Faculty of Education - Research Publications
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ItemInnovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change Project Phase One Report 2016-2017(ILETC Project, 2017)The ILETC project presents a unique opportunity for a team of experts in education and architecture from across governments, schools, business and academia to co-design new solutions to the challenges of delivering 21st century learning to students in Australia and New Zealand. The Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change project (ILETC) commenced officially in June 2016. The aim of this 4 year project is to build understanding of how physical classroom space impacts on learning and how best to support teachers in making the most of the spaces in their schools. It will develop resources and strategies to support educators, school leaders, policy makers and architects in developing and inhabiting new learning spaces. In its busy first 18 months the project has not only accomplished all planned milestones, but has achieved extensive engagement with partners, teachers, architects and researchers both within Australasia and internationally. This highly efficient and collaborative, cross-disciplinary group has maximised the expertise of the project team and partners in building a comprehensive base of evidence about teaching in innovative learning spaces in Australasia. The group has made it a priority to not only conduct their research in an open and transparent way, with regular newsletter updates, blog posts and articles, but to publish findings as soon as data is analysed and share these with an ever growing following of educators, designers and other researchers. This report provides a summary of the project’s activities, findings and engagement in the first 18 months of research. It draws together the many outputs, events, media and activities to highlight some of the key discoveries and how these inform the next stage of investigations.
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ItemUNICEF EAPRO – Suggestions for UNICEF EAPRO Strategy (2016-2020) on Multilingual Education and Social Cohesion(Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, 2016)
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ItemEnhancing Student Wellbeing: A review of research for Catholic Education Melbourne(Catholic Education Office/ Youth Research Centre, MGSE, 2017-09-20)As part of the review of the literature, 280 papers were reviewed at abstract level using key education data bases including A+ Education, ERIC and INFORMIT (for the Australian context) using the search terms wellbeing OR well being OR well-being in combination with the following terms: safe*, inclus*, Catholic, relation*, divers*, teach*, learn*, voice, empower*, SEL, socialemotional learning. 120 were identified as valuable to inform the development of a framework, including some following on from references identified in the papers in the original search. Subsequent consultation with the CEM team led to the identification and inclusion of a further 32 documents with a focus on sub-themes, including religion and spirituality.
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ItemType and Use of Innovative Learning Environments in Australasian Schools ILETC Survey 1( 2017)Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs), celebrated by some for the ‘transformational’ educational opportunities they may provide, raise questions whether the anticipated pedagogical value of these ‘non-traditional’ spaces is based on idealised visions of teaching and learning rather than sound evidence. Before such complex issues can be efficiently addressed, evidence of the actual ‘state of play’ of ILEs is required. This report provides results of a survey disseminated to over 6000 school principals in Australia and New Zealand (NZ). Participants were invited to provide their perceptions of (1) the types of learning spaces in their schools; (2) the types of teaching approaches observed in those spaces; (3) the degree to which teachers in those spaces utilised progressive ‘mind frames’; and (4) the degree to which students engaged in ‘deep’ as opposed to ‘surface’ learning in those spaces. With a response rate of 14%, the 822 responses provided unique data on the distribution, use, and perceived impact of use of particular learning environment typologies in these Australasian regions. Findings, based on principals’ perceptions, indicated that in this sample of schools: (1) traditional classrooms were the dominant classroom type, amounting to approximately 75% of all spaces; (2) the dominant teaching approach was characteristics of teacher-led pedagogies; (3) participants from schools with a higher prevalence of traditional classroom spaces reported a lower assessment along the teacher mind frame continuum, with the reverse in more flexible learning spaces; and (4) students in traditional classrooms exhibited less deep learning characteristics, with the opposite in more flexible learning environments. The study concluded that while this research was dependent on the perceptions of leading teachers, the response rate and framing of the questions indicates that there existed evidence of a relationship between types of learning environments, teaching practices, teacher mind frames, and student deep learning. This technical report does not argue generalizable results, nor the existence of demonstrable causal relationships between spatial types and pedagogic approaches/types of learning. Such discussion and further analysis will stem from this technical report. It does, however, provide a detailed overview of the structure, implementation and results from a large-scale survey that focused on such issues. This constitutes an evidence-based platform for future discussion and academic inquiry about the opportunities and challenges surrounding the use and practice of ILEs in Australia and NZ. The direction of this enquiry may, conceivably, extend to questioning if more flexible learning environments facilitate, encourage or allow the types of learning and teaching characteristics being sought by policy and educational specialists, and proponents of ‘21st century learning skills’.
