'How to Thrive' BEACON Wellbeing Program Measurement Project Lead: Associate Professor Aaron Jarden This project is to design and report on wellbeing program effectiveness on a development of the 'How to Thrive' Program to 150 Carers across the state of Victoria. The project will take measurement based on the BEACON wellbeing scale at the start, end and 1 month after the completion of the program. Client will collect and manage the data via their IT systems.
A Framework for building Relationships between Indigenous People and people and the University of Melbourne Project contact: Bernadette Murphy The project seeks to understand how the University of Melbourne understands Indigenous ‘participation’ as a matter of compliance and seeks then to shift this understanding to one of a relationship with Indigenous communities. The project seeks to ask how institutions form relationships. Further, and relatedly, can institutions reflect on their position within those relationships? The project frames and grounds this inquiry through an ethics of…
A framework for enhancing resilience in development settings Project contact: Prof. Helen Cahill ChildFund Australia commissioned the development of an evidence-informed framework to build the knowledge-base in their partner organisations about strategies to enhance the resilience of disadvantaged children and young people, the key target groups for ChildFund Projects in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region. A set of planning, implementation and evaluation resources were developed to assist country teams to use a resilience lens in project design…
Abilities Based Learning and Education Support Research (with the Victorian Department of Education and Training) Jayne Johnston The aim of the Abilities Based Learning and Education Support (ABLES) research is to inform the development of an integrated program of assessment, reporting, and teaching advice for children and young people whose learning is supported by the Victorian Department of Education and Training's (DET) Program for Students with Disabilities, or similar programs, and other students who have additional learning needs.The objectives of the research…
Affective encounters: Teaching and learning for schools and communities through museums and collections Project Lead: Dr Dianne Mulcahy
AFL Academy Wellbeing Project Project Lead: Dr Tan Chyuan Chin The Centre for Positive Psychology (now Centre for Wellbeing Science) was engaged by the AFL Academy (Elite Talent Pathway) for their plans to measure and improve players’ wellbeing through their programs. Talent Pathway has a priority for the wellbeing of the players. This project delivered the wellbeing measurement outputs using CPP’s Wellbeing Profiler, capturing results from approximately 90 players, across the 24 month project period.
An evidence-informed framework for enhancing wellbeing Project Leader: Prof. Helen Cahill Catholic Education Melbourne (CEM) commissioned a literature review of research informing school and system approaches to enhancing wellbeing. This review of the literature was used to inform recommendations to guide the development of the new CEM framework to guide school approaches to promoting student wellbeing. It also informed the development of a teacher-friendly discussion paper designed to introduce teachers to the evolving evidence around effective…
Assessing and Microcredentialing of Complex Competencies in the University of Melbourne Network of Schools Project Lead: Enterprise Professor Sandra Milligan The University of Melbourne’s Network of Schools (UMNOS), is working in partnership with experts in the Assessment Research Centre, to support the design and implementation of practical solutions to assessing and recognising complex competencies, including within their own schools.UMNOS members are representative of the school system, drawn from: government, independent and Catholic sectors; rural and metropolitan locations; and primary, secondary and P-12 categories.…
Assessment and Credentialing: A Practical Alternative to the ATAR with Big Picture Schools Project Lead: Jayne Johnston Big Picture Education Australia has a 15 year track record of implementing an innovative design for learning and schools in a range of urban, regional and remote settings around Australia. At the heart of the design is a departure from traditional ‘appointment learning’ where everyone learns the same things according to a fixed timetable inside the four walls of a school. Big Picture uses personalised,…
Assessment and Teaching of Foundational Skills for Diverse Learners: The Students with Additional Needs Program (for schools) Project Contact: Jayne Johnston This program of research commenced in 2007 at the Assessment Research Centre under the leadership of Professor Patrick Griffin, and since then has drawn on the collaborative work of many educators, researchers, and administrators who share a commitment to supporting every student's right to learn.To support all students as learners, we must first provide their teachers and schools with access to high quality, research-based advice,…
