Maria Nicholas
Biographic Data
| ID | 6327713 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maria Nicholas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maria |
| FAMILY NAME | Nicholas |
| SIGNATURE | NICHOLAS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Deakin University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5979-4288 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
A Review of the Three-Cueing System
This paper addresses the ongoing debate about the role of the three-cueing system in reading education by analyzing the body of evidence from 53 studies spanning 1964–2022. A key outcome of this study was to determine that the three-cueing system is not a method for teaching students how to decode, but rather a framework for teaching students how to monitor their reading accuracy and comprehension, enabling them to take control of their own learn…
Children's engagement with digital technology in educational spaces
Children's engagement in play and learning is becoming increasingly complex as educational spaces integrate digital experiences. While engagement is often seen as a multifaceted construct, there is often no clear and generally accepted definition or understanding of what is meant when the term ‘engagement’ is used. This scoping review synthesised the ways in which engagement has been conceptualised within young children's digital experiences in e…
The Responsive Teacher
As standardised, scripted reading lessons become more prevalent, an important issue has arisen: what flexible, contextually responsive, student-centred affordances of teaching instruction may be lost if teachers feel compelled to restrict their teaching to scripted practice? To establish a baseline for evaluating the dialogic flexibility of such programs, this study presents a thematic analysis of the unscripted behaviours of three Australian pri…
Literacy learning in infant-toddler programs
The ‘schoolification’ of early childhood education and care programs, seen as readying children for formalised schooling, has had an impact on the education of younger and younger age groups. While the focus of past research has mainly focused on 4-5-year-old children, this study shifts the focus to 2-3-year-old children and the literacy focus of educators working with these very young children. Nine educators from Victoria, Australia were interv…
Exploring children’s meaning-making as they interact with digital artworks through play at a museum exhibition
Many museums have begun to integrate digital technologies as a way of providing opportunities for children to play, explore, and make meaning of artworks. However, little is known about the specific ways children interact with digital artworks in museum spaces. This paper presents findings from a study that explored young children’s interactions with digital artworks at the Beings by Universal Everything exhibition, held at ACMI (formerly known a…
Teacher agency and student diversity in reading education
State-level governments across Australia have made a commitment via public announcements to ensuring that all schools are teaching reading using ‘consistent’, ‘compulsory’, ‘common practice’. Through a mixed-methods questionnaire with 51 schoolteachers from four states across Australia, this paper examines practitioner experiences of teacher agency and student diversity in reading education. The results reveal that teachers’ confidence in teachin…
How Individuals Matter
Cross-sector collaborations via Facebook
This paper reports on a study that explored the user-driven inter-organisational professional learning that teachers from two education systems collectively engaged in via social media. A dedicated Facebook group was established to enable Australian early childhood teachers (sector one) and primary school teachers (sector two) to engage in collaborations that would support children’s transition to school. Using an Activity Theory framework, findi…
The shared reading of digital storybooks with young children
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 …
Transition into school-aged care – how do services support children starting school
Despite a focus on successful transitions to school, transition to School Aged Care (SAC) has largely been overlooked. This paper shares insights into transition programs provided for children commencing in SAC, at or close to their transition to school. Educators working in SAC programs in Victoria, Australia, participated in an online survey exploring their practices, beliefs, and understandings regarding children’s transition into SAC in their…
Guided to Guider
Guided to Guider: the “∼ed” and “∼er” roles in professional development materials for guided reading
The Barometer of Agency
The guided reading teaching approach is a commonly utilised practice that teachers have employed for over 20 years, both in Australia and abroad. What the approach entails, however, can be open to interpretation—an outcome that highlights the challenge of describing and conceptualising the approach in clear and unambiguous terms. This study addressed this issue of ambiguity by exploring whether guided reading, rather than being a singular teachin…
Child-Centred Teaching
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 raise…
Cross-sector early years teacher collaboration
In Victoria, Australia, the transition from preschool to compulsory school education is impacted by systemic disconnections in organisation, pedagogical thinking and curricula. These disconnections can create discontinuities in children’s experiences, and continuity of learning. At a policy level, attempts have been made to build cooperative relationships and shared understandings between teachers in both contexts with a focus on transition-to-sc…
Guided reading – Working within a child's zone of proximal development