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ItemStimulating curriculum and teaching innovations to support the mental wellbeing of university students(Australian Government Department of Education and Training, 2017)The aim of the project Stimulating Curriculum and Teaching Innovations was to build the capacity of university educators to develop policies, curriculum, and teaching and learning environments that enhance student mental wellbeing. The growing prevalence and severity of mental health difficulties across student populations in higher education is an issue of significant concern for universities. This project aimed to foster sector wide conversations, promote a whole-of-institution approach to promoting student mental wellbeing in universities and develop a suite of research-informed resources to help academic educators identify curriculum and teaching approaches that can promote and support students’ mental wellbeing.
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ItemLanguages Provision in Victorian Government Schools, 2016(Department of Education and Training Victoria, 2017)The following analysis reviews Languages education in Victorian government primary and secondary schools over the last seven years. It provides an overview of the current state of Languages and highlights the differing patterns in the study of Languages at the primary and secondary levels.
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Item2016 ATEM Tertiary Education Sector Workplace Survey: Results and Analysis(Association for Tertiary Education Management, 2017)In 2016 the Association for Tertiary Education Management (ATEM) celebrated its 40th anniversary. To mark this important milestone, ATEM ran a University Workplace Survey across the higher education sector in Australia and New Zealand. This survey was based upon the Times Higher Education (THE) University Workplace Survey 20161 in the UK. The aim of this endeavour was to gain a better understanding of the working conditions in the Australian and New Zealand tertiary education sector. This report represents the findings of the survey and is presented to the Tertiary Education Sector as a significant outcome of ATEM’s 40th anniversary activities. The survey asked respondents to state their level of agreement with statements about their views of their workplace, pay and conditions, politics and policy and workplace atmosphere. They were also asked to provide some socio-demographic information. Additional information about the methodology used by the survey can be found in the methodology section at the end of this report. The results from this research shows that the clear majority of professional staff found their work rewarding, even when clear concerns about workload and work-life balance was also evident. While other surveys of staff satisfaction at institutional levels may have similar findings in the Australian/New Zealand contexts2, there are some significant differences in responses from the ATEM Survey compared to the UK-based Times Higher Education University Workplace Survey 2016.
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Item“In the real world...”: Teachers’ perceptions of ILEs. ILETC phase 1 teacher workshops.(Innovative Learning Environments & Teacher Change (ILETC), 2017)Drawing on the principles and attributes of design thinking, a series of research-led workshops in Australia and New Zealand were developed to capture rich data of teachers’ lived experiences and their insights on teaching in innovative learning spaces, as revealed through reflective and speculative activities. The workshop format also provided a reciprocally useful experience for participants by structuring activities that provided insights into the experiences of others, enabled individual reflection and prompted further contemplation of problems and solutions through group discussion and rumination. This technical report presents findings of the teacher workshops. The data obtained as described in this report has allowed findings that are distinctive and inform the project with useful information. This technical report constitutes an evidence-based platform to inform subsequent phases of the ILETC project. The integration of the qualitative data from the workshops together with quantitative data from Phase 1 survey (see Imms, Mahat, Byers and Murphy, 2017) and scholarly literature (forthcoming) provide a strong knowledge base that responds to the project’s initial assumptions surrounding the use of innovative learning environments in Australia and New Zealand.