The university sector was hit hard by COVID-19 in early 2020 with global calls for universities to lockdown. The teacher education sector in most countries, including Australia, had not anticipated the shift to off-campus teaching of such a massive scale and the sector was not well prepared for the challenge. This paper reports how the Australian education sector responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and details how one Australian university implemented a number of innovations changing the mode of teaching and move to a fully online environment for all initial teacher education programmes. The innovations included the conversion of all face to face course work units into online units, including synchronous and asynchronous learning opportunities. The initial impact of the innovations on pre-service teachers was captured through systematic measures of engagement with the online content. Using these measures, we interviewed four academics who were identified as supporting high levels of interaction. We were keen to understand what contributed to fostering high levels of interaction of pre-service teachers. Key lessons learnt from the analysis are discussed with a hope that these practices might benefit others looking for ways to provide high-quality teacher education programmes during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Over the past decade, researchers have called for a reconceptualisation of school connectedness. A review of literature between 1990 and 2016 was completed to define school connectedness and identified four factors: attending, belonging, engaging, and flow. The review of the published literature from 1990 to 2016 that related to the four factors was undertaken to define each of these terms and their relevance to school connectedness.Subsequently, based on the four factors, a sequential, four-level model of school connectedness was proposed. The model suggests a progression from minimal connection to a deep level of acculturation and shared meaning relevant for adolescents between 12 and 18 years of age. It is argued that the four factors form the foundation for engagement and suggests the possibility of an experience of flow as a result of a student's connectedness with school. The literature on which the model is based draws together social, emotional, behavioural, and cognitive terms central to learning. The purpose of the review is to move beyond individual factors to propose an explanation for the sequence of graduated connection. Practically, the model provides a template for establishing the student's current experience of school to facilitate interventions to optimise connectedness with school.

New approaches to support the early learning for young Indigenous children are important to government policies across Australia. This study explores whether the Abecedarian Approach Australia (3a) intervention, with strong cultural adaptations, can boost young Aboriginal children's early language and learning skills, prior to preschool. Participants in this study were Aboriginal children attending playgroups, Families as First Teachers, in school settings in two remote communities in the Northern Territory. Implementation data on two components (Conversational Reading and LearningGames) of the Abecedarian Approach Australia (3a) intervention are reported, and the level of exposure the children had to the programme during the study period is analysed. Child outcomes were assessed on the Brigance Early Childhood Screen II for 149 children aged from 24 to 56 months. Children's language and early learning were associated with intervention dosage. Higher exposure to Conversational Reading and LearningGames predicted stronger language and overall development for young children. This study demonstrates that this intervention can be delivered effectively in playgroups in remote settings and is a meaningful and robust strategy to support early childhood learning, with potential to improve educational outcomes for young Aboriginal children in remote communities.

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Writing over time: An analysis of texts created by Year One students might scope possible learning journeys and assist teachers to monitor changes in students' writing during the early stages of their learning.The elements of writing discussed here were derived from an analysis of texts collected from Year 1 writers (the second year of school in Australia). The multi-vector Writing Analysis Tool used in this study was based on the analysis of 210 texts randomly selected from a large data set of Year 1 students' texts collected as part of an earlier stage of the research (Mackenzie, Scull and Munsie 2013).The analysis resulted in the identification of six salient dimensions of writing: text structure, sentence structure, vocabulary, spelling, punctuation, and handwriting/legibility and six levels of performance.These dimensions, clearly evident as areas of competency and challenge for young writers in the texts surveyed, are also affirmed in the literature that considers factors important as young children learn to write, as discussed below. Learning to writeLearning to write requires the ability to synchronize "skills such as handwriting, spelling, grammar, and punctuation" while at the same time keeping "track of such concerns as topic, organization, word choice, and audience needs" (Moats 2005(Moats /2006. Students' understanding of the dimensions of writing, both singularly and when integrated, develops as they move recursively across the different components of the process to compose and craft texts, and is central to effective assessment and teaching practice. To discuss these dimensions we have found it useful to use the terms authorial and secretarial, as described by Peters and Smith (1993). The authorial dimensions consider the composition of ideas and information communicated through the text, while the secretarial dimensions take account of the surface features and conventions of writing that allow a writer to accurately record written messages.

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