Search

Cyberbullying is a serious social problem with negative health and wellbeing consequences for young people. Teachers have an important role to play in intervention activities because they are often first responders to cyberbullying events. This paper presents 10 teachers' workarounds to cyberbullying intervention. The vignettes drawn from interview data show teachers recognise cyberbullying as a significant concern for young people. However, in their reporting, there is no uniform approach taken. Instead, each teacher describes a unique set of practices for cyberbullying intervention that are not always aligned to intervention frameworks. While a mix of factors determines their uptake of recommended interventions, the key to each teacher's workaround is the level of frustration, annoyance and worry they experienced in relation to cyberbullying. The research demonstrates intervention frameworks need to rethink the role teachers play in cyberbullying intervention, provide greater support and guidance for managing student distress in relation to cyberbullying, and address the frustration experienced by teachers in relation to their intervention responsibilities.

There is growing interest in the incorporation of digital games as part of the suite of offerings in museum education in heritage environments. Digital games are seen as ways of recreating historic worlds, affording empathetic and affective engagement, and increasing interest in and understanding of historical periods or processes, working in complementarity with material exhibitions and artefacts on display. Stakeholders engaged in the development of digital games, however, may have different views of what constitutes significant knowledge and priorities. This paper reports on findings from a pilot study that investigated key concerns for three groups involved in designing a game -- museum educators, maritime archaeologists and games designers -- that foregrounded the construction of history, history as constructed and processes of historical research. The paper explores the differing values and priorities underlying the perspectives of each group, and the implications of these for museum education, and the design of the game.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to suggest how well-being messages are recontextualized into school-based contexts from an analysis of national policy and state curricular approaches to health education as reported in the findings of two selected case studies as well as community concerns about young people's well-being. Design/methodology/approach: A cross-sectional review of Australian federal and state-level student well-being policy documents was undertaken. Using two case examples of school-based in-curricular well-being programs, the paper explores how discourses from these well-being policy documents are recontextualized through progressive fields of translation and pedagogic decision making into local forms of curriculum. Findings: Pedagogic messages about well-being in Australia are often extra-curricular, in that they are rarely integrated into one or across existing subject areas. Such messages are increasingly focused on mental health, around phenomena such as bullying. Both case examples clearly demonstrate how understandings of well-being respond to various power relations and pressures emanating from stakeholders within and across official pedagogic fields and other contexts such as local communities. Originality/value: The paper focusses on presenting an adaptation of Bernstein's (1990) model of social reproduction of pedagogic discourse. The adapted model demonstrates how "top-down" knowledge production from the international disciplines shaping curriculum development and pedagogic approaches can be replaced by community context-driven political pressure and perceived community crises. It offers contemporary insight into youth-at-risk discourses, well-being approaches and student mental health.

Young people's online safety continues to be a high priority for educators and parents. Cybersafety policies and educational programs are continually updated and revised to accommodate for the innovative ways they engage with digital culture. However, empirical research has shown that despite these efforts young people, especially teen girls, continue to experience online problems. To date gender-specific guidelines for cybersafety practice remain in their infancy. This paper provides new evidence suggesting that teen girls' online practices with peers and close friends have important implications for cybersafety policy. Drawing on survey data and group interview responses from girls 13 years of age, the article discusses how the girls managed and negotiated their daily experiences with peers and close friends in online contexts. The girls' online practices are offered for consideration in cybersafety policy development and curriculum planning.

There is considerable enthusiasm in many quarters for the incorporation of digital games into the classroom, and the capacity of games to engage and challenge players, present complex representations and experiences, foster collaborative learning, and promote deep learning. But while there is increasing research documenting the progress and outcomes of game-based learning, relatively little attention is paid to student perceptions and voice. In order to effectively target game-based learning pedagogy, it is important to understand students' previous experience, if any, of the use of games in the classroom, and what they made of these. In this paper, we present findings from a survey of 270 primary and secondary school students in Year Levels 4-9 (aged 9-14) in 6 Queensland schools at the start of a 3-year Australian Research Council project researching the use of digital games in school to promote literacy and learning.

