Editorial

Welcome to the last issue of 2017. The year has certainly flown!

This issue starts with two studies in the area of Indigenous education.

In the first article, Bodkin-Andrews, Whittaker, Harrison, Craven, Parker, Trudgett and Page compare Aboriginal Australian students, non-Aboriginal Australian students and students who were born overseas in terms of their cultural identity, future aspirations and adaptive motivational factors such as valuing of school, self-beliefs and persistence. Results show that Aboriginal Australian students report lower aspirations and less adaptive motivational tendencies but stronger cultural identity than the other two groups. Cultural identity, in turn, emerges as a strong predictor of adaptive motivational factors and future aspirations. Furthermore, results illustrate that – for all three groups – cultural identity more than gender, educational resources at home, grade, whether or not parents are university educated or employed, affects students’ intentions to support a family, get a job and contribute to society.

A similar finding is reported in the second article by Dunstan, Hewitt and Tomaszewski who examine data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children (LSIC). Their analysis shows that Indigenous identity has a significant influence on Indigenous children’s affective engagement with school along with other factors such as remoteness and peer relationships.

In another longitudinal study, Hammer, Melhuish and Howard analyse data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) to investigate the effects of various demographic and socio-emotional factors in early childhood on later performance at school. The analysis identifies hyperactivity prior to school entry as the overall strongest predictor which affects negatively the performance in Years 3, 5 and 7 as measured by the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN).

In the next article, Lloyd, Smith, Dempsey, Fischetti and Amos compare two ways of delivering a disability awareness program in schools in New South Wales (NSW). They find that the delivery format which consists of a single presenter with a disability, two shorter sessions and a voluntary homework activity results in greater improvements in students’ attitudes towards people with a disability than the format which involves one longer session being delivered by two presenters without the opportunity for a homework activity.

Buckley-Walker, Tognolini, Lockyer, Brown and Caputi describe the development of an assessment of students’ abilities to create meaning from text, sound, image and video (i.e. multiliteracy skills) in an online environment. Taking readers through two pilot studies and a field trial, the authors illustrate how Rasch analyses are used to examine the dimensionality, item functioning and marking rubrics of the assessment. Results illustrate that the assessment works well for the lower-level skills but that further work is required to develop suitable tasks to assess higher-level skills.

This issue finishes with a study on reading interest beyond the early years by Margaret Merga. Analysis of interview data from students in Years 4 and 6 shows that children value interactive reading opportunities, such as reading aloud and being read to – whether at home or at school – well after they have become independent readers. While some of the value is in terms of reading skill development, the study highlights the positive social and emotional experiences children associate with these interactive reading opportunities and encourages parents and teachers to continue to offer such opportunities to children and students well into the secondary school years.

As you can see, this issue of the AJE is again filled with a variety of topics which will no doubt capture the interest of our readers.