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The Human Development and Community Wellbeing (HDCW) Team focuses on improving outcomes for children, family, and the community.

The Education Department of Western Australia advocates for culturally responsive schools. Aboriginal Indigenous Education Officers are employed by schools to facilitate and enable the potential for Aboriginal school children to thrive in school settings. 

The prevalence of child and adolescent breakfast skipping is concerning, and limited existing evidence suggests an association between skipping breakfast and negative emotional wellbeing outcomes. However, positive emotional wellbeing outcomes have been neglected from research in this space.

This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of different forms of bullying victimization experiences and their association with family functioning, peer relationships and school connectedness among adolescents across 40 lower and middle income to high-income countries (LMIC-HICs).

Engagement has been identified as an important predictor of student outcomes; therefore, teachers’ ability to accurately and objectively measure student engagement is essential and can assist teachers to make instructional decisions based on data rather than perception.

Bullying is an issue that continues to represent a significant challenge to the provision of pastoral care in schools. In more recent decades, it has evolved in its complexity to include forms of bullying often referred to as cyberbullying or online bullying.

Bullying behaviour often increases in late childhood and peaks in early adolescence. While interventions to address bullying behaviour typically encourage students to report bullying incidents to school staff, students are often reluctant to report incidents for fear it will worsen their situation or because they lack confidence in a staff members’ ability to intervene effectively. This study explores school staff responses to student reports of bullying behaviour.

Recognition that schools should be responsive to children who are impacted by adversity and trauma is burgeoning internationally. However, consensus regarding the necessary components of a trauma-informed school is lacking. This research developed expert-informed and internationally relevant best-practice trauma-informed principles for schools.

Interest in how the school built environment impacts bullying behaviour has gained momentum in recent years. While numerous studies have identified locations within schools where bullying frequently occurs, few studies have investigated the potential conceptual pathways linking school locations to bullying behaviour.

Bullying in schools has been associated with poor academic and mental health outcomes in students. While students are often encouraged to report bullying incidents to school staff, some students avoid reporting incidents as they lack faith in staff members ability to intervene.