New publications

The report of the Senate Select Committee on School Funding. The full report is available online. See also opinion article 7 September 2014 in The Conversation.

This report released by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) 'reveals Australian 15-year-olds are more likely to persevere with challenging problems than some of their peers in high-performing countries. Conducted in 2012 as part of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the supplementary PISA problem-solving assessment measured 15-year-olds’ general reasoning skills, and their willingness and ability to regulate problem-solving processes. A total of 85 000 students from 44 countries and economies participated in the assessment, including approximately 14,500 Australian students from 775 schools'. From ACER media statement 24 September 2014. See also article in The Age 24 September 2014.

'Ian Dobson analyses the official Commonwealth Government statistics on university staff in science over the period from 2002 to 2012. Remarkably it finds that while student load in the sciences grew by 46 per cent during this period, full-time & fractional full-time time teaching staff grew by only 10 per cent. These ‘science’ figures are those for the Natural and Physical Sciences field of education (N&PS). By contrast, across all fields of education student load increased by only 37 per cent during the same period while teaching staff grew by 22 per cent.' From Executive overview, part of the full report available online.

'A social history of school education in Australia, from dame schools and one teacher classrooms in the bush, to the growth of private schools under public funding in recent years.' From publisher's description. See also review 22 September 2014 on the Stumbling Through the Past blog.

The authors 'have created a meeting-planning “checklist” to develop a common language for discussing and improving the quality of meetings. In addition, they provide guidelines for readers on “wise facilitating” and “wise participating,” and also include “top tips” and common dilemmas... Meeting Wise is designed to be read and applied at every level of the educational enterprise: district leadership meetings with central office staff, charter-school management summits, principals’ meetings with teachers, professional development sessions, teacher-team meetings, and even teachers’ meetings with parents and students'. From publisher's description. See also Harvard Graduate School of Education review.

'The Blended Synchronous Learning Handbook is the primary output of the Blended Synchronous Learning Project. It includes the summative findings of the Blended Synchronous Learning case studies, a Blended Synchronous Learning Design Framework, and a range of other resources and information to support blended synchronous learning design research and practice'. From publisher's description, linked to the full handbook online.