Abstract
As we are writing this editorial for the Australian Journal of Education (AJE), pictures of the Australian bushfires are being circulated around the world. It is the summer holidays Down Under and many of the schools around the country are being used as evacuation centres or to accommodate people tasked with firefighting or re-establishing essential services like water and electricity. Among many other things, this is a reminder that education is a public good and an integral part of our society to which the AJE feels privileged to contribute.
In the first article, Thomas Cain and John Hattie investigate students’ attitudes towards school and their relationships with students’ reading performance. Data are analysed for about 50,000 Year 7 and 9 students in 306 Victorian government schools from the state-wide Student Attitudes to School Survey and the Australian National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy reading assessments. The six-attitude factors, namely Effective Teaching Practices, Learner Characteristics and Disposition, School Connectedness, Advocate at School, Experience of Bullying, and High Expectations for Success are related to students’ reading achievement and gain from Year 7 to Year 9. Results indicate that students who report less bullying, greater connectedness to school as well as higher motivation and resilience show greater gains. Cain and Hattie also develop a four-cluster model that groups schools with similar profiles across the six-attitude factors, with the idea that schools may be able to use this information in their improvement planning.
Next, Ken Rigby examines the extent to which primary and secondary students in Australia report being bullied by individuals or by groups in this study. Close to half of the 1,688 students in Years 5 to 10 in this study indicate no bullying during the surveyed year. Among those students who report bullying, being bullied by an individual student is reported more frequently than being bullied by groups of students. The severity of negative outcomes, such as students’ reporting feeling unsafe at school, being absent from school or that their schoolwork has suffered, is associated with the reported frequency of individual and group bullying. Results from correlation and regression analyses indicate a stronger association between being bullied and negative outcomes for students who report being bullied by groups rather than individuals. While group bullying is less commonly reported, its negative effects on student wellbeing may be more severe. The author suggests that interventions for bullying currently used in Australian schools may need to include a greater focus on addressing group bullying.
Measurement of student attitude is also the focus of Michelle Turner, Paul Bowen, Jacinta Ryan and Paul Hayes’ contribution. They seek to adapt an established measure of student resilience – the Resilience at University scale – to the Australian secondary school context through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling of data from a convenience sample of 562 female secondary school students. Results show convergent validity of the assumed seven factors – Living authentically; Finding your calling; Maintaining perspective; Managing stress; Interacting cooperatively; Staying healthy; Building networks. However, the internal consistency of two subscales – Living authentically and Interacting cooperatively – is not ideal, and further development of the resilience measure, including development of more items for these two scales, is required before the instrument can be used in Australian schools.
Jill Duncan, Renée Punch, Mark Gauntlett and Ruth Talbot-Stokes undertake a scoping review of the effects of Australian legislation designed to eliminate discrimination based on disability – comprising the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) and the Disability Standards for Education 2005 (Cth). The review focuses on the inclusion of students with disability in Australian primary and secondary schools, and the difficulties that might exist in the interplay between the legislation, policy and practice. From a content analysis of the identified 18 articles, five key themes emerge, namely inclusion/exclusion of students, jurisdictions and definitions inconsistency, the complaints-driven system, legislation clarity (or lack thereof) leading to confusion about how the Standards are best applied in practice, and reasonable adjustments, particularly in relation to assessment. The article concludes with recommendations to governments, teachers and parents to assist the legislation’s aim of eliminating discrimination of students with disabilities.
Significant changes in the Australian tertiary environment, such as increases in the number of places available, and in the labour market for university graduates, such as the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 and the subsequent downturn in GDP growth, prompted Michael Corliss, Anne Daly and Phil Lewis to compare estimates of the monetary returns associated with the completion of bachelor degrees in 2016 with those of a study 10 years earlier. According to the new estimates, for the median person, monetary incentives to complete a bachelor degree are still good and the private rate of return compares favourably with outcomes for those who move straight into the labour force after completing Year 12. Still, the returns to a university degree appear to have declined over the 10-year period with the completion of a bachelor degree no longer yielding positive returns. Also, evidence of a skills mismatch between the labour market and the lowest paid university graduates suggests that some graduates may have been better off financially without a university degree. The key factors determining the monetary rate of return are the discipline of the degree and whether graduates’ employment is part-time or full-time.
The last contribution in this issue is a review by Jo Doyle of the book Social Media in Higher Education: Case Studies, Reflections and Analysis, edited by Chris Rowell. In her review, Jo emphasises that the book, through its podcasts, case studies, examples and reflections, is not just a good read in itself but also a very valuable resource for academics and other tertiary education staff which could be used for professional development or teaching.
Happy reading!