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Effective learning in chemistry education requires students to understand visual representations across multiple conceptual levels. Essential to this process are visuospatial skills which enable students to interpret and manipulate these representations effectively. These abilities allow students to construct mental models that support problem solving and decision making, improving their understanding of complex concepts, for example chemical structures and reactions. The impact of individual differences in mental imagery, such as aphantasia and hyperphantasia, on chemistry students' spatial thinking when engaging with visual representations is not well understood. This paper presents two exploratory studies that examine how the vividness of mental imagery is related to student outcomes in chemistry-related visuospatial problem solving. The first study quantitatively assessed the performance of first-year university students in tasks requiring complex visual and spatial reasoning within a chemistry context. The second study, involving the same participants, used qualitative interview data to investigate their cognitive strategies with a focus on how their mental imagery impacts their problem-solving approaches. Preliminary results suggest that the vividness of students' visual mental imagery did not significantly impact their ability to spatially reason with visual representations in chemistry. Our findings also indicate that students with aphantasia may employ alternative strategies that mitigate their lack of visual mental imagery. This paper highlights the need for further research into the diversity of cognitive mechanisms employed by chemistry students of varying mental imagery capabilities.

The study explores insights into the phenomenon of Australian lecturers' lived experiences of teaching standalone critical thinking units within associate degree courses at one university in Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. The study makes an original contribution by focusing upon the experiences of teaching staff in Australian universities in relation to teaching critical thinking, particularly from a Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenological and Gadamerian hermeneutic theoretical and conceptual framework. At present, there are no unified methods, frameworks, or models of teaching critical thinking in Australian higher education. This problem for lecturers is an important aspect of a university education that is not well understood. This is a global educational issue and is a matter of teaching and learning concern worldwide in tertiary education (e.g. United States of America, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK). Although, several studies have been conducted on teaching critical thinking from the perspective of university lecturers. There is limited research that focus on teaching staff in Australian universities' experience with teaching critical thinking that has used Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology and Gadamer's hermeneutic circle, interpretive approach in gathering data. Using interviews, data is conducted with three first-year undergraduate Australian university Ph.D. lecturers. During the analysis of the empirical data, three themes were significant in revealing the key findings: (a) Dwelling; (b) Sorge, and (c) Concern. The comprehensive understanding of the results was that the challenges university lecturers faced in developing students to thinking critically provided new pedagogical curriculum insights for the teaching and learning of a standalone critical thinking unit within the associate degree course.

This practitioner reflection explores our integration of the Relational Employability Framework within the Health Research Project capstone unit of a Bachelor of Health Science degree. To address the historically low quality of student reflections, we incorporated image-based reflective activities to improve engagement and depth. These activities encouraged students to use visual media to examine their developing relational employability. We developed and implemented a series of tutorial activities designed to scaffold this process, aiming to foster deeper reflective practice and highlight its importance for career development and employability. Our reflections indicate that, while grades did not significantly increase, students showed enhanced critical thinking and engagement with reflective practice, suggesting the framework's effectiveness in broadening awareness and enriching employability overall. We discuss the need for peer support among educators to sustain and enhance reflective practices in teaching-learning and conclude with thoughts on our ongoing efforts to embed and expand reflective practices in teaching approaches.

The article examines the experiences of Chinese PhD students doing research in China Studies as well as the experiences of their supervisors who supervise their research in Australian universities. By conducting semi-structured interviews with both PhD students and their supervisors, we aim to understand the expectations, concerns and challenges of both students and supervisors involved in the PhD journey. We found that the main concerns and challenges of students lie in the tight timeframe of scholarship, their 'ideological dissonance' and their relations with supervisors. The supervisors hope their Chinese students could improve academic writing skills, critical thinking skills and social skills in order to well accommodate the research culture in Australia and successfully complete their PhD research. Our findings could help Australian universities to better understand the cultural and educational challenges of Chinese PhD students and to further build up the quality for research training to attract more international research students from China and elsewhere.