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Child-Centred Teaching
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 raise…
Cross-sector early years teacher collaboration
In Victoria, Australia, the transition from preschool to compulsory school education is impacted by systemic disconnections in organisation, pedagogical thinking and curricula. These disconnections can create discontinuities in children’s experiences, and continuity of learning. At a policy level, attempts have been made to build cooperative relationships and shared understandings between teachers in both contexts with a focus on transition-to-sc…
Guided reading – Working within a child's zone of proximal development
The Barometer of Agency
The guided reading teaching approach is a commonly utilised practice that teachers have employed for over 20 years, both in Australia and abroad. What the approach entails, however, can be open to interpretation—an outcome that highlights the challenge of describing and conceptualising the approach in clear and unambiguous terms. This study addressed this issue of ambiguity by exploring whether guided reading, rather than being a singular teachin…
Transition into school-aged care – how do services support children starting school
Despite a focus on successful transitions to school, transition to School Aged Care (SAC) has largely been overlooked. This paper shares insights into transition programs provided for children commencing in SAC, at or close to their transition to school. Educators working in SAC programs in Victoria, Australia, participated in an online survey exploring their practices, beliefs, and understandings regarding children’s transition into SAC in their…
Guided to Guider
Guided to Guider: the “∼ed” and “∼er” roles in professional development materials for guided reading
Cross-sector collaborations via Facebook
This paper reports on a study that explored the user-driven inter-organisational professional learning that teachers from two education systems collectively engaged in via social media. A dedicated Facebook group was established to enable Australian early childhood teachers (sector one) and primary school teachers (sector two) to engage in collaborations that would support children’s transition to school. Using an Activity Theory framework, findi…
The shared reading of digital storybooks with young children
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 …
Literacy learning in infant-toddler programs
The ‘schoolification’ of early childhood education and care programs, seen as readying children for formalised schooling, has had an impact on the education of younger and younger age groups. While the focus of past research has mainly focused on 4-5-year-old children, this study shifts the focus to 2-3-year-old children and the literacy focus of educators working with these very young children. Nine educators from Victoria, Australia were interv…
Exploring children’s meaning-making as they interact with digital artworks through play at a museum exhibition
Many museums have begun to integrate digital technologies as a way of providing opportunities for children to play, explore, and make meaning of artworks. However, little is known about the specific ways children interact with digital artworks in museum spaces. This paper presents findings from a study that explored young children’s interactions with digital artworks at the Beings by Universal Everything exhibition, held at ACMI (formerly known a…
Teacher agency and student diversity in reading education
State-level governments across Australia have made a commitment via public announcements to ensuring that all schools are teaching reading using ‘consistent’, ‘compulsory’, ‘common practice’. Through a mixed-methods questionnaire with 51 schoolteachers from four states across Australia, this paper examines practitioner experiences of teacher agency and student diversity in reading education. The results reveal that teachers’ confidence in teachin…
How Individuals Matter
A Review of the Three-Cueing System
This paper addresses the ongoing debate about the role of the three-cueing system in reading education by analyzing the body of evidence from 53 studies spanning 1964–2022. A key outcome of this study was to determine that the three-cueing system is not a method for teaching students how to decode, but rather a framework for teaching students how to monitor their reading accuracy and comprehension, enabling them to take control of their own learn…
Children's engagement with digital technology in educational spaces
Children's engagement in play and learning is becoming increasingly complex as educational spaces integrate digital experiences. While engagement is often seen as a multifaceted construct, there is often no clear and generally accepted definition or understanding of what is meant when the term ‘engagement’ is used. This scoping review synthesised the ways in which engagement has been conceptualised within young children's digital experiences in e…
The Responsive Teacher
As standardised, scripted reading lessons become more prevalent, an important issue has arisen: what flexible, contextually responsive, student-centred affordances of teaching instruction may be lost if teachers feel compelled to restrict their teaching to scripted practice? To establish a baseline for evaluating the dialogic flexibility of such programs, this study presents a thematic analysis of the unscripted behaviours of three Australian pri…
Psychology (11 works) · Pedagogy (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Developmental psychology (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Child Development and Digital Technology (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Innovative Education and Learning Practices (4 works) · Mathematics education (4 works) · Medical education (4 works)