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The purpose of this paper is to explore how one tertiary enabling programme designed for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students uses a specifically designed pedagogy which goes beyond a focus on discrete academic skills to help students develop the resilience and knowledge about learning they need to be successful in tertiary learning contexts.

A narrative methodology is used to explore how graduates analysed and evaluated their experience of the course.

The stories show that for these students, resilience is a dynamic and multifaceted construct. Strength, confidence and resilience for these students come from seeing and valuing the strength and resilience that already exists in Indigenous people and Indigenous knowledge systems and using this as a basis for developing their own resilience.

This focus on resilience can provide a transformative experience for students who have largely been marginalised from the mainstream educational system, assisting them to build the crucial “cultural capital” required to be successful in their tertiary studies, while reinforcing the strength and knowledge they already bring with them. Through this process students are offered a way of navigating the higher education landscape on their own terms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the progress of the curriculum reform in Hong Kong in the implementation phase from 2001‐2006, with the agreement and support of heads and teachers on the reform.

Survey questionnaires and focus group interviews were used to collect data from various stakeholders. A stratified random sampling method was employed to select 150 primary schools and 120 secondary schools to participate in the study.

It is found that with the agreement and support of school heads and teachers, there is good progress in the reform items on teaching and learning. Findings of this paper also suggest that teachers who agreed with the reform items made changes with their practices in terms of learning and teaching strategies, catering to learner diversity, assessment for learning, developing students' language proficiency, cross‐curricula learning, playing multiple teachers' roles and preparation for the new senior secondary curriculum. This study thus supports most findings from the change literature with its empirical data that educational changes and innovations with the agreement and support of school heads and teachers tend to have a greater chance of succeeding.

The paper contributes by examining to what extent findings and views established in change literature elsewhere can be justified and enriched with the case of Hong Kong.

Territory-wide system assessment (TSA) was launched and administered by Hong Kong (HK) Education Bureau (EDB) since 2004. Since then, parents and teachers have been questioning its need, value, uselessness, effectiveness, harm for schools, teachers and students. In 2015, the issue blew up with Kau Yan School’s principal boycotting the tests. A series of discussions in the public and media and different surveys were then carried out widely in HK. After review, EDB announced in 2017 that the revised version of TSA be extended to Primary 3 students in HK. The purpose of this paper is to propose that TSAs for Primary 3, Primary 6 and Secondary 3 need a further review to judge their need and uselessness.

This paper reviews the educational policy governing the administration of the TSA. Primary and secondary data from focus group meetings, press interviews (Bogdan and Biklen, 1982; Miles and Huberman, 1994; Ouiment et al., 2001) and public reports would be analyzed. Besides, participant observation (Nosich, 1982; Sou, 2000; Sou and Zhou, 2007) and theoretical reasoning (Nosich, 1982; Sou, 2000; Sou and Zhou, 2007) have been applied for the critical review of this controversial test. The contrast study on the conflicting views of stakeholders in the education industry would bring up some insights of this controversial educational policy in Assessment for Learning.

Conflicting and contrasting perceptions from TSA to basic competency assessment (BCA) among stakeholders of education and government include governmental stakeholder – EDB’s awareness; EDB stressed that TSA is a low-stakes assessment which does not need extra practice for students; non-governmental stakeholders including legislative councilors’ perception, school principals’ perception, teachers’ perception, parents’ perception and students’ perception. Facing the opposition and grievances of different stakeholders, EDB announced in January 2017 that the revised version of TSA: BCA, be extended to HK in May 2017. Parents and legislative councilors were angry and they ask for a review or even cancellation for Primary 3 TSA.

This original study will initiate more thorough revisions and discussions for the TSAs for Primary 3, Primary 6 and Secondary 3 in HK, as a quality educational management step. While TSA for Primary 3 has been reviewed and substantially “revised,” the community at large still asks for further revision for its needs, uselessness and harm for parents, teachers and students. Since the underlying causes of students’ suicides are not fully identified, the problem of over-drilling practices for TSAs for Primary 3, Primary 6 and Secondary 3 needs to be satisfactorily resolved. Thus, TSAs for Primary 6 and Secondary 3, like that for Primary 3, should be reviewed for probable revision.