In a modern and increasingly complex society, students are expected to acquire skills and knowledge to deal with societal challenges, for example, climate change. These include scientific reasoning competencies (SRC), which describe abilities to solve scientific problems by applying scientific skills and knowledge and thus play a crucial role in science education. To foster SRC, science teachers are expected not only to possess these competencies themselves but also to be aware of how their students acquire SRC and have instructional strategies to teach SRC. Preservice science teachers should already have acquired this pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) on a basic level by the time they graduate from university. To investigate this development of PCK about SRC in initial teacher education, we conducted an exploratory study with a sample of 36 preservice science teachers in a Master of Teaching program at a public university in Victoria, Australia. We used the PCKSR-bio, a multiple-choice instrument for assessing PCK for different scientific reasoning activities regarding biology-related classroom situations. We did not find differences between the PCK about SRC of preservice science teachers in the first year of their master's studies and those in the second year of their master's studies, which indicates that their level does not significantly increase during the first year of their Master of Teaching program. An analysis of the participants' responses to the items revealed that they had comparable knowledge regarding each of the scientific reasoning activities addressed and were best at answering questions that addressed students' misconceptions. This is relevant for teachers who supervise early-career teachers as they should know what knowledge early-career teachers bring with them from initial teacher training and what they still need to learn. Furthermore, a comparison between the preservice science teachers in Australia and the preservice biology teachers in Germany, both in a similar phase of their initial teacher education, revealed that the participants in Germany achieved a significantly higher average test score than the participants in Australia. The findings are discussed and recommendations for the improvement of science teacher education related to SRC and potentially for in-service professional development are made.

There is strong evidence from research conducted in the United States that fraction magnitude understanding supports mathematics achievement. Unfortunately, there has been little research that examines if this relation is present across educational contexts with different approaches to teaching fractions. The current study compared fourth and sixth grade students from two countries which differ in their approach to teaching fractions: Australia and the United States. We gathered data on fraction and decimal magnitude understanding, proportional reasoning, and a standardized mathematics achievement test on whole number computation. Across both countries, reasoning about rational magnitude (either fraction or decimal) was predictive of whole number computation, supporting the central role of rational number learning. However, the precise relation varied, indicating that cross-national differences in rational number instruction can influence the nature of the relation between understanding fraction and decimal magnitude and mathematics achievement. The relation between proportional reasoning and whole number computation was fully mediated by rational magnitude understanding, suggesting that a key mechanism for how reasoning about rational magnitude supports mathematics achievement: proportional reasoning supports the development of an accurate spatial representation of magnitude that can be flexibly and proportionally scaled, which in turn supports children's mathematics learning. Together, these findings support using measurement models and spatial scaling strategies when teaching fractions and decimals.

As we move further into the digital age, the acquisition of digital literacy (DL) and computational thinking (CT) skills is emerging internationally as an essential goal for students in contemporary school curricula. As the world becomes more uncertain and volatile due to impacts of artificial intelligence (AI), international unrest, climate change, global economic instability and unforeseen catastrophes such as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it is necessary to review, revise and refine school education curricula and policies. The issue of what is essential for students to learn, and how they learn it, is of growing importance to international organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and is emerging as a significant driver for educational reform across the globe. The growing prominence of CT and DL skills across many industry sectors has prompted recent changes to international assessment frameworks such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). This paper will briefly discuss specific examples of alternative approaches to addressing CT in national curricula for the compulsory years of schooling and explain how CT has been adopted as a driver for mathematics curriculum change in Australia.

