What are the benefits for my school community?

• Access to free and easy-to-deliver emotional health screening for students from Year 4 to Year 11, that will identify students who score high on symptoms of emotional distress and who may otherwise “slip through the cracks”
• Recommendations tailored to your school and community on local, evidence-based referral services, provided by expert researchers and clinicians
• Increased knowledge for your school mental health staff in methods of screening and identification of emotionally distressed youth
• Development of guides and templates for your school to use for ongoing screening and referral, if your school would like to continue screening after the study

Participation will involve the sharing of information, participation in screening, provision of feedback. Skills development will be provided, along with detailed findings and supports. More information can be found in the linked Information Sheet.

When will the study take place?

• Schools will be randomly allocated to either be screened in March 2021 or March 2022
• The research team will provide feedback about any students who showed up on the survey with symptoms of emotional distress as quickly as possible and you will then be responsible for providing that feedback to the student and/or their parent/guardian.

I’m interested – what are the next steps?

• To register your interest or for further information, please email the project coordinator, Dr Rebecca Kuhnert: rebecca.kuhnert@mq.edu.au

The Evidence Institute is proud to partner with the Gonski Institute for Education (UNSW) in their ground-breaking research project Growing Up Digital Australia.  This research project is designed to change the status quo and understand how the widespread use of technology is impacting Australian children. Growing Up Digital Australia builds on the research methodology that has been developed by Harvard Medical School and the University of Alberta. In this Australian study, we seek to answer questions around how digital technologies are being used, the benefits and distractions they pose to students and whether they are bridging the divide of equity, or widening it.

To find out more about this project visit the Growing Up Digital Australia website.

Associated websites

• Growing Up Digital Australia
  
  

Associated reports and infographics

Phase 1

• Infographics Summary Report
• Technical Report

Phase 2

• Infographics Summary Report
• Technical Report

The purpose of this research project is to explore teachers’ perspectives about the best ways to teach enterprise and entrepreneurial education in Australian schools, and to understand challenges and current practices.

You are invited to participate in this research project because you are an Australian teacher who may be teaching enterprise education or some aspects of enterprise education in the form of 21st Century skills or the Australian Curriculum’s General Capabilities.

What does participation involve?

Participation will involve completing a short online survey including Likert scale type questions (Not needed – Essential) and short responses that will take approximately 20 minutes of your time.

Questions will include:

a. In your personal view, what learning outcomes should we be focused on within enterprise education to give all Australian youth the best education possible:
- Growth Mindset (Not Needed <<<->>> Essential)
- Self-awareness & Reflection (Not Needed <<<->>> Essential)

b. What categories best describe your school (multiple answers possible)
- Early childhood
- Primary
- Secondary

c. What would you say are the main challenges for enterprise education in Australian schools?

Your participation in this research project is entirely voluntary. If you agree to participate you do not have to complete any question(s) you are uncomfortable answering. All comments and responses are anonymous i.e. it will not be possible to identify you at any stage of the research, because personal identifying information is not sought in any of the responses. 

This research will explore whether custom made mobile apps can improve their enjoyment of learning science and help students better understand scientific topics. This research is in partnership with an Australian education company – Arludo – created by Associate Professor Michael Kasumovic.

Arludo creates mobile apps that are gamified experiments – as students use the apps to explore scientific concepts, they are collecting scientific data that are automatically displayed as figures. This way, teachers can spend more time helping students understand data. We are exploring whether this improves students’ critical and analytical thinking. You can find more information here: arludo.mailchimpsites.com

The mobile apps are free to download and the 8-week program comes with digital worksheets containing videos and questions that students answer online. These worksheets scaffold student learning and assess their understanding using  Bloom’s Taxonomy. Teachers will be able to see student answers in the teacher dashboard to more easily assess understanding and performance.

Associated resources

• Using Mobile Apps to Engage Students in Learning Science - full information
• Sign up form

This project will explore how teachers and administrators across regional schools in NSW responded to family and student needs, rapid shifts to online learning environments, and social distancing mandates during a global pandemic. It will also consider how resources in regional areas were delegated, accessed, and used during the crisis, with a focus on administrator and teacher support.

Associated resources

• Principal Information and Informed Consent

What does participation involve?

The project has two parts:

• Teaching staff participation in an online anonymous Qualtrics survey.  The survey will take approximately 30 minutes to complete and will involve short answer and Likert responses. 
• Principal participation in a follow up virtual Skype or WebEx interview. This interview will be conducted by members of the research team.  You will be provided with the interview questions prior to the interview, but there may be follow-up questions during the interview.  The interview will take approximately 30 minutes.

The research team will share the results of the survey with you and your staff and will ask for you to approve your interview transcript prior to sharing results with a wider audience. 

Participation is completely voluntary and participants can withdraw at any time.  An information sheet is provided on the right side of this webpage with more details about data storage and the research process.

What happens next?

If you wish to participate, please contact Sally Lamping to confirm your participation. This will also provide an opportunity to clarify any final questions. As Principal, you will then be asked to read and sign the information and consent form (found on the right side of this page). Signing the consent indicates that you agree for your school to participate in the research project.

Once you have confirmed participation, the researchers will send the survey link to the school’s nominated administrative support specialist to distribute to teaching staff, along with an information sheet. 

The project aims to enhance the coding and computational thinking of year six and seven students. The project will link coding and computational thinking in the Digital Technologies Curriculum with Multimodal Authoring of Animations in the English Curriculum by creating animated micro-narratives using Scratch. The project has been operating in schools for one year and has Catholic Schools in Melbourne and Government Schools in Sydney participating.

The research team would like to invite at least one High School and Primary School in Sydney to participate in the project in 2022. The research team is looking for one year six class, along with their primary school teacher and one year seven class and their secondary English teacher and, if possible, the secondary Digital Technologies teacher of that class.

Participation in this research involves the teachers attending online Scratch coding tutorials, during term four in 2021, if possible. Support to teachers will be provided by a member of the research team. In term one of 2022, the research team will meet weekly to extend the teachers’ Scratch coding confidence and competence. The classroom program for teaching the students to code an animated micro-narrative will be developed by the school teachers with assistance from the research team, and delivered during term two and four in 2022.  

Please contact the researchers directly if you are interested in participating in this research.

This project is open for submissions until the end of the 2021 school year.

As teachers know, students can be creative in all subjects, but measuring creativity can be a challenge. Researchers at The University of South Australia have developed a measure of student creativity in adolescents. This ten-minute online survey uses self-report measures and creative tasks in verbal creativity, divergent thinking and maths creativity to examine student creativity. Schools will receive a report analysing their student responses. We can then discuss teaching strategies to build students’ creative capacities in a range of subjects.

For further information please contact Dr Tim Patston at UniSA Education Futures Tim.Patston@unisa.edu.au

Associated resources

• Summary of research findings

Guidelines for Collaboration

Ethics Considerations

Two key resources have been developed to assist researchers and schools in understanding ethics.