Building information modelling (BIM) is an innovative, collaborative process underpinned by digital technologies introduced to improve project performance in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC). Growth in industry demands has necessitated BIM inclusion into the higher education (HE) curricula as both a pedagogic and practical objective to prepare and develop aspiring built environment (BE) professionals with the required competence for contemporary practice. However, comprehension of BIM concepts and subsequent development of the skill set required for its application remains overwhelming for students. In mitigating this challenge, adopting appropriate learner-centred strategies has been advocated. Problem-based learning (PBL) is becoming a widespread strategy to address concerns associated with authentic practices.

This paper evaluates the impact of the PBL strategy on students' accelerated learning of BIM based on a case study of 53 undergraduate students in a BIM module. The network analysis and centrality measures were employed in understudying the most applicable BIM skills.

From the analyses, PBL benefits students' knowledge acquisition (cognitive and affective) of BIM concept and development of transferable skills (academic and disciplinary), equipping them with capabilities to become BIM competent and workplace ready for the AEC industry.

The BIM pedagogy evolves, and new skillsets emerge. Analytical, communications and collaboration skills remain sacrosanct to delivering BIM modules. These skills mentioned above are essential in getting undergraduate students ready to apply BIM in the AEC sector.

This article aims to examine the manifestation of coloniality within social studies curricula and explore strategies for rejecting colonial paradigms through teaching praxis. The author presents a curriculum that unveils the narratives of Linnentown, a local Black community, to examine the impacts of colonial legacies on people's everyday lives.

Using the teaching and learning cycle framework, the author demonstrates the integration of sequenced embodied and multimodal activities. Furthermore, the author utilizes the concept of critical place-based education (CPBE) to demonstrate how critical pedagogies within the context of place can cultivate transformative learning experiences.

By guiding students to critically analyze the sociopolitical conditions of Linnentown residents, CPBE, paired with multimodal activities, helps challenge dominant narratives and empowers students to become agents of change in their local communities.

This curriculum fosters a nuanced understanding of structural oppression, empowers students to develop critical awareness and social agency and guides youth in confronting settler colonialism within and beyond their communities.

The purpose of this paper is to share information on the management of open distance libraries with special reference to technology applications. It seeks to provide information on the changing roles of academic libraries with specific reference to the requirements of open and distance learning (ODL). It aims to focus on the practical management experience of the University of South Africa (UNISA) library in support of the implementation of a new ODL model (optimizing available technology) at the University.

A review of the relevant literature was conducted to provide an overview on the topic and a context for the information gathered on the UNISA Library. Information gathered from the planning, policies and procedures of UNISA in general and the UNISA library in particular as well as experience gained by participating in workshops on ODL at UNISA was included in the paper.

The findings indicate that research and literature on leadership in distance education in general are limited and this is even more true for open and distance libraries. It is, however, evident from experience and the required standards for distance library services, that structured management and planning of these services are important to ensure success and future developments of the services. Furthermore, leaders in open distance libraries also need a variety of skills that are constantly updated to ensure optimization of resources, for suitable strategic planning, policy formulation and suitable in terms of new technology developments.

In addition to the literature survey and analysis the information gathered for the article is original in that it captures the experience gained from management of an ODL library. Although focused on open distance learning, the information is also of value to residential institutions, as the border between online services and open distance services is becoming blurred.

In Australia, political imperatives that drive the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) and Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL) call for a new understanding of assessment at the tertiary level. Assessment strategies are under the microscope to provide accountability but are increasingly called to measure a wider set of attributes considered important in equipping graduates to meet 21st century opportunities and challenges. This paper reports on a shared benchmarking exercise between two universities to ensure the current assessment strategies in their undergraduate early childhood programs meet such requirements.

