This systematic scoping review reports findings from 38 studies (2000–2022) that explored the approaches to differentiation that have been effectively used with high-ability students and the school-level supports that enabled their application. The review advances our understanding of current approaches and highlights future considerations for school-based pedagogies that aim for an inclusive education for all, including shared understandings of what effectiveness means and looks like in practice and how it can be determined or measured. The review identified 15 effective teaching approaches used with high-ability learners, showing that teachers draw upon an array of approaches when differentiating for high-ability students in both primary and secondary settings and across disciplines. However, the limited number of studies and predominance of data from one country suggest the need for further research across a broader range of contexts, including the important role of school leadership in supporting differentiated teacher practice. This need is made more pressing in contexts where differentiation continues to be primarily focused upon students working below expected level rather than including the highly able, and where the practice of differentiation continues to be misunderstood.

In 2017, 5019 educators from primary and preschool settings across Victoria, Australia took part in joint professional learning around effective transition to school processes. Upon registering for this professional learning workshop, participants were invited to identify the most significant challenges associated with transition to school. The responses were analysed using qualitative content analysis to code emerging themes. Findings show that prior to attending the professional learning workshop, school readiness was identified as a challenge, however perceptions as to what this entailed varied. In many instances the early childhood educators’ perceptions of school readiness differed to the views of primary school educators. Whilst academic readiness was identified as an important challenge in both sectors, early childhood educators also raised social and emotional readiness as a key challenge, more so than primary school educators. Educators’ awareness of differences in perspectives between early childhood educators, school educators, and parents were also factors noted as key challenges impacting transition to school.

This paper investigates mothers’ views regarding the purpose of shared reading with their two-year-old children, confidence in using printed and electronic texts, and self-reported practice, framed around a focus on mothers’ motivation to engage in shared reading with their children. Research into adult–child shared reading experiences has traditionally focused on early reading behaviours and talk patterns captured in video data, reporting on the literacy or cognitive benefits of these experiences as viewed by researchers. Parent contributions have typically been sought to provide background information such as parent education, frequency of home reading and socio-economic factors. There is limited research that invites parents' voices. Findings from this study have been drawn from quantitative and qualitative data, collected from questionnaires and individual interviews with 12 reading-proficient mothers of two-year-old children in Victoria, Australia. Findings show that mothers acknowledged the educational affordances of shared reading, and the love of reading that the practice invites. Self-reported practices and confidence levels showed a strong preference for using printed picture storybooks as part of a bedtime routine, and that access to electronic texts does not necessarily equate to the same guided engagement with electronic texts as with printed texts.

Research into the experiences of casual relief teachers (CRTs) (substitute or supply teachers) across Australia and internationally has reported feelings of marginalisation among participants. These findings are concerning when one considers that students might be in the care of CRTs for an equivalent of 1 year or more throughout their schooling. When CRTs describe such feelings there is a suggestion that they do not feel a part of the community of practice in which they work. Accordingly, their opportunities for professional learning are often compromised, which has implications for their ability to maintain pedagogical knowledge and skills. This study used cluster sampling survey data to offer insights into professional challenges faced by CRTs. The discussion examines the self-determined skills of 59 Australian CRTs and the way schooling is organised that may leave them feeling excluded rather than members of what should be their “communities of practice.”

Research has shown that schoolteachers often prepare children for success in standardized reading assessments by ‘teaching to the test.’ Concurrently, research exploring children’s emergent literacies and ‘school readiness’ has shown that early childhood teachers often feel pressured to ‘prepare’ children for school and may do so by focusing on print-related literacies, to the detriment of earlier stages of the oral-to-print continuum. This raises the concern that teaching children as a group, preparing them for the next ‘stage of education,’ will disadvantage children who are working below or above expected levels of development. Our study explores the teaching approaches used with a group of foundation-year children who achieved more advanced reading outcomes than children from four adjacent classrooms in their first year of schooling. We collected the reading and letter-identification outcomes of 16 children in the teacher’s foundation-year class and interviewed her about her practices. Findings showed that the teacher used her knowledge of what the children should achieve in standardized assessments as a minimum expectation and moved beyond the content of such assessments when warranted, as determined by informal assessments. As a result, every child in the class met, and many exceeded, minimum reading standards by year’s end. We conclude that using an individualized, child-centred pedagogy, informed by a combination of standardized and informal assessments, allowed the teacher to support her students to develop a range of reading abilities and to reach their full potential.

The possibilities and challenges of digital technologies for young children are widely documented. However, parental guidelines place greater emphasis upon potential harms, advocating that parents limit their children’s screen time, or advise that parents simply read digital texts as they would a printed text. Our study investigated 22 Australian parents’ perspectives of their 2–3-year-old child’s experiences with digital devices and their views of reading digital storybooks to understand whether parents were cognisant of or engaged in practices that appeared to limit their child’s screen time, and whether parents noted any differences when shared reading printed and digital texts with their child. Results showed that many parents (1) limit screen time and therefore do not engage in shared digital text reading, consigning children’s screen time to unsupervised use; and (2) were aware that the reading of digital texts often is, and at times should differ to the reading of printed texts. These findings suggest that advising parents to limit screen time may result in parents avoiding the use of digital texts when shared reading with their child. Furthermore, recommending that parents read digital texts as they would printed texts may encourage parents to have unrealistic and/or frustrating expectations.