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The study set to investigate the Finnish matriculation examination with a focus on the social studies. The goal was to examine how well the subject-specific exams of the examination measure students’ attainment in the courses of the respective subject across upper secondary studies.The data was drawn form a longitudinal study of 6,172 Southern-Finland upper secondary students in 62 schools who passed their matriculation examination in spring 2017. Data on course choices and attainment was received from school and matriculation examination results from the Finnish Matriculation Examination Board.Key finding of the study is the unanimity between the two assessments: students’ grades in the subject-specific exams of the matriculation examination correlated strongly with their respective grades across the courses during their three years of upper secondary studies.The findings give strong support for the matriculation examination as an exit exam and for its use in student admission to higher education.Corresponding author:Najat Ouakrim-Soivio, Mannerheiminkatu 2, 06100 Porvoo, Finland. najat@arviointi.fi: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9139-4145Suggested citation:Kantasalmi, K., & Kupiainen, S. (2021). Classes with selective intake in Finnish Comprehensive School: A Problem of Societally Equal Opportunity for Schooling or a Boost for Learning and Equity in Pedagogical arrangements? International Journal of Educational Research, 109, 101857.Kupiainen, S. & Hotulainen, R. (2017). Metropolialueen nuoret toisen asteen opiskelijoina: osaamisen ja oppimisasenteiden kehitys yläkoulun alusta lukion ja ammatillisten opintojen toisen opiskeluvuoden kevääseen. [The metropolitan youth as upper secondary students: The development of learning and learning attitudes from the beginning of lower secondary studies to the second year of general or vocational upper secondary studies]. In A. Toom, M. Rautiainen & J. Tähtinen (Eds.) Toiveet ja todellisuus – Kasvatus osallisuutta ja oppimista rakentamassa.Kupiainen, S., Marjanen, J., & Hautamäki, J. (2016). The problem posed by exam choice on the comparability of results in the Finnish matriculation examination Journal for Educational Research Online, 8(2), 87. Retrived 15.10.2022 at https://www.waxmann.com/index.php?eID=download&id_artikel=ART102868&uid=freiKupiainen, S., Marjanen, J. & Ouakrim-Soivio, N. (2018). Ylioppilas valintojen pyörteessä. [The matriculate in the whirlwind of choices]. Suomen ainedidaktisen tutkimusseuran julkaisuja. Ainedidaktisia tutkimuksia 14. Retrived 15.10.2022 at https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/231687Ouakrim-Soivio, N., Kupiainen, S., & Marjanen, J. (2017). Toimivatko oppilas- ja opiskelija-arvioinnin kriteerit? Oppiaineiden välinen ja sukupuolen mukainen vaihtelu perusopetuksen ja lukion päättöarvosanoissa ja arvosanojen yhteys nuorten oppiainevalintoihin. [How do the criteria for student assessment work? Subject and gender-based variation in students’ final grades and their relation to students’ subject choices]. In V. Britschgi, & J. RautopuroRantala, J. & Ouakrim-Soivio, N. (2020). Why does changing the orientation of History teachingtake so long? A case study from Finland. In, Berg, C. & Christou, T. (Eds.) The Palgravehandbook of History and Social Studies education. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 471–494.Kupiainen, S. & Ouakrim-Soivio, N. (2019). Do centralised upper secondary school exit examinations offer added value? Presentation on NOFA7-konference13.–15.5.2019. Retrieved 15.10.2022 at https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1347552/FULLTEXT01.pdfDeclaration of conflicts of interests:No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