Critical thinking is recognised as instrumental for positive, personal and professional, long-term outlooks. It is also widely accepted that the development of students' critical thinking skills can be achieved through explicit interventions. This paper documents the outcomes of a pilot study that investigated the value and impact of an instructional model for guiding critical thinking skills. The model was implemented as an explicit framework, with pre-tertiary students, at a regional campus of an Australian university. Student participants were tasked with using the Review, Connect, Extend, Apply (RCEA) Framework (James, 2015) to support their analysis and critical reflection on the concepts explored in a unit of study. Data revealed that students exhibited limited critical thinking skills prior to participation in the pilot program and evidenced improvement after engaging with the RCEA framework. However, some students struggled with expressing their reflections, evaluations, and applications of knowledge, which resulted in considerations about the importance of vocabulary. The findings directed the authors to note the importance of qualifying the notion of explicit interventions for teaching critical thinking. Accordingly, they propose the use of an explicit teaching model for enabling students' critical thinking, which encompasses a structured format, a thinking framework, and pedagogy that incorporates the modelling of metacognition and metalanguage for critical thinking.

Surviving and thriving in this 21st century volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world caused by rapid digitalisation and changing work landscape, requires agile organisations with agile employees who are adaptable, resilient, and actively engaged in lifelong learning. A blended workforce encompassing full-time and 'gig' employees, working in tandem with smart machines, calls for an innovative and collaborative workforce capable of critical thinking and creative problem solving. This paper aims to highlight the potential of design thinking approaches to foster lifelong learning and graduate employability in a VUCA environment. The paper outlines an empirical study investigating the multiple benefits of incorporating design thinking process attributes in higher education. It argues that such processes can result in the development of 21st century skills and mindset and graduate capability themes that promote lifelong learning skills. Incorporating such strategies offers the potential to narrow the competency gap between workforce and work and enhance the employability and career development of graduates. The paper offers a Framework for Lifelong Learning in a VUCA environment that outlines the powerful traits that arise as payoffs from engaging in and practising design thinking. This framework can serve as a preliminary guide for higher education educators, learning organisations and individuals to inculcate and enhance lifelong learning.

The teaching and learning of statistical thinking begins at a young age in Australia, with a focus on data representation and interpretation from Foundation Year (age 5), and the collection, sorting and categorising of items from the natural environment starting even earlier. The intangible concept of "data," as part of statistical literacy, can be complex for children to grasp, especially when applying the notion of data to the everyday world or when data are explored in isolation to an investigation process. Authentic data modelling experiences present meaningful opportunities to apply statistical thinking although expert STEM knowledge is not always accessible to primary classroom teachers, nor is it always obvious how to implement such authentic problems within a classroom context. In this exploratory case study, we present data from a Year 4 classroom (age 9) statistical investigation addressing, 'How big is a leaf?' linking data to the real-life STEM context they represented. The authors were interested in how the teacher's communication processes supported her students' emerging understandings about data. Wit's (2018) cognitive tuning framework offered a way to capture how the communication processes in a group build to a commonly shared frame of reference. Findings revealed a pattern of communication between the teacher and students, supporting students' changing conceptions of data and related statistical thinking processes, throughout the investigation.

In Australia, it has been observed that there have been significant declines in the proportion of students studying senior sciences over the last two decades (Commonwealth of Australia 2017 & 2018; Steidtmann et.al, 2023). It has been suggested that one of the causes for this decline could be a link between students' literacy achievement and their engagement with the demanding reasoning processes in science that affect student pathways into senior secondary science (Cooper et.al, 2022). In recognising the importance of critical and creative thinking and the current context of Australia, this longitudinal study explores the effect of cognitive acceleration in science education (CASE) in 12- and 13-year-olds of a K-12 college in a middle socio-economic suburb of Western Australia over a period of six years to determine its impact on students' NAPLAN (Year 7 and 9) and ATAR (Year 12) performance. The cognitive gains through the CASE intervention are examined in the light of student achievements upon completion of WACE (Western Australian Certificate of Education). Teachers implementing CASE in the science classrooms participated in a two-year professional development, and as such, this study also cast some light on how their teaching practices have been influenced or shaped by their experience of delivering the CASE intervention.

