Seeding Success and Research-Based Intervention for Aboriginal Students: Impact of quality teaching, effective schools, and psycho-social drivers on educational outcomes The Seeding Success project is the first large scale representative survey of the effects of schooling experiences and resilience on educational outcomes of Aboriginal students and their classmates. The project is the result of a collaboration between the Research and Evaluation Unit in Planning and Innovation, the Aboriginal Education and Training Directorate, the Professional Learning and Leadership Development Directorate and a team of researchers in Aboriginal education from the Centre for Educational Research at the University of Western Sydney. The university team is headed by Professor Rhonda Craven and A/Professor Geoff Munns. The project steering committee also includes representatives from the AECG. The project aims to identify factors that are linked to successful educational achievement for NSW Aboriginal students. It examines Aboriginal and non Aboriginal student views regarding their learning experiences as well as those of their teachers to help develop an understanding of which factors matter most for this group of students in Years 3 to 6. The study involves 52 randomly selected schools from metropolitan and regional areas. The design of the study consists of four phases. The first phase in 2008 involved testing the psychometric properties of existing and newly developed instrumentation for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students to ensure the measures are robust for the sample under consideration. The main study in 2009 consisted of the collection of three time waves of quantitative data from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students in Year 3 to Year 6. The data included student and teacher surveys of features of quality teaching as well as measures of literacy and numeracy progress. State of the art statistical methods of the longitudinal data are to be used to tease out the specific factors that have significant impacts on educational outcomes after controlling for the effects of other variables and any measurement error. The final phase in 2009 was an in-depth ethnography in selected classroom environments and interviews of principals, teachers and students. The field work has been completed and reports will be completed in mid to late 2010. For information please contact Dr Brian Davies, Manager of Research and Evaluation on (02) 9561-8094.