Teachers' beliefs about what it is (or is not) possible to achieve with digital games in educational contexts will inevitably influence the decisions that they make about how, when, and for what specific purposes they will bring these games into their classrooms. They play a crucial role in both shaping and responding to the complex contextual factors which influence how games are understood and experienced in educational settings. Throughout this article the authors draw upon data collected for a large-scale, mixed-methods research project focusing on literacy, learning and teaching with digital games in Australian classrooms, to focus explicitly on the attitudes, understandings and expectations held about digital games by diverse teachers at the beginning of the project. They seek to identify the beliefs about games that motivated teachers' participation in a digital games research project while focusing, as well, on concerns that teachers express about risks or limitations of such a project. The authors' aim is to develop a detailed picture of the mindsets that teachers bring to games-based learning environments, and the relevance of these mindsets to broader debates about the relationship between games, learning and school.

Cyberbullying is a serious social problem with negative health and wellbeing consequences for young people. Teachers have an important role to play in intervention activities because they are often first responders to cyberbullying events. This paper presents 10 teachers' workarounds to cyberbullying intervention. The vignettes drawn from interview data show teachers recognise cyberbullying as a significant concern for young people. However, in their reporting, there is no uniform approach taken. Instead, each teacher describes a unique set of practices for cyberbullying intervention that are not always aligned to intervention frameworks. While a mix of factors determines their uptake of recommended interventions, the key to each teacher's workaround is the level of frustration, annoyance and worry they experienced in relation to cyberbullying. The research demonstrates intervention frameworks need to rethink the role teachers play in cyberbullying intervention, provide greater support and guidance for managing student distress in relation to cyberbullying, and address the frustration experienced by teachers in relation to their intervention responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian middle school girls are some of the heaviest users of social media in this country. They use it extensively to communicate with friends both in and out of school and, not surprisingly, most say they could not live without it. Despite these claims, girls aged 12 to 14 experience higher levels of online trouble such as cyberbullying and sexting than same age boys. These troubles make them more prone to emotional distress such as depression and anxiety. To date, intervention initiatives have not been overly effective in reducing these problems. This paper reports on the online practices employed by middle school girls to negotiate social media. The data is drawn from an ongoing study involving 75 middle school girls from two high schools in Queensland. Preliminary findings drawn from survey and focus group contributions show that middle school girls can easily describe online safety protocols but their interpretation and translation of protocols into effective social media practices often differs from recommended guidelines when communicating with friends. Strategies for cultivating social media safety awareness in middle school girls are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is considerable enthusiasm in many quarters for the incorporation of digital games into the classroom, and the capacity of games to engage and challenge players, present complex representations and experiences, foster collaborative learning, and promote deep learning. But while there is increasing research documenting the progress and outcomes of game-based learning, relatively little attention is paid to student perceptions and voice. In order to effectively target game-based learning pedagogy, it is important to understand students' previous experience, if any, of the use of games in the classroom, and what they made of these. In this paper, we present findings from a survey of 270 primary and secondary school students in Year Levels 4–9 (aged 9–14) in 6 Queensland schools at the start of a 3-year Australian Research Council project researching the use of digital games in school to promote literacy and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Significant efforts worldwide have gone into developing cybersafety education for young people. In many countries, key government bodies, community organisations, charity groups and school sectors have engaged in program and curriculum development with the aim of improving students' cybersafety awareness and digital literacy. In Australia, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) delivers cybersafety programs, presentations and resources to teachers, librarians, children, parents, carers and other community members through its Cybersmart branding, including the Cybersmart Outreach Program. Drawing on data from the 2011 evaluation of the effectiveness of the ACMA Cybersmart Outreach Program in schools, this paper discusses distinctions between what junior secondary students rated as 'easy' and what is 'important' in relation to managing online safety, and proposes that closer attention to this distinction might present useful guidance for this age group in the development of future education programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]