It is widely recognised that the development of higher order thinking skills is a fundamental goal of higher education. There are a variety of online tools that assist the development of student higher order thinking. In this paper, a process of scaffolding for the writing of higher-order questions enabled through peer learning activities is explored. Data collected over two years across five cohorts shows that there was an overall statistically significant improvement in the number of higher-order questions produced by students at the end of each unit. The findings reveal a viable peer teaching tool that can easily be embedded into existing programmes to develop the necessary critical thinking skills for higher education students.

Common sense in practice was a significant finding of a qualitative narrative research project investigating the professional practice and learning of police in an Australian police jurisdiction. Police officers in this research emphasised common sense as an intrinsic attribute of policing. Conceptions of policing as a craft or trade, learned on-the-job, and police officers as artisans, have dominated police training. In recent years, in response to global trends to professionalise policing, organisations in most Western nations have established partnerships with tertiary and higher education institutions to provide integrated programs of professional learning and practice for police. This paper draws on Bourdieu's practice theory to examine the narratives of traditionally trained police officers' perceptions of common sense. Police officers' narratives revealed three distinct perspectives that supported the unquestioning acceptance and application of common sense to their everyday practice.

In recent years, numeracy has had an increasing focus in the Australian educational system, with policies and assessments in place for both students and teachers. In order to address the requirements of their careers, teachers need to have sufficient numeracy capabilities. In our study, we explored the numeracy capabilities of post-graduate pre-service teachers enrolled in a numeracy unit at an Australian university. Specifically, we investigated participants' statistical literacy capabilities by examining responses to a multi-part question involving the analysis of Australian National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) data presented graphically. Participants' multiple-choice answers were analysed quantitatively. To assess the depth of participants' statistical literacy reasoning, the explanations for their responses were analysed qualitatively using an adaptation of the Structure of Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy levels. Although the vast majority of participants exhibited strong basic statistical literacy skills, few participants demonstrated high-level statistical reasoning. Surprisingly, there were few differences in the response patterns of participants who had or had not studied university mathematics in their undergraduate studies.

A global commitment to inclusive education through policies and legislation has been espoused to provide equitable access to the curriculum for students with disability. Recent evidence suggests, however, that for students with blindness or low vision (BLV), the visual nature of the curriculum means that content can be inaccessible. This study explored the barriers and enablers that students with BLV encounter when engaging with the curriculum. Empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews with six students with BLV in Australian mainstream secondary schools. The interviews were analysed to determine the factors that influenced equitable access and participation. The analysis uncovered a number of themes, including access to curriculum materials, support from classroom teachers, support from specialist educators and familiarity with, and use of assistive technologies. The results of this study demonstrated that more professional development is needed for teachers and other stakeholders to prepare students with BLV to participate in learning 'on the same basis' as their peers without disability.

Training the high-order competency of complex thinking encompasses addressing its sub-competencies of critical, innovative, scientific and systemic thinking. In this framework, how do the practices of reasoning for complexity in Latin American institutions differ from other regions? This study focused on comparing training practices that promote complex thinking in national and international educational entities through analysis of their programs and alternative professional credentials to identify best educational practices. The comparative education method benchmarked the selected institutions and compared the best educational practices. The four categories of analysis were the philosophical, theoretical, and political components and the educational process. A significant-document analysis was applied to publications found on the websites of 19 educational institutions, and the data were triangulated. The findings accounted for (a) educational institutions seeking to educate individuals who can improve the quality of life in society and contribute to sustainable development, (b) educational practices aimed at developing complex thinking competencies and lifelong learning as essential for new educational models, (c) the collaboration of researchers, faculty, and other stakeholders, and appropriate tools for formative assessment, promoting the development of complex reasoning competencies in changing environments, and (d) educational processes focused on developing high skills, innovation, and digital transformation as essential for designing the future of education. This study is intended to be of value to managers, decision-makers, professors, researchers, and society interested in creating new programs to develop high-level capabilities, such as complex thinking.

