With a little over three months to go, Year 12 students have their sights set on the last major hurdle that will see them complete their final year of school — exams. What a year it has been for them. All students have experienced disruption, some for many weeks with learning at home rolled out […] … learn more→
Monthly Archives: August 2020

‘It really sucks’: how some Year 12 students in Queensland feel about 2020

IO Scout vs AMZ Scout comparison
If you’re looking to increase your profits from Amazon sales, you’ve probably seen various tools that promise to help you achieve your goal. These tools do the research for you and extract data that enables you to maximize your potential. The question remains, which one can rise to the challenge? We will compare paid and […] … learn more→

Big-book theses are failing PhD students
The traditional big-book thesis emerged in Germany more than a hundred years ago, in a cultural and temporal context in which such feats of scholarship were particularly highly valued. Yet it has been adopted fairly inflexibly across the world, with little attention paid to how it relates to the needs and interests of students – […] … learn more→

Running a tweetchat
During this difficult pandemic period, Anuja Cabraal and I have been hosting a weekly tweetchat on the #VirtuaNotViral hashtag. Now, a “twitter chat” is not a new thing and we are not the only people doing them. However, we’ve got interested in them as a particular type of social media interaction, and I’m using this post to […] … learn more→

Guides on parenting: an endless race for well-being?
One can have the impression by looking at the shelves of bookstores that the guides intended for parents are multiplying. This phenomenon is not, however, new. It was after the war that counseling for parents became a real market. The domain experts form a long chain, more or less inscribed in the academic world, going in the United […] … learn more→

PhD students can benefit from non-academic mentors’ outside perspectives
A mentor is a professional who acclimates a protégé into a profession. In the Bottegas of Renaissance Florence, upstart Leonardo Da Vinci pulverized Tuscan stone and collected eggs to make tempera for mentor Andrea del Verrocchio, who might allow Da Vinci to assist Michelangelo with his paintings. Although this model was adopted by the research laboratories of the Enlightenment […] … learn more→

Switching to defined contributions is the only show left in town for the USS
Shortly before many UK university staff packed up for summer after what, no doubt, had been a very stressful term, they might have read the chief executive of the Universities Superannuation Scheme’s account of how Covid-19 has ravaged one of the country’s few remaining defined benefit pension schemes. No doubt many were already concerned about […] … learn more→

A 3-decade ‘moving picture’ of young Australians’ study, work and life, thanks to LSAY
The Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth (LSAY) unpack the lives of young Australians as they leave school, enter further study or the workforce and make the transition into adulthood. The latest findings are now available for the group of young people who completed their first questionnaire back in 2009 at age 15. This group’s 11th and […] … learn more→

A-level results: confusion is the result of months of inertia and years of policy
Thirty-six hours before the release of A-level results in England on August 13, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson announced a new procedure to review the grades. This followed five months of work by teachers and exam regulators to produce results which were sent to universities last week to filter applications. A head teachers’ representative said the latest measure […] … learn more→

Almost half of US teens who date experience stalking and harassment
Falling in love for the first time can be a thrill, and teen dating is important to adolescent development. But according to the results of a study that my research team recently conducted, these early forays into romance often veer into unhealthy territory. As many as 48% of 12- to 18-year-olds who describe themselves as having had […] … learn more→