Assessment Curriculum and Technology Research Centre (ACTRC), a collaboration with the University of the Philippines Project Lead: Professor Field Rickards The Assessment Research Centre, together with the University of the Philippines, has established the Assessment Curriculum and Technology Research Centre (ACTRC) as a joint research centre based in Quezon City, Philippines. Supported by the Australian Government, the ACTRC advises and informs an ambitious reform of the Philippine system of education through innovative curriculum, assessment and technology research and implementation.The ACTRC plays an important transformative and…
Assessment for Graduate Teaching Consortium Project Lead: Professor Janet Clinton The Assessment for Graduate Teaching (AfGT) is an approved Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA) instrument developed and implemented by a consortium of Australian higher education providers that have Initial Teacher Education (ITE) faculties or schools. The AfGT is designed to capture the sophisticated intellectual work of teaching and enable pre-service teachers to demonstrate the various ways in which they can meet the Australian Professional Standards…
Attuning to affect in museum and school education: Embodied knowledge and its capacities and effects Project Lead: Dr Dianne Mulcahy
Beginning teachers’ developing clinical judgment: competencies, skills and attitudes Teresa Angelico This paper reports on a case study that tracked a group of beginning teachers who are undertaking an employment-based model of Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Combining academic study for a Masters level degree with part-time employment in secondary schools, this pathway combines intensive face-to-face study with substantial professional in-school experience. The focus of the study was the development of clinical judgement and the ways in…
Berry Street Alumni Project Project contact: A/PROF Helen Stokes Berry Street’s educational outreach is framed by its Berry Street Education Model (BSEM), which links the research fields of positive education and traumatology. This model recognises that significant numbers of students in mainstream settings have been affected by trauma, and are in need of educational approaches and pedagogies that address the complexities of their lives. Dissemination of the BSEM through intensive teacher-training and Professional Development…
Building a Bridge into Preschool in Remote Northern Territory Communities Dr Jane Page In collaboration with Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in the NT Department of Education (DoE), the study aims to increase the school readiness of young Indigenous children in two remote communities in the Territory. Using a validated early childhood program model -Abecedarian Approach Australia (3a) - with local cultural and educational practices, a cohort of 80 children aged between 12 months and 3 years…
Challenging the monolingual mindset – leveraging students’ out-of-classroom language practices for pedagogical innovation in the English-as-an-additional-language (EAL) classroom Project Contact: Dr Yvette Slaughter Conventional views of teaching English as an Additional Language (EAL) often frame languages as discrete systems that speakers switch between. However, state-of-the-art theories of bilingualism have begun to challenge this assumption, arguing that the language practices of bilinguals are drawn from a single linguistic repertoire (e.g., Garcìa & Wei, 2014; Lewis, Jones & Baker, 2010), and that enabling access to the full breadth…
Child Wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic Project Lead: Dr Penny Levickis Child wellbeing and mental health was identified as a research and practice priority by the REEaCh Hub’s Research Network of Early Childhood (EC) Professionals in 2020. The REEaCh Hub are conducting an online survey with members of the Research Network to understand more about EC professionals’ thoughts and experiences in relation to the social and emotional health of children in early childhood settings. This information…
Chinese Teacher Training Centre Materials and Resources Dr Yvette Slaughter The Chinese Teacher Training Centre (CTTC) was established in 2009 as a national resource by the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development in partnership with China’s National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (Hanban) in the wake of the Australian Federal Government’s announcement of the National Asian Languages and Studies in Schools Program (NALSSP) and recommendations for such a centre in…
Competency Based Assessment Reform in the Republic of Vietnam Project Lead: Dr Cuc Nguyen The Assessment Research Centre has a long and successful partnership, working with the Vietnamese Ministry of Education in Hanoi on a series of large scale reform initiatives. For almost two decades, the Centre has collaborated with Vietnamese counterparts to strengthen the capabilities of educators and researchers in transformative education projects.Largely focussed on building capacity in the development, and subsequent measurement, of standards and achievement, recent…
