|
2017 11 December
ET News Digest
Your Weekly Education Newsletter
 Are zealots good for schools? Dennis Sleigh I suspect that most people appreciate enthusiasm but it is a short distance between enthusiasm and fanaticism – and once that line is crossed, we have real problems. Today, when so many people – professionals, parents, pressure groups and politicians – seem anxious to reform schooling, it is easy to find enthusiasts, and it is inevitable that some of these are borderline fanatics. Read More  World leader in education policy, Pasi Sahlberg, joins UNSW and Gonski Institute for Education World-renowned Finnish educator Dr Pasi Sahlberg has been appointed a Professor of Education at UNSW Sydney and will work with the University’s new interdisciplinary institute focussing on educational access and excellence, the Gonski Institute for Education. Read More UniSA research to identify how schools foster refugee student resilience Often refugees don’t arrive with much but what they do have in spades is resilience; that will form the centerpiece of a Uni SA initiative designed to play to refugee children’s strengths. Lead researcher Emeritus Professor Bruce Johnson says the approach the project will take is a big departure from the usual models of research in the refugee space, which have tended to focus on individual problems and a notion of 'fixing' refugee children. Read More  Beating the summertime veg Apparently, the long summer school holiday has its roots in a time when kids were expected to help with the summer planting on the family farm, those days are long gone, now the six-week break is mostly opportunity for a lengthy period of mental fallow. A lot of research has been conducted in the area, indicating that summer learning loss is real and has marked implications for the student; over the holiday period students can regress by 2.6 months Read More   Kids and literacy, get them started young So how do you improve literacy in kids? Have them attend schools where a greater number of kids are literate when they start school. According to the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) students who attended schools where less than 25% of their peers have literacy skills when they start school achieved significantly lower, on average, than students who attend schools where greater proportions of their peers begin formal schooling equipped with literacy skills.  Arts degree a guarantee for future employment There’s a lot of uncertainty about what work will look like in the future but one thing is for sure; employers will be looking for flexible, agile thinkers... which is leading to a new regard for degrees like arts. With the digital disruption sweeping through workplaces globally, employers are turning their attention to the new wave of Gen-Z school-leavers who, thought-leaders and policy-makers argue, need to possess more generalist or transferrable skills. Read More  Mental health on the minds of young Australians Mission Australia’s annual youth survey, now sixteen years old, provides one of the better pictures of what young Australians are thinking and concerned about. A total of 24,055 young people aged 15–19 years responded to the survey and the biggest concern identified was mental health. But encouragingly most young people of both sexes felt happy about their lives and were optimistic about the future.  Inspirational teachers’ day made better Ten extraordinary primary and secondary school teachers have received a nice surprise with their students, colleagues and community anointing them as the winners of the 2017 A Day Made Better Teaching Awards. Presented by OfficeMax, the awards recognise primary and secondary school teachers who go above and beyond for their students, received an overwhelming 50,000 nominations. 
|
|