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Year 12 students are more than their results – ACU expert

The release of Year 12 results has dominated media headlines across the country.

ACU Senior Research Fellow Dr Steven Lewis has been part of the coverage, offering expert advice for school leavers designed to put their results and ATARs into perspective.

Dr Lewis, of ACU’s Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education (ILSTE), has also penned a piece for The Conversation about the overwhelming focus on high achieving students by traditional and social media platforms.

As Dr Lewis writes, the “ecstatic scenarios” of students who have excelled has become the often-depicted narrative in the media.

But while top performing students should celebrate their results, Dr Lewis argues a figure at the end of 13 years of education is a narrow definition of achievement, and more diverse media coverage is needed to overcome this “one-dimensional view of schooling success”.

Dr Lewis also points out learning is a lifelong process and reassures school leavers that there are multiple pathways available to them for further study.

Read the article first published in The Conversation

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