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Increasingly, there are expectations internationally that schools will use research to inform their improvement initiatives. Within this context, this paper brings together findings from two large-scale Australian studies – the Monash Q Project and the University of Newcastle's Quality Teaching Rounds Project – to explore educators' patterns of engagement with research. The combination of these studies provides data from a larger and more diverse sample (n = 774) than other recent Australian studies, and integrates insights from direct and indirect approaches to investigating educators' research engagement. The analysis highlights several common themes associated with educators' research use including: the perceived credibility of different sources; the relevance and usability of research; and affordances of access to research and time to use it well in practice. Newer and more nuanced insights include: the interrelationships between collaborative and directed research use; the need for research to be convenient in terms of access and usability; the role of trusted colleagues in helping to bridge gaps between research and practice; and educators' distrust of research itself. The paper argues that these insights provide important cues as to how systems and school leaders can help educators to increase and improve their use of research in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are growing expectations in Australia and internationally that school educators will engage with and use research to improve their practice. In order to support educators to respond to such expectations, there is a need to be able to accurately assess the levels of educators' research engagement. At present, however, few psychometrically sound instruments are available. Drawing on two studies of Australian educators (n = 1,311) and utilising Rasch analysis, supported by confirmatory factor analysis, this paper reports on the development of a brief eight-item scale that demonstrates validity and reliability and evidenced unidimensionality in the second study. The scale is intended as a quick, easy-to-use tool for educators to gain insights into their beliefs about the value of engaging with research, their actions around using research, and their confidence in finding, interpreting, and judging the quality of relevant research. Notwithstanding the need for further testing, this paper argues that the scale has the potential to be applicable to other educational contexts and to contribute to future research into educators' research engagement and its assessment. The scale can also provide school and education system leaders, as well as evaluators and researchers, with data regarding educators' research engagement over time, allowing for research use supports and resources to be better targeted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workforce insecurity has significant implications for the role of school leaders and teachers preparing students for changing worlds of work. For educators to better prepare students to enter an increasingly casualised labour workforce, there first needs to be an acknowledgement of how students perceive themselves in relation to post-school life. Drawing on a study of approximately 2500 secondary school students in the Australian state of Victoria, the figure of homo promptus is presented as a figure of youth to understand the real and imagined characteristics of students as workers-in-the-making. Homo promptus is entrepreneurial and strategic, yet on 'standby' as short-termism problematises future planning. This figure is overlaid onto students' perceptions of their own career identity relative to post-school aspirations and transitions. The emergence of homo promptus and the broader labour and education landscapes from which this conceptualisation has been developed have implications for school leaders, teachers and school-based careers advisors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]