The transition to secondary school may negatively impact adolescents’ psychosocial and subjective well-being development. However, how subjective well-being develops during secondary school and how school contextual factors, including aspects of ability grouping and achievement composition, are associated with the development of subjective well-being still require clarification. This study examined two measures of subjective well-being, life satisfaction and school satisfaction, to investigate the development of subjective well-being during secondary school. Moreover, school context variations in the form of school tracks and school-level achievement were analyzed to examine the extent to which ability grouping and achievement composition were associated with the development of subjective well-being. A large-scale longitudinal German dataset with four measurement points from grades 6 to 10 was analyzed (Time 1: N = 1,841; Mage = 12.20, SD = 0.81; 48.4% female; 45.3% immigrant students). The latent growth model revealed that life satisfaction and school satisfaction decreased statistically significantly during secondary school, yet school satisfaction showed a temporary increase between the end of primary school and right after the transition to secondary school. School tracks did not statistically significantly predict the magnitude of the decline in life satisfaction or school satisfaction. Only school-level achievement composition significantly negatively predicted the decline in life satisfaction, suggesting that students in schools with higher levels of achievement composition had a greater decrease in life satisfaction than their counterparts in schools with lower levels of achievement composition. Taken together, these findings contribute to the knowledge of how life and school satisfaction develop during secondary school and the long-term associations between subjective well-being and school context factors.

Critical and creative thinking (CCT) was introduced as a General Capability in the Australian Curriculum in 2010, heralded as a call for more explicit teaching of CCT. This study was an online survey of 259 Australian teachers, exploring how they have adopted CCT as curriculum, including how confident they feel about this area of their teaching and what aspects of Australia’s CCT curriculum they teach and how. Most respondents believed it was important to teach CCT, but only a minority could recall professional learning in this area, and their confidence levels tended to be only moderate. The teachers were asked to provide examples of what they ‘say’ and ‘do’ in their teaching that best reflect their ‘typical’ approaches to teaching CCT. The examples indicated that they typically incorporated CCT into their teaching of other learning areas. However, the examples were mostly focused on only a few of the CCT General Capability sub-elements and were mostly of teachers providing students opportunities to engage in CCT skills, rather than explaining, modelling, scaffolding, or reinforcing the skills. For teachers to teach CCT more confidently and impactfully, improved professional learning and a more conducive CCT curriculum would assist.

This special issue presents a collection of recent papers drawing on qualitative research in and about schooling in Australia and the ways in which gender-related issues in the broadest sense continue to shape people’s educational experiences. These papers from the present are positioned in relation to the long histories of policy and research attention to gender equity in Australian education. We set the context for work in the present by scanning the past, noting the ambitions, the gaps and the failures of earlier policies, and drawing attention to the quality and volume of research that has previously been undertaken in this area. We explore the current policy vacuum regarding gender to consider some of the pressures and complexities that have led to the erasure or avoidance of gender-related issues. Each of the papers that form this special issue demonstrate—despite different methods, theoretical frameworks, settings and participant cohorts—how stereotypes and limitations circulate in everyday life in schools and beyond them, and how these impact on people. They each explore from a different starting point how gender injustices are perpetuated and produced, in often subtle and nuanced ways that require concerted effort to unpack. They simultaneously offer insights into the critical and creative ways that young people and those around them are reconfiguring gender and seeking more hopeful and more equitable educational experiences and outcomes. Collectively, the papers that form this special issue advocate for policies and practices that embrace the complexities of young people's lives and are oriented towards inclusive and equitable educational environments.

This study explores the impact of industrialization on secondary schooling in nineteenth-century France. As a source of exogenous variation in industrialization across the French territory, it takes advantage of the openings and closures of mines, which were supervised by the Ministry of Public Works, independently from the Ministry of Education. The results suggest that industrialization had a negative but mostly insignificant effect on high school enrollment. However, industrialization increased the share of high school pupils in applied sections and the wages of mathematics teachers.

Although gender expansive views are increasingly evident amongst young people, segregation according to binary notions of gender underpins the organisational structures of single-sex secondary schools. While claims of educational benefits are common, particularly for girls, gender is difficult to disentangle from socioeconomic advantage and other factors. Evidence suggests that such schools contribute to homogenised and limiting notions of gender. While some schools are moving towards desegregation in response to parental demand, little is known from the perspectives of young people in non-elite schools who have experienced segregated schooling. This paper turns to the accounts of 14 recent school leavers in NSW to consider the underpinning logics of segregated schooling, including the imbrication and erasure of socioeconomic dis/advantage, cultural, social, and locational factors that complicate claims about segregated schooling. Affective intensities of single-sex schooling are traced through micronarratives that touch on relations with peers, teachers, school spaces and practices, learning experiences, and their implications for gendered subjectivities and gender justice. Their accounts suggest that student experiences of segregated schooling are ambivalent and do not support claims of educational advantage and that configurations of single-sex schooling may be anachronistic for these times.

