Volume 9 Issue 1

A fifth annual visit by Avondale nurses to a hospital on Malaita in the Solomon Islands demonstrates to local nursing students the value of the profession.

This mixed methods pilot study investigated the impact of values education on Year Seven students in three Christian K-12 schools in Australia. Participants were surveyed to determine their knowledge, understanding, and internalisation of the Nine Core Values for Australian Schooling. Further, random selections of students from two schools participated in three focus groups that discussed scenarios describing value-laden interactions. The study found that Year Seven students had a varied knowledge and understanding of the Nine Core Values for Australian Schooling that appeared independent of background variables. The study also found that the participants generally had sound levels of internalisation of values, but that the levels of internalisation among girls exceeded that among boys. Further, the study found no relationship between the knowledge of values and the internalisation of values.

Teachers who work with young adolescents know that motivating and maintaining their interest in classroom-based learning is a major challenge.

This study seeks to address this issue and is an examination of the use of a motivational scaffold to assist a cohort of Year Nine students to take greater responsibility for their learning through direct and authentic learning experiences outside the classroom.

School-family and school-community partnerships have been shown to underpin school success. These relationships where parents and community organisations share responsibility for helping children succeed in school have been called ‘partnership schools’ and ‘complementary learning’. An example of a ‘partnership school’ was reported in a case study by Miller (2005; 2009) where support being provided by church-based community volunteers at Whitewood Public School1 on the Central Coast of New South Wales was cited. That study investigated the use of empowerment evaluation (Fetterman, 2001) with a national school breakfast program in Australia called the Good Start Breakfast Club. This paper reports from two perspectives, the contribution to ‘complementary learning’ of those volunteers from the Christ Centered Community Church2 serving in the school breakfast program at Whitewood: first the reflections by a group of parents, grandparents and carers of children attending the school; and second, the reflections of the church pastor. Relationships significant to students’ lives and learning emerge in these narratives.

Analysis of the data collected in the Valuegenesis II study of 3263 students in Seventh-day Adventist schools, indicates that 63% consider the school chaplain has influenced their development of faith. Further, school chaplaincy is associated with statistically significant positive differences in the levels of Faith Maturity, Christian Commitment, Intrinsic Orientation to Religion, Positive Views of God, Denominational Loyalty and Social Responsibility, being a medium to large effect impacting students lives. The potential of reflective practice to improve the outcomes of chaplaincy in the current context of low levels of job satisfaction and chaplaincy retention is considered.

Is it possible to foster excellence, engagement and intergenerational understanding through a Year Eight Technology project?

Almost exactly two years ago, I was invited to speak at the Avondale Graduation for that year and had accepted. But unexpectedly, my wife was taken ill in late November and was dead by the 22nd of December. It was a very difficult time, but it was also a time in which life had a certain clarity. All sorts of things that had seemed important – the state of the house, the state of my finances, the state of my work –seemed suddenly far less significant. But relationships (with Beth, with my children, with our friends, with God), in those days and in the months that followed, became more and more clear. How important these were. It wasn’t that I gave up on the house, or my finances or my work, but it was clear that they were secondary priorities. I was to invest in things that would last, in things that, when the going was tough, had really been revealed to matter. In short, I was to invest in love.

In late winter, 1986, I wrote a letter of appreciation to Australian poet, Gwen Harwood, for her Selected Poems (1975). I mentioned that I was planning to visit Hobart in 1987 and cautiously wondered if we might meet. I enclosed a stamped addressed envelope, hoping, perhaps presumptuously, to receive a reply. After all, it was rumoured she did not like academia and was arguably the finest poet then writing in Australia. She had already won seven prestigious awards and would go on to receive seven more, including three honorary doctorates.