In the Australian state of Victoria, the city of Melbourne endured the world's longest number of lockdown days, with severe government health orders and travel restrictions in place for extended periods of 2020 and 2021. In common with others, we found the provision of field teaching in introductory geology, structural geology, and volcanology, and the online replacement of practical instruction in petrology and petrography to be the greatest pedagogical challenges. We developed and used a range of different virtual field excursions that, given time and travel constraints imposed on us, were necessarily "low-tech" and non-immersive. Despite this, our students largely engaged enthusiastically with the virtual excursions, met many preexisting learning goals, and gained additional skills, particularly in regional-scale geological synthesis. In teaching petrology and petrography online, curated resources improved student understanding of some fundamental concepts, and it was advantageous that students were all assessed using identical imagery, rather than one sample from a non-identical class-set. On the other hand, we found we were less able to train students in the advanced skills of thin section interpretation. Assessment changes associated with online teaching have resulted in a permanent shift from low-level recall-style assessments to instead emphasizing higher-level synthesis and "geological thinking" skills. Our efforts throughout the pandemic demonstrated the value of instructor-student engagement and yielded teaching resources that have subsequently enhanced our face-to-face teaching and increased flexibility for students. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of collaborative teaching practice and we have increasingly seen the benefits of local and national-scale teaching networks for peer support and for resource sharing.

Making connections within and between different aspects of mathematics is recognised as fundamental to learning mathematics with understanding. However, exactly what these connections are and how they serve the goal of learning mathematics is rarely made explicit in curriculum documents with the result that mathematics tends to be presented as a set of discrete, disconnected topics. Interest in establishing a more coherent approach to the teaching and learning of school mathematics has led to a focus on big ideas. That is, networks of related concepts, skills and ways of thinking that facilitate learning mathematics with understanding. Research on learning progressions has helped identify what these big ideas are and how they serve to build connections within and between different aspects of mathematics. This paper draws on research that provides an evidenced-based learning progression for multiplicative reasoning to illustrate the connective role of multiplicative thinking in the development of algebraic, geometrical, and statistical reasoning.

Sustainability is an important issue that we all face, including higher education students. We assert that the transition into the contemporary higher education context needs educators to plan transition pedagogy that engages students with the world during their studies, instead of solely using curriculum as preparation for the future world of work. To investigate this, we explored how students position themselves in relation to sustainability as part of an assessment task in a first-year university transition course and whether this type of assessment provides opportunities for students to experience subjectification. Drawing on Biesta's ([2022]. "World-Centred Education: A View for the Present." New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group) conception of world-centred education, we applied a novel methodology based on dialogical self theory, developed by Hermans and Bartels ([2021]. "Citizenship Education and the Personalization of Democracy." New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029653), to analyse the data comprising student reflections on an assessment item oriented toward current sustainability issues. Our findings suggest that when students interact with their peers and encounter challenging content, conflicting internal positions can lead to subjectification and an intention for further action on real-world issues from the commencement of their studies. We propose that the principles of opposition, cooperation and participation provide a practical framework for educators and course designers to purposefully designate space for students to explore positions and practise the generative dialogue needed for thinking and acting in the world as subjects now and in the future. In analysing students' reported experience, our paper contributes to the discussion around implementing world-centred education and provides useful insight into how students engage with sustainability in higher education.

Developing students' creativity is an important educational goal in many countries. The Australian Curriculum Authority has mandated that all teachers teach creative thinking across all subjects and grades. However, after more than 10 years working within this mandate, how do science teachers see their role in promoting creativity in the classroom? This study reports interviews with 13 Australian science teachers, from three jurisdictions, about how they understand creativity, the activities that they use and barriers to supporting creative thinking in classrooms. The findings showed that, although teachers were able to identify many of the elements of creativity and creative thinking described in the literature, many still felt unsure of what creative thinking entails. For class activities that foster creative thinking most teachers focused on project-based or inquiry learning which require long periods of class time to complete. Less emphasis was given to the importance of developing creative thinking skills in making hypotheses by supporting construction of meaning, providing personal insights and explanations through the use of possibility thinking, mental images, analogies when teaching curriculum content. The Australian Curriculum documents themselves give guidance suggesting that creative thinking in science is mainly developed through inquiry-based activities. It is imperative that schools give more support to teachers to understand and develop creative thinking tasks, including time, resources, professional learning, and accountability systems.

