Sally Ashton-Hay

• Doctor of Philosophy; Master of Education TESOL; Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary); Certificate of TESOL; Bachelor of Arts
• Southern Cross University Gold Coast

In the Australian university context, Academic Language and Learning (ALL) entails advisors working with academics and students to enhance learning. It is a relatively new area, beginning around the mid-1980s, and ALL units developed within their respective institutions. Since early 2000s, there has been an increasing amount of literature discussin...

The higher education sector's reliance on international students, including Australian postgraduate tourism programs, impacts students and staff. Teachers' stories contribute to understanding the complexity involved. This exploratory study collected stories from classroom experiences of a sample of teaching staff working in majority international c...

The aim of Passport to Success @ SCU is to effectively disseminate vital information on the nature and availability of support services and resources to international students, and help new students to actively explore their own and the institution's expectations of higher education using an interactive game-style approach to orientation.

The differences between regularly published practice papers and evidence-based Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) manuscripts as preferred publications are outlined and discussed in this editorial. By examining the literature and backstory of SoTL, clear guidelines for well-designed research studies supported by evidence provide compelling...

Attention to students and their education experiences has become increasingly important in the 21st century. Student experience - particularly active and agentic practices captures in terms like 'student voice' and 'partnership' - was an obvious choice in response to Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice (JUTLP) editors' commissioned...

Student success and retention in higher education are becoming increasingly important and the need for learning support for diverse students is also crucial. This chapter reports on a study investigating whether attendance at Academic Skills consultations over a 3-year period made any difference in student performance, success, Grade Point Average...

Student voice provides important feedback on teaching and learning experiences yet is most often used only for the purpose of evaluating units of study for universities. This chapter reports on an investigation of student needs and what matters most in their learning experience. Students responded to three survey questions: What was going well, wha...

Traditional attitudes to student voice are changing which is highlighted in the recent proliferation of student voice manuscripts the Journal is receiving. Student voice literature currently positions students as active dialogue partners in higher education with much to contribute rather than passive consumers or evaluators. As Editors of the Stude...

Artificial intelligence and large-language model chatbots have generated significant attention in higher education, and in research practice. Whether ChatGPT, Bard, Jasper Chat, Socratic, Bing AI, DialoGPT, or something else, these are all shaping how education and research occur. In this Editorial, we offer five editorial principles to guide decis...

Purpose This study aims to examine the effectiveness of bilingual learning strategies designed to support Chinese undergraduate business students facing significant learning challenges in an Australian university capstone curriculum delivered at their Chinese university. These challenges include the students’ difficulty understanding discipline-spe...

As the importance of student success and retention in higher education increases , the need for academic support is also crucial to assist the growing number of students from diverse backgrounds. This study assessed whether the attendance of students for an Academic Skills consultation made any difference in terms of performance, success, GPA, and...

This article discusses the experiences and challenges of introducing a third-party learning support provider into the teaching and learning culture at Southern Cross University (SCU), a regional university with campus locations in New South Wales and Queensland. The provider was engaged to extend online study support after-hours to first year stude...

https://blogs.deakin.edu.au/peers4peers/using-reflection-as-an-evaluation-tool/

Peer Programs Network Newsletter

Online academic skills support in higher education and the ways that students use such support is seldom researched. "Ask a Question" is part of one Australian university's online academic support service for students to upload assignment documents for review or to ask a specific question about their work. With a view to fine-tuning the online acad...

As Australian higher education institutions seek to internationalise and increase enrolments of international students, the student experience is crucial for ensuring a sustainable future via delivery of quality learning, development of English language standards and retention of enrolments. This project aimed to capture student voice in order to b...

As Australian higher education institutions seek to internationalise and increase enrolments of international students, the student experience is crucial for ensuring a sustainable future via delivery of quality learning, development of English language standards and retention of enrolments. This project aimed to capture student voice in order to b...

The diverse range of academic, social and cultural challenges experienced by Asian students when studying at Western universities is well documented. This research involved a pre-departure curriculum designed to ease the intercultural transition and adjustment for Chinese international students to a new learning environment in Australia. Moving bey...

Recent government initiatives emphasise the need for social inclusion in higher education to enhance participation, learning outcomes and increase retention rates. Australian Indigenous students, socioeconomically disadvantaged and non-English speaking migrants are included, yet operational strategies for supportive programs related to internationa...

This book presents important research advances in the study of teaching and teacher research as well as a review of motivation in education; mentoring; an evaluation of online learning; educational change and computer-assisted teaching.

This chapter describes the use of collaborative learning as an approach to enhance English language learning by students from non-English speaking backgrounds. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) principles were applied to two case studies, one comprising of undergraduate English as Foreign Language Learners in Turkey and the other involved Engli...

English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students often face incongruence with Western teaching methods and learning expectations. The aim of this paper is to explore the potential for interactive peer-based learning to engage ESL and EFL language learners provide authentic communication experiences and accelerate...

There's nothing to compare with teaching in a foreign country for professional development and appreciation of the value of education. Ataturk, the fther of modern Turkey, once claimed that teachers are the saviours of a nation. As modern revolutionaries, teachers may spread progressive educational change wherever they work, including in a developi...

This paper examines the various roles of culture in language teaching with the aim of increasing awareness for English teachers. Graves (2001) claims that culture is receiving increasing attention; Hymes (1972) views it as communicative competence; Larsen-Freeman (2001) as a fifth skill in addition to reading, writing, speaking and listening; and K...

Aboriginal students are identified as one of the groups most at risk in Australia today. They have low levels of achievement and school retention coupled with high levels of failure, absenteeism and behaviour problems. All available statistics support this perspective (National Review 1994 in Groome 1995:70). DEET (1991:165)also recognises the need...

Thirty-five years ago, a landmark article entitled What the “Good Language Learner” Can Teach Us suggested that if more was known about what “successful learners” did, then those strategies could be taught to poorer learners to enhance learning (Rubin, 1975: 42). Since publication of this article, language instruction has begun to encompass technol...

Most members of the language teaching profession realize that their students’ learning potential increases when attitudes are positive and motivation runs high. The research into the connection between positive attitudes and successfully learning a second language supports this simple observation, although it is important to understand that many va...

Drama is highly regarded as an effective and valuable teaching strategy because of its unique ability to engage reflective, constructivist and active learning in the classroom as well as enhancing oral skills development (Di Pietro, 1987; Via, 1976; Heathcote cited in Wagner, 1976; Mezirow, 1990; Schon, 1991; Donato and McCormick, 1994; Lukinsky, 1...

This study is concerned with the learning experiences and strategies of secondary Aboriginal girls from Elcho Island in the Northern Territory as they study in an urban school in the Gold Coast, Queensland. The girls were learning English as their second and third language. The study details how the ESL teacher/author tried to understand how to mee...

This paper explores and highlights some of the strategies used to challenge, encourage and support the communicative learning process for two large classes of Turkish learners in their third and fourth years of the English Language and Literature Department at a large university in eastern Turkey. Many of these students are expected to become Engli...

Recent educational reforms have been gaining increasing attention across Europe, particularly for the creation of powerful learning environments (Buchberger, 2001; Gerjets & Hesse, 2005; Lesgold, 2004; Palincsar & Herrenkohl, 2002; Van Petegem, De Loght, & Shortridge, 2003) based on constructivist educational theory. Most of these innovations are r...

Book review - Ancient scholars once journeyed across the Alps to study Italian law while some sailed the Mediterranean to learn Greek philosophy or examine Arabic scripts on science, medicine and mathematics. Devotees of philosophical and religious thought migrated to the Orient in search of transcendental wisdom. Today, the quest for knowledge ha...