Collective ed.’s core aim was to enhance completion of Year 12 in targeted schools, with flow-on learning for Tasmanian education more broadly. The Beacon Foundation commissioned the Peter Underwood Centre to undertake an independent evaluation to assess to what extent and how Collective ed. contributed to benefits for students.
Hellyer Regional Collective is a multi-campus learning space that provides a range of educational opportunities for students to complete Year 12. Learning locations across the Collective include:
- Hellyer College,
- Burnie, Parklands, Smithton and Wynyard High Schools
- King Island, Mountain Heights, Penguin, Rosebery and Yolla District Schools
The Collective works together to offer a broad range of courses and subjects for everyone, and opportunities to:
- continue tertiary studies
- undertake an apprenticeship or traineeship
- seek a career in service, tourism or retail industries
Learning is personalised to reflect the needs, strengths and goals of students in the North West region.
Learning through COVID-19 was a cross-institutional project funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation and led by the University of Queensland Institute for Social Science Research. The project used COVID-19 school closures as an opportunity to investigate how to maximise educational outcomes for Australian children and young people experiencing disadvantage prior to the pandemic, or at risk of experiencing disadvantage as a result of the pandemic. The Peter Underwood Centre investigated the effects of COVID-19 school closures on education by asking Tasmanian children and young people, and their families, as well as government departments and peak bodies, their experiences of learning or providing educational services, before, during, and after the pandemic.
- Connection, connectivity and choice: Learning during COVID-19 restrictions across mainstream schools and Flexible Learning Programmes in Australia
- Uneven impacts of COVID-19 on the attendance rates of secondary school students from different socioeconomic backgrounds in Australia: A quasi-experimental analysis of administrative data
Catholic Education Tasmania (CET) has several initiatives to support school success for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in Catholic schools across Tasmania. The research found deep commitment of CET staff to supporting the learning and well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students as well as significant diversity in specific views about what good practice looked like and actions taken.
Working it Out has been engaged by the Department of Education to provide training to equip school staff with the skills and knowledge to provide a safe and inclusive school community for all students. The project worked collaboratively to develop and establish protocols and templates for data gathering, analysis and reporting that allow reasoned judgments about its impact informed by results-based accountability (how much, how well and what impact).
The Packages of Learning are an integrated approach to teaching subjects, including English, Maths, Science, History or Geography, Technologies and Work Studies, with an industry focus. The Tasmanian Department of Education engaged the Peter Underwood Centre to conduct an independent evaluation of the Packages of Learning when it was it was being piloted in 2019.
Children and young people within the criminal justice system, especially those who have been sentenced or remanded into custody, face particular challenges in relation to accessing education. The research examined how young people leaving custody in Victoria’s youth justice system can be supported to successfully re-connect with education, focusing in particular on coordination and collaboration.
Through this initiative we collected examples of when, where, how or what learners love to learn.
10 schools and CFCs were selected to take part in the initiative.
The initiative was in association with a collaborative project focused on Engagement in Learning.
The Department of Education selected drawings to include in materials for the celebration of the 150th Anniversary of public education in Tasmania. The Peter Underwood Centre examined all drawings to find out about what engages children and students with learning.
The Tasmanian Department of Education undertook a two-year project to identify and enhance successes and opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian School-based Apprentices, and address barriers. The Department of Education engaged the Peter Underwood Centre to support the project through an independent evaluation.
In 2016 the Tasmanian Government announced a suite of initiatives to support literacy and numeracy.
In this context, the Peter Underwood Centre was commissioned to undertake a 'Review of Literacy Teaching, Training, and Practice in Government Schools'. The review uses the nationally-agreed definition provided by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), which includes comprehending and composing written, oral, and visual texts.
The review identified current literacy practices used in schools and in pre-service teacher education in Tasmania. Findings have informed the development of the 2019-2022 Department of Education Literacy Framework and Action Plan.
- Teaching literacy: Review of literature - Phase 1 Report (PDF 896.5 KB)
- Initial teacher education for teaching literacy: Review of literature - Phase 1b Report (PDF 749.4 KB)
- Literacy Teaching Practice in Tasmanian Schools: Stakeholder Report - Phase 2 (PDF 1.5 MB)
- Initial teacher education for teaching literacy - Phase 3 Report (PDF 1.4 MB)
- Literacy Teaching in Tasmania: Teaching Practice and Teacher Learning - Final Report (PDF 3.2 MB)
The Big Picture Education model aims to support students, many of whom have been previously disengaged at school, with a personalised curriculum and real-world workplace experiences based on individual interests. The Peter Underwood Centre undertook an evaluation of the Launceston Big Picture School with a focus on the implementation of distinguishing characteristics of the Big Picture Education model and on outcomes for students.
Education in youth detention is commonly identified as a significant part of the solution to the problem of how young people involved in the criminal youth justice system can successfully re-join society. The research findings outline enablers and constraints to educational connection and achievement for young people within the Victorian custodial youth justice context.
The project’s principal goal was to lift Tasmanian educational retention and attainment by improving the quantity and quality of parental and community engagement in primary and high schools. The project delivered capacity building workshops for school leaders, community and families designed to facilitate school-parent-community partnerships which increase parental and community engagement schools. The workshops supplemented mentoring of school-parent-community engagement planning groups as the groups, which consisted of school leaders, parents and community members, refined, implemented and evaluated their strategies.
The Parents Matter project aimed to address the gap between parental aspirations for their children and parental knowledge about Tasmanian industries of the future (food, tourism, advanced manufacturing, health), education pathways to those careers, and to better understand and support their children’s career and education aspirations.
The primary purpose of Flexi schools in Australia is to serve students for whom traditional school has not been a good fit and are largely comprised of students who have disengaged and disconnected from traditional education. By surveying school principals in Tasmania, Australia, this study finds that some of the documented characteristics usually associated with being a teacher are particularly valued and required in reengagement program staff.
This project used the lens of constructive alignment to design, implement, and evaluate innovative learning programs. The general questions of the research were related to how constructive alignment—the gearing of teaching and assessment methods towards the outcomes learners are expected to attain―influences learners' activity and self-regulation, and how it affects outcomes such as achievement, motivation, engagement, and satisfaction with learning. The research involved a collaboration with colleagues from Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany, where participants rated the constructive alignment of the course, their learning motivation, and the mental workload using the CALEQ survey developed. Regression analyses showed that increased clarity of the intended learning outcomes of the course and receiving effective feedback were associated with a significant increase in the adoption of deep of learning approaches.
STEAM education continues to build momentum across Australia, with education stakeholders making space for the contribution that expanded and non-hierarchical disciplinary perspectives are bringing to education at all levels. This project explored the lived experiences of teacher professional learning collaborators in designing and delivering a multi-site, live streamed STEAM professional learning event. The authorship teams’ individual and shared experiences of contributing to teacher professional learning that holds space for broad and deep disciplinary agendas to emerge are elicited. From this, implications of working with and from ways of being, doing and knowing inherent to individual disciplines are considered in relation to their wider disciplinary synergies. In mapping the synergies inherent to the authorship teams’ experience of contributing to this event, this article illustrates how storying disciplinary perspectives can elicit meaningful thresholds for connection, convergence and collaboration.