Design thinking is often proposed as an educative strategy to enhance growth mindset, problem solving, and creativity, but there are very few evaluations of the impact of experiential design thinking programs. The primary aim of this study was to investigate whether an online design-thinking workshop provided to outdoor education staff could improve their design-thinking traits. The pilot program was delivered over a 6-week period and comprised four, 2-hour sessions, in which teams worked together to actively engage in the steps of the design thinking process. Significant improvements were observed in participants' growth mindset and design thinking process--specifically, feedback seeking. Furthermore, design thinking was strongly correlated with growth mindset and cognitive flexibility; two constructs previously theorised to be associated with design thinking. This study provides a framework for constructing online design thinking workshops and how to effectively evaluate participant outcomes.

With the aim of engaging more students in meaningful thinking in mathematics, a cohort of Year 7 students were introduced to a 'Building Thinking Classrooms' framework for learning in mathematics. In this paper, the authors outline the key features of the implemented framework and share reflections on challenges and benefits.

Statistics need data and data need context. Contexts from across the curriculum can be the most powerful in creating interest, reward, and enthusiasm for both teachers and students. The activity described here is based in STEM, employing aspects of each field to create and solve a hypothetical problem of escaping from an erupting volcano (Science) by planning (Engineering), collecting (Technology), and analysing (Mathematics, Technology) data. The software "TinkerPlots" allows the exploration of emergent ideas associated with trend in bivariate numerical data, covariation, and extrapolation in Year 5.

Describing neural connectivity between pre-frontal and parietal brain regions and anxiety in children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has the potential to inform diagnosis and treatment decisions. This study aimed to identify the neural connectivity patterns between the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and parietal regions in young autistic males, and to determine if Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) was associated with these communication patterns. Forty-one males with ASD aged between 6 and 18 yr (M age = 10.76 yr, SD = 3.14 yr) and their mothers were recruited as volunteer participants from the Gold Coast region, Australia. After assessments, participants received 3 min of eyes-closed and 3 min of eyes-opened EEG data-collection under resting conditions. EEG data from the frontal and parietal regions were investigated for their connectivity via Granger Causality (GC). There were significant correlations between the PFC-to-parietal region GC connectivity indices and total GAD scores, and also for the core components of GAD, but these were restricted to the alpha-wave frequency with only minimal beta-wave significant results. No significant correlations between parietal-to-PFC regions and GAD were present. Communication from the decision-making region (PFC) to the spatial reasoning (parietal) regions appeared to be aimed at instigating increased motor activity associated with GAD.

Critical thinking in children is a growing concern for early childhood educators; however, few studies have examined children's critical thinking in an out-of-class context. This case study aimed toward filling this research gap by examining the critical thinking of a Mandarin-speaking child aged 5 years and 8 months in an out-of-class context. The child's natural utterances produced in free conversation and story-readings have been audio- and video-taped twice a week over two months. The recordings have been transcribed and analyzed according to the Delphi Report and 'level of questions' to examine the child's critical thinking level. Findings revealed that the child demonstrated critical thinking, and two indicators, 'spontaneous statements' and 'continuous questions', reflected children's critical thinking level. It also found that these categories were reasonable and practical to identify young children's critical thinking levels.

