Search

Despite many claimed benefits, teacher collaboration remains patchy, under-theorised, and resisted. At the same time, new large teaching spaces offer teachers opportunities to teach in teams within and across school subjects to enhance teacher and student learning. In this paper we aim to contribute to theorising the nature and means of this form of collaboration, drawing on both relevant literature and analyses of three case studies of team teaching. We found that team teaching (a) is enabled and constrained by multiple contextual factors, and (b) potentially changes and enhances the nature and scope of teacher professional learning.

Martin (1989) described persuasive language as the language of power. When a person can use persuasive language effectively in speech and writing, it increases their ability to participate and access power in democratic societies. Persuasive writing is one of three key text types in the Australian Curriculum: English, and language features of persuasive text types are taught across the curriculum. Australian students’ ability to write persuasive texts has been assessed in seven of the past nine years of National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) testing. One of the language features that is considered important in persuasive writing is grammatical metaphor. This paper employs concepts from systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to examine how ideational grammatical metaphor was used in the 32 highest scoring persuasive texts written by Tasmanian primary and secondary school students for the 2011 NAPLAN test. The results show that high achieving students demonstrated an ability to use ideational metaphor in their persuasive writing from the middle primary school years. This paper aims to provide guidance for Australian primary and secondary school educators by showing how and in what ways high achieving students use grammatical metaphor for persuasive purposes in NAPLAN responses across the tested year levels.

Teaching practices respond to the prompts, resources and inherent potential of a school’s physical, social and cultural landscape. This study involved how teachers adapt their practice in response to contemporary flexible learning environments. An Australian case study focused on how teachers framed and enacted changes in practice by perceiving action possibilities of the flexible environment and (re)configuring the classroom environment over time through their professional agency. An enactment model of teacher adaptation is proposed, based on the case study and the relevant literature. The model suggests that the phases in the adaptation process are awareness, experimentation and coherence.

There is a recent advocacy for students to experience their learning as personalised, but this expectation poses challenges for teachers tasked with addressing prescribed curricula. In this article, we draw on relevant literature and our analyses of three case studies to propose a framework within which teachers can achieve both goals. We first clarify what we mean by personalising learning, noting problems in how it is currently conceptualised and enacted. We suggest that any attempt to support students to personalise their learning needs to be contextualised within broader curricular goals, and that its developmental nature entails progressions in specific learner capabilities, and therefore the need for students to be supported in this process. In proposing a framework for this support, we focus on general principles around the what and how of this process rather than on particular discipline areas.

What is an appropriate structure for reporting a study that sought to understand and interpret the valued language choices in the highest scoring persuasive texts written by Tasmanian primary and secondary school students for the 2011 NAPLAN writing test, and to critique the impact of such high-stakes, standardised testing on Australian primary and secondary school teachers’ persuasive writing instruction, straddling between positivist, interpretivist and critical paradigms, and adopting qualitative research?

This paper seeks to explicate the broad range of evaluative language choices made by Tasmanian Year 3 students who scored highly on the 2011 National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy writing test. Each text is analysed using the three systems of Appraisal (Martin & White, 2005) from systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1994), highlighting how these young writers attempted to persuade their readers. Building on prior studies into young students’ use of evaluative language in their writing, this paper aims to provide a starting point for Year 3 educators who wish teach language choices that are highly valued in the context of formal examinations. This paper highlights that even at the young age of eight years old, students must demonstrate a wide range of complex language skills to write effective persuasive texts.

Since 2008, it has been compulsory for all Australian students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 to complete a number of standardised tests known as the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). Completed yearly, the NAPLAN tests are designed to assess students’ reading, writing, language (spelling, grammar, and punctuation), and numeracy skills (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2010).

The rapid decline in Australian students’ performance on the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) writing test is an issue of national concern. This paper presents the first investigation into patterns of achievement and progress on the NAPLAN writing test across the tested year levels (3, 5, 7 and 9) between 2011 and 2018, with a focus on gender differences. The findings reveal a considerable decline in writing performance for both genders over time, with a major disparity of up to 2 years of learning in test outcomes between male and female students. While performance of girls exceeded year-level standards when averaged over the 8 years, the average performance of boys was consistently below standards, with male students falling further behind female students across the school years. Yet average scores for both genders have declined significantly since 2011. Drawing on current international research into the teaching of writing and standardised writing tests, the paper considers two possible causes for this decline which are often communicated by education stakeholders: ineffective writing instruction, and issues with the design and implementation of the NAPLAN writing test. The paper calls for a national conversation about how we might effectively teach and assess writing.