Abstract
Welcome to this first issue of the AJE in 2017. In line with the journal’s scope, articles in this issue span again all levels of education, ranging from the importance of early childhood reading activities to the implications of online delivery of initial teacher education (ITE) programs at university for teacher workforce planning.
While much research has shown the importance of early childhood for learning outcomes in monolingual school systems, less is known on this topic in bilingual systems. In their article, Shek Kam Tse, Yu Zhu, Sau Yan Hui and Hung Wai Ng report on a study of reading performance in English and Chinese in Hong Kong using instruments adapted from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Results show that home activities such as reading books, telling stories and singing songs during early childhood are stronger predictors of Grade 4 students’ reading performance in both Chinese and English than activities undertaken later in primary school.
Ken Rigby reports on an exploratory study on bullying and preventative strategies in 25 primary, secondary and combined schools. The results of his study show that schools rate restorative practices where offenders and victims meet as well as actions aimed at strengthening the victim to be more effective in terms of reducing bullying than addresses at school assemblies and peer mediation. Findings also indicate that training regarding how to deal with bullying during pre-service teacher education is perceived to be less effective than school-based professional development or training provided to teaching staff by organisations outside their school.
The next two contributions relate to the topic of early school leaving. In their article, Nicky Dulfer, Suzanne Rice and Kira Clarke describe the development of an instrument to measure the extent to which students perceive teaching practices aimed at promoting autonomy, relatedness, relevance and competence to occur in the classroom. Teaching with a high level of these elements has been shown to cater better to the needs of students who are at risk of dropping out. These measures can throw light on the impact of different teaching practices on at-risk students’ engagement in school. In their article, Andrew Bills and Nigel Howard point out that the term ‘at risk’ paints a deficit picture of students who might consider leaving school early. In addition, the authors argue that South Australia’s Flexible Learning Options initiative deals with such students by removing them from schools and placing them in community-based learning programs. This, the authors contend, has resulted in preventing schools from being able to offer holistic care and solutions to ‘at-risk students’ and in constraining students from accessing the full curriculum and resources offered by schools.
The National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is arguably the largest source of student outcome data in Australia. Tessa Daffern, Noella Mackenzie and Brian Hemmings use Year 3 and Year 5 NAPLAN data to examine the relative effects of the three language conventions, namely spelling, grammar and punctuation, on performance in writing a persuasive text. Results indicate that while all three language conventions jointly predict writing performance, spelling has the strongest effect on performance.
As is the case in other disciplines, online delivery of courses continues to grow in ITE which enables students to take courses at universities in states and territories in which they do not reside. Yet, teacher workforce planning still tends to assume that students of ITE programs represent the teacher supply in the state or territory of the university from which they graduate. An analysis of data from the Australian Government Department of Education and Training’s Higher Education Statistics Collection for 2013 by Daniel Edwards and Paul Weldon shows that nearly a quarter of all external completers resided outside the state in which their university was located. As this translates into nearly 700 teachers in the 2014 school year, the authors emphasise the need to drill further into where these graduates end up teaching to increase accuracy in teacher workforce planning. Happy reading!