Previous research has suggested that infants are able to distinguish between possible and impossible events and make basic probabilistic inferences. However, much of this research has focused on children's intuitions about past events for which the outcome is already determined but unknown. Here, we investigated children's ability to use probabilistic information to guide their choices and actively shape future events. In two experiments, we examined whether children could successfully direct a marble through a series of tubes, selecting between routes where success was possible, impossible, or guaranteed (i.e., 50% vs. 0%, or 50% vs. 100%; Experiment 1), and routes where success was mutually possible but probabilistically distinct (e.g., 33% vs. 50%; Experiment 2). In total, we tested 136 two- to five-year-old children (76 males), recruited predominantly through a museum in Brisbane, Australia. In Experiment 1, we found that while younger children typically did not perform above chance, the vast majority of 4- and 5-year-olds consistently distinguished between possible and impossible or guaranteed outcomes. In Experiment 2, children of all ages had greater difficulty with distinguishing between two possible outcomes with different likelihoods than between possible and impossible/guaranteed outcomes, although some individual 4- and 5-year-olds demonstrated competence when making both distinctions.

Making informed health decisions requires knowledge and skills in appraising health claims, and teaching adolescents these skills may prepare them for future decision-making. This cluster randomized trial evaluated the effectiveness of an educational intervention on students' ability to identify and appraise health claims. Nine Australian high schools (4 control and 5 intervention) were recruited, comprising 974 students (382 control and 592 intervention) in Grades 7-10. Intervention impact was evaluated through baseline and follow-up evaluation. Follow-up mean scores on questions (maximum score of 25) from the Claim Evaluation Tools database (primary outcome) showed minimal between-group difference (intervention versus control: 14.4 versus 13.6; difference 0.8, 95% confidence interval [CI] -1.6 to 3.1; P = 0.52). Change scores were only slightly higher in the intervention group (difference 1.2 [95% CI -0.7 to 3.1; P = 0.21]). Between-group differences for secondary outcomes were also minimal. Most intervention group students 'trusted' and 'liked' the programme and found the content 'easy' and 'helpful'. Most teacher feedback was positive, some noting challenges of covering content in allocated time and maintaining student engagement. It is unlikely that the assessed educational intervention had a large effect. Future research priorities are suggested.

The shift from additive to multiplicative thinking is challenging for students. A professional learning program was developed that focused on an identified area of need by teachers, namely multiplicative thinking. Program content focused on concepts underpinning multiplicative thinking, pedagogical approaches, challenging tasks, and application to classroom practice. It was delivered via six 90-min modules in 13 participating schools across terms 2-4, as part of regular after school professional learning. Whilst all staff participated, the research focus was year 3-4 teachers. Students' historical data were collected across four years (2016-2019) to determine mean growth over time, in participating and non-participating schools. National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and Mathematics Assessment Interview (MAI) data were used to determine the impact of the learning, as both assessments are administered annually. Analysis of year 4 students' longitudinal data showed greater mean growth in student learning over a 2-year period in schools involved in the learning and additional in-class coaching support, than students in non-participating schools. Our findings showed that targeted school-based professional learning, with in-class support from a knowledgeable other, leads to teachers' improved understanding of multiplicative thinking and subsequent pedagogical content knowledge to support student learning.

A growing body of evidence suggests developing the attention of preservice, secondary mathematics (PSMTs) teachers towards professional noticing of student thinking should feature in teacher education programs. There were two aims for this qualitative study: first, to explore the extent to which an Interview Module (IM) supported the development of PSMTs' ability to notice and make pedagogical decisions based on student thinking evidenced in video and paper-based work samples. A secondary aim was to establish the viability of the IM in an Australian context. Overall, PSMTs regarded their involvement in the IM as beneficial to their development as teachers. Specifically, participants outlined that the IM helped to shift their beliefs about teaching and learning, and helped promote productive teacher dispositions. Furthermore, these shifts were enabled through opportunities to engage with authentic student work, and the access they were given to new forms of responding.