Data were collected using qualitative methodology and conceptualised using an interpretivist frame that enabled the collaborative groups to socially construct the meaning of assessment and identify what was specific, unique and different across the two programs. A cross-case analysis enabled a robust examination of the data.

Findings identified key structural and procedural differences between the two benchmarked university programs in terms of cohort size, university policies around assessment points, the use of exams and the choices surrounding professional experience placements.

Implications of the research note the complexity of contextual factors such as university policies on assessment and the impact these have on the quality of assessment.

This paper is unique in that it used the conceptual framework for self-evaluation from TEQSA and followed their six key phases of benchmarking.

Professional development schools (PDSs) are a specific type of school–university partnership designed to support teacher preparation, professional development, inquiry and research, and student learning. Active teacher engagement in PDS work over the past three decades has led to the emergence of teacher leader practice and development as a serendipitous outcome of PDS partnerships. Emphasizing teacher leadership throughout, this chapter provides an overview of PDSs, including a definition and core purposes, benefits of continuous learning for all PDS stakeholders, and the complexities of PDS work before offering a brief history of PDS in the United States.

This study aims to seek to demonstrate how explicit teaching of SFL metalinguistic and multimodal “grammars” enhanced 8-9-year-old children’s deeper understanding and production of multimodal texts through critique of the construction of mini-documentaries about animals: the information, language of narration, composition of scenes and resources to engage the viewer. It also seeks to demonstrate how a knowledge of metalinguistic and multimodal “grammars” contributes to students achieving both content knowledge and understanding of the resources of semiotic modes.

A design-based approach was used with the teacher and author working closely together to implement a unit of work on mini-documentaries, including explicit teaching of the metalanguage of information reports, mini-documentary narration (aka script) and multimodal resources deployed to scaffold students’ creating their own mini-documentaries.

The students’ mini-documentaries demonstrate how knowledge of SFL written and multimodal SFL-informed “grammars” assisted students to learn how meaning was created through selection of resources from the written, visual, sound and gestural modes and apply this knowledge to creating multimodal texts demonstrating their understandings of the topic and how to make meaning in a multimodal mini-documentary.

The research is limited to the outcomes from one group of students in one class. Generalisation to other contexts is not possible. Further studies are required to support the results from this research.

The linguistic and multimodal SFL-informed grammars can be applied by educators to critique multimodal texts in a range of mediums and scaffold students’ production of multimodal texts. They can also inform assessment criteria and expand students’ conception of what is literate practice.

Knowledge of a linguistic and multimodal metalanguage can provide students with the tools to enhance their critical language awareness and critical multimodal awareness.

This paper aims to analyze how middle schoolers developed a critical awareness of language while participating in a curricular unit informed by systemic functional linguistics (SFL). This unit was developed to understanding and taking action to protect a local bat population in the context of school reforms shaping teaching and learning in the USA. It was designed to support a heterogeneous class of seventh graders in learning to read scientific explanations, write letters to government officials and develop a functional metalanguage to support them in analyzing how language simultaneously constructs ideas, enacts power dynamics and manages the flow of information in disciplinary texts. The questions guiding this study are: How do students use SFL metalanguage in text production and interpretation practices? Do their uses of SFL metalanguage support critical language awareness and reflection? And, if so, in what ways?

This study uses ethnographic methods to conduct teacher action research. Data include classroom transcripts, student writing samples and interviews.

The findings illustrate how students engaged with SFL, often playfully, to create their own student-generated functional metalanguage in highly productive ways.

This study contributes to a growing body of scholarship that suggests SFL metalanguage can provide teachers and students with a powerful semiotic toolkit that enables them to navigate the demands of teaching and learning in the context of the Standardization and Accountability movement.

This study has implications teachers’ professional development and students’ disciplinary literacy development in the context of school reform.

To date, few studies have explored how students take up and transform SFL metalanguage into a tool for critical reflection, especially adolescents.