Background/Objective. The teaching and learning of geology in Morocco's secondary education system seems to face various challenges. This research aims to recognize and analyze these challenges so as to develop a deeper understanding of the problems faced in middle and high school classrooms. Materials/methods. To this end, a survey was conducted among Life and Earth Sciences teachers working in secondary education in Morocco using an online questionnaire (via Google Forms). Participants were selected using a non-probability sampling method based on self-selection; only teachers who voluntarily agreed to respond to the questionnaire were included in the sample. The sample comprised 142 Life and Earth Sciences teachers from public secondary schools under various provincial education directorates across Morocco. The questionnaire was divided into two parts: the first part, comprising four items, gathers general information about the respondents; the second part, composed of 17 items, explores the specific difficulties encountered in the teaching and learning of geology. Data analysis was carried out using Excel for descriptive statistical processing and SPSS software to apply the Chi-square test to examine relationships between certain variables. Results. The data analysis reveals numerous challenges from both teachers' and students' perspectives. These challenges are mainly related to the characteristics of the subject, particularly its use of abstract concepts and the intricate ideas of geological time and spatial relationships. Conclusion. The study found that there are also obstacles related to teaching methods, pedagogy, administration, and individual circumstances. To address these setbacks, the teachers surveyed suggested several solutions to improve the teaching of geology and facilitate student learning.

International research has established that significant others, such as parents and peers, can influence a student’s educational or occupational aspirations. However, this research also reveals that influences differ by educational system, and the effects of peers are strongest in systems with low levels of stratification. For a long time, it was assumed that these effects were weaker in highly stratified systems, such as in Germany. However, our results using large-scale data ( N  > 11,000) indicate that the situation is more complex and parents and peers have different influences, depending on the secondary school track a student attends. Occupational aspirations are lower, on average, in non-academic tracks yet more diverse than in the academic track. Parents strongly influence students’ occupational aspirations in the academic track, while peers are more relevant in non-academic tracks, where no parental effects are detectable. These results suggest that the influence of significant others is not uniform but rather complex as school track interactions are present. Reporting uniform effects in systems with strong tracking is problematic and needs to be reconsidered.

This article is a personal reflection on the current state of Patristics in Australia, focusing on its debatable effectiveness in both Church and society. It discusses the manner in which the subject of Patristics functions as a specialized subset of knowledge within theological colleges and in a very limited number of universities, meaning that its accessibility is almost exclusively via formal educational providers. The more specialized the mode of delivery becomes, however, the more the role and relevance of Patristics appears to be diminishing over time. While that is not an Australian characteristic alone, the author argues that the purely tertiary nature of Patristic learning today is a feature of the local landscape that ought to be surveyed. As it currently stands, the subject is disconnected from preceding levels of education and indeed from other possible means of popularizing the subject for a broader audience who, otherwise, are not likely to encounter the Church Fathers in any meaningful way. This implies a fundamental question about how such a situation arose in the first place and became part of the status quo. The discussion is broadened through a presentation of certain key features of Patristics in the Eastern tradition.

This paper argues that a component of increasing the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and youths completing their secondary education is having parents and teachers maintain heightened expectations of these children in achieving this goal. To understand this phenomenon, we investigate the importance of, and discrepancies between, primary caregiver and teacher outlooks regarding Indigenous youths completing year 12. For the purpose of this paper, we adopt the term ‘primary caregiver’ in place of parent. This is because the majority (87.7%) of P1s analysed are the biological mothers with the remainder being close female relatives. P2s analysed are all male, 93.3% are biological fathers; remainder are step-fathers or adoptive fathers. This paper uses quantitative data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children to measure expectations from parents and teachers of Indigenous children. Results suggest that parents maintain exceptionally high expectations of their children, while teacher's expectations significantly decline over the course of Indigenous children's primary and secondary schooling years. We suggest that relationships and communication between parents and teachers, regarding expectations of students, are important to establishing an equilibrium in expectations of children, and that teachers may benefit from further training to address any underlying biases towards Indigenous children.