Reflective practices are considered an important part of a pre-service teachers' (PSTs) professional learning experiences. However, there has been much criticisms on its efficacy as a learning tool for teacher professional development. This paper will relate a study that was designed to compare reflective teaching practices in two culturally different countries, namely Malaysia and Australia. These two countries were chosen as they offered an opportunity to study differences in reflective thinking practices from an Asian and a Western cultural perspective among PSTs. The study used a framework using five constructs: lifelong learning skills, self-assessment, self-belief, teaching awareness, and reflective thinking. The sample consisted of 387 Malaysian PSTs and 378 Australian PSTs who are enrolled in Bachelor level programmes. The results clearly indicate that while reflective thinking is emphasised in the teacher education programmes, the conceptualisation of the process of reflective thinking between the two cohorts of PSTs are very different. Limitations and implications for practice are discussed.

A study was conducted to explore the beliefs and practices of 49 New South Wales (NSW) primary school teachers regarding their beliefs and practices concerning the use of concrete materials in the learning and teaching of Number and Algebra. This paper reports on elements of the study regarding why and how teachers use concrete materials. Not only do teacher beliefs influence their classroom practice, Buehl and Beck (2014) propose that teacher practices may impact teacher beliefs suggesting they are interrelated. This paper sought to situate teacher beliefs and practices upon a conceptualisation of this interrelationship based on aspects of classroom practice involving concrete materials. The study employed survey methodology utilising a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews to gather data that were analysed to identify key themes regarding teachers' prevailing beliefs about the use of concrete materials. These themes included a belief in a social constructivist approach to learning and teaching mathematics, a cognitive dimension and engagement. On the basis of these findings an overview is suggested that positions teacher beliefs and practices relating to the use of concrete materials and how it might be used to shift inservice and preservice teachers' beliefs towards a more constructivist teaching approach.

Design thinking can be broadly defined as a set of creative skills to understand and problem-solve ambiguous and complex problems, and a practice that places humans at the heart of the design process. Such collaborative ways of design thinking and design-doing are much needed to address twenty-first century challenges such as climate change. Design thinking methodology is well known for teaching and learning in design disciplines, and to a lesser extent, as an innovative problem-solving framework for business education. Typically design thinking has been taught and practised in physical settings and to a lesser extent online. While design thinking is also increasingly practised online, this is challenging at scale in higher education contexts. This case study analyses design thinking activities with educational technologies in a large undergraduate cohort of first-year business students. Eleven students and three teachers were interviewed to ascertain their level of engagement with design thinking with digital tools and to identify common themes that enabled or inhibited such practice. Student artefacts of design thinking are explored and compared to the interview data. Findings indicate that students may develop novice design thinking skills, process knowledge and mindsets in online and remote delivery modes, despite limited experience, technical and time constraints. Broader learning design implications of design thinking constraints in digital practice are discussed to assist educators. It is suggested that higher education adopt and support design thinking, as a subject and practice, more widely. [Note: The page range (213-234) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range is 213-232.]

Employability skills for health graduates, and many disciplines within higher education, are considered vital to maximising their capacity to cope with the rapidly changing, uncertain and highly competitive labour market. Despite the increasing importance of developing generic skills for employability, there is a dearth of knowledge about how to support health students to develop generic skills as part of their formal education. The main objective of this two-phase study was to engage health students in the process of self-assessment of their generic skills and explore the potential of this process to facilitate their generic skills development. The first phase of this study engaged students in completing a self- assessment questionnaire, incorporating a validated set of industry-demanded skills with associated behaviours. In the second phase a subsection of respondents participated in focus group interviews that explored their perception of the self-assessment process in generic skills development. Students viewed themselves as having some capabilities to perform the generic skills, as well as their university studies contributing to the development of these skills. The qualitative data found that the self-assessment process prompted students to reflect on their abilities and further engage with developing these skills. This study supports the evidence for contextualising and embedding a process of self-assessment of generic skills into the formal curricula to help better prepare health students for their future work.