Competency Based Education Professional Development for Teachers of Primary and Secondary Education (for the Vietnamese Ministry of Education) Dr Cuc Nguyen The Assessment Research Centre (ARC) were contracted to provide professional development workshops for teachers of Primary and Secondary Education in Competency Based Education. ARC held two separate workshops on ‘Understanding CBE’ and ‘Assessing CBE’.The workshops introduced a competency-based approach to teaching/learning and assessment to improve Vietnam’s educational outcomes and to equip the future generation of students with the competencies needed to prosper. This project will…
Comprehensive Sexuality Education and Gender: Mapping of Resource Materials on CSE and Gender Project contact: Prof. Helen Cahill This project included development of evidence informed criteria for mapping and reviewing teaching resources available to assist education systems in the Asia-Pacific region to provide comprehensive sexuality education, and to address the challenges of gender equality, and prevention of gender-based violence. The associated report and recommendations was presented in the context of a three-day regional consultation with Ministry of Education delegates from 12 countries in…
Creating Connections Project contact: Prof. Helen Cahill Creating Connections is a life skills program targeted at adolescents and parents of adolescents.It aims to teach adolescents about sexual and reproductive health and gender rights, and promotes social and emotional skills that can help adolescents to make informed decisions, communicate effectively, look after their own safety and wellbeing, and provide support to peers.It also includes a focus on:violence preventiondrug and alcohol safetyresiliencemental healthpositive copinghelp-seeking.Creating…
Creating Meaningful, Participatory English Language Teaching Pedagogies for Refugee Women and Their Children Dr Julie Choi While government funded adult ESL programs typically, and understandably, approach language and literacy education using functionalist notions of literacy often for employment purposes, such narrowly focused approaches are inappropriate for a majority of refugee women who have very low level language and literacy skills both in English and their native languages. Due to their visa status, living conditions, lack of resources, and other life circumstances,…
Creative Problem Solving (for North Shore Coaching College) Project contact: Dr Zhonghua Zhang This project is undertaken in collaboration with the North Shore Coaching College. A yearly competition is held to test the creative problem-solving skills of students in years 3 to 8 across Australia. Testing is carried out in late October each year and awards are presented to top students in early November. Online testing as well as paper and pencil testing are carried out. Test items…
Creativity, Risk, and Content & Language Integrated Learning A/PROF Russell Cross Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) focuses on the simultaneous teaching of new content and new language, and is now well established as an effective means to not only develop an additional language, but also for its positive contribution to academic achievement and higher order thinking, mother tongue language and literacy, and the development of intercultural competence. Yet teaching content in “a language that students…
Cultivating wellbeing by empowering families: Establishing evidence for and impact of the Now and Next Program Project Lead: Associate Professor Peggy Kern Current policies and programs for disability care often rely on reactive, treatment-based, expert-provided services. Additional benefit may arise from proactive approaches that place parents at the centre of care.The ‘Now and Next’ project is an evidenced-informed program that fosters empowerment, agency, and wellbeing for the family as a whole. Results to date suggest that parent capacity building can successfully be delivered early in a family’s…
Curriculum Policies project Research Assistant: Kate O’Connor In Australia, much of the analysis of curriculum policy has been concerned with particular reports, or with commonwealth developments, or with particular subject areas or the agendas of a single state. This project aims to build a foundation picture of what has been happening across states over the past thirty years: in changes and continuities within as well as between the different states. It is…
Customised Program for Curriculum Leaders from Singapore (for the Ministry of Education, Singapore) Dr Jane Strickland The Ministry of Education, Singapore contacted the Assessment Research Centre, Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne to provide a customised program, known as ‘Overseas Immersion Program for Curriculum Leaders’ focusing on formative assessment.The objectives of the program are to:strengthen school-based assessment practices by focusing on leadership in formative assessment.deepen participants’ knowledge on formative assessment, particularly in the area of using feedback…