills ...
More »Teaching beyond post-modernism in a digitalised society: opinion
The rapid and exponential growth of the internet over the past 40 years has changed the nature of society. Indeed, at the end of the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the internet is our defining medium. This has ...
More »New medical guidelines for transgender kids
They may constitute only approximately 1.2 per cent of the population, but until recently, transgender individuals have been excluded from society. In a 2015 speech, former Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson said that of LGBTQI people, "the lingering and most extensive discrimination ...
More »The latest research on bouncing back
American developmental psychologist Emmy Werner was one of the first people to ever use the term 'resilience'. It came out of her landmark study of children from Kauai, Hawaii, from their birth in 1955 to their late teens, in the 1970s. At the ...
More »Opinion: How studying STEM subjects in senior years opens doors
Choosing final-year school subjects is a challenging time for students – students may be tempted simply to avoid Maths or Science and therefore miss out on the foundation for many future opportunities. According to a recent SEEK Employment Report, the ...
More »Save the dolphins, from the classroom
For years, there have been intermittent reports of animals in captivity lashing out, and even killing themselves and their trainers and keepers. The 2013 documentary Blackfish brought this issue into sharp relief. It told the story of Tilikum, an orca whale implicated ...
More »Hopeful and marginalised: migrant youths share their thoughts and feelings
We hear about their extreme highs and lows, but we don’t often hear the everyday thoughts of migrant and refugee young people in Australia. Not every one is a Duckie Thot or the victim of an unprovoked attack. There are Muhammads, ...
More »National mindfulness curriculum launches, to some scepticism
Mindfulness – the process of bringing one's attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally – seems firmly entrenched in Western culture and institutions. So, it's no surprise that many schools across Australia have used it as a tool